Part 11 (1/2)
Of their own accord, I realized. Another manifestation of Greville's security, no doubt. Anyone who came up the path after dark would get illuminated for his pains.
'Sorry I've been so long,' I said. 'Now you're here, would you carry a few things?'
He nodded as if he'd let out enough words already to last the evening, and followed me silently, when I beckoned him, towards the small sitting room.
'I'm taking that green stone box and as many of those video tapes as you can carry, starting from that end,' I said, and he obligingly picked up about ten recent tapes, balancing the box on top.
I found a hall light, switched that on, and turned off the lamp in the sitting room. It promptly turned itself on again, unasked.
'Cor,' Brad said.
I thought that maybe it was time to leave before I tripped any other alarms wired direct after dark to the local constabulary. I closed the sitting-room door and we went along the hall to the outer world. Before leaving I pressed all the switches beside the front door downwards, and maybe I turned more on than I'd turned off: the spotlights didn't go on, but a dog started barking noisily behind us.
'StrUth,' Brad said, whirling round and clutching the video tapes to his chest as if they would defend him.
There was no dog. There was a loudspeaker like a bull horn on a low hall table emitting the deep-throated growls and barks of a determined Alsatian.
'Bleeding h.e.l.l,' Brad said.
'Let's go,' I said in amus.e.m.e.nt, and he cOUld hardly wait.
The barking stopped of its own accord as we stepped out into the air. I pulled the door shut, and we set off to go down the steps and along the path, and we'd gone barely three paces when the spotlights blazed on again.
'Keep going,' I said to Brad. 'I daresay they'll turn themselves off in time.'
It was fine by him. He'd parked the car round the corner, and I spent the swift journey to Hungerford wondering about Clarissa WILliams; her life, love and adultery.
During the evening I failed both to open the green stone box and to understand the gadgets.
Shaking the box gave me no impression of contents and I supposed it could well be empty. A cigarette box, I thought, though I couldn't remember ever seeing Greville smoking. Perhaps a box to hold twin packs of cards.
Perhaps a box for jewellery. Its tiny keyhole remained impervious to probes from nail scissors, suitcase keys and a piece of wire, and in the end I surrendered and laid it aside.
Neither of the gadgets opened or shut. One was a small black cylindrical object about the size of a thumb with one end narrowly ridged, like a coin. Turning the ridged end a quarter-turn clockwise, its full extent of travel, produced a thin faint high-pitched whine which proved to be the unexciting sum of the thing's activity.
Shrugging, I switched the whine off again and stood the small tube upright on the green box.
The second gadget didn't even produce a whine. It was a flat black plastic container about the size of a pack of cards with a single square red b.u.t.ton placed centrally on the front. I pressed the b.u.t.ton: no results. A round chromiumed k.n.o.b set into one of the sides of the cover revealed itself on further inspection as the end of a telescopic aerial. I pulled it out as far as it would go, about ten inches, and was rewarded with what I presumed was a small transmitter which transmitted I didn't know what to I didn't know where.
Sighing, I pushed the aerial back into its socket and added the transmitter to the top of the green box, and after that I fed Greville's tapes one by one into my video machine and watched the races.
Alfie's comment about in-and-out running had interested me more than I would have wanted him to know. Dozen Roses, from my own reading of the results, had had a long doldrum period followed by a burst of success, suggestive of the cla.s.sic 'cheating' pattern of running a horse to lose and go on losing until he was low in the handicap and unbacked, then setting him off to win at long odds in a race below his latent abilities and wheeling away the winnings in a barrow.
All trainers did that in a mild way sometimes, whatever the rules might say about always running flat out.
Young and inexperienced horses could be RUINEd by being pressed too hard too soon: one had to give them a chance to enjoy themselves, to let their racing instinct develop fully.
That said, there was a point beyond which no modern trainer dared go. In the bad old days before universal camera coverage, it had been harder to prove a horse hadn't been trying: many jockeys had been artists at waving their whips while hauling on the reins. Under the eagle lenses and fierce discipline of the current scene, even natural and unforeseen fluctuations in a horse's form could find the trainer yanked in before the Stewards for an explanation, and if the trainer couldn't explain why his short-priced favourite had turned leaden footed it could cost him a depressing fine.
. No trainer, however industrious, was safe from suspicion, yet I'd never read or heard of Nicholas Loder getting himself into that sort of trouble. Maybe Alfie, I thought dryly, knew something the Stewards didn't.
Maybe Alfie could tell me why Loder had all but panicked when he'd feared Dozen Roses might not run on Sat.u.r.day next.
Brad had picked up the six most recent outings of Dozen Roses, interspersed by four of Gemstones's. I played all six of Dozen Roses's first, starting with the earliest, back in May, checking the details with what Greville had written in his diary.
On the screen there were shots of the runners walking round the parade ring and going down to the start, with Greville's pink and orange colours bright and easy to see. The May race was a ten-furlong handicap for three-year-olds and upwards, run at Newmarket on a Friday. Eighteen runners. Dozen Roses ridden by a second-string jockey because Loder's chief retained jockey was riding the stable's other runner which started favourite.
Down at the start there was some sort of fracas involving Dozen Roses. I rewound the tape and played it through in slow motion and couldn't help laughing.
Dozen Roses, his mind far from racing, had been showing unseemly interest in a mare.
I remembered Greville saying once that he thought it a shame and unfair to curb a colt's enthusiasm: no horse of his would ever be gelded. I remembered him vividly, leaning across a small table and saying it over a gla.s.s of brandy with a gleam in which I'd seen his own enjoyment of s.e.x. So many glimpses of him in my mind, I thought. Too few, also. I couldn't really believe I would never eat with him again, whatever my senses said.
Trainers didn't normally run mares that had come into season, but sometimes one couldn't tell early on.
Horses knew, though. Dozen Roses had been aroused.
The mare was loaded into the stalls in a hurry and Dozen Roses had been walked around until the last minute to cool his ardour. After that, he had run without sparkle and finished mid-field, the mare to the rear of him trailing in last. Loder's other runner, the favourite, had won by a length.
Too bad, I thought, smiling, and watched Dozen Roses's next attempt three weeks later.
No distracting attractions this time. The horse had behaved quietly, sleepily almost, and had turned in the sort of moderate performance which set owners wondering if the game was worth it. The next race was much the same, and if I'd been Greville I would have decided it was time to sell.
Greville, it seemed, had had more faith. After seven weeks' rest Dozen Roses had gone bouncing down to the start, raced full of zest and zoomed over the finis.h.i.+ng line in front, netting 14/1 for anyone ignorant enough to have backed him. Like Greville, of course.
Watching the sequence of tapes I did indeed wonder why the Stewards hadn't made a fuss, but Greville hadn't mentioned anything except his pleasure in the horse's return to his three-year-old form.
Dozen Roses had next produced two further copybook performances of stamina and determination, which brought us up to date. I rewound and removed the last tape and could see why Loder thought it would be another trot-up on Sat.u.r.day.
Gemstones's tapes weren't as interesting. Despite his name he wasn't of much value, and the one race he'd won looked more like a fluke than constructive engineering.
I would sell them both, I decided, as Loder wanted.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
Brad came early on Wednesday and drove me to LambouRN '{ The ankle was sore in spite of Distalgesics but lEss of a constant drag that morning and I could have driven the car myself if I'd put my mind to it. Having Brad around, I reflected on the way, was a luxury I was all too easily getting used to.
Clarissa Williams's attentions had worn off completely except for a little stiffness and a blackening bruise like a bar midway between shoulder and elbow.
That didn't matter. For much of the year I had bruises somewhere or other, result of the law of averages operating in steeplechasing. Falls occurred about once every fourteen races, sometimes oftener, and while a few of the jockeys had bodies that hardly seemed to bruise at all, mine always did. On the other hand I healed everywhere fast, bones, skin and optimism.
Milo Shandy, striding about in his stable yard as if incapable of standing still, came over to my car as it rolled to a stop and yanked open the driver's door. The words he was about to say didn't come out as he stared first at Brad, then at me on the back seat, and what he eventually said was, 'A chauffeur, by G.o.d. Coddling yourself, aren't you?'
Brad got out of the car, gave Milo a neanderthal look and handed me the crutches as usual.
Milo, dark, short and squarely built, watched the proceedings with disgust.