Odds against sh-1

by Dick Francis

  ‘But why?’ I sat up straight, disturbed.

  ‘He came here yesterday afternoon. I’d say on balance he is almost down on our side of the fence. I didn’t get the usual caution about expenses, which is a good sign. Anyway, what he wanted was to see the proofs you told him we held which show it is Kraye who is buying the shares. Photographs of share transfer certificates. He knew about them. He said you’d told him.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘He wanted to see them. That was reasonable, and I didn’t want to risk tipping him back into indecision, so I showed them to him. He asked me very courteously if he could take them to show them to the Seabury executive. They held a meeting this morning, I believe. He thought they might be roused to some effective action if they could see for themselves how big Kraye’s holding is.’

  ‘What about the other photographs? The others that were in the box.’

  ‘He took them all. They were all jumbled up, and he was in a hurry. He said he’d sort them out himself later.’

  ‘He took them to Seabury?’ I said uneasily.

  ‘That’s right. For the executive meeting this morning.’ He looked at his watch. ‘The meeting must be on at this moment, I should think. If you want them you can ask him for them as soon as you get there. He should have finished with them by then.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t let him take them,’ I said.

  ‘It can’t do any harm. Even if he lost them we’d still have the negatives. You could get another print done tomorrow, of your list.’

  The negatives, did he but know it, were inaccessibly tucked into a mislaid file in Finchley. I didn’t confess. Instead I said, unconvinced, ‘All right. I suppose it won’t matter. I’ll get on down there, then.’

  I packed an overnight bag in the flat. The sun was pouring in through the windows, making the blues and greens and blond wood furniture look warm and friendly. After two years the place was at last beginning to feel like home. A home without Jenny. Happiness without Jenny. Both were possible, it seemed. I certainly felt more myself than at any time since she left.

  The sun was still shining, too, at Seabury. But not on a very large crowd. The poor quality of the racing was so obvious as to be pathetic: and it was in order that such a rotten gaggle of weedy quadrupeds could stumble and scratch their way round to the winning post, I reflected philosophically, that I had tried to pit my inadequate wits against Lord Hagbourne, Captain Oxon, the Seabury executive, Kraye, Bolt, Fred, Leo, old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

  There were no mishaps all day. The horses raced nonchalantly over the tan patch at their speedy crawl, and no light flashed in their eyes as they knocked hell out of the fences on the far side. Round One to Chico and me.

  As the fine weather put every one in a good mood a shred of Seabury’s former vitality temporarily returned to the place: enough, anyway, for people to notice the dinginess of the stands and remark that it was time something was done about it. If they felt like that, I thought, a revival shouldn’t be impossible.

  The Senior Steward listened attentively while I passed on Zanna Martin’s suggestion that Seabury council should be canvassed, and surprisingly said that he would see it was promptly done.

  In spite of these small headways, however, my spine wouldn’t stop tingling. Lord Hagbourne didn’t have the photographs.

  ‘They are only mislaid, Sid,’ he said soothingly. ‘Don’t make such a fuss. They’ll turn up.’

  He had put them down on the table round which the meeting had been held, he said. After the official business was over, he had chatted, standing up. When he turned back to pick up the box, it was no longer there. The whole table had been cleared. The ashtrays were being emptied. The table was required for lunch. A white cloth was being spread over it.

  What, I asked, had been the verdict of the meeting, anyway? Er, um, it appeared the whole subject had been shelved for a week or two: no urgency was felt. Shares changed hands slowly, very slowly. But they had agreed that Hunt Radnor could carry on for a bit.

  I hesitated to go barging into the executive’s private room just to look for a packet of photographs, so I asked the caterers instead. They hadn’t seen it, they said, rushing round me. I tracked down the man and woman who had cleared the table after the meeting and laid it for lunch.

  Any amount of doodling on bits of paper, said the waitress, but no box of photographs, and excuse me love, they’re waiting for these sandwiches. She agreed to look for it, looked, and came back shaking her head. It wasn’t there, as far as she could see. It was quite big, I said despairingly.

  I asked Mr Fotherton, Clerk of the Course; I asked Captain Oxon, I asked the secretary, and anyone else I could think of who had been at the meeting. None of them knew where the photographs were. All of them, busy with their racing jobs, said much the same as Lord Hagbourne.

  ‘Don’t worry, Sid, they’re bound to turn up.’

  But they didn’t.

  I stayed on the racecourse until after the security patrols changed over at six o’clock. The incomers were the same men who had been on watch the night before, four experienced and sensible ex-policemen, all middle-aged. They entrenched themselves comfortably in the Press room, which had windows facing back and front, effective central heating, and four telephones; better headquarters than usual on their night jobs, they said.

  Between the last race (three-thirty) and six o’clock, apart from hunting without success for the photographs and driving Lord Hagboume round to Napoleon Close for a horrified first-hand look at the smashed-up mirror, I persuaded Captain Oxon to accompany me on a thorough nook and cranny check-up of all the racecourse buildings.

  He came willingly enough, his stiffness of earlier in the week having been thawed, I supposed, by the comparative success of the day; but we found nothing and no one that shouldn’t have been there.

  I drove into Seabury and booked into the Seafront Hotel, where I had often stayed in the past. It was only half full. Formerly, on racing nights, it had been crammed. Over a brandy in the bar the manager lamented with me the state of trade.

  ‘Race meetings used to give us a boost every three weeks nearly all the winter. Now hardly anyone comes, and I hear they didn’t even ask for the January fixture this year. I tell you, I’d like to see that place blooming again, we need it.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Then write to the Town Council and say so.’

  ‘That wouldn’t help,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘You never know. It might. Do write.’

  ‘All right, Sid. Just to please you then. For old time’s sake. Let’s have another brandy on the house.’

  I had an early dinner with him and his wife and afterwards went for a walk along the seashore. The night was dry and cold and the onshore breeze smelt of seaweed. The banked pebbles scrunched into trickling hollows under my shoes and the winter sand was as hard-packed as rock. Thinking about Kraye and his machinations, I had strolled quite a long way eastwards, away from the racecourse, before I remembered I had said I would ring Radnor at his home during the evening.

  There was nothing much to tell him. I didn’t hurry, and it was nearly ten o’clock when I got back to Seabury. The modernisations didn’t yet run to telephones in all the bedrooms at the hotel, so I used the kiosk outside on the promenade, because I came to it first.

  It wasn’t Radnor who answered, but Chico, and I knew at once from his voice that things had gone terribly wrong.

  ‘Sid…’ he said. ‘Sid… look, pal, I don’t know how to tell you. You’ll have to have it straight. We’ve been trying to reach you all the evening.’

  ‘What…?’ I swallowed.

  ‘Someone bombed your flat.’

  ‘Bombed,’ I said stupidly.

  ‘A plastic bomb. It blew the street wall right out. All the flats round yours were badly damaged, but yours… well, there’s nothing there. Just a big hole with disgusting black sort of cobwebs. That’s how they knew it was a plastic bomb. The sort the French terrorists used… Sid, ar
e you there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry, pal. I’m sorry. But that’s not all. They’ve done it to the office, too.’ His voice was anguished. ‘It went off in the Racing Section. But the whole place is cracked open. It’s… it’s bloody ghastly.’

  ‘Chico.’

  ‘I know. I know. The old man’s round there now, just staring at it. He made me stay here because you said you’d ring, and in case the racecourse patrols want anything. No one was badly hurt, that’s the only good thing. Half a dozen people were bruised and cut, at your flats. And the office was empty, of course.’

  ‘What time…?’

  ‘The bomb in the office went off about an hour and a half ago, and the one in your flat was just after seven. The old man and I were round there with the police when they got the radio message about the office. The police seem to think that whoever did it was looking for something. The people who live underneath you heard someone moving about upstairs for about two hours shortly before the bomb went off, but they just thought it was you making more noise than usual. And it seems everything in your flat was moved into one pile in the sitting-room and the bomb put in the middle. The police said it meant that they hadn’t found what they were looking for and were destroying everything in case they had missed it.’

  ‘Everything…’ I said.

  ‘Not a thing was left. God, Sid, I wish I didn’t have to… but there it is. Nothing that was there exists any more.’

  The letters from Jenny when she loved me. The only photograph of my mother and father. The trophies I won racing. The lot. I leant numbly against the wall.

  ‘Sid, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was the same thing at the office. People across the road saw lights on and someone moving about inside, and just thought we were working late. The old man said we must assume they still haven’t found what they were looking for. He wants to know what it is.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘You must.’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘You can think on the way back.’

  ‘I’m not coming back. Not tonight. It can’t do any good. I think I’ll go out to the racecourse again, just to make sure nothing happens there too.’

  ‘All right. I’ll tell him when he calls. He said he’d be over in Cromwell Road all night, very likely.’

  We rang off and I went out of the kiosk into the cold night air. I thought that Radnor was right. It was important to know what it was that the bomb merchants had been looking for. I leaned against the outside of the box, thinking about it. Deliberately not thinking about the flat, the place that had begun to be home, and all that was lost. That had happened before, in one way or another. The night my mother died, for instance. And I’d ridden my first winner the next day.

  To look for something, you had to know it existed. If you used bombs, destroying it was more important than finding it. What did I have, which I hadn’t had long (or they would have searched before) which Kraye wanted obliterated.

  There was the bullet which Fred had accidentally fired into the mirror. They wouldn’t find that, because it was somewhere in a police ballistics laboratory. And if they had thought I had it, they would have looked for it the night before.

  There was the leaflet Bolt had sent out, but there were hundreds of those, and he wouldn’t want the one I had, even if he knew I had it.

  There was the letter Mervyn Brinton had re-written for me, but if it were that it meant…

  I went back into the telephone box, obtained Mervyn Brinton’s number from directory enquiries, and rang him up.

  To my relief, he answered.

  ‘You are all right, Mr Brinton?’

  ‘Yes, yes. What’s the matter?’

  ‘You haven’t had a call from the big man? You haven’t told anyone about my visit to you, or that you know your brother’s letter by heart?’

  He sounded scared. ‘No. Nothing’s happened. I wouldn’t tell anyone. I never would.’

  ‘Fine,’ I reassured him. ‘That’s just fine. I was only checking.’

  So it was not Brinton’s letter.

  The photographs, I thought. They had been in the office all the time until Radnor gave them to Lord Hagbourne yesterday afternoon. No one outside the agency, except Lord Hagbourne and Charles, had known they existed. Not until this morning, when Lord Hagbourne took them to Seabury executive meeting, and lost them.

  Suppose they weren’t lost, but stolen. By someone who knew Kraye, and thought he ought to have them. From the dates on all those documents Kraye would know exactly when the photographs had been taken. And where.

  My scalp contracted. I must assume, I thought, that they had now connected all the Halleys and Sids.

  Suddenly fearful, I rang up Aynsford. Charles himself answered, calm and sensible.

  ‘Charles, please will you do as I ask, at once, and no questions? Grab Mrs Cross, go out and get in the car and drive well away from the house, and ring me back at Seabury 79411. Got that? Seabury 79411.’

  ‘Yes.’ He said, and put down the telephone. Thank God, I thought, for a naval training. There might not be much time. The office bomb had exploded an hour and a half ago; London to Aynsford took the same.

  Ten minutes later the bell began to ring. I picked up the receiver.

  ‘They say you’re in a call box,’ Charles said.

  ‘That’s right. Are you?’

  ‘No, the pub down in the village. Now, what’s it all about?’

  I told him about the bombs, which horrified him, and about the missing photographs.

  ‘I can’t think what else it can be that they are looking for.’

  ‘But you said that they’ve got them.’

  ‘The negatives,’ I said.

  ‘Oh. Yes. And they weren’t in your flat or the office?’

  ‘No. Quite by chance, they weren’t.’

  ‘And you think if they’re still looking, that they’ll come to Aynsford?’

  ‘If they are desperate enough, they might. They might think you would know where I keep things… And even have a go at making you tell them. I asked you to come out quick because I didn’t want to risk it. If they are going to Aynsford, they could be there at any minute now. It’s horribly likely they’ll think of you. They’ll know I took the photos in your house.’

  ‘From the dates. Yes. Right. I’ll get on to the local police and ask for a guard on the house at once.’

  ‘Charles, one of them… well, if he’s the one with the bombs, you’ll need a squad.’ I described Fred and his van, together with its number.

  ‘Right.’ He was still calm. ‘Why would the photographs be so important to them? Enough to use bombs, I mean?’

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘Take care.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I did take care. Instead of going back into the hotel, I rang up.’

  The manager said, ‘Sid, where on earth are you, people have been trying to reach you all the evening… the police too.’

  ‘Yes, Joe, I know. It’s all right. I’ve talked to the people in London. Now, has anyone actually called at the hotel, wanting me?’

  ‘There’s someone up in your room, yes. Your father-in-law, Admiral Roland.’

  ‘Oh really? Does he look like an Admiral?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he sounded puzzled.

  ‘A gentleman?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Not Fred, then.

  ‘Well, he isn’t my father-in-law. I’ve just been talking to him in his house in Oxfordshire. You collect a couple of helpers and chuck my visitor out.’

  I put down the receiver sighing. A man up in my room meant everything I’d brought to Seabury would very likely be ripped to bits. That left me with just the clothes I stood in, and the car…

  I fairly sprinted round to where I’d left the car. It was locked, silent and safe. No damage. I patted it thankfully, climbed in, and drove out to the racecourse.
r />   FIFTEEN

  All was quiet as I drove through the gates and switched off the engine. There were lights on — one shining through the windows of the Press room, one outside the weighing room door, one high up somewhere on the stands. The shadows in between were densely black. It was a clear night with no moon.

  I walked across to the Press room, to see if the security patrols had anything to report.

  They hadn’t.

  All four of them were fast asleep.

  Furious, I shook the nearest. His head lolled like a pendulum, but he didn’t wake up. He was sitting slumped into his chair. One of them had his arms on the table and his head on his arms. One of them sat on the floor, his head on the seat of the chair and his arms hanging down. The fourth lay flat, face downwards, near the opposite wall.

  The stupid fools, I thought violently. Ex-policemen letting themselves be put to sleep like infants. It shouldn’t have been possible. One of their first rules in guard work was to take their own food and drink with them and not accept sweets from strangers.

  I stepped round their heavily breathing hulks and picked up one of the Press telephones to ring Chico for reinforcements. The line was dead. I tried the three other instruments. No contact with the exchange on any of them.

  I would have to go back and ring up from Seabury, I thought. I went out of the Press room but in the light pouring out before I shut the door I saw a dim figure walking towards me from the direction of the gate.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he called imperiously, and I recognised his voice. Captain Oxon.

  ‘It’s only me, Sid Halley.’ I shouted back. ‘Come and look at this.’

  He came on into the light, and I stood aside for him to go into the Press room.

  ‘Good heavens. What on earth’s the matter with them?’

  ‘Sleeping pills. And the telephones don’t work. You haven’t seen anyone about who ought not to be?’

  ‘No. I haven’t heard anything except your car. I came down to see who had come.’

  ‘How many lads are there staying overnight in the hostel? Could we use some of those to patrol the place while I ring the agency to get some more men?’