For Kicks - Страница 14

The next evening at eight I walked alone down to Slaw, all the other lads saying they were skint until payday and that in any case they wanted to watch Z Cars on television.

"I thought you lost all your cash on Sparks at Cheltenham," observed Grits.

"I've about two bob left," I said, producing some pennies.

"Enough for a pint."

The pub, as often on Wednesdays, was empty. There was no sign of Soupy or his mysterious friend, and having bought some beer I amused myself at the dart board, throwing one-to-twenty sequences, and trying to make a complete ring in the trebles. Eventually I pulled the darts out of the board, looked at my watch, and decided I had wasted the walk;

and it was at that moment that a man appeared in the doorway, not from the street, but from the saloon bar next door. He held a glass of gently fizzing amber liquid and a slim cigar in his left hand and pushed open the door with his right. Looking me up and down, he said, "Are you a stable lad?"

"Yes."

"Granger's or Inskip's?"

"Inskip's."

"Hmm." He came farther into the room and let the door swing shut behind him.

"There's ten bob for you if you can get one of your lads down here tomorrow night… and as much beer as you can both drink."

I looked interested.

"Which lad?" I asked.

"Any special one? Lots of them will be down here on Friday."

"Well, now, it had better be tomorrow, I think. Sooner the better, I always say. And as for which lad… er… you tell me their names and I'll pick one of them… how's that?"

I thought it was damn stupid, and also that he wished to avoid asking too directly, too memorably for. well. for me?

"OK. Paddy, Grits, Wally, Steve, Ron…" I paused.

"Go on," he said.

"Reg, Norman, Dave, Jeff, Clan, Mike…"

His eyes brightened.

"Clan," he said.

"That's a sensible sort of name.

Bring Clan. "

"I am Clan," I said.

There was an instant in which his balding scalp contracted and his eyes narrowed in annoyance.

"Stop playing games," he said sharply.

"It was you," I pointed out gently, 'who began it. "

He sat down on one of the benches and carefully put his drink down on the table in front of him.

"Why did you come here tonight, alone?" he asked.

"I was thirsty."

There was a brief silence while he mentally drew up a plan of campaign. He was a short stocky man in a dark suit a size too small, the jacket hanging open to reveal a monogrammed cream shirt and golden silk tie. His fingers were fat and short, and a roll of flesh overhung his coat collar at the back, but there was nothing soft in the way he looked at me.

At length he said, "I believe there is a horse in your stable called Sparking Plug?"

"Yes."

"And he runs at Leicester on Monday?"

"As far as I know."

"What do you think his chances are?" he asked.

"Look, do you want a tip, mister, is that what it is? Well, I do Sparking Plug myself and I'm telling you there isn't an animal in next Monday's race to touch him."

"So you expect him to win?"

"Yes, I told you."

"And you'll bet on him I suppose."

"Of course."

"With half your pay? Four pounds, perhaps?"

"Maybe."

"But he'll be favourite. Sure to be. And at best you'll probably only get even money. Another four quid. That doesn't sound much, does it, when I could perhaps put you in the way of winning… a hundred?"

"You're barmy," I said, but with a sideways leer that told him that I wanted to hear more.

He leaned forward with confidence.

"Now you can say no if you want to. You can say no, and I'll go away, and no one will be any the wiser, but if you play your cards right I could do you a good turn."

"What would I have to do for a hundred quid?" I asked flatly.

He looked round cautiously, and lowered his voice still farther.

"Just add a little something to Sparking Plug's feed on Sunday night.

Nothing to it, you see? Dead easy. "

"Dead easy," I repeated: and so it was.

"You're on, then?" he looked eager.

"I don't know your name," I said.

"Never you mind." He shook his head with finality.

"Are you a bookmaker?"

"No," he said.

"I'm not. And that's enough with the questions. Are you on?"

"If you're not a bookmaker," I said slowly, thinking my way, 'and you are willing to pay a hundred pounds to make sure a certain favourite doesn't win, I'd guess that you didn't want just to make money backing all the other runners, but that you intend to tip off a few bookmakers that the race is fixed, and they'll be so grateful they'll pay you say, fifty quid each, at the very least. There are about eleven thousand bookmakers in Britain. A nice big market. But I expect you go to the same ones over and over again. Sure of your welcome, I should think. "

His face was a study of consternation and disbelief, and I realized I had hit the target, bang on.

"Who told you…" he began weakly.

"I wasn't born yesterday," I said with a nasty grin.

"Relax. No one told me." I paused.

"I'll give Sparking Plug his extra nosh, but I want more for it. Two hundred."

"No. The deal's off." He mopped his forehead.

"All right." I shrugged.

"A hundred and fifty then," he said grudgingly.

"A hundred and fifty," I agreed.

"Before I do it."

"Half before, half after," he said automatically. It was by no means the first time he had done this sort of deal.

I agreed to that. He said if I came down to the pub on Saturday evening I would be given a packet for Sparking Plug and seventy-five pounds for myself, and I nodded and went away, leaving him staring moodily into his glass.

On my way back up the hill I crossed Soupy off my list of potentially useful contacts. Certainly he had procured me for a doping job, but I had been asked to stop a favourite in a novice 'chase, not to accelerate a dim long priced selling plater. It was extremely unlikely that both types of fraud were the work of one set of people.

Unwilling to abandon Colonel Beckett's typescript I spent chunks of that night and the following two nights in the bathroom, carefully re-reading it. The only noticeable result was that during the day I found the endless stable work irksome because for five nights in a row I had had only three hours' sleep. But I frankly dreaded having to tell October on Sunday that the eleven young men had made their mammoth investigation to no avail, and I had an unreasonable feeling that if I hammered away long enough I could still wring some useful message from those densely packed pages.

On Saturday morning, though it was bleak, bitter, and windy, October's daughters rode out with the first string. Elinor only came near enough to exchange polite good mornings, but Patty, who was again riding one of my horses, made my giving her a leg up a moment of eyelash-fluttering intimacy, deliberately and unnecessarily rubbing her body against mine.

"You weren't here last week, Danny boy," she said, putting her feet in the irons.

"Where were you?"

"At Cheltenham… miss."

"Oh. And next Saturday?"

TO be here. "

She said, with intentional insolence, "Then kindly remember next Saturday to shorten the leathers on the saddle before I mount. These are far too long."

She made no move to shorten them herself, but gestured for me to do it for her. She watched me steadily, enjoying herself. While I was fastening the second buckle she rubbed her knee forwards over my hands and kicked me none too gently in the ribs.

"I wonder you stand me teasing you, Danny boy," she said softly, bending down, 'a dishy guy like you should answer back more. Why don't you? "

"I don't want the sack," I said, with a dead straight face.

"A coward, too," she said sardonically, and twitched her horse away.

And she'll get into bad trouble one day, if she keeps on like that, I thought. She was too provocative. Stunningly pretty of course, but that was only the beginning;

and her hurtful little tricks were merely annoying. It was the latent invitation which disturbed and aroused.

I shrugged her out of my mind, fetched Sparking Plug, sprang up on to his back and moved out of the yard and up to the moor for the routine working gallops.

The weather that day got steadily worse until while we were out with the second string it began to rain heavily in fierce slashing gusts, and we struggled miserably back against it with stinging faces and sodden clothes. Perhaps because it went on raining, or possibly because it was, after all, Saturday, Wally for once refrained from making me work all afternoon, and I spent the three hours sitting with about nine other lads in the kitchen of the cottage, listening to the wind shrieking round the corners outside and watching Chepstow races on television, while our damp jerseys, breeches, and socks steamed gently round the fire.

I put the previous season's form book on the kitchen table and sat over it with my head propped on the knuckles of my left hand idly turning the pages with my right.

Depressed by my utter lack of success with the eleven horses' dossiers, by the antipathy I had to arouse in the lads, and also, I think, by the absence of the hot sunshine I usually lived in at that time of the year, I began to feel that the whole masquerade had been from the start a ghastly mistake. And the trouble was that having taken October's money I couldn't back out; not for months. This thought depressed me further still. I sat slumped in unrelieved gloom, wasting my much needed free time.

I think now that it must have been the sense that I was failing in what I had set out to do, more than mere tiredness, which beset me that afternoon, because although later on I encountered worse things it was only for that short while that I ever truly regretted having listened to October, and unreservedly wished myself back in my comfortable Australian cage.