High Stakes Read online

  ‘Would you like one?’ I asked diffidently.

  ‘I sure would.’

  ‘Blue or red?’

  ‘Red.’

  In another cupboard I had a pile of manufactured coders packed like those in the shops. I opened one of the cartons, checked that the contents had a bright red plastic casing and handed it over.

  ‘If you write me a Christmas message,’ she said, ‘I’ll expect it in code number four.’

  I took her out to dinner again as I was on a bacon-and-egg level myself as a cook, and she was after all on holiday to get away from the kitchen.

  There was nothing new in taking a girl to dinner. Nothing exceptional, I supposed, in Allie herself, I liked her directness, her naturalness. She was supremely easy to be with, not interpreting occasional silences as personal insults, not coy or demanding, nor sexually a tease. Not a girl of hungry intellect, but certainly of good sense.

  That wasn’t all, of course. The spark which attracts one person to another was there too, and on her side also, I thought.

  I drove her back to Hampstead and stopped outside her sister’s house.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ I said.

  She didn’t answer directly. ‘I go home on Thursday.’

  ‘I know. What time is your flight?’

  ‘Not till the evening. Six-thirty.’

  ‘Can I drive you to the airport?’

  ‘I could get my sister…’

  ‘I’d like to.’

  ‘Okay.’

  We sat in a short silence.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said finally. ‘I guess… If you like.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She nodded briefly, opened the car door, and spoke over her shoulder. ‘Thank you for a fascinating day.’

  She was out on the pavement before I could get round to help her. She smiled. Purring and contented, as far as I could judge.

  ‘Good night.’ She held out her hand.

  I took it, and at the same time leant down and kissed her cheek. We looked at each other, her hand still in mine. One simply cannot waste such opportunities. I repeated the kiss, but on her lips.

  She kissed as I’d expected, with friendliness and reservations. I kissed her twice more on the same terms.

  ‘Good night,’ she said again, smiling.

  I watched her wave before she shut her sister’s front door, and drove home wishing she were still with me. When I got back I went into the workshop and retrieved the screwed up piece of code she’d thrown in the litter bin. Smoothing it, I read the jumbled up letters again.

  No mistake. Sorted out, the words were still a pat on the ego.

  The toy man is as great as his toys.

  I put the scrap of paper in my wallet and went upstairs to bed feeling the world’s biggest fool.

  5

  On Wednesday morning Charlie Canterfield telephoned at seven-thirty. I stretched a hand sleepily out of bed and groped for the receiver.

  ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve been trying your number since Sunday morning.’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘I know that.’ He sounded more amused than irritated. ‘Look… can you spare me some time today?’

  ‘All of it, if you like.’

  My generosity was solely due to the unfortunate fact that Allie had felt bound to spend her last full day with her sister, who had bought tickets and made plans. I had gathered that she’d only given me Monday and Tuesday at the expense of her other commitments, so I couldn’t grumble. Tuesday had been even better than Monday, except for ending in exactly the same way.

  ‘This morning will do,’ Charlie said. ‘Nine-thirty?’

  ‘Okay. Amble along.’

  ‘I want to bring a friend.’

  ‘Fine. Do you know how to get here?’

  ‘A taxi will find it,’ Charlie said and disconnected.

  Charlie’s friend turned out to be a large man of Charlie’s age with shoulders like a docker and language to match.

  ‘Bert Huggerneck,’ Charlie said, making introductions.

  Bert Huggerneck crunched my bones in his muscular hand. ‘Any friend of Charlie’s is a friend of mine,’ he said, but with no warmth or conviction.

  ‘Come upstairs,’ I said. ‘Coffee? Or breakfast?’

  ‘Coffee,’ Charlie said. Bert Huggerneck said he didn’t mind, which proved in the end to be bacon and tomato ketchup on toast twice, with curried baked beans on the side. He chose the meal himself from my meagre store cupboard and ate with speed and relish.

  ‘Not a bad bit of bleeding nosh,’ he observed, ‘considering.’

  ‘Considering what?’ I asked.

  He gave me a sharp look over a well-filled fork and made a gesture embracing both the flat and its neighbourhood. ‘Considering you must be a rich bleeding capitalist, living here.’ He pronounced it “capitalist”, and clearly considered it one of the worst of insults.

  ‘Come off it,’ Charlie said amiably. ‘His breeding’s as impeccable as yours and mine.’

  ‘Huh.’ Total disbelief didn’t stop Bert Huggerneck accepting more toast. ‘Got any jam?’ he said.

  ‘Sorry.’

  He made do with half a jar of marmalade.

  ‘What’s that about breeding?’ he said suspiciously to Charlie. ‘Capitalists are all snobs.’

  ‘His grandfather was a mechanic,’ Charlie said. ‘Same as mine was a milkman and yours a navvie.’

  I was amused that Charlie had glossed over my father and mother, who had been school teacher and nurse. Far more respectable to be able to refer to the grandfather-mechanic, the welder-uncle and the host of card-carrying cousins. If politicians of all sorts searched diligently amongst their antecedents for proletarianism and denied aristocratic contacts three times before cockcrow every week-day morning, who was I to spoil the fun? In truth the two seemingly divergent lines of manual work and schoolmastering had given me the best of both worlds, the ability to use my hands and the education to design things for them to make. Money and experience had done the rest.

  ‘I gather Mr Huggerneck is here against his will,’ I observed.

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ Charlie said. ‘He wants your help.’

  ‘How does he act if he wants to kick you in the kidneys?’

  ‘He wouldn’t eat your food.’

  Fair enough, I thought. Accept a man’s salt, and you didn’t boot him. Times hadn’t collapsed altogether where that still held good.

  We were sitting round the kitchen table with Charlie smoking a cigarette and using his saucer as an ashtray and me wondering what he considered so urgent. Bert wiped his plate with a spare piece of toast and washed that down with coffee.

  ‘What’s for lunch?’ he said.

  I took it as it was meant, as thanks for breakfast.

  ‘Bert,’ said Charlie, coming to the point, ‘is a bookie’s clerk.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Bert said. ‘Not is. Was.’

  ‘Was,’ Charlie conceded, ‘and will be again. But at the moment the firm he worked for is bankrupt.’

  ‘The boss went spare,’ Bert said, nodding. ‘The bums come and took away all the bleeding office desks and that.’

  ‘And all the bleeding typists?’

  ‘Here,’ said Bert, his brows suddenly lifting as a smile forced itself at last into his eyes. ‘You’re not all bad, then.’

  ‘Rotten to the core,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, see, the boss got all his bleeding sums wrong, or like he said, his mathematical computations were based on a misconception.’

  ‘Like the wrong horse won?’

  Bert’s smile got nearer. ‘Cotton on quick, don’t you? A whole bleeding row of wrong horses. Here, see, I’ve been writing for him for bleeding years. All the big courses, he has… well, he had… a pitch in Tatt’s and down in the Silver Ring too, and I’ve been writing for him myself most of the time, for him personally, see?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bookmakers always took a cle
rk to record all bets as they were made. A bookmaking firm of any size sent out a team of two men or more to every allowed enclosure at most race meetings in their area: the bigger the firm, the more meetings they covered.

  ‘Well, see, I warned him once or twice there was a leary look to his book. See, after bleeding years you get a nose for trouble, don’t you? This last year or so he’s made a right bleeding balls-up more than once and I told him he’d have the bums in if he went on like that, and I was right, wasn’t I?’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Told me to mind my own bleeding business,’ Bert said. ‘But it was my bleeding business, wasn’t it? I mean, it was my job at stake. My livelihood, same as his. Who’s going to pay my H.P. and rent and a few pints with the lads, I asked him, and he turned round and said not to worry, he had it all in hand, he knew what he was doing.’ His voice held total disgust.

  ‘And he didn’t,’ I remarked.

  ‘Of course he bleeding didn’t. He didn’t take a blind bit of notice of what I said. Bleeding stupid, he was. Then ten days ago he really blew it. Lost a bleeding packet. The whole works. All of us got the push. No redundancy either. He’s got a bleeding big overdraft in the bank and he’s up to the eyeballs in debt.’

  I glanced at Charlie who seemed exclusively interested in the ash on his cigarette.

  ‘Why,’ I asked Bert, ‘did your boss ignore your warnings and rush headlong over the cliff?’

  ‘He didn’t jump over no cliff, he’s getting drunk every night down the boozer.’

  ‘I meant…’

  ‘Hang on, I get you. Why did he lose the whole bleeding works? Because someone fed him the duff gen, that’s my opinion. Cocky as all get out, he was, on the way to the races. Then coming home he tells me the firm is all washed up and down the bleeding drain. White as chalk, he was. Trembling, sort of. So I told him I’d warned him over and over. And that day I’d warned him too that he was laying too much on that Energise and not covering himself, and he’d told me all jolly like to mind my own effing business. So I reckon someone had told him Energise was fixed not to win, but it bleeding did win, and that’s what’s done for the firm.’

  Bert shut his mouth and the silence was as loud as bells. Charlie tapped the ash off and smiled.

  I swallowed.

  ‘Er…’ I said eventually.

  ‘That’s only half of it,’ Charlie said, interrupting smoothly. ‘Go on, Bert, tell him the rest.’

  Bert seemed happy to oblige. ‘Well, see, there I was in the boozer Saturday evening. Last Saturday, not the day Energise won. Four days ago, see? After the bums had been, and all that. Well, in walks Charlie like he sometimes does and we had a couple of jars together, him and me being old mates really on account of we lived next door to each other when we were kids and he was going to that la-di-da bleeding Eton and someone had to take him down a peg or two in the holidays. So, anyway, there we were in the boozer and I pour out all my troubles and Charlie says he has another friend who’d like to hear them, so… well… here we are.’

  ‘What are the other troubles, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh… Yeah. Well, see, the boss had a couple of betting shops. Nothing fancy, just a couple of betting shops in Windsor and Staines, see. The office, now, where the bailiffs came and took everything, that was behind the shop in Staines. So there’s the boss holding his head and wailing like a siren because all his bleeding furniture’s on its way out, when the phone rings. Course by this time the phone’s down on the floor because the desk it was on is out on the pavement. So the boss squats down beside it and there’s some geezer on the other end offering to buy the lease.’

  He paused more for dramatic effect than breath.

  ‘Go on,’ I said encouragingly.

  ‘Manna from Heaven for the boss, that was,’ said Bert, accepting the invitation. ‘See, he’d have had to go on paying the rent for both places even if they were shut. He practically fell on the neck of this geezer in a manner of speaking, and the geezer came round and paid him in cash on the nail, three hundred smackers, that very morning and the boss has been getting drunk on it ever since.’

  A pause. ‘What line of business’ I asked, ‘is this geezer in?’

  ‘Eh?’ said Bert, surprised. ‘Bookmaking, of course.’

  Charlie smiled.

  ‘I expect you’ve heard of him,’ Bert said. ‘Name of Ganser Mays.’

  It was inevitable, I supposed.

  ‘In what way,’ I asked, ‘do you want me to help?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Charlie said you wanted my help.’

  ‘Oh that. I dunno, really. Charlie just said it might help to tell you what I’d told him, so I done it.’

  ‘Did Charlie tell you,’ I asked, ‘who owns Energise?’

  ‘No, Charlie didn’t,’ Charlie said.

  ‘What the bleeding hell does it matter who owns it?’ Bert demanded.

  ‘I do,’ I said.

  Bert looked from one of us to the other several times. Various thoughts took their turn behind his eyes, and Charlie and I waited.

  ‘Here,’ he said at last. ‘Did you bleeding fix that race?’

  ‘The horse ran fair and square, and I backed it on the Tote,’ I said.

  ‘Well, how come my boss thought…’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said untruthfully.

  Charlie lit another cigarette from the stub of the last. They were his lungs, after all.

  ‘The point is,’ I said, ‘who gave your boss the wrong information?’

  ‘Dunno.’ He thought it over, but shook his head. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Could it have been Ganser Mays?’

  ‘Blimey!’

  ‘Talk about slander,’ Charlie said. ‘He’d have you for that.’

  ‘I merely ask,’ I said. ‘I also ask whether Bert knows of any other small firms which have gone out of business in the same way.’

  ‘Blimey,’ Bert said again, with even more force.

  Charlie sighed with resignation, as if he hadn’t engineered the whole morning’s chat.

  ‘Ganser Mays,’ I said conversationally, ‘has opened a vast string of betting shops during the past year or so. What has happened to the opposition?’

  ‘Down the boozer getting drunk,’ Charlie said.

  Charlie stayed for a while after Bert had gone, sitting more comfortably in one of my leather armchairs and reverting thankfully to his more natural self.

  ‘Bert’s a great fellow,’ he said. ‘But I find him tiring.’ His Eton accent, I noticed, had come back in force and I realised with mild surprise how much he tailored voice and manner to suit his company. The Charlie Canterfield I knew, the powerful banker smoking a cigar who thought of a millon as everyday currency, was not the face he had shown to Bert Huggerneck. It occurred to me that of all the people I had met who had moved from one world to another, Charlie had done it with most success. He swam through big business like a fish in water but he could still feel completely at home with Bert in a way that I, who had made a less radical journey, could not.

  ‘Which is the villain,’ Charlie asked. ‘Ganser Mays or Jody Leeds?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Equal partners?’

  We considered it. ‘No way of knowing at the moment,’ I said.

  ‘At the moment?’ His eyebrows went up.

  I smiled slightly. ‘I thought I might have a small crack at… would you call it justice?’

  ‘The law’s a bad thing to take into your own hands.’

  ‘I don’t exactly aim to lynch anyone.’

  ‘What, then?’

  I hesitated. ‘There’s something I ought to check. I think I’ll do it today. After that, if I’m right, I’ll make a loud fuss.’

  ‘Slander actions notwithstanding?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I shook my head. ‘It’s infuriating.’

  ‘What are you going to check?’ he asked.

  ‘Telephone tomorrow morning and I’ll tell you.’

 
Charlie, like Allie, asked before he left if I would show him where I made the toys. We went down to the workshop and found Owen Idris, my general helper, busy sweeping the tidy floor.

  ‘Morning, Owen.’

  ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘This is Mr Ganterfield, Owen.’

  ‘Morning, sir.’

  Owen appeared to have swept without pause but I knew the swift glance he had given Charlie was as good as a photograph. My neat dry little Welsh factotum had a phenomenal memory for faces.

  ‘Will you want the car today, sir?’ he said.

  ‘This evening.’

  ‘I’ll just change the oil, then.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Will you be wanting me for the parking?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ He looked resigned. ‘Any time,’ he said.

  I showed Charlie the machines but he knew less about engineering than I did about banking.

  ‘Where do you start, in the hands or in the head?’

  ‘Head,’ I said. ‘Then hands, then head.’

  ‘So clear.’

  ‘I think of something, I make it, I draw it.’

  ‘Draw it?’

  ‘Machine drawings, not an artistic impression.’

  ‘Blue prints,’ said Charlie, nodding wisely.

  ‘Blue prints are copies… The originals are black on white.’

  ‘Disillusioning.’

  I slid open one of the long drawers which held them and showed him some of the designs. The fine spidery lines with a key giving details of materials and sizes of screw threads looked very different from the bright shiny toys which reached the shops, and Charlie looked from design to finished article with a slowly shaking head.

  ‘Don’t know how you do it.’

  ‘Training,’ I said. ‘Same way that you switch money round ten currencies in half an hour and end up thousands richer.’

  ‘Can’t do that so much these days,’ he said gloomily. He watched me put designs and toys away. ‘Don’t forget though that my firm can always find finances for good ideas.’

  ‘I won’t forget.’

  ‘There must be a dozen merchant banks,’ Charlie said, ‘all hoping to be nearest when you look around for cash.’

  ‘The manufacturers fix the cash. I just collect the royalties.’