Break In

by Dick Francis

  They said nothing.

  I said, ‘You were sent, Mr Leggatt, a special delivery letter containing proof that all of Bobby Allardeck’s creditors had been paid and he was not going bankrupt. Why don’t you now try to undo a fraction of the misery you’ve caused him and my sister? Why don’t you print conspicuously in Intimate Details an apology for misrepresenting Bobby’s position? Why don’t you outline the paragraph in red and get your two busy nocturnal journalists to scoot up to Newmarket with the edition hot off the presses like before, and while the town is asleep deliver a copy personally to every recipient who was on their earlier round? And why don’t you send a red-inked copy to each of Bobby’s owners, as before? That would be most pleasing, don’t you think?’

  They didn’t looked pleased in the slightest.

  ‘It’s unfortunate,’ I said mildly, ‘that it’s one’s duty as a citizen to report illegal acts to the relevant authorities.’

  Without any show of emotion Sam Leggatt turned his head towards the silent Mr Evans. After a pause Mr Evans briefly nodded.

  ‘Do it,’ Sam Leggatt said to Tunny.

  Tunny was thunderstruck. ‘No.’

  ‘Print the apology and get the papers delivered.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Don’t you know a barrel when you see one?’ He looked back at me. ‘And in return?’

  ‘Watts’s credit cards and Erskine’s Press Club pass.’

  ‘And you’ll still have…?’

  ‘Their jackets, a chequebook, photos, letters, notebooks, a diary and a neat little bugging system.’

  He nodded. ‘And for those?’

  ‘Well,’ I said slowly, ‘how about if you asked your lawyers what you would be forced to pay to Bobby if the wire-tapping came to court? If you cared to compensate him at that level now we would press no charges and save you the bad publicity and the costs and the penalties of a trial.’

  ‘I have no authority for that.’

  ‘But you could get it.’

  He merely stared, without assent or denial.

  ‘Also,’ I said, ‘the answer to why the attack was made. Who suggested it? Did you direct your journalists to break the law? Did they do it at their own instigation? Were they paid to do it, and if so by whom?’

  ‘Those questions can’t be answered.’

  ‘Do you yourself know the answers?’

  He said flatly, ‘Your bargaining position is strong enough only for the apology and the delivery of the apology, and you shall have those, and I will consult on the question of compensation. Beyond that, nothing.’

  I knew a stone wall when I saw one. The never-reveal-your-sources syndrome at its most flexible. Leggatt was telling me directly that answering my questions would cause the Flag more trouble than my reporting them for wire-tapping, which being so I would indeed get nothing else.

  ‘We’ll settle for the compensation,’ I said. ‘We would have to report the wire-tapping quite soon. Within a few days.’ I paused. ‘When a sufficient apology appears in the paper on Friday morning, and I’ve checked on the Newmarket deliveries, I’ll see that the credit cards and the Press Club pass reach you here at your front desk.’

  ‘Acceptable,’ Leggatt said, smothering a protest from Tunny. ‘I agree to that.’

  I nodded to them and turned and went out through the door, and when I’d gone three steps felt a hand on my arm and found Leggatt had followed me.

  ‘Off the record,’ he said, ‘what would you do if you discovered who had suggested the Allardeck attacks?’

  I looked into sandy brown eyes, at one with the hair. At the businesslike outward presentation of the man who daily printed sneers, innuendo, distrust and spite, and spoke without showing a trace of them.

  ‘Off the record,’ I said, ‘bash his face in.’

  ELEVEN

  I didn’t suppose an apology printed in the Flag would melt Bobby’s bank manager’s cash register heart, and I was afraid that the Flag’s compensation, if they paid it, wouldn’t be enough, or soon enough, to make much difference.

  I thought with a sigh of the manager in my own bank, who had seen me uncomplainingly through bad patches in the past and had stuck out his neck later to lend me capital for one or two business excursions, never pressing prematurely for repayment. Now that I looked like being solvent for the foreseeable future he behaved the same as ever, friendly, helpful, a generous source of advice.

  Getting the apology printed was more a gesture than an end to Bobby’s troubles, but at least it should reassure the owners and put rock back under the quicksands for the tradespeople in Newmarket. If the stable could be saved, it would be saved alive, not comatose.

  I’d got from Sam Leggatt a tacit admission that the Flag had been at fault, and the certainty that he knew the answers to my questions. I needed those answers immediately and had no hope of unlocking his tongue.

  With a sense of failure and frustration I booked into a nearby hotel for the night, feeling more tired than I liked to admit and afraid of falling asleep on the seventy dark miles home. I ordered something to eat from room service and made a great many telephone calls between yawns.

  First, to Holly.

  ‘Well done, today,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your win, of course.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ It seemed a lifetime ago. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Where are you?’ she said. ‘I tried the cottage.’

  ‘In London.’ I told her the hotel and my room number. ‘How are things?’

  ‘Awful.’

  I told her about the Flag promising to print the apology, which cheered her a little but not much.

  ‘Bobby’s out. He’s gone walking on the Heath. It’s all dreadful. I wish he’d come back.’

  The anxiety was raw in her voice and I spent some time trying to reassure her, saying Bobby would certainly return soon, he would know how she worried; and privately wondering if he wasn’t sunk so deep in his own despair that he’d have no room for imagining Holly’s.

  ‘Listen,’ I said after a while. ‘Do something for me, will you?’

  ‘Yes. What?’

  ‘Look up in the form books for Maynard’s horse Metavane. Do you remember, it won the 2000 Guineas about eight years ago?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘I want to know who owned it before Maynard.’

  Is it important?’ She sounded uninterested and dispirited.

  ‘Yes. See if you can find out, and ring me back.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And don’t worry.’

  ‘I can’t help it.’

  No one could help it, I thought, disconnecting. Her unhappiness settled heavily on me as if generated in my own mind.

  I telephoned Rose Quince at the home number she had given me on my way out, and she answered breathlessly at the eighth ring saying she had just that minute come through the door.

  ‘So they didn’t throw you to the presses?’ she said.

  ‘No. But I fear I got bounced off the flak jacket.’

  ‘Not surprising.’

  ‘All the same, read Intimate Details on Friday. And by the way, do you know a man called Tunny? He edits Intimate Details.’

  ‘Tunny,’ she said. ‘Tug Tunny. A memory like a floppy disc, instant recall at the flick of a switch. He’s been in the gossip business all his life. He probably pulled the wings off butterflies as a child and he’s fulfilled if he can goad any poor slob to a messy divorce.’

  ‘He didn’t look like that,’ I said dubiously.

  ‘Don’t be put off by the parsonage exterior. Read his column. That’s him.’

  ‘Yes. Thanks. And what about Owen Watts and Jay Erskine?’

  ‘The people who left their belongings in your sister’s garden?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Owen Watts I’ve never heard of before today,’ Rose said. ‘Jay Erskine… if it’s the same Jay Erskine, he used to work on the Towncrier as a crime reporter.’

  T
here were reservations in her voice, and I said persuasively, ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘Hm.’ She paused, then seemed to make up her mind. ‘He went to jail some time ago,’ she said. ‘He was among criminals so much because of his job, he grew to like them, like policemen sometimes do. He got tried for conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice. Anyway, if it’s the same Jay Erskine, he was as hard as nails but a terrific writer. If he wrote those pieces about your brother-in-law, he’s sold out for the money.’

  ‘To eat,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t get compassionate,’ Rose said critically. ‘Jay Erskine wouldn’t.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Thanks. Have you been inside the Flag building?’

  ‘Not since they did it up. I hear it’s gruesome. When Pollgate took over he let loose some decorator who’d been weaned on orange kitchen plastic. What’s it like?’

  ‘Gruesome,’ I said, ‘is an understatement. What’s Pollgate like himself?’

  ‘Nestor Pollgate, owner of the Flag as of a year ago,’ she said, ‘is reported to be a fairly young upwardly mobile shit of the first water. I’ve never met him myself. They say a charging rhinoceros is safer.’

  ‘Does he have editorial control?’ I asked. ‘Does Sam Leggatt print to Pollgate’s orders?’

  ‘In the good old days proprietors never interfered,’ she said nostalgically. ‘Now, some do, some still don’t. Bill Vaughnley gives general advice. The old Lord edited the Towncrier himself in the early years, which was different. Pollgate bought the Flag over several smarting dead bodies and you’ll see old-guard Flag journalists weeping into their beer in Fleet Street bars over the whipped-up rancour they have to dip their pens in. The editor before Sam Leggatt threw in the sponge and retired. Pollgate has certainly dragged the Flag to new heights of depravity, but whether he stands over Leggatt with a whip, I don’t know.’

  ‘He wasn’t around tonight, I don’t think,’ I said.

  ‘He spends his time putting his weight about in the City, so I’m told. Incidentally, compared with Pollgate, your man Maynard is a babe in arms with his small takeovers and his saintly front. They say Pollgate doesn’t give a damn what people think of him, and his financial bullying starts where Maynard’s leaves off.’

  ‘A right darling.’

  ‘Sam Leggatt I understand,’ she said. ‘Pollgate I don’t. If I were you I wouldn’t twist the Flag’s tail any further.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘Look what they did to your brother-in-law,’ she said, ‘and be warned.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said soberly. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Any time.’

  She said goodbye cheerfully and I sat drinking a glass of wine and thinking of Sam Leggatt and the fearsome manipulator behind him: wondering if the campaign against Maynard had originated from the very top, or from Leggatt or from Tunny, or from Watts and Erskine, or from outside the Flag altogether, or from one of Maynard’s comet-trail of victims.

  The telephone rang and I picked up the receiver, hearing Holly’s voice saying without preamble, ‘Maynard got Metavane when he was an unraced two-year-old, and I couldn’t find the former owners in the form book. But Bobby has come back now, and he says he thinks they were called Perryside. He’s sure his grandfather used to train for them, but they seem to have dropped right out of racing.’

  ‘Um,’ I said. ‘Have you got any of those old Racing Who’s Whos? They had pages of owners in them, with addresses. I’ve got them, but they’re in the cottage, which isn’t much good tonight.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve got any from ten years ago,’ she said doubtfully, and I heard her asking Bobby. ‘No, he says not.’

  ‘Then I’ll ring up Grandfather and ask him. I know he’s kept them all, back to the beginning.’

  ‘Bobby wants to know what’s so important about Metavane after all these years.’

  ‘Ask him if Maynard still owns any part of Metavane.’

  The murmuring went on and the answer came back. ‘He thinks Maynard still owns one share. He syndicated the rest for millions.’

  I said, ‘I don’t know if Metavane’s important. I’ll know tomorrow. Keep the chin up, won’t you?’

  ‘Bobby says to tell you the dragon has started up the drive.’

  I put the receiver down smiling. If Bobby could make jokes he had come back whole from the Heath.

  Grandfather grumbled that he was ready for bed but consented to go downstairs in his pyjamas. ‘Perryside,’ he said, reading, ‘Major Clement Perryside, The Firs, St Albans, Hertfordshire, telephone number attached.’ Disgust filled the old voice. ‘Did you know the fella had his horses with Allardeck?’

  ‘Sorry, yes.’

  ‘To hell with him, then. Anything else? No? Then goodnight.’

  I telephoned to the Perryside number he’d given me and a voice at the other end said, Yes, it was The Firs, but the Perrysides hadn’t lived there for about seven years. The voice had bought the house from Major and Mrs Perryside, and if I would wait they might find their new address and telephone number.

  I waited. They found them. I thanked them; said goodnight.

  At the new number another voice said, No, Major and Mrs Perryside don’t live here any more. The voice had bought the bungalow from them several months back. They thought the Perrysides had gone into sheltered housing in Hitchin. Which sheltered housing? They couldn’t say, but it was definitely in Hitchin. Or just outside. They thought.

  Thank you, I said, sighing, and disconnected.

  Major and Mrs Perryside, growing older and perhaps poorer, knowing Maynard had made millions from their horse: could they still hold a grievance obsessional enough to set them tilting at him at this late stage? But even if they hadn’t, I thought it would be profitable to talk to them.

  If I could find them; in Hitchin, or outside.

  I telephoned to my answering machine in the cottage and collected my messages: four from various trainers, the one from Holly, and a final unidentified man asking me to ring him back, number supplied.

  I got through to Wykeham Harlowe first because he, like my grandfather, went early to bed, and he, too, said he was in his pyjamas.

  We talked for a while about that day’s runners and those for the next day and the rest of the week, normal more or less nightly discussions. And as usual nowadays he said he wouldn’t be coming to Towcester tomorrow, it was too far. Ascot, he said, on Friday and Saturday. He would go to Ascot, perhaps only on one day, but he’d be there.

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘You know how it is, Paul,’ he said. ‘Old bones, old bones.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know. This is Kit.’

  ‘Kit? Of course you’re Kit. Who else would you be?’

  ‘No one,’ I said. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow night.’

  ‘Good, good. Take care of those novices. Goodnight, then, Paul.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ I said.

  I talked after that with the three other trainers, all on the subject of the horses I’d be riding for them that week and next, and finally, after ten o’clock and yawning convulsively, I got through to the last, unidentified, number.

  ‘This is Kit Fielding,’ I said.

  ‘Ah.’ There was a pause, then a faint but discernible click, ‘I’m offering you,’ said a civilised voice, ‘a golden opportunity.’

  He paused. I said nothing. He went on, very smoothly, ‘Three thousand before, ten thousand after.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘You haven’t heard the details.’

  I’d heard quite enough. I disconnected without saying another word and sat for a while staring at walls I didn’t see.

  I’d been propositioned before, but not quite like that. Never for such a large sum. The before-and-after merchants were always wanting jockeys to lose races to order, but I hadn’t been approached by any of them seriously for years. Not since they’d tired of being told no.

  Tonight’s was an unknown voice, or one I hadn’t heard often enough
to recognise. High in register. Education to match. Prickles wriggled up my spine. The voice, the approach, the amount, the timing, all of them raised horrid little suggestions of entrapment.

  I sat looking at the telephone number I’d been given.

  A London number. The exchange 722. I got through to the operator and asked whereabouts in London one would find exchange 722, general information printed in London telephone directories. Hold on, she said, and told me almost immediately; 722 was Chalk Farm stroke Hampstead.

  I thanked her. Chalk Farm stroke Hampstead meant absolutely nothing, except that it was not an area known for devotion to horse racing. Very much the reverse, I would have thought. Life in Hampstead tended to be intellectually inward-looking, not raucously open-air.

  Why Hampstead…

  I fell asleep in the chair.

  After a night spent at least half in bed I drank some coffee in the morning and went out shopping, standing in draughty doorways in Tottenham Court Road, waiting for the electronic wizards to unbolt their steel-mesh shutters.

  I found a place that would re-record Rose’s professional three-quarter-inch tape of Maynard on to a domestic size to fit my own player, no copyright questions asked. The knowingly obliging youth who performed the service seemed disgusted and astounded that the contents weren’t pornographic, but I cheered him up a little by buying a lightweight video-recording camera, a battery pack to run it off and a number of new tapes. He showed me in detail how to work everything and encouraged me to practise in the shop. He could point me to a helpful little bachelor club, he said, if I needed therapy.

  I declined the offer, piled everything in the car, and set off north to Hitchin, which was not exactly on the direct route to Towcester but at least not in a diametrically opposite direction.

  Finding the Perrysides when I got there was easy: they were in the telephone book. Major C. Perryside, 14 Conway Retreat, Ingle Barton. Helpful locals pointed me to the village of Ingle Barton, three miles outside the town, and others there explained how to find number 14 in the retirement homes.

  The houses themselves were several long terraces of small one-storey units, each with its own brightly painted front door and strip of minute flower bed. Paths alone led to the houses: one had to park one’s car on a tarmac area and walk along neatly paved ways between tiny segments of grass. Furniture removal men, I thought, would curse the lay-out roundly, but it certainly led to an air of unusual peace, even on a cold damp morning in November.