I sat at a bar table in the corner with my back to the entrance, though in fact few were arriving: more were leaving after long hours of talk and lunch. I took some ibuprofen, and waited without impatience. I spent hours in my job, sometimes, waiting for predators to pop out of their holes.
Davis Tatum arrived late and out of breath from having apparently walked up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. He wheezed briefly behind my back, then came around into view and lowered his six-feet-three-inch bulk into the chair opposite.
He leaned forward and held out his hand for a shake. I gave him a limp approximation, which raised his eyebrows but no comment.
He was a case of an extremely agile mind in a totally unsuitable body. There were large cheeks, double chins, fat-lidded eyes and a small mouth. Dark, smooth hair had neither receded nor grayed. He had flat ears, a neck like a weight lifter, and a charcoal pin-striped suit straining over a copious belly. He might have difficulty, I thought, in catching sight of certain parts of his own body. Except in the brain-box, nature had dealt him a sad hand.
‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I have some bad news, and I possibly shouldn’t be here talking to you at all, according to how you read Archbold.’
‘Archbold being the dos and don’ts manual for trial lawyers?’
‘More or less.’
‘What’s the bad news, then?’ I asked. There hadn’t been much that was good.
‘Ellis Quint has retracted his “guilty” plea, and has gone back to “not guilty”.’
‘Retracted?’ I exclaimed. ‘How can one retract a confession?’
‘Very easily.’ He sighed. ‘Quint says he was upset yesterday about his mother’s death, and what he said about feeling guilty was misinterpreted. In other words, his lawyers have got over the shock and have had a rethink. They apparently know you have so far not been able to break Ellis Quint’s alibi for the night that last colt was attacked in Northamptonshire, and they think they can therefore get the Bracken colt charge dismissed, despite the Land-Rover and circumstantial evidence, so they are aiming for a complete acquittal, not psychiatric treatment, and, I regret to tell you, they are likely to succeed.’
He didn’t have to tell me that my own reputation would never recover if Ellis emerged with his intact.
‘And Archbold?’
‘If I were the Crown Prosecuting counsel in this case I could be struck off for talking to you, a witness. As you know, I am the senior barrister in the chambers where the man prosecuting Ellis Quint works. I have seen his brief and discussed the case with him. I can absolutely properly talk to you, though perhaps some people might not think it prudent.’
I smiled. ‘Bye bye, then.’
‘I may not discuss with you a case in which I may be examining you as a witness. But of course I will not be examining you. Also, we can talk about anything else. Like, for instance, golf.’
‘I don’t play golf.’
‘Don’t be obtuse, my dear fellow. Your perceptions are acute.’
‘Are we talking about angles?’
His eyes glimmered behind the folds of fat. ‘I saw the report package that you sent to the CPS.’
‘The Crown Prosecution Service?’
‘The same. I happened to be talking to a friend. I said your report had surprised me, both by its thoroughness and by your deductions and conclusions. He said I shouldn’t be surprised. He said you’d had the whole top echelon of the Jockey Club hanging on your every word. He said that, about a year ago, you’d cleared up two major racing messes at the same time. They’ve never forgotten it.’
‘A year last May,’ I said. ‘Is that what he meant?’
‘I expect so. He said you had an assistant then that isn’t seen around anymore. The job I’d like you to do might need an assistant for the leg-work. Don’t you have your assistant nowadays?’
‘Chico Barnes?’
He nodded. ‘A name like that.’
‘He got married,’ I said briefly. ‘His wife doesn’t like what I do, so he’s given it up. He teaches judo. I still see him — he gives me a judo lesson most weeks, but I can’t ask him for any other sort of help.’
‘Pity.’
‘Yes. He was good. Great company and bright.’
‘And he got deterred. That’s why he gave it up.’
I went, internally, very still. I said, ‘What do you mean?’
‘I heard,’ he said, his gaze steady on my face, ‘that he got beaten with some sort of thin chain to deter him from helping you. To deter him from all detection. And it worked.’
‘He got married,’ I said.
Davis Tatum leaned back in his chair, which creaked under his weight.
‘I heard,’ he said, ‘that the same treatment was doled out to you, and in the course of things the Jockey Club mandarins made you take your shirt off. They said they had never seen anything like it. The whole of your upper body, arms included, was black with bruising, and there were vicious red weals all over you. And with your shirt hiding all that you’d calmly explained to them how and why you’d been attacked and how one of their number, who had arranged it, was a villain. You got one of the big shots chucked out.’
‘Who told you all that?’
‘One hears things.’
I thought in unprintable curses. The six men who’d seen me that day with my shirt off had stated their intention of never talking about it. They’d wanted to keep to themselves the villainy I’d found within their own walls; and nothing had been more welcome to me than that silence. It had been bad enough at the time. I didn’t want continually to be reminded.
‘Where does one hear such things?’ I asked.
‘Be your age, Sid. In the clubs… Bucks, the Turf, the RAC, the Garrick… these things get mentioned.’
‘How often… do they get mentioned? How often have you heard that story?’
He paused as if checking with an inner authority, and then said, ‘Once.’
‘Who told you?’
‘I gave my word.’
‘One of the Jockey Club?’
‘I gave my word. If you’d given your word, would you tell me?’
‘No.’
He nodded. ‘I asked around about you. And that’s what I was told. Told in confidence. If it matters to you, I’ve heard it from no one else.’
‘It matters.’
‘It reflects to your credit,’ he protested. ‘It obviously didn’t stop you.’
‘It could give other villains ideas.’
‘And do villains regularly attack you?’
‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘Physically no one’s laid a finger on me since that time.’ Not until yesterday, I thought. ‘If you’re talking about nonphysical assaults… Have you read the papers?’
‘Scurrilous.’ Davis Tatum twisted in his seat until he could call the barman. ‘Tanqueray and tonic, please — and for you, Sid?’
‘Scotch. A lot of water.’
The barman brought the glasses, setting them out on little round white mats.
‘Health,’ Davis Tatum toasted, raising his gin.
‘Survival,’ I responded, and drank to both.
He put down his glass and came finally to the point.
‘I need someone,’ he said, ‘who is clever, unafraid and able to think fast in a crisis.’
‘No one’s like that.’
‘What about you?’
I smiled. ‘I’m stupid, scared silly a good deal of the time and I have nightmares. What you think you see is not what you get.’
‘I get the man who wrote the Quint report.’
I looked benignly at my glass and not at his civilized face.
‘If you’re going to do something to a small child that you know he won’t like,’ I said, ‘such as sticking a needle into him, you first tell him what a brave little boy he is — in the hope that he’ll then let you make a pincushion of him without complaint.’