My coffee was nearly cold. I drank it anyway and got on with the races scheduled for Taunton.
Hundreds more names, but nothing.
Ascot, nothing. Newcastle, nothing. Warwick, Teesside, Plumpton, Doncaster, nothing.
I put the Calendar down for a bit and went out onto the balcony for some air. Fiercely cold air, slicing down to the lungs. Primeval arctic air carrying city gunge: the mixture as before. Over in the Park the zoo creatures were quiet, sheltering in warmed houses. They always made more noise in the summer.
Return to the task.
Huntingdon, Market Rasen, Stratford on Avon... I sighed before starting Stratford and checked how many more still lay ahead. Nottingham, Carlisle and Wetherby. I was in for another wasted morning, no doubt.
Turned back to Stratford, and there it was.
I blinked and looked again carefully, as if the name would vanish if I took my eyes off it.
Half way down among sixty-four entries for the Shakespeare Novice Hurdle.
Padellic (Mr J. Leeds) J. Leeds 5 10 7
Padellic.
It was the first time the name had appeared in association with Jody. I knew the names of all his usual horses well, and what I had been searching for was a new one, an unknown. Owned, if my theories were right, by Jody himself. And here it was.
Nothing in the Calendar to show Padellic’s colour or markings. I fairly sprinted over to the shelf where I kept a few form books and looked him up in every index.
Little doubt, I thought. He was listed as a black or brown gelding, five years old, a half-bred by a thorough-bred sire out of a hunter mare. He had been trained by a man I’d never heard of and he had run three times in four-year-old hurdles without being placed.
I telephoned to the trainer at once, introducing myself as a Mr Robinson trying to buy a cheap novice.
‘Padellic?’ he said in a forthright Birmingham accent. ‘I got shot of that bugger round October time. No bloody good. Couldn’t run fast enough to keep warm. Is he up for sale again? Can’t say as I’m surprised. He’s a right case of the slows, that one.’
‘Er... where did you sell him?’ I asked tentatively.
‘Sent him to Doncaster mixed sales. Right bloody lot they had there. He fetched four hundred quid and I reckon he was dear at that. Only the one bid, you see. I reckon the bloke could’ve got him for three hundred if he’d tried. I was right pleased to get four for him, I’ll tell you.’
‘Would you know who bought him?’
‘Eh?’ He sounded surprised at the question. ‘Can’t say. He paid cash to the auctioneers and didn’t give his name. I saw him make his bid, that’s all. Big fellow. I’d never clapped eyes on him before. Wearing sunglasses. I didn’t see him after. He paid up and took the horse away and I was right glad to be shot of him.’
‘What is the horse like?’ I asked.
‘I told you, bloody slow.’
‘No, I mean to look at.’
‘Eh? I thought you were thinking of buying him.’
‘Only on paper, so to speak. I thought,’ I lied, ‘that he still belonged to you.’
‘Oh, I see. He’s black, then. More or less black, with a bit of brown round the muzzle.’
‘Any white about him?’
‘Not a hair. Black all over. Black ’uns are often no good. I bred him, see? Meant to be bay, he was, but he turned out black. Not a bad looker, mind. He fills the eye. But nothing there where it matters. No speed.’
‘Can he jump?’
‘Oh ay. In his own good time. Not bad.’
‘Well, thanks very much.’
‘You’d be buying a monkey,’ he said warningly. ‘Don’t say as I didn’t tell you.’
‘I won’t buy him,’ I assured him. ‘Thanks again for your advice.’
I put down the receiver reflectively. There might of course be dozens of large untraceable men in sunglasses going round the sales paying cash for slow black horses with no markings; and then again there might not.
The telephone bell rang under my hand. I picked up the receiver at the first ring.
‘Steven?’
No mistaking that cigar-and-port voice. ‘Charlie.’
‘Have you lunched yet?’ he said. ‘I’ve just got off a train round the corner at Euston and I thought...’
‘Here or where?’ I said.
‘I’ll come round to you.’
‘Great.’
He came, beaming and expansive, having invested three million somewhere near Rugby. Charlie, unlike some merchant bankers, liked to see things for himself. Reports on paper were all very well, he said, but they didn’t give you the smell of a thing. If a project smelt wrong, he didn’t disgorge the cash. Charlie followed his nose and Charlie’s nose was his fortune.
The feature in question buried itself gratefully in a large scotch and water.
‘How about some of that nosh you gave Bert?’ he suggested, coming to the surface. ‘To tell you the truth I get tired of eating in restaurants.’
We repaired amicably to the kitchen and ate bread and bacon and curried baked beans and sausages, all of which did no good at all to anyone’s waistline, least of all Charlie’s. He patted the bulge affectionately. ‘Have to get some weight off, one of these days. But not today,’ he said.
We took coffee back to the sitting-room and settled comfortably in armchairs.
‘I wish I lived the way you do,’ he said. ‘So easy and relaxed.’
I smiled. Three weeks of my quiet existence would have driven him screaming to the madhouse. He thrived on bustle, big business, fast decisions, financial juggling and the use of power. And three weeks of all that, I thought in fairness, would have driven me mad even quicker.
‘Have you made that lock yet?’ he asked. He was lighting a cigar round the words and they sounded casual, but I wondered all of a sudden if that was why he had come.
‘Half,’ I said.
He shook his match to blow it out. ‘Let me know,’ he said.
‘I promised.’
He drew in a lungful of Havana and nodded, his eyes showing unmistakably now that his mind was on duty for his bank.
‘Which would you do most for,’ I asked. ‘Friendship or the lock?’
He was a shade startled. ‘Depends what you want done.’
‘Practical help in a counter-offensive.’
‘Against Jody?’
I nodded.
‘Friendship,’ he said. ‘That comes under the heading of friendship. You can count me in.’
His positiveness surprised me. He saw it and smiled.
‘What he did to you was diabolical. Don’t forget, I was here. I saw the state you were in. Saw the humiliation of that drink charge, and the pain from God knows what else. You looked a little below par and that’s a fact.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. If it was just your pocket he’d bashed, I would probably be ready with cool advice but not active help.’
I hadn’t expected anything like this. I would have thought it would have been the other way round, that the loss of property would have angered him more than the loss of face.
‘If you’re sure...’ I said uncertainly.
‘Of course.’ He was decisive. ‘What do you want done?’
I picked up the Racing Calendar, which was lying on the floor beside my chair, and explained how I’d looked for and found Padellic.
‘He was bought at Doncaster sales for cash by a large man in sunglasses and he’s turned up in Jody’s name.’
‘Suggestive.’
‘I’d lay this house to a sneeze,’ I said, ‘that Rupert Ramsey is worrying his guts out trying to train him for the Champion Hurdle.’
Charlie smoked without haste. ‘Rupert Ramsey has Padellic, but thinks he has Energise. Is that right?’