Break In Page 13

‘I could see,’ she said contentedly. ‘You were pushing along just ahead of the mare all the way. When she quickened, you quickened, when she took a breather down the bottom end, so did you. And then I could see you just shake up my horse when her jockey took up his whip… I knew we’d win. I was sure of it all the way round. It was lovely.’

  Such sublime confidence could come crashing down on its nose at the last fence, but she knew that as well as I did. There had been times when it had. It made the good times better.

  She said, ‘Wykeham says we’re giving Kinley his first try over hurdles at Towcester tomorrow. His first ever race.’

  ‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘And Dhaulagiri’s taking his first start at a novice ‘chase. I rode both of them schooling at Wykeham’s ast week, did he tell you? They both jumped super. Er… will you be there?’

  ‘I wouldn’t miss it.’ She paused. ‘My niece says she will come with me.’

  I lifted my head. ‘Will she?’

  ‘She said so.’

  The princess regarded me calmly and I looked straight back, but although it would have been useful I couldn’t read what she was thinking.

  ‘I enjoyed driving her,’ I said.

  ‘She said the journey went quickly.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The princess patted my arm non-committally, and Lord and Lady Vaughnley appeared in the doorway, looking in with enquiring faces and coming forward with greetings. The princess welcomed them, gave them glasses of port, which it seemed they liked particularly on cold days, and drew Lady Vaughnley away with her to admire something out on the viewing balcony, leaving Lord Vaughnley alone inside with me.

  He said how truly delighted he’d been with everyone’s response to last Saturday’s race, and I asked if he could possibly do me a favour.

  ‘My dear man. Fire away. Anything I can.’

  I explained again about Bobby and the attacks in the Flag, which by now he himself knew all about.

  ‘Good Lord, yes. Did you see the comment page in our own paper this morning? That woman of ours, Rose Quince, she has a tongue like a rattlesnake, but when she writes, she makes sense. What’s the favour?’

  ‘I wondered,’ I said, ‘if the Towncrier would have a file of clippings about Maynard Allardeck. And if you have one, would you let me see it.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘You’ll have a reason, no doubt?’

  I said we had concluded that Bobby had been a casualty in a campaign mainly aimed at his father. ‘And it would be handy to know who might have enough of a grudge against Maynard to kill off his chance of a knighthood.’

  Lord Vaughnley smiled benignly. ‘Such as anyone whose business was pulled from beneath them?’

  ‘Such as,’ I agreed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re suggesting that the Flag could be pressured in to mounting a hate campaign?’ He pursed his mouth, considering.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought it would take much pressure,’ I said. ‘The whole paper’s a hate campaign.’

  ‘Dear, dear,’ he said with mock reproof. ‘Very well. I can’t see how it will directly help your brother-in-law, but yes, I’ll see you get access to our files.’

  That’s great,’ I said fervently. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘When would suit you?’

  ‘As soon as possible.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Six o’clock?’

  I shut my mouth on a gasp. He said, ‘I have to be at a dinner in the City this evening. I’ll be dropping into the Towncrier first. Ask for me at the front desk.’

  I duly asked at his front desk in Fleet Street and was directed upwards to the editorial section on the third floor, arriving, it seemed, at a point of maximum bustle as the earliest editions of the following day’s papers were about to go to press.

  Lord Vaughnley, incongruous in tweed jacket, dress trousers, stiff shirt and white tie, stood at the shoulder of a coatless man seated at a central table, both of them intent on the newspaper before them. Around them, in many bays half separated from each other by shoulder-high partitions, were clumps of three or four desks, each bay inhabited by telephones, typewriters, potted plants and people in a faint but continuous state of agitation.

  ‘What do you want?’ someone said to me brusquely as I hovered, and when I said Lord Vaughnley, he merely pointed. Accordingly I walked over to the centre of the activity and said neutrally to Lord Vaughnley, ‘Excuse me…’

  He raised his eyes but not his head. ‘Ah yes, my dear chap, be with you directly,’ he said, and lowered the eyes again, intently scanning what I saw to be tomorrow’s front page, freshly printed.

  I waited with interest while he finished, looking around at a functional scene which I guessed hadn’t changed much since the days of that rumbustious giant, the first Lord Vaughnley. Desks and equipment had no doubt come and gone, but from the brown floor to the yellowing cream walls the overall impression was of a working permanence, slightly old-fashioned.

  The present Lord Vaughnley finished reading, stretched himself upwards and patted the shirt-sleeved shoulder of the seated man, who was, I discovered later, that big white chief, the editor.

  ‘Strong stuff, Marty. Well done.’

  The seated man nodded and went on reading. Lord Vaughnley said to me, ‘Rose Quince is here. You might like to meet her.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I would.’

  ‘Over here.’ He set off towards one of the bays, the lair, it proved, of the lady of the rattlesnake tongue who could nevertheless write sense, and who had written that day’s judgment on Maynard.

  ‘Rose,’ said the paper’s proprietor, ‘take care of Kit Fielding, won’t you?’ and the redoubtable Rose Quince assured him that yes, she would.

  ‘Files,’ Lord Vaughnley said. ‘Whatever he wants to see, show him.’

  ‘Right.’

  To me he said, ‘We have a box at Ascot. The Towncrier has, I mean. I understand from the princess that you’ll be riding there this Friday and Saturday. No point, I suppose, my dear chap, in asking you to lunch with me on Saturday, which is the day I’ll be there, but do come up for a drink when you’ve finished. You’ll always be welcome.’

  I said I’d be glad to.

  ‘Good. Good. My wife will be delighted. You’ll be in good hands with Rose, now. She was born in Fleet Street the same as I was, her father was Conn Quince who edited the old Chronicle; she knows more of what goes on than the Street itself. She’ll give you the gen, won’t you, Rose?’

  Rose, who looked to me to be bristling with reservations, agreed again that yes, she would; and Lord Vaughnley, with the nod of a man who knows he’s done well, went away and left me to her serpent mercies.

  She did not, it is true, have Medusa snakes growing out of her head, but whoever had named her Rose couldn’t have foreseen its incongruity.

  A rose she was not. A tiger-lily, more like. She was tall and very thin and fifteen to twenty years older than myself. Her artfully tousled and abundant hair was dark but streaked throughout with blonde, the aim having clearly been two contrasting colours, not overall tortoiseshell. The expertly painted sallow face could never have been pretty but was strongly good-looking, the nose masculine, the eyes noticeably pale blue; and from several feet away one could smell her sweet and heavy scent.

  A quantity of bracelets, rings and necklaces decorated the ultimate in fashionable outlines, complemented by a heavy bossed and buckled belt round the hips, and I wondered if the general overstatement was a sort of stockade to frighten off the encroachment of the next generation of writers, a battlement against time.

  If it was, I knew how she felt. Every jump jockey over thirty felt threatened by the rising nineteen-year-olds who would supplant them sooner or later. Every jockey, every champion had to prove race by race that he was as good as he’d ever been, and it was tough at the top only because of those hungry to take over one’s saddle. I didn’t need bangles, but I pulled out grey hairs when they appeared.

  Rose Quince looked me up and down
critically and said, ‘Big for a jockey, aren’t you?’ which was hardly original, as most people I met said the same.

  ‘Big enough.’

  Her voice had an edge to it more than an accent, and was as positive as her appearance.

  ‘And your sister is married to Maynard Allardeck’s son.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘The source of Daddy’s disapproval.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her? Was she a whore?’

  ‘No, a Capulet.’

  Rose took barely three seconds to comprehend, then she shook her head in self-disgust.

  ‘I missed an angle,’ she said.

  ‘Just as well.’

  She narrowed her eyes and looked at me with her head tilted.

  ‘I watched the Towncrier Trophy on television last Saturday,’ she said. ‘It would more or less have been treason not to.’ She let her gaze wander around my shoulders. ‘Left it a bit late, didn’t you?’

  ‘Probably.’

  She looked back to my face. ‘No excuses?’

  ‘We won.’

  ‘Yes, dammit, after you’d given everyone cardiac arrest. Did you realise that half the people in this building had their pay packets on you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘The Sports Desk told us you couldn’t lose.’

  ‘Bunty Ireland?’

  ‘Precisely, Bunty Ireland. He thinks the sun shines out of your arse.’ She shook an armful of baubles to express dismissal of Bunty’s opinions. ‘No jockey is that smart.’

  ‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Could we talk about Maynard?’

  Her dark eyebrows rose. ‘On first name terms, are you?’

  ‘Maynard Allardeck.’

  ‘A prize shit.’

  ‘Olympic gold.’

  She smiled, showing well-disciplined teeth. ‘You read nothing in the paper, buddy boy. Do you want to see the tape?’

  ‘What tape?’

  ‘The tape of How’s Trade. It’s still here, downstairs. If you want to see it, now’s the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Right. Come along. I’ve got the unexpurgated version, the one they cut from to make the programme. Ready for the rough stuff? It’s dynamite.’

  TEN

  She had acquired, it appeared, both the ten-minute edition which had been broadcast as well as the half-hour original.

  ‘Did you see the programme on the box?’ Rose said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘You’d better see that first, then.’

  She had taken me to a small room which contained a semi-circle of comfortable chairs grouped in front of a television set. To each side of the set various makes of video machine sat on tables, with connecting cables snaking about in apparent disorder.

  ‘We get brought or sent unsolicited tapes of things that have happened,’ Rose explained casually. ‘All sorts of tapes. Loch Ness monsters by the pailful. Mostly rubbish, but you never know. We’ve had a scoop or sixteen this way. The big white chief swears by it. Then we record things ourselves. Some of our reporters like to interview with video cameras, as I do sometimes. You get the flavour back fresh if you don’t write the piece for a week or so.’

  While she talked she connected a couple of wandering cable ends to the back of the television set and switched everything on. Her every movement was accompanied by metallic clinks and jingles, and her lily scent filled the room. She picked up a tape cassette which had been lying on the table behind one of the video machines and fed it into the slot.

  ‘Right. Here we go.’

  We sat in two of the chairs, she sprawling sideways so she could see my face, and the screen sprang immediately to life with an interesting arrangement of snow. Total silence ensued for ten seconds before the Maynard segment of How’s Trade arrived in full sharp colour with sound attached. Then we had the benefit of Maynard looking bland and polished through a voice-over introduction, with time to admire the hand-sewn lapels and silk tie.

  The interviewer asked several harmless questions, May-nard’s slightly condescending answers being lavishly interrupted by views of the interviewer nodding and smiling. The interviewer himself, unknown as far as I was concerned, was perhaps in his mid-thirties, with forgettable features except for calculating eyes of a chilling detachment. A prosecutor, I thought; and disliked him.

  In reply to a question about how he got rich Maynard said that ‘once or twice’ he had come to the rescue of an ailing but basically sound business, had set it back on its feet with injections of liquidity and had subsequently acquired it to save it from closure when it had been unable to repay him. To the benefit, he suavely insisted, of all concerned.

  ‘Except the former owners?’ the interviewer asked; but the question was put as merely fact-finding, without bite.

  Maynard’s voice said that generous compensation was of course paid to the owners.

  ‘And then what?’ asked the interviewer, in the same way.

  Naturally, Maynard said, if a good offer came along, he would in his turn sell: he could then lend the money to rescue another needy firm. The buying, selling and merging of businesses was advisable when jobs could be saved and a sensible profit made. He had done his modest best for industry and had ensured employment for many. It had been most rewarding in human terms.

  Neither Maynard nor the interviewer raised his voice above a civilised monotone, and as an entertainment it was a drag. The segment ended with the interviewer thanking Maynard for a most interesting discussion, and there was a final shot of Maynard looking noble.

  The screen, as if bored silly, reverted to black and white snow.

  ‘Allardeck the philanthropist,’ Rose said, jangling the bracelets and recrossing her long legs. ‘Have you met him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, now for Allardeck the rapacious bully.’

  ‘I’ve met him too,’ I said.

  She gave me a quizzical look and watched me watch the snowstorm until we were suddenly alive again with Maynard’s charm and with the introduction and the first few harmless questions. It wasn’t until the interviewer started asking about takeovers that things warmed up; and in this version the interviewer’s voice was sharp and critical, designed to raise a prickly defensive response.

  Maynard had kept his temper for a while, reacting self-righteously rather than with irritation, and these answers had been broadcast. In the end however his courtesy disintegrated, his voice rose and a forefinger began to wag.

  ‘I act within the law,’ he told the interviewer heavily. ‘Your insinuations are disgraceful. When a debtor can’t pay, one is entitled to take his property. The state does it. The courts enforce it. It’s the law. Let me tell you that in the horse racing business, if a man can’t pay his training fees, the trainer is entitled to sell the horse to recover his money. It’s the law, and what’s more, it’s natural justice.’

  The interviewer mentioned villainous mortgage holders who foreclosed and evicted their tenants. Hadn’t Maynard, he asked, lent money to a hard-pressed family business that owned a block of flats which was costing more to maintain than the rental income, and couldn’t afford the repairs required by the authorities? And after the repairs were done, hadn’t Maynard demanded his money back? And when the family couldn’t pay, hadn’t he said he would take the flats instead, which were a loss to the family anyway? And after that, hadn’t mysterious cracks developed in the fabric, so that the building was condemned and all the poor tenants had to leave? And after that, hadn’t he demolished the flats and sold the freehold land to a development company for ten times his original loan for repairs?

  The inquisitorial nature of the interviewer was by now totally laid bare, and the questions came spitting out as accusations, to which Maynard answered variously with growing fury:

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘The building subsided because of underground trains.’


  ‘The family was glad to be rid of a mill-stone liability.’

  ‘I will not answer these questions.’

  The last statement was practically a shout. The interviewer made calming motions with his hand, leaning back in his chair, appearing to relax, all of which cooling behaviour caused Maynard to simmer rather than seethe. A mean-looking scowl, however, remained in place. Nobility was nowhere to be seen.

  The interviewer with subterranean cunning said pleasantly, ‘You mentioned racehorses. Am I right in thinking your own father was a racehorse trainer and that you at one time were his assistant?’

  Maynard said ungraciously, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Give us your opinion of investing in bloodstock.’

  Maynard said profits could be made if one took expert advice.

  ‘But in your case,’ the interviewer said, ‘you must be your own expert.’

  Maynard shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

  The interviewer said very smoothly, ‘Will you tell us how you acquired your racehorse Metavane?’

  Maynard said tightly, ‘I took him in settlement of a bad debt.’

  ‘In the same way as your other businesses?’

  Maynard didn’t answer.

  ‘Metavane proved to be a great horse, didn’t he? And you syndicated him for at least four million pounds… which must be your biggest coup ever – bigger than the Bourne Brothers’ patents. Shall we talk about those two enterprises? First, tell me how much you allow either Metavane’s former owners or the Bourne Brothers out of the continuing fruits of your machinations.’

  ‘Look here,’ Maynard said furiously, ‘if you had a fraction of my business sense you’d be out doing something useful instead of sitting here green with envy picking holes.’

  He stood up fiercely and abruptly and walked decisively off the set, tearing off the microphone he had been wearing on his tie and flinging it on the ground. The interviewer made no attempt to stop him. Instead he faced the camera and with carefully presented distaste said that some of the other businesses, big and small, known to have benefited from Mr Allardeck’s rescue missions were Downs and Co. (a printing works), Benjy’s Fast Food Takeout, Healthy Life (sports goods manufacturers), Applewood Garden Centre, Purfleet Electronics and Bourne Brothers (light engineers).