I nodded.
‘Then I was to deliver the same message to you, if you were here instead.’
‘Sit down?’ I suggested, gesturing to a chair.
‘Can’t stop. Sorry. Message from Dad. What are you doing about the Commissioners? He said he was absolutely not going before any so and so Commissioners next Thursday, or lurid words to that effect.’
‘No, he won’t have to.’
‘He also says he would have sent the Petty Cash book, or whatever, in with me this morning, but his secretary is sick, and if you ask me she’s the sickest thing that ever broke fingernails on a typewriter, and she has not done something or other with petty cash receipts or vouchers, or whatever it is you need. However...’ she paused, drawing an exaggerated breath. ‘Dad says, if you would like to drop in this evening you could go round the yard with him at evening stables, and have a noggin afterwards, and he will personally press into your hot little palms the book your assistant has been driving him mad about.’
‘I’d like that,’ I said.
‘Good. I’ll tell him.’
‘And will you be there?’
‘Ah,’ she said, her eyes laughing, ‘a little uncertainty is the H.P. sauce on the chips.’
‘And the spice of life to you, too.’
She gave me an excellent smile, spun on her heel so that the skirt swirled and the hair bounced, and walked out of the office.
Jossie Finch, daughter of William Finch, master of Axwood Stables. I knew her father in the way all long-time amateur riders knew all top trainers; enough to greet and chat to at the races. Since his was one of the racing accounts which pre-dated my arrival in the firm, and which Trevor liked to do himself, I had never before actually visited his yard.
I was interested enough to want to go, in spite of all my troubles. He had approximately ninety horses in his care, both jumpers and flat racers, and winners were taken for granted. Apart from Tapestry, most of the horses I usually rode were of moderate class, owned with more hope than expectation. To see a big stableful of top performers was always a feast. I would be safe from abduction there. And Jossie looked a cherry on the top.
When Peter and Debbie came back I laid into them for going out and leaving the outer door unlocked, and they adopted put-upon expressions and said they thought it was all right, as I was there, which would stop people sneaking in to steal things.
My fault, I thought more reasonably. I should have locked it after them myself. I would have to reshape a lot of habits. It could easily have been the enemy who walked in, not Jossie Finch.
I spent part of the afternoon on Mr Wells, but more of it trying to trace Connaught Powys.
We had his original address on file, left over from the days when he had rigged the computer and milked his firm of a quarter of a million pounds in five years. The firm’s audit was normally Trevor’s affair, but one year, when Trevor was away a great deal with an ulcer, I had done it instead, and by some fluke had discovered the fraud. It had been one of those things you don’t believe even when it is in front of your eyes. Connaught Powys had been an active director, and had paid his taxes on a comfortable income. The solid, untaxed lolly had disappeared without trace, but Connaught himself hadn’t been quick enough.
I tried his old address. A sharp voice on the telephone told me the new occupants knew nothing of the Powys whereabouts, and wished people would stop bothering them, and regretted the day they’d ever moved into a crook’s house.
I tried his solicitors, who froze when they heard who was trying to find him. They could not, they said, divulge his present address without his express permission: which, their tone added, he was as likely to give as Shylock to a church bazaar.
I tried Leyhill Prison. No good.
I tried finally a racing acquaintance called Vivian Iverson who ran a gambling club in London and always seemed to know of corruption scandals before the stories publicly broke.
‘My dear Ro,’ he said, ‘you’re fairly non gratis in that quarter, don’t you know.’
‘I could guess.’
‘You put the shivers up embezzlers, my friend. They’re leaving the Newbury area in droves.’
‘Oh sure. And I pick the Derby winner every year.’
‘You may well jest, my dear chap, but the whisper has gone round.’ He hesitated. ‘Those two little dazzlers, Glitberg and Ownslow, have been seen talking to Powys, who has got rid of his indoor pallor under a sun lamp. The gist, so I’m fairly reliably told, was a hate-Britten chorus.’
‘With vengeance intended?’
‘No information, my dear chap.’
‘Could you find out?’
‘I only listen, my dear Ro,’ he said. ‘If I hear the knives are out, I’ll tell you.’
‘You’re a pet,’ I said dryly.
He laughed. ‘Connaught Powys comes here to play, most Fridays.’
‘What time?’
‘You do ask a lot, my dear chap. After dinner to dawn.’
‘How about making me an instant member?’
He sighed heavily. ‘If you are bent on suicide, I’ll tell the desk to let you in.’
‘See you,’ I said. ‘And thanks.’
I put down the receiver and stared gloomily into space. Glitberg and Ownslow. Six years apiece, reduced for good behaviour... They could have met Connaught Powys in Leyhill, and it would have been no joy to any of them that I had put them all there.
Glitberg and Ownslow had served on a local council and robbed the ratepayers blind, and I’d turned them up through some dealings they’d done with one of my clients. My client had escaped with a fine, and had removed his custom from me with violent curses.
I wondered how much time all the embezzlers and bent solicitors and corrupted politicians in Leyhill Prison spent in thinking up new schemes for when they got out. Glitberg and Ownslow must already have been out for about six months.
Debbie had gone to the dentist and Peter to his Institute of Accounting Staff class, and this time I did lock the door behind them.
I felt too wretchedly tired to bother any further with Mr Wells. The shakes of the morning had gone, but even the swift tonic of Jossie Finch couldn’t lift the persistent feeling of threat. I spent an hour dozing in the armchair we kept for favoured clients, and when it was time, locked the filing cabinets and my desk and every door in the office, and went down to my car.
There was no one hiding behind the front seats. No one lurking round the edges of the car park. Nothing in the boot except the suitcase I’d stowed there that morning. I started up and drove out into the road, assaulted by nothing but my own nerves.
William Finch’s yard lay south-west of Newbury: a huge spread of buildings sheltering in a hollow, with a creeper-covered Victorian mansion rising on the hillside above. I arrived at the house just as Finch was coming out of it, and we walked down together to the first cluster of boxes.
‘Glad you could come,’ he said.
‘It’s a treat.’
He smiled with easy charm. A tall man, going grey at about fifty, very much in command of himself and everything else. He had a broad face, fine well-shaped mouth, and the eyes of experience. Horses and owners thrived in his care, and years of success had given him a stature he plainly enjoyed.
We went from box to box, spending a couple of minutes in each. Finch told me which horse we were looking at, with some of its breeding and form. He held brief reassurance conversations in each case with the lad holding the horse’s head, and with his head lad, who walked round with us. If all was well, he patted the horse’s neck and fed him a carrot from a bag which his head lad carried. A practised important routine evening inspection, as carried out by every trainer in the country.
We came to an empty box in a full row. Finch gestured to it with a smile.