Beside the telephone stood a small metal box with a stuck-on notice. Please pay for calls. I dialled the London number of the Press Association and asked for the racing section.
‘Horses knocked out of the novice hurdle at Stratford?’ said a voice. ‘Well, I suppose so, but we prefer people to wait for the evening papers. These enquiries waste our time.’
‘Arrangements to make as soon as possible...’ I murmured.
‘Oh, all right. Wait a sec. Here we are...’ He read out about seven names rather fast. ‘Got that?’
‘Yes, thank you very much,’ I said.
I put down the telephone slowly, my mouth suddenly dry. Jody had declared Padellic as a Saturday Stratford runner three days ago. If he had intended not to go there, he would have had to remove his name by a Friday morning deadline of eleven o’clock...
Eleven o’clock had come and gone. None of the horses taken out of the novice hurdle had been Padellic.
‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘He runs tomorrow.’
‘Oh.’ Allie’s eyes were wide. ‘Oh golly!’
12
Eight o’clock, Saturday morning.
I sat in my hired Cortina in a lay-by on the road over the top of the Downs, watching the drizzly dawn take the eye-strain out of the passing headlights.
I was there much too early because I hadn’t been able to sleep. The flurry of preparations all Friday afternoon and evening had sent me to bed still in top gear and from then on my brain had whirred relentlessly, thinking of all the things which could go wrong.
Snatches of conversation drifted back.
Rupert Ramsey expressing doubts and amazement on the other end of the telephone.
‘You want to do what?’
‘Take Energise for a ride in a horsebox. He had a very upsetting experience in a horsebox at Sandown, in a crash... I thought it might give him confidence to go for an uneventful drive.’
‘I don’t think it would do much good,’ he said.
‘All the same I’m keen to try. I’ve asked a young chap called Pete Duveen, who drives his own box, just to pick him up and take him for a ride. I thought tomorrow would be a good day. Pete Duveen says he can collect him at seven thirty in the morning. Would you have the horse ready?’
‘You’re wasting your money,’ he said regretfully. ‘I’m afraid there’s more wrong with him than nerves.’
‘Never mind. And... will you be at home tomorrow evening?’
‘After I get back from Chepstow races, yes.’
The biggest race meeting of the day was scheduled for Chepstow, over on the west side of the Bristol Channel. The biggest prizes were on offer there and most of the top trainers, like Rupert, would be going.
‘I hope you won’t object,’ I said, ‘but after Energise returns from his ride, I’d like to hire a security firm to keep an eye on him.’
Silence from the other end. Then his voice, carefully polite. ‘What on earth for?’
‘To keep him safe,’ I said reasonably. ‘Just a guard to patrol the stable and make regular checks. The guard wouldn’t be a nuisance to anybody.’
I could almost feel the shrug coming down the wire along with the resigned sigh. Eccentric owners should be humoured. ‘If you want to, I suppose... But why?’
‘If I called at your house tomorrow evening,’ I suggested diffidently, ‘I could explain.’
‘Well...’ He thought for a bit. ‘Look, I’m having a few friends to dinner. Would you care to join us?’
‘Yes, I would,’ I said positively. ‘I’d like that very much.’
I yawned in the car and stretched. Despite anorak, gloves and thick socks the cold encroached on fingers and toes, and through the drizzle-wet windows the bare rolling Downs looked thoroughly inhospitable. Straight ahead through the windscreen wipers I could see a good two miles of the A34. It came over the brow of a distant hill opposite, swept down into a large valley and rose again higher still to cross the Downs at the point where I sat.
A couple of miles to my rear lay the crossroads with the traffic lights, and a couple of miles beyond that, the fruit stall.
Bert Huggerneck, wildly excited, had telephoned at six in the evening.
‘Here, know what? There’s a squeezer on tomorrow!’
‘On Padellic?’ I said hopefully.
‘What else? On bleeding little old Padellic.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Listened at the bleeding door,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The two smart alecs was talking. Stupid bleeding gits. All over the whole bleeding country Ganser Mays is going to flood the little bookies’ shops with last minute bets on Padellic. The smart alecs are all getting their girl friends, what the little guys don’t know by sight, to go round putting on the dough. Hundreds of them, by the sound of it.’
‘You’re a wonder, Bert.’
‘Yeah,’ he said modestly. ‘Missed my bleeding vocation.’
Owen and I had spent most of the afternoon loading the big hired van from Chiswick and checking that we’d left nothing out. He worked like a demon, all energy and escaping smiles.
‘Life will seem flat after this,’ he said.
I had telephoned Charlie from Hantsford Manor and caught him before he went to lunch.
‘We’re off,’ I said. ‘Stratford, tomorrow.’
‘Tally bloody ho!’
He rang me from his office again at five. ‘Have you seen the evening papers?’
‘Not yet,’ I said.
‘Jody has two definite runners at Chepstow as well.’
‘Which ones?’
‘Cricklewood in the big race and Asphodel in the handicap chase.’
Cricklewood and Asphodel both belonged to the same man, who since I’d left had become Jody’s number one owner. Cricklewood was now also ostensibly the best horse in the yard.
‘That means,’ I said, ‘that Jody himself will almost certainly go to Chepstow.’
‘I should think so,’ Charlie agreed. ‘He wouldn’t want to draw attention to Padellic by going to Stratford, would you think?’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘Just what we wanted,’ Charlie said with satisfaction. ‘Jody going to Chepstow.’
‘We thought he might.’
Charlie chuckled. ‘You thought he might.’ He cleared his throat. ‘See you tomorrow, in the trenches. And Steven...’
‘Yes?’
‘Good luck with turning the handle.’
Turning the handle...
I looked at my watch. Still only eight-thirty and too early for any action. I switched on the car’s engine and let the heater warm me up.
All the little toys, revolving on their spindles, going through their programmed acts. Allie, Bert, Charlie and Owen. Felicity and Jody Leeds, Ganser Mays. Padellic and Energise and Black Fire. Rupert Ramsey and Pete Duveen.
And one little toy I knew nothing about.
I stirred, thinking of him uneasily.
A big man who wore sunglasses. Who had muscles, and knew how to fight.
What else?
Who had bought Padellic at Doncaster Sales?
I didn’t know if he had bought the horse after Jody had found it, or if he knew Energise well enough to look for a double himself; and there was no way of finding out.
I’d left no slot for him in today’s plan. If he turned up like a joker, he might entirely disrupt the game.
I picked up my raceglasses which were lying on the seat beside me and started watching the traffic crossing the top of the opposite distant hill. From two miles away, even with strong magnification, it was difficult to identify particular vehicles, and in the valley and climbing the hill straight towards me they were head-on and foreshortened.
What looked like a car and trailer came over the horizon. I glanced at my watch. If it was Allie, she was dead on time.