Rat Race (20 page)

No easy revelation this time. Just the merest flicker of speculation.

Harley…?

He had recovered ill-invested capital on the first occasion. He
had known Colin would not rely often on his sister’s skill after the second. But would Harley go so far…? And Harley had known I wasn’t flying Colin, though Tyderman had thought I was.

Rats on treadwheels, I thought, go round and round in small circles and get nowhere, just like me.

I sighed. It wasn’t much use trying to work it all out when I obviously lacked about fifty pieces of vital information. Decision: did I or did I not start actively looking for some of the pieces? If I didn’t, a successor to Major Tyderman might soon be around playing another lot of chemical tricks on aeroplanes, and if I did, I could well be heading myself for yet more trouble.

I tossed a mental coin. Heads you do, tails you don’t. In mid-toss I thought of Nancy. All roads led back to Nancy. If I just let everything slide and lay both physically and metaphorically on my back on the grass in the sun, I’d have nothing to think about except what I hated to think about. Very poor prospect. Almost anything else was better.

Took the plunge, and made a start with Annie Villars.

She was standing in the paddock in a sleeveless dark red dress, her greying short hair curling neatly under a black straw hat chosen more for generalship than femininity. From ten paces the authority was clearly uppermost: from three, one could hear the incongruously gentle voice, see the non-aggression in the consciously curved lips, realise that the velvet glove was being given a quilted lining.

She was talking to the Duke of Wessex. She was saying, ‘Then if you agree, Bobbie, we’ll ask Kenny Bayst to ride it. This new boy has no judgement of pace, and for all his faults, Kenny does know how to time a race.’

The Duke nodded his distinguished head and smiled at her benevolently. They caught sight of me hovering near them and both turned towards me with friendly expressions, one deceptively, and one authentically vacant.

‘Matt,’ smiled the Duke. ‘My dear chap. Isn’t it a splendid day?’

‘Beautiful, sir,’ I agreed. As long as one could obliterate Warwickshire.

‘My nephew Matthew,’ he said, ‘Do you remember him?’

‘Of course I do, sir.’

‘Well… it’s his brithday soon, and he wants… he was wondering if for a birthday present I would give him a flight in an aeroplane. With you, he said. Especially with you.’

I smiled. ‘I’d like to do that very much.’

‘Good, good. Then… er… how do you suggest we fix it?’

‘I’ll arrange it with Mr Harley.’

‘Yes. Good. Soon then. He’s coming down to stay with me tomorrow as it’s the end of term and his mother is off somewhere in Greece. So next week, perhaps?’

I’m sure that will be all right.’

He beamed happily. ‘Perhaps I’ll come along too.’

Annie Villars said patiently, ‘Bobbie, we ought to go and see about saddling your horse.’

He looked at his watch. ‘By jove, yes. Amazing where the afternoon goes to. Come along, then.’ He gave me another large smile, transferred it intact to Annie, and obediently moved off after her as she started purposefully towards the saddling boxes.

I bought a racecard. The Duke’s horse was a two year old maiden called Thundersticks. I watched the Duke and Annie watch Thundersticks walk round the parade ring, one with innocent beaming pride, the other with judicious non-commitment. The pace-lacking boy rode a bad race, even to my unpractised eye: too far out in front over the first furlong, too far out the back over the last. Just as well the Duke’s colours were inconspicuous, I thought. He took his disappointment with charming grace, reassuring Annie that the colt would do better next time. Sure to. Early days yet. She smiled at him in soft
agreement and bestowed on the jockey a look which would have bored a hole through steel plating.

After they had discussed the sweating colt’s performance yard by yard, and patted him and packed him off with his lad towards the stables, the Duke took Annie away to the bar for a drink. After that she had another loser for another owner and another thoughtful detour for refreshment, so that I didn’t manage to catch her on her own until between the last two races.

She listened without comment to me explaining that I thought it might be possible to do something positive about solving the Great Bomb Mystery, if she would help.

‘I thought it was solved already.’

‘Not really. No one knows why.’

‘No. Well, I don’t see how I can help.’

‘Would you mind telling me how well Major Tyderman and Mr Goldenberg know each other, and how they come to have any say in how Rudiments should run in its various races?’

She said mildly, ‘It’s none of your business.’

I knew what the mildness concealed. ‘I know that.’

‘And you are impertinent.’

‘Yes.’

She regarded me straightly, and the softness gradually faded out of her features to leave taut skin over the cheekbones and a stern set to the mouth.

‘I am fond of Midge and Nancy Ross,’ she said. ‘I don’t see how anything I can tell you will help, but I certainly want no harm to come to those two girls. That last escapade was just a shade too dangerous, wasn’t it? And if Rupert Tyderman could do that…’ She paused, thinking deeply. ‘I will be obliged if you will keep anything I may tell you to yourself.’

‘I will.’

‘Very well I’ve known Rupert for a very long time. More or less from my childhood. He is about fifteen years older…. When I was a young girl I thought he was a splendid person, and I didn’t understand why people hesitated when they
talked about him.’ She sighed. ‘I found out, of course, when I was older. He had been wild, as a youth. A vandal when vandalism wasn’t as common as it is now. When he was in his twenties he borrowed money from all his relations and friends for various grand schemes, and never paid them back. His family bought him out of one mess where he had sold a picture entrusted to him for safe keeping and spent the proceeds…. Oh, lots of things like that. Then the war came and he volunteered immediately, and I believe all during the war he did very well. He was in the Royal Engineers, I think… but afterwards, after the war ended, he was quietly allowed to resign his commission for cashing dud cheques with his fellow officers.’

She shook her head impatiently. ‘He has always been a fool to himself…. Since the war he has lived on some money his grandfather left in trust, and on what he could cadge from any friends he had left.’

‘You included?’ I suggested.

She nodded. ‘Oh yes. He’s always very persuasive. It’s always for something extremely plausible, but all the deals fall through…’ She looked away across the Heath, considering. ‘And then this year, back in February or March, I think, he turned up one day and said he wouldn’t need to borrow any more from me, he’d got a good thing going which would make him rich.’

‘What was it?’

‘He wouldn’t say. Just told me not to worry, it was all legal. He had gone into partnership with someone with a cast iron idea for making a fortune. Well, I’d heard that sort of thing from him so often before. The only difference was that this time he didn’t want money….’

‘He wanted something else?’

‘Yes.’ She frowned. ‘He wanted me to introduce him to Bobbie Wessex. He said… just casually… how much he’d like to meet him, and I suppose I was so relieved not to find him cadging five hundred or so that I instantly agreed. It was
very silly of me, but it didn’t seem important…’

‘What happened then?’

She shrugged. ‘They were both at the Doncaster meeting at the opening of the fiat season, so I introduced them. Nothing to it. Just a casual racecourse introduction. And then,’ she looked annoyed, ‘the next time Rupert turned up with that man Goldenberg, saying Bobbie Wessex had given him permission to decide how Rudiments should be run in all his races. I said he certainly wasn’t going to do that, and telephoned to Bobbie. But,’ she sighed, ‘Rupert had indeed talked him into giving him carte blanche with Rudiments. Rupert is an expert persuader, and Bobbie, well, poor Bobbie is easily open to suggestion. Anyone with half an eye could see that Goldenberg was as straight as a corkscrew but Rupert said he was essential as someone had got to put the bets on, and he, Rupert, couldn’t, as no bookmaker would accept his credit and you had to have hard cash for the Tote.’

‘And then the scheme went wrong,’ I said.

‘The first time Rudiments won, they’d both collected a lot of money. I had told them the horse would win. Must win. It started at a hundred to six, first time out, and they were both as high as kites afterwards.’

‘And next time Kenny Bayst won again when he wasn’t supposed to, when they had laid it?’

She looked startled. ‘So you did understand what they were saying.’

‘Eventually.’

‘Just like Rupert to let it out. No sense of discretion.’

I sighed. ‘Well, thank you very much for being so frank. Even if I still can’t see what connection Rudiments has with Major Tyderman blowing up one aircraft and crippling another.’

She twisted her mouth. ‘I told you,’ she said, ‘Right at the beginning, that nothing I told you would be of any help.’

Colin stopped beside me in pink and green silks on his way from the weighing room to the parade ring for the last race. He
gave me a concentrated enquiring look which softened into something like compassion.

‘The waiting’s doing you no good,’ he said.

‘Has she telephoned again?’

He shook his head. ‘Midge won’t leave the house, in case she does.’

‘I’ll be at Warwick races on Saturday… flying some people up from Kent… Will you ask her… just to talk to me?’

‘I’ll wring her stupid little neck,’ he said.

I flew the customers back to Wiltshire and the Six back to Buckingham. Harley, waiting around with bitter eyes, told me the Board of Trade had let him know they were definitely proceeding against me.

‘I expected they would.’

‘But that’s not what I wanted to speak to you about. Come into the office.’ He was unfriendly, as usual. Snappy. He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and waved it at me.

‘Look at these times. I’ve been going through the bills Honey has sent out since you’ve been here. All the times are shorter. We’ve had to charge less… we’re not making enough profit. It’s got to stop. D’you understand? Got to stop.’

‘Very well.’

He looked nonplussed: hadn’t expected such an easy victory.

‘And I’m taking on another pilot.’

‘Am I out, then?’ I found I scarcely cared.

He was surprised. ‘No. Of course not. We simply seem to be getting too much taxi work just lately for you to handle on your own, even with Don’s help.’

‘Maybe we’re getting more work because we’re doing the trips faster and charging less,’ I suggested.

He was affronted. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Another long evening in the caravan, aching and empty.

Nowhere to go, no way of going, and nothing to spend when I got there. That didn’t matter, because wherever I went,
whatever I spent, the inescapable thoughts lay in wait. Might as well suffer them alone and cheaply as anywhere else.

For something to do, I cleaned the caravan from end to end. When it was finished, it looked better, but I, on the whole, felt worse. Scrambled myself two eggs, ate them unenthusiastically on toast. Drank a dingy cup of dried coffee, dried milk.

Switched on the television. Old movie, circa 1950, pirates, cutlasses, heaving bosoms. Switched off.

Sat and watched night arrive on the airfield. Tried to concentrate on what Annie Villars had told me, so as not to think of night arriving over the fields and tents of Warwickshire. For a long time, had no success at all.

Look at everything upside down. Take absolutely nothing for granted.

The middle of the night produced out of a shallow restless sleep a singularly wild idea. Most sleep-spawned revelations from the subconscious wither and die of ridicule in the dawn, but this time it was different. At five, six, seven o’clock, it still looked possible. I traipsed in my mind through everything I had seen and heard since the day of the bomb, and added a satisfactory answer to why to the answer to who.

That Friday I had to set off early in the Aztec to Germany with some television cameramen from Denham, wait while they took their shots, and bring them home again. In spite of breaking Harley’s ruling about speed into pin-sized fragments it was seven-thirty before I climbed stiffly out of the cockpit and helped Joe push the sturdy twin into the hangar.

‘Need it for Sunday, don’t you?’ he asked.

‘That’s right. Colin Ross to France.’ I stretched and yawned, and picked up my heavy flight bag with all its charts and documents.

‘We’re working you hard.’

‘What I’m here for.’

He put his hands in his overall pockets. ‘You’re light on those
aeroplanes, I’ll give you that. Larry, now, Larry was heavy-handed. Always needing things repaired, we were, before you came.’

I gave him a sketch of an appreciative smile and walked up to fill in the records in the office. Harley and Don were both still flying, Harley giving a lesson, and Don a sight-seeing trip in the Six, and Honey was still traffic-copping up in the tower. I climbed up there to see her and ask her a considerable favour.

‘Borrow my Mini?’ she repeated in surprise. ‘Do you mean now, this minute?’

I nodded. ‘For the evening.’

‘I suppose I could get Uncle to take me home,’ she reflected. ‘If you’ll fetch me in the morning?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Well… all right. I don’t really need it this evening. Just fill it up with petrol before you hand it back.’

‘O.K. And thanks a lot.’

She gave me a frankly vulgar grin. ‘Minis are too small for what you want.’

I managed to grin back. ‘Yeah…’

Given the wheels, make the appointment. A pleasant male voice answered the telephone, polite and quiet.

‘The Duke of Wessex? Yes, this is his house. Who is speaking please?’

‘Matthew Shore.’

‘One moment, sir.’

The one moment stretched to four minutes, and I fed a week’s beer money into the greedy box. At last the receiver at the other end was picked up and with slightly heavy breathing the Duke’s unmistakable voice said, ‘Matt? My dear chap, what can I do for you?’