‘Owen asked the neighbours. No one saw a thing. No one ever does, in London. All he discovered was that the muck wasn’t there at seven yesterday evening when the man from two doors along let his labrador make use of my fuchsia tubs.’
He drank his whisky and asked what I’d done in Miami. I couldn’t stop the smile coming. ‘Besides that,’ he said.
‘I bought a horse.’
‘You’re a glutton for punishment.’
‘An understudy,’ I said, ‘for Energise.’
‘Tell all to your Uncle Charlie.’
I told, if not all, most.
‘The trouble is though, that although we must be ready for Saturday at Stratford, he might choose Nottingham on Monday or Lingfield on Wednesday,’ I said.
‘Or none of them.’
‘And it might freeze.’
‘How soon would we know?’ Charlie asked.
‘He’ll have to declare the horse to run four days before the race, but he then has three days to change his mind and take him out again. We wouldn’t know for sure until the runners are published in the evening papers the day before. And even then we need the nod from Bert Huggerneck.’
He chuckled. ‘Bert doesn’t like the indoor life. He’s itching to get back on the racecourse.’
‘I hope he’ll stick to the shop.’
‘My dear fellow!’ Charlie lit a cigar and waved the match. ‘Bert’s a great scrapper by nature and if you could cut him in on the real action he’d be a lot happier. He’s taken a strong dislike to Ganser Mays, and he says that for a capitalist you didn’t seem half bad. He knows there’s something afoot and he said if there’s a chance of anyone punching Ganser Mays on the long bleeding nose he would like it to be him.’
I smiled at the verbatim reporting. ‘All right. If he really feels like that, I do indeed have a job for him.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Directing the traffic.’
He puffed at the cigar. ‘Do you know what your plan reminds me of?’ he said. ‘Your own Rola toys. There you are, turning the single handle, and all the little pieces will rotate on their spindles and go through their allotted acts’.
‘You’re no toy,’ I said.
‘Of course I am. But at least I know it. The real trick will be programming the ones who don’t.’
‘Do you think it will all work?’
He regarded me seriously. ‘Given ordinary luck, I don’t see why not.’
‘And you don’t have moral misgivings?’
His sudden huge smile warmed like a fire. ‘Didn’t you know that merchant bankers are pirates under the skin?’
Charlie took Wednesday off and we spent the whole day prospecting the terrain. We drove from London to New-bury, from Newbury to Stratford on Avon, from Stratford to Nottingham, and from Nottingham back to Newbury. By that time the bars were open, and we repaired to the Chequers for revivers.
‘There’s only the one perfect place,’ Charlie said, ‘and it will do for both Stratford and Nottingham.’
I nodded. ‘By the fruit stall.’
‘Settle on that, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘And if he isn’t down to run at either of those courses we spend Sunday surveying the road to Lingfield?’
‘Right.’
He smiled vividly. ‘I haven’t felt so alive since my stint in the army. However this turns out, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’
His enthusiasm was infectious and we drove back to London in good spirits.
Things had noticeably improved in the garden. The muck heap had gone and Owen had sloshed to some effect with buckets of water, though without obliterating the smell. He had also stayed late, waiting for my return. All three of us left our shoes in the hall and went upstairs.
‘Too Japanese for words,’ Charlie said.
‘I stayed, sir,’ Owen said, ‘because a call came from America.’
‘Miss Ward?’ I said hopefully.
‘No, sir. About a horse. It was a shipping firm. They said a horse consigned to you would be on a flight to Gatwick Airport tonight as arranged. Probable time of arrival, ten a.m. tomorrow morning. I wrote it down.’ He pointed to the pad beside the telephone. ‘But I thought I would stay in case you didn’t see it. They said you would need to engage transport to have the horse met.’
‘You,’ I said, ‘will be meeting it.’
‘Very good, sir,’ he said calmly.
‘Owen,’ Charlie said, ‘if he ever kicks you out, come to me.’
We all sat for a while discussing the various arrangements and Owen’s part in them. He was as eager as Charlie to make the plan work, and he too seemed to be plugged into some inner source of excitement.
‘I’ll enjoy it, sir,’ he said, and Charlie nodded in agreement. I had never thought of either of them as being basically adventurous and I had been wrong.
I was wrong also about Bert Huggerneck, and even in a way about Allie, for they too proved to have more fire than reservations.
Charlie brought Bert with him after work on Thursday and we sat round the kitchen table poring over a large scale map.
‘That’s the A34,’ I said, pointing with a pencil to a red line running south to north. ‘It goes all the way from Newbury to Stratford. For Nottingham, you branch off just north of Oxford. The place we’ve chosen is some way south of that. Just here...’ I marked it with the pencil. ‘About a mile before you reach the Abingdon bypass.’
‘I know that bleeding road,’ Bert said. ‘Goes past the Harwell atomic.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Yeah. I’ll find that. Easy as dolly-birds.’
‘There’s a roadside fruit stall there,’ I said. ‘Shut, at this time of year. A sort of wooden hut.’
‘Seen dozens of ’em,’ Bert nodded.
‘It has a good big space beside it for cars.’
‘Which side of the road?’
‘On the near side, going north.’
‘Yeah. I get you.’
‘It’s on a straight stretch after a fairly steep hill. Nothing will be going very fast there. Do you think you could manage?’
‘Here,’ he complained to Charlie. ‘That’s a bleeding insult.’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘Is that all I do, then? Stop the bleeding traffic?’ He sounded disappointed; and I’d thought he might have needed to be persuaded.
‘No,’ I said. ‘After that you do a lot of hard work extremely quickly.’
‘What, for instance?’
When I told him, he sat back on his chair and positively beamed.
‘That’s more bleeding like it,’ he said. ‘Now that’s a daisy, that is. Now you might think I’m slow on my feet, like, with being big, but you’d be bleeding wrong.’
‘I couldn’t do it at all without you.’
‘Hear that?’ he said to Charlie.
‘It might even be true,’ Charlie said.
Bert at that point described himself as peckish and moved in a straight line to the store cupboard. ‘What’ve you got here, then? Don’t you ever bleeding eat? Do you want this tin of ham?’
‘Help yourself,’ I said.
Bert made a sandwich inch-deep in mustard and ate it without blinking. A couple of cans of beer filled the cracks.
‘Can I chuck the betting shop, then?’ he asked between gulps.
‘What have you learned about Ganser Mays?’
‘He’s got a bleeding nickname, that’s one thing I’ve learned. A couple of smart young managers run his shops now, you’d never know they was the same place. All keen and sharp and not a shred of soft heart like my old boss.’
‘A soft-hearted bookmaker?’ Charlie said. ‘There’s no such thing.’
‘Trouble was,’ Bert said, ignoring him, ‘he had a bleeding soft head and all.’
‘What is Ganser Mays’ nickname?’ I asked.
‘Eh? Oh yeah. Well, these two smart alecs, who’re sharp enough to cut themselves, they call him Squeezer. Squeezer Mays. When they’re talking to each other, of course, that is.’