‘Then you,’ said Luke-John, ‘can do another follow-up to the Tiddely Pom business. Whether he wins or loses, I mean. Give us a puff for getting him to the starting gate.’
‘He isn’t there yet,’ I pointed out.
Luke-John sniffed impatiently. ‘There hasn’t been a vestige of trouble. No reaction at all. We’ve frightened them off, that’s what’s happened.’
I shook my head, wishing we had. Asked about the reports on Tiddely Pom and the Roncey children.
‘All O.K.,’ said Derry cheerfully. ‘Everything going smoothly.’
Mike de Jong appeared in the doorway, a quick, dark, intense man with double strength glasses and a fringe of black beard outlining his jaw. Caution rolled over him like a sea mist when he saw who I was with, and most of the purposefulness drained out of his stride. It took too much manoeuvring to get Luke-John and Derry to go into the further bar to eat without me, and Luke-John left looking back over his shoulder with smouldering suspicion, wanting to know why.
Mike joined me, his sharp face alight with appreciation.
‘Keeping secrets from the boss, eh?’
‘Sometimes he’s butter-fingered with other people’s T.N.T.’
Mike laughed. The cogs whirred round in his high-speed brain. ‘So what you want is private? Not for the Blaze?’
I dodged a direct answer. ‘What I want is very simple. Just anything you may have heard about a fellow countryman of yours.’
‘Who?’ His accent was a carbon copy, clipped and flat.
‘A man called Vjoersterod.’
There was a tiny pause while the name sank in, and then he choked on his beer. Recovered, and pretended someone had jogged his elbow. Made a playing-for-time fuss about brushing six scattered drops off his trouser leg. Finally he ran out of alibis and looked back at my face.
‘Vjoersterod?’ His pronunciation was subtly different from mine. The real thing.
‘That’s right,’ I agreed.
‘Yes... well, Ty... why do you ask me about him?’
‘Just curiosity.’
He was silent for thirty seconds. Then he said carefully again, ‘Why are you asking about him?’ Who pumped who.
‘Oh come on,’ I said in exasperation. ‘What’s the big mystery? All I want is a bit of gen on a harmless chap who goes racing occasionally...’
‘Harmless. You must be mad.’
‘Why?’ I sounded innocently puzzled.
‘Because he’s...’ He hesitated, decided I wasn’t on to a story, and turned thoroughly helpful. ‘Look here, Ty, I’ll give you a tip, free, gratis and for nothing. Just steer clear of anything to do with that man. He’s poison.’
‘In what way?’
‘He’s a bookmaker, back home. Very big business, with branches in all the big cities and a whole group of them round Johannesburg. Respectable enough on the surface. Thousands of perfectly ordinary people bet with him. But there have been some dreadful rumours...’
‘About what?’
‘Oh... blackmail, extortion, general high powered thuggery. Believe me, he is not good news.’
‘Then why don’t the police...?’ I suggested tentatively.
‘Why don’t they? Don’t be so naive, Ty. They can’t find anyone to give evidence against him, of course.’
I sighed. ‘He seemed so charming.’
Mike’s mouth fell open and his expression became acutely anxious.
‘You’ve met him?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Here... in England?’
‘Well, yes, of course.’
‘Ty... for God’s sake... keep away from him.’
‘I will,’ I said with feeling. ‘Thanks a lot, Mike. I’m truly grateful.’
‘I’d hate anyone I liked to tangle with Vjoersterod,’ he said, the genuine friendship standing out clear in his eyes, unexpectedly affecting. Then with a born newspaper man’s instinct for the main chance, a look of intense curiosity took over.
‘What did he want to talk about with you?’ he asked.
‘I really don’t know,’ I said, sounding puzzled.
‘Is he going to get in touch with you again?’
‘I don’t know that, either.’
‘Hm... give me a ring if he does, and I’ll tell you something else.’
‘Tell me now.’ I tried hard to make it casual.
He considered, shrugged, and friendship won again over journalism. ‘All right. It’s nothing much. Just that I too saw him here in England; must have been nine or ten months ago, back in the Spring.’ He paused.
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘why ever were you so horrified when I said I’d met him?’
‘Because when I saw him he was in the buffet bar on a race train, talking to another press man. Bert Checkov.’
With an enormous effort, I kept my mildly puzzled face intact.
Mike went on without a blink. ‘I warned Bert about him later, just like I have you. In here, actually. Bert was pretty drunk. He was always pretty drunk after that.’
‘What did he say?’ I asked.
‘He said I was three months too late.’
Mike didn’t know any more. Bert had clammed up after that one indiscretion and had refused to elaborate or explain. When he fell out of the window, Mike had wondered. Violent and often unexplained deaths among people who had had dealings with Vjoersterod were not unknown, he said. When I said I had met Vjoersterod, it had shocked him. He was afraid for me. Afraid I could follow Bert down on to the pavement.
I put his mind at rest. After what he’d told me, I would be forewarned, I said.
‘I wonder why he got his hooks into Bert...’ Mike said, his eyes on the middle distance, all the cogs whirring.
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, sighing, and distracted his attention on to another half-pint and a large ham sandwich. Luke-John’s thin freckled face loomed over his shoulder, and he turned to him with a typical bounce, as if all his body were made of springs.
‘So how’s the Gospel Maker? What’s cooking on the Blaze?’
Luke-John gave him a thin smile. He didn’t care for his Fleet Street nickname; nor for puns in general. Nor, it seemed, for Mike de Jong’s puns in particular. Mike received the message clearly, sketched me a farewell, and drifted over to another group.
‘What did he want?’ Luke-John asked sharply.
‘Nothing,’ I said mildly. ‘Just saying hello.’
Luke-John gave me a disillusioned look, but I knew very well that if I told him at that stage about Vjoersterod he would dig until he stumbled on the blackmail, dig again quite ruthlessly to find out how I could have been blackmailed, and then proceed to mastermind all subsequent enquiries with a stunning absence of discretion. Vjoersterod would hear his steam roller approach clean across the country. Luke-John was a brilliant Sports Editor. As a Field Marshal his casualty list would have been appalling.
He and Derry drank around to closing time at three, by which time the crowd had reduced to Sunday writers only. I declined their invitation to go back with them to the doldrums of the office, and on reflection telephoned to the only member of the racing authorities I knew well enough for the purpose.
Eric Youll at thirty-seven was the youngest and newest of the three stewards of the National Hunt Committee, the ruling body of Steeplechasing. In two years, by natural progression, he would be Senior Steward. After that, reduced to the ranks until re-elected for another three-year term. As a Steward he made sense because until recently he had himself ridden as an amateur, and knew at first hand all the problems and mechanics of racing. I had written him up in the Blaze a few times and we had been friendly acquaintances for years. Whether he either could or would help me now was nonetheless open to doubt.
I had a good deal of trouble getting through to him, as he was a junior sprig in one of the grander merchant banks. Secretaries with bored voices urged me to make an appointment.