Driving Force Page 6

  “Too bad,” I said.

  “Had you ever seen him before, Freddie?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “He’d welshed on a bookie or two.”

  People who failed to pay bookmakers weren’t necessarily my best buddies, as I pointed out.

  “No,” Sandy agreed, “but he must have had something to do with racing if he asked for a lift in a horse van.”

  “Dave said he was propositioning a tanker driver first. Maybe he had something to do with oil.”

  “Oh, very funny.”

  “Let me know the result of the postmortem, will you?”

  “Well, all right, but I don’t expect I’ll get it today.”

  “Anytime,” I said. “Come in for a drink.”

  He liked to do that, because sometimes I would keep him up to date with any local villainy I didn’t like the look of. On the other hand, the villainy going on on the undersides of my vans needed more understanding before, or if ever, I told Sandy about it.

  I spoke to Jogger again briefly, asking him to phone me without fail when he returned from Surrey.

  “Won’t hammer or bucket.”

  With a sigh I heard him disconnect and reached Marigold’s old yard again before it clicked. Hammer and nail or bucket and pail.

  Fail.

  Most of the way I thought instead of the limpets and wondered what to do about them. I thought I might usefully set up an opportunity for advice without committing myself, so I pulled the van into a roadside parking space, fished out my diary for the number and got through to the Security section of the Jockey Club in Portman Square in London, asking for the headman.

  Everyone professionally engaged in racing knew Patrick Venables by name and most of them by sight. Transgressors wished they didn’t. Such sins as I’d been guilty of having luckily escaped his notice, I could go to him for help when I needed it and probably be believed.

  Fortunately I found him in his office. I asked him if he would by any chance be going to Sandown races the next day.

  “Yes, but I’m also going this afternoon,” he said. “If it’s urgent, come today.”

  I explained about the flu and the driver shortage. “But I can drive one of my vans to Sandown tomorrow,” I said.

  “Right. Outside the weighing room.”

  “Thanks very much.”

  I resumed the journey, loaded the appointed horses, drove them and the two grooms to join Marigold. She told me loudly I should have brought more than two grooms with nine horses and I explained that her head lad had said two only, he’d had another one go home sick and he wasn’t feeling too well himself.

  “Blast the man,” she screeched.

  “You can’t argue with a virus,” I said pacifically.

  “I’ve got to get all the horses over here today,” she yelled.

  “Yes, well, we will.”

  I cleaned out the van, smiled reassuringly, shut up the ramps and made the third leg of the shuttle. Twenty-seven deliveries, I thought, seeing the third load rattle down the ramps into their new home, and supposedly two more trips to make, though the head lad had ominously told me Mrs. English hadn’t counted right, she’d overlooked her own hack and two unbroken two-year-olds.

  The yards were approximately thirty miles apart and each shuttle, with loading and unloading, was taking me two hours. By dusk at seven in the evening all but the oddments were safely settled in and Marigold for once looked tired. Her head lad had given best to the flu and gone home to bed and my own muscles were aching. When I suggested finishing the job early the next morning, the lady resignedly agreed. I tentatively kissed her cheek, an intimacy I would normally not have attempted, and to my utter astonishment her eyes filled with tears, instantly repudiated with a shake of her woolly hatted head.

  I offered, “It’s been a long day.”

  “A day I’ve looked forward to . . . and planned . . . for years.”

  “Then I’m glad it went OK.”

  She was lonely, I perceived, surprised, the hard outer lady had a gallant way of playing the cards life had dealt her. I knew moreover that I had indeed secured her future business, and was happy I’d had to do the shuttle myself.

  Leaving her trudging with reviving voice round the new stables, I drove the nine-van along to the farmyard, pulled up by the pumps and wrote up the logbooks, both the van’s and my own. I’d spoken to Isobel on the phone several times during the day, hearing at one point that Jericho Rich had actually turned up in her office checking her records. Cheek, I thought. I’d also learned from Harve that all the planned work had been completed without trouble except that one of Jogger’s pair of broodmares had started to foal on the way to Surrey and that Jogger, mechanic, had unwillingly become midwife.

  Jogger in his turn had reported the incident to me with shocked indignation because the stud groom at the destination had refused to move the mare from the horse van until the foaling was complete, delaying Jogger’s return to Pixhill by a couple of hours. Jogger, it appeared, had never seen a foal born before: he had found it both eye-opening and disgusting.

  “Did you know the mare eats all that stuff? Fair turned me up.”

  “Don’t think about it,” I advised him. “Tell me which vans have sprouted little strangers.”

  “Eh? Oh . . . Phil’s and the one Dave’s driving, which is Pat’s van usually. But, see, most of the others had gone out by the time I found those. There may be more.”

  He sounded cheerful, but then it wasn’t his business at stake. By the time I’d completed the logbooks, filled the tanks and moved the nine-van to the corner where we customarily cleaned the fleet, he had still not returned.

  Under the strong outdoor lights I hosed down the nine-van and squeegeed the windows, not a big job for once as the weather had been dry all day. In the farmyard, the cleaning water came out like a mist under pressure, driven through a pump with compressed air: more effective and more economical with water than a plain hose.

  The interior took me more time, as forty-five horses and a relay of grooms had left their mark despite the intermittent sweepings out, and I was dog-tired myself by the time I’d mopped the floors with disinfectant and fastened all the partitions ready for the morrow.

  The front cab itself was a mess, littered with screwed-up sandwich wrappers and awash with ropes, reins and other paraphernalia used and borrowed from the underseat locker.

  I opened the locker and replaced all the gear in it. Even inside the locker the grooms had left their meal-remains. I picked out a small paper carrier and replaced it with a couple of refolded horse rugs. Shutting the lid, I noticed again the stain on the seat from the previous night and wondered how to get rid of it, short of re-covering the whole thing. Certainly none of the grooms that had sat on it that day had complained, but then they hadn’t known about Kevin Keith Ogden’s last ride.

  Smiling a shade ruefully I swept the rubbish into the sack I’d provided but the grooms had resolutely ignored and stood it beside the small carrier, which would have gone into the sack also, except that it proved heavier than empty and contained, I found, a thermos flask and a packet of uneaten sandwiches. Yawning, I thought I would get it back to Marigold’s grooms in the morning, whether or not I did the last shuttle myself.

  Finally I drove the van along to its usual parking space, locked everything, threw the rubbish sack into our own Dumpster, carried the thermos flask and bag into the offices and typed my day’s records into Isobel’s computer. That done, I sat for a while calling to the screen the requirements for the next day, trying to work out if we would have enough drivers and hoping no one else would be ill by the morning.

  I phoned Jogger to find out where he was. Ten minutes from the boozer, he said. The boozer, Jogger’s natural home, was the pub where he drank with his cronies every night. Ten minutes to the boozer meant maybe twelve to the farm.

  “Don’t stop on the way,” I said.

  While I waited for him I ran through the computer notes for
the day; everything, that’s to say, that had been entered before Isobel and Rose had left at four o’clock.

  The only hiccup, a very minor one, seemed to have been that Michael Watermead’s fillies had set off an hour and a half late to Newmarket.

  “Nigel reported,” the screen informed me, “lads from Newmarket didn’t show until ten-thirty. Tessa’s message yesterday ordered van for nine A.M. Nigel set off with fillies at eleven. Reported arrival Newmarket one-thirty. Reported leaving Newmarket two-thirty.”

  Nigel had returned uneventfully, Harve had said, and his van stood clean and shipshape in its accustomed place.

  The Tessa in question was Michael’s daughter, so no one’s head would roll over the mistake; mix-ups over time were all too common. If that was the worst that had happened, it had been a near-perfect workday.

  Isobel’s last snippet of information read, “Mr. Rich in person called at the office, checking our records on his transfer. I satisfied him on all points.”

  Jogger’s lights swooped in through the gates and he rolled along to the pumps. I went out to meet him and found him still shaken by the confrontation with the bloody realities of birth. I myself had seen several foals and other animals delivered but never, I idly reflected, an actual human baby. Would I, I wondered, have found it more traumatic? My only child, a daughter, had been born in my absence to a girl who’d persuaded another man he was the father, and married him quickly. I saw them all sometimes, along with their two subsequent children, but I felt few paternal longings and knew I would never seek to prove the truth.

  Jogger filled his tanks, moved to the cleaning area and grumbled his way through the mopping out. In the belief that if I interrupted I would be left with an incomplete job, I waited until he’d finished before I asked him the vital question.

  “Where exactly are these limpet strangers?”

  “You’ll never see them in the dark,” he said, sniffing.

  “Jogger . . .”

  “Yeah, well, you can’t hardly see them in broad daylight.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand, “unless you want to get under on the slider with a flashlight?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “Just tell me about them.”

  He walked along the row with me, pointing.

  “Phil’s van. I had it over the pit. There’s a tube container stuck on top of the rear fuel tank, in that space above the tank but under the van’s floor. It’s hidden by the side of the horse van, and you can’t see it either from the front or the back of the van if you’re looking casually under the chassis. Bloody neat job.”

  I frowned. “What would it hold?”

  “Search me. Half a dozen footballs, maybe. It’s empty now, though. It must have had a screw-on cap. The screwthread’s there, but the cap is missing.”

  Phil’s van was a super-six, as were half of the fleet. A super-six carried six horses in comfort, had an extra-spacious cab, a generous general layout, and could accommodate a seventh horse standing crossways at a pinch. I liked driving them better than the longer nine-vans. Half a dozen footballs in a tube on the underside sounded macabre as well as downright improbable.

  “Pat’s van,” Jogger said, pointing, “that’s the one Dave drove with the broodmares, remember?” He broke off, recalling his own frightful day. “Don’t never ask me to drive no broodmares no more.”

  “Er, no, Jogger. What about Pat’s van?”

  Pat’s van, smaller, took four horses. Five of the fleet were that size, handy, less thirsty, the runabouts. In the Flat-racing season, Pat’s van was retained full time by another Pixhill trainer with a phobia about sharing journeys with other trainers’ horses. Pat’s van went often to France, though not with her driving.

  “Under there,” Jogger said, “is another tube, not so big. It unscrews at the end and it’s empty. The screw-on cap is there, on that one.”

  “Been there awhile?” I asked. “Dirty?”

  “Natch.”

  “I’ll take a look in the morning. And Jogger, keep it to yourself, will you? If you spread it around the boozer you’ll frighten off whoever stuck the things there, and we’ll never have a chance of finding out what’s going on.”

  He could see the point of that. He said he’d be as silent as the wash (wash and shave; grave) and again I wondered if his reticence would outlast the evening’s pints.

  ON SATURDAY MORNING early I drove one of the four-vans to Salisbury Plain, collected Marigold’s oddment horses and delivered them to her by nine, realizing along the way that I’d forgotten to take with me her grooms’ lunch carrier bag. When I mentioned it to her she inquired loudly of her employees about ownership but received no claims.

  “Throw it away,” she counseled. “I’m sending horses to Doncaster. You can take them, I hope?”

  Doncaster races, twelve days ahead, represented the prestigious opening of the Flat season. I assured her I’d be delighted to take anything she wanted.

  “In a van on their own,” she added. “I don’t want them picking up other stables’ germs. My horses never share transport.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Good.” She brought forth a smile, more a matter of eyes than of lips: as good a pledge as shaking hands on a contract.

  Home again I drank coffee, ate cornflakes, talked to Harve, talked to Jogger (“Didn’t say a dicky bird down the boozer”) and checked the day’s list, again juggling the dearth of drivers and pressing Dave and Jogger again into behind-the-wheel service.

  Rather against his will I redrafted Phil into the nine-van and took his super-six myself, picking up jumpers from three different stables and delivering them and their grooms to Sandown racecourse for the afternoon’s sport.

  Over Sandown’s fences I’d ridden more winners than I could remember, its testing course so imprinted in my subconscious that I could probably have ridden it blindfolded and had certainly navigated its intricacies familiarly in countless dreams. Of all courses it evoked in me the strongest nostalgia for the close world I’d lost, the intimate body-to-body blending with a nonhuman powerhouse, the mind-into-mind flowing of courage and intent. One could speak to strangers of race-riding as being a “job like any other” but the slightest introspection gave that the lie. Racing on horses over jumps at thirty or more miles an hour was, to me at least, a spiritual exaltation never achieved or even envisioned in any other way. To each his religion, I supposed. Big horses over big fences had been mine.

  Nowadays at Sandown I felt excommunicated; no doubt a blasphemy, but a deep truth nevertheless.

  I met Patrick Venables outside the weighing room, as he’d promised.

  The head of racing’s Security service, a tall thin man with suitably hawklike eyes, had, in his time, one understood, been “something in counterespionage,” no details ever supplied. Racecourse wits said he’d been sired by a lie detector out of a leech, in that one couldn’t fool him or shake him off.

  Like others in his job before him, he ran the comparatively small Security section with brisk efficiency and was largely responsible for the reasonably honest state of racing, sniffing out new scams almost before they were invented.

  He greeted me with the usual skin-deep friendliness, never to be mistaken for trust. Looking at his watch he said, “Five minutes, Freddie. Is that enough?”

  Condense it, he meant, and, faced with his deadline and obvious lack of time, I began to retreat from asking his advice.

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter,” I said lamely.

  My hesitancy, instead of releasing him, seemed to switch on his attention. He told me to follow him into the weighing room and led me through to a small inner office containing a table, two chairs and very little else.

  He closed the door. “Sit down,” he said, “and fire away.”

  I told him about the three containers Jogger had so far found under the vans. “I don’t know how long they’ve been there or what they contained. My mechanic says he can’t swear he w
on’t find more, as they’re pretty well camouflaged.” I paused briefly. “Has anyone else come across anything like this?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I know of. Have you told the police?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Curiosity, I suppose. I wanted to find out who’s been using me, and what for.”

  He pondered, studying my face. “You’re using me as insurance,” he said eventually, “in case one of your vans is caught smuggling.”

  I didn’t deny it. “I’d like to catch them myself, though.” “Mm.” He pursed his mouth. “I’d have to advise you not to.”

  I protested, “I can’t just do nothing.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I suppose”—he frowned—“this hasn’t anything to do with the man who died in one of your vans? I heard about that.”

  “I don’t really know.” I told him about the masked searcher. “I don’t know what he was looking for. If it was the dead man’s belongings he wouldn’t have had any success because the police had them all. But then I wondered if he’d been leaving anything. And he had dirt and dust on his clothes, which was why I wondered if he’d been on the ground, and why I asked my mechanic to see if he’d stuck anything on the van underneath.”

  “And you think he had?”

  “No. The container under there had been in place for some time. It was filthy, with layers of grime.”

  I told him that the van I had driven to Sandown that day had a capacious tube stuck above the fuel tank. “You can’t see it at all easily even if you’re looking for it, up from underneath,” I explained. “Horse vans are all coach-built so that the sides are nearer the ground than the chassis. For aerodynamics and good looks. I expect you know that. Mine are built in Lambourn. They’re very good. Anyway, the sides hide and shield the underside mechanisms, same as cars. Bombs can be hidden there.”

  “I do understand,” he assured me. “Are bombs what you fear?”

  “I suppose drugs are more likely.”