Break In Page 5

  We pelted out into the yard, all three of us, intent on catching Jermyn Graves in the act of trying to steal away his own property; and we did indeed find an extremely bewildered man holding open a stable door.

  It was not, however, Jermyn Graves, but Nigel, Bobby’s ancient head-lad. He had switched on the light inside the empty box and turned his weatherbeaten face to us as he heard us approach, the light carving deep canyons in his heavy vertical wrinkles.

  ‘Sooty’s gone,’ he said anxiously. ‘Sooty’s gone, guv’nor. I fed him myself at half-six, and all the doors were shut and bolted when I went home.’ There was a detectable tinge of defensiveness in his voice which Bobby also heard and laid to rest.

  ‘I moved him,’ he said easily. ‘Sooty’s fine.’

  Sooty was not the real name of Graves’s horse, but the real names of some horses tended to be hopeless mouthfuls for their attendant lads. It was hard to sound affectionate when saying (for instance) Nettleton Manor. Move over Nettleton Manor. Nettleton Manor, you old rogue, have a carrot.

  ‘I was just taking a last look round,’ Nigel said. ‘Going home from the pub, like.’

  Bobby nodded. Nigel, like most head-lads, took the welfare of the horses as a personal pride. Beyond duty, their horses could be as dear to head-lads as their own children, and seeing they were safely tucked up last thing at night was a parental urge that applied to both species.

  ‘Did you hear a bell ring?’ Holly said.

  ‘Yes.’ He wrinkled his forehead. ‘Near the house.’ He paused. ‘What was it?’

  ‘A new security system we’re trying out,’ Bobby said. ‘The bell rings to tell us someone’s moving about the yard.’

  ‘Oh?’ Nigel looked interested. ‘Works a treat then, doesn’t it?’

  FOUR

  Work a treat the bell might, but no one came in the small hours to tug it again to its sentinel duty. I slept undisturbed in jeans and sweater, ready for battle but not called, and Bobby went out and disconnected the string before the lads arrived for work in the morning.

  He and Holly had written out the list of Flag recipients, and after coffee, when it was light, I set off in Holly’s car to seek them out.

  I went first, though, as it was Sunday and early, to every newsagent, both in the town and within a fair radius of the outskirts, asking if they had sold a lot of copies of the Flag to any one person two days ago, on Friday, or if anyone had arranged for many extra copies to be delivered on that morning.

  The answer was a uniform negative. Sales of the Flag on Friday had been the same as Thursday, give or take. None of the shops, big or small, had ordered more copies than usual, they said, and no one had sold right out of the Flag. The boys had done their regular delivery rounds, nothing more.

  Dead end to the first and easiest trail.

  I went next to seek out the feed-merchant, who was not the one who supplied my grandfather. I had been struck at once, in fact, by the unfamiliarity of all the names of Bobby’s suppliers, though when one thought about it, it was probably only to be expected. Bobby, taking over from his grandfather, would continue to use his grandfather’s suppliers: and never, it seemed, had the lifelong antagonists used the same blacksmith, the same vet, the same anything. Each had always believed the other would spy on him, given the slightest opportunity. Each had been right.

  No feed-merchant in Newmarket, with several thousand horses round about, would find it strange to have his doorbell rung on his theoretical day of rest. The feed-merchant who waved me into the brick office annexe to his house was young and polished; and in an expensive accent and with crispness he told me it was not good business to allow accounts to run on overdue, he had his own cash-flow to consider, and Allardeck’s credit had run out.

  I handed him Jermyn Graves’s cheque, duly endorsed by Bobby on the back.

  ‘Ah,’ said the feed-merchant, brightening. ‘Why ever didn’t you say so?’

  ‘Bobby hoped you might wait, as usual.’

  ‘Sorry. No can do. Cash on delivery from now on.’

  ‘That cheque is for more than your account,’ I pointed out.

  ‘So it is. Right then. Bobby shall be supplied until this runs out.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and asked him if he had seen his copy of the Flag delivered.

  ‘No. Why?’

  I explained why. ‘This was a large scale and deliberate act of spite. One tends to want to know who.’

  ‘Ah.’

  I waited. He considered.

  ‘It must have been here fairly early Friday morning,’ he said finally. ‘And it was delivered here to the office, not to the house, as the papers usually are. I picked it up with the letters when I came in. Say about eight-thirty.’

  ‘And it was open at the gossip page with the paragraph outlined in red?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Didn’t you wonder who’d sent it?’

  ‘Not really…’ He frowned. ‘I thought someone was doing me a good turn.’

  ‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Do you take the Flag usually?’

  ‘No, I don’t. The Times and the Sporting Life.’

  I thanked him and left, and took Holly’s winnings to the plumber, who greeted me with satisfaction and gave me some of the same answers as the feed-merchant. The Flag had been inside his house on the front door mat by seven o’clock, and he hadn’t seen who brought it. Mr Allardeck owed him for some pipework done way back in the summer, and he would admit, he said, that he had telephoned and threatened him pretty strongly with a county court action if he didn’t pay up at once.

  Did the plumber take the Flag usually?

  Yes, he did. On Friday, he got two.

  ‘Together?’ I asked. ‘I mean, were they both there on the mat at seven?’

  ‘Yes. They were.’

  ‘Which was on top of the other?’

  He shrugged, thought, and said, ‘As far as I remember, the one marked in red was underneath. Funny, I thought it was, that the boy had delivered two. Then I saw the paragraph, and I reckoned one of my neighbours was tipping me off.’

  I said it was all very hard on Bobby.

  ‘Yes, well, I suppose so.’ He sniffed. ‘He’s not the only bad payer, by a long shot.’ He gave me the beginnings of a sardonic smile. ‘They pay up pretty quick when their pipes burst. Come a nice heavy freeze.’

  I tried three more creditors on the list. Still unpaid, they were more brusque and less helpful, but an overall pattern held good. The marked papers had been delivered before the newsboys did their rounds and no one had seen who delivered them.

  I went back to the largest of the newsagents and asked the earliest time their boys set out.

  ‘The papers reach us here by van at six. We sort them into the rounds, and the boys set off on their bicycles before six-thirty.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  They nodded. ‘Any time.’

  Disturbed by the stealth and thoroughness of the operation I drove finally to see my grandfather in the house where I’d been brought up: a large brick-built place with gables like comic eyebrows peering down at a barbed-wire-topped boundary fence.

  The yard was deserted when I drove in, all the horses in their boxes with the top doors closed against the cold. On the day after the last day of the Flat season, no one went out to gallop on the Heath. Hibernation, which my grandfather hated, was already setting in.

  I found him in his stable office, typing letters with concentration, the result, I surmised, of the departure of yet another beleaguered secretary.

  ‘Kit!’ he said, glancing up momentarily. ‘I didn’t know you were coming. Sit down. Get a drink.’ He waved a thin hand. ‘I won’t be long. Damned secretary walked out. No consideration, none at all.’

  I sat and watched while he hammered the keys with twice the force necessary, and felt the usual slightly exasperated affection for him, and the same admiration.

  He loved horses beyond all else. He loved Grandmother next best and had gone very sil
ent for a while the winter she’d died, the house eerily quiet after the years they’d spent shouting at each other. Within a few months he had begun shouting at Holly and me instead, and later, after we’d left, at the secretaries. He didn’t intend to be unkind. In an imperfect world he was a perfectionist irritated by minor incompetencies, which meant most of the time.

  The typing stopped. He stood up, the same height as myself, white-haired, straight and trim in shirt, tie and excellently cut tweed jacket. Casual my grandfather was not, not in habits or manners or dress, and if he was obsessive by nature it was probably just that factor which had brought him notable success over almost sixty years.

  ‘There’s some cheese,’ he said, ‘for lunch. Are you staying tonight?’

  ‘I’m, er, staying with Holly.’

  His mouth compressed sharply. ‘Your place is here.’

  ‘I wish you’d make it up with her.’

  ‘I talk to her now,’ he said, ‘which is more than can be said for that arrogant Maynard with his rat of a son. She comes up here some afternoons. Brings me stews and things sometimes. But I won’t have him here and I won’t go there, so don’t ask.’ He patted my arm, the ultimate indication of approval. ‘You and I, we get along all right, eh? That’s enough.’

  He led the way to the dining room where two trays lay on the table, each covered with a cloth. He removed one cloth to reveal a carefully laid single lunch: cheeses, biscuits under clingfilm, pats of butter, dish of chutney, a banana and an apple with a silver fruit knife. The other tray was for dinner.

  ‘New housekeeper,’ he said succinctly. ‘Very good.’

  Long may she last, I thought. I removed the clingfilm and brought another knife and plate, and the two of us sat there politely eating very little, he from age, I from necessity.

  I told him about the paragraph in the Flag and knew at once with relief that he’d had no hand in it.

  ‘Nasty,’ he said. ‘Mind you, my old father could have done something like that, if he’d thought of it. Might have done it myself,’ he chuckled, ‘long ago. To Allardeck.’ Allardeck, to Grandfather, was Bobby’s grandfather, Maynard’s father, the undear departed. Grandfather had never in my hearing called him anything but plain Allardeck.

  ‘Not to Holly,’ my grandfather said. ‘Couldn’t do it to Holly. Wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘No.’

  He looked at me searchingly. ‘Did she think it might be me?’

  ‘She said it couldn’t be, and also that she very much didn’t want it to be you.’

  He nodded, satisfied and unhurt. ‘Quite right. Little Holly. Can’t think what possessed her, marrying that little rat.’

  ‘He’s not so bad,’ I said.

  ‘He’s like Allardeck. Just the same. Smirking all over his face when his horse beat mine at Kempton two weeks ago.’

  ‘But you didn’t lodge an objection, I noticed.’

  ‘Couldn’t. No grounds. No bumping, boring or crossing. His horse won by three lengths.’ He was disgusted. ‘Were you there? I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Read it in the paper.’

  ‘Huh.’ He chose the banana. I ate the apple. ‘I saw you win the Towncrier yesterday on television. Rotten horse, full of hate. You could see it.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘You get people like that, too,’ he observed. ‘Chockful of ability and too twisted up to do anything worthwhile.’

  ‘He did win,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Just. Thanks to you. And don’t argue about that, it’s something I enjoy, watching you ride. There never was an Allardeck anywhere near your class.’

  ‘And I suppose that’s what you said to Allardeck himself?’

  ‘Yes, of course. He hated it.’ Grandfather sighed. ‘It’s not the same since he’s gone. I thought I’d be glad, but it’s taken some of the point out of life. I used to enjoy his sour looks when I got the better of him. I got him barred from running his horse in the St Leger once, because my spies told me it had ringworm. Did I tell you that? He would have killed me that day if he could. But he’d stolen one of my gullible lady owners with a load of lies about me never entering her horses where they could win. They didn’t win for him either, as I never let him forget.’ He cut the peeled banana into neat pieces and sat looking at them. ‘Maynard, now,’ he said, ‘Maynard hates my guts too, but he’s not worth the ground Allardeck stood on. Maynard is a power-hungry egomaniac, just the same, but he’s also a creeper, which his father never was, for all his faults.’

  ‘How do you mean, a creeper?’

  ‘A bully to the weak but a boot-licker to the strong. Maynard boot-licked his way up every ladder, stamping down on all the people he passed. He was a hateful child. Smarmy. He had the cheek to come up to me once on the Heath and tell me that when he grew up he was going to be a lord, because then I would have to bow to him, and so would everyone else.’

  ‘Did he really?’

  ‘He was quite small. Eight or nine. I told him he was repulsive and clipped his ear. He snitched to his father, of course, and Allardeck sent me a stiff letter of complaint. Long ago, long ago.’ He ate a slice of banana without enthusiasm. ‘But that longing for people to bow to him, he’s still got it, I should think. Why else does he take over all those businesses?’

  ‘To win,’ I said. ‘Like we win, you and I, if we can.’

  ‘We don’t trample on people doing it. We don’t want to be bowed to.’ He grinned. ‘Except by Allardecks, of course.’

  We made some coffee and while we drank I telephoned some of Grandfather’s traditional suppliers, and his vet and blacksmith and plumber. All were surprised at my question, and no, none of them had received a marked copy of the Flag.

  ‘The little rat’s got a traitor right inside his camp,’ Grandfather said without noticeable regret. ‘Who’s his secretary?’

  ‘No one. He does everything himself.’

  ‘Huh. Allardeck had a secretary.’

  ‘You told me about fifty times Allardeck had a secretary only because you did. You boasted in his hearing that you needed a secretary as you had so many horses to train, so he got one too.’

  ‘He never could bear me having more than he did.’

  ‘And if I remember right,’ I said, ‘you were hopping up and down when he got some practice starting stalls, until you got some too.’

  ‘No one’s perfect.’ He shrugged dismissively. ‘If the little rat hasn’t got a secretary, who else knows his life inside out?’

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is indeed the question.’

  ‘Maynard,’ Grandfather said positively. ‘That’s who. Maynard lived in that house, remember, until long after he was married. He married at eighteen… stupid, I thought it, but Bobby was on the way. And then he was in and out for at least another fifteen years, when he was supposed to be Allardeck’s assistant, but was always creeping off to London to do all those deals. Cocoa! Did you ever hear of anyone making a fortune out of cocoa? That was Maynard. Allardeck smirked about it for weeks, going on and on about how smart his son was. Well, my son was dead, as I reminded him pretty sharply one day, and he shut up after that.’

  ‘Maynard wouldn’t destroy Bobby’s career,’ I said.

  ‘Why not? He hasn’t spoken to him since he took up with Holly. Holly told me if Maynard wants to say anything to Bobby he gets his tame lawyer to write, and all the letters so far have been about Bobby repaying some money Maynard lent him to buy a car when he left school. Holly says Bobby was so grateful he wrote his father a letter thanking him and promising to repay him one day, and now Maynard’s holding him to it.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Absolutely true.’

  ‘What a bastard.’

  ‘The one thing Maynard is actually not,’ Grandfather said dryly, ‘is a bastard. He’s got Allardeck’s looks stamped all over him. The same sneer. The same supercilious smirk. Lanky hair. No chin. The little rat’s just like them, too.’

  Bobby, the little rat, was to any but
a Fielding eye a man with a perfectly normal chin and a rather pleasant smile, but I let it pass. The sins and shortcomings of the Allardecks, past and present, could never be assessed impartially in a Fielding house.

  I stayed with Grandfather all afternoon and walked round the yard with him at evening stables at four-thirty, the short winter day already darkening and the lights in the boxes shining yellow.

  The lads were busy, as always, removing droppings, carrying hay and water, setting the boxes straight. The long-time head-lad (at whom Grandfather never shouted) walked round with us, both of them briefly discussing details of each of the fifty or so horses. Their voices were quiet, absorbed and serious, and also in a way regretful, as the year’s expectations and triumphs were all over, excitement put away.

  I dreaded the prospect of those excitements being put away for ever: of Grandfather ill or dying. He wouldn’t retire before he had to, because his job was totally his life, but it was expected that at some point not too very far ahead I would return to live in that house and take over the licence. Grandfather expected it, the owners were prepared for it, the racing world in general thought it a foregone conclusion; and I knew that I was far from ready. I wanted four more years, or five, at the game I had a passion for. I wanted to race for as long as my body was fit and uninjured and anyone would pay me. Jump jockeys never went on riding as long as flat jockeys because crunching to the ground at thirty miles an hour upwards of thirty times a year is a young man’s sport, but I’d always thought of thirty-five as approximately hanging-up-the-boots time.

  By the time I was thirty-five, Grandfather would be eighty-seven, and even for him… I shivered in the cold air and thrust the thought away. The future would have to be faced, but it wasn’t upon me yet.

  To Grandfather’s great disgust I left him after stables and went back to the enemy house, to find the tail end of the same evening ritual still in progress. Graves’s horses were still in the fillies’ yard, and Bobby was feeling safer because Nigel had told him that Graves had at least twice mistaken other horses for his own when he’d called to see them on Sunday mornings.