Break In

by Dick Francis

  More silence.

  ‘I’ll be telling everyone I can think of about the wiretapping,’ I said. ‘Starting now.’

  ‘Where are you?’ he said.

  ‘At the other end of the telephone line.’

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Ring me back will you?’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes.’

  ‘All right.’

  I put the receiver down and stood looking at it, drumming my fingers and wondering if the Flag really did have equipment which could trace where I’d called from, or whether I was being fanciful.

  I couldn’t afford, I thought, any more punch-ups. I left the Underground station, walked along the street for ten minutes, went into a pub, rang the Flag. My call was again expected: the switchboard put me straight through.

  When Sam Leggatt said ‘Yes’ there were voices raised loudly in the backgound.

  ‘Fielding,’ I said.

  ‘You’re early.’ The backgound voices abruptly stopped.

  ‘Your decision,’ I said.

  ‘We want to talk to you.’

  ‘You’re talking.’

  ‘No. Here, in my office.’

  I didn’t answer immediately, and he said sharply, ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What time do you go to press?’

  ‘First edition, six-thirty, to catch the West Country trains. We can hold until seven. That’s the limit.’

  I looked at my watch. Fourteen minutes after six. Too late, to my mind, for talking.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you just print and distribute the apology? It’s surely no big deal. It’ll cost you nothing but the petrol to Newmarket. I’ll come to your office when you assure me that you’re doing that.’

  ‘You’d trust my word?’

  ‘Do you trust mine?’

  He said grudgingly, ‘Yes, I suppose I do expect you to return what you said.’

  ‘I’ll do it. I’ll act in good faith. But so must you. You seriously did damage Bobby Allardeck, and you must at least try to put it right.’

  ‘Our lawyers say an apology would be an acknowledgment of liability. They say we can’t do it.’

  ‘That’s it, then,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘No, Fielding, wait.’

  ‘Your lawyers are fools,’ I said, and put down the receiver.

  I went out into the street and rubbed a hand over my head, over my hair, feeling depressed and a loser.

  Four winners, I thought. It happened so seldom. I should be knee-deep in champagne, not banging myself against a brick wall that kicked back so viciously.

  The cuts on my ribs hurt. I could no longer ignore them. I walked dispiritedly along to yet another telephone and rang up a long-time surgical ally.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ he said cheerfully. ‘What is it this time? A little clandestine bone-setting?’

  ‘Sewing,’ I said.

  ‘Ah. And when are you racing?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Toddle round, then.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I went in a taxi and got stitched.

  ‘That’s not a horseshoe slash,’ he observed, dabbing anaesthetic into my right side. ‘That’s a knife.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did you know the bone is showing?’

  ‘I can’t see it.’

  ‘Don’t tear it open again tomorrow.’

  ‘Then fix it up tight.’

  He worked for a while before patting my shoulder. ‘It’s got absorbable stitches, also clips and gripping tape, but whether it would stand another four winners is anyone’s guess.’

  I turned my head. I’d said nothing about the winners.

  ‘I heard it on the news,’ he said.

  He worked less lengthily on the other cut and said lightly, I didn’t think getting knifed was your sort of thing.’

  ‘Nor did I.’

  ‘Want to tell me why it happened?’

  He was asking, I saw, for reassurance. He would come to my aid on the quiet, but it was important to him that I should be honest.

  ‘Do you mean,’ I said, ‘have I got myself into trouble with gamblers and race-fixers and such?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Then no, I promise you.’ I told him briefly of Bobby’s problems and felt his reservations fade.

  ‘And the bruises?’ he said.

  ‘I fell under some hurdlers the day before yesterday.’

  He nodded prosaically. I paid his fee in cash and he showed me to his door.

  ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘Come back when you need.’

  I thanked him, caught a taxi and rode back to the hotel thinking of the Flag thundering off the presses at that moment without carrying the apology. Thinking of Leggatt and the people behind him; lawyers, Nestor Pollgate, Tug Tunny, Owen Watts and Jay Erskine. Thinking of the forces and the furies I had somehow unleashed. You’ve got to learn there’s people you can’t push around, one of the knifemen had said.

  Well, I was learning.

  The rented car booth in the lobby told me I was in luck, they’d got me a Mercedes; here were the keys, it was in the underground car park; the porter would show me when I wanted to go out. I thanked them. We try harder, they said.

  Up in my room I ordered some food from room service and telephoned Wykeham to tell him how his winners had won, catching at least an echo of the elation of the afternoon.

  ‘Did they get home all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, they all ate up. Dhaulagiri looks as if he had a hard race but Dusty said he won easy.’

  ‘Dhaulagiri ran great,’ I said. ‘They all did. Kinley’s as good as any you’ve got.’

  We talked of Kinley’s future and of the runners at Ascot the next day and Saturday. For Wykeham the months of October, November and December were the peak: his horses came annually into their best form then, the present flourish of successes expected and planned for.

  Between 30 September and New Year’s Day he ran every horse in his charge as often as he could. ‘Seize the moment,’ he would say. After Christmas, with meetings disrupted by frost and snow, he let his stable more or less hibernate, resting, regrouping, aiming for a second intense flowering in March. My life followed his rhythms to a great extent, as natural to me as to his horses.

  ‘Get some rest, now,’ he said jovially. ‘You’ve got six rides tomorrow, another five on Saturday. Get some good sleep.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Goodnight, Wykeham.’

  ‘Goodnight, Paul.’

  My food came and I ate bits of it and drank some wine while I got through to the other trainers who’d left messages, and after that I rang Rose Quince.

  ‘Four winners,’ she said. ‘Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t

  you?’

  ‘These things happen.’

  ‘Of sure. Just hold on to your moment of glory, buddy boy, because I’ve some negative news for you.’

  ‘How negative?’

  ‘A firm and positive thumbs down from the producer of How’s Trade. There’s no way on earth he’s going to say who sicked him on to Maynard Allardeck.’

  ‘But someone did?’

  ‘Oh, sure. He just won’t say who. I’d guess he got paid to do it as well as paid not to, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Whoever paid him to do it must be feeling betrayed.’

  ‘Too bad,’ she said. ‘See you.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said hastily, ‘what did Jay Erskine go to jail for?’

  ‘I told you. Conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice.’

  ‘But what did he actually do?’

  ‘As far as I remember, he put some frighteners on to a chief prosecution witness who then skipped the country and never gave evidence, so the villain got off. Why?’

  ‘I just wondered. How long did he get?’

  ‘Five years, but he was out in a lot less.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome. And by the way, one of the favour
s you owed me is cancelled. I took your advice. The venom worked a treat and I’m freed, I’m no longer under the jurisdiction of the chauvinist. So thanks, and goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  If the Flag wanted frighteners, Jay Erskine could get them.

  I sighed and rubbed my eyes and thought about Holly, who had been hovering in my mind for ages, telling me to ring her up. She would want the money I still wore round my waist and I was going to have to persuade her and Bobby to come to London or Ascot in the morning to fetch it.

  I was going to have to tell her that I hadn’t after all managed to get the apology printed. That hers and Bobby’s lawyers could grind on for ever and get nothing. That reporting the wire-tapping to all and sundry might inconvenience the Flag, but would do nothing to change their bank manager’s mind. I put the call through to Holly reluctantly.

  ‘Of course we’ll come to fetch the money,’ she said. ‘Will you please stop talking about it and listen.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Sam Leggatt telephoned. The editor of the Flag.’

  ‘Did he? When?’

  ‘About an hour ago. An hour and a half. About seven o’clock. He said you were in London, somewhere in the Knightsbridge area, and did I know where you would be staying?’

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked, alarmed.

  ‘I told him where you stayed last night. I told him to try there. He said that wasn’t in Knightsbridge and I said of course not, but hadn’t he heard of taxis. Anyway he wanted to get a message to you urgently, he said. He wanted me to write it down. He said to tell you the apology was being printed at that moment and will be delivered.’

  ‘What! Why on earth didn’t you say so?’

  ‘But you told me last night it was going to happen. I mean, I thought you knew.’

  ‘Christ Almighty,’ I said.

  ‘Also,’ Holly said, ‘he wants you to go to the Flag tonight. He said if you could get there before ten there would be someone there you wanted to meet.’

  FOURTEEN

  When I pressed the buzzer and walked unannounced through his unlatching door he was sitting alone in his office, shirt-sleeved behind his shiny black desk, reading the Flag.

  He stood up slowly, his fingers spread on the paper as if to give himself leverage, a short solid man with authority carried easily, as of right.

  I was not who he’d expected. A voice behind me was saying, ‘Here it is, Sam’, and a man came walking close, waving a folder.

  ‘Yes, Dan, just leave it with me, will you?’ Leggatt said, stretching out a hand and taking it. ‘I’ll get back to you.’

  ‘Oh? OK.’ The man Dan went away, looking at me curiously, closing the door with a click.

  ‘I got your message,’ I said.

  He looked down at his copy of the Flag, turned a page, reversed the paper and pushed it towards me across the desk.

  I read the Intimate Details that would be titillating a few million Friday breakfasts and saw that at least he’d played fair. The paragraph was in bold black type in a black-outlined box.

  It said:

  The Daily Flag acknowledges that the Newmarket racing stable of Robertson (Bobby) Allardeck (32) is a sound business and is not in debt to local traders. The Daily Flag apologises to Mr Allardeck for any inconvenience he may have suffered in consequence of reports to the contrary printed in this column earlier.

  ‘Well,’ he said, when I’d read.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Bobby Allardeck should thank God for his brother-in-law.’

  I looked at him in surprise, and I thought of Bobby’s schizophrenic untrustable regard for me, and of my sister, for whom I truly acted. That paragraph should at least settle the nerves of the town and the owners and put the stable back into functionable order: given, of course, that its uneasy underlying finances could be equally sorted out.

  ‘What changed your mind?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘You did. The lawyers said you would back down. I said you wouldn’t. They think they can intimidate anybody with their threats of long expensive lawsuits.’ He smiled twistedly. ‘I said you’d be real poisonous trouble if we didn’t print, and you would have been, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded. ‘I persuaded them we didn’t want Jay Erskine and Owen Watts in court, where you would put them.’

  ‘Particularly as Jay Erskine has a criminal record already.’

  He was momentarily still. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  It had been that one fact, I thought, that had swayed them.

  ‘Did Jay Erskine write the attacks on Bobby?’ I asked.

  After a slight hesitation he nodded. ‘He wrote everything except the apology. I wrote that myself.’

  He pressed a button on an intercom on his desk and said, ‘Fielding’s here’ neutrally to the general air.

  ‘Where are the credit cards, now we’ve printed?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ll get them tomorrow, after the newspapers have been delivered, like I said.’

  ‘You never let up, do you? Owen Watts has set off to Newmarket already and the others are in the post.’ He looked at me broodingly. ‘How did you find out about the bank?’

  ‘I thought you might try to discredit me. I put a stop on all ingoing payments.’

  He compressed his mouth. ‘They can’t see what they’re dealing with,’ he said.

  The buzzer on his door sounded and he pushed the release instantly. I turned and saw a man I didn’t know walking in with interest and no caution. Fairly tall, with a receding hairline over a pale forehead, he wore an ordinary dark suit with a brightly striped tie and had a habit of rubbing his fingers together, like a schoolmaster brushing off chalk.

  ‘David Morse, head of our legal department,’ said Sam Lcggatt briefly.

  No one offered to shake hands. David Morse looked me over as an exhibit, up and down, gaze wandering over the unzipped anorak and the blue shirt and tie beneath.

  ‘The jockey,’ he said coolly. ‘The one making the fuss.’

  I gave no reply, as none seemed useful, and through the open door behind him came another man who brought power with him like an aura and walked softly on the outsides of his feet. This one, as tall as the lawyer, had oiled dark hair, olive skin, a rounded chin, a small mouth and eyes like bright dark beads: also heavy shoulders and a flat stomach in smooth navy suiting. He was younger than either Sam Leggatt or Morse and was indefinably their boss.

  ‘I’m Nestor Pollgate,’ he announced, giving me a repeat of the Morse inspection and the same absence of greeting. ‘I am tired of your antics. You will return my journalists’ possessions immediately.’

  His voice, like his body, was virile, reverberatingly bass in unaccented basic English.

  ‘Did you ask me here just for that?’ I said.

  Don’t twist their tail, Rose Quince had said. Ah well.

  Pollgate’s mouth contracted and he moved round to Legwatt’s side of the desk, and the lawyer also, so that they were ranged there in a row like a triumvirate of judges with myself before them, as it were on the carpet.

  I had stood before the racing Disciplinary Stewards once or twice in that configuration, and I’d learned to let neither fright nor defiance show. Every bad experience, it seemed, could bring unexpected dividends. I stood without fidgeting and waited.

  ‘Your contention that we mounted a deliberate campaign to ruin your brother-in-law is rubbish,’ Pollgate said flatly. ‘If you utter that opinion in public we will sue you.’

  ‘You mounted a campaign to ruin Maynard Allardeck’s chance of a knighthood,’ I said. ‘You aimed to destroy his credibility and you didn’t give a damn who else you hurt in the process. Your paper was ruthlessly callous. It often is. I will utter that opinion as often as I care to.’

  Pollgate perceptibly stiffened. The lawyer’s mouth opened a little and Leggatt looked on the verge of inner amusement.

  ‘Tell me why you wanted to wreck Maynard Allardeck,’ I said.
/>
  ‘None of your business.’ Pollgate answered with the finality of a bank-vault door, and I acknowledged that if I ever found out it wouldn’t be by straightforward questions put to anyone in that room.

  ‘You judged,’ I said instead, ‘that a sideways swipe at Maynard would be most effective, and you decided to get at him through his son. You gave not a thought to the ruin you were bringing on the son. You used him. You should compensate him for that use.’

  ‘No,’ Pollgate said.

  ‘We admit nothing,’ the lawyer said. A classically lawyerlike phrase. We may be guilty but we’ll never say so. He went on, ‘If you persist in trying to extort money by menaces, the Daily Flag will have you arrested and charged.’

  I listened not so much to the words as to the voice, knowing I’d heard it somewhere recently, sorting out the distinctive high pitch and the precision of consonants and the lack of belief in any intelligence I might have.

  ‘Do you live in Hampstead?’ I said thoughtfully.

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Pollgate said, coldly impatient.

  ‘Three thousand before, ten after.’

  ‘You’re talking gibberish,’ Pollgate said.

  I shook my head. David Morse was looking as if he’d bitten a wasp.

  ‘You were clumsy,’ I said to him. ‘You don’t know the first thing about bribing a jockey.’

  ‘What is the first thing?’ Sam Leggatt asked.

  I almost smiled. ‘The name of the horse.’

  ‘You admit you take bribes, then,’ Morse said defensively.

  ‘No I don’t, but I’ve been propositioned now and then, and you didn’t sound right. Also you were recording your offer on tape. I heard you start the machine. True would-be corrupters wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘I did advise caution,’ Sam Leggatt said mildly.

  ‘You’ve no proof of any of this,’ Pollgate said with finality.

  ‘My bank manager’s holding a three thousand pound draft issued in the City. He intends on my behalf to ask questions about its origins.’

  ‘He’ll get nowhere,’ Pollgate said positively.

  ‘Then perhaps he’ll do what I asked him first, which is to tear it up.’

  There was a short stark silence. If they asked for the draft back they would admit they’d delivered it, and if they didn’t, their failed ploy would have cost them the money.