Driving Force Read online

  “If you need anything, let us know.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “See you on Sunday, then.”

  I walked out to her car with her and got an affectionate, passionless kiss and a carefree wave as she turned her car and departed. Celibacy, I thought, returning to the house, could go on for too long, and too long, at that point, was a year. The older I grew, the more I saw consequences in advance and the more I cared, like Maudie, about not doing damage for the sake of a passing pleasure. I looked back over the years with horror, sometimes. After I’d lost Susan Palmerstone I’d drifted in and out of several relationships without understanding that I might have awoke much deeper feelings than I felt myself; and I’d dodged a thrown plate or two and laughed about it. How dreadfully long it had taken me to stop grazing. All the same . . . I sighed.

  I went into the sitting room to see what I could retrieve from the mess, and stood considering the answering machine, which had been split into two pieces with its guts, in the shape of recording tape, unspooling onto the floor.

  On the tape, I thought, was Jogger’s voice.

  I hadn’t in the end written down exactly what he’d said, and although I could more or less remember, I wasn’t certain of being exact. No amount of rhyming dictionary would help if I got the original words wrong. I rummaged in the kitchen for a Phillips screwdriver and other tools and liberated the hacked pieces of cassette from the answering machine, trying not to tear the tape itself but finding that the ax, in going through one of the spools, had severed a lot of it into very short lengths.

  Cursing, I sought and found an old cassette with nothing of note on it, and took that apart and removed all the tape from it. Then I carefully unrolled the whole of the longest section of tape from the answering machine’s one undamaged spool and wound it from its beginning onto one of the newly freed spools. I attached the severed end to the second freed spool and replaced them into their cassette, screwing it shut again.

  Then I searched the house for an old seldom-used pocket-sized cassette player which I knew I had somewhere, but naturally when I finally ran it to earth its batteries were dead.

  A short pause ensued while I raided another gadget with the same size batteries in working order, but finally, with a sort of prayer, I pressed the play button and held my breath.

  “I hate this bloody machine,” Jogger’s voice said. “Where have you gone, Freddie?”

  Loud and clear. Hallelujah.

  The whole of his message was there, though slightly distorted by my not having wound the tape evenly enough. When I ran it back and then forward again the distortions had disappeared. I took a sheet of paper and wrote down what he’d said, word for word, indicating his pauses with dots, but I still didn’t understand his meaning.

  A dead nun in the pit last August.

  Most unlikely! Someone would have told me about it even though I’d spent a good deal of August in France (Deauville races) and America (Saratoga, ditto).

  What rhymed with nun? Bun, done, fun, run, sun . . .

  No. What paired with nun?

  Nun and monk.

  Monk . . . bunk, chunk, dunk, drunk, funk, hunk, junk, punk, sunk, stunk, chipmunk.

  A dead chipmunk? A dead funk? A dead hunk? Hunk of what? Dead junk? Dead punk? A dead drunk?

  I would give the transcript to Nina, I thought, and let the collective brains of the Jockey Club Security Service loose on it. I laid the nonsense aside feeling that even if we cracked the code the message could turn out to be irrelevant. Jogger obviously hadn’t known he was going to die. He hadn’t been leaving me an intensely significant message, fearing it to be his last.

  With a shift of focus I switched on the new computer, hoping there wouldn’t be a flash and a fizzle and another total collapse of hard disk. Amazingly, however, the wizard had restored me to smooth computer life, everything working as before. I called up Isobel’s office machine to see what, if anything, she and Rose had entered and filed since that morning.

  They’d been busy, both of them. They’d been quick, conscientious, generous with their time. I’d told both of them to start with that day’s entries and go slowly backwards between their other jobs, if they could, but not to go further back in any case than the beginning of the month.

  “Leave it on paper for now,” I said.

  “But the spreadsheets . . .” Rose said.

  “Leave the spreadsheets.”

  “If you say so,” she agreed doubtfully.

  “It’s our own fault we lost everything,” Isobel said dolefully.

  “Never mind.” I still didn’t tell them I might produce full backup copies if, first, the safecracker didn’t somehow destroy them in getting the safe open, and if, second, the Michelangelo virus hadn’t already wiped them out. I also didn’t want to incur a repeat attack on myself or my belongings if someone heard the disks existed and knew they could reveal high-risk information. The bruise on my head might be fading, but my car and my sitting room continually reminded me that melodrama in Pixhill had come through my gates and might not yet be extinct.

  On the screen I read the next day’s engagements for the fleet. Not bad for that week: Steeplechasers to Wolverhampton and Lingfield Park. Broodmares to three studs. Irish horses to Bristol airport, returning home from Cheltenham.

  Advance plans for Saturday looked good.

  I called up the directory of files to see what else Isobel and Rose had entered and found an unusual one there: “Visitors.”

  “Visitors” turned out to be the list I’d asked them for of everyone they could remember who’d visited the farmyard office lately.

  The dears, I thought, pleased. Helpful beyond duty.

  The list read:

  All the drivers except Gerry and Pat, who have the flu.

  (They’ll both be working again next week, they say.)

  Vic and his wife (They both now have the fl u.).

  Tessa Watermead (looking for Nigel or Lewis).

  Jericho Rich (about his horses).

  Constable Smith (about the dead man).

  Dr. Farway (about the dead man).

  Mr. Tigwood (collecting box).

  Betsy (Mr. Watermead’s secretary).

  Brett Gardner (when he left).

  Mrs. Williams (cleaner).

  Lorna Lipton (looking for FC, but he was driving the shuttle).

  Paul (Isobel’s brother, borrowed some money).

  Man delivering disinfectant chemicals.

  I typed a thank-you message onto the list and made a backup copy of the new work onto a clean unused floppy, though I suspected the office would be ankle-deep in backups from now on. I switched off the computer, made some food, drank the rest of the champagne and thought a lot about viruses, both organic and electronic.

  Nina telephoned, yawning, at about ten.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “In the cab of the horse van, in the farmyard. We’ve refueled and Nigel’s hosing down the outside of the van, thank God. I’m knackered.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing, don’t worry. The trip went according to plan. We’ve delivered the show jumper. The owner’s father, Jericho Rich, he was there when we unloaded, shouting orders all over the place. What a bloody awkward man. I nearly snapped his head off but thought I’d better not, for your sake. No, nothing much else happened, it’s just that this long-distance-driving lark is a job for strong young men; you’re right about that.”

  “How did you get on with Nigel?”

  “My God, he’s randy. Had his hand on my knee a couple of times and I’m old enough to be his mother. Actually he’s not bad fun. No complaints. We chatted a lot. Can I tell you tomorrow?” She yawned again. “He’s nearly finished the cleaning. He’s got inexhaustible stamina.”

  “His chief virtue,” I agreed.

  “See you in the morning. ’Bye.”

  In the morning I went to the farmyard early, wanting to see some of the drivers before they set off.
Harve himself was down for an early start to Wolverhampton, and in such absences of his I very often wandered around in case there were last-minute queries or alterations.

  Early starts were normal, as most trainers insisted on their horses arriving at a course at least three hours before they were due to race. In the winter, when racing could start at noon in order to complete the program in the abbreviated daylight, the drivers could be loading at six or seven in the dark and unloading in the dark twelve hours later, according to the length of the journey. By the vernal equinox, we were loading and unloading at dawn and dusk with the long-light summer days beckoning, and in the three years I’d had the business I’d seen a regular pattern of energy enhanced by the sun. The workload might be the same in January and June, but not the fatigue level.

  Most of the drivers were in the canteen when I arrived on the Friday. The sky outside was gloriously pink and ginger, high, clear and cold. In the canteen the tea looked the color of teak with strength to match, and white plastic tea-spoons stood upright in the sugar bowl.

  “Morning, Freddie . . .”

  I answered the chorus. “Good morning.”

  Harve had already set off to Wolverhampton. I checked the other assembled drivers against the list I’d copied from the computer screen and found them all well briefed by Harve and Isobel. I realized I’d left a lot to those two since Tuesday night and had been more affected than I’d acknowledged by the rattling of my brain.

  Phil, Dave and Lewis were there, Lewis showing no sign of the flu. Nigel, despite his late return the evening before, exuded undiminished animal strength. Aziz smiled, as ever. A bunch of others looked at their watches, drank their tannin, used the washroom and ambled out on a collective mission to pick up most of the Pixhill horses that were running that afternoon at Lingfield Park.

  Dave was down to go with Aziz in the nine-van on a broodmare mission to Ireland. Both men had arrived in plenty of time, and I asked Dave to come along to my office as I had something to discuss with him. He came in his usual happy-go-lucky way, carrying his tea mug and wearing an amiable unsuspecting expression.

  I gestured to him to sit in the chair in front of the desk and closed the door behind us.

  “OK, Dave,” I said, taking the chair behind the desk and feeling irritation with him, rather than outright anger, “who arranged your diarrhea?”

  “What?” He blinked, dismissing the thought crossing his mind. Dismissing the possibility that I knew what he’d done. Dismissing it wrongly, too soon.

  “Diarrhea,” I reminded him, “needing a stop at South Mimms service station to buy Imodium.”

  “Oh . . . yes. That. Mm. That’s right.”

  “Who arranged that stop?”

  “What? Well, no one. I had the squits, like.”

  “Let’s just face it, Dave,” I said a shade wearily, “you did not pick up Kevin Keith Ogden by accident.”

  “Who?”

  “The hitchhiker. And let’s stop playing games. You know perfectly well who I mean. You went to his inquest yesterday. You and Brett stopped at South Mimms not because of any mythical squits but to pick up a passenger in order to take him to Chieveley. All of which you did not tell the coroner.”

  Dave’s mouth opened with automatic denials ready and closed on account of what he saw in my face.

  “Who arranged it?” I repeated.

  He didn’t know what to say. I could almost chart the tumbling thoughts; could clearly see the indecision. I waited while he consulted his tea and searched for answers in the brightening sky beyond the window. The little-boy freckles as always lent his expression a natural air of innocence but the half-sly artful assessing look he finally gave me spoke of a more adult guilt.

  “There was nothing wrong with it,” he said wheedlingly.

  “How do you know?”

  He tried one of the ingratiating grins to which I was by then immune. “What makes you think it was arranged? Like I said, there was this geezer cadging a lift . . .”

  “Stop it, Dave,” I said sharply. “If you want to keep your job, you’ll tell me the truth.”

  Shock stopped him. I’d never looked forbidding to him before. “The truth,” I urged.

  “Honestly, Freddie, I didn’t mean no harm.” He began to look worried. “What harm could it do?”

  “What was the arrangement?”

  “Look, it couldn’t do no harm to give a man a lift.”

  “Who paid you?”

  “I . . . well . . .”

  “Who?” I insisted. “Or you get on your bike now and you don’t come back.”

  “No one,” he said desperately. “All right. All right. I was supposed to be paid, but I never was.” His disgust looked genuine. “I mean, you weren’t supposed to know about him, but then he died . . .” His voice faded, the realization of his admission hitting home. “They said I would find an envelope in the cab of the nine-van first thing Friday, but of course the van was outside your house and there was no envelope in it in the morning, though I looked for it when we were cleaning, like, and I’ve never heard no more, and it’s not fair.”

  “Serves you right,” I said unsympathetically. “Who are they?”

  “What?”

  “ ‘They’ who said you would find an envelope in the cab?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Dave!” I said, exasperated. “Get on with it.”

  “Yes, but, see, I don’t know.”

  I said sarcastically, “You agreed to do something you knew I had over and over again forbidden, and you don’t know who you jeopardized your job for?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “No buts,” I said. “How did ‘they’ get in touch with you, and were ‘they’ a man or a woman?”

  “Er . . .”

  I would strangle him, I thought.

  “All right,” he said, “all right.” He took an unhappy breath. “It was a she, and she phoned me at home and my wife answered it and she didn’t like it being some strange woman, not Isobel, like, but anyway she just said it would be worth my while just to give this man a lift, and you don’t turn down windfalls like that. I mean . . . well . . . it’s all beer money, isn’t it?”

  “Did you recognize her voice?”

  He shook his head miserably.

  “What accent did she have?”

  He seemed merely puzzled by the question. “She was English,” he said, “not foreign.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Like I said, she said to pick up this man . . .”

  “How were you to know him?”

  “She said he would be near the diesel pumps and he’d see us pull up and he would speak to me . . . and he did.”

  “Who thought up the diarrhea?”

  “Like, she did. See, she said I had to have some way of getting Brett to stop at South Mimms. So I told Brett if he didn’t stop, I’d have to drop my trousers in the cab and he would have to clean it up.” He laughed uneasily.

  “Brett said he would rub my face in it. But anyway, he stopped.”

  “So Brett wasn’t in the scheme?”

  Dave looked furious. “Brett’s a shit.”

  “Why, exactly?”

  Dave’s sense of injustice overcame caution. “He said he wouldn’t take the man unless he paid us. So I asked this Ogden, but he said he hadn’t any money. He must have had some, but he said that wasn’t in the bargain, I would be getting paid later, and I said Brett wouldn’t agree to it without being paid first, and this Ogden got sort of purple, he was so upset, and he found some money after all, but not a lot, and Brett said it wasn’t enough and so I gave Brett some money and I had to tell him I’d be getting it back, so then he said he’d be wanting some of that if I didn’t want him to tell you that I’d fixed up a hitchhiker for money. And not only that,” Dave’s fury increased, “but Brett came to the pub on Saturday evening and made me pay for his beer and he was effing gloating, and I told him the pay envelope hadn’t turned up but all he said was, ‘T
oo bad, mate, that’s your bad luck,’ and went on drinking.”

  “And you took a swipe at Jogger,” I said.

  “Well, he wouldn’t shut up and I was raging about Brett, and Jogger was going on and on about things stuck on the bottom of the horse vans, on and on about the cash box in your sitting room, that filthy old cash box, on and on about things being carried under the trucks . . .”

  “Did you understand what he was talking about?” I asked, surprised.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “About lone rangers?”

  “Yeah, of course. Strangers.”

  “What about nuns and Poland?”

  “Eh?”

  His face was blank. Nuns and Poland meant nothing.

  “Did Jogger,” I asked, “know about your private enterprise?”

  “What? Do you mean that Ogden? Of course Jogger knew he’d died, like. I didn’t tell him the ride had been fixed in advance. I’m not loony, see, he’d have been round to you in five minutes telling on me. Always on your side, was Jogger.”

  “I thought you were, too,” I observed.

  “Yeah.” He looked very faintly ashamed. “Well, like, there’s no harm in a bit of beer money on the side.”

  “There was, this time.”

  “How was I to know he’d die?” Dave asked aggrievedly.

  “What was he carrying?” I asked.

  “Carrying?” His forehead wrinkled. “A bag. One of them briefcases. And, um, a sort of carrier bag with sandwiches and a flask. I helped him put them all up in the cab.”

  “What did he do with the sandwiches?”

  “Ate them, I suppose. I don’t know.”

  “Did you and Brett buy sandwiches?”

  He looked puzzled by the questions but found them easier to answer than earlier ones. “Brett did,” he said readily, though sourly. “He went off laughing and bought some with my money, the turd.”

  “Brett said you’d picked up hitchhikers on other occasions.”

  “He’s a shit.”

  “Well, did you? And were they arranged in advance?”