In his rubber-face.
CHAPTER TEN
This time I didn't waste my precious advantage. I sprang straight at him and chopped with all my strength at the wrist of the hand that held the syringe.
A direct hit. The hand flew backwards, the fingers opened, and the syringe spun away through the air.
I kicked his shin and punched him in the stomach, and when his head came forward I grabbed hold of it and swung him with a crash against the wall.
Buckram kicked up a fuss and stamped around loose, as rubber-face had not attempted to put the headcollar on. When rubber-face rushed me with jabbing fists I caught hold of his clothes and threw him against Buckram, who snapped at him with his teeth.
A muffled sound came through the rubber, which I declined to interpret as an appeal for peace. Once away from the horse he came at me again, shoulders hunched, head down, arms stretching forwards. I stepped straight into his grasp, ignored a bash in my short ribs, put my arm tight round his neck, and banged his head on the nearest wall. The legs turned to latex to match the face, and the lids palely shut inside the eyeholes. I gave him another small crack against the wall to remove any lingering doubts, and stood back a pace. He lay feebly in the angle between floor and wall, one hand twisting slowly forwards and backwards across the straw.
I tied up Buckram, who by some miracle had not pushed his way out of the unbolted door and roused the neighbourhood, and in stepping away from the tethering ring nearly put my foot right down on the scattered syringe. It lay under the manger, in the straw, and had survived undamaged through the rumpus.
Picking it up I tossed it lightly in my hand and decided that the gifts of the gods should not be wasted. Pulling up the sleeve of rubber-face's black jersey, I pushed the needle firmly into his arm and gave him the benefit of half the contents. Prudence, not compassion, stopped me from squirting in the lot: it might be that what the syringe held was a flattener for a horse but curtains for a man, and murdering was not going to help.
I pulled off rubber-face's rubber face. Underneath it was Carlo. Surprise, surprise.
The prizes of war now amounted to one rubber mask, one half empty syringe, and one bone-breaking truncheon. After a slight pause for thought I wiped my fingerprints off the syringe, removed Carlo's gloves, and planted his all over it; both hands. A similar liberal sprinkling went on to the truncheon: then, using the gloves to hold them with, I took the two incriminating articles up to the house and hid them temporarily in a lacquered box under a dustsheet in one of the ten unused bedrooms.
From the window on the stairs on the way down I caught an impression of a large pale shape in the drive near the gate. Went to look, to make sure. No mistake; the Mercedes.
Back in Buckram's box, Carlo slept peacefully, totally out. I felt his pulse, which was slow but regular, and looked at my watch. Not yet three thirty. Extraordinary.
Carrying Carlo to the car looked too much of a chore, so I went and fetched the car to Carlo. The engine started with a click and a purr, and made too little noise in the yard even to disturb the horses. Leaving the engine running I opened both rear doors and lugged Carlo in backwards. I had intended to do him the courtesy of the back seat, since he had done as much for me, but he fell limply to the floor. I bent his knees up, as he lay on his back, and gently shut him in.
As far as I could tell no one saw our arrival at the Forbury Inn. I parked the Mercedes next to the other cars near the front door, switched off the engine and the side lights, and quietly went away.
By the time I had walked the near mile home, collected the rubber mask from Buckram's box and taken off his headcollar, and dismantled the electronic eye and stowed it in the cupboard, it was too late to bother with going to bed. I slept for an hour or so more on the sofa and woke up feeling dead tired and not a bit full of energy for the first day of the races.
Alessandro arrived late, on foot, and worried.
I watched him, first through the office window and then from the owners' room, as he made his way down into the yard. He hovered in indecision in bay four, and with curiosity overcoming caution, made a crablike traverse over to Buckram's box. He unbolted the top half of the door, looked inside, and then bolted the door again. Unable from a distance to read his reaction, I walked out of the house into his sight without appearing to take any notice of him.
He removed himself smartly from bay four and pretended to be looking for Etty in bay three, but finally his uncertainty got the better of him and he turned to come and meet me.
'Do you know where Carlo is?' he asked without preamble.
'Where would you expect him to be?' I said.
He blinked. 'In his room- I knock on his door when I am ready- but he wasn't there. Have you- have you seen him?'
'At four o'clock this morning,' I said casually. 'He was fast asleep in the back of your car. I imagine he is still there.'
He turned his head away as if I'd punched him.
'He came, then,' he said, and sounded hopeless.
'He came,' I agreed.
'But you didn't- I mean- kill him?'
'I'm not your father,' I said astringently. 'Carlo got injected with some stuff he brought for Buckram.'
His head snapped back and his eyes held a fury that was for once not totally directed at me.
'I told him not to come,' he said angrily. 'I told him not to.'
'Because Buckram could win for you next week?'
'Yes- no- You confuse me.'
'But he disregarded you,' I suggested, 'And obeyed your father?'
'I told him not to come,' he repeated.
'He wouldn't dare disobey your father,' I said dryly.
'No one disobeys my father,' he stated automatically and then looked at me in bewilderment. 'Except you,' he said.
'The knack with your father,' I explained, 'is to disobey within the area where retaliation becomes progressively less profitable, and to widen that area at every opportunity.'
'I don't understand.'
'I'll explain it to you on the way to Doncaster,' I said.
'I am not coming with you,' he said stiffly. 'Carlo will drive me in my own car.'
'He'll be in no shape to. If you want to go to the races I think you'll find you either have to drive yourself or come with me.'
He gave me an angry stare and didn't admit he couldn't drive. But he couldn't resist the attraction of the races, either, and I had counted on it.
'Very well. I will come with you.'
After we had ridden back from Racecourse side with the first lot I told him to talk to Margaret in the office while I changed into race-going clothes, and then I drove him up to the Forbury Inn for him to do the same.
He bounded out of the Jensen almost before it stopped rolling and wrenched open one of the Mercedes' rear doors. Inside the car a hunched figure sitting on the back seat showed that Carlo was at least partially awake, if not a hundred per cent receptive of the Italian torrent of abuse breaking over him.
I tapped Alessandro on the back and when he momentarily stopped cursing, said, 'If he feels anything like I did after similar treatment, he will not be taking much notice. Why don't you do something constructive, like getting ready to go to the races?'
'I'll do what I please,' he said fiercely, but the next minute it appeared that what pleased him was to change for the races.
While he was indoors, Carlo made one or two remarks in Italian which stretched my knowledge of the language too far. The gist, however, was clear. Something to do with my ancestors.
Alessandro reappeared wearing the dark suit he had first arrived in, which was now a full size too large. It made him look even thinner, and a good deal younger, and almost harmless. I reminded myself sharply that a lowered guard invited the uppercut, and jerked my head for him to get into the Jensen.