Rat Race

by Dick Francis

  ‘Say, if it isn’t Eric, Eric Goldenberg, of all people. Come over here, me old sport, come and have a drink.’

  Goldenberg looked less than enthusiastic at the invitation and the Major sidled away quickly to avoid being included, giving the Australian a glance full of the dislike of the military for the flamboyant.

  The man in the cast put one arm clumsily round Golden-berg’s shoulder, the crutch swinging out widely and knocking against Nancy.

  ‘Say,’ he said. ‘Sorry, lady. I haven’t got the hang of these things yet.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said, and Goldenberg said something to him that I couldn’t hear, and before we knew where we were we had been encompassed into the Australian’s circle and he was busy ordering drinks all round.

  Close to, he was a strange looking man because his face and hair were almost colourless. The skin was whitish, the scalp, half bald, was fringed by silky hair that had been fair and was turning white, the eyelashes and eyebrows made no contrast, and the lips of the smiling mouth were creamy pale. He looked like a man made up to take the part of a large cheerful ghost. His name, it appeared, was Acey Jones.

  ‘Aw, come on,’ he said to me in disgust. ‘Coke is for milksops, not men.’ Even his eyes were pale: a light indeterminate bluey grey.

  ‘Just lay off him, Ace,’ Goldenberg said. ‘He’s flying me home. A drunken pilot I can do without.’

  ‘A pilot, eh?’ The big voice broadcast the information to about fifty people who weren’t in the least interested. ‘One of the fly boys? Most pilots I know are a bunch of proper tearaways. Live hard, love hard, drink hard. Real characters, those guys.’ He said it with an expansive smile which hid the implied slight. ‘C‘m on now, sport, live dangerously. Don’t disillusion all these people.’

  ‘Beer, then, please,’ I said.

  Nancy was equally scornful, but for opposite reasons. ‘Why did you climb down?’

  ‘Antagonising people when you don’t have to is like casting your garbage on the waters. One day it may come floating back, smelling worse.’

  She laughed. ‘Chanter would say that was immoral. Stands be made on principles.’

  ‘I won’t drink more than half of the beer. Will that do?’

  ‘You’re impossible.’

  Acey Jones handed me the glass and watched me take a mouthful and went on a bit about hell-raising and beating up the skies and generally living the life of a high-powered gypsy. He made it sound very attractive and his audience smiled and nodded their heads and none of them seemed to know that the picture was fifty years out of date, and that the best thing a pilot can be is careful: sober, meticulous, receptive, and careful. There are old pilots and foolish pilots, but no old foolish pilots. Me, I was old, young, wise, foolish, thirty-four. Also depressed, divorced, and broke.

  After aviation, Acey Jones switched back to insurance and told Goldenberg and Nancy and me and the fifty other people about getting a thousand pounds for breaking his ankle, and we had to listen to it all again, reacting with the best we could do in surprised appreciation.

  ‘No, look, no kidding, sport,’ he said to Goldenberg with his first sign of seriousness. ‘You want to get yourself signed up with this outfit. Best fiver I’ve ever spent.…’

  Several of the fifty onlookers edged nearer to listen, and Nancy and I filtered towards the outside of the group. I put down the tasted beer on an inconspicuous table out in the hall while Nancy dispatched the bottom half of her coke, and from there we drifted out into the air.

  The sun was still shining, but the small round white clouds were expanding into bigger round clouds with dark grey centres. I looked at my watch. Four twenty. Still nearly an hour until the time the Major wanted to leave. The longer we stayed the bumpier the ride was likely to be, because the afternoon forecast for scattered thunderstorms looked accurate.

  ‘Cu-nims forming,’ Nancy said, watching them. ‘Nasty.’

  We went and watched her brother get up on his mount for the last race and then we went up on the Owners and Trainers and watched him win it, and that was about that. She said goodbye to me near the bottom of the steps, outside the weighing room.

  ‘Thanks for the escort duty…’

  ‘Enjoyed it…’

  She had smooth gilded skin and greyish brown eyes. Straight dark eyebrows. Not mu6h lipstick. No scent. Very much the opposite of my blonde, painted, and departed wife.

  ‘I expect,’ she said, That we’ll meet again, because I sometimes fly with Colin, if there’s a spare seat.’

  ‘Do you ever take him yourself?’

  ‘Good Lord no.’ She laughed. ‘He wouldn’t trust me to get him there on time. And anyway, there are too many days when the weather is beyond what I can do. Maybe one day, though.…’

  She held out her hand and I shook it. A grip very like her brother’s, and just as brief.

  ‘See you, then,’ she said.

  ‘I hope so.’

  She nodded with a faint smile and went away. I watched her neat blue and white back view and stifled a sudden unexpected inclination to run after her and give her a Chanter type farewell.

  When I walked across the track towards the aeroplane I met Kenny Bayst coming back from it with his raincoat over his arm. His skin was blotched pink again with fury, clashing with his carroty hair.

  ‘I’m not coming back with you,’ he said tightly. ‘You tell Miss Annie effing Villars that I’m not coming back with you. There’s no bloody pleasing her. Last time I nearly got the push for winning and this time I nearly got the push for not winning. You’d think that both times I’d had the slightest choice in the matter. I’ll tell you straight, sport, I’m not coming back in your bloody little aeroplane having them gripe gripe gripe at me all the way back.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. I didn’t blame him.

  ‘I’ve just been over to fetch my raincoat. I’ll go home by train… or get a lift.’

  ‘Raincoat… but the aircraft is locked.’

  ‘No it isn’t. I just got my raincoat out of the back. Now you tell them I’ve had enough, right?’ I nodded, and while he hurried off I walked on towards the aeroplane puzzled and a bit annoyed. Major Tyderman had said he had locked up again after he had fetched his Sporting Life, but apparently he hadn’t.

  He hadn’t. Both the doors on the port side were unlocked, the passenger door and the baggage locker. I wasn’t too pleased because Derrydowns had told me explicitly never to leave the aircraft open as they’d had damage done by small boys on several occasions: but all looked well and there were no signs of sticky fingers.

  I did all the external checks again and glanced over the flight plan for the return. If we had to avoid too many thunderclouds it might take a little longer to reach Newmarket, but unless there was one settled and active over the landing field there should be no problem.

  The passengers of the two Polyplane aircraft assembled by ones and twos, shovelled themselves inside, shut the doors, and were trundled down to the far end of the course. One after the other the two aeroplanes raced back over the grass and lifted away, wheeling like black darts against the blue, grey and white patchwork of the sky.

  Annie Villars came first of my lot. Alone, composed, polite; giving nothing away. She handed me her coat and binoculars and I stored them for her. She thanked me. The deceptive mild brown eyes held a certain blankness and every few seconds a spasmodic tightening belied the gentle set of her mouth. A formidable lady, I thought. What was more, she herself knew it. She was so conscious of the strength and range of her power that she deliberately manufactured the disarming exterior in order not exactly to hide it, but to make it palatable. Made a nice change, I thought ironically, from all those who put up a big tough front to disguise their inner lack.

  ‘Kenny Bayst asked me to tell you that he has got a lift home to Newmarket and won’t be coming back by air,’ I said.

  A tiny flash of fire in the brown eyes. The gentle voice, completely controlled, said ‘I’m not sur
prised.’ She climbed into the aeroplane and strapped herself into her seat and sat there in silence, looking out over the emptying racecourse with eyes that weren’t concentrating on the grass and the trees.

  Tyderman and Goldenberg returned together, still deep in discussion. The Major’s side mostly consisted of decisive nods, but it was pouring out of Goldenberg. Also he was past worrying about what I overheard.

  ‘I would be surprised if the little shit hasn’t been double crossing us all the time and collecting from some bookmaker or other even more than he got from us. Making fools of us, that’s what he’s been doing. I’ll murder the little sod. I told him so, too.’

  ‘What did he say?’ the Major asked.

  ‘Said I wouldn’t get the chance. Cocky little bastard.’

  They thrust their gear angrily into the baggage compartment and stood talking by the rear door in voices rumbling like the distant thunder.

  Colin Ross came last, slight and inconspicuous, still wearing the faded jeans and the now crumpled sweat shirt.

  I went a few steps to meet him. ‘Your sister Nancy asked me to check with you whether you had remembered to bring the present for Midge.’

  ‘Oh damn…’ More than irritation in his voice there was weariness. He had ridden six hard races, won three of them. He looked as if a toddler could knock him down.

  ‘I’ll get it for you, if you like.’

  ‘Would you?’ He hesitated, then with a tired flap of his wrist said, ‘Well, I’d be grateful. Go into the weighing room and ask for my valet, Ginger Mundy. The parcel’s on the shelf over my peg. He’ll get it for you.’

  I nodded and went back across the track. The parcel, easily found, proved to be a little smaller than a shoe box and was wrapped in pink and gold paper with a pink bow. I took it over to the aeroplane and Colin put it on Kenny Bayst’s empty seat.

  The Major had already strapped himself in and was drumming with his fingers on his binocular case, which was as usual slung around him. His body was still stiff with tension. I wondered if he ever relaxed.

  Goldenberg waited without a smile while I clambered across into my seat, and followed me in and clipped shut the door in gloomy silence. I sighed, started the engine, and taxied down to the far end of the course. Ready for take-off I turned round to my passengers and tried a bright smile.

  ‘All set?’

  I got three grudging nods for my pains. Colin Ross was asleep. I took the hilarious party off the ground without enthusiasm, skirted the Manchester zone, and pointed the nose in the general direction of Newmarket. Once up in the sky it was all too clear that the air had become highly unstable. At lower levels, rising pockets of heat from the built-up areas bumped the aeroplane about like a puppet, and to enormous heights great heaps of cumulo-nimbus cloud were boiling up all round the horizon.

  Airsick-making weather. I looked round to see if an issue of waterproof bags was going to be required. Needn’t have bothered. Colin was still asleep and the other three had too much on their minds to worry about a few lurches. I told Annie Villars where the bags were to be found if wanted, and she seemed to think I had insulted her.

  Although by four thousand feet the worst of the bumps were below us, the flight was a bit like a bending race as I tracked left and right to avoid the dark towering cloud masses. Mostly we stayed in the sunshine: occasionally raced through the small veiling clouds which were dotted among the big ones. I wanted to avoid even the medium sized harmless ones, as these sometimes hid a dangerous whopper just behind, and at a hundred and fifty miles an hour there was little chance to dodge. Inside every well grown cumulo-nimbus there were vertical rushing air currents which could lift and drop even an airliner like a yoyo. Also one could meet hailstones and freezing rain. Nobody’s idea of a jolly playground. So it was a good idea to avoid the black churning brutes, but it was a rougher ride than one should aim for with passengers.

  Everyone knows the horrible skin-prickling heart-thudding feeling when the normal suddenly goes wrong. Fear, it’s called. The best place to feel it is not with a jerk at four thousand feet in a battlefield of cu-nims.

  I was used to far worse weather; to bad, beastly, even lethal weather. It wasn’t the state of the sky which distracted me, which set the fierce little adrenalin-packed alarm bell ringing like crazy.

  There was something wrong with the aeroplane.

  Nothing much. I couldn’t even tell what it was. But something. Something…

  My instinct for safety was highly developed. Over-developed, many had said, when it had got me into trouble. Bloody coward, was how they’d put it.

  You couldn’t ignore it, though. When the instinct switched to danger you couldn’t risk ignoring it, not with passengers on board. What you could do when you were alone was a different matter, but civil commercial pilots seldom got a chance to fly alone.

  Nothing wrong with the instruments. Nothing wrong with the engine.

  Something wrong with the flying controls.

  When I swerved gently to avoid yet another lurking cu-nim the nose of the aircraft dropped and I had a shade of difficulty pulling it up again. Once level nothing seemed wrong. All the gauges seemed right. Only the instinct remained. Instinct and the memory of a slightly sluggish response.

  The next time I made a turn, the same thing happened. The nose wanted to drop, and it needed more pressure than it should have done to hold it level. At the third turn, it was worse.

  I looked down at the map on my knees. We were twenty minutes out of Haydock… south of Matlock… approaching Nottingham. Another eighty nautical miles to Newmarket.

  It was the hinged part of the tailplane which raised or lowered the aircraft’s nose. The elevators, they were called. They were linked by wires to the control column in such a way that when you pushed the control column forward the tail went up and tipped the nose down. And vice versa.

  The wires ran through rings and over pulleys, between the cabin floor and the outer skin of the fuselage. There wasn’t supposed to be any friction.

  Friction was what I could feel.

  I thought perhaps one of the wires had somehow come off one of the pulleys during the bumpy ride. I’d never heard of it happening before, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t. Or perhaps a whole pulley had come adrift, or had broken in half… If something was rolling around loose it could affect the controls fairly seriously.

  I turned to the cheerful company.

  ‘I’m very sorry, but there will be a short delay on the journey. We’re going to land for a while at the East Midlands Airport, near Nottingham, while I get a quick precautionary check done on the aircraft.’

  I met opposition.

  Goldenberg said belligerently, ‘I can’t see anything wrong.’ His eyes swept over the gauges, noticing all the needles pointing to the green safety segments on all the engine instruments. ‘It all looks the same as it always does.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s necessary?’ Annie Villars said. ‘I particularly want to get back to see my horses at evening stables.’

  The Major said ‘Damn it all!’ fiercely and frowned heavily and looked more tense than ever.

  They woke up Colin Ross.

  ‘The pilot wants to land here and make what he calls a precautionary check. We want to go straight on. We don’t want to waste time. There isn’t anything wrong with the plane, as far as we can see…’

  Colin Ross’s voice came across, clear and decisive. ‘If he says we’re going down, we’re going down. He’s the boss.’

  I looked round at them. Except for Colin they were all more moody and gloomy than ever. Colin unexpectedly gave me a flicker of a wink. I grinned as much to myself as to him, called up East Midlands on the radio, announced our intention to land, and asked them to arrange for a mechanic to be available for a check.

  On the way down I regretted it. The friction seemed no worse: if anything it was better. Even in the turbulent air near the ground I had no great trouble in moving the elevators. I’d made a fool of mys
elf and the passengers would be furious and Derrydowns would be scathing about the unnecessary expense, and at any time at all I would be looking for my seventh job.

  It was a normal landing. I parked where directed on the apron and suggested everyone got out and went into the airport for a drink, as the check would take half an hour, and maybe more.

  They were by then increasingly annoyed. Up in the air they must have had a lingering doubt that I was right about landing. Safe on the ground, they were becoming sure it was unnecessary.

  I walked some of the way across the tarmac with them towards the airport passengers’ doors, then peeled off to go to the control office for the routine report after landing, and to ask for the mechanic to come for a look-see as soon as possible. I would fetch them from the bar, I said, once the check was done.

  ‘Hurry it up’ Goldenberg said rudely.

  ‘Most annoying. Most annoying indeed.’ The Major.

  ‘I was away last night… particularly wanted to get back this evening. Might as well go by road, no point in paying for speed if you don’t get it…’ Annie Villar’s irritation overcoming the velvet glove.

  Colin Ross said, ‘If your horse coughs, don’t race it.’

  The others looked at him sharply. I said, ‘Thanks’ gratefully, and bore off at a tangent to the left. I saw them out of the side of my vision, looking briefly back towards the aircraft and then walking unenthusiastically towards the big glass doors.

  There was a crack behind me like a snapping branch, and a monstrous boom, and a roaring gust of air.

  I’d heard that sequence before. I spun round, appalled.

  Where there had stood a smart little blue and white Cherokee there was an exploding ball of fire.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The bomb had taken a fraction of a second to detonate. The public impact lasted three days. The investigations dragged on for weeks.

  Predictably, the Dailies went to town on ‘Colin Ross Escapes Death by One Minute’ and ‘Champion Jockey wins Race against Time’. Annie Villars, looking particularly sweet and frail, said in a television news interview that we had all been fantastically lucky. Major Tyderman was quoted as saying ‘Fortunately there was something wrong with the plane, and we landed for a check. Otherwise…’ And Colin Ross had apparently finished his sentence for him; ‘Otherwise we would all have been raining down on Nottingham in little bits.’