Odds Against Read online

  It wasn’t much of a fight. He started out to hit my face, changed his mind, and ploughed both fists in below the belt. It was quite a long way down for him. Doubling over in pain on to the lawn, I picked up the ladder, and gave him a swinging swipe behind the knees.

  The ground shook with the impact. He fell on his side, his coat swinging open. I lunged forward, snatching at the pistol showing in the holster beside his ribs. It came loose, but he brushed me aside with an arm like a telegraph pole. I fell, sprawling. He rolled over into a crouch, picked up the gun from the grass and sneered down into my face. Then he stood up like a released spring and on the way with force and deliberation booted his toe-cap into my navel. He also clicked back the catch on his gun.

  Up in the tree Chico yelled. The big man turned and took three steps towards him, seeing him for the first time. With a choice of targets, he favoured the one still in a state to resist. The hand with the pistol pointed at Chico.

  ‘Leo,’ I shouted. Nothing happened. I tried again.

  ‘Fred!’

  The big man turned his head a fraction back to me and Chico jumped down on to him from ten feet up.

  The gun went off with a double crash and again the day flew apart in shining splintering fragments. I sat on the ground with my knees bent up, groaning quietly, cursing fluently, and getting on with my business.

  Drawn by the noise, the inhabitants of the bungalows down the line came out into their back gardens and looked in astonishment over the fences. The elderly couple stood palely at their window, their mouths again open. The big man had too big an audience now for murder.

  Chico was overmatched for size and nearly equalled in skill. He and the big man threw each other round a bit while I crept doubled up along the path into the front garden as far as the gate, but the battle was a foregone conclusion, bar the retreat.

  He came alone, crashing up the path, saw me hanging on to the gate and half raised the gun. But there were people in the road now, and more people peering out of opposite windows. In scorching fury he whipped at my head with the barrel, and I avoided it by leaving go of the gate and collapsing on the ground again. Behind the gate, with the bars nice and comfortingly between me and his boot.

  He crunched across the pavement, slammed into the van, cut his cogs to ribbons and disappeared out on to the London road in a cloud of dust.

  Chico came down the garden path staggering, with blood sloshing out of a cut eyebrow. He looked anxious and shaken.

  ‘I thought you said you could bloody well fight,’ I mocked him.

  He came to a halt beside me on his knees. ‘Blast you.’ He put his fingers to his forehead and winced at the result.

  I grinned at him.

  ‘You were running away,’ he said.

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘What have you got here?’ He took the little camera out of my hand. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, his face splitting into an unholy smile. ‘Don’t tell me.’

  ‘It’s what we came for, after all.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Four of him. Two of the van.’

  ‘Sid, you slay me, you really do.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I feel sick.’ I rolled over and retched what was left of my breakfast on to the roots of the privet hedge. There wasn’t any blood. I felt a lot better.

  ‘I’ll go and get the horse-box,’ said Chico, ‘and pick you up.’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ I said, wiping my mouth on a handkerchief. ‘We’re going back into the garden. I want that bullet.’

  ‘It’s half way to Seabury,’ he protested, borrowing my handkerchief to mop the blood off his eyebrow.

  ‘What will you bet?’ I said. I used the gate again to get up, and after a moment or two was fairly straight. We presented a couple of reassuring grins to the audience, and retraced our way down the path into the back garden.

  The mirror lay in sparkling pointed fragments all over the lawn.

  ‘Pop up the tree and see if the bullet is there, in the wood. It smashed the mirror. It might be stuck up there. If not, we’ll have to comb the grass.’

  Chico went up the aluminium ladder that time.

  ‘Of all the luck,’ he called. ‘It’s here.’ I watched him take a penknife out of his pocket and carefully cut away at a section just off-centre of the back board of the ex-mirror. He came down and held the little misshapen lump out to me on the palm of his hand. I put it carefully away in the small waist pocket of my breeches.

  The elderly couple had emerged like tortoises from their bungalow. They were scared and puzzled, understandably. Chico offered to cut down the remains of the mirror, and did, but we left them to clear up the resulting firewood.

  As an afterthought, however, Chico went across the garden and retrieved the poster from a soggy winter rosebed. He unrolled it and showed it to us, laughing.

  ‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.’

  ‘One of them,’ said Chico, ‘has a sense of humour.’

  Much against his wishes, we returned to our observation post in the scrubby gorse.

  ‘Haven’t you had enough?’ he said crossly.

  ‘The patrols don’t get here till six,’ I reminded him. ‘And you yourself said that dusk would be the likely time for them to try something.’

  ‘But they’ve already done it.’

  ‘There’s nothing to stop them from rigging up more than one booby trap,’ I pointed out. ‘Especially as that mirror thing wouldn’t have been one hundred per cent reliable, even if we hadn’t spotted it. It depended on the sun. Good weather forecast, I know, but weather forecasts are as reliable as a perished hot-water bottle. A passing cloud would have wrecked it. I would think they have something else in mind.’

  ‘Cheerful,’ he said resignedly. He led Revelation away along the road to stow him in the horse box, and was gone a long time.

  When he came back he sat down beside me and said, ‘I went all round the stables. No one stopped me or asked what I was doing. Don’t they have any security here? The cleaners have all gone home, but there’s a woman cooking in the canteen. She said I was too early, to come back at half past six. There wasn’t anyone about in the stands block except an old geyser with snuffles mucking about with the boiler.’

  The sun was lower in the sky and the November afternoon grew colder. We shivered a little and huddled inside our jerseys.

  Chico said, ‘You guessed about the mirror before you set off round the course.’

  ‘It was a possibility, that’s all.’

  ‘You could have ridden along the boundary fence, looking into the gardens like we did afterwards, instead of haring off over all those jumps.’

  I grinned faintly. ‘Yes. As I told you, I was giving in to temptation.’

  ‘Screwy. You must have known you’d fall.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. The mirror mightn’t have worked very effectively. Anyway, it’s better to test a theory in a practical way. And I just wanted to ride round there. I had a good excuse if I were hauled up for it. So I went. And it was grand. So shut up.’

  He laughed. ‘All right.’ Restlessly he stood up again and said he would make another tour. While he was gone I watched the racecourse with and without the binoculars, but not a thing moved on it.

  He came back quietly and dropped down beside me.

  ‘As before,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing here, either.’

  He looked at me sideways. ‘Do you feel as bad as you look?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ I said. ‘Do you?’

  He tenderly touched the area round his cut eyebrow. ‘Worse. Much worse. Soggy bad luck, him slugging away at your belly like that.’

  ‘He did it on purpose,’ I said idly; ‘and it was very informative.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It showed he knew who I was. He wouldn’t have needed to have attacked us like that if we’d just been people come over from the racecourse to see if we could shift the mirror. B
ut when he spoke to me he recognised me, and he knew I wouldn’t be put off by any poster eyewash. And his sort don’t mildly back down and retreat without paying you off for getting in their way. He just hit where he knew it would have most effect. I actually saw him think it.’

  ‘But how did he know?’

  ‘It was he who sent Andrews to the office,’ I said. ‘He was the man Mervyn Brinton described; big, going a bit bald, freckles on the backs of his hands, cockney accent. He was strong-arming Brinton, and he sent Andrews to get the letter that was supposed to be in the office. Well… Andrews knew me, and I knew him. He must have gone back and told our big friend Fred that he had shot me in the stomach. My death wasn’t reported in the papers, so Fred knew I was still alive and would put the finger on Andrews at once. Andrews wasn’t exactly a good risk to Fred, just a silly spiv with no sense, so Fred, I guess, marched him straight off to Epping Forest and left him for the birds. Who did a fair job, I’ll give them that.’

  ‘Do you think,’ said Chico slowly, ‘that the gun Fred had today… is that why you wanted the bullet?’

  I nodded. ‘That’s right. I tried for the gun too, but no dice. If I’m going on with this sort of work, pal, you’ll have to teach me a spot of judo.’

  He looked down doubtfully. ‘With that hand?’

  ‘Invent a new sport,’ I said. ‘One-armed combat.’

  ‘I’ll take you to the club,’ he said smiling. ‘There’s an old Jap there who’ll find a way if anyone can.’

  ‘Good.’

  Up at the far end of the racecourse a horse box turned in off the main road and trundled along towards the stables. The first of the next day’s runners had apparently arrived.

  Chico went to have a look.

  I sat on in fading daylight, watching nothing happen, hugging myself against the cold and the re-awakened grinding ache in my gut, and thinking evil thoughts about Fred. Not Leo. Fred.

  There were four of them, I thought. Kraye, Bolt, Fred and Leo.

  I had met Kraye: he knew me only as Sid, a despised hanger-on in the home of a retired admiral he had met at his club and had spent a week-end with.

  I had met Bolt: he knew me as John Halley, a shop assistant wanting to invest a gift from an aunt.

  I had met Fred: he knew my whole name, and that I worked for the agency, and that I had turned up at Seabury.

  I did not know if I had met Leo. But Leo might know me. If he had anything to do with racing, he definitely did.

  It would be all right, I thought, as long as they did not connect all the Halleys and Sids too soon. But there was my wretched hand, which Kraye had pulled out of my pocket, which Fred could have seen in the garden, and which Leo, whoever he was, might have noticed almost anywhere in the last six days, thanks to my promise to Zanna Martin. Zanna Martin, who worked for Bolt. A proper merry-go-round, I thought wryly.

  Chico materialised out of the dusk. ‘It was Ping Pong, running in the first tomorrow. All above board,’ he said. ‘And nothing doing anywhere, stands or course. We might as well go.’

  It was well after five. I agreed, and got up stiffly.

  ‘That Fred,’ said Chico, casually giving me a hand, ‘I’ve been thinking. I’ve seen him before, I’m certain. At race meetings. He’s not a regular. Doesn’t work for a bookie, or anything like that. But he’s about. Cheap rings, mostly.’

  ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t burrow,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t see why he should,’ he said seriously. ‘He can’t possibly think you’d connect him with Andrews or with Kraye. All you caught him doing was fixing a poster in a tree. If I were him, I’d be sleeping easy.’

  ‘I called him Fred,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Chico glumly. ‘So you did.’

  We reached the road and started along it towards the horse box.

  ‘Fred must be the one who does all the jobs,’ said Chico. ‘Digs the false drains, sets fire to stables, and drives tractors to pull over tankers. He’s big enough for anything.’

  ‘He didn’t wave the flags. He was up the tree at the time.’

  ‘Um. Yes. Who did?’

  ‘Not Bolt,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t fat enough for Boit, even in a duffle coat. Possibly Kraye. More likely Leo, whoever he is.’

  ‘One of the workmen, or the foreman. Yes. Well, that makes two of them for overturning tankers and so on.’

  ‘It would be easier for two,’ I agreed.

  Chico drove the horse box back to Mark’s, and then, to his obvious delight, my Merc back to London.

  FOURTEEN

  Chief-Inspector Cornish was pleased but trying to hide it.

  ‘I suppose you can chalk it up to your agency,’ he said, as if it were debatable.

  ‘He walked slap into us, to be fair.’

  ‘And slap out again,’ he said dryly.

  I grimaced. ‘You haven’t met him.’

  ‘You want to leave that sort to us,’ he said automatically.

  ‘Where were you, then?’

  ‘That’s a point,’ he admitted, smiling.

  He picked up the matchbox again and looked at the bullet. ‘Little beauty. Good clear markings. Pity he has a revolver, though, and not an automatic. It would have been nice to have had cartridge cases as well.’

  ‘You’re greedy,’ I said.

  He looked at the aluminium ladder standing against his wall, and at the poster on his desk, and at the rush-job photographs. Two clear prints of the van showing its number plates and four of Fred in action against Chico. Not exactly posed portraits, those, but four different, characteristic and recognisable angles taken in full sunlight.

  ‘With all this lot to go on, we’ll trace him before he draws breath.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. And the sooner Fred was immobilised the better, I thought. Before he did any more damage to Seabury. ‘You’ll need a tiger net to catch him. He’s a very tough baby, and he knows judo. And unless he has the sense to throw it away, he’ll still have that gun.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ he said. ‘And thanks.’ We shook hands amicably as I left.

  It was results day at Radnor’s, too, As soon as I got back Dolly said Jack Copeland wanted me up in Bona Fides. I made the journey.

  Jack gleamed at me over the half moons, pleased with his department. ‘George’s got him. Kraye. He’ll tell you.’

  I went over to George’s desk. George was fairly smirking, but after he’d talked for two minutes, I allowed he’d earned it.

  ‘On the off chance,’ he said, ‘I borrowed a bit of smooth quartz Kraye recently handled in the Geology Museum and got Sammy to do the prints on it. Two or three different sets of fingers came out, so we photographed the lot. None of them were on the British files, but I’ve given them the run around with the odd pal in Interpol and so on, just in case. And brother, have we hit pay dirt or have we.’

  ‘We have?’ I prompted, grinning.

  ‘And how. Your friend Kraye is in the ex-con library of the state of New York.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Assault.’

  ‘Of a girl?’I asked.

  George raised his eyebrows. ‘A girl’s father. Kraye had beaten the girl, apparently with her permission. She didn’t complain. But her father saw the bruises and raised the roof. He said he’d get Kraye on a rape charge, though it seems the girl had been perfectly willing on that count too. But it looked bad for Kraye, so he picked up a chair and smashed it over the father’s head and scarpered. They caught him boarding a plane for South America and hauled him back. The father’s brain was damaged. There are long medical details, but what it all boils down to is that he couldn’t coordinate properly afterwards. Kraye got off on the rape charge, but served four years for attacking the father.

  ‘Three years after that he turned up in England with some money and a new name, and soon acquired a wife. The one who divorced him for cruelty. Nice chap.’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ I said. ‘What was his real name?’

  ‘Wilbur Potter,’
said George sardonically. ‘And you’ll never guess. He was a geologist by profession. He worked for a construction firm, surveying. Always moving about. Character assessment: slick, a pusher, a good talker. Cut a few corners, always had more money than his salary, threw his weight about, but nothing indictable. The assault on the father was his first brush with the law. He was thirty-four at that time.’

  ‘Messy,’ I said. ‘The whole thing.’

  ‘Very,’ George agreed.

  ‘But sex violence and fraudulent take-overs aren’t much related,’ I complained.

  ‘You might as well say it is impossible to have boils and cancer at the same time. Something drastically wrong with the constitution, and two separate symptoms.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said.

  Sammy up in Missing Persons had done more than photograph Kraye’s fingerprints, he had almost found Smith.

  ‘Intersouth rang us this morning,’ he purred. ‘Smith gave them as a reference. He’s applied for a driving job in Birmingham.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘We should have his address by this afternoon.’

  Downstairs in Racing I reached for Dolly’s telephone and got through to Charing, Street and King.

  ‘Mr Bolt’s secretary speaking,’ said the quiet voice.

  ‘Is Mr Bolt in?’I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not… er, who is that speaking, please?’

  ‘Did you find you had a file of mine?’

  ‘Oh…’ she laughed. ‘Yes, I picked it up in your car. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Do you have it with you?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t bring it here. I thought it might be better not to risk Mr Bolt seeing it, as it’s got Hunt Radnor Associates printed on the outside along with a red sticker saying “Ex Records, care of Sid Halley”’.

  ‘Yes, it would have been a disaster,’ I agreed with feeling.

  ‘I left it at home. Do you want it in a hurry?’

  ‘No, not really. As long as it’s safe, that’s the main thing. How would it be if I came over to fetch it the day after tomorrow – Sunday morning? We could go for a drive, perhaps, and have some lunch?’