‘Perhaps I ought to know you?’ I suggested.
‘I shouldn’t think so. I don’t go racing.’
‘Er,’ I said mildly, ‘here you’d need to be able to find the racecourses.’
‘Patrick said you were bound to have a map.’
Patrick, I thought, had taken leave of his senses.
She watched my no doubt obvious misgivings with cool amusement.
‘My horseboxes are basic transport,’ I said. ‘No fridges, no cookers, no bathrooms.’
‘They’ve Mercedes engines, haven’t they?’
I nodded, surprised.
‘I’m a good driver.’
I believed her. ‘All right, then,’ I said.
I reflected that whatever she might lack as an investigator, I definitely did need an extra pair of hands for my wheels. What Harve and Jogger would make of her I dreaded to think.
‘Good,’ she said prosaically and after a brief second’s pause asked, ‘Do you take Horse and Hound?’
I fetched that week’s as yet unread copy of the magazine from a side table and handed it to her, watching as she flicked through towards the end, to the many pages of classified advertisements. She came to the horse-transport section where about once a month I advertised Croft Raceways, and tapped the page with a rose-pink fingernail.
‘Patrick wants to know if you’ve seen this?’
I took the magazine from her and read where she’d pointed. In an outlined, single-column-width advertisement were the simple words:
A fourth line gave a telephone number.
I frowned. ‘Yes, I’ve seen that. It’s in the transport ads now and then. Rather pointless, I’ve thought.’
‘Patrick wants me to check it out.’
‘No one,’ I objected, ‘would advertise a smuggling service. It’s impossible.’
‘Why don’t we try?’
I passed her a cordless telephone. ‘Go ahead.’
She pressed the numbers, listened, wrinkled her nose and switched the phone off.
‘Answering machine,’ she reported succinctly. ‘Leave name and number and they’ll get back.’
‘Man or woman?’
‘Man.’
We looked at each other. I didn’t believe there was anything sinister in the advertisement, but I said, ‘Perhaps Patrick Venables could use his muscle on Horse and Hound and find out where that ad comes from.’
She nodded. ‘He’s doing it tomorrow.’
Impressed despite my disbelief I went over to the desk and consulted the chart.
‘I’ve probably got two boxes going to Taunton races tomorrow,’ I told her. ‘My woman driver Pat’s got the flu. You can take her box. It can carry four horses but you’re only likely to have three. You can follow my other box to Taunton so that you arrive at the right place at the right time, and for the pick-up this end I’ll send a man called Dave with you. He knows the stable the horses are going from. After you’ve collected the horses, drop him back at our base and follow the other box from then on.’
‘All right.’
‘It would be better if you didn’t report for work in that car out there.’
She gave me a glimmering smile. ‘You’ll hardly know me in the morning. And what do I call you? Sir?’
‘Freddie will do. And you?’
‘Nina.’
She stood up, tall and composed, every inch the opposite of what I needed. The trip to Taunton, I thought, would be her first and last, especially when it came to cleaning the box after the return home. She shook my hand — her own was firm and dry — and went unhurriedly out to her car. I followed her to the door and watched the scarlet excitement depart with its expensive distinctive Mercedes purr.
No one, I reflected, had mentioned pay. Rose would want to know what I’d agreed. Not even undercover missions for the Jockey Club could be conducted without ubiquitous paperwork.
Sundays were always comparatively quiet, businesswise, with rarely as many as half the fleet on the road. That particular Sunday, the driver shortage posing no problem, Harve, Jogger and Dave could all take their accustomed day off, along with a bunch of others. Most of the drivers liked Saturday and Sunday work as they were paid more for weekends, but I was lucky in general with all of them as a team, as they hated to see work go to rival firms and would drive on their allotted days off to prevent it. According to the law, their hours and compulsory rest periods were strictly set out: I sometimes had difficulty persuading them that I could be prosecuted if they bent the rules too far.
Like most jobs in racing, driving horseboxes was more a way of life than simply a means of earning a living and, as a result, only people who enjoyed it, did it. Stamina was essential, also good humour and adaptability. Brett had been a mistake.
The news of his leaving had spread already through the racing grapevine, and before eleven that morning two applicants had phoned for his job. I turned them both down: one had worked for too many other firms, the other was over sixty, too old already for the intense physical demands and no good as a long-term prospect.
I phoned Harve and told him I’d engaged a temporary woman driver to take Pat’s place until she was well again. She would be doing the Taunton run planned for Pat.
‘Good,’ Harve said, unsuspecting.
So far, the week ahead looked less busy than the one just completed, not a bad thing in the circumstances. I would be able to go to Cheltenham races in spectator comfort, to watch other lucky slobs win the Gold Cup and smash their collarbones.
Jericho Rich on the telephone bounced me out of unprofitable regrets.
‘You got my fillies to Newmarket okay, then,’ he shouted.
‘Yes, Jericho,’ I held the receiver an inch from my ear.
‘I expect you know I checked everything in your office. A good job well done, I’ll say that for you.’
Good grief, I thought. The heavens would fall.
‘I’ve got a daughter,’ he said loudly.
‘Er, yes, I’ve met her at the races.’
‘She’s bought a showjumper, some damned fancy name. Can’t remember it. It’s in France. Send a box for it, will you?’
‘Pleasure, Jericho. When and where from?’
‘She’ll tell you. Give her a buzz. I said I’d pay for the transport if it was you who fetched it, so she’s doing you the honour.’ He laughed, fortissimo but for him almost mellow. ‘Don’t send that driver, though. That one that picked up the hitchhiker.’
‘He’s left,’ I assured him. ‘Didn’t my girls tell you?’
‘Well, yes they did.’ He read out his daughter’s phone number. ‘Give her a buzz now. No time like the present.’
‘Thanks, Jericho.’
I buzzed the daughter as directed and began on the details of the showjumper: age, sex, colour, value, all for the agents who would arrange the paperwork for the horse, and overnight provision for the driver. She sounded straightforward and less fussy than her father, merely asking me to complete the transfer as soon as I could as she needed to practise before the show-jumping season started. She gave me an address and phone number in France and asked if I could arrange for a groom to travel over with the horse.
‘I could provide a good man from here,’ I suggested. ‘One I trust.’
‘Yes. Great. Send the bill to my father.’
I said I would and, to do him justice, Jericho Rich was a prompt payer. Mostly I billed the trainers for the transport of all their runners, the trainers then billing the individual owners, but Jericho always wanted his bills sent direct to himself. Jericho believed trainers would charge him more than they’d paid, all of a piece with his general mistrust of anyone working for him.