Warned Off (13 page)

At
Kempton I saw people I knew but either they didn’t recognise me because of my
face or didn’t want to be seen talking to me. Not that it bothered me much any
more.

I spotted Mac standing alone by a
racecard kiosk. He didn’t want to be seen with me, I knew that, but there was
nobody around. He watched me approach and looked nervous.

‘I told you not to speak to me on the
racecourse.’

‘Relax. As far as everyone’s concerned
I’m the invisible man anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

He still looked worried. ‘Mac, there’s a
race going on, everyone is on the other side of the stand.’

Looking more resigned than relieved he
said, ‘Okay, what is it?’

I told him about Jackie. ‘That’s a bad
decision, Eddie.’

‘How the hell is it a bad decision? She
won’t take any risks, she’s just observing! She’s an insider, for God’s sake!
It’s the best break we’ve had.’

He stood shaking his head. ‘What else
can we do?’ I asked.

Glaring at me he said, ‘Look, Eddie, do
what you want, just start getting me some results.’

I stared at him. ‘What the hell’s that
supposed to mean?’

‘It means I need some results from you!
I’m under pressure!’

‘Results? Pressure? I just came out of
the fucking hospital after getting my face fried for you and you talk to me
about pressure!’

He looked around nervously. ‘Calm down,
Eddie, for God’s sake. I’m sorry ... Look, I’m getting calls from my boss
virtually every time there’s a major form upset. We’re well into the flat
season, there could be a drugged horse in every damn race and we wouldn’t know
about it.’

‘That’s way over the top, Mac, and you
know it.’

‘Okay, maybe it is, but everybody’s
feeling it, not just you. Now look, I’ll have to go. We’ll talk soon when we’ve
both calmed down a bit.’

The way I felt, that would take a while.

After half an hour spent searching the
bars for Priscilla, I saw her walking toward me, deep in conversation with
Wendy.

‘Hello.’ I said. They stopped and stared
but didn’t recognise me immediately. When Wendy did her eyebrows went up and
her hand clapped her open mouth. ‘Eddie! What the hell happened to you?’

‘It’s a long story, as they say.’

‘You look like you’ve had skin grafts
from an old saddle.’

‘I wish it were as tough.’

Wendy stepped to the side to see how far
round the scarring went. I turned to her friend. ‘Hello, Priscilla, remember
me?’ Priscilla looked more bored than shocked. ‘Not like that I don’t.’

‘Heard anything from Alan?’ I asked.

She gave me a bitter look and shook her
head. ‘You told me he was in Cyprus.’

‘I think he might be back.’

‘He’d be riding if he was back.’

‘Yes, I suppose he would.’

She sneered. ‘Tell him when he does come
back I hope he falls off his first ride and it kicks his balls up into his
belly.’

‘Painful.’

‘Not half enough for the slimy little
sod.’

Wendy had completed her inspection and
was back facing me.

She knitted her brows in a half-quizzical
smile. ‘You got scars anywhere else then, Eddie?’

‘Nowhere you haven’t seen before,’ I
said. She giggled, uninsulted.

‘You coming in to buy us a drink?’ she
asked.

‘Sorry, Wendy, not today. But if you
hear anything of Alan Harle, ring me. There’ll be a bottle in it for you.’

‘Make it a magnum.’

‘Give me a break.’

Her smile said it was worth a try.
Priscilla’s frown said let’s get away from this freak. I said goodbye and went
to see a couple of guys I knew in the press bar.

The rest of the day was spent drifting,
listening, trying to pick up any snippet leading to Harle, but I came up with
nothing and left before the last race.

As I approached my car I knew something
wasn’t right but couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Slowing down I started looking
around.

From what I could see there was nobody
but me in the car park, though the high sides of the numerous horseboxes could
be hiding any number of potential attackers.

Ten paces from the car I realised what
was wrong, it was parked nose up to a horsebox. I had reversed into the space
when I’d arrived. Someone had been driving my car.

As I reached it I looked through the
windows. No unwanted passengers. I walked to the front and checked the
bonnet-catch to see if it had been tampered with. There were no signs.

Squatting, I ran my hand along the
underside of the car then decided that wasn’t thorough enough. Lying down I dug
my heels in and pushed myself under the car for a proper look. I found nothing.

Sliding back out I got to my feet and
dusted myself down. Close behind me someone spoke. ‘Looking for something?’

I took a large step, almost a jump away
from the voice and turned very quickly. My hand was raised to punch when my
brain registered the uniform of the Metropolitan Police. It cancelled the message
to my fist and began whirring through the plausible excuse file.

I tried playing for time since I didn’t
think he’d quite believe I was looking to see if someone had stuck twenty
pounds of explosive on my exhaust pipe. ‘Do you always creep up so quietly on
people?’

‘Only suspects, sir.’

I looked suitably flustered. ‘Suspect?
Me? What of? This is my car.’

‘What were you doing lying under it?’

‘I saw a cat.’
Jeez
, I thought,
what a lame excuse.

‘A big black one. It was under the back wheel.
I saw it as I came up and I didn’t want to risk running it over if it was
trapped.’

‘Animal lover, are you, sir?’

‘Honestly!’

Unclipping the radio from his lapel he
asked HQ to run a computer check on the licence number. That’s when it dawned
on me the car wasn’t registered in my name. I thought about trying to explain
while he waited for an answer but decided to stay quiet.

The tinny voice of the controller came
through. The constable had his notebook out. ‘The car is registered in the name
of the Jockey Club, Portman Square, London.’

‘Roger,’ he said, pressing a full-stop
from his pencil into the book. I waited for him to speak. He looked at me. ‘You
a member of the Jockey Club, sir?’

Very droll.

‘I have the use of the car for a while.’

‘Do you have the keys?’

I pulled them from my pocket. ‘Open the
car, please,’ he said. I pushed the key in, the lock clicked and I opened the
door.

‘Close it now, please.’

I closed it.

Walking to the back of the car he looked
again at the registration plate. He still had his notebook and pencil in hand.

‘Will you open the boot, please, sir?’

‘Sure.’

I pushed the key in and turned it. The
boot lid came smoothly up and I stared inside and wondered if the day was going
to get any worse. There was someone in the boot. It was Alan Harle. He was
dead.

They
took me to a small square room with a table and two chairs and a vase of
daffodils on the window-sill and kept me waiting with only a silent constable
for company.

Under the circumstances it didn’t take
detective sergeant Cranley all that long to get there and the evil glee which
had no doubt shone on his face throughout the journey was still obvious as he
came through the door.

One of the London CID boys was with him
and couldn’t have failed to be impressed by Cranley’s completely unbiased
opening line. ‘Well, well, well, Malloy, got you by the bollocks at last!’

I saved my reply. This already had the
makings of a long night. Cranley didn’t disappoint me. He kept referring to my
previous jail term on the basis that the leopard never changes its spots. He
claimed I’d almost killed Harle the first time and that my taking him to the
hospital had been a front to give myself an alibi.

So I’d boiled my own face, I asked, to
give me another alibi for Harle’s abduction from the hospital? Cranley said he
wouldn’t put it past me.

‘You haven’t asked for a lawyer yet,
Malloy. I’m surprised.’

‘Why would I want a lawyer? I’ve done
nothing, Cranley, and you know it.’

But he persevered, all night he
persevered, trying to extract a confession, screaming at me, pushing his sweaty
pock-marked face into mine, breathing his garlic breath. At one point he raised
his fist, but then he looked in my eyes and what he saw made him think twice.

As dawn broke they took my belt and tie
and shoe laces and threw me in a cell. I’d had no food or drink and my head
pounded from Cranley’s screaming. I lay down and tried to clear my mind.

Who the hell were these guys of
Kruger’s? I’d been at Kempton no more than two hours. You don’t just happen
across a car and dump a body in it. How had they known I’d be there? How could
they know which car I was driving? They began to seem somehow superhuman.

If they were that good I thought I’d
better tell Jackie to forget what we’d arranged. She wouldn’t be safe doing
even that. Jackie ... I thought about holding her the way I had on Sunday
morning when we’d parted. Trying to comfort myself, I replayed in my head our
final conversation.

What are your immediate plans, Eddie?
Well, tomorrow I’ll be at Kempton ...

Jackie ... Surely not?

The more I thought about it the more my
suspicion deepened, though I desperately didn’t want to believe that she’d
betrayed me, set me up. Surely everything we’d had during those three days
couldn’t have been false? There wasn’t a woman alive who could put on such an
act.

In the end I convinced myself it was
just tiredness and mental bruising that made me suspicious of Jackie. After
all, hadn’t Kruger’s men traced me before, followed me to Roscoe’s place?

Or had they? Maybe they’d been on their
way to Roscoe’s and just happened upon my car. If they’d followed me there, why
hadn’t they stopped me entering Roscoe’s house?

My weary, battered mind tumbled the
thoughts over in slow motion. I didn’t know what to think any more, couldn’t
trust myself to be logical. Attempts at sleep resulted in a fitful two hours
punctuated by snatches of the same nightmare.

At ten o’clock a policeman brought me
breakfast, soap and a towel. ‘Get that down you, then get cleaned up. There’s
somebody here to see you.’

I ate but didn’t bother cleaning up as I
knew it was for their cosmetic purposes rather than mine. Then I was led to a
room where McCarthy waited.

‘You look awful,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’

‘Have you been up all night?’

‘Almost. Cranley was conducting one of
his special interviews. You know, one of those where they tell you what you did
rather than ask you.’

‘Yes, he looks the type, I’ve just spent
fifteen minutes with him. He is not your biggest fan, Eddie, I can assure you
of that. What the hell have you done to upset him so much?’

‘Nothing, let’s just say we took an
instant dislike to each other. He’s obsessed with my supposed involvement in
all this, keeps saying he’s going to get me.’

‘Not this time he isn’t. He’s just had
the results of some of the forensic tests. Harle’s been dead at least a week,
which gives you the perfect alibi, since you were lying in a bed in Newbury
Hospital when he was killed.’

‘What was the cause of death?’

‘Still to be confirmed, but they’ve
detected Hepatitis B along with a massive quantity of heroin. Either he
injected himself with an infected needle or somebody else did.’

‘I think we can safely say it was
somebody else, don’t you? They’ll be claiming he dumped his own body in my car
next.’

He smiled.

‘I guess that’s how they got you
involved, through the car?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Mac, I know that’s
really dropped you in it.’

‘Forget it, it turned out to be a sort
of blessing in disguise. It’s made my people realise just how serious this is.
There were a lot of heads in the sand, Eddie, a lot of people who didn’t want
to face the reality of what was going on, didn’t want to admit that you were in
there on our side. Harle’s body in the boot of a Jockey Club car at Kempton
sort of brought matters to a head. We had a very interesting meeting last
night. If you still want to carry on with this, I can tell you that you now
have everybody’s support. And I mean everybody.’

He sounded like he was knighting me.
‘What do you want me to do, Mac, get down on my knees and thank the Lord?’

He shrugged and looked hurt. ‘We’ve been
skulking around in back alleys so long I though you’d appreciate being ...
accepted.’

‘Well, how gratifying! I’m so pleased to
know that Jockey Club members have now voted not to hold their noses and cross
the street when they see me approach. I’m honoured, but did they say anything
in passing about returning my licence?’

‘I’m afraid that wasn’t discussed,
Eddie. And I’m not going to bullshit you, that is still going to depend very
heavily on getting a confession out of Kruger.’

‘Well, surprise, surprise.’

He looked tentatively at me. ‘Are you
sticking with it?’

‘Can you get me out of here today?’

‘This morning.’

‘Can you get Cranley off my back?’

‘I’ve told him you are now officially
employed by the Jockey Club, temporarily, of course.’

‘Of course!’

‘I said you’d be working on this case on
the basis that the police, good as they are at their job, do not have enough
time to dedicate exclusively to this particular problem.’

‘And how did detective sergeant Cranley
take that little speech?’

‘Let’s say he didn’t applaud. I then
told him that you would give the police all the help and information you could
and that you’d expect the same from them.’

‘Fat chance. What have the press got to
say about it this morning?’

‘Not that much in the racing papers who
are closing ranks as usual, thank God, but a couple of the tabloids are
featuring it, though that should soon blow over since Cranley intends to keep
it low-profile.’

‘Now, I wonder why that is? Could it be
anything to do with the fact that so far he’s made a complete balls of the
whole thing?’

‘Probably.’ McCarthy looked at me
expectantly.

‘Well? Are you still in?’

I nodded. ‘Either until they get me or
the Jockey Club runs out of cars.’

McCarthy
got me another car, a white Granada (‘It’ll make you feel like a cop’), and I
went back to the cottage to bathe and change.

Mac had underplayed the press reports.
Harle’s death made the front pages in some papers.

Roscoe was quoted as being ‘devastated’
by the news and repeated his story about Harle running out on him back in March
and never contacting him since.

I slept for a while then prepared myself
for another trip to Roscoe’s. On the drive down, thoughts of Jackie occupied my
mind. I was missing her, regretting I wouldn’t be there for her ten o’clock
call. I’d shaken off my suspicions of the previous night, though some dregs
obstinately remained, making me feel guilty about harbouring them.

The gathering dusk found me and my
binoculars halfway up a tree about three hundred yards from Roscoe’s front
door. Things were bound to be stirred up by Harle’s murder and I thought there
was a reasonable chance Roscoe might be entertaining some interesting visitors.

It was almost midnight when I shimmied
down to the ground, stiff, sore and cold. I could still smell the exhaust fumes
of the car which had left Roscoe’s and passed below me a minute before. The two
men inside had been with Roscoe for almost three hours. One was my little
bumbling friend from the toilet of the Duke’s Hotel and the other was a young
man I’d last seen lying unconscious on the Cheltenham turf – Phil Greene,
Harle’s stand-in. Somehow, I didn’t think they’d been on a social call.

Resisting a brief crazy temptation to
break into the grooms’ quarters and find Jackie, I jogged to where I’d hidden
the car and headed home.