by Dick Francis
‘No one does,’ I said. ‘Everyone has an outside and an inside, and the two can be quite different.’
‘Is that just a general observation?’
‘No.’ I picked up the mug of tea, and blew across the steaming surface. ‘To myself, I’m a jumble of uncertainty and fear and stupidity. And to others … well, what happened to Chico and me last evening was because of the way others see us.’ I took a tentative taste. As always when Charles made it, the tea was strong enough to rasp the fur off your tongue. I quite liked it, sometimes. I said, ‘We’ve been lucky, since we started this investigating thing. In other words, the jobs we’ve done have been comparatively easy, and we’ve been getting a reputation for being successful, and the reputation has been getting bigger than the reality.’
‘Which is, of course,’ Charles said drily, ‘that you’re a pair of dim-witted layabouts.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I do. Tom Ullaston rang me here yesterday morning, to arrange about stewards for Epsom, he said, but I gathered it was mostly to tell me what he thought about you, which was, roughly speaking, that if you had still been a jockey it would be a pity.’
‘It would be great,’ I said, sighing.
‘So someone lammed into you and Chico yesterday to stop you chalking up another success?’
‘Not exactly,’ I said.
I told him what I had spent the night sorting out; and his tea got cold.
When I’d finished he sat for quite a while in silence, simply staring at me in best give-away-nothing manner.
Then he said, ‘It sounds as if yesterday evening was … terrible.’
‘Well, yes, it was.’
More silence. Then, ‘So what next?’
‘I was wondering,’ I said diffidently, ‘if you’d do one or two jobs for me today, because I … er …’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘What?’
‘It’s your day for London. Thursday. So could you bear to drive the Land Rover up instead of the Rolls, and swap it for my car?’
‘If you like,’ he said, not looking enchanted.
‘The battery charger’s in it, in my suitcase,’ I said.
‘Of course I’ll go.’
‘Before that, in Oxford, could you pick up some photographs? They’re of Nicholas Ashe.’
‘Sid!’
I nodded. ‘We found him. There’s a letter in my car, too, with his new address on. A begging letter, same as before.’
He shook his head at the foolishness of Nicholas Ashe. ‘Any more jobs?’
‘Two. I’m afraid. The first’s in London, and easy. But as for the other … Would you go to Tunbridge Wells?’
When I told him why, he said he would, even though it meant cancelling his afternoon’s board-meeting.
‘And would you lend me your camera, because mine’s in the car … and a clean shirt?’
‘In that order?’
‘Yes, please.’
Wishing I didn’t have to move for a couple of thousand years I slowly unstuck myself from the sofa some time later and went upstairs, with Charles’s camera, to see Chico.
He was lying on his side, his eyes dull and staring vaguely into space, the effect of the drugs wearing off. Sore enough to protest wearily when I told him what I wanted to photograph.
‘Sod off.’
‘Think about barmaids.’
I peeled back the blanket and sheet covering him and took pictures of the visible damage, front and back. Of the invisible damage there was no measure. I put the covers back again.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
He didn’t answer, and I wondered whether I was really apologizing for disturbing him at that moment or more basically for having tangled his life in mine, with such dire results. A hiding to nothing was what he’d said we were on with those syndicates, and he’d been right.
I took the camera out on to the landing and gave it to Charles.
‘Ask for blown-up prints by tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘Tell him it’s for a police case.’
‘But you said no police …’ Charles said.
‘Yes, but if he thinks it’s already for the police, he won’t go trotting round to them when he sees what he’s printing.’
‘I suppose it’s never occurred to you,’ Charles said, handing over a clean shirt, ‘that it’s your view of you that’s wrong, and Thomas Ullaston’s that’s right?’
I telephoned to Louise and told her I couldn’t make it, that day, after all. Something’s come up, I said, in the classic evasive excuse, and she answered with the disillusion it merited.
‘Never mind, then.’
‘I do mind, actually,’ I said. ‘So how about a week tomorrow? What are you doing after that for a few days?’
‘Days?’
‘And nights.’
Her voice cheered up considerably. ‘Research for a thesis.’
‘What subject?’
‘Clouds and roses and stars, their variations and frequency in the life of your average liberated female.’
‘Oh Louise,’ I said, ‘I’ll … er … help you all I can.’
She laughed and hung up, and I went along to my room and took off my dusty, stained, sweaty shirt. Looked at my reflection briefly in the mirror and got no joy from it. Put on Charles’s smooth sea island cotton and lay on the bed. I lay on one side, like Chico, and felt what Chico felt; and at one point or other, went to sleep.
In the evening I went down and sat on the sofa, as before, to wait for Charles, but the first person who came was Jenny.
She walked in, saw me, and was immediately annoyed. Then she took a second look, and said, ‘Oh no, not again.’
I said merely, ‘Hullo.’
‘What is it this time? Ribs, again?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I know you too well.’ She sat at the other end of the sofa, beyond my feet. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for your father.’
She looked at me moodily. ‘I’m going to sell that flat in Oxford,’ she said.
‘Are you?’
‘I don’t like it any more. Louise Mclnnes has left, and it reminds me too much of Nicky …’
After a pause I said, ‘Do I remind you of Nicky?’
With a flash of surprise she said, ‘Of course not.’ And then, more slowly, ‘But he …’ she stopped.
‘I saw him,’ I said. ‘Three days ago, in Bristol. And he looks like me, a bit.’
She was stunned, and speechless.
‘Didn’t you realize?’ I said.
She shook her head.
‘You were trying to go back,’ I said. To what we had, at the beginning.’
‘It’s not true.’ But her voice said that she saw it was. She had even told me so, more or less, the evening I’d come to Aynsford to start finding Ashe.
‘Where will you live?’ I said.
‘What do you care?’
I supposed I would always care, to some extent, which was my problem, not hers.
‘How did you find him?’ she said.
‘He’s a fool.’
She didn’t like that. The look of enmity showed where her instinctive preference still lay.
‘He’s living with another girl,’ I said.
She stood up furiously, and I remembered a bit late that I really didn’t want her to touch me.
‘Are you telling me that to be beastly?’ she demanded.
‘I’m telling you so you’ll get him out of your system before he goes on trial and to jail. You’re going to be damned unhappy if you don’t.’
‘I hate you,’ she said.
‘That’s not hate, that’s injured pride.’
‘How dare you!’
‘Jenny.’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you plainly, I’d do a lot for you. I’ve. loved you a long time, and I do care what happens to you. It’s no good finding Ashe and getting him convicted of fraud instead of you, if you don’t wake up and see him for what he is. I want to make you angry with him. F
or your own sake.’
‘You won’t manage it,’ she said fiercely.
‘Go away,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Go away. I’m tired.’
She stood there looking as much bewildered as annoyed, and at that moment Charles came back.
‘Hallo,’ he said, taking a disapproving look at the general atmosphere. ‘Hallo, Jenny.’
She went over and kissed his cheek, from long habit.
‘Has Sid told you he’s found your friend Ashe?’ he said.
‘He couldn’t wait.’
Charles was carrying a large brown envelope. He opened it, pulled out the contents, and handed them to me: the three photographs of Ashe, which had come out well, and the new begging letter.
Jenny took two jerky strides and looked down at the uppermost photograph.
‘Her name is Elizabeth More,’ I said slowly. ‘His real name is Norris Abbott. She calls him Ned.’
The picture, the third one I’d taken, showed them laughing and entwined, looking into each other’s eyes, the happiness in their faces sharply in focus.
Silently, I gave Jenny the letter. She opened it and looked at the signature at the bottom, and went very pale. I felt sorry for her, but she wouldn’t have wanted me to say so.
She swallowed, and handed the letter to her father.
‘All right,’ she said after a pause. ‘All right. Give it to the police.’
She sat down again on the sofa with a sort of emotional exhaustion slackening her limbs and curving her spine. Her eyes turned my way.
‘Do you want me to thank you?’ she said.
I shook my head.
‘I suppose one day I will.’
‘There’s no need.’
With a flash of anger she said, ‘You’re doing it again.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Making me feel guilty. I know I’m pretty beastly to you sometimes. Because you make me feel guilty, and I want to get back at you for that.’
‘Guilty for what?’ I said.
‘For leaving you. For our marriage going wrong.’
‘But it wasn’t your fault,’ I protested.
‘No, it was yours. Your selfishness, your pigheadedness. Your bloody determination to win. You’ll do anything to win. You always have to win. You’re so hard. Hard on yourself. Ruthless to yourself. I couldn’t live with it. No one could live with it. Girls want men who’ll come to them for comfort. Who say, I need you. help me, comfort me, kiss away my troubles. But you … you can’t do that. You always build a wall and deal with your own troubles in silence, like you’re doing now. And don’t tell me you aren’t hurt because I’ve seen it in you too often, and you can’t disguise the way you hold your head, and this time it’s very bad, I can’t see it. But you’d never say, would you, Jenny, hold me, help me, I want to cry?’
She stopped, and in the following silence made a sad little gesture with her hand.
‘You see?’ she said. ‘You can’t say it, can you?’
After another long pause I said, ‘No.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I need a husband who’s not so rigidly in control of himself. I want someone who’s not afraid of emotion, someone uninhibited, someone weaker, I can’t live in the sort of purgatory you make of life for yourself. I want someone who can break down. I want … an ordinary man.’
She got up from the sofa and bent over and kissed my forehead.
‘It’s taken me a long time to see all that,’ she said. ‘And to say it. But I’m glad I have.’ She turned to her father. ‘Tell Mr Quayle I’m cured of Nicky, and I won’t be obstructive from now on. I think I’ll go back to the flat now. I feel a lot better.’
She went with Charles towards the door, and then paused and looked back, and said, ‘Goodbye, Sid.’
‘Goodbye,’ I said: and I wanted to say Jenny, hold me, help me, I want to cry: but I couldn’t.
19
Charles drove himself and me to London the following day in the Rolls with me still in a fairly droopy state and Charles saying we should put it off until Monday.
‘No,’ I said.
‘But even for you this is daunting … and you’re dreading it.’
Dread, I thought, was something I felt for Trevor Deansgate, who wasn’t going to hold off just because I had other troubles. Dread was too strong a word for the purpose of the present journey; and reluctance too weak. Aversion, perhaps.
‘It’s better done today,’ I said.
He didn’t argue. He knew I was right, otherwise he wouldn’t have been persuaded to drive me.
He dropped me at the door of the Jockey Qub in Portman Square, and went and parked the car, and walked back again. I waited for him downstairs, and we went up in the lift together: he in his City suit, and I in trousers and a clean shirt, but no tie and no jacket. The weather was still hot. A whole week of it, we’d had, and it seemed that everyone except me was bronzed and healthy.
There was a looking glass in the lift My face stared out of it, greyish and hollow-eyed, with a red streak of a healing cut slanting across near the hairline on my forehead, and a blackish bruise on the side of my jaw. Apart from that I looked calmer. less damaged and more normal than I felt, which was a relief. If I concentrated, I should be able to keep it that way.
We went straight to Sir Thomas Ullaston’s office, where he was waiting for us. Shook hands, and all that.
To me he said, ‘Your father-in-law told me on the telephone yesterday that you have something disturbing to tell me. He wouldn’t say what it was.’
‘No, not on the telephone,’ I agreed.
‘Sit down, then. Charles … Sid …’ He offered chairs, and himself perched on the edge of his big desk. ‘Very important, Charles said. So here I am, as requested. Fire away.’
‘It’s about syndicates,’ I said. I began to tell him what I’d told Charles, but after a few minutes he stopped me.’
‘No. Look, Sid, this is not going to end here simply between me and you, is it? So I think we must have some of the others in. to hear what you’re saying.’
I would have preferred him not to, but he summoned the whole heavy mob; the Controller of the Secretariat, the Head of Administration, the Secretary to the Stewards, the Licensing Officer, who dealt with the registration of owners, and the Head of Rules Department, whose province was disciplinary action. They came into the room and filled up the chairs, and for the second time in four days turned their serious civilized faces my way. to listen to the outcome of an investigation.
It was because of Tuesday, I thought, that they would listen to me now. Trevor Deansgate had given me an authority I wouldn’t otherwise have had, in that company, in that room.
I said, ‘I was asked by Lord Friarly, whom I used to ride for, to look into four syndicates, which he headed. The horses were running in his colours, and he wasn’t happy about how they were doing. That wasn’t surprising, as their starting prices were going up and down like yoyos, with results to match. Lord Friarly felt he was being used as a front for some right wicked goings on, and he didn’t like it.’
I paused, knowing I was using a light form of words because the next bit was going to fall like lead.
‘On the same day, at Kempton, Commander Wainwright asked me to look into the same four syndicates, which I must say had been manipulated so thoroughly that it was a wonder they weren’t a public scandal already.’
The smooth faces registered surprise. Sid Halley was not the natural person for Commander Wainwright to ask to look into syndicates, which were the normal business of the Security Section.
‘Lucas Wainwright told me that all four syndicates had been vetted and OK’d by Eddy Keith, and he asked me to find out if there was any unwelcome significance in that.’
For all that I put it at its least dramatic, the response from the cohorts was of considerable shock. Racing might suffer from its attraction for knaves and rogues, as it always had, but corruption within the headquarters itself? Never.
I said, ‘I came here to Portman Square to make notes about the syndicates, which I took from Eddy Keith’s files, without his knowledge. I wrote the notes in Lucas’s office, and he told me about a man he’d sent out on the same errand as myself, six months ago. That man, Mason, had been attacked, and dumped in the streets of Tunbridge Wells, with appalling head injuries, caused by kicks. He was a vegetable, and blind. Lucas told me also that the man who had formed the syndicates, and who had been doing the manipulating, was a Peter Rammileese, who lived at Tunbridge Wells.’
The faces were all frowningly intent.
‘After that I … er … went away for a week, and I also lost the notes, so I had to come back here and do them again, and Eddy Keith discovered I’d been seeing his files, and complained to you, Sir Thomas, if you remember?’
‘That’s right. I told him not to fuss.’
There were a few smiles all around, and a general loosening of tension. Inside me, a wilting fatigue.
‘Go on, Sid.’ Sir Thomas said.
Go on, I thought. I wished I felt less weak, less shaky, less continuously sore. Had to go on, now I’d started. Get on with it. Go on.
I said, ‘Well, Chico Barnes, who was here with me on Tuesday …’ They nodded. ‘Chico and I, we went down to Tunbridge Wells, to see Peter Rammileese. He was away, as it happened. His wife and little son were there, but the wife had fallen off a horse and Chico went to the hospital with her, taking the little boy, which left me, and an open house. So I … er … looked around.’
Their faces said ‘Tut tut’, but none of their voices.
‘I looked for any possible direct tie-in with Eddy, but actually the whole place was abnormally tidy and looked suspiciously prepared for any searches any tax men might make.’
They smiled slightly.
‘Lucas warned me at the beginning that as what I was doing was unofficial, I couldn’t be paid, but that he’d give me help instead, if I needed it. So I asked him to help me with the business of Trevor Deansgate, and he did.’
‘In what way, Sid?’
‘I asked him to write to Henry Thrace, to make sure that the Jockey Club would hear at once if Gleaner died, or Zingaloo, and to tell me, so that I could get a really thorough post-mortem done.’