Odds Against Read online

  When I reached the office I took out the disastrous letter and read it again, before adding it to the file. Being neither the original nor a photocopy, but only a reproduction from memory, it wasn’t of the slightest use as evidence. In the older Brinton’s small tidy script, a weird contrast to the heart-broken contents, it ran:

  Dear Mervy, dear big brother,

  I wish you could help me, as you did when I was little. I have spent fifteen years building up Dunstable racecourse, and a man called Howard Kraye is making me destroy it. I have to frame races which nobody likes. Very few horses come now, and the gate receipts are falling fast. This week I must see that the race-card goes to the printers too late, and the Press room telephones will all be out of order. There will be a terrible muddle. People must think I am mad. I can’t escape him. He is paying me as well, but I must do as he says. I can’t help my nature, you know that. He has found out about a boy I was living with, and I could be prosecuted. He wants the racecourse to sell for housing. Nothing can stop him getting it. My racecourse, I love it.

  I know I shan’t send this letter. Mervy, I wish you were here. I haven’t anyone else. Oh dear God, I can’t go on much longer, I really can’t.

  At five to six that afternoon I opened the door of Zanna Martin’s office. Her desk was facing me and so was she. She raised her head, recognised me, and looked back at me in a mixture of pride and embarrassment.

  ‘I did it,’ she said. ‘If you didn’t, I’ll kill you.’

  She had combed her hair even further forward, so that it hung close round her face, but all the same one could see the disfigurement at first glance. I had forgotten, in the days since Friday, just how bad it was.

  ‘I felt the same about you,’ I said grinning.

  ‘You really did keep your promise?’

  ‘Yes, I did. All day Saturday and Sunday, most of yesterday and most of today, and very nasty it is, too.’

  She sighed with relief. ‘I’m glad you’ve come. I nearly gave it up this morning. I thought you wouldn’t do it, and you’d never come back to see if I had, and that I was being a proper idiot.’

  ‘Well, I’m here,’ I said. ‘Is Mr Bolt in?’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s gone home. I’m just packing up.’

  ‘Finished the envelopes?’ I said.

  ‘Envelopes? Oh, those I was doing when you were here before? Yes, they’re all done.’

  ‘And filled and sent?’

  ‘No, the leaflets haven’t come back from the printers yet, much to Mr Bolt’s disgust. I expect I’ll be doing them tomorrow.’

  She stood up, tall and thin, put on her coat and tied the scarf over her hair.

  ‘Are you going anywhere this evening?’ I asked.

  ‘Home,’ she said decisively.

  ‘Come out to dinner,’ I suggested.

  ‘Aunty’s legacy won’t last long, the way you spend. I think Mr Bolt has already invested your money. You’d better save every penny until after settlement day.’

  ‘Coffee, then, and the flicks?’

  ‘Look,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I sometimes buy a hot chicken on my way home. There’s a fish and chip shop next to the station that sells them. Would you… would you like to come and help me eat it? In return, I mean, for Friday night.’

  ‘I’d enjoy that,’ I said, and was rewarded by a pleased half-incredulous laugh.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  As before, we went to Finchley by underground, but this time she sat boldly where her whole face showed. To try to match her fortitude, I rested my elbow on the seat arm between us. She looked at my hand and then at my face, gratefully, almost as if we were sharing an adventure.

  As we emerged from the tube station she said, ‘You know, it makes a great deal of difference if one is accompanied by a man, even…’ she stopped abruptly.

  ‘Even,’ I finished, smiling, ‘if he is smaller than you and also damaged.’

  ‘Oh dear… and much younger, as well.’ Her real eye looked at me with rueful amusement. The glass one stared stonily ahead. I was getting used to it again.

  ‘Let me buy the chicken,’ I said, as we stopped outside the shop. The smell of hot chips mingled with diesel fumes from a passing lorry. Civilisation, I thought. Delightful.

  ‘Certainly not.’ Miss Martin was firm and bought the chicken herself. She came out with it wrapped in newspaper. ‘I got a few chips and a packet of peas,’ she said.

  ‘And I,’ I said firmly, as we came to an off-licence, ‘am getting some brandy.’ What chips and peas would do to my digestion I dared not think.

  We walked round to the house with the parcels and went through into her room. She moved with a light step.

  ‘In that cupboard over there,’ she said, pointing, as she peeled off her coat and scarf, ‘there are some glasses and a bottle of sherry. Will you pour me some? I expect you prefer brandy, but have some sherry if you’d like. I’ll just take these things into the kitchen and put them to keep hot.’

  While I unscrewed the bottles and poured the drinks I heard her lighting her gas stove and unwrapping the parcels. There was dead quiet as I walked across the room with her sherry, and when I reached the door I saw why. She held the chicken in its piece of greaseproof paper absently in one hand: the bag of chips lay open on the table with the box of peas beside it: and she was reading the newspaper they had all been wrapped in.

  She looked up at me in bewilderment.

  ‘You,’ she said. ‘It’s you. This is you.’

  I looked down where her finger pointed. The fish and chip shop had wrapped up her chicken in the Sunday Hemisphere.

  ‘Here’s your sherry,’ I said, holding it out to her.

  She put down the chicken and took the glass without appearing to notice it.

  ‘Another Halley,’ she said. ‘It caught my eye. Of course I read it. And it’s your picture, and it even refers to your hand. You are Sid Halley.’

  ‘That’s right.’ There was no chance of denying it.

  ‘Good heavens. I’ve known about you for years. Read about you. I saw you on television, often. My father loved watching the racing, we always had it on when he was alive…’ She broke off and then said with increased puzzlement, ‘Why on earth did you say your name was John and that you worked in a shop? Why did you come to see Mr Bolt? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Drink your sherry, put the chicken in the oven before it freezes and I’ll tell you.’ There was nothing else to do: I didn’t want to risk her brightly passing on the interesting titbit of news to her employer.

  Without demur she put the dinner to heat, came to sit on the sofa, opposite to where I apprehensively waited in an arm-chair, and raised her eyebrows in expectation.

  ‘I don’t work in a shop,’ I admitted. ‘I am employed by a firm called Hunt Radnor Associates.’

  Like Brinton, she had heard of the agency. She stiffened her whole body and began to frown. As casually as I could, I told her about Kraye and the Seabury shares; but she was no fool and she went straight to the heart of things.

  ‘You suspect Mr Bolt too. That’s why you went to see him.’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

  ‘And me? You took me out simply and solely to find out about him?’ Her voice was bitter.

  I didn’t answer at once. She waited, and somehow her calmness was more piercing than tears or temper could have been. She asked so little of life.

  At last I said, ‘I went to Bolt’s office as much to take out his secretary as to see Bolt himself, yes.’

  The peas boiled over, hissing loudly. She stood up slowly. ‘At least that’s honest.’

  She went into the tiny kitchen and turned out the gas under the saucepan.

  I said, ‘I came to your office this afternoon because I wanted to look at those leaflets Bolt is sending to Seabury shareholders. You told me at once that they hadn’t come from the printers. I didn’t need to accept your invitation to supper after that. But I’m here.�
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  She stood in the kitchen doorway, holding herself straight with an all too apparent effort.

  ‘I suppose you lied about that too,’ she said in a quiet rigidly controlled voice, pointing to my arm. ‘Why? Why did you play such a cruel game with me? Surely you could have got your information without that. Why did you make me change my desk round? I suppose you were laughing yourself sick all day Saturday thinking about it.’

  I stood up. Her hurt was dreadful.

  I said, ‘I went to Kempton races on Saturday.’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘I kept my promise.’

  She made a slight gesture of disbelief.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said helplessly.

  ‘Yes. Good night Mr Halley. Good night.’

  I went.

  ELEVEN

  Radnor held a Seabury conference the next morning, Wednesday, consisting of himself, Dolly, Chico and me: the result, chiefly, of my having the previous afternoon finally wrung grudging permission from Lord Hagbourne to arrange a twenty-four hour guard at Seabury for the coming Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

  The bulldozing had been accomplished without trouble, and a call to the course that morning had established that the tan was arriving in regular lorry loads and was being spread. Racing, bar any last minute accidents, was now certain. Even the weather was co-operating. The glass was rising; the forecast was dry, cold and sunny.

  Dolly proposed a straight patrol system, and Radnor was inclined to agree. Chico and I had other ideas.

  ‘If anyone intended to sabotage the track,’ Dolly pointed out, ‘they would be frightened off by a patrol. Same thing if they were planning something in the stands themselves.’

  Radnor nodded. ‘Safest way of making sure racing takes place. I suppose we’ll need at least four men to do it properly.’

  I said, ‘I agree that we need a patrol tonight, tomorrow night and Friday night, just to play safe. But tomorrow, when the course will be more or less deserted… what we need is to pinch them at it, not to frighten them off. There’s no evidence yet that could be used in a court of law. If we could catch them in mid-sabotage, so to speak, we’d be much better off.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Chico. ‘Hide and pounce. Much better than scaring them away.’

  ‘I seem to remember,’ said Dolly with a grin, ‘that the last time you two set a trap the mouse shot the cheese.’

  ‘Oh God, Dolly, you slay me,’ said Chico, laughing warmly and for once accepting her affection.

  Even Radnor laughed. ‘Seriously, though,’ he said. ‘I don’t see how you can. A racecourse is too big. If you are hiding you can only see a small part of it. And surely if you show yourself your presence would act like any other patrol to stop anything plainly suspicious being done? I don’t think it’s possible.’

  ‘Um,’ I said. ‘But there’s one thing I can still do better than anyone else in this agency.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ said Chico, ready to argue.

  ‘Ride a horse.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Chico. ‘I’ll give you that, chum.’

  ‘A horse,’ said Radnor thoughtfully. ‘Well, that’s certainly an idea. Nobody’s going to look suspiciously at a horse on a racecourse, I suppose. Mobile, too. Where would you get one?’

  ‘From Mark Witney. I could borrow his hack. Seabury’s his local course. His stables aren’t many miles away.’

  ‘But can you still…?’ began Dolly, and broke off. ‘Well, don’t glare at me like that, all of you. I can’t ride with two hands, let alone one.’

  ‘A man called Gregory Philips had his arm amputated very high up,’ I said, ‘and went on racing in point-to-points for years.’

  ‘Enough said,’ said Dolly. ‘How about Chico?’

  ‘He can wear a pair of my jodphurs. Protective colouring. And lean nonchalantly on the rails.’

  ‘Stick insects,’ said Chico cheerfully.

  ‘That’s what you want, Sid?’ said Radnor.

  I nodded. ‘Look at it from the worst angle: we haven’t anything on Kraye that will stand up. We might not find Smith, the tanker driver, and even if we do, he has everything to lose by talking and nothing to gain. When the race course stables burned down a year ago, we couldn’t prove it wasn’t an accident; an illicit cigarette end. Stable lads do smoke, regardless of bans.

  ‘The so-called drain which collapsed – we don’t know if it was dug a day, a week, or six weeks before it did its work. That letter William Brinton of Dunstable wrote to his brother, it’s only a copy from memory that we’ve got, no good at all for evidence. All it proves, to our own satisfaction, is that Kraye is capable of anything. We can’t show it to Lord Hagbourne, because I obtained it in confidence, and he still isn’t a hundred per cent convinced that Kraye has done more than buy shares. As I see it, we’ve just got to give the enemy a chance to get on with their campaign.’

  ‘You think they will, then?’

  ‘It’s awfully likely, isn’t it? This year there isn’t another Seabury meeting until February. A three months’ gap. And if I read it right, Kraye is in a hurry now because of the political situation. He won’t want to spend fifty thousand buying Seabury and then find building land has been nationalised overnight. If I were him, I’d want to clinch the deal and sell to a developer as quickly as possible. According to the photographs of the share transfers, he already holds twenty-three per cent of the shares. This is almost certainly enough to swing the sale of the company if it comes to a vote. But he’s greedy. He’ll want more. But he’ll only want more if he can get it soon. Waiting for February is too risky. So yes, I do think if we give him a chance that he will organise some more damage this week.’

  ‘It’s a risk,’ said Dolly. ‘Suppose something dreadful happens and we neither prevent it nor catch anyone doing it?’

  They kicked it round among the three of them for several minutes, the pros and cons of the straight patrols versus cat and mouse. Finally Radnor turned back to me and said ‘Sid?’

  ‘It’s your agency,’ I said seriously. ‘It’s your risk.’

  ‘But it’s your case. It’s still your case. You must decide.’

  I couldn’t understand him. It was all very well for him to have given me a free hand so far, but this wasn’t the sort of decision I would have ever expected him to pass on.

  Still… ‘Chico and I, then,’ I said. ‘We’ll go along tonight and stay all day tomorrow. I don’t think we’ll let even Captain Oxon know we’re there. Certainly not the foreman, Ted Wilkins, or any of the other men. We’ll come in from the other side from the stands, and I’ll borrow the horse for mobility. Dolly can arrange official patrol guards with Oxon for tomorrow night… suggest he gives them a warm room, Dolly. He ought to have the central heating on by then.’

  ‘Friday and Saturday?’ asked Radnor, non-committally.

  ‘Full guards, I guess. As many as Lord Hagbourne will sub for. The racecourse crowds make cat and mouse impossible.’

  ‘Right,’ said Radnor, decisively. ‘That’s it, then.’

  When Dolly, Chico, and I had got as far as the door he said, ‘Sid, you wouldn’t mind if I had another look at those photographs? Send Jones-boy down with them if you’re not needing them.’

  ‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘I’ve pored over them till I know them by heart. I bet you’ll spot something at once that I’ve missed.’

  ‘It often works that way,’ he said, nodding.

  The three of us went back to the Racing Section, and via the switchboard I traced Jones-boy, who happened to be in Missing Persons. While he was on his way down I flipped through the packet of photographs yet again. The share transfers, the summary with the list of bank accounts, the letters from Bolt, the ten pound notes, and the two sheets of dates, initials and figures from the very bottom of the attaché case. It had been clear all along that these last were lists either of receipts or expenditure: but by now I was certain they were the latter. A certain W.L.B. had received regular sums of fifty po
unds a month for twelve months, and the last date for W.L.B. was four days before William Leslie Brinton, Clerk of Dunstable Racecourse, had taken the quickest way out. Six hundred pounds and a threat; the price of a man’s soul.

  Most of the other initials meant nothing to me, except the last one, J.R.S., which looked as if they could be the tanker driver’s. The first entry for J.R.S., for one hundred pounds, was dated the day before the tanker overturned at Seabury, the day before Kraye went to Aynsford for the week-end.

  In the next line, the last of the whole list, a further sum of one hundred and fifty pounds was entered against J.R.S. The date of this was that of the following Tuesday, three days ahead when I took the photographs. Smith had packed up and vanished from his job and his digs on that Tuesday.

  Constantly recurring amongst the other varying initials were two christian names, Leo and Fred. Each of these was on the regular pay-roll, it seemed. Either Leo or Fred, I guessed, had been the big man who had visited and frightened Mervyn Brinton. Either Leo or Fred was the ‘Big Chap’ who had sent Andrews with a gun to the Cromwell Road.

  I had a score to settle with either Leo or Fred.

  Jones-boy came in for the photographs. I tapped them together back into their box and gave them to him.

  ‘Where, you snotty nosed little coot, is our coffee?’ said Chico rudely. We had been downstairs when Jones-boy did his rounds.

  ‘Coots are bald,’ observed Dolly dryly, eyeing Jones-boy’s luxuriant locks.

  Jones-boy unprintably told Chico where he could find his coffee.

  Chico advanced a step, saying, ‘You remind me of the people sitting on the walls of Jerusalem.’ He had been raised in a church orphanage, after all.

  Jones-boy also knew the more basic bits of Isaiah. He said callously, ‘You did it on the doorstep of the Barnes cop shop, I believe.’

  Chico furiously lashed out a fist to Jones-boy’s head. Jones-boy jumped back, laughed insultingly, and the box he was holding flew high out of his hand, opening as it went.

  ‘Stop it you two, damn you,’ shouted Dolly, as the big photographs floated down on to her desk and on to the floor.