Odds against sh-1 Page 9

  I waited until he had finished a long conversation with a managing director about the character of the proposed production manager of a glass factory. The invaluable thing about Jack Copeland was his quick and comprehensive grasp of what dozens of jobs entailed. He was speaking to the glass manufacturer as if he had grown up in the industry: and in five minutes, I knew, he might be advising just as knowledgeably on the suitability of a town clerk. His summing up of a man went far beyond the basic list of honesty, conscientiousness, normality and prudence, which was all that many employers wanted. He liked to discover his subject’s reaction under stress, to find out what he disliked doing, and what he often forgot. The resulting footnotes to his reports were usually the most valuable part of them, and the faith large numbers of industrial firms had in him bore witness to his accuracy.

  He wielded enormous power but did not seem conscious of it, which made him much liked. After Radnor, he was the most important person in the agency.

  ‘Jack,’ I said, as he put down the receiver. ‘Can you check a man for me, please?’

  ‘What’s wrong with the Racing Section, pal?’ he said, jerking his thumb towards the floor.

  ‘He isn’t a racing person.’

  ‘Oh? Who is it?’

  ‘A Howard Kraye. I don’t know if he has a profession. He speculates on the stock market. He is a rabid collector of quartz.’ I added Kraye’s London address.

  He scribbled it all down fast.

  ‘O.K., Sid. I’ll put one of the boys on to it and let you have a prelim. Is it urgent?’

  ‘Fairly.’

  ‘Right.’ He tore the sheet off the pad. ‘George? You still doing that knitting wool client’s report? When you’ve finished, here’s your next one.’

  ‘George,’ I said. ‘Be careful.’

  They both looked at me, suddenly still.

  ‘An unexploded bomb,’ I observed. ‘Don’t set him off.’

  George said cheerfully, ‘Makes a nice change from knitting wool. Don’t worry, Sid. I’ll walk on eggs.’

  Jack Copeland peered at me closely through the half specs.

  ‘You’ve cleared it with the old man, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘It’s a query fraud. He said to check with him if you wanted to.’

  He smiled briefly. ‘No need, I guess. Is that all then?’

  ‘For the moment, yes, thanks.’

  ‘Just for the record, is this your own show, or Dolly’s, or whose?’

  ‘I suppose… mine.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he said, accenting the second syllable. ‘The wind of change, if I read it right?’

  I laughed. ‘You never know.’

  Down in the Racing Section I found Dolly supervising the reshuffling of the furniture. I asked what was going on, and she gave me a flashing smile.

  ‘It seems you’re in, not out. The old man just rang to say you needed somewhere to work, and I’ve sent Jones-boy upstairs to pinch a table from Missing Persons. That’ll do for now, won’t it? There isn’t a spare desk in the place.’

  A series of bangs from outside heralded the return of Jones-boy, complete with a spindly plywood affair in a sickly lemon colour. ‘How that lot ever find a missing person I’ll never know. I bet they don’t even find their missing junk.’

  He disappeared and came back shortly with a chair.

  ‘The things I do for you!’ he said, setting it down in front of me. ‘A dim little bird in the typing pool is now squatting on a stool. I chatted her up a bit.’

  ‘What this place needs is some more equipment,’ I murmured.

  ‘Don’t be funny,’ said Dolly. ‘Every time the old man buys one desk he takes on two assistants. When I first came here fifteen years ago we had a whole room each, believe it or not…’

  The rearranged office settled down again, with my table wedged into a corner next to Dolly’s desk. I sat behind it and spread out the photographs to sort them. The people who developed and printed all the agency’s work had come up with their usual excellent job, and it amazed me that they had been able to enlarge the tiny negatives up to nine by seven inch prints, and get a clearly readable result.

  I picked out all the fuzzy ones, the duplicates at the wrong exposures, tore them up, and put the pieces in Dolly’s waste paper basket. That left me with fifty-one pictures of the contents of Kraye’s attaché cash. Innocent enough to the casual eye, but they turned out to be dynamite.

  The two largest piles, when I had sorted them out, were Seabury share transfer certificates, and letters from Kraye’s stockbroker. The paper headed S.R. revealed itself to be a summary in simple form of the share certificates, so I added it to that pile. I was left with the photographs of the bank notes, of share dealings which had nothing to do with Seabury, and the two sheets of figures I had found under the writing board at the bottom of the case.

  I read through all the letters from the stockbroker, a man called Ellis Bolt, who belonged to a firm known as Charing, Street and King. Bolt and Kraye were on friendly terms; the letters referred sometimes to social occasions on which they had met; but for the most part the typewritten sheets dealt with the availability and prospects of various shares (including Seabury), purchases made or proposed, and references to tax, stamp duty, and commission.

  Two letters had been written in Bolt’s own hand. The first, dated ten days ago, said briefly:

  Dear H.

  Shall wait with interest for the news on Friday.

  E

  The second, which Kraye must have received on the morning he went to Aynsford, read:

  Dear H.

  I have put the final draft in the hands of the printers, and the leaflets should be out by the end of next week, or the Tuesday following at the latest. Two or three days before the next meeting, anyway. That should do it, I think. There would be a lot of unrest should there be another hitch, but surely you will see to that.

  E

  ‘Dolly,’ I said. ‘May I borrow your phone?’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  I rang upstairs to Bona Fides. ‘Jack? Can I have a run-down on another man as well? Ellis Bolt, stockbroker, works for a firm called Charing, Street and King.’ I gave him the address. ‘He’s a friend of Kraye’s. Same care needed, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Right. I’ll let you know.’

  I sat staring down at the two harmless looking letters.

  ‘Shall wait with interest for the news on Friday’. It could mean any news, anything at all. It also could mean the News; and on the radio on Friday I had heard that Seabury Races were off because a lorry carrying chemicals had overturned and burned the turf.

  The second letter was just as tricky. It could easily refer to a shareholders’ meeting at which a hitch should be avoided at all costs. Or it could refer to a race meeting — at Seabury — where another hitch could affect the sale of shares yet again.

  It was like looking at a conjuring trick: from one side you saw a normal object, but from the other, a sham.

  If it were a sham, Mr Ellis Bolt was in a criminal career up to his eyebrows. If it was just my suspicious mind jumping to hasty conclusions I was doing an old-established respectable stockbroker a shocking injustice.

  I picked up Dolly’s telephone again and got an outside line.

  ‘Charing, Street and King, good morning,’ said a quiet female voice.

  ‘Oh, good morning. I would like to make an appointment to see Mr Bolt and discuss some investments. Would that be possible?’

  ‘Certainly, yes. This is Mr Bolt’s secretary speaking. Could I have your name?’

  ‘Halley. John Halley.’

  ‘You would be a new client, Mr Halley?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I see. Well, now, Mr Bolt will be in the office tomorrow afternoon, and I could fit you in at three thirty. Would that suit you?’

  ‘Thank you. That’s fine. I’ll be there.’

  I put down the receiver and looked tentatively at Dolly.

  ‘Woul
d it be all right with you if I go out for the rest of the day?’

  She smiled. ‘Sid, dear, you’re very sweet, but you don’t have to ask my permission. The old man made it very clear that you’re on your own now. You’re not accountable to me or anyone else in the agency, except the old man himself. I’ll grant you I’ve never known him give anyone quite such a free hand before, but there you are, my love, you can do what you like. I’m your boss no longer.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Come to think of it, I don’t. I’ve a notion that what the old man has always wanted of you in this agency is a partner.’

  ‘Dolly!’ I was astounded. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘He’s not getting any younger,’ she pointed out.

  I laughed. ‘So he picked on a broken-down jockey to help him out.’

  ‘He picks on someone with enough capital to buy a partnership, someone who’s been to the top of one profession and has the time in years to get to the top of another.’

  ‘You’re raving, Dolly dear. He nearly chucked me out yesterday morning.’

  ‘But you’re still here, aren’t you? More here than ever before. And Joanie said he was in a fantastically good mood all day yesterday, after you’d been in to see him.’

  I shook my head, laughing. ‘You’re too romantic. Jockeys don’t turn into investigators any more than they turn into…’

  ‘Well, what?’ she prompted.

  ‘Into auctioneers, then… or accountants.’

  She shook her head. ‘You’ve already turned into an investigator, whether you know it or not. I’ve been watching you these two years, remember? You look as if you’re doing nothing, but you’ve soaked up everything the bloodhounds have taught you like a hungry sponge. I’d say, Sid love, if you don’t watch out, you’ll be part of the fixtures and fittings for the rest of your life.’

  But I didn’t believe her, and I paid no attention to what she had said.

  I grinned. ‘I’m going down to take a look at Seabury Racecourse this afternoon. Like to come?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ she sighed. Her in-tray was six inches deep. ‘I could have just done with a ride in that rocket car of yours, and a breath of sea air.’

  I stacked the photographs together and returned them to the box, along with the negatives. There was a drawer in the table, and I pulled it open to put the photographs away. It wasn’t empty. Inside lay a packet of sandwiches, some cigarettes, and a flat half bottle of whisky.

  ‘I began to laugh. ‘Someone,’ I said,’will shortly come rampaging down from Missing Persons looking for his Missing Lunch.’

  * * *

  Seabury Racecourse lay about half a mile inland, just off a trunk road to the sea. Looking backwards from the top of the stands one could see the wide silver sweep of the English Channel. Between and on both sides the crowded rows of little houses seemed to be rushing towards the coast like Gadarene swine. In each little unit a retired schoolmaster or civil servant or clergyman — or their widows — thought about the roots they had pulled up from wherever it had been too cold or too dingy for their old age, and sniffed the warm south salt-laden air.

  They had made it. Done what they’d always wanted. Retired to a bungalow by the sea.

  I drove straight in through the open racecourse gates and stopped outside the weighing room. Climbing out, I stretched and walked over to knock on the door of the racecourse manager’s office.

  There was no reply. I tried the handle. It was locked. So was the weighing room door, and everything else.

  Hands in pockets, I strolled round the end of the stands to look at the course. Seabury was officially classified in Group Three: that is to say, lower than Doncaster and higher than Windsor when it came to receiving aid from the Betting Levy Board.

  It had less than Grade Three stands: wooden steps with corrugated tin roofs for the most part, and draughts from all parts of the compass. But the track itself was a joy to ride on, and it had always seemed a pity to me that the rest of the amenities didn’t match it.

  There was no one about near the stands. Down at one end of the course, however, I could see some men and a tractor, and I set off towards them, walking down inside the rails, on the grass. The going was just about perfect for November racing, soft but springy underfoot, exactly right for tempting trainers to send their horses to the course in droves. In ordinary circumstances, that was. But as things stood at present, more trainers than Mark Witney were sending their horses elsewhere. A course which didn’t attract runners didn’t attract crowds to watch them. Seabury’s gate receipts had been falling off for some time, but its expenses had risen; and therein lay its loss.

  Thinking about the sad tale I had read in the balance sheets, I reached the men working on the course. They were digging up a great section of it and loading it on to a trailer behind the tractor. There was a pervasive unpleasant smell in the air.

  An irregular patch about thirty yards deep, stretching nearly the whole width of the course, had been burned brown and killed. Less than half of the affected turf had already been removed, showing the greyish chalky mud underneath, and there was still an enormous amount to be shifted. I didn’t think there were enough men working on it for there to be a hope of its being re-turfed and ready to race on in only eight days’ time.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I said to the men in general. ‘What a horrible mess.’

  One of them thrust his spade into the earth and came over, rubbing his hands on the sides of his trousers.

  ‘Anything you want?’ he said, with fair politeness.

  ‘The racecourse manager. Captain Oxon.’

  His manner shifted perceptibly towards the civil. ‘He’s not here today, sir. Hey!.. aren’t you Sid Halley?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He grinned, doing another quick change, this time towards brotherhood. ‘I’m the foreman. Ted Wilkins.’ I shook his outstretched hand. ‘Captain Oxon’s gone up to London. He said he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I was just down in this part of the world and I thought I’d drop in and have a look at the poor old course.’

  He turned with me to look at the devastation. ‘Shame, isn’t it?’

  ‘What happened, exactly?’

  ‘The tanker overturned on the road over there.’ He pointed, and we began to walk towards the spot, edging round the dug up area. The road, a narrow secondary one, ran across near the end of the racecourse, with a wide semi-circle of track on the far side of it. During the races the hard road surface was covered thickly with tan or peat, or with thick green matting, which the horses galloped over without any trouble. Although not ideal, it was an arrangement to be found on many courses throughout the country, most famously with the Melling Road at Aintree, and reaching a maximum with five road crossings at Ludlow.

  ‘Just here,’ said Ted Wilkins, pointing. ‘Worst place it could possibly have happened, right in the middle of the track. The stuff just poured out of the tanker. It turned right over, see, and the hatch thing was torn open in the crash.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ I asked. ‘The crash, I mean?’

  ‘No one knows, really.’

  ‘But the driver? He wasn’t killed, was he?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t even hurt much. Just shook up a bit. But he couldn’t remember what happened. Some people in a car came driving along after dark and nearly ran into the tanker. They found the driver sitting at the side of the road, holding his head and moaning. Concussion, it was, they say. They reckon he hit his head somehow when his lorry went over. Staggers me how he got out of it so lightly, the cab was fair crushed, and there was glass everywhere.’

  ‘Do tankers often drive across here? Lucky it’s never happened before, if they do.’

  ‘They used not to,’ he said, scratching his head. ‘But they’ve been over here quite regularly now for a year or two. The traffic on the London road’s getting chronic, see?’<
br />
  ‘Oh… did it come from a local firm, then?’

  ‘Down the coast a bit. Intersouth Chemicals, that’s the firm it belonged to.’

  ‘How soon do you think we’ll be racing here again?’ I asked, turning back to look at the track. ‘Will you make it by next week?’

  He frowned. ‘Strictly between you and me, I don’t think there’s a bleeding hope. What we needed, as I said to the Captain, was a couple of bulldozers, not six men with spades.’

  ‘I would have thought so too.’

  He sighed. ‘He just told me we couldn’t afford them and to shut up and get on with it. And that’s what we’ve done. We’ll just about have cut out all the dead turf by next Wednesday, at this rate of going on.’

  ‘That doesn’t leave any time for new turf to settle,’ I remarked.

  ‘It’ll be a miracle if it’s laid, let alone settled,’ he agreed gloomily.

  I bent down and ran my hand over a patch of brown grass. It was decomposing and felt slimy. I made a face, and the foreman laughed.

  ‘Horrible, isn’t it? It stinks, too.’

  I put my fingers to my nose and wished I hadn’t. ‘Was it slippery like this right from the beginning?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Hopeless.’

  ‘Well I won’t take up any more of your time,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘I’ll tell Captain Oxon you came. Pity you missed him.’

  ‘Don’t bother him. He must have a lot to worry about just now.’

  ‘One bloody crisis after another,’ he nodded. ‘So long, then.’ He went back to his spade and his heart-breaking task, and I retraced the quarter mile up the straight to the deserted stands.

  I hesitated for a while outside the weighing room, wondering whether to pick the lock and go in, and knowing it was mainly nostalgia that urged me to do it, not any conviction that it would be a useful piece of investigation. There would always be the temptation, I supposed, to use dubious professional skills for one’s own pleasure. Like doctors sniffing ether. I contented myself with looking through the windows.