I lifted my hand out of the water to see what had blocked the pipe, and stared in amazement. It was a large mouse. I had been pulling its tail.
Accidental sabotage, I thought. The same old pattern. However unlikely it was that a mouse should dive into a tank, find the filter conveniently out of place, and get stuck just inside the outlet pipe, one would have a hard job proving that it was impossible.
I carefully put the sodden little body out of sight in the small gap between the tank and wall. With relief I noticed that the water level was already going down slightly, which meant that the pump was working properly and the boiler would soon be more or less back to normal.
I splashed some more water out of the tank to make a larger pool should Kraye or Oxon glance in again, and replaced the lid. Putting on my shirt and jacket I followed with my eyes the various pipes in and out of the boiler. The lagged steam exit pipe to the calorifier. The vast chimney flue for the hot gases from the burning oil. The inlet pipe from the pump. The water gauge. The oil pipe. There had to be another water inlet somewhere, partly for safety, partly to keep the steam circuit topped up.
I found it in the end running alongside and behind the inlet pipe from the pump. It was a gravity feed from a stepped series of three small unobtrusive tanks fixed high on the wall. Filters, I reckoned, so that the mains water didn’t carry its mineral salts into the boiler and fur it up. The filter tanks were fed by a pipe which branched off one of the rising mains and had its own stop cock.
Reaching up, I tried to turn it clockwise. It didn’t move. The mains water was cut off. With satisfaction, I turned it on again.
Finally, with the boiler once more working exactly as it should, I took a look at the water gauge. The level had already risen to nearly half way between the red and black marks. Hoping fervently Oxen wouldn’t come back for another check on it, I went over to the door and switched off the light.
There was no one in the passage. I slipped through the door, and in the last three inches before shutting it behind me stretched my hand back and put the light on again. I didn’t want Kraye knowing I’d been in there.
Keeping close to the wall, I walked softly down the passage towards the Tattersalls end. If I could get clear of the stands there were other buildings out that way to give cover. The barns, cloakrooms and tote buildings in the silver ring. Beyond these lay the finishing straight, the way down to the tan patch and the bisecting road. Along that, bungalows, people, and telephones.
That was when my luck ran out.
SEVENTEEN
I was barely two steps past the door of the Tattersalls bar when it opened and the lights blazed out on to my tiptoeing figure. In the two seconds it took Oxon to realise what he was seeing I was six running paces down towards the way out. His shouts echoed in the passage mingled with others further back, and I still thought that if Kraye too were behind me I might have a chance. But when I was within ten steps of the end another figure appeared there, hurrying, called by the noise.
I skidded nearly to a stop, sliding on one of the scattered bottle tops, and crashed through the only possible door, into the same empty bar as before. I raced across the board floor, kicking bottle tops in all directions, but I never got to the far door. It opened before I reached it: and that was the end.
Doria Kraye stood there, maliciously triumphant. She was dressed theatrically in white slender trousers and a shiny short white jacket. Her dark hair fell smoothly, her face was as flawlessly beautiful as ever: and she held rock steady in one elegant long-fingered hand the little.22 automatic I had last seen in a chocolate box at the bottom of her dressing-case.
‘The end of the line, buddy boy,’ she said. ‘You stay just where you are.’
I hesitated on the brink of trying to rush her.
‘Don’t risk it,’ she said. ‘I’m a splendid shot. I wouldn’t miss. Do you want a knee-cap smashed?’
There was little I wanted less. I turned round slowly. There were three men coming forward into the long room. Kraye, Oxon and Ellis Bolt. All three of them looked as if they had long got tired of the chase and were going to take it out on the quarry.
‘Will you walk,’ said Doria behind me, ‘or be dragged?’
I shrugged. ‘Walk.’
All the same, Kraye couldn’t keep his hands off me. When, following Doria’s instructions, I walked past him to go back out through the passage he caught hold of my jacket at the back of my neck and kicked my legs. I kicked back, which wasn’t too sensible, as I presently ended up on the floor. There was nothing like little metal bottle tops for giving you a feeling of falling on little metal bottle tops, I thought, with apologies to Michael Flanders and Donald Swan.
‘Get up,’ said Kraye. Doria stood beside him, pointing at me with the gun.
I did as he said.
‘Right,’ said Doria. ‘Now, walk down the passage and go into the weighing room. And Howard, for God’s sake wait till we get there, or we’ll lose him again. Walk, buddy boy. Walk straight down the middle of the passage. If you try anything, I’ll shoot you in the leg.’
I saw no reason not to believe her. I walked down the centre of the passage with her too close behind for escape, and with the two men bringing up the rear.
‘Stop a minute,’ said Kraye, outside the boiler room.
I stopped. I didn’t look round.
Kraye opened the door and looked inside. The light spilled out, adding to that already coming from the other open doors along the way.
‘Well?’said Oxon.
‘There’s more water on the floor.’ He sounded pleased, and shut the door without going in for a further look. Not all of my luck had departed, it seemed.
‘Move,’ he said. I obeyed.
The weighing room was as big and bare as ever. I stopped in the middle of it and turned round. The four of them stood in a row, looking at me, and I didn’t at all like what I read in their faces.
‘Go and sit there,’ said Doria, pointing.
I went on across the floor and sat where she said, on the chair of the weighing machine. The pointer immediately swung round the clock face to show my weight. Nine stone seven. It was, I was remotely interested to see, exactly ten pounds less than when I had last raced. Bullets would solve any jockey’s weight problem, I thought.
The four of them came closer. It was some relief to find that Fred wasn’t among them, but only some. Kraye was emitting the same livid fury as he had twelve days ago at Aynsford. And then, I had merely insulted his wife.
‘Hold his arms,’ he said to Oxon. Oxon was one of those thin wiry men of seemingly limitless strength. He came round behind me, clamped his fingers round my elbows and pulled them back. With concentration Kraye hit me several times in the face.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘where are they?’
‘What?’ I said indistinctly.
‘The negatives.’
‘What negatives?’
He hit me again and hurt his own hand. Shaking it out and rubbing his knuckles, he said, ‘You know what negatives. The films you took of my papers.’
‘Oh, those.’
‘Those.’ He hit me again, but less hard.
‘In the office,’ I mumbled.
He tried a slap to save his knuckles. ‘Office,’ I said.
He tried with his left hand, but it was clumsy. After that he sucked his knuckles and kept his hands to himself.
Bolt spoke for the first time, in his consciously beautiful voice. ‘Fred wouldn’t have missed them, especially as there was no reason for them to be concealed. He’s too thorough.’
If Fred wouldn’t have missed them, the bombs had been pure spite. I licked the inside of a split lip and thought about what I would like to do to Fred.