Whip Hand Read online

  ‘You’ve worked hard,’ I said.

  ‘Chico and I have been sitting here in shifts, answering your telephone, and trying to find out where you’d gone. Your car was still here, in the garage, and Chico said you would never have gone anywhere of your own accord without the battery charger for your arm.’

  ‘Well … I did.’

  ‘Sid …’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘What we need now is a list of periodicals and magazines dealing with antique furniture. We’ll try those first with the M people.’

  ‘It’s an awfully big project,’ Charles said doubtfully. ‘And even if we do find it, what then? I mean, as the man at Christie’s pointed out, even if we find whose mailing list was being used, where does it get us? The firm or magazine wouldn’t be able to tell us which of the many people who had access to the list was Nicholas Ashe, particularly as he is almost certain not to have used that name if he had any dealings with them.’

  ‘Mm,’ I said. ‘But there’s a chance he’s started operating again somewhere else, and is still using the same list. He took it with him, when he went. If we can find out whose list it is, we might go and call on some people who are on it, whose names start with A to K, and P to Z, and find out if they’ve received any of those begging letters recently. Because if they have, the letters will have the address on, to which the money is to be sent. And there, at that address, we might find Mr Ashe.’

  Charles put his mouth into the shape of a whistle, but what came out was more like a sigh.

  ‘You’ve come back with your brains intact, anyway,’ he said.

  Oh God, I thought, I’m making myself think to shut out the abyss. I’m in splinters … I’m never going to be right again. The analytical reasoning part of my mind might be marching straight on, but what had to be called the soul was sick and dying.

  ‘And there’s the polish,’ I said. I still had in my pocket the paper he’d given me the week before. I took it out and put it on the table. ‘If the idea of special polish is closely geared to the mailing list, then to get maximum results the polish is necessary. There can’t be many private individuals ordering so much wax in unprinted tins packed in. little white boxes. We could ask the polish firm to let us know if another lot is ordered. It’s just faintly possible that Ashe will use the same firm again, even if not at once. He ought to see the danger … but he might be a fool.’

  I turned away wearily. Thought about whisky. Went over and poured myself a large one.

  ‘Drinking heavily, are you?’ Charles said from behind me, in his most offensive drawl.

  I shut my teeth hard, and said, ‘No.’ Apart from coffee and water, it was my first drink for a week.

  ‘Your first alcoholic black-out, was it, these last few days?’

  I left the glass untouched on the drinks tray and turned round. His eyes were at their coldest, as unkind as in the days when we’d first met.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ I said.

  He lifted his chin a fraction. ‘A spark,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Still got your pride, I see.’

  I compressed my lips and turned my back on him, and drank a lot of the Scotch. After a bit I deliberately loosened a few tensed-up muscles, and said, ‘You won’t find out that way. I know you too well. You use insults as a lever, to sting people into opening up. You’ve done it to me in the past. But not this time.’

  ‘If I find the right sting,’ he said, ‘I’ll use it.’

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ I said.

  ‘Since you ask, yes.’

  We sat opposite each other in armchairs in unchanged companionship, and I thought vaguely of this and that and shied away from the crucifying bits.

  ‘You know,’ I said. ‘We don’t have to go trailing that mailing list around to see whose it is. All we do is ask the people themselves. Those …’ I nodded towards the M stack. ‘We just ask some of them what mailing lists they themselves are on. We’d only need to ask a few … the common denominator would be certain to turn up.’

  When Charles had gone home to Aynsford I wandered aimlessly round the flat, tie off and in shirtsleeves, trying to be sensible. I told myself that nothing much had happened, only that Trevor Deansgate had used a lot of horrible threats to get me to stop doing something that I hadn’t yet started. But I couldn’t dodge the guilt. Once he’d revealed himself, once I knew he would do something, I could have stopped him, and I hadn’t.

  If he hadn’t got me so effectively out of Newmarket I would very likely have still been prodding unproductively away, unsure even if there was anything to discover, right up to the moment in the Guineas when Tri-Nitro tottered in last. But I would also be up there now, I thought, certain and inquisitive; and because of his threat, I wasn’t.

  I could call my absence prudence, commonsense, the only possible course in the circumstances. I could rationalize and excuse. I could say I wouldn’t have been doing anything that wasn’t already being done by the Jockey Club. I came back, all the time, to the swingeing truth, that I wasn’t there now because I was afraid to be.

  Chico came back from his judo class and set to again to find out where I’d been; and for the same reasons I didn’t tell him, even though I knew he wouldn’t despise me as I despised myself.

  ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘You just keep it all bottled up and see where it gets you. Wherever you’ve been, it was bad. You’ve only got to look at you. It’s not going to do you any good to shut it all up inside.’

  Shutting it all up inside, however, was a lifelong habit, a defence learned in childhood, a wall against the world, impossible to change.

  I raised at least half a smile. ‘You setting up in Harley Street?’

  ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘You missed all the fun, did you know? Tri-Nitro got stuffed after all in the Guineas yesterday, and they’re turning George Caspar’s yard inside out It’s all here, somewhere, in the Sporting Life. The Admiral brought it. Have you read it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Our Rosemary, she wasn’t bonkers after all, was she? How do you think they managed it?’

  ‘They?’ I said.

  ‘Whoever did it.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I went along to see the gallop on Saturday morning,’ he said. ‘Yeah, yeah, I know you sent the telegram about leaving, but I’d got a real little dolly lined up for a bit of the other on Friday night, so I stayed. One more night wasn’t going to make any difference, and besides, she was George Caspar’s typist.’

  ‘She was …’

  ‘Does the typing. Rides the horses sometimes. Into everything, she is, and talkative with it.’

  The new scared Sid Halley didn’t even want to listen.

  ‘There was a right old rumpus all day Wednesday in George Caspar’s house,’ Chico said. ‘It started at breakfast when that Inky Poole turned up and said Sid Halley had been asking questions that he, Inky Poole, didn’t like.’

  He paused for effect. I simply stared.

  ‘Are you listening?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You got your stone face act on again.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Then Brothersmith the vet turned up and heard Inky Poole letting off, and he said funny, Sid Halley had been around him asking questions too. About bad hearts, he said. Same horses as Inky Poole was talking about. Bethesda, Gleaner and Zingaloo. And how was Tri-Nitro’s heart, for good measure. My little dolly typist said you could’ve heard George Caspar blowing up all the way to Cambridge. He’s really touchy about those horses.’

  Trevor Deansgate, I thought coldly, had been at George Caspar’s for breakfast, and had heard every word.

  ‘Of course,’ Chico said, ‘some time later they checked the studs, Garvey’s and Thrace’s, and found you’d been there too. My dolly says your name is mud.’

  I rubbed my hand over my face. ‘Does your dolly know you were working with me?’

  ‘Do us a favour. Of course not.’

  ‘Di
d she say anything else?’ What the hell am I asking for, I thought.

  ‘Yeah. Well, she said Rosemary got on to George Caspar to change all the routine for the Saturday morning gallop, nagged him all day Thursday and all day Friday and George Caspar was climbing the walls. And at the yard they had so much security they were tripping over their own alarm bells.’ He paused for breath. ‘After that she didn’t say much else on account of three martinis and time for tickle.’

  I sat on the arm of the sofa and stared at the carpet.

  ‘Next morning,’ Chico said, ‘I watched the gallop, like I said. Your photos came in very handy. Hundreds of ruddy horses … Someone told me which were Caspar’s, and there was Inky Poole, scowling like in the pictures, so I just zeroed in on him and hung about. There was a lot of fuss when it came to Tri-Nitro. They took the saddle off and put a little one on, and Inky Poole rode on that.’

  ‘It was Inky Poole, then, who rode Tri-Nitro, same as usual?’

  ‘They looked just like your pictures,’ Chico said. ‘Can’t swear to it more than that.’

  I stared some more at the carpet.

  ‘So what do we do next?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing … We give Rosemary her money back and draw a line.’

  ‘But hey,’ Chico said in protest. ‘Someone got at the horse. You know they did.’

  ‘Not our business, any more.’

  I wished that he, too, would stop looking at me. I felt a distinct need to crawl into a hole and hide.

  The doorbell rang with the long peal of a determined thumb. ‘We’re out,’ I said; but Chico went and answered it.

  Rosemary Caspar swept past him, through the hall and into the sitting room, advancing in the old fawn raincoat and a fulminating rage. No scarf, no false curls, and no loving kindness.

  ‘So there you are,’ she said forcefully. ‘I knew you’d be here, skulking out of sight. Your friend kept telling me when I telephoned that you weren’t here, but I knew he was lying.’

  ‘I wasn’t here,’ I said. As well try damming the St Lawrence with a twig.

  ‘You weren’t where I paid you to be, which was up in Newmarket. And I told you from the beginning that George wasn’t to find out you were asking questions, and he did, and we’ve been having one God-awful bloody row ever since, and now Tri-Nitro has disgraced us unbearably and it’s all your bloody fault.’

  Chico raised his eyebrows comically. ‘Sid didn’t ride it … or train it.’

  She glared at him with transferred hatred. ‘And he didn’t keep him safe, either.’

  ‘Er, no,’ Chico said. ‘Granted.’

  ‘As for you,’ she said, swinging back to me. ‘You’re a useless bloody humbug. It’s all rubbish, this detecting. Why don’t you grow up and stop playing games? All you did was stir up trouble, and I want my money back.’

  ‘Will a cheque do?’ I said.

  ‘You’re not arguing, then?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Do you mean you admit that you failed?’

  After a small pause, I said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ She sounded as if I had unexpectedly deprived her of a good deal of what she had come to say, but while I wrote out a cheque for her she went on complaining sharply enough.

  ‘All your ideas about changing the routine, they were useless. I’ve been on and on at George about security and taking care, and he says he couldn’t have done any more, no one could, and he’s in absolute despair – and I’d hoped, I’d really hoped, what a laugh, that somehow or other you would work a miracle, and that Tri-Nitro would ‘win, because I was so sure, so sure … and I was right.’

  I finished writing. ‘Why were you always so sure?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know. I just knew. I’ve been afraid of it for weeks … otherwise I would not have been so desperate as to try you, in the first place. And I might as well not have bothered … it’s caused so much trouble, and I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it. Yesterday was terrible. He should have won … I knew he wouldn’t. I felt ill. I still feel ill.’

  She was trembling again. The pain in her face was acute. So many hopes, so much work had gone into Tri-Nitro, such anxiety and such care. Winning races was to a trainer like a film to a film maker. If you got it right, they applauded: wrong, and they booed. And either way you’d poured your soul into it, and your thoughts and your skill and weeks of worry. I understood what the lost race meant to George, and to Rosemary equally, because she cared so much.

  ‘Rosemary …’ I said, in useless sympathy.

  ‘It’s pointless Brothersmith saying he must have had an infection,’ she said. ‘He’s always saying things like that. He’s so wet, I can’t stand him, always looking over his shoulder, I’ve never liked him. And it was his job anyway to check Tri-Nitro and he did, over and over, and there was nothing wrong with him, nothing. He went down to the post looking beautiful, and in the parade ring before that, there was nothing wrong, nothing. And then in the race, he just went backwards, and he finished … he came back … exhausted.’ There was a glitter of tears for a moment, but she visibly willed them from overwhelming her.

  ‘They’ve done dope tests, I suppose,’ Chico said.

  It angered her again. ‘Dope tests! Of course they have. What do you expect? Blood tests, urine tests, saliva tests, dozens of bloody tests. They gave George duplicate samples, and that’s why we’re down here, he’s trying to fix up with some private lab … but they won’t be positive. It will be like before … absolutely nothing.’

  I tore out the cheque and gave it to her, and she glanced at it blindly.

  ‘I wish I’d never come here. My God, I wish I hadn’t. You’re only a jockey. I should have known better. I don’t want to talk to you again. Don’t talk to me at the races, do you understand.’

  I nodded. I did understand. She turned abruptly to go away. ‘And for God’s sake don’t speak to George, either.’ She went alone out of the room, and out of the flat, and slammed the door.

  Chico clicked his tongue and shrugged. ‘You can’t win them all,’ he said. ‘What could you do that her husband couldn’t, not to mention a private police force and half a dozen guard dogs?’ He was excusing me, and we both knew it.

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Sid?’

  ‘I don’t know that I’m going on with it,’ I said. ‘This sort of job.’

  ‘You don’t want to take any notice of what she said,’ he protested. ‘You can’t give it up. You’re too good at it. Look at the awful messes you’ve put right. Just because of one that’s gone wrong …’

  I stared hollowly at a lot of unseen things.

  ‘You’re a big boy now,’ he said. And he was seven years younger than I, near enough. ‘You want to cry on Daddy’s shoulder?’ He paused. ‘Look, Sid mate, you’ve got to snap out of it. Whatever’s happened it can’t be as bad as when that horse sliced your hand up, nothing could. This is no time to die inside, we’ve got about five other jobs lined up. The insurance, and the guard job, and Lucas Wainwright’s syndicates …’

  ‘No,’ I said. I felt leaden and useless. ‘Not now, honestly, Chico.’

  I got up and went into the bedroom. Shut the door. Went purposelessly to the window and looked out at the scenery of roofs and chimney pots, glistening in the beginnings of rain. The pots were still there, though the chimneys underneath were blocked off and the fires long dead. I felt at one with the chimney pots. When fires went out, one froze.

  The door opened.

  ‘Sid,’ Chico said.

  I said resignedly, ‘Remind me to put a lock on that door.’

  ‘You’ve got another visitor.’

  ‘Tell him to go away.’

  ‘It’s a girl. Louise somebody.’

  I rubbed my hand over my face and head and down to the back of my neck. Eased the muscles. Turned from the window.

  ‘Louise McInnes?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘She shares the flat with Jenny,’ I said.


  ‘Oh, that one. Well then, Sid, if that’s all for today I’ll be off. And … er … be here tomorrow, won’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He nodded. We left everything else unsaid. The amusement, mockery, friendship and stifled anxiety were all there in his face and his voice … Maybe he read the same in mine. At any rate he gave me a widening grin as he departed, and I went into the sitting room thinking that some debts couldn’t be paid.

  Louise was standing in the middle of things, looking around her in the way I had, in Jenny’s flat. Through her eyes I saw my own room afresh: its irregular shape, high-ceilinged, not modern; and the tan leather sofa, the table with drinks by the window, the shelves with books, the prints framed and hung, and on the door, leaning against the wall, the big painting of racing horses which I’d somehow never bothered to hang up. There were coffee cups and glasses scattered about, and full ashtrays, and the piles of letters on the coffee table and everywhere else.

  Louise herself looked different: the full production, not the Sunday morning tumble out of bed. A brown velvet jacket, a blazing white sweater, a soft mottled brown skirt with a wide leather belt round an untroubled waist. Fair hair washed and shining, rose petal make-up on the English rose skin. A detachment in the eyes which said that all this honey was not chiefly there for the attracting of bees.

  ‘Mr Halley.’

  ‘You could try Sid,’ I said. ‘You know me quite well, by proxy.’

  Her smile reached halfway. ‘Sid.’

  ‘Louise.’

  ‘Jenny says Sid is a plumber’s mate’s sort of name.’

  ‘Very good people, plumbers’ mates.’

  ‘Did you know,’ she said, looking away and continuing the visual tour of inspection, ‘that in Arabic “Sid” means “lord”?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, it does.’

  ‘You could tell Jenny,’ I said.

  Her gaze came back fast to my face. ‘She gets to you, doesn’t she?’

  I smiled. ‘Like some coffee? Or a drink?’

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Sure.’