For Kicks - Страница 25

A week later I read his typewritten reply.

"Old Etonian, destroyed at Cartmel, Lancashire, at Whitsun last year, spent the previous November and December in Humber's yard. Humber claimed him in a selling race, and sold him again at Leicester sales seven weeks later.

"But. Old Etonian went berserk in the parade ring before the race; he was due to run in a handicap, not a seller; and the run-in at Cartmel is short. None of these facts conform to the pattern of the others.

"Dope tests were made on Old Etonian, but proved negative.

"No one could explain why he behaved as he did."

Tommy Stapleton, I thought, must have had an idea, or he would not have cut out the report, yet he could not have been sure enough to act on it without checking up. And checking up had killed him. There could be no more doubt of it.

I tore up the paper and took Jerry along to the cafe, more conscious than usual of the danger breathing down my neck. It didn't, however, spoil my appetite for the only edible meal of the week.

At supper a few days later, in the lull before Charlie turned on his transistor radio for the usual evening of pops from Luxemburg (which I had grown to enjoy) I steered the conversation round to Cartmel races.

What, I wanted to know, were they like?

Only Cecil, the drunk, had ever been there.

"It's not like it used to be in the old days," he said owlishly, not noticing Reggie filch a hunk of his bread and margarine.

Cecil's eyes had a glazed, liquid look, but I had luckily asked my question at exactly the right moment, in the loquacious half-hour between the silent bleariness of the afternoon's liquor and his disappearance to tank up for the night.

"What was it like in the old days?" I prompted.

"They had a fair there." He hiccupped.

"A fair with roundabouts and swings and side-shows and all. Bank Holiday, see? Whitsun and all that. Only place outside the Derby you could go on the swings at the races. Course, they stopped it now. Don't like no one to have a good time, they don't. It weren't doing no harm, it weren't, the fair."

"Fairs," said Reggie scornfully, his eyes flicking to the crust Jerry held loosely in his hand.

"Good for dipping," commented Lenny, with superiority.

"Yeah," agreed Charlie, who hadn't yet decided if Borstal qualified Lenny as a fit companion for one from the higher school.

"Eh?" said Cecil, lost.

"Dipping. Working the pockets," Lenny said.

"Oh. Well, it can't have been that with the hound trails and they stopped them too. They were good sport, they were. Bloody good day out, it used to be, at Cart- me!" but now it's the same as any other ruddy place. You might as well be at Newton Abbot or somewhere.

Nothing but ordinary racing like any other day of the week. " He belched.

"What were the hound trails?" I asked.

"Dog races," he said, smiling foolishly.

"Bloody dog races. They used to have one before the horse races,

and one afterwards, but they've ruddy well stopped it now. Bloody killjoys, that's all they are. Still," he leered triumphantly, 'if you know what's what you can still have a bet on the dogs. They have the hound trail in the morning now, on the other side of the village from the racetrack, but if you get your horse bedded down quick enough you can get there in time for a bet."

"Dog races?" said Lenny disbelievingly.

"Dogs won't race round no horse track. There ain't no bloody electric hare, for a start."

Cecil swivelled his head unsteadily in his direction.

"You don't have a track for hound trails," he said earnestly, in his slurred voice.

"It's a trail, see? Some bloke sets off with a bag full of aniseed and paraffin, or something like that, and drags it for miles and miles round the hills and such. Then they let all the dogs loose and the first one to follow all round the trail and get back quickest is the winner. Year before last someone shot at the bloody favourite half a mile from home and there was a bleeding riot. They missed him, though.

They hit the one just behind, some ruddy outsider with no chance. "

"Reggie's ate my crust," said Jerry sadly.

"Did you go to Cartmel last year too?" I asked.

"No," Cecil said regretfully.

"Can't say I did. A woman got killed there, and all."

"How?" asked Lenny, looking avid.

"Some bloody horse bolted in the paddock, and jumped the rails of the parade ring and landed on some poor bloody woman who was just having a nice day out. She backed a loser all right, she did that day. I heard she was cut to bits, time that crazy animal trampled all over her trying to get out through the crowd. He didn't get far, but he kicked out all over the place and broke another man's leg before they got the vet to him and shot him.

Mad, they said he was. A mate of mine was there, see, leading one round in the same race, and he said it was something awful, that poor woman all cut up and bleeding to death in front of his eyes. "

The others looked suitably impressed at this horrific story, all except Bert, who couldn't hear it.

"Well," said Cecil, getting up, 'it's time for my little walk. "

He went out for his little walk, which was presumably to wherever he had hidden his alcohol, because as usual he came back less than an hour later and stumbled up the ladder to his customary oblivion.

CHAPTER TEN

Towards the end of my fourth week Reggie left (complaining of hunger) and in a day or two was duly replaced by a boy with a soft face who said in a high pitched voice that his name was Kenneth.

To Humber I clearly remained one insignificant face in this endless procession of human flotsam; and as I could safely operate only as long as that state of affairs continued I did as little as possible to attract his attention. He gave me orders, and I obeyed them: and he cursed me and punished me, but not more than anyone else, for the things I left undone.

I grew to recognize his moods at a glance. There were days when he glowered silently all through first and second exercise and turned out again to make sure that no one skimped the third, and on these occasions even Cass walked warily and only spoke if he were spoken to.

There were days when he talked a great deal but always in sarcasm, and his tongue was so rough that everyone preferred the silence. There were occasional days when he wore an abstracted air and overlooked our faults, and even rarer days when he looked fairly pleased with life.

At all times he was impeccably turned out, as if to emphasize the difference between his state and ours. His clothes, I judged, were his main personal vanity, but his wealth was also evident in his car, the latest type of Cunard-sized Bentley. It was fitted with back-seat television, plush carpets, radio telephone, fur rugs, air conditioning, and a built-in drinks cabinet holding in racks six bottles, twelve glasses, and a glittering array of chromiumed cork-screws, ice-picks, and miscellaneous objects like swizzle sticks.

I knew the car well, because I had to clean it every Monday afternoon.

Bert had to clean it on Fridays. Humber was proud of his car.

He was chauffeured on long journeys in this above- his-status symbol by Jud Wilson's sister Grace, a hard- faced amazon of a woman who handled the huge car with practised ease but was not expected to maintain it. I never once spoke to her: she bicycled in from wherever she lived, drove as necessary, and bicycled away again. Frequently the car had not been cleaned to her satisfaction, but her remarks were relayed to Bert and me by Jud.

I looked into every cranny every time while cleaning the inside, but Humber was neither so obliging nor so careless as to leave hypodermic syringes or phials of stimulants lying about in the glove pockets.

All through my first month there the freezing weather was not only a discomfort but also a tiresome delay. While racing was suspended Humber could dope no horses, and there was no opportunity for me to see what difference it made to his routine when the racing was scheduled for any of the five courses with long run ins

On top of that, he and Jud Wilson and Cass were always about in the stables. I wanted to have a look round inside Humber's office, a brick hut standing across the top end of the yard, but I could not risk a search when any one of them might come in and find me at it. With Humber and Jud Wilson away at the races, though, and with Cass gone home to his midday meal, I reckoned I could go into the office to search while the rest of the lads were eating.

Cass had a key to the office, and it was he who unlocked the door in the morning and locked it again at night. As far as I could see he did not bother to lock up when he went home for lunch, and the office was normally left open all day, except on Sunday. This might mean, I thought, that Humber kept nothing there which could possibly be incriminating: but on the other hand he could perhaps keep something there which was apparently innocent but would be incriminating if one understood its significance.

However, the likelihood of solving the whole mystery by a quick look round an unlocked stable office was so doubtful that it was not worth risking discovery,

and I judged it better to wait with what patience I could until the odds were in my favour.

There was also Humber's house, a whitewashed converted farm house adjoining the yard. A couple of stealthy surveys, made on afternoons when I was bidden to sweep snow from his garden path, showed that this was an ultra-neat soulless establishment like a series of rooms in shop windows, impersonal and unlived-in. Humber was not married, and downstairs at least there seemed to be nowhere at all snug for him to spend his evenings.