I climbed yet again into the cab. The rolled up horse rug still bore the imprint of Ogden’s head and there was an unappealing stain halfway along the seat, threatening action on the morrow. Damn the man, I thought.
Brett had left the key in the ignition, another taboo in my book. I stepped over into the front compartment and removed the key ring, checking that at least the brakes were on and all but the cabin lights were off. Finally, switching off those interior lights also I jumped down from the passenger door, locking it behind me.
The front passenger door and the driver’s door both locked with the same key that started the engine, a large complicated key supplied by the manufacturers. I locked the driver’s door — Brett hadn’t — and with the second more ordinary key on the ring locked the grooms’ door. A third key locked the small compartment under the dashboard that contained the mobile telephone power switch and various documents, which I’d checked and found secure.
I walked again right round the box, making a last inspection. Everything seemed as it should be. The two ramps for horses were up and bolted. The five doors for humans, two for the front seats, three for the attendants, were similarly immovable. The flap over the intake to the diesel tanks, fastened by the fourth and last key on the keyring, was proof against siphoning thieves.
Feeling all the same uneasy I went back to the house and locked the back door behind me, which I didn’t do always. I stretched out a hand to switch off the outside lights and then changed my mind and left them on.
The fleet usually spent the night inside a large brick-walled converted farmyard, the wide strong entrance gates padlocked. The nine-box standing alone on my tarmac seemed unaccustomedly vulnerable, even though trucks of that size were seldom stolen. There were too many identity numbers engraved on too many parts, quite apart from the name CROFT RACEWAYS painted in about six places, the whole thing hardly inconspicuous for anyone trying to avoid notice.
I reheated the old stew, sloshed some red wine into it for excitement and ate the result while leaving the sitting room curtains open so that I could see the horsebox all the time.
Absolutely nothing happened. My unease slowly abated, and I put down its existence simply to the fact of Ogden’s demise.
I made and received a few more telephone calls, checking particularly with my senior driver that all the other boxes were back at the farm. The rest of the day’s journeys, it seemed, had for once gone uneventfully to plan: no mix-ups over time, no engine troubles, no equipment or attendants left behind. All the drivers had filled in their log sheets and popped them as requested into the letter-box of the office. The padlocks were on the gates. No keys were anywhere accessible. Despite the dead passenger, the overall message I received was that the boss could relax and go to bed.
The boss, in the end, did just that, though from my bedroom, which was over the sitting-room, I still had a clear view of the horsebox out under the lights. I left the curtains wide open and although I never slept with them fully closed I nevertheless woke several times because of the continuing unusual brightness outside. At about three in the morning I became suddenly fully alert, disturbed by more than plain light. Disturbed by a moving flash across the ceiling, indistinct, like sheet lightning, seen through my eyelids.
The weather had been mild recently, though it was still early March, but it seemed to me that the temperature had dropped ten degrees in the past few hours. In bare feet and sleeping shorts I stood up and went to the window, shivering.
At first sight nothing seemed changed. Shrugging, I half turned to return to the warm bed and then stopped stock-still in serious alarm.
The grooms’ door, through which we’d all climbed, was slightly open, not securely locked, as I’d left it.
Open.
I stared hard, but there was no mistake. There was a black line of shadow where the door no longer fitted flat and snugly into position. The flash of light I’d seen must have been a reflection from its window as the door had been opened.
Without considering clothes, I sprinted headlong downstairs and along to the back door, unlocking it, throwing my feet into gumboots and snatching an old raincoat from a peg. Trying to fit my arms into its sleeves I ran across the tarmac and pulled the door wide.
There was a figure inside there, in black, as surprised to see me as I to see him. At first he had his back towards me, then when he whirled round with a fierce exclamation, more an explosion of escaping breath than an actual word, I saw that his head was covered with a black hood, his eyes alive through holes, the cliché disguise of robbers and terrorists.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I yelled at him, trying myself crazily to climb up after him. Stupid thing to do in gumboots: the stepholes weren’t designed for their clumsy width.
Black-mask snatched up the rolled horse rug, gave it a fast shake to open its folds and threw it over me while I was still halfway up. I slid off the toe-holds, stepped back unbalanced into a void and landed in a heap on the tarmac. The black figure, dimly seen, jumped over onto the driver’s seat, unlatched the door on that side, leaped athletically to the ground and ran for the shadows, lithe and scudding.
Perhaps in trainers I could have made it a contest. In gumboots and an unbelted raincoat still only half on, it was hopeless. I stood up disgustedly, disentangling myself from the horse rug, fastening the raincoat belatedly and listening in vain for any sound of departing footsteps.
None of it made sense, nor did standing around shivering in inappropriate clothes in the middle of the night. There was nothing worth stealing in the horsebox save perhaps the radio or phone, but the black figure hadn’t seemed to be attacking either. He hadn’t in fact seemed to be doing anything in particular, when I looked back to my first sight of him, but simply standing in the cab with his back to me. There had been dust and streaks of dirt on his clothes. As far as I could remember he hadn’t been carrying anything. No tools, not even a torch. If he’d opened the grooms’ door with either a key or a lock-pick, he must have put it in a pocket.
The keyhole of the grooms’ door was in the handle itself. There was no key in the lock, nor, when I looked, any obvious scratches or signs of force or tampering.
Cold and cross, I threw the horse rug back into the cab, shut the grooms’ door and the driver’s side door and went back to the house to fetch the keys again to relock them.
Out of respect for my carpets I slid my feet out of the gumboots and padded through the hall and across the sitting-room to the desk, not bothering to switch on any lights in there owing to being able to see perfectly well because of the glow outside. I retrieved the keys from the desk drawer, retraced my steps, resumed the gumboots and clomped back towards the wheels.
Coming close, I saw without belief that there was a black moving shadow again inside the cab. Monstrous, I thought, and what in God’s name could he want? He was standing behind the driver’s seat, feeling forward into the storage shelf that spread across the whole width of the cab high and above the front seats, projecting out over the windscreen. The spacious shelf, common to all of my fleet, was used by the drivers and attendants to stow their personal belongings, often changes of clothing and occasionally a sleeping-bag and pillow. There was a full-length mattress installed for the use of several of the drivers who slept there habitually on overnight stops, preferring it to cheap lodgings. Brett had told me he expected better. Your own choice, I assured him.
The busy figure in the cab saw me coming and was out and away again before I could reach him. I ran in his wake sluggishly, as if through treacle, my bare feet half-sliding out of the boots at every stride. He headed down the drive and seemed to melt into the shadows of the trees by the exit to the road.