Luke-John sighed. Derry said decisively, ‘That does it, then. If Bert tipped him, I’m not going to.’
‘Why not?’
‘Bert’s heavy long-distance tips were nearly always non-starters.’
Luke-John stretched his neck until the tendons stood out like strings, and massaged his nobbly larynx. ‘Always the risk of that, of course. It happens to everyone.’
‘Do you mean that seriously?’ I asked Derry.
‘Oh sure. Sorry about your Tally article and all that,’ he grinned, ‘but I’d say just about the time it’s published you’ll find Tiddely Pom has been taken out of the Lamplighter.’
Derry twiddled unconcernedly with a rubber band and Luke-John shuffled absentmindedly through some papers. Neither of them felt the shiver travelling down my spine.
‘Derry,’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of what?’
‘That Bert always tipped non-starters for big races.’
Derry snapped the band twice in his fingers. ‘To be precise, if you want me to be precise, Bert tipped a higher percentage of big-race non-starters than anyone else in the street, and he has been at his best in this direction, or worst, or at any rate his most consistent, during the past year. He’d blow some horse up big, tell everyone to back it at once, and then wham, a day or two before the race it would be scratched.’
‘I’ve never noticed,’ said Luke-John forbiddingly, as if it couldn’t have happened without.
Derry shrugged. ‘Well, it’s a fact. Now, if you want to know something equally useless about that puffed up Connersley of the Sunday Hemisphere, he has a weird habit of always tipping horses which start with his own initial, C. Delusions of grandeur, I imagine.’
‘You’re having us on,’ Luke-John said.
Derry shook his head. ‘Uhuh. I don’t just sit here with my eyes shut, you know. I read the newspapers.’
‘I think,’ I said suddenly, ‘I will fetch my typewriter.’
‘Where is it?’
Over my shoulder on the way back to the door I said, ‘Being cleaned.’
This time the typewriter was ready. I collected it and went further along the street, to Bert’s paper. Up in the lift, to Bert’s department. Across the busy floor to the Sports Desk. Full stop beside the assistant sports editor, a constant racegoer, a long-known bar pal.
‘Ty! What’s the opposition doing here?’
‘Bert Checkov,’ I said.
We discussed him for a while. The assistant sports editor was hiding something. It showed in half looks, unfinished gestures, an unsuccessfully smothered embarrassment. He said he was shocked, shattered, terribly distressed by Bert’s death. He said everyone on the paper would miss him, the paper would miss him, they all felt his death was a great loss. He was lying.
I didn’t pursue it. Could I, I asked tentatively, have a look at Bert’s clippings book? I would very much like to re-read some of his articles.
The assistant sports editor said kindly that I had little to learn from Bert Checkov or anyone else for that matter, but to go ahead. While he got back to work I sorted out the records racks at the side of the room and eventually found three brown paper clippings books with Bert’s work stuck into the pages.
I took my typewriter out of its carrying case and left it lying on an inconspicuous shelf. The three clippings books went into the carrying case, though I had to squeeze to get it shut, and I walked quietly and unchallenged out of the building with my smuggled goods.
Luke-John and Derry goggled at the books of cuttings.
‘How on earth did you get them out? And why on earth do you want them?’
‘Derry,’ I said, ‘can now set about proving that Bert always tipped non-starters in big races.’
‘You’re crazy,’ Luke-John said incredulously.
‘No’ I said regretfully. ‘If I’m right, the Blaze is on the edge of the sort of scandal it thrives on. A circulation explosion. And all by courtesy of the sports section.’
Luke-John’s interest sharpened instantly from nil to needles.
‘Don’t waste time then, Derry. If Ty says there’s a scandal, there’s a scandal.’
Derry gave me a sidelong look. ‘Our truffle hound on the scent, eh?’ He took his feet off the desk and resignedly got to work checking what Bert had forecast against what had actually happened. More and more form books and racing calendars were brought out, and Derry’s written lists slowly grew.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Here it is, just as I said. These books cover the last three years. Up till eighteen months ago he tipped runners and non-runners in about the same proportion as the rest of us poor slobs. Then he went all out suddenly for horses which didn’t run when it came to the point. All in big races, which had ante-post betting.’ He looked puzzled. ‘It can’t be just coincidence, I do see that. But I don’t see the point.’
‘Ty?’ said Luke-John.
I shrugged. ‘Someone has been working a fiddle.’
‘Bert wouldn’t.’ His voice said it was unthinkable.
‘I’d better take these books back before they miss them,’ I said, packing them again into the typewriter case.
‘Ty!’ Luke-John sounded exasperated.
‘I’ll tell you when I come back.’ I said.
There was no denunciation at Bert’s office. I returned the books to their shelf and retrieved my typewriter, and thanked the assistant sports editor for his kindness.
‘You still here? I thought you’d gone.’ He waved a friendly hand. ‘Any time.’
‘All right,’ said Luke-John truculently when I got back to the Blaze. ‘I won’t believe Bert Checkov was party to any fiddle.’
‘He sold his soul,’ I said plainly, ‘Like he told me not to.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘He sold his column. He wrote what he was told to write.’
‘Not Bert. He was a newspaper man, one of the old school.’
I considered him. His thin face looked obstinate and pugnacious. Loyalty to an old friend was running very strong.
‘Well then,’ I said slowly, ‘Bert wrote what he was forced to write.’
A good deal of the Morton tension subsided and changed course. He wouldn’t help to uncover a scandal an old friend was responsible for, but he’d go the whole way to open up one he’d been the victim of.
‘Clever beast,’ said Derry under his breath.
‘Who forced him?’ Luke-John said.
‘I don’t know. Not yet. It might be possible to find out.’
‘And why?’
‘That’s much easier. Someone has been making an ante-post book on a certainty. What Bert was doing... being forced to do... was persuading the public to part with their money.’
They both looked contemplative. I started again, explaining more fully. ‘Say a villain takes up book-making. It can happen, you know.’
Derry grinned. ‘Say one villain hits on a jolly scheme for making illegal gains in a fool-proof way with very little effort. He only works it on big races which have ante-post betting, because he needs at least three weeks to rake in enough to make it worth the risk. He chooses a suitable horse, and he forces Bert to tip it for all his column’s worth. Right? So the public put their money on, and our villain sticks to every penny that comes his way. No need to cover himself against losses. He knows there won’t be any. He knows he isn’t going to have to pay out on that horse. He knows it’s going to be scratched at or after the four day forfeits. Very nice fiddle.’
After a short silence Derry said, ‘How does he know?’
‘Ah well,’ I said, shrugging, ‘That’s another thing we’ll have to find out.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Luke-John said sceptically. ‘All that just because Bert tipped a few non-starters.’