Reflex Read online

  “What . . . I mean . . . about her face?”

  “We’ll see better soon. Are you hungry?”

  “Good heavens. It’s one o’clock.”

  We ate ham and tomatoes and brown toast, and finished the champagne, and then returned to the darkroom.

  Printing onto paper from such faint negatives was still a critical business as again one had first to judge the exposure right and then stop the developing print at exactly the best instant and switch it to the fixer, or all that came out was a flat light or a dark gray sheet with no depth and no highlights. It took me several tries with each of the two best new strips to get truly visible results, but I finished with three pictures which were moderately clear, and more than clear enough to reveal what George had photographed. I looked at them with the bright lights on, and with a magnifying glass; and there was no chance of a mistake.

  “What’s the matter?” Jeremy said. “They’re wonderful. Unbelievable. Why aren’t you blowing your trumpets and patting yourself on the back?”

  I put the finished articles into the print drier, and silently cleared up the developing trays.

  “What is it?” Jeremy asked. “What’s the matter?”

  “They’re bloody dynamite,” I said.

  9

  I took Jeremy and the new pictures upstairs and switched on the epidiascope, which hummed slightly in its idiosyncratic way as it warmed up.

  “What’s that?” Jeremy said, looking at the machine.

  “You must have seen one,” I said, surprised. “It’s pretty old, I know. I inherited it from Charlie. But all the same, they must still be around. You put things in here on this baseboard and their image is projected large and bright onto a screen—or in my case, a wall. You can project anything. Pages of books, illustrations, photographs, letters, dead leaves. All done by mirrors.”

  The photograph of Elgin Yaxley and Terence O’Tree still lay in position, and at the flick of a switch came into sharp focus as before, calendar and dates and all. I drew the curtains against the fading afternoon light and let the picture shine bright in the dark room. After a minute I unclamped it and took it out, and put in instead the best strip I’d made downstairs, adjusting the lens, and enlarging each third separately, showing each of the three pictures on its own.

  Even in their unavoidably imperfect state, even in shades of white to dark gray, they pulsated off the wall. The first one showed the top half of a girl as far down as the waist, and also the head and shoulders of a man. They were facing each other, the girl’s head higher than the man’s. Neither of them wore clothes. The man had his hands under the girl’s breasts, lifting them up, with his mouth against the nipple furthest away from the camera.

  “Good heavens,” Jeremy said faintly.

  “Mm,” I said. “Do you want to see the others?”

  “They didn’t look so bad in snapshot size.”

  I projected the second picture, which was of much the same pose, except that the camera had been at a different angle, showing less of the girl’s front and nearly all of the man’s face.

  “It’s just pornography,” Jeremy said.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  I unclamped the second picture and showed the third, which was different entirely. Events had moved on. The girl, whose own face this time was clearly visible, seemed to be lying on her back. The picture now stretched down to her knees, which were apart. Over her lay the man, his head turned to one side, showing his profile. His hand cupped the one visible breast, and there wasn’t much doubt about the activity they were engaged in.

  There was nothing to indicate where the pictures had been taken. No distinguishable background. The faint smudges on the transparent film had turned into people, but behind them there was nothing but gray.

  I switched off the epidiascope and put on the room lights.

  “Why do you say it isn’t pornography?” Jeremy said. “What else is it?”

  “I’ve met them,” I said. “I know who they are.”

  He stared.

  “As you’re a lawyer,” I said. “You can tell me. What do you do if you find out after a man’s death that he may have been a blackmailer while he was alive?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well . . . ah . . . he can’t be prosecuted, exactly.”

  “So one does nothing?”

  He frowned. “Are you . . . um . . . going to tell me what you’re on about?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  I told him about George Millace. About the burglaries, the attack on Marie Millace and the burning of their house. I told him about Elgin Yaxley and Terence O’Tree and the five murdered horses; and I told him about the lovers.

  “George very carefully kept those oddments in that box,” I said. “I’ve deciphered two of them. What if some of the others are riddles too? What if they all are?”

  “And all . . . the basis for blackmail?”

  “Heaven knows.”

  “Heaven knows . . . and you want to find out.”

  I slowly nodded. “It’s not so much the blackmail angle, but the photographic puzzles. If George made them, I’d like to solve them. Just to see if I can. You were quite right. I do enjoy that sort of thing.”

  Jeremy stared at the floor. He shivered as if he were cold. He said abruptly, “I think you should destroy the whole lot.”

  “That’s instinct, not reason.”

  “You have the same instinct. You said . . . dynamite.”

  “Well . . . someone burgled and burned George Millace’s house. When I found the first picture I thought it must have been Elgin Yaxley who’d done it, but he was in Hong Kong, and it doesn’t seem likely . . . And now one would think the lovers did it . . . but it might not be them either.”

  Jeremy stood up and moved restlessly around the room in angular uncoordinated jerks.

  “I don’t like the feel of it,” he said. “It could be dangerous.”

  “To me?”

  “Of course to you.”

  “No one knows what I’ve got,” I said. “Except, of course, you.”

  His movements grew even more disturbed, his elbows bending and flapping almost as if he were imitating a bird. Agitation, I thought: real agitation, not camouflage.

  “I suppose . . .” he said. “Um . . . ah . . .”

  “Ask the question.”

  He shot me a glance. “Oh yes . . . well . . . was there any doubt . . . about the way George Millace died?”

  “Dear . . . God,” I said. I felt as if he’d punched the air out of my lungs. “I don’t think so.”

  “What happened exactly?”

  “He was driving home from Doncaster, and he went to sleep and ran into a tree.”

  “Is that all? Precisely all?”

  “Um . . .” I thought back. “His son said his father stopped at a friend’s house for a drink. Then he drove on towards home. Then he hit a tree.”

  Jeremy jerked around a little more and said, “How did anyone know he had stopped at a friend’s house? And how does anyone know he went to sleep?”

  “These are true lawyer’s questions,” I said. “I don’t know the answer to the first, and as to the second, of course nobody knows; it’s just what everyone supposes. Going to sleep in the dark towards the end of a long drive isn’t all that uncommon. Deadly. Tragic. But always happening.”

  “Did they do an autopsy?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Do they usually?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes. They’d have tested his blood for the alcohol level. They might have checked for heart attack or stroke, if he wasn’t too badly damaged. If there were no suspicious circumstances, that would be all.”

  “His son would have told me—have told everyone on the racecourse—if there had been any odd questions asked. I’m sure there weren’t any.”

  “Those burglaries must have made the police think a bit, though,” he said frowning.

  I said weakly, “The first ser
ious burglary occurred actually during the funeral.”

  “Cremation?”

  I nodded. “Cremation.” I pondered. “The police might have wondered . . . in fact they did hint very broadly to Marie Millace, and upset her considerably . . . about George possessing photographs other people might not want found. But they don’t know he had them.”

  “Like we do.”

  “As you say.”

  “Give it up,” he said abruptly. “Burn those pictures. Stick to looking for Amanda.”

  “You’re a lawyer. I’m surprised you want to suppress incriminating evidence.”

  “You can damn well stop laughing,” he said. “You could end up with George Millace. Splat on a tree.”

  Jeremy left at six, and I walked along to Harold’s for the military briefing. He had six runners planned for me during the week, and with those and the five spare rides I’d been offered at Windsor I looked like having an exceptionally busy time.

  “Don’t come crashing down on one of those hyenas you’ve accepted,” Harold said. “What you take them for when you’ve got all my horses to ride I don’t know.”

  “Money,” I said.

  “Huh.”

  He never liked me taking outside rides, although as I was self-employed he couldn’t stop me. He never admitted that some of the biggest races I’d won had been for other stables. In those cases, he would point out if pressed, I had been riding second string horses, which had confounded the trainer’s assessments and won when they weren’t expected to.

  “Next Saturday at Ascot I’m running two of Victor’s,” he said. “Chainmail . . . and Daylight.”

  I glanced at him quickly, but he didn’t meet my eyes.

  “He didn’t have a proper race at Sandown, of course,” he said. “He’s still at his peak.”

  “He’ll have a harder job at Ascot. Much stronger opponents.”

  He nodded, and after a pause he said casually, “Chainmail might be the best bet. Depends what’s left in at the four-day stage, of course. And there’s the overnights . . . we’ll see better what the prospects are on Friday.”

  There was a silence.

  “Prospects for winning?” I said at last. “Or for losing?”

  “Philip . . .”

  “I’m not going to,” I said.

  “But . . .”

  “You tell me, Harold,” I said. “Tell me early Saturday morning, if you’ve any feeling for me at all. I’ll get an acute stomachache. Vomiting. Diarrhea. Won’t be able to go racing.”

  “But there’s Daylight.”

  I compressed my mouth and stifled the tremble of anger.

  “We had four winners last week,” I said tightly. “Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “But Victor . . .”

  I said, “I’ll ride my bloody guts out for Victor as long as we’re trying to win. You tell him that. Tell him just that.” I stood up, unable to sit calmly. “And don’t you forget, Harold, that Chainmail’s still only four, and pretty wayward, for all that he’s fast. He pulls like a train and tries to duck out of the huddles, and he’s not above sinking his teeth into any horse that bumps him. He’s the devil of a hard ride, but he’s brave and I like him . . . and I’m not going to help you ruin him. And you will damn well ruin him if you muck him about. You’ll turn him sour. You’ll make him a real rogue. Apart from dishonest, it’s stupid.”

  “Have you finished?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Then I agree with you about Chainmail. I’ll say it all to Victor. But in the end it’s Victor’s horse.”

  I stood without speaking. Anything I said, I thought, could prove too decisive. While I was still riding for the stable, there was hope.

  “Do you want a drink?” Harold said; and I said yes, Coke; and the fraught moment passed. We talked normally about the chances and plans for the other three runners, and only when I was leaving did Harold make any reference to the awaiting chasm.

  “If necessary,” he said heavily, “I’ll give you time to get sick.”

  At Fontwell races the next day I rode one horse for Harold, which fell three from home, and two for other people, resulting in a second place and a third, and faint congratulatory noises but no avalanches of further work. An average sort of day; better than some. The fall had been slow and easy: a bruise but no damage.

  No hot gossip in the weighing room.

  No unseemly fighting between newly elected Jockey Club members and cocaine-pushing film directors. No elderly lords drooling over delectable dollies. Not even any worried broken-collarboned jockeys agonizing over battered mothers.

  No heavy-blue-overcoated owners putting pressure on their going-straight jockeys.

  A quiet day at the office.

  Tuesday, with no racing engagements, I rode out both lots with Harold’s string and schooled some of the horses over training jumps. It was a raw damp morning, the sort to endure, not enjoy, and even Harold seemed to take no pleasure in the work. The mood of the Downs, I thought, walking my mount back through Lambourn, infected the whole village. On days like this the inhabitants scarcely said good morning.

  From twelve o’clock onwards the day was my own.

  Eating some muesli I contemplated George Millace’s box of riddles, but felt too restless for another long spell in the darkroom. I thought of my promised visit to my grandmother, and hastily sought a good reason for postponing it. Finally I decided to placate the accusing image of Jeremy Folk by seeing if I could find one of the houses where my mother had left me in my childhood. A nice vague expedition with no expectation of success. A drift-around day; undemanding.

  I set off accordingly to London and cruised up and down a whole lot of little streets between Chiswick and Hammersmith. All of them looked familiar to me in a way: rows of tidy terraces and mostly three stories and a basement, bow-fronted townhouses for middle-income people, misleadingly narrow frontages stretching far back to small enclosed gardens. I had lived in several houses like that at some time or another, and I couldn’t remember even the name of a road.

  The years, too, had brought a host of changes. Whole streets had obviously disappeared with the building of bigger roads. Little remaining blocks of houses stood in lonely islands, marooned. Cinemas had closed. Asian shops had moved in. The buses looked the same.

  Bus routes.

  The buses triggered the memory. The house I was looking for had been three or four from the end of the road, and just around the corner there had been a bus stop. I had been on the buses often, catching them at that stop.

  Going to where?

  Going to the river, for walks.

  The knowledge drifted quietly back across twenty-plus years. We’d gone down to the river in the afternoons, to look at the houseboats and the seagulls and the mud when the tide was out; and we’d looked across the gardens at Kew.

  I drove down to the Kew Bridge and started from there, following buses.

  A slow business, because I stopped when the bus did. Unproductive also, because none of the stops anywhere seemed to be near the corners of roads. I gave it up after an hour and simply cruised around, resigned to not finding anything I recognized. Probably I’d got even the district wrong. Probably I should be looking in Hampstead, where I knew I’d been also.

  It was a pub that finally oriented me. The Willing Horse. An old pub. Dark brown paint. Frosted glass in the windows with tracery patterns around the edges. I parked the car around the corner and walked back to the chocolate doors, and simply stood there, waiting.

  After a while I seemed to know which way to go. Turn left, walk three hundred yards, cross the road, first turning on the right.

  I turned into a street of bow-fronted terrace houses, three stories high, narrow and neat and typical. Cars lined both sides of the street, with many front gardens converted to parking places. There were a few bare-branched trees growing from earthpatches near the edge of the pavement, and hedges and shrubs by the houses. Three steps up to a small flat area outside each
front door.

  I crossed that road and walked slowly up it, but the impetus had gone. Nothing told me whether I was in the right place, or which house to try. I walked more slowly, indecisively, wondering what to do next.

  Four houses from the end I went up the short footpath, and up the steps, and rang the doorbell.

  A woman with a cigarette opened the door.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Does Samantha live here?”

  “Who?”

  “Samantha?”

  “No.” She looked me up and down with the utmost suspicion, and closed the door.

  I tried six more houses. Two no answers, one “clear off,” one “no dear, I’m Popsy, like to come in?” one “we don’t want no brushes,” and one “is that a cat?”

  At the eighth an old lady told me I was up to no good, she’d watched me go from house to house, and if I didn’t stop it she would call the police.

  “I’m looking for someone called Samantha,” I said. “She used to live here.”

  “I’m watching you,” she said. “If you try to climb in through any windows, I’ll call the police.”

  I walked away from her grim little face and she came right out into the street to watch me.

  It wasn’t much good, I thought. I wouldn’t find Samantha. She might be out, she might have moved, she might never have lived in that street in the first place. Under the old woman’s baleful gaze I tried another house where no one answered, and another where a girl of about twenty opened the door.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “Does anyone called Samantha live there?” I’d said it so often it now sounded ridiculous. This is the last one, I thought. I may as well give it up and go home.

  “Who?”

  “Samantha?”

  “Samantha what? Samantha who?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  She pursed her lips, not quite liking it.

  “Wait a moment,” she said. “I’ll go and see.” She shut the door and went away. I walked down the steps to the front garden where a small red car stood on some tarmac. Hovered, waiting to see if the girl returned, aware of the old woman beadily watching from along the road.