‘He took them all. They were all jumbled up, and he was in a hurry. He said he’d sort them out himself later.’
‘He took them to Seabury?’ I said uneasily.
‘That’s right. For the executive meeting this morning.’ He looked at his watch. ‘The meeting must be on at this moment, I should think. If you want them you can ask him for them as soon as you get there. He should have finished with them by then.’
‘I wish you hadn’t let him take them,’ I said.
‘It can’t do any harm. Even if he lost them we’d still have the negatives. You could get another print done tomorrow, of your list.’
The negatives, did he but know it, were inaccessibly tucked into a mislaid file in Finchley. I didn’t confess. Instead I said, unconvinced, ‘All right. I suppose it won’t matter. I’ll get on down there, then.’
I packed an overnight bag in the flat. The sun was pouring in through the windows, making the blues and greens and blond wood furniture look warm and friendly. After two years the place was at last beginning to feel like home. A home without Jenny. Happiness without Jenny. Both were possible, it seemed. I certainly felt more myself than at any time since she left.
The sun was still shining, too, at Seabury. But not on a very large crowd. The poor quality of the racing was so obvious as to be pathetic: and it was in order that such a rotten gaggle of weedy quadrupeds could stumble and scratch their way round to the winning post, I reflected philosophically, that I had tried to pit my inadequate wits against Lord Hagbourne, Captain Oxon, the Seabury executive, Kraye, Bolt, Fred, Leo, old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
There were no mishaps all day. The horses raced nonchalantly over the tan patch at their speedy crawl, and no light flashed in their eyes as they knocked hell out of the fences on the far side. Round One to Chico and me.
As the fine weather put every one in a good mood a shred of Seabury’s former vitality temporarily returned to the place: enough, anyway, for people to notice the dinginess of the stands and remark that it was time something was done about it. If they felt like that, I thought, a revival shouldn’t be impossible.
The Senior Steward listened attentively while I passed on Zanna Martin’s suggestion that Seabury council should be canvassed, and surprisingly said that he would see it was promptly done.
In spite of these small headways, however, my spine wouldn’t stop tingling. Lord Hagbourne didn’t have the photographs.
‘They are only mislaid, Sid,’ he said soothingly. ‘Don’t make such a fuss. They’ll turn up.’
He had put them down on the table round which the meeting had been held, he said. After the official business was over, he had chatted, standing up. When he turned back to pick up the box, it was no longer there. The whole table had been cleared. The ashtrays were being emptied. The table was required for lunch. A white cloth was being spread over it.
What, I asked, had been the verdict of the meeting, anyway? Er, um, it appeared the whole subject had been shelved for a week or two: no urgency was felt. Shares changed hands slowly, very slowly. But they had agreed that Hunt Radnor could carry on for a bit.
I hesitated to go barging into the executive’s private room just to look for a packet of photographs, so I asked the caterers instead. They hadn’t seen it, they said, rushing round me. I tracked down the man and woman who had cleared the table after the meeting and laid it for lunch.
Any amount of doodling on bits of paper, said the waitress, but no box of photographs, and excuse me love, they’re waiting for these sandwiches. She agreed to look for it, looked, and came back shaking her head. It wasn’t there, as far as she could see. It was quite big, I said despairingly.
I asked Mr Fotherton, Clerk of the Course; I asked Captain Oxon, I asked the secretary, and anyone else I could think of who had been at the meeting. None of them knew where the photographs were. All of them, busy with their racing jobs, said much the same as Lord Hagbourne.
‘Don’t worry, Sid, they’re bound to turn up.’
But they didn’t.
I stayed on the racecourse until after the security patrols changed over at six o’clock. The incomers were the same men who had been on watch the night before, four experienced and sensible ex-policemen, all middle-aged. They entrenched themselves comfortably in the Press room, which had windows facing back and front, effective central heating, and four telephones; better headquarters than usual on their night jobs, they said.
Between the last race (three-thirty) and six o’clock, apart from hunting without success for the photographs and driving Lord Hagboume round to Napoleon Close for a horrified first-hand look at the smashed-up mirror, I persuaded Captain Oxon to accompany me on a thorough nook and cranny check-up of all the racecourse buildings.
He came willingly enough, his stiffness of earlier in the week having been thawed, I supposed, by the comparative success of the day; but we found nothing and no one that shouldn’t have been there.
I drove into Seabury and booked into the Seafront Hotel, where I had often stayed in the past. It was only half full. Formerly, on racing nights, it had been crammed. Over a brandy in the bar the manager lamented with me the state of trade.
‘Race meetings used to give us a boost every three weeks nearly all the winter. Now hardly anyone comes, and I hear they didn’t even ask for the January fixture this year. I tell you, I’d like to see that place blooming again, we need it.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Then write to the Town Council and say so.’
‘That wouldn’t help,’ he said gloomily.
‘You never know. It might. Do write.’
‘All right, Sid. Just to please you then. For old time’s sake. Let’s have another brandy on the house.’
I had an early dinner with him and his wife and afterwards went for a walk along the seashore. The night was dry and cold and the onshore breeze smelt of seaweed. The banked pebbles scrunched into trickling hollows under my shoes and the winter sand was as hard-packed as rock. Thinking about Kraye and his machinations, I had strolled quite a long way eastwards, away from the racecourse, before I remembered I had said I would ring Radnor at his home during the evening.
There was nothing much to tell him. I didn’t hurry, and it was nearly ten o’clock when I got back to Seabury. The modernisations didn’t yet run to telephones in all the bedrooms at the hotel, so I used the kiosk outside on the promenade, because I came to it first.
It wasn’t Radnor who answered, but Chico, and I knew at once from his voice that things had gone terribly wrong.
‘Sid…’ he said. ‘Sid… look, pal, I don’t know how to tell you. You’ll have to have it straight. We’ve been trying to reach you all the evening.’
‘What…?’ I swallowed.
‘Someone bombed your flat.’
‘Bombed,’ I said stupidly.
‘A plastic bomb. It blew the street wall right out. All the flats round yours were badly damaged, but yours… well, there’s nothing there. Just a big hole with disgusting black sort of cobwebs. That’s how they knew it was a plastic bomb. The sort the French terrorists used… Sid, are you there?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry, pal. I’m sorry. But that’s not all. They’ve done it to the office, too.’ His voice was anguished. ‘It went off in the Racing Section. But the whole place is cracked open. It’s… it’s bloody ghastly.’
‘Chico.’
‘I know. I know. The old man’s round there now, just staring at it. He made me stay here because you said you’d ring, and in case the racecourse patrols want anything. No one was badly hurt, that’s the only good thing. Half a dozen people were bruised and cut, at your flats. And the office was empty, of course.’