‘I’ll remember,’ he said. ‘And thanks.’ We shook hands amicably as I left.
It was results day at Radnor’s, too, As soon as I got back Dolly said Jack Copeland wanted me up in Bona Fides. I made the journey.
Jack gleamed at me over the half moons, pleased with his department. ‘George’s got him. Kraye. He’ll tell you.’
I went over to George’s desk. George was fairly smirking, but after he’d talked for two minutes, I allowed he’d earned it.
‘On the off chance,’ he said, ‘I borrowed a bit of smooth quartz Kraye recently handled in the Geology Museum and got Sammy to do the prints on it. Two or three different sets of fingers came out, so we photographed the lot. None of them were on the British files, but I’ve given them the run around with the odd pal in Interpol and so on, just in case. And brother, have we hit pay dirt or have we.’
‘We have?’ I prompted, grinning.
‘And how. Your friend Kraye is in the ex-con library of the state of New York.’
‘What for?’
‘Assault.’
‘Of a girl?’I asked.
George raised his eyebrows. ‘A girl’s father. Kraye had beaten the girl, apparently with her permission. She didn’t complain. But her father saw the bruises and raised the roof. He said he’d get Kraye on a rape charge, though it seems the girl had been perfectly willing on that count too. But it looked bad for Kraye, so he picked up a chair and smashed it over the father’s head and scarpered. They caught him boarding a plane for South America and hauled him back. The father’s brain was damaged. There are long medical details, but what it all boils down to is that he couldn’t coordinate properly afterwards. Kraye got off on the rape charge, but served four years for attacking the father.
‘Three years after that he turned up in England with some money and a new name, and soon acquired a wife. The one who divorced him for cruelty. Nice chap.’
‘Yes indeed,’ I said. ‘What was his real name?’
‘Wilbur Potter,’ said George sardonically. ‘And you’ll never guess. He was a geologist by profession. He worked for a construction firm, surveying. Always moving about. Character assessment: slick, a pusher, a good talker. Cut a few corners, always had more money than his salary, threw his weight about, but nothing indictable. The assault on the father was his first brush with the law. He was thirty-four at that time.’
‘Messy,’ I said. ‘The whole thing.’
‘Very,’ George agreed.
‘But sex violence and fraudulent take-overs aren’t much related,’ I complained.
‘You might as well say it is impossible to have boils and cancer at the same time. Something drastically wrong with the constitution, and two separate symptoms.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said.
Sammy up in Missing Persons had done more than photograph Kraye’s fingerprints, he had almost found Smith.
‘Intersouth rang us this morning,’ he purred. ‘Smith gave them as a reference. He’s applied for a driving job in Birmingham.’
‘Good,’ I said.
‘We should have his address by this afternoon.’
Downstairs in Racing I reached for Dolly’s telephone and got through to Charing, Street and King.
‘Mr Bolt’s secretary speaking,’ said the quiet voice.
‘Is Mr Bolt in?’I asked.
‘I’m afraid not… er, who is that speaking, please?’
‘Did you find you had a file of mine?’
‘Oh…’ she laughed. ‘Yes, I picked it up in your car. I’m so sorry.’
‘Do you have it with you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t bring it here. I thought it might be better not to risk Mr Bolt seeing it, as it’s got Hunt Radnor Associates printed on the outside along with a red sticker saying “Ex Records, care of Sid Halley”’.
‘Yes, it would have been a disaster,’ I agreed with feeling.
‘I left it at home. Do you want it in a hurry?’
‘No, not really. As long as it’s safe, that’s the main thing. How would it be if I came over to fetch it the day after tomorrow — Sunday morning? We could go for a drive, perhaps, and have some lunch?’
There was a tiny pause. Then she said strongly, ‘Yes, please. Yes.’
‘Have the leaflets gone out?’ I asked.
‘They went yesterday.’
‘See you on Sunday, Miss Martin.’
I put down Dolly’s telephone to find her looking at me quizzically. I was again squatting on the corner of her desk, the girl from the typing pool having in my absence reclaimed her chair.
‘The mouse got away again, I understand,’ she said.
‘Some mouse.’
Chico came into the office. The cut on his eyebrow looked red and sore, and all the side of his face showed greyish bruising.
‘Two of you,’ said Dolly disgustedly, ‘and he knocked you about like kids.’
Chico took this a lot better than if she had fussed maternally over his injury.
‘It took more than two Lilliputians to peg down Gulliver,’ he said with good humour. (They had a large library in the children’s orphanage.)
‘But only one David to slay Goliath.’
Chico made a face at her, and I laughed.
‘And how are our collywobbles today?’ he asked me ironically.
‘Better than your looks.’
‘You know why Sid’s best friends don’t know him?’ said Chico.
‘Why?’ said Dolly, seriously.
‘He suffers from Halley-tosis.’
‘Oh God,’ said Dolly. ‘Take him away someone. Take him away. I can’t stand it.’
On the ground floor I sat in a padded maroon arm-chair in Radnor’s drawing-room office and listened to him saying there were no out-of-the-ordinary reports from the patrols at Seabury.
‘Fison has just been on the telephone. Everything is normal for a race day, he says. The public will start arriving very shortly. He and Thom walked all round the course just now with Captain Oxon for a thorough check. There’s nothing wrong with it, that they can see.’
There might be something wrong with it that they couldn’t see. I was uneasy.
‘I might stay down there tonight, if I can find a room,’ I said.
‘If you do, give me a ring again at home, during the evening.’
‘Sure.’ I had disturbed his dinner, the day before, to tell him about Fred and the mirror.
‘Could I have those photographs back, if you’ve finished with them?’ I asked. ‘I want to check that list of initials against the racecourse workmen at Seabury.’
‘I’m sorry, Sid, I haven’t got them.’
‘Are they back upstairs…?’
‘No, no, they aren’t here at all. Lord Hagbourne has them.’
‘But why?’ I sat up straight, disturbed.
‘He came here yesterday afternoon. I’d say on balance he is almost down on our side of the fence. I didn’t get the usual caution about expenses, which is a good sign. Anyway, what he wanted was to see the proofs you told him we held which show it is Kraye who is buying the shares. Photographs of share transfer certificates. He knew about them. He said you’d told him.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘He wanted to see them. That was reasonable, and I didn’t want to risk tipping him back into indecision, so I showed them to him. He asked me very courteously if he could take them to show them to the Seabury executive. They held a meeting this morning, I believe. He thought they might be roused to some effective action if they could see for themselves how big Kraye’s holding is.’
‘What about the other photographs? The others that were in the box.’