‘Right now,’ I said, ‘will do very well.’
After the initial shock the last voice conceded that right now Mr Youll could just fit me in. When I got there, Mr Youll was busily engaged in drinking a cup of tea and reading the Sporting Life. He put them both down without haste, stood up, and shook hands.
‘This is unexpected,’ he said. ‘Come to borrow a million?’
‘Tomorrow, maybe.’
He smiled, told his secretary on the intercom to bring me some tea, offered me a cigarette, and leaned back in his chair, his manner throughout one of indecision and uncertainty. He was wary of me and of the purpose of my visit. I saw that uneasy expression almost every day of my life: the screen my racing friends erected when they weren’t sure what I was after, the barrier that kept their secrets from publication. I didn’t mind that sort of withdrawal. Understood it. Sympathised. And never printed anything private, if I could help it. There was a very fine edge to be walked when ones friends were ones raw material.
‘Off the record,’ I assured him. ‘Take three deep breaths and relax.’
He grinned and tension visibly left his body. ‘How can I help you, then?’
I waited until the tea had come and been drunk, and the latest racing news chewed over. Then, without making much of it, I asked him if he’d ever heard of a bookmaker called Vjoersterod.
His attention pin-pointed itself with a jerk.
‘Is that what you’ve come to ask?’
‘For openers.’
He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘Someone showed me your column last week and the week before... Stay out of it, Ty.’
‘If you racing bigwigs know what’s going on and who is doing it, why don’t you stop him?’
‘How?’
The single bald word hung in the air, cooling. It told me a lot about the extent of their knowledge. They should have known how.
‘Frankly,’ I said at last, ‘that’s your job, not mine. You could of course ban all ante-post betting, which would knock the fiddle stone dead.’
‘That would be highly unpopular with the Great British Public. Anyway your articles have hit the ante-post market badly enough as it is. One of the big firms was complaining to me bitterly about you a couple of hours ago. Their Lamplighter bets are down by more than twenty per cent.’
‘Then why don’t they do something about Charlie Boston?’
He blinked. ‘Who?’
I took a quiet breath. ‘Well, now... just what do the Stewards know about Vjoersterod?’
‘Who is Charlie Boston?’
‘You first,’ I said.
‘Don’t you trust me?’ He looked hurt.
‘No,’ I said flatly. ‘You first.’
He sighed resignedly and told me that all the Stewards knew about Vjoersterod was hearsay, and scanty at that. None of them had ever actually seen him, and wouldn’t know him if they did. A member of the German horse racing authorities had sent them a private warning that Vjoersterod was suspected of stage managing a series of non-starting ante-post favourites in big races in Germany, and that they had heard rumours he was now beginning to operate in England. Pursuit had almost cornered him in Germany. He was now moving on. The British Stewards had noted the alarming proportion of non-starters in the past months and were sure the German authorities were right, but although they had tried to find out the facts from various owners and trainers, they had been met with only a brick wall of silence everywhere.
‘It’s a year since Vjoersterod came here first,’ I remarked. ‘A year ago he bought out Charlie Boston’s string of betting shops round Birmingham and started raking in the dough. He also found a way to force Bert Checkov to write articles which persuaded ante-post punters to believe they were on to a good thing. Vjoersterod chose a horse, Checkov wrote it up, Vjoersterod stopped it running, and Bingo, the deed was done.’
His face was a mixture of astonishment and satisfaction. ‘Ty, are you sure of your facts?’
‘Of course I am. If you ask me, both the bookmakers and the authorities have been dead slow on the trail.’
‘And how long exactly have you been on it?’
I grinned, conceding the point. I said ‘I met Vjoersterod yesterday. I referred to Charlie Boston being his partner and he told me he owned Charlie Boston. Vjoersterod wanted to know where Tiddely Pom was.’
He stared. ‘Would you... um... well, if necessary, testify to that?’
‘Certainly. But it would be only my word against his. No corroboration.’
‘Better than anything we’ve had before.’
‘There might be a quicker way to get results, though.’
‘How?’ he asked again.
‘Find a way to shut Charlie Boston’s shops, and you block off Vjoersterod’s intakes. Without which there is no point in him waiting around to stop any favourites. If you can’t get him convicted in the Courts, you might at least freeze him out, back to South Africa.’
There was another long pause during which he thought complicated thoughts. I waited, guessing what was in his mind. Eventually, he said it.
‘How much do you want for your help?’
‘An exclusive for the Blaze.’
‘As if I couldn’t guess...’
‘It will do,’ I conceded, ‘if the Blaze can truthfully claim to have made the ante-post market safe for punters to play in. No details. Just a few hints that but for the libel laws, all would and could be revealed.’
‘Why ever do you waste your time with that dreadful rag?’ he exclaimed in exasperation.
‘Good pay,’ I said. It’s a good paper to work for. And it suits me.’
‘I’ll promise you one thing,’ he said, smiling. ‘If through you personally we get rid of Vjoersterod, I’ll take it regularly.’
From Eric Youll’s bank, I went home. If the youngest Steward did his stuff, Vjoersterod’s goose was on its way to the oven and would soon be cooked. He might of course one day read the Blaze and send someone to carve up the chef. It didn’t trouble me much. I didn’t believe it would happen.
Elizabeth had had Mrs Woodward put her favourite rose pink, white-embroidered sheets on the bed. I looked at her searchingly. Her hair had been done with particular care. Her makeup was flawless.
‘You look pretty,’ I said tentatively.
Her expression was a mixture of relief and misery. I understood with a sudden rocking wince what had led her to such scenery painting: the increased fear that if she were bitchy I would leave her. No matter if I’d earned and deserved the rough side of her tongue; I had to be placated at all costs, to be held by the best she could do to appear attractive, to be obliquely invited, cajoled, entreated to stay.
‘Did you have a good day?’ Her voice sounded high and near to cracking point.
‘Quite good... how about a drink?’
She shook her head, but I poured her one all the same, and fixed it in the clip.
‘I’ve asked Mrs Woodward to find someone to come and sit with me in the evenings,’ she said. ‘So that you can go out more.’
‘I don’t want to go out more,’ I protested.
‘You must do.’
‘Well, I don’t.’ I sat down in the armchair and took a hefty mouthful of nearly neat whisky. At best, I thought, in an unbearable situation alcohol offered postponement. At worst, aggravation. And anyway it was too damned expensive, nowadays, to get drunk.
Elizabeth didn’t answer. When I looked at her, I saw she was quietly crying again. The tears rolled down past her ears and into her hair. I took a tissue out of the box and dried them. Had she but known it, they were harder for me to bear than any amount of fury.