Bolt

EIGHT

I telephoned to Wykeham later that Sunday afternoon and listened to the weariness in his voice. His day had been a procession of frustrations and difficulties which were not yet over. The dog-patrol man, complete with dog, was sitting in his kitchen drinking tea and complaining that the weather was freezing. Wykeham was afraid most of the patrolling would be done all night indoors.
‘Is it freezing really?’ I asked. Freezing was always bad news because racing would be abandoned, frosty ground being hard, slippery and dangerous.
‘Two degrees off it.’
Wykeham kept thermometers above the outdoor water taps so he could switch on low-powered battery heaters in a heavy freeze and keep the water flowing. His whole stable was rich with gadgets he’d adopted over the years, like infra-red lights in the boxes to keep the horses warm and healthy.
‘A policeman came,’ Wykeham said. ‘A detective constable. He said it was probably some boys’ prank. I ask you! I told him it was no prank to shoot two horses expertly, but he said it was amazing what boys got up to. He said he’d seen worse things. He’d seen ponies in fields with their eyes gouged out. It was c … c … crazy. I said Cotopaxi was no pony, he was co-favourite for the Grand National, and he said it was b … bad luck on the owner.’
‘Did he promise any action?’
‘He said he would come back tomorrow and take statements from the lads, but I don’t think they know anything. Pete, who looked after Cotopaxi, has been in tears and the others are all indignant. It’s worse for them than having one killed accidentally.’
‘For us all,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘It didn’t help that the slaughterers had so much trouble getting the bodies out. I didn’t watch. I couldn’t. I l … loved both those horses.’
To the slaughterers, of course, dead horses were just so much dogmeat, and although it was perhaps a properly unsentimental way of looking at it, it wasn’t always possible for someone like Wykeham, who had cared for them, talked to them, planned for them and lived through their lives. Trainers of steeplechasers usually knew their charges for a longer span than Flat-race trainers, ten years or more sometimes as opposed to three or four. When Wykeham said he loved a horse, he meant it.
He wouldn’t yet have the same feeling for Kinley, I thought. Kinley, the bright star, young and fizzing. Kinley was excitement, not an old buddy.
‘Look after Kinley,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’ve moved him. He’s in the corner box.’
The corner box, always the last to be used, couldn’t be reached directly from any courtyard but only through another box. Its position was a nuisance for lads, but it was also the most secret and safe place in the stable.
‘That’s great,’ I said with relief, ‘and now, what about tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Plumpton races.’
There was a slight silence while he reorganised his thoughts. He always sent a bunch of horses to go-ahead Plumpton because it was one of his nearest courses, and as far as I knew I was riding six of them.
‘Dusty has a list,’ he said eventually.
‘OK.’
‘Just ride them as you think best.’
‘All right.’
‘Goodnight, then, Kit.’
‘Goodnight, Wykeham.’
At least he’d got my name right, I thought, disconnecting. Perhaps all the right horses would arrive at Plumpton.


I went down there on the train the next morning, feeling glad, as the miles rolled by, to be away from the Eaton Square house. Even diluted by the princess, Litsi and Danielle, an evening spent with Beatrice de Brescou Bunt had opened vistas of social punishment I would as soon have remained closed. I had excused myself early, to openly reproachful looks from the others, but even in sleep I seemed to hear that insistent complaining voice.
When I’d left in the morning, Litsi had said he would himself spend most of the day with Roland after John Grundy had left. The princess and Danielle would occupy Beatrice. Danielle, working evening shifts in her television news company, would have to leave it all to the princess from soon after five-thirty. I had promised to return from Plumpton as soon as possible, but truthfully I was happy to be presented with a very good reason not to, in the shape of a message awaiting me in the changing room. Relayed from the stable manager at Newbury racecourse, the note requested me to remove my car from where I’d left it, as the space was urgently required for something else.
I telephoned to Eaton Square, and as it happened Danielle answered.
I explained about the car. ‘I’ll get a lift from Plumpton to Newbury. I think I’d better sleep at home in Lambourn, though, as I’ve got to go to Devon to race tomorrow. Will you apologise to the princess? Tell her I’ll come back tomorrow night, after racing, if she’d like.’
‘Deserter,’ Danielle said. ‘You sound suspiciously pleased.’
‘It does make sense in terms of miles,’ I said.
‘Tell it to the marines.’
‘Look after yourself,’ I said.
She said, ‘Yes,’ on a sigh after a pause, and put the phone down. Sometimes it seemed that everything was the same between us, and then, on a sigh, it wasn’t. Without much enthusiasm, I went in search of Dusty who had arrived with the right horses, the right colours for me to wear and a poor opinion of the detective constable for trying to question the lads while they were working. No one knew anything, anyway, Dusty said, and the lads were in a mood for the lynching of any prowling stranger. The head lad (not Dusty, who was the travelling head lad) had looked round the courtyards as usual at about eleven on Saturday night, when all had appeared quiet. He hadn’t looked into all the eighty boxes, only one or two whose inmates weren’t well, and he hadn’t looked at either Cascade or Cotopaxi. He’d looked in on Kinley and Hillsborough to make sure they’d eaten their food after racing, and he’d gone home to bed. What more could anyone do, Dusty demanded.
‘No one’s blaming anybody,’ I said.
He said, ‘Not so far,’ darkly, and took my saddle away to put it on the right horse for the first race.
We stage-managed the afternoon between us, as so often, he producing and saddling the horses, I riding them, both of us doing a public relations job on the various owners, congratulating, commiserating, explaining and excusing. We ended with a typical day on two winners, a second, two also rans and a faller, the latter giving me a soft landing and no problems.
‘Thanks, Dusty,’ I said at the end. ‘Thanks for everything.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said suspiciously.
‘I just meant, six races is a busy day for you, and it all went well.’
‘It would have gone better if you hadn’t fallen off in the fifth,’ he said sourly.
I hadn’t fallen off. The horse had gone right down under me, leaving grass stains on its number cloth. Dusty knew it perfectly well.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘thanks, anyway.’
He gave me an unsmiling nod and hurried off: and in essential discord we would no doubt act as a team at Newton Abbot the next day and at Ascot the next, effective but cold.
Two other jockeys who lived in Lambourn gave me a lift back with them to Newbury, and I collected my car from its extended parking there and drove home to my house on the hill.
I lit the log fire to cheer things up a bit, ate some grilled chicken and telephoned to Wykeham.
He’d had another wearing day. The insurers had been questioning his security, the detectives had annoyed all the lads, and the dog-patrol man had been found asleep in the hay barn by the head lad when he arrived at six in the morning. Wykeham had informed Weatherbys, the Jockey Club secretariat, of the horses’ deaths (a routine obligation) and all afternoon his telephone had been driving him mad as one newspaper after another had called up to ask if it were true that they had been murdered.
Finally, he said, the princess had rung to say she’d cancelled her visit to her friends at Newton Abbot and wouldn’t be there to watch her horses, and please would Wykeham tell Kit that yes, she did very definitely want him to return to Eaton Square as soon as he could.
‘What’s going on there?’ Wykeham asked, without pressing interest. ‘She sounds unlike herself.’
‘Her sister-in-law arrived unexpectedly.’
‘Oh?’ He didn’t pursue it. ‘Well done, today, with the winners.’
‘Thanks.’ I waited, expecting to hear that Dusty had said I’d fallen off, but I’d misjudged the old crosspatch. ‘Dusty says Torquil went down flat in the fifth. Were you all right?’
‘Not a scratch,’ I said, much surprised.
‘Good. About tomorrow, then …”
We discussed the next day’s runners and eventually said goodnight, and he called me Kit, which made it twice in a row. I would know things were returning to normal, I thought, when he went back to Paul.
I played back all the messages on my answering machine and found most of them echoes of Wykeham’s: a whole column of pressmen wanted to know my feelings on the loss of Cotopaxi. Just as well, I thought, that I hadn’t been at home to express them.
There was an enquiry from a Devon trainer as to whether I could ride two for him at Newton Abbot, his own jockey having been hurt: I looked up the horses in the form book, telephoned to accept, and peacefully went to bed.
The telephone woke me at approximately two-thirty.
‘Hello,’ I said sleepily, squinting at the unwelcome news on my watch. ‘Who is it?’
‘Kit …’
I came wide awake in a split second. It was Danielle’s voice, very distressed.
‘Where are you?’ I said.
‘I … oh … I need … I’m in a shop.’
‘Did you say shock or shop?’ I said.
‘Oh …’ she gulped audibly. ‘Both, I suppose.’
‘What’s happened? Take a deep breath. Tell me slowly.’
‘I left the studio … ten after two … started to drive home.’ She stopped. She always finished at two, when the studio closed and all the American news-gatherers left for the night, and drove her own small Ford car back to the garage behind Eaton Square where Thomas kept the Rolls.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘A car seemed to be following me. Then I had a flat tyre. I had to stop. I …’ she swallowed again. ‘I found … I had two tyres almost flat. And the other car stopped and a man got out… He was wearing … a hood.’
Jesus Christ, I thought.
‘I ran,’ Danielle said, audibly trying to stifle near-hysteria. ‘He started after me … I ran and ran … I saw this shop … it’s open all night … and I ran in here. But the man here doesn’t like it. He let me use his telephone … but I’ve no money, I left my purse and my coat in the car … and I don’t know … what to do …’
‘What you do,’ I said, ‘is stay there until I reach you.’
‘Yes, but … the man here doesn’t want me to … and somewhere outside … I can’t… I simply can’t go outside. I feel so stupid … but I’m frightened.’
‘Yes, you’ve good reason to be. I’ll come at once. You let me talk to the man in the shop … and don’t worry, I’ll be there in under an hour.’
She said, ‘All right,’ faintly, and in a few seconds an Asian-sounding voice said, ‘Hello?’
‘My young lady,’ I said, ‘needs your help. You keep her warm, give her a hot drink, make her comfortable until I arrive, and I’ll pay you.’
‘Cash,’ he said economically.
‘Yes, cash.’
‘Fifty pounds,’ he said.
‘For that,’ I said, ‘you look after her very well indeed. And now tell me your address. How do I find you?’
He gave me directions and told me earnestly he would look after the lady, I wasn’t to hurry, I would be sure to bring the cash, wouldn’t I, and I assured him again that yes, I would.
I dressed, swept some spare clothes into a bag, locked the house and broke the speed limit to London. After a couple of wrong turns and an enquiry from an unwilling night-walker I found the street and the row of dark shops, with one brightly lit near the end next to the Underground station. I stopped with a jerk on double yellow lines and went inside.
The place was a narrow mini-supermarket with a take-away hot-food glass cabinet near the door, the whole of the rest of the space packed to the ceiling with provisions smelling subtly of spices. Two customers were choosing hot food, a third further down the shop looking at tins, but there was no sign of Danielle.
The Asian man serving, smoothly round of face, plump of body and drugged as to eye, gave me a brief glance as I hurried in, and went back methodically to picking out the customers’ chosen chapatis and samosas with tongs.
‘The young lady,’ I said.
He behaved as if he hadn’t heard, wrapping the purchases, adding up the cost.
‘Where is she?’ I insisted, and might as well as not have spoken. The Asian talked to his customers in a language I’d never heard; took their money, gave them change, waited until they had left.
‘Where is she?’ I said forcefully, growing anxious.
‘Give me the money.’ His eyes spoke eloquently of his need for cash. ‘She is safe.’
‘Where?’
‘At the back of the shop, behind the door. Give me the money.’
I gave him what he’d asked, left him counting it, and fairly sprinted where he’d pointed. I reached a back wall stocked from floor to ceiling like the rest, and began to feel acutely angry before I saw that the door, too, was covered with racks.
In a small space surrounded by packets of coffee I spotted the door knob; grasped it, turned it, pushed the door inwards. It led into a room piled with more stock in brown cardboard boxes, leaving only a small space for a desk, a chair and a single bar electric fire.
Danielle was sitting on the chair, huddled into a big dark masculine overcoat, trying to keep warm by the inadequate heater and staring blindly into space.
‘Hi,’ I said.
The look of unplumbable relief on her face was as good, I supposed, as a passionate kiss, which actually I didn’t get. She stood though, and slid into my arms as if coming home, and I held her tight, not feeling her much through the thick coat, smelling the musky eastern fragrance of the dark material, smoothing Danielle’s hair and breathing deeply with content.
She slowly disengaged herself after a while, though I could have stood there for hours.
‘You must think I’m stupid,’ she said shakily, sniffing and wiping her eyes on her knuckles. ‘A real fool.’
‘Far from it.’
‘I’m so glad to see you.’ It was heartfelt: true.
‘Come on, then,’ I said, much comforted. ‘We’d best be going.’
She slid out of the oversize overcoat and laid it on the chair, shivering a little in her shirt, sweater and trousers. The chill of shock, I thought, because neither the shop nor store-room was actively cold.
‘There’s a rug in my car,’ I said. ‘And then we’ll go and fetch your coat.’
She nodded, and we went up through the shop towards the street door.
‘Thank you,’ I said to the Asian.
‘Did you switch the fire off?’ he demanded.
I shook my head. He looked displeased.
‘Goodnight,’ I said, and Danielle said, ‘Thank you.’
He looked at us with the drugged eyes and didn’t answer, and after a few seconds we left him and crossed the pavement to the car.
‘He wasn’t bad, really,’ Danielle said, as I draped the rug round her shoulders. ‘He gave me some coffee from that hot counter, and offered me some food, but I couldn’t eat it.’
I closed her into the passenger seat, went round and slid behind the wheel, beside her.
‘Where’s your car?’ I said.
She had difficulty in remembering, which wasn’t surprising considering the panic of her flight.
‘I’d gone only two miles, I guess, when I realised I had a flat. I pulled in off the highway. If we go back towards the studio … but I can’t remember …’
‘We’ll find it,’ I said. ‘You can’t have run far.’ And we found it in fact quite easily, its rear pointing towards us down a seedy side-turning as we coasted along.
I left her in my car while I took a look. Her coat and handbag had vanished, also the windscreen wipers and the radio. Remarkable, I thought, that the car itself was still there, despite the two flat tyres, as the keys were still in the ignition. I took them out, locked the doors and went back to Danielle with the bad news and the good.
‘You still have a car,’ I said, ‘but it could be stripped or gone by morning if we don’t get it towed.’
She nodded numbly and stayed in the car again when I found an all-night garage with a tow-truck, and negotiated with the incumbents. Sure, they said lazily, accepting the car’s keys, registration number and whereabouts. Leave it to them, they would fetch it at once, fix the tyres, replace the windscreen wipers, and it would be ready for collection in the morning.
It wasn’t until we were again on our way towards Eaton Square that Danielle said any more about her would-be attacker, and then it was unwillingly.
‘Do you think he was a rapist?’ she said tautly.
‘It seems … well … likely, I’m afraid.’ I tried to picture him. ‘What sort of clothes was he wearing? What sort of hood?’
‘I didn’t notice,’ she began, and then realised that she remembered more than she’d thought. ‘A suit. An ordinary man’s suit. And polished leather shoes. The light shone on them, and I could hear them tapping on the ground … how odd. The hood was … a woollen hat, dark, pulled down, with holes for eyes and mouth.’
‘Horrible,’ I said with sympathy.
‘I think he was waiting for me to leave the studio.’ She shuddered. ‘Do you think he fixed my tyres?’
‘Two flat at once is no coincidence.’
‘What do you think I should do?’
‘Tell the police?’ I suggested.
‘No, certainly not. They think any young woman driving alone in the middle of the night is asking for trouble.’
‘All the same …’
‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘that a friend of a friend of mine – an American – was driving along in part of London, like I was, doing absolutely nothing wrong, when she was stopped by the police and taken to the police station? They stripped her! Can you believe it? They said they were looking for drugs or bombs … there was a terrorist scare on, and they thought she had a suspicious accent. It took her ages to get people to wake up and say she was truly going home after working late. She’s been a wreck ever since, and gave up her job.’
‘It does seem unbelievable,’ I agreed.
‘It happened,’ she said.
‘They’re not all like that,’ I said mildly.
She decided nevertheless to tell only her colleagues in the studio, saying they should step up security round the parked cars.
‘I’m sorry I made you come so far,’ she said, not particularly sounding it. ‘But I didn’t want the police, and otherwise it meant waking Dawson and getting someone there to come for me. I felt shattered … I knew you would come.’
‘Mm.’
She sighed, some of the tension at last leaving her voice. ‘There wasn’t much in my purse, that’s one good thing. Just lipstick and a hair-brush, not much money. No credit cards. I never take much with me to work.’
I nodded. ‘What about keys?’
‘Oh …’
‘The front door key of Eaton Square?’
‘Yes,’ she said, dismayed. ‘And the key to the back door of the studios, where the staff go in. I’ll have to tell them in the morning, when the day shift gets there.’
‘Did you have anything with you that had the Eaton Square address on it?’
‘No,’ she said positively. ‘I cleaned the whole car out this afternoon … I did it really to evade Aunt Beatrice … and I changed purses. I had no letters or anything like that with me.’
‘That’s something,’ I said.
‘You’re so practical.’
‘I would tell the police,’ I said neutrally.
‘No. You don’t understand, you’re not female.’
There seemed to be no reply to that, so I pressed her no further. I drove back to Eaton Square as I’d done so many times before, driving her home from work, and it wasn’t until we were nearly there that I wondered whether the hooded man could possibly have been not a rapist at all, but Henri Nanterre.
On the face of it, it didn’t seem possible, but coming at that particular time it had to be considered. If it in fact were part of the campaign of harassment and accidents, then we would hear about it, as about the horses also: no act of terrorism was complete without the boasting afterwards.
Danielle had never seen Henri Nanterre and wouldn’t have known his general shape, weight, and way of moving. Conversely, nor would he have turned up in Chiswick when he had no reason to know she was in England, even if he knew of her actual existence.
‘You’re very quiet all of a sudden,’ Danielle said, sounding no longer frightened but consequently sleepy. ‘What are you thinking?’
I glanced at her softening face, seeing the taut lines of strain smoothing out. Three or four times we’d known what the other was thinking, in the sort of telepathic jump that sometimes occurred between people who knew each other well, but not on a regular basis, and not lately. I was glad at that moment that she couldn’t read my thoughts, not knowing if she would be more or less worried if she did.
‘Tomorrow evening,’ I said, ‘get Thomas to drive you to work. He’s not going to Devon now … and I’ll fetch you.’
‘But if you’re riding in Devon …’
‘I’ll go down and back on the train,’ I said. ‘I should be back in Eaton Square by nine.’
‘All right, I guess … thanks.’
I parked my car where hers stood usually, and took my bag from the boot, and with Danielle swathed in the rug like an oversized shawl, we walked round to the front door in Eaton Square.
‘I hope you have a key?’ she said, yawning. ‘We’ll look like gypsies if you don’t.’
‘Dawson lent me one.’
‘Good … I’m asleep on my feet.’
We went indoors and quietly up the stairs. When we reached her floor, I put my arms round her, rug and all, again holding her close, but there was no clinging relief-driven response this time, and when I bent to kiss her, it was her cheek she offered, not her mouth.
‘Goodnight,’ I said. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘Yes.’ She would hardly meet my eyes. ‘I truly thank you.’
‘You owe me nothing,’ I said.
‘Oh …’ She looked at me briefly, as if confused. Then she dropped the rug which she had been holding close round her like a defensive stockade, put her arms round my neck and gave me a quick kiss at least reminiscent of better times, even if it landed somewhere on my chin.
‘Goodnight,’ she said lightly, and walked away along the passage to her room without looking back, and I picked up my bag and the rug and went on upstairs feeling a good deal better than the day before. I opened the door of the bamboo room half expecting to find Beatrice snoring blissfully between my sheets, but the linen was smooth and vacant, and I plummeted there into dreamland for a good two hours.