For Kicks - Страница 20

After the fourth race I followed him into the bar and jogged his arm violently as he began to drink. Half of his beer splashed over his hand and ran down his sleeve, and he swung round cursing, to find my face nine inches from his own.

"Sorry," I said.

"Oh, it's you." I put as much surprise into my voice as I could.

His eyes narrowed.

"What are you doing here? Sparking Plug runs in this race."

I scowled.

"I've left Inskip's."

"Have you got one of the jobs I suggested? Good."

"Not yet. There might be a bit of a delay there, like."

"Why? No vacancies?"

"They don't seem all that keen to have me since I got chucked out of Inskip's."

"You got what?" he said sharply.

"Chucked out of Inskip's," I repeated.

"Why?"

"They said something about Sparking Plug losing last week on the day you spoke to me… said they could prove nothing but they didn't want me around no more, and to get out."

"That's too bad," he said, edging away.

"But I got the last laugh," I said, sniggering and holding on to his arm.

"I'll tell you straight, I got the bloody last laugh."

"What do you mean?" He didn't try to keep the contempt out of his voice, but there was interest in his eyes.

"Sparking Plug won't win today neither," I stated.

"He won't win because he'll feel bad in his stomach."

"How do you know?"

"I soaked his salt-lick with liquid paraffin," I said.

"Every day since I left on Monday he's been rubbing his tongue on a laxative. He won't be feeling like racing. He won't bloody win, he won't." I laughed.

Black Moustache gave me a sickened look, prised my fingers off his arm, and hurried out of the bar. I followed him carefully. He almost ran down into Tatter- sails, and began frantically looking around. The redheaded woman was nowhere to be seen, but she must have been watching, because presently I saw her walking briskly down the rails, to the same spot where they had met before. And there, with a rush, she was joined by Black Moustache. He talked vehemently. She listened and nodded. He then turned away more calmly, and walked away out of Tattersalls and back to the parade ring. The woman waited until he was out of sight: then she walked firmly into the Members' enclosure and along the rails until she came to Bimmo Bognor. The little man leant forward over the rails as she spoke earnestly into his ear. He nodded several times and she began to smile, and when he turned round to talk to his clerks I saw that he was smiling broadly too.

Unhurriedly I walked along the rows of bookmakers, studying the odds they offered. Sparking Plug was not favourite, owing to his waterlogged defeat last time out, but no one would chance more than five to one. At that price I staked forty pounds my entire earnings at Inskip's on my old charge, choosing a prosperous, jolly-looking bookmaker in the back row.

Hovering within earshot of Mr. Bimmo Bognor a few minutes later I heard him offer seven to one against Sparking Plug to a stream of clients, and watched him rake in their money, confident that he would not have to pay them out.

Smiling contentedly I climbed to the top of the stands and watched Sparking Plug make mincemeat of his opponents over the fences and streak insultingly home by twenty lengths. It was a pity, I reflected, that I was too far away to hear Mr. Bognor's opinion of the result.

My jolly bookmaker handed me two hundred and forty pounds in fivers without a second glance. To avoid Black Moustache and any reprisals he might be thinking of organizing, I then went over to the cheap enclosure in the centre of the course for twenty boring minutes;

returning through the horse gate when the runners were down at the start for the last race, and slipping up the stairs to the stand used by the lads.

Humber's head travelling-lad was standing near the top of the stands.

I pushed roughly past him and tripped heavily over his feet.

"Look where you're bloody going," he said crossly, focusing a pair of shoe-button eyes on my face.

"Sorry mate. Got corns, have you?"

"None of your bloody business," he said, looking at me sourly. He would know me again, I thought.

I bit my thumb nail.

"Do you know which of this lot is Martin Davies' head travelling-lad?" I asked.

He said, "That chap over there with the red scarf. Why?"

"I need a job," I said: and before he could say any thing I left him and pushed along the row to the man in the red scarf.

His stable had one horse in the race. I asked him quietly if they ran two, and he shook his head and said no.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that this negative answer had not been wasted on Humber's head lad. He thought, as I had hoped, that I had asked for work, and had been refused. Satisfied that the seed was planted, I watched the race (Humber's horse finished last) and slipped quietly away from the racecourse via the paddock rails and the Members' car park, without any interception of Black Moustache or a vengeful Bimmo Bognor.

A Sunday endured half in my dreary room and half walking round the empty streets was enough to convince me that I could not drag through the next fortnight in Newcastle doing nothing, and the thought of a solitary Christmas spent staring at coffee-coloured peeling paint was unattractive. Moreover I had two hundred pounds of bookmakers' money packed into my belt alongside what was left of October's: and Humber had no horses entered before the Stafford meeting on Boxing Day. It took me only ten minutes to decide what to do with the time between.

On Sunday evening I wrote to October a report on Bimmo Bognor's intelligence service, and at one in the morning I caught the express to London. I spent

Monday shopping and on Tuesday evening, looking civilized in some decent new clothes and equipped with an extravagant pair of Kastle skis I signed the register of a comfortable, bright little hotel in a snow-covered village in the Dolomites.

The fortnight I spent in Italy made no difference one way or another to the result of my work for October, but it made a great deal of difference to me. It was the first real holiday I had had since my parents died, the first utterly carefree, purposeless, self-indulgent break for nine years.

I grew younger. Fast strenuous days on the snow slopes and a succession of evenings dancing with my skiing companions peeled away the years of responsibility like skins, until at last I felt twenty-seven instead of fifty, a young man instead of a father; until the unburdening process, begun when I left Australia and slowly fermenting through the weeks at Inskip's, suddenly seemed complete.

There was also a bonus in the shape of one of the receptionists, a rounded glowing girl whose dark eyes lit up the minute she saw me and who, after a minimum of persuasion, uninhibitedly spent a proportion of her nights in my bed. She called me her Christmas box of chocolates. She said I was the happiest lover she had had for a long time, and that I pleased her. She was probably doubly as promiscuous as Patty but she was much more wholesome; and she made me feel terrific instead of ashamed.

On the day I left, when I gave her a gold bracelet, she kissed me and told me not to come back, as things were never as good the second time. She was God's gift to bachelors, that girl.

I flew back to England on Christmas night feeling as physically and mentally fit as I had ever been in my life, and ready to take on the worst that Humber could dish out. Which, as it happened, was just as well.

CHAPTER EIGHT

At Stafford on Boxing Day one of the runners in the first race, the selling 'chase, threw off his jockey a stride after landing in fourth place over the last fence, crashed through the rails, and bolted away across the rough grass in the centre of the course.

A lad standing near me on the draughty steps behind the weighing room ran off cursing to catch him; but as the horse galloped crazily from one end of the course to the other it took the lad, the trainer, and about ten assorted helpers a quarter of an hour to lay their hands on his bridle. I watched them as with worried faces they led the horse, an undistinguished bay, off the course and past me towards the racecourse stables.

The wretched animal was white and dripping with sweat and in obvious distress; foam covered his nostrils and muzzle, and his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. His flesh was quivering, his ears lay flat back on his head, and he was inclined to lash out at anyone who came near him.

His name, I saw from the race card, was Superman.

He was not one of the eleven horses I had been investigating: but his hot ted up appearance and frantic behaviour, coupled with the fact that he had met trouble at Stafford in a selling 'chase, convinced me that he was the twelfth of the series. The twelfth; and he had come unstuck. There was, as Beckett had said, no mistaking the effect of whatever had pepped him up. I had never before seen a horse in such a state, which seemed to me much worse than the descriptions of 'excited winners' I had read in the press cuttings: and I came to the conclusion that Superman was either suffering from an overdose, or had reacted excessively to whatever the others had been given.

Neither October nor Beckett nor Macclesfield had come to Stafford. I could only hope that the precautions October had promised had been put into operation in spite of its being Boxing Day, because I could not, without blowing open my role, ask any of the officials if the pre-race dope tests had been made or other precautions taken, nor insist that the jockey be asked at once for his impressions, that unusual bets should be investigated, and that the horse be thoroughly examined for punctures.