‘It depends what you risk.’
Hands, I thought. One could risk hands.
‘Good luck, Hotline,’ Ellis said.
It was the owners of two-year-old colts that had the good luck. My telephone jammed and rang nonstop all evening and all night when I got home after the Derby, but the calls were all from people enjoying their shivers and jumping at shadows. The moonlight shone on quiet fields, and no animal, whether colt or two-year-old thoroughbred or children’s pony, lost a foot.
In the days that followed, interest and expectation dimmed and died. It was twelve days after the Derby, on the last night of the Royal Ascot meeting, that the screaming heeby-jeebies re-awoke.
Chapter 4
On the Monday after the Derby, I trailed off on the one-day dig into the overblown reference and, without talking to the lady-employer herself (which would clearly have been counterproductive), I uncovered enough to phone the tight-fisted trainer with sound advice.
‘She wants to get rid of him without risk of being accused of unfair dismissal,’ I said. ‘He steals small things from her house which pass through a couple of hands and turn up in the local antique shop. She can’t prove they were hers. The antique shop owner is whining about his innocence. The lady has apparently said she won’t try to prosecute her houseman if he gets the heck out. Her testimonial is part of the bargain. The houseman is a regular in the local betting shop, and gambles heavily on horses. Do you want to employ him?’
‘Like hell.’
‘The report I’ll write and send to you,’ I told him, ‘will say only, “Work done on recruitment of staff.” You can claim tax relief on it.’
He laughed dryly: ‘Anytime you want a reference,’ he said, pleased, ‘I’ll write you an affidavit.’
‘You never know,’ I said, ‘and thanks.’
I had phoned the report from the car park of a motorway service station on my way home late in the dusky evening, but it was when I reached Pont Square that the day grew doubly dark. There was a two-page fax waiting on my machine and I read it standing in the sitting room with all thoughts of a friendly glass of scotch evaporating into disbelief and the onset of misery.
The pages were from Kevin Mills. ‘I don’t know why you want this list of the great and good,’ he wrote, ‘but for what it’s worth and because I promised, here is a list of the guests entertained by Topline Foods at lunch at Aintree on the day before the Grand National.’
The list contained the name of the angry Lancashire farmer, as was expected, but it was the top of the list that did the psychological damage.
‘Guest of Honor,’ it announced, ‘Ellis Quint.’
All the doubts I’d banished came roaring back with double vigor. Back too came self-ridicule and every defense mechanism under the sun.
I couldn’t, didn’t, couldn’t believe that Ellis could maim — and effectively kill — a child’s pony and three young racehorses. Not Ellis! No! It was impossible.
There had to be dozens of other people who could have learned where to find all four of those vulnerable, unguarded animals. It was stupid to give any weight to an unreliable coincidence. All the same, I pulled my box chart out of a drawer, and in very small letters, as if in that way I could physically diminish the implication, I wrote in each ‘Who knew of victim’s availability’ space the unthinkable words, Ellis Quint.
The ‘motive’ boxes had also remained empty. There was no apparent rational motive. Why did people poke out the eyes of ponies? Why did they stalk strangers and write poison-pen letters? Why did. they torture and kill children and tape-record their screams?
I wrote ‘self-gratification,’ but it seemed too weak. Insanity? Psychosis? The irresistible primordial upsurge of a hunger for pointless, violent destruction?
It didn’t fit the Ellis I knew. Not the man I’d raced against and laughed with and had deemed a close friend for years. One couldn’t know someone that well, and yet not know them at all.
Could one?
No.
Relentless thoughts kept me awake all night, and in the morning I sent Linda Ferns’ check back to her, uncashed.
‘I’ve got no further,’ I wrote. ‘I’m exceedingly sorry.’
Two days later the same check returned.
‘Dear Sid,’ Linda replied, ‘Keep the money. I know you’ll find the thugs one day. I don’t know what you said to Rachel but she’s much happier and she hasn’t had any bad dreams since you came last week. For that alone I would pay you double. Affectionately, Linda Ferns.’
I put the check in a pending file, caught up with paperwork and attended my usual judo training session.
The judo I practiced was the subtle art of self-defense, the shifting of balance that used an attacker’s own momentum to overcome him. Judo was rhythm, leverage and speed; a matter sometimes of applying pressure to nerves and always, in the way I learned, a quiet discipline. The yells and the kicks of karate, the arms slapped down on the padded mat to emphasize aggression, they were neither in my nature nor what I needed. I didn’t seek physical domination. I didn’t by choice start fights. With the built-in drawbacks of half an arm, a light frame and a height of about five feet seven, my overall requirement was survival.
I went through the routines absentmindedly. They were at best a mental crutch. A great many dangers couldn’t be wiped out by an ability to throw an assailant over one’s shoulder.
Ellis wouldn’t leave my thoughts.
I was wrong. Of course I was wrong.
His face was universally known. He wouldn’t risk being seen sneaking around fields at night armed with anything like a machete.
But he was bored with celebrity. Fame was no substitute for danger, he’d said. Everything he had was not enough.
All the same… he couldn’t.
In the second week after the Derby I went to the four days of the Royal Ascot meeting, drifting around in a morning suit, admiring the gleaming coats of the horses and the women’s extravagant hats. I should have enjoyed it, as I usually did. Instead, I felt as if the whole thing were a charade taking illusory place over an abyss.
Ellis, of course, was there every day: and, of course, he sought me out.
‘How’s it going, Hotline?’
‘The Hotline is silent.’
‘There you are, then,’ Ellis said with friendly irony, ‘you’ve frightened your foot merchant off.’
‘Forever, I hope.’
‘What if he can’t help it?’ Ellis said.
I turned my head: looked at his eyes. ‘I’ll catch him,’ I said.
He smiled and looked away. ‘Everyone knows you’re a whiz at that sort of thing, but I’ll bet you—’
‘Don’t,’ I interrupted. ‘Don’t bet on it. It’s bad luck.’
Someone came up to his other elbow, claiming his attention. He patted my shoulder, said with the usual affection, ‘See you, Sid,’ and was drawn away; and I couldn’t believe, I couldn’t, that he had told me why, even if not how.
‘What if he can’t help it?’
Could compulsion lead to cruel, senseless acts?
No…
Yes, it could, and yes, it often did.
But not in Ellis. No, not in Ellis.
Alibis, I thought, seeking for a rational way out. I would find out — somehow — exactly where Ellis had been on the nights the horses had been attacked. I would prove to my own satisfaction that it couldn’t have been Ellis, and I would return with relief to the beginning and admit I had no pointers at all and would never find the thugs for Linda, and would quite happily chalk up a failure.