"OK," I said again. "So even supposing that Scientific doesn't crossfire, no one would be vastly surprised if he didn't win."
"No," she agreed. "It would be disappointing but no surprise."
"So," I said, "after that call from our friend just now, all we have to do is ensure he doesn't win on Saturday without making him so ill he gives up on the idea of racing altogether."
She stared at me. "But how?"
"I can think of a number of ways," I said. "How about if he doesn't run in the first place? You could simply not declare him and tell everyone he was lame or something."
"He said the horse had to run," she replied gloomily.
Time to move on to plan B.
"Well, how about a bit of overtraining on Thursday or Friday? Give him too much of a gallop so he's worn out on Saturday."
"But everyone would know," she said.
"Would they really?" I thought she was being overly worried.
"Oh yes, they would," she said. "There are always people watching the horses work. Some of them are from the media, but most are spotters for the bookmaking firms. They know every horse in Lambourn by sight, and they would see all too easily if I gave Scientific anything more than a gentle pipe-opener on Thursday or Friday."
Was there a plan C?
"Can't you make his saddle slip or something?" I asked.
"The girths will be tightened by the assistant starter just before the race starts."
"But can't you go down to the start and do it yourself and just leave them loose?" Was I clutching at straws?
"But the jockey would fall off," she said.
"At least that would stop him from winning," I said with a smile.
"But he might be injured." She shook her head. "I can't do that."
Plan D?
"How about if you cut through the reins just enough so that they break during the race? If the jockey can't steer, then he surely can't win."
"Tell that to Fred Winter," she said.
"What?"
"Fred Winter," she repeated. "He won the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris on Mandarin with no steering, way back in the early sixties. The bit broke, which meant he had no brakes, either. He used his legs, pressing on the sides of the horse to keep it on the figure-eight course. It was an absolutely amazing piece of riding."
"And will this Fred Winter be the jockey on Scientific on Saturday?" I asked.
"No, of course not," she said. "He died years ago."
"Well, in that case, don't you think it's a good idea?"
"What?"
"To make the reins break." God, this was hard work.
"But…"
"But what?" I asked.
"I'd be the laughingstock," she said miserably. "Horses from Kauri House Stables don't go to the races with substandard tack."
"Would you rather be laughed at or arrested for tax evasion?"
It was a cruel thing to say, but it did bring the problems she faced into relative order.
"Thomas is right, dear," my stepfather said, somewhat belatedly entering the conversation.
"So it's agreed, then," I said. "We won't subject Scientific to the green-potato-peel treatment, but we will try and arrange for his reins to break during the race. And we take our chances."
"I suppose so," my mother said reluctantly.
"Right," I said positively. "That's the first decision made."
My mother looked up at me. "And what other decisions do you have in mind?"
"Nothing specific as yet," I said. "But I do have some questions."
She looked back at me with doleful eyes. Why did I think she knew the questions wouldn't be welcome?
"First," I said, "when is your next Value Added Tax return due?"
"I told you I don't pay VAT," my mother said.
"But the stables must have a VAT registration for the other bills, like the horses' feed, the purchase of tack, and all sorts of other stuff. Don't the race entries attract VAT?"
"Roderick canceled our registration," she said.
If Roderick hadn't already been dead, I'd have wrung his bloody neck.
"How about the other tax returns?" I said. "Your personal one and the training-business return. When are they due?"
"Roderick dealt with all that."
"But who has been doing it since Roderick died?" I asked in desperation.
"No one," she said. "But I did manage to do the PAYE return last month on my own."
At least that was something. PAYE, or Pay-As-You-Earn, was the way most UK workers paid their income tax. The tax amount was deducted by their employer out of their paychecks, and paid directly to the Treasury. The non-arrival of the PAYE money was usually the first indication to the tax man that a company was in deep financial trouble. It would have rung serious alarm bells at the tax office, and representatives of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs would have been hammering on the kitchen door long before now.
"Where do you keep your tax papers?" I asked.
"Roderick had them."
"But you must have copies of your tax returns," I implored.
"I expect so," she said. "They might be in one of the filing cabinets in the office."
I was amazed that anyone who was so brilliant at the organization and training of seventy-two racehorses, with all the decisions and red tape that must be involved to satisfy the Rules of Racing, could be so completely hopeless when it came to anything financial.
"Don't you have a secretary?" I asked.
"No," she said. "Derek and I do all the paperwork between us."
Or not, I thought, as the case may be.
I was pretty certain that my mother's individual self-assessment tax return, as for every other self-employed person in the United Kingdom, should have been filed with the tax office by midnight on January 31 at the very latest, along with the payment of any income tax due. Unlike in the United States, where the filing date is April 15 and one is able to file for an extension, in the UK January 31 is the deadline, period.
I looked up at the calendar on the wall above her desk. It was already February 9. There were no exceptions to the deadline, so she would have already incurred a penalty for late filing, to say nothing of the interest for late payment.
I'd checked the tax office website on the Internet. It confirmed that she would have notched up an automatic one-hundred-pound late-filing penalty plus interest on the overdue tax. It also said that she had until the end of February before a five percent surcharge of the tax due was added, on top of the interest.
Very soon now, the Revenue was probably going to start asking difficult questions about my mother's accounts. The time left to sort out the mess was unknown, but it had to be short. Maybe it was already too late and the Revenue would be at her door in the morning.
I wondered about my own tax affairs.
As an employee, I paid my tax as I earned through the PAYE system, which meant I didn't need to complete an annual tax return. The army deducted my tax and National Insurance before it paid the remainder of my salary into my bank account. Mostly they took off my board and lodging costs too, but there hadn't been any of those for a while. Even the army couldn't charge me to stay in a National Health Service hospital.
Sometime soon I should be receiving a tax-free lump sum of nearly a hundred thousand pounds from the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme, although how they could put a value on the loss of a lower leg and foot is anyone's guess. The major from the MOD had taken away my completed AFCS form with a promise that it would be dealt with promptly. That had been nearly three weeks ago now, but I had long learned that anything less than six months was "promptly" as far as army finances were concerned.
Perhaps it might help to keep the tax man's handcuffs from my mother's wrists. But would it be enough? And would it arrive in time?
I searched through my mother's filing cabinets, and eventually I found her previous year's tax return filed under R for Roderick. Where else?
The tax return was a piece of art. It clearly showed that my mother had only minimal personal income, well below that which would have incurred any tax to be paid. It stated that her monthly income was just two hundred pounds from her business, mere pocket money.