I was out of my depth. I had no idea what he was talking about; but it began to look as though Sandy, if he had unseated him, had had his reasons.
Joe went on talking. 'You're always decent to me, Alan, you're not like the others. You're my friend-' He put his hand heavily on my arm, pawing, leaning over towards me and giving me the benefit of the full force of his alcoholic breath. The delicate steering of the Lotus reacted to his sudden weight on my arm with a violent swerve towards the curb.
I shook him off. 'For God's sake sit up, Joe, or you'll have us in the ditch,' I said.
But he was too immersed in his own troubles to hear me. He pulled my arm again. There was a lay-by just ahead. I slowed, turned into it, and stopped the car.
'If you don't sit up and leave me alone you can get out and walk,' I said, trying to get through to him with a rough tone.
But he was still on his own track, and weeping noisily now.
'You don't know what it's like to be in trouble,' he sobbed. I resigned myself to listen. The quicker he got his resentments off his chest, I thought, the quicker he would relax and go to sleep.
'What trouble?' I said. I was not in the least interested.
'Alan, I'll tell you because you're a pal, a decent pal.' He put his hand on my knee. I pushed it off.
Amid a fresh burst of tears Joe blurted, 'I was supposed to stop a horse and I didn't, and Sandy lost a lot of money and said he'd get even with me and he's been following me around saying that for days and days and I knew he'd do something awful and he has.' He paused for breath. 'Lucky for me I hit a soft patch or I might have broken my neck. It wasn't funny. And that bloody Sandy,' he choked on the name, 'was laughing. I'll make him laugh on the other side of his bloody face.'
That last sentence made me smile. Joe with his baby face, strong of body perhaps, but weak of character, was no match for the tough, forceful Sandy, more than ten years older and incalculably more self-assured. Joe's bragging, like his whining, sprang from feelings of insecurity. But the beginning of his outburst was something different.
'What horse did you not stop?' I asked. 'And how did Sandy know you were supposed to be going to stop one?'
For a second I thought action would silence him, but after the smallest hesitation he babbled on. The drink was still at the flood. So were the tears.
From the self-pitying, hiccuping, half incoherent voice I learned a sorry enough story. Shorn of blasphemy and reduced to essentials, it was this. Joe had been paid well for stopping horses on several occasions, two of which I had seen myself. But when David Stampe had told his father the Senior Steward about the last one, and Joe had nearly lost his licence, it gave him a steadying shock. The next time he was asked to stop a horse he said he would, but in the event, from understandable nerves, he had not done it thoroughly enough early in the race, and at the finish was faced with the plain knowledge that if he lost the race he would lose his licence as well. He won. This had happened ten days ago.
I was puzzled. 'Is Sandy the only person who has harmed you?'
'He tipped me over the rails-' He was ready to start all over again.
I interrupted. 'It wasn't Sandy, surely, who was paying you not to win?'
'No, I don't think so. I don't know,' he snivelled.
'Do you mean you don't know who was paying you? Ever?'
'A man rang up and told me when he wanted me to stop one, and afterwards I got a packet full of money through the post.'
'How many times have you done it?' I asked.
'Ten,' said Joe, 'all in the last six months.' I stared at him.
'Often it was easy,' said Joe defensively. 'The -'s wouldn't have won anyway, even if I'd helped them.'
'How much did you get for it?'
'A hundred. Twice it was two-fifty.' Joe's tongue was still running away with him, and I believed him. It was big money, and anyone prepared to pay on that scale would surely want considerable revenge when Joe won against orders. But Sandy? I couldn't believe it.
'What did Sandy say to you after you won?' I asked.
Joe was still crying. 'He said he'd backed the horse I beat and that he'd get even with me,' said Joe. And it seemed that Sandy had done that.
'You didn't get your parcel of money, I suppose?'
'No,' said Joe, sniffing.
'Haven't you any idea where they come from?' I asked.
'Some had London postmarks,' said Joe. 'I didn't take much notice.' Too eager to count the contents to look closely at the wrappings, no doubt.
'Well, I said, 'surely now that Sandy has had his little revenge, you are in the clear? Can't you possibly stop crying about it? It's all over. What are you in such a state about?'
For answer Joe took a paper from his jacket pocket and gave it to me.
'You might as well know it all. I don't know what to do. Help me, Alan. I'm frightened.'
In the light of the dashboard I could see that this was true. And Joe was beginning to sober up.
I unfolded the paper and switched on the lights inside the car. It was a single sheet of thin, ordinary typing paper. In simple capital letters, written with a ball-point pen, were five words: BOLINGBROKE, YOU WILL BE PUNISHED.
'Bolingbroke is the horse you were supposed to stop and didn't?'
'Yes.' The tears no longer welled in his eyes.
'When did you get this?' I asked.
'I found it in my pocket, today, when I put my jacket on after I'd changed. Just before the fifth race. It wasn't there when I took it off.'
'And you spent the rest of the afternoon in the bar, in a blue funk, I suppose,' I said.
'Yes- and I went back there while you took Mr Tudor to Brighton. I didn't think anything was going to happen to me because of Bolingbroke, and I've been frightened ever since he won. And just as I was thinking it was all right Sandy pushed me over the rails and then I found this letter in my pocket. It isn't fair.' The self-pity still whined in his voice.
I gave him back the paper.
'What am I to do?' said Joe.
I couldn't tell him, because I didn't know. He had got himself into a thorough mess, and he had good reason to be afraid. People who manipulated horses and jockeys to that extent were certain to play rough. The time lag of ten days between Bolingbroke's win and the arrival of the note could mean, I thought, that there was a cat-and-mouse, rather than a straight forward, mentality at work. Which was little comfort to offer Joe.
Apart from some convulsive hiccups and sniffs, Joe seemed to have recovered from his tears, and the worst of the drunkenness was over. I switched off the inside lights, started the car up, and pulled back on the road. As I had hoped, Joe soon went to sleep. He snored loudly.
Approaching Dorking, I woke him up. I had some questions to ask.
'Joe, who is that Mr Tudor I took to Brighton? He knows you.'
'He owns Bolingbroke,' said Joe. 'I often ride for him.'
I was surprised. 'Was he pleased when Bolingbroke won?' I asked.
'I suppose so. He wasn't there. He sent me ten per cent afterwards, though, and a letter thanking me. The usual thing.'
'He hasn't been in racing long, has he?' I asked.
Topped up about the same time you did,' said Joe, with a distinct return to his old brash manner. 'Both of you arrived with dark sun-tans in the middle of winter.'
I had come by air from the burning African summer to the icy reception of October in England: but after eighteen months my skin was as pale as an Englishman's. Tudor's, on the other hand, remained dark.
Joe was sniggering. 'You know why Mr Clifford bloody Tudor lives at Brighton? It gives him an excuse to be sunburnt all the year round. Touch of the old tar, really.'
After that I had no compunction in turning Joe out at the bus stop for Epsom. Unloading his troubles on me seemed, for the present at least, to have restored his ego.