Odds Against Page 21

  I didn’t go out there. Sabotaging the Royal Box wouldn’t stop a race meeting to which royalty weren’t going anyway. And besides, whoever was in my car would see me opening the door.

  Retreating, I went back, right through the dining-board room and out into the servery on the far side. There I found a storeroom with plates, glass and cutlery, and in the storeroom also a second exit. A small service lift down to the kitchens. It worked with ropes, like the one in the office in the Cromwell Road… like the office lift had worked, before the bomb.

  Kraye and Oxon were down in the kitchen. Their angry voices floated up the shaft, mingled with a softer murmuring voice which seemed to be arguing with them. Since for once I knew where they all were, I returned with some boldness to the ground again. But I was worried. There seemed to be nothing at all going wrong in the main building. If they were organising yet more damage somewhere out on the course itself, I didn’t see how I could stop it.

  While I was still dithering rather aimlessly along the passage the kitchen door opened, the light flooded out, and I could hear Kraye still talking. I dived yet again for the nearest door and put it between myself and them.

  I was, I discovered, in the ladies’ room, where I hadn’t been before: and there was no second way out. Only a double row of cubicles, all with the doors open, a range of washbasins, mirrors on the walls with a wide shelf beneath them, a few chairs, and a counter like that in the bar. Behind the counter there was a rail with coat hangers.

  There were heavy steps in the passage outside. I slid instantly behind and under the counter and pressed myself into a corner. The door opened.

  ‘He won’t be in here,’ said Kraye. ‘The light’s still on.’

  ‘I looked in here not five minutes ago, anyway,’ agreed Oxon.

  The door closed behind them and their footsteps went away. I began to breathe again and my thudding heart slowed down. But for a couple of seconds only. Across the room, someone coughed.

  I froze. I couldn’t believe it. The room had been empty when I came in, I was certain. And neither Kraye nor Oxon had stayed… I stretched my ears, tense, horrified.

  Another cough. A soft, single cough.

  Try as I could, I could hear nothing else. No breathing. No rustle of clothing, no movement. It didn’t make sense. If someone in the room knew I was behind the counter, why didn’t they do something about it? If they didn’t know, why were they so unnaturally quiet?

  In the end, taking a conscious grip on my nerves, I slowly stood up.

  The room was empty.

  Almost immediately there was another cough. Now that my ears were no longer obstructed by the counter, I got a clearer idea of its direction. I swung towards it. There was no one there.

  I walked across the room and stared down at the wash basin. Water was trickling from one of the taps. Even while I looked at it the tap coughed. Almost laughing with relief I stretched out my hand and turned it off.

  The metal was very hot. Surprised, I turned the water on again. It came spluttering out of the tap, full of air bubbles and very hot indeed. Steaming. How stupid, I thought, turning it off again, to have the water so hot at this time of night…

  Christ, I thought. The boiler.

  SIXTEEN

  Kraye and Oxon’s so-called methodical end to end search which had just failed to find me in the ladies’, was proceeding from the Members’ end of the stands towards Tattersalls. The boiler, like myself, was in the part they had already put behind them. I switched out the ladies’ room lights, carefully eased into the passage, and via the kitchen, the Members’ dining-room, the gentlemen’s cloaks and another short strip of passage returned to the boiler room.

  Although there was no door through, I knew that on the far side of the inside wall lay to the left the weighing room and to the right the changing room, with the dividing wall between. From both those rooms, when it was quiet, as it was that night, one could quite clearly hear the boiler’s muffled roar.

  The light that I had switched off was on again in the boiler room. I looked round. It all looked as normal as it had before, except… except that away to the right there was a very small pool of water on the floor.

  Boilers. We had had a lesson on them at school. Sixteen or seventeen years ago, I thought hopelessly. But I remembered very well the way the master had begun the lesson.

  ‘The first thing to learn about boilers,’ he said, ‘is that they explode.’

  He was an excellent teacher: the whole class of forty boys listened from then on with avid interest. But since then the only acquaintance I’d had with boilers was down in the basement of the flats, where I sometimes drank a cup of orange tea with the caretaker. A tough ex-naval stoker, he was, and a confirmed student of racing form. Mostly we’d talked about horses, but sometimes about his job. There were strict regulations for boilers, he’d said, and regular official inspections every three months, and he was glad of it, working alongside them every day.

  The first thing to learn about boilers is that they explode.

  It’s no good saying I wasn’t frightened, because I was. If the boiler burst it wasn’t simply going to make large new entrances into the weighing room and changing room, it was going to fill every cranny near it with scalding tornadoes of steam. Not a death I looked on with much favour.

  I stood with my back against the door and tried desperately to remember that long ago lesson, and to work out what was going wrong.

  It was a big steam boiler. An enormous cylinder nine feet high and five feet in diameter. Thick steel, with dark red anti-rust paint peeling off. Fired at the bottom not by coke, which it had been built for, but by the more modern roaring jet of burning oil. If I opened the fire door I would feel the blast of its tremendous heat.

  The body of the cylinder would be filled almost to the top with water. The flame boiled the water. The resulting steam went out of the top under its own fierce pressure in a pipe which – I followed it with my eye – led into a large yellow-painted round-ended cylinder slung horizontally near the ceiling. This tank looked rather like a zeppelin. It was, if I remembered right, a calorifier. Inside it, the steam pipe ran in a spiral, like an immobile spring. The tank itself was supplied direct from the mains with the water which was to be heated, the water going to the central heating radiators, and to the hot taps in the kitchen, the cloakrooms and the jockeys’ washrooms. The scorching heat from the spiral steam pipe instantly passed into the mains water flowing over it, so that the cold water entering the calorifier was made very hot in the short time before it left at the other end.

  The steam, however, losing its heat in the process, gradually condensed back into water. A pipe led down the wall from the calorifier into a much smaller tank, an ordinary square one, standing on the floor. From the bottom of this yet another pipe tracked right back across the room and up near the boiler itself to a bulbous metal contraption just higher than my head. An electric pump. It finished the circuit by pumping the condensed water up from the tank on the floor and returning it to the boiler, to be boiled, steamed and condensed all over again. Round and round, continuously.

  So far, so good. But if you interfered with the circuit so that the water didn’t get back into the boiler, and at the same time kept the heat full on at the bottom, all the water inside the cylinder gradually turned to steam. Steam, which was strong enough to drive a liner, or pull a twelve coach train, but could in this case only get out at all through a narrow, closely spiralled pipe.

  This type of boiler, built not for driving an engine but only for heating water, wasn’t constructed to withstand enormous pressures. It was a toss-up, I thought, whether when all the water had gone the fast expanding air and steam found a weak spot to break out of before the flames burnt through the bottom. In either case, the boiler would blow up.

  On the outside of the boiler there was a water gauge, a foot-long vertical glass tube held in brackets. The level of water in the tube indicated the level of water in the boiler. Near the to
p of the gauge a black line showed what the water level ought to be. Two thirds of the way down a broad red line obviously acted as a warning. The water in the gauge was higher than the red line by half an inch.

  To put it mildly, I was relieved. The boiler wasn’t bulging. The explosion lay in the future: which gave me more time to work out how to prevent it. As long as it would take Oxon and Kraye to decide on a repeat search, perhaps.

  I could simply have turned out the flame, but Kraye and Oxon would notice that the noise had stopped, and merely light it again. Nothing would have been gained. On the other hand, I was sure that the flame was higher than it should have been at night, because the water in the ladies’ tap was nearly boiling.

  Gingerly I turned the adjusting wheel on the oil line. Half a turn. A full turn. The roaring seemed just as loud. Another turn: and that time there was a definite change. Half a turn more. It was perceptibly quieter. Slowly I inched the wheel around more, until quite suddenly the roar turned to a murmur. Too far. Hastily I reversed. At the point where the murmur was again a roar, I left it.

  I looked consideringly at the square tank of condensed water on the floor. It was this, overflowing, which was making the pool of water; and it was overflowing because the contents were not being pumped back into the boiler. If they’ve broken the pump, I thought despairingly, I’m done. I didn’t know the first thing about electric pumps.

  Another sentence from that far away school lesson floated usefully through my mind. For safety’s sake, every boiler must have two sources of water.

  I chewed my lower lip, watching the water trickle down the side of the tank on to the floor. Even in the few minutes I had been there the pool had spread. One source of water was obviously knocked out. Where and what was the other?

  There were dozens of pipes in the boiler room; not only oil pipes and water pipes, but all the electric cables were installed inside tubes as well. There were about six separate pipes with stop cocks on them. It seemed to me that all the water for the entire building came in through the boiler room.

  Two pipes, apparently rising mains, led from the floor up the wall and into the calorifier. Both had stop-cocks, which I tested. Both were safely open. There was no rising main leading direct into the boiler.

  By sheer luck I was half way round the huge cylinder looking for an inlet pipe when I saw the lever type door handle move down. I leapt for the only vestige of cover, the space between the boiler and the wall. It was scorching hot there: pretty well unbearable.

  Kraye had to raise his voice to make himself heard over the roaring flame.

  ‘You’re sure it’s still safe?’

  ‘Yes, I told you, it won’t blow up for three hours yet. At least three hours.’

  ‘The water’s running out already,’ Kraye objected.

  ‘There’s a lot in there.’ Oxon’s voice came nearer. I could feel my heart thumping and hear the pulse in my ears. ‘The level’s not down to the caution mark on the gauge yet,’ he said. ‘It won’t blow for a long time after it goes below that.’

  ‘We’ve got to find Halley,’ Kraye said. ‘Got to.’ If Oxon moved another step he would see me. ‘I’ll work from this end; you start again from the other. Look in every cupboard. The little rat has gone to ground somewhere.’

  Oxon didn’t answer audibly. I had a sudden glimpse of his sleeve as he turned, and I shrank back into my hiding place.

  Because of the noise of the boiler I couldn’t hear them go away through the door, but eventually I had to risk that they had. The heat where I stood was too appalling. Moving out into the ordinarily hot air in the middle of the room was like diving into a cold bath. And Oxon and Kraye had gone.

  I slipped off my jacket and wiped the sweat off my face with my shirt sleeve. Back to the problem: water supply.

  The pump looked all right. There were no loose wires, and it had an undisturbed, slightly greasy, slightly dirty appearance. With luck, I thought, they hadn’t damaged the pump, they’d blocked the pipe where it left the tank. I took off my tie and shirt as well, and put them with my jacket on the grimy floor.

  The lid of the tank came off easily enough, and the water, when I tested it, proved to be no more than uncomfortably hot. I drank some in my cupped palm. The running and the heat had made me very thirsty, and although I would have preferred it iced, no water could have been purer; or more tasteless, though I was not inclined to be fussy on that point.

  I stretched my arm down into the water, kneeling beside the tank. As it was only about two feet deep I could touch the bottom quite easily, and almost at once my searching fingers found and gripped a loose object. I pulled it out.

  It was a fine mesh filter, which should no doubt have been in place over the opening of the outlet pipe.

  Convinced now that the pipe was blocked from this end, I reached down again into the water. I found the edge of the outlet, and felt carefully into it. I could reach no obstruction. Bending over further, so that my shoulder was half in the water, I put two fingers as far as they would go into the outlet. I could feel nothing solid, but there did seem to be a piece of string. It was difficult to get it between two fingers firmly enough to pull as hard as was necessary, but gradually with a series of little jerks I managed to move the plug backwards into the tank.

  It came away finally so suddenly that I nearly overbalanced. There was a burp from the outlet pipe of the tank and on the other side of the room a sharp click from the pump.

  I lifted my hand out of the water to see what had blocked the pipe, and stared in amazement. It was a large mouse. I had been pulling its tail.

  Accidental sabotage, I thought. The same old pattern. However unlikely it was that a mouse should dive into a tank, find the filter conveniently out of place, and get stuck just inside the outlet pipe, one would have a hard job proving that it was impossible.

  I carefully put the sodden little body out of sight in the small gap between the tank and wall. With relief I noticed that the water level was already going down slightly, which meant that the pump was working properly and the boiler would soon be more or less back to normal.

  I splashed some more water out of the tank to make a larger pool should Kraye or Oxon glance in again, and replaced the lid. Putting on my shirt and jacket I followed with my eyes the various pipes in and out of the boiler. The lagged steam exit pipe to the calorifier. The vast chimney flue for the hot gases from the burning oil. The inlet pipe from the pump. The water gauge. The oil pipe. There had to be another water inlet somewhere, partly for safety, partly to keep the steam circuit topped up.

  I found it in the end running alongside and behind the inlet pipe from the pump. It was a gravity feed from a stepped series of three small unobtrusive tanks fixed high on the wall. Filters, I reckoned, so that the mains water didn’t carry its mineral salts into the boiler and fur it up. The filter tanks were fed by a pipe which branched off one of the rising mains and had its own stop cock.

  Reaching up, I tried to turn it clockwise. It didn’t move. The mains water was cut off. With satisfaction, I turned it on again.

  Finally, with the boiler once more working exactly as it should, I took a look at the water gauge. The level had already risen to nearly half way between the red and black marks. Hoping fervently Oxen wouldn’t come back for another check on it, I went over to the door and switched off the light.

  There was no one in the passage. I slipped through the door, and in the last three inches before shutting it behind me stretched my hand back and put the light on again. I didn’t want Kraye knowing I’d been in there.

  Keeping close to the wall, I walked softly down the passage towards the Tattersalls end. If I could get clear of the stands there were other buildings out that way to give cover. The barns, cloakrooms and tote buildings in the silver ring. Beyond these lay the finishing straight, the way down to the tan patch and the bisecting road. Along that, bungalows, people, and telephones.

  That was when my luck ran out.

  SEVENTEEN


  I was barely two steps past the door of the Tattersalls bar when it opened and the lights blazed out on to my tiptoeing figure. In the two seconds it took Oxon to realise what he was seeing I was six running paces down towards the way out. His shouts echoed in the passage mingled with others further back, and I still thought that if Kraye too were behind me I might have a chance. But when I was within ten steps of the end another figure appeared there, hurrying, called by the noise.

  I skidded nearly to a stop, sliding on one of the scattered bottle tops, and crashed through the only possible door, into the same empty bar as before. I raced across the board floor, kicking bottle tops in all directions, but I never got to the far door. It opened before I reached it: and that was the end.

  Doria Kraye stood there, maliciously triumphant. She was dressed theatrically in white slender trousers and a shiny short white jacket. Her dark hair fell smoothly, her face was as flawlessly beautiful as ever: and she held rock steady in one elegant long-fingered hand the little .22 automatic I had last seen in a chocolate box at the bottom of her dressing-case.

  ‘The end of the line, buddy boy,’ she said. ‘You stay just where you are.’

  I hesitated on the brink of trying to rush her.

  ‘Don’t risk it,’ she said. ‘I’m a splendid shot. I wouldn’t miss. Do you want a knee-cap smashed?’

  There was little I wanted less. I turned round slowly. There were three men coming forward into the long room. Kraye, Oxon and Ellis Bolt. All three of them looked as if they had long got tired of the chase and were going to take it out on the quarry.

  ‘Will you walk,’ said Doria behind me, ‘or be dragged?’

  I shrugged. ‘Walk.’