‘Until next time,’ I said. ‘Until you’re in deeper still.’
Bunny’s eyes stared inwards to the hopeless future, and I guessed he would never take the first step back to firm ground, which was in his case to stop gambling altogether.
‘There are easier ways for trainers to lose races,’ I pointed out, ‘than trying to bribe the jockey.’
His scowl reached Neanderthal proportions. ‘She pays the lad who does her horse to watch him like a hawk and give her a report on everything that happens. I can’t sack him or change him to another horse, because she says if I do she’ll send Tapestry to another trainer.’
‘I’m amazed she hasn’t already,’ I said: and she would have done, I thought, if she’d been able to hear that conversation.
‘You’ve only got to ride a bad race,’ he said. ‘Get boxed in down the far side and swing wide coming into the straight.’
‘No,’ said. ‘Not on purpose.’
I seemed to be remarkably good at inspiring fury. Binny would happily have seen me fall dead at his feet.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry about the fix you’re in. I really am, whether you believe it or not. But I’m not going to try to get you out of it by cheating Moira or the horse or the punters or myself, and that’s that.’
‘You bastard,’ he said.
Five minutes later, when I was back in the hub of the racecourse outside the weighing room, a hand touched me on the arm and a drawly voice spoke behind my ear.
‘My dear Ro, what are your chances?’
I turned, smiling, to the intelligent face of Vivian Iverson. In the daylight on a racecourse, where I’d first met him, he wore his clothes with the same elegance and flair that he had extended to his Vivat Club. Dark green blazer over grey checked trousers; hair shining black in the April sun. Quiet amusement in the observant eyes.
‘In love, war, or the three-thirty?’ I said.
‘Of remaining at liberty, my dear chap.’
I blinked. ‘Um,’ I said. ‘What would you offer?’
‘Five to four against?’
‘I hope you’re wrong,’ I said.
Underneath the banter, he was detectably serious. ‘It just so happens that last night in the club I heard our friend Connaught Powys talking on the telephone. To be frank, my dear Ro, after I’d heard your name mentioned, I more or less deliberately listened.’
‘On an extension?’
‘Tut tut,’ he said reprovingly. ‘Unfortunately not. I don’t know who he was talking to. But he said — his exact words — “As far as Britten is concerned you must agree that precaution is better than cure,” and a bit later he said “If dogs start sniffing around, the best thing to do is chain them up”.’
‘Charming,’ I said blankly.
‘Do you need a bodyguard?’
‘Are you offering yourself?’
He shook his head, smiling. ‘I could hire you one. Karate. Bullet proof glass. All the mod cons.’
‘I think,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘that I’ll just increase the insurance policies.’
‘Against kidnapping? No one will take you on.’
‘Checks and balances,’ I said. ‘No one’ll push me off a spring-board if it means a rock falling on their own head.’
‘Be sure to let them know the rock exists.’
‘Your advice,’ I said, smiling, ‘is worth its weight in ocean-going sailing boats.’
Moira Longerman twinkled with her bright bird-eyes in the parade ring before Tapestry’s race and stroked my arm repeatedly, her small thin hand sliding delicately over the shiny scarlet sleeve.
‘Now, Roland, you’ll do your best, I know you’ll do your best.’
‘Yes,’ I said guiltily, flexing several flabby muscles and watching Tapestry’s highly tuned ones ripple under his coat as he walked round the ring with his lad.
‘I saw you talking to Binny just now, Roland.’
‘Did you, Moira?’ I switched my gaze to her face.
‘Yes, I did.’ She nodded brightly. ‘I was up in the stands, up there in the bar, looking down to the paddock. I saw Binny take you away for a talk.’
She looked at me steadily, shrewdly, asking the vital question in total silence. Her hand went on stroking. She waited intently, expecting an answer.
‘I promise you,’ I said plainly, ‘that if I make a hash of it, it’ll be against my will.’
She stopped stroking: patted my arm instead, and smiled. ‘That will do nicely, Roland.’
Binny stood ten feet away, unable to make even a show of the civility due from trainer to owner. His face was rigid, his eyes expressionless, and even the usual scowl had frozen into a more general and powerful gloom. I thought I had probably been wrong to think of Binny as a stupid fool. There was something about him at that moment which raised prickles on the skin and images of murder.
The bell rang for jockeys to mount, and it was the lad, not Binny, who gave me a leg-up into the saddle.
‘I’m not going to take much more of this,’ Moira said pleasantly to the world in general.
Binny ignored her as if he hadn’t heard; and maybe he hadn’t. He’d also given me no riding instructions, which I didn’t mind in the least. He seemed wholly withdrawn and unresponsive, and when Moira waved briefly as I walked away on Tapestry, he did not accompany her across to the stands. Even for him, his behaviour was incredible.
Tapestry himself was in a great mood, tossing his head with excitement and bouncing along in tiny cantering strides as if he had April spring fever in all his veins. I remembered his plunging start in the Gold Cup and realised that this time I’d be lucky if he didn’t bolt with me from the post. Far from being last from indecision, this time, in my weakened state, I could be forty lengths in front by the second fence, throwing away all chance of staying-power at the end.
Tapestry bounced gently on his toes in the parade past the stands, while the other runners walked. Bounced playfully back at a canter to the start, which in three mile ’chases at Kempton Park was to the left of the stands and in full view of most of the crowd.
There were eleven other jockeys walking around there, making final adjustments to girths and goggles and answering to the starter’s roll call. The starter’s assistant, tightening the girths of the horse beside me, looked over his shoulder and asked me if mine were all right, or should he tighten those too.
If I hadn’t recently been through so many wringers, I would simply have said yes, and he would have pulled the buckles up a notch or two, and I wouldn’t have given it another thought. As it was, in my over-cautious state, I had a sudden sharp vision of Binny’s dangerous detachment, and remembered the desperation behind his appeal to me to lose. The prickles returned in force.
I slid off Tapestry’s back and looped his reins over my arm.
‘Just want to check...’ I said vaguely to the starter’s assistant.
He nodded briefly, glancing at his watch. One minute to race-time, his face said, so hurry up.
It was my own saddle. I intimately knew its every flap, buckle, scratch and stain. I checked it thoroughly inch by inch with fingers and eyes, and could see nothing wrong. Girths, stirrups, leathers, buckles; everything as it should be. I pulled the girths tighter myself, and the starter told me to get mounted.
Looking over my shoulder, I thought, for the rest of my life. Seeing demons in shadows. But the feeling of danger wouldn’t go away.
‘Hurry up, Britten.’
‘Yes, sir.’
I stood on the ground, looking at Tapestry tossing his head.
‘Britten!’
Reins, I thought. Bridle. Bit. Reins. If the bridle broke, I couldn’t control the horse and he wouldn’t win the race. Many races had been lost, from broken bridles.