Odds Against Page 8

  ‘I want to talk to you about the take-over bid for Seabury Racecourse.’

  He looked at me, startled. ‘You want…?’

  ‘That’s right. It can’t be said out here where you will be needed at any moment by someone else. If you could just manage twenty minutes at the end of the afternoon…?’

  ‘Er… what is your connection with Seabury?’

  ‘None in particular, sir. I don’t know if you remember, but I’ve been connected’ (a precise way of putting it) ‘with Hunt Radnor Associates for the last two years. Various… er… facts about Seabury have come our way and Mr Radnor thought you might be interested. I am here as his representative.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Very well, Sid, come to the Stewards’ tea room after the last. If I’m not there, wait for me. Right?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  I walked down the slope and then up the iron staircase to the jockeys’ box in the stand, smiling at myself. Representative. A nice big important word. It covered anything from an ambassador down. Commercial travellers had rechristened themselves with its rolling syllables years ago… they had done it because of the jokes, of course. It didn’t sound the same, somehow, starting off with ‘Did you hear the one about the representative who stopped at a lonely farmhouse…?’ Rodent officers, garbage disposal and sanitary staff: pretty new names for rat-catchers, dustmen and road sweepers. So why not for me?

  ‘Only idiots laugh at nothing,’ said a voice in my ear. ‘What the hell are you looking so pleased about all of a sudden? And where the blazes have you been this last month?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve missed me?’ I grinned, not needing to look round. We went together through the door of the high-up jockeys’ box, two of a kind, and stood looking out over the splendid racecourse.

  ‘Best view in Europe.’ He sighed. Mark Witney, thirty-eight years old, racehorse trainer. He had a face battered like a boxer’s from too many racing falls and in the two years since he hung up his boots and stopped wasting he had put on all of three stone. A fat, ugly man. We had a host of memories in common, a host of hard ridden races. I liked him a lot.

  ‘How’s things?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, fair, fair. They’ll be a damn sight better if that animal of mine wins the fifth.’

  ‘He must have a good chance.’

  ‘He’s a damn certainty, boy. A certainty. If he doesn’t fall over his god-damned legs. Clumsiest sod this side of Hades.’ He lifted his race glasses and looked at the number board. ‘I see poor old Charlie can’t do the weight again on that thing of Bob’s… That boy of Plumtree’s is getting a lot of riding now. What do you think of him?’

  ‘He takes too many risks,’ I said. ‘He’ll break his neck.’

  ‘Look who’s talking… No, seriously, I’m considering taking him on. What do you think?’ He lowered his glasses. ‘I need someone available regularly from now on and all the ones I’d choose are already tied up.’

  ‘Well, you could do better, you could do worse, I suppose. He’s a bit flashy for me, but he can ride, obviously. Will he do as he’s told?’

  He made a face. ‘You’ve hit the bull’s eye. That’s the snag. He always knows best.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘Can you think of anyone else?’

  ‘Um… what about that boy Cotton? He’s too young really. But he’s got the makings…’ We drifted on in amiable chat, discussing his problem, while the box filled up around us and the horses went down to the start.

  It was a three mile chase, and one of my ex-mounts was favourite. I watched the man who had my old job ride a very pretty race, and with half my mind thought about housing estates.

  Sandown itself had survived, some years ago, a bid to cover its green tempting acres with little boxes. Sandown had powerful friends. But Hurst Park, Manchester and Birmingham racecourses had all gone under the rolling tide of bricks and mortar, lost to the double-barrelled persuasive arguments that shareholders liked capital gains and people needed houses. To defend itself from such a fate Cheltenham Racecourse had transformed itself from a private, dividend-paying company into a non-profit-making Holdings Trust, and other racecourses had followed their lead.

  But not Seabury. And Seabury was deep in a nasty situation. Not Dunstable, and Dunstable Racecourse was now a tidy dormitory for the Vauxhall workers of Luton.

  Most British racecourses were, or had been, private companies, in which it was virtually impossible for an outsider to acquire shares against the will of the members. But four, Dunstable, Seabury, Sandown and Chepstow, were public companies, and their shares could be bought on the open market, through the Stock Exchange.

  Sandown had been played for in a staightforward and perfectly honourable way, and plans to turn it into suburban housing had been turned down by the local and county councils. Sandown flourished, made a good profit, paid a ten per cent dividend, and was probably now impregnable. Chepstow was surrounded by so much other open land that it was in little danger from developers. But little Dunstable had been an oasis inside a growing industrial area.

  Seabury was on the flat part of the south coast, flanked on every side by miles of warm little bungalows representing the dreams and savings of people in retirement. At twelve bungalows to the acre – elderly people liked tiny gardens – there must be room on the spacious racecourse for over three thousand more. Add six or seven hundred pounds to the building price of each bungalow for the plot it stood on, and you scooped something in the region of two million…

  The favourite won and was duly cheered. I clattered down the iron staircase with Mark, and we went and had a drink together.

  ‘Are you sending anything to Seabury next week?’ I asked. Seabury was one of his nearest meetings.

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. It depends if they hold it at all, of course. But I’ve got mine entered at Lingfield as well, and I think I’ll send them there instead. It’s a much more prosperous looking place, and the owners like it better. Good lunch and all that. Seabury’s so dingy these days. I had a hard job getting old Carmichael to agree to me running his horse there at the last meeting – and look what happened. The meeting was off and we’d missed the other engagement at Worcester too. It wasn’t my fault, but I’d persuaded him that he stood more chance at Seabury, and he blamed me because in the end the horse stayed at home eating his head off for nothing. He says there’s a jinx on Seabury, and I’ve a couple more owners who don’t like me entering their horses there. I’ve told them that it’s a super track from the horses’ point of view, but it doesn’t make much difference, they don’t know it like we do.’

  We finished our drinks and walked back towards the weighing room. His horse scrambled home in the fifth by a whisker and I saw him afterwards in the unsaddling enclosure beaming like a Hallowe’en turnip.

  After the last race I went to the Stewards’ tea room. There were several Stewards with their wives and friends having tea, but no Lord Hagbourne. The Stewards pulled out a chair, gave me a welcome, and talked as ever, about the racing. Most of them had ridden as amateurs in their day, one against me in the not too distant past, and I knew them all well.

  ‘Sid, what do you think of the new type hurdles?’

  ‘Oh, much better. Far easier for a young horse to see.’

  ‘Do you know of a good young chaser I could buy?’

  ‘Didn’t you think Hayward rode a splendid race?’

  ‘I watched the third down at the Pond, and believe me that chestnut took off outside the wings…’

  ‘…do you think we ought to have had him in, George?’

  ‘…heard that Green bust his ribs again yesterday…’

  ‘Don’t like that breed, never did, not genuine…’

  ‘Miffy can’t seem to go wrong, he’d win with a carthorse…’

  ‘Can you come and give a talk to our local pony club, Sid? I’ll write you the details… what date would suit you?’

  Gradually they finished their tea, said good-bye, and left for home.
I waited. Eventually he came, hurrying, apologising, explaining what had kept him.

  ‘Now,’ he said, biting into a sandwich. ‘What’s it all about, eh?’

  ‘Seabury.’

  ‘Ah yes, Seabury. Very worrying. Very worrying indeed.’

  ‘A Mr Howard Kraye has acquired a large number of shares…’

  ‘Now hold on a minute, Sid. That’s only a guess, because of Dunstable. We’ve been trying to trace the buyer of Seabury shares through the Stock Exchange, and we can find no definite lead to Kraye.’

  ‘Hunt Radnor Associates do have that lead.’

  He stared. ‘Proof?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘Photographs of share transfer certificates.’ And heaven help me, I thought, if I’ve messed them up.

  ‘Oh,’ he said sombrely. ‘While we weren’t sure, there was some hope we were wrong. Where did you get these photographs?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say, sir. But Hunt Radnor Associates would be prepared to make an attempt to forestall the takeover of Seabury.’

  ‘For a fat fee, I suppose,’ he said dubiously.

  ‘I’m afraid so, sir, yes.’

  ‘I don’t connect you with this sort of thing, Sid.’ He moved restlessly and looked at his watch.

  ‘If you would forget about me being a jockey, and think of me as having come from Mr Radnor, it would make things a lot easier. How much is Seabury worth to National Hunt racing?’

  He looked at me in surprise, but he answered the question, though not in the way I meant.

  ‘Er… well you know it’s an excellent course, good for horses and so on.’

  ‘It didn’t show a profit this year, though.’

  ‘There was a great deal of bad luck.’

  ‘Yes. Too much to be true, don’t you think?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Has it ever occurred to the National Hunt Committee that bad luck can be… well… arranged?’

  ‘You aren’t seriously suggesting that Kraye… I mean that anyone would damage Seabury on purpose? In order to make it show a loss?’

  ‘I am suggesting that it is a possibility. Yes.’

  ‘Good God.’ He sat down rather abruptly.

  ‘Malicious damage,’ I said. ‘Sabotage, if you like. There’s a great deal of industrial precedent. Hunt Radnor Associates investigated a case of it only last year in a small provincial brewery where the fermentation process kept going wrong. A prosecution resulted, and the brewery was able to remain in business.’

  He shook his head. ‘It is quite ridiculous to think that Kraye would be implicated in anything like that. He belongs to one of my clubs. He’s a wealthy, respected man.’

  ‘I know, I’ve met him,’ I said.

  ‘Well then, you must be aware of what sort of person he is.’

  ‘Yes.’ Only too well.

  ‘You can’t seriously suggest…’ he began.

  ‘There would be no harm in finding out,’ I interrupted. ‘You’ll have studied the figures. Seabury’s quite a prize.’

  ‘How do you see the figures, then?’ It seemed he genuinely wanted to know, so I told him.

  ‘Seabury Racecourse has an issued share capital of eighty thousand pounds in fully paid-up one pound shares. The land was bought when that part of the coast was more or less uninhabited, so that this sum bears absolutely no relation to the present value of the place. Any company in that position is just asking for a take-over.

  ‘A buyer would in theory need fifty-one per cent of the shares to be certain of gaining control, but in practice, as was found at Dunstable, forty would be plenty. It could probably be swung on a good deal less, but from the point of view of the buyer, the more he got his hands on before declaring his intentions, the bigger would be his profit.

  ‘The main difficulty in taking over a racecourse company – it’s only natural safeguard, in fact – is that the shares seldom come on the market. I understand that it isn’t always by any means possible to buy even a few on the Stock Exchange, as people who own them tend to be fond of them, and as long as the shares pay any dividend, however small, they won’t sell. But it’s obvious that not everyone can afford to have bits of capital lying around unproductively, and once the racecourse starts showing a loss, the temptation grows to transfer to something else.

  ‘Today’s price of Seabury shares is thirty shillings, which is about four shillings higher than it was two years ago. If Kraye can manage to get hold of a forty per cent holding at an average price of thirty shillings, it will cost him only about forty-eight thousand pounds.

  ‘With a holding that size, aided by other shareholders tempted by a very large capital gain, he can out-vote any opposition, and sell the whole company to a land developer. Planning permission would almost certainly be granted, as the land is not beautiful, and is surrounded already by houses. I estimate that a developer would pay roughly a million for it, as he could double that by selling off all those acres in tiny plots. There’s the capital gains tax, of course, but Seabury shareholders stand to make eight hundred per cent on their original investment, if the scheme goes through. Four hundred thousand gross for Mr Kraye, perhaps. Did you ever find out how much he cleared at Dunstable?’

  He didn’t answer.

  I went on, ‘Seabury used to be a busy, lively, successful place, and now it isn’t. It’s a suspicious coincidence that as soon as a big buyer comes along the place goes downhill fast. They paid a dividend of only sixpence per share last year, a gross yield of under one and three-quarters per cent at today’s price, and this year they showed a loss of three thousand, seven hundred and fourteen pounds. Unless something is done soon, there won’t be a next year.’

  He didn’t reply at once. He stared at the floor for a long time with the half-eaten sandwich immobile in his hand.

  Finally he said, ‘Who did the arithmetic? Radnor?’

  ‘No… I did. It’s very simple. I went to Company House in the City yesterday and looked up the Seabury balance sheets for the last few years, and I rang for a quotation of today’s share price from a stockbroker this morning. You can easily check it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t doubt you. I remember now, there was a rumour that you made a fortune on the Stock Exchange by the time you were twenty.’

  ‘People exaggerate so,’ I smiled. ‘My old governor, where I was apprenticed, started me off investing, and I was a bit lucky.’

  ‘Hm.’

  There was another pause while he hesitated over his decision. I didn’t interrupt him, but I was much relieved when finally he said, ‘You have Radnor’s authority for seeing me, and he knows what you have told me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well.’ He got up stiffly and put down the unfinished sandwich. ‘You can tell Radnor that I agree to an investigation being made, and I think I can vouch for my colleagues agreeing. You’ll want to start at once, I suppose.’

  I nodded.

  ‘The usual terms?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you would get on to Mr Radnor about that.’

  As I didn’t know what the usual terms were, I didn’t want to discuss them.

  ‘Yes, all right. And Sid… it’s understood that there is to be no leak about this? We can’t afford to have Kraye slapping a libel or slander action on us.’

  ‘The agency is always discreet,’ I said, with an outward and an inward smile. Radnor was right. People paid for privacy. And why not?

  SIX

  The Racing Section was quiet when I went in next morning, mostly because Chico was out on an escort job. All the other heads were bent studiously over their desks, including Dolly’s.

  She looked up and said with a sigh, ‘You’re late again.’ It was ten to ten. ‘The old man wants to see you.’

  I made a face at her and retraced my way down the staircase. Joanie looked pointedly at her watch.

  ‘He’s been asking for you for half an hour.’

  I knock
ed and went in. Radnor was sitting behind his desk, reading some papers, pencil in hand. He looked at me and frowned.

  ‘Why are you so late?’

  ‘I had a pain in me turn,’ I said flippantly.

  ‘Don’t be funny,’ he said sharply, and then, more reasonably, ‘Oh… I suppose you’re not being funny.’

  ‘No. But I’m sorry about being late.’ I wasn’t a bit sorry, however, that it had been noticed: before, no one would have said a thing if I hadn’t turned up all day.

  ‘How did you get on with Lord Hagbourne?’ Radnor asked. ‘Was he interested?’

  ‘Yes. He agreed to an investigation. I said he should discuss terms with you.’

  ‘I see.’ He flicked a switch on the small box on his desk. ‘Joanie, see if you can get hold of Lord Hagbourne. Try the London flat number first.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ her voice came tinnily out of the speaker.

  ‘Here,’ said Radnor, picking up a shallow brown cardboard box. ‘Look at these.’

  The box contained a thick wad of large glossy photographs. I looked at them one by one and heaved a sigh of relief. They had all come out sharp and clear, except some of the ones I had duplicated at varying exposures.

  The telephone on Radnor’s desk rang once, quietly. He lifted the receiver.

  ‘Oh, good morning Lord Hagbourne. Radnor here. Yes, that’s right…’ He gestured to me to sit down, and I stayed there listening while he negotiated terms in a smooth, civilised, deceptively casual voice.

  ‘And of course in a case like this, Lord Hagbourne, there’s one other thing: we make a small surcharge if our operatives have to take out of the ordinary risks… Yes, as in the Canlas case, exactly. Right then, you shall have a preliminary report from us in a few days. Yes… good-bye.’

  He put down the receiver, bit his thumb-nail thoughtfully for a few seconds, and said finally, ‘Right, then, Sid. Get on with it.’

  ‘But…’ I began.

  ‘But nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s your case. Get on with it.’

  I stood up, holding the packet of photographs. ‘Can I… can I use Bona Fides and so on?’