"For Kicks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Francis Dick)

CHAPTER SIX

October dipped his finger in the powder and tasted it.

"I don't know what it is either," he said, shaking his head.

"I'll get it analysed."

I bent down and patted his dog, and fondled his ears.

He said "You do realize what a risk you'll be running if you take his money and don't give the dope to the horse?"

I grinned up at him.

"It's no laughing matter," he said seriously.

"They can be pretty free with their boots, these people, and it would be no help to us if you get your ribs kicked in…"

"Actually," I said, straightening up, "I do think it might be best if Sparking Plug didn't win… I could hardly hope to attract custom from the dopers we are really after if they heard I had double-crossed anyone before."

"You're quite right." He sounded relieved.

"Sparking Plug must lose;

but Inskip. how on earth can I tell him that the jockey must pull back? "

"You can't," I said.

"You don't want them getting into trouble. But it won't matter much if I do. The horse won't win if I keep him thirsty tomorrow morning and give him a bucketful of water just before the race."

He looked at me with amusement.

"I see you've learned a thing or two."

"It'd make your hair stand on end, what I've learned."

He smiled back.

"All right then. I suppose it's the only thing to do.

I wonder what the National Hunt Committee would think of a Steward conspiring with one of his own stable lads to stop a favourite? " He laughed.

"I'll tell Roddy Beckett what to expect… though it won't be so funny for Inskip, nor for the lads here, if they back the horse, nor for the general public, who'll lose their money."

"No," I agreed.

He folded the packet of white powder and tucked it back into the envelope with the money. The seventy- five pounds had foolishly been paid in a bundle of new fivers with consecutive numbers: and we had agreed that October would take them and try to discover to whom they had been issued.

I told him about the long run-ins on all of the courses where the eleven horses had won.

"It almost sounds as if they might have been using vitamins after all," he said thoughtfully.

"You can't detect them in dope tests because technically they are not dope at all, but food. The whole question of vitamins is very difficult."

"They increase stamina?" I asked.

"Yes, quite considerably. Horses which " die" in the last half mile and as you pointed out, all eleven are that type would be ideal subjects. But vitamins were among the first things we considered, and we had to eliminate them. They can help horses to win, if they are injected in massive doses into the bloodstream, and they are undetectable in analysis because they are used up in the winning, but they are undetectable in other ways too. They don't excite, they don't bring a horse back from a race looking as though Benzedrine were cdittmg out of his ears." He sighed.

"I don't know…"

With regret I made my confession that I had learned nothing from Beckett's typescript.

"Neither Beckett nor I expected as much from it as you did," he said.

"I've been talking to him a lot this week, and we think that although all those extensive inquiries were made at the time, you might find something that was overlooked if you moved to one of the stables where those eleven horses were trained when they were doped. Of course, eight of the horses were sold and have changed stables, which is a pity, but three are still with their original trainers, and it might be best if you could get a job with one of those."

"Yes," I said.

"All right. I'll try all three trainers and see if one of them will take me on. But the trail is very cold by now… and joker number twelve will turn up in a different stable altogether.

There was nothing, I suppose, at Haydock this week? "

"No. Saliva samples were taken from all the runners before the selling 'chase, but the favourite won, quite normally, and we didn't have the samples analysed. But now that you've spotted that those five courses must have been chosen deliberately for their long finishing straights we will keep stricter watches there than ever. Especially if one of those eleven horses runs there again."

"You could check with the racing calendar to see if any has been entered," I agreed.

"But so far none of them has been doped twice, and I can't see why the pattern should change."

A gust of bitter wind blew down the gully, and he shivered. The little stream, swollen with yesterday's rains, tumbled busily over its rocky bed. October whistled to his dog, who was sniffing along its banks.

"By the way," he said, shaking hands, 'the vets are of the opinion that the horses were not helped on their way by pellets or darts, or anything shot or thrown. But they can't be a hundred per cent certain.

They didn't at the time examine all the horses very closely. But if we get another one I'll see they go over every inch looking for punctures. "

"Fine." We smiled at each other and turned away. I liked him. He was imaginative and had a sense of humour to leaven the formidable big-business-executive power of his speech and manner. A tough man, I thought appreciatively: tough in mind, muscular in body, unswerving in purpose: a man of the kind to have earned an earldom, if he hadn't inherited it.

Sparking Plug had to do without his bucket of water that night and again the following morning. The box driver set off to Leicester with a pocketful of hard- earned money from the lads and their instructions to back the horse to win; and I felt a traitor.

Inskip's other horse, which had come in the box too, was engaged in the third race, but the novice 'chase was not until the fifth race on the card, which left me free to watch the first two races as well as Sparks' own. I bought a race card and found a space on the parade ring rails, and watched the horses for the first race being led round.

Although from the form books I knew the names of a great many trainers they were still unknown to me by sight; and accordingly, when they stood chatting with their jockeys in the ring, I tried, for interest, to identify some of them. There were only seven of them engaged in the first race: Owen, Cundell, Beeby, Cazalet, Humber. Humber? What was it that I had heard about Humber? I couldn't remember. Nothing very important, I thought.

Humber 's horse looked the least well of the lot, and the lad leading him round wore unpolished shoes, a dirty raincoat, and an air of not caring to improve matters. The jockey's jersey, when he took his coat off, could be seen to be still grubby with mud from a former outing, and the trainer who had failed to provide clean colours or to care about stable smartness was a large, bad-tempered looking man leaning on a thick, knobbed walking stick.

As it happened, Humber 's lad stood beside me on the stand to watch the race.

"Got much chance?" I asked idly.

"Waste of time running him," he said, his lip curling.

"I'm fed to the back molars with the sod."

"Oh. Perhaps your other horse is better, though?" I murmured, watching the runners line up for the start.

"My other horse?" He laughed without mirth.

"Three others, would you believe it? I'm fed up with the whole sodding set up. I'm packing it in at the end of the week, pay or no pay."

I suddenly remembered what I had heard about Humber. The worst stable in the country to work for, the boy in the Bristol hostel had said:

they starved the lads and knocked them about and could only get riffraff to work there.

"How do you mean, pay or no pay?" I asked.

" Humber pays sixteen quid a week, instead of eleven," he said, 'but it's not bloody worth it. I've had a bellyful of bloody Humber. I'm getting out. "

The race started, and we watched Humber 's horse finish last. The lad disappeared, muttering, to lead him away.

I smiled, followed him down the stairs, and forgot him, because waiting near the bottom step was a seedy, black-moustached man whom I instantly recognized as having been in the bar at the Cheltenham dance.

I walked slowly away to lean over the parade ring rail, and he inconspicuously followed. He stopped beside me, and with his eyes on the one horse already in the ring, he said, "I hear that you are hard up."

"Not after today, I'm not," I said, looking him up and down.

He glanced at me briefly.

"Oh. Are you so sure of Sparking Plug?"

"Yeah," I said with an unpleasant smirk.

"Certain." Someone, I reflected, had been kind enough to tell him which horse I looked after: which meant he had been checking up on me. I trusted he had learned nothing to my advantage.

"Hmm."

A whole minute passed. Then he said casually, "Have you ever thought of changing your job… going to another stable?"

"I've thought of it," I admitted, shrugging.

"Who hasn't?"

"There's always a market for good lads," he pointed out, 'and I've heard you're a dab hand at the mucking out. With a reference from Inskip you could get in anywhere, if you told them you were prepared to wait for a vacancy. "

"Where?" I asked; but he wasn't to be hurried. After another minute he said, still conversationally, "It can be very… er… lucrative working for some stables."

"Oh?"

"That is," he coughed discreetly, 'if you are ready to do a bit more than the stable tells you to. "

"Such as?"

"Oh… general duties," he said vaguely.

"It varies. Anything helpful toer the person who is prepared to supplement your income."

"And who's that?"

He smiled thinly.

"Look upon me as his agent. How about it? His terms are a regular river a week for information about the results of training gallops and things like that, and a good bonus for occasional special jobs of a more, er, risky nature."

"It don't sound bad," I said slowly, sucking in my lower lip.

"Can't I do it at Inskip's?"

"Inskip's is not a betting stable," he said.

"The horses always run to win. We do not need a permanent employee in that sort of place. There are however at present two betting stables without a man of ours in them, and you would be useful in either."

He named two leading trainers, neither of whom was one of the three people I had already planned to apply to. I would have to decide whether it would not be more useful to join what was clearly a well-organized spy system, than to work with a once-doped horse who would almost certainly not be doped again.

"I'll think it over," I said.

"Where can I get in touch with you?"

"Until you're on the pay roll, you can't," he said simply.

"Sparking Plug's in the fifth, I see. Well, you can give me your answer after that race. I'll be somewhere on your way back to the stables. Just nod if you agree, and shake your head if you don't. But I can't see you passing up a chance like this, not one of your sort." There was a sly contempt in the smile he gave me that made me unexpectedly wince inwardly.

He turned away and walked a few steps, and then came back.

"Should I have a big bet on Sparking Plug, then?" he asked.

"Oh… er… well… if I were you I'd save your money."

He looked surprised, and then suspicious, and then knowing.

"So that's how the land lies," he said.

"Well, well, well." He laughed, looking at me as if I'd crawled out from under a stone. He was a man who despised his tools.

"I can see you're going to be very useful to us.

Very useful indeed. "

I watched him go. It wasn't from kindheartedness that I had stopped him backing Sparking Plug, but because it was the only way to retain and strengthen his confidence. When he was fifty yards away, I followed him. He made straight for the bookmakers in Tatter- sails and strolled along the rows, looking at the odds displayed by each firm;

but as far as I could see he was in fact innocently planning to bet on the next race, and not reporting to anyone the outcome of his talk with me. Sighing, I put ten shillings on an outsider and went back to watch the horses go out for the race.

Sparking Plug thirstily drank two full buckets of water, stumbled over the second last fence, and cantered tiredly in behind the other seven runners to the accompaniment of boos from the cheaper enclosures. I watched him with regret. It was a thankless way to treat a great-hearted horse.

The seedy, black-moustached man was waiting when I led the horse away to the stables. I nodded to him, and he sneered knowingly back.

"You'll hear from us," he said.

There was gloom in the box going home and in the yard the next day over Sparking Plug's unexplainable defeat, and I went alone to Slaw on Tuesday evening, when Soupy duly handed over another seventy-five pounds. I checked it. Another fifteen new fivers, consecutive to the first fifteen.

"Ta," I said.

"What do you get out of this yourself?"

Soupy's full mouth curled.

"I do all right. You mugs take the risks, I get a cut for setting you up. Fair enough, eh?"

"Fair enough. How often do you do this sort of thing?" I tucked the envelope of money into my pocket.

He shrugged, looking pleased with himself.

"I can spot blokes like you a mile off. Inskip must be slipping, though. First time I've known him pick a bent penny, like. But those darts matches come in very handy… I'm good, see. I'm always in the team. And there's a lot of stables in Yorkshire… with a lot of beaten favourites for people to scratch their heads over."

"You're very clever," I said. He smirked. He agreed.

I walked up the hill planning to light a fuse under TNT. " the high explosive kid.

In view of the black-moustached man's offer I decided to read through Beckett's typescript yet again, to see if the eleven do pings could have been the result of systematic spying. Looking at things from a fresh angle might produce results, I thought, and also might help me make up my mind whether or not to back out of the spying job and go to one of the doped horse's yards as arranged.

Locked in the bathroom I began again at page one. On page sixty-seven, fairly early in the life history of the fifth of the horses, I read "Bought at Ascot Sales, by D. L. Mentiff, Esq." of York for four hundred and twenty guineas, passed on for five hundred pounds to H. Humber of Posset, County Durham, remained three months, ran twice unplaced in maiden hurdles, subsequently sold again, at Doncaster, being bought for six hundred guineas by N. W. Davies, Esq. " of Leeds.

Sent by him to L. Peterson's training stables at Mars Edge, Staffs, remained eighteen months, ran in four maiden hurdles, five novice 'chases, all without being placed. Races listed below. " Three months at Humber 's. I smiled. It appeared that horses didn't stay with him any longer than lads. I ploughed on through the details, page after solid page.

On page ninety-four I came across the following:

" Alamo was then offered for public auction at Kelso, and a Mr. John Arbuthnot, living in Berwickshire, paid three hundred guineas for him.

He sent him to be trained by H. Humber at Posset, County Durham, but he was not entered for any races, and Mr. Arbuthnot sold him to Humber for the same sum. A few weeks later he was sent for resale at Kelso.

This time Alamo was bought for three hundred and seventy-five guineas by a Mr. Clement Smithson, living at Nantwich, Cheshire, who kept him at home for the summer and then sent him to a trainer called Samuel Martin at Malton, Yorkshire, where he ran unplaced in four maiden hurdles before Christmas, (see list attached). "

I massaged my stiff neck. Humber again.

I read on.

On page one hundred and eighty, I read, "Ridgeway was then acquired as a yearling by a farmer, James Green, of Home Farm, Crayford, Surrey, in settlement of a bad debt. Mr. Green put him out to grass for two years, and had him broken in, hoping he would be a good hunter.

However, a Mr. Taplow of Pewsey, Wilts, said he would like to buy him and put him in training for racing. Ridgeway was trained for flat races by Ronald Streat of Pewsey, but was unplaced in all his four races that summer. Mr. Taplow then sold Ridgeway privately to Albert George, farmer, of Bridge Lewes,

Shropshire, who tried to train him himself but said he found he didn't have time to do it properly, so he sold him to a man a cousin of his knew near Durham, a trainer called Hedley Humber. Humber apparently thought the horse was no good, and Ridgeway went up for auction at Newmarket in November, fetching two hundred and ninety guineas and being bought by Mr. P. J. Brewer, of The Manor, Witherby, Lanes. "

I ploughed right on to the end of the typescript, threading my way through the welter of names, but Humber was not mentioned anywhere again.

Three of the eleven horses had been in Humber 's yard for a brief spell at some distant time in their careers. That was all it amounted to.

I rubbed my eyes, which were gritty from lack of sleep, and an alarm clock rang suddenly, clamorously, in the silent cottage. I looked at my watch in surprise. It was already half past six. Standing up and stretching, I made use of the bathroom facilities, thrust the typescript up under my pyjama jacket and the jersey I wore on top and shuffled back yawning to the dormitory, where the others were already up and struggling puffy- eyed into their clothes.

Down in the yard it was so cold that everything one touched seemed to suck the heat out of one's fingers, leaving them numb and fumbling, and the air was as intense an internal shaft to the chest as iced coffee sliding down the oesophagus. Muck out the boxes, saddle up, ride up to the moor, canter, walk, ride down again, brush the sweat off, make the horse comfortable, give him food and water, and go in to breakfast. Repeat for the second horse, repeat for the third, and go in to lunch.

While we were eating Wally came in and told two others and me to go and clean the tack, and when we had finished our tinned plums and custard we went along to the tack room and started on the saddles and bridles. It was warm there from the stove, and I put my head back on a saddle and went solidly asleep.

One of the others jogged my legs and said, "Wake up Clan, there's a lot to do," and I drifted to the surface again. But before I opened my eyes the other lad said, "Oh, leave him, he does his share," and with blessings on his head I sank back into blackness. Four o'clock came too soon, and with it the three hours of evening stables:

then supper at seven and another day nearly done.

For most of the time I thought about Humber's name cropping up three times in the typescript. I couldn't really see that it was of more significance than that four of the eleven horses had been fed on horse cubes at the time of their doping. What was disturbing was that I should have missed it entirely on my first two readings. I realized that I had had no reason to notice the name Humber before seeing him and his horse and talking to his lad at Leicester, but if I had missed one name occurring three times, I could have missed others as well.

The thing to do would be to make lists of every single name mentioned in the typescript, and see if any other turned up in association with several of the horses. An electronic computer could have done it in seconds. For me, it looked like another night in the bathroom.

There were more than a thousand names in the typescript. I listed half of them on the Wednesday night, and slept a bit, and finished them on Thursday night, and slept some more.

On Friday the sun shone for a change, and the morning was beautiful on the moor. I trotted Sparking Plug along the track somewhere in the middle of the string and thought about the lists. No names except Humber's and one other occurred in connection with more than two of the horses. But the one other was a certain Paul J. Adams, and he had at one time or another owned six of them. Six out of eleven. It couldn't be a coincidence. The odds against it were phenomenal. I was certain I had made my first really useful discovery, yet I couldn't see why the fact that P. J. Adams, Esq. " had owned a horse for a few months once should enable it to be doped a year or two later. I puzzled over it all morning without a vestige of understanding.

As it was a fine day, Wally said, it was a good time for me to scrub some rugs. This meant laying the rugs the horses wore to keep them warm in their boxes flat on the concrete in the yard, soaking them with the aid of a hose pipe, scrubbing them with a long-handled broom and detergent, hosing them off again, and hanging the wet rugs on the fence to drip before they were transferred to the warm tack room to finish drying thoroughly. It was an unpopular job, and Wally, who had treated me even more coldly since Sparking Plug's disgrace (though he had not gone so far as to accuse me of engineering it), could hardly conceal his dislike when he told me that it was my turn to do it.

However, I reflected, as I laid out five rugs after lunch and thoroughly soaked them with water, I had two hours to be alone and think. And as so often happens, I was wrong.

At three o'clock, when the horses were dozing and the lads were either copying them or had made quick trips to Harrogate with their new pay packets; when stable life was at its siesta and only I with my broom showed signs of reluctant activity, Patty Tarren walked in through the gate, across the tarmac, and slowed to a halt a few feet away.

She was wearing a straightish dress of soft looking knobbly green tweed with a row of silver buttons from throat to hem. Her chestnut hair hung in a clean shining bob on her shoulders and was held back from her forehead by a wide green band, and with her fluffy eyelashes and pale pink mouth she looked about as enticing an interruption as a hard-worked stable hand could ask for.

"Hullo, Danny boy," she said.

"Good afternoon, miss."

"I saw you from my window," she said.

I turned in surprise, because I had thought October's house entirely hidden by trees, but sure enough, up the slope, one stone corner and a window could be seen through a gap in the leafless boughs. It was, however, a long way off. If Patty had recognized me from that distance she had been using binoculars.

"You looked a bit lonely, so I came down to talk to you."

"Thank you, miss."

"As a matter of fact," she said, lowering the eyelashes, 'the rest of the family don't get here until this evening, and I had nothing to do in that barn of a place all by myself, and I was bored. So I thought I'd come down and talk to you. "

"I see." I leant on the broom, looking at her lovely face and thinking that there was an expression in her eyes too old for her years.

"It's rather cold out here, don't you think? I want to talk to you about something… don't you think we could stand in the shelter of that doorway?" Without waiting for an answer she walked towards the doorway in question, which was that of the hay barn, and went inside.

I followed her, resting the broom against the doorpost on the way.

"Yes, miss?" I said. The light was dim in the barn.

It appeared that talking was not her main object after all.

She put her hands round the back of my neck and offered her mouth for a kiss. I bent my head and kissed her. She was no virgin, October's daughter. She kissed with her tongue and with her teeth, and she moved her stomach rhythmically against mine. My muscles turned to knots. She smelled sweetly of fresh soap, more innocent than her behaviour.

"Well… that's all right, then," she said with a giggle, disengaging herself and heading for the bulk of the bales of hay which half filled the barn.

"Come on," she said over her shoulder, and climbed up the bales to the flat level at the top. I followed her slowly. When I got to the top I sat looking at the hay barn floor with the broom, the bucket, and the rug touched with sunshine through the doorway. On top of the hay had been Philip's favourite play place for years when he was little. and this is a fine time to think of my family, I thought.

Patty was lying on her back three feet away from me. Her eyes were wide and glistening, and her mouth curved open in an odd little smile.

Slowly, holding my gaze, she undid all the silver buttons down the front of her dress to a point well below her waist. Then she gave a little shake so that the edges of the dress fell apart.

She had absolutely nothing on underneath.

I looked at her body, which was pearl pink and slender, and very desirable; and she gave a little rippling shiver of anticipation.

I looked back at her face. Her eyes were big and dark, and the odd way in which she was smiling suddenly struck me as being half furtive, half greedy; and wholly sinful. I had an abrupt vision of myself as she must see me, as I had seen myself in the long mirror in

October's London house, a dark, flashy looking stable boy with an air of deceitfulness and an acquaintance with dirt.

I understood her smile, then.

I turned round where I sat until I had my back to her, and felt a flush of anger and shame spread all over my body.

"Do your dress up," I said.

"Why? Are you impotent after all, Danny boy?"

"Do your dress up," I repeated.

"The party's over."

I slid down the hay, walked across the floor, and out of the door without looking back. Twitching up the broom and cursing under my breath I let out my fury against myself by scrubbing the rug until my arms ached.

After a while I saw her (green dress rebuttoned) come slowly out of the hay barn, look around her, and go across to a muddy puddle on the edge of the tarmac. She dirtied her shoes thoroughly in it, then childishly walked on to the rug I had just cleaned, and wiped all the mud off carefully in the centre.

Her eyes were wide and her face expressionless as she looked at me.

"You'll be sorry, Danny boy," she said simply, and without haste strolled away down the yard, the chestnut hair swinging gently on the green tweed dress.

I scrubbed the rug again. Why had I kissed her? Why, after knowing about her from that kiss, had I followed her up into the hay? Why had I been such a stupid, easily roused, lusting fool? I was filled with useless dismay.

One didn't have to accept an invitation to dinner, even if the appetizer made one hungry. But having accepted, one should not so brutally reject what was offered. She had every right to be angry.

And I had every reason to be confused. I had been for nine years a father to two girls, one of whom was nearly Patty's age. I had taught them when they were little not to take lifts from strangers and when they were bigger how to avoid more subtle snares. And here I was, indisputably on the other side of the parental fence.

I felt an atrocious sense of guilt towards October, for I had had the intention, and there was no denying it, of doing what Patty wanted.