I didn’t actually agree with my grandfather, as gambling surely involved free choice, but it was an opinion that I knew was held by many of those with whom we did daily business.
“So what are you going to do about it?” Larry demanded.
“About what?” I asked.
“Getting even.”
“I’m not sure yet. But first, I’m going to find out whose orders those thugs were following. And, Larry,” I said, looking him straight in the eye, “no more little games. Understand?”
“Why are you being so bloody self-righteous all of a sudden?” he said.
“Because I recognize when not to poke a hornet’s nest with a stick. Let us wait and bide our time, and let’s not get stung again in the meantime.”
“OK,” he said with resignation, “I suppose so.”
Larry wasn’t happy. He wanted to lash out at those who had hurt both his body and his pride. But lashing out at a great big grizzly bear would simply result in another claw swipe to the head.
Getting even required far more cunning than that.
16
Mr. John Smith, or whoever, was waiting for me next to my car in the Uttoxeter racetrack parking lot at the end of the day.
“Haven’t you got anything better to do than hang round in racetrack parking lots?” I asked him sarcastically.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he said, ignoring me.
“How very observant of you,” I replied.
“Don’t you be funny with me,” he said. “Your friend is back from holiday tomorrow, and I want the microcoder.”
“I don’t know what time she lands,” I said. “I’ll call you when I’ve heard from her.”
“Make sure you do,” he said threateningly.
“You should be nice to me,” I said, “or you won’t get it back at all.”
“Watch it,” he said with real menace.
“Are you threatening me?” I asked.
“You’d better believe it,” he said.
“Well, I must warn you, I don’t respond well to threats.”
“Take my advice, Mr. Talbot,” he said, “respond to this one.”
Gone was the patient good humor of last Wednesday afternoon. Mr. John Smith, I imagined, was under pressure to get results.
He suddenly turned and walked away across the parking lot. I tried to see where he went, but I lost sight of him amongst the departing crowd, and I couldn’t tell if it was the dark blue Ford from the rest area that he climbed into.
“What was all that about?” asked Luca, who had been silently watching the exchange. Betsy had been standing next to him throughout, and her eyes were now wide with surprise and inquisition.
“Nothing,” I said, and started to load the equipment into the car.
“It didn’t look like nothing to us,” Luca said.
I looked him in the eye, and then shot a quick glance at Betsy, hoping Luca would get the message that I didn’t want to discuss the matter within her hearing.
“Just who was that man?” said Betsy. “He didn’t seem very nice.”
“It was nothing,” I said again. “He wants something I have, and we have been negotiating about the price. That’s all.”
Luca looked at me with disbelief showing all over his face, but he too glanced briefly at Betsy, telling me that he did indeed understand not to discuss the matter further with her there. Betsy, meanwhile, had not got the same message.
“What?” she said.
“What ‘what’?” I asked.
“What have you got that he wants?” she persisted.
“Nothing much,” I said. “A type of television remote. Forget it.”
She looked like she was about to ask me another question when Luca interrupted her thought process. “Where do you want to go for dinner tonight, Betsy?” he said.
“What?” she said angrily, turning towards him.
“Where shall we go for dinner tonight?” he repeated.
“We’re going to my mother’s,” she said sharply.
“Oh yes,” said Luca. “I forgot.”
He winked at me as we climbed into the car. Luca was nobody’s fool, he forgot nothing.
Within ten minutes I could see in the rearview mirror that Betsy was again listening to her iPod and dozing with her head against the window.
“Betsy, please, could you pass me a tissue?” I asked fairly quietly.
She didn’t move.
Luca began to turn around.
“Leave her,” I said to him.
“So was this TV remote thing that the man wanted that RFID writer you showed me?” Luca asked me quietly.
“Yes,” I said. “He calls himself John Smith, but I very much doubt that’s his real name. He also says he’s working for the Australian Racing Board.”
“Why don’t you just give it to him, then?” Luca said.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “For some reason I don’t altogether trust him, so I made up a story about giving it to a friend who had then gone on holiday.”
“Nice one,” said Luca sarcastically. “Where to?”
“Greece, I think,” I said. “I can’t really remember. I told him she was back on Sunday, that’s tomorrow.”
“She?” he said, almost laughing. “So where did the RFID writer come from in the first place?”
“I was given it,” I said.
“Who by?” he asked.
“A man from Australia.”
“Not John Smith?” he said.
“No. Another man from Australia.”
“Hence the Australian Racing Board’s interest in it?”
“Exactly.”
“So who was this other man from Australia?” Luca asked persistently. I began to wish we had never started this.
“Just a man,” I said evasively.
“So a mystery man from Australia just gave you a device for writing RFIDs and now the Australian Racing Board wants it back?”
It sounded implausible even to me.
“Yes,” I said.
“But is it theirs?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you ask the mystery man who gave it to you?”
“I can’t,” I said. “He’s gone away.”
“Back to Australia?”
“Not exactly,” I replied. Farther than that, I thought.
“So are you going to give it to the man in the parking lot, this John Smith?” Luca asked.
“I might,” I said. “What do you think I should do?”
“Well, it’s not yours, is it? So why not give it to him? And I tend to think that next time he comes asking, you might just get another dose of fists and steel toe caps if you refuse. He seemed quite determined.”
“Yes, you’re probably right,” I said. “But there’s still something about him I don’t like. And I feel that giving up the microcoder is like giving up my trump card.”
“ ‘Microcoder’?” Luca said.
“That’s what the man calls it. But I know my father called it a ‘chip writer.’”
“Your father?” Luca said surprised. “I thought your father was dead.”
“He is,” I said without further elaboration. I’d forgotten that I hadn’t told Luca that the man murdered at Ascot had been my father. As far as Luca was concerned, my father had always been dead, and he knew I had been raised from babyhood by my grandparents.
“So how come your father knew about this microcoder thing?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” I said, trying to close the discussion.
“It’s a long journey,” he said.
“Yeah, well, not long enough.”
“So what’s next?” said Luca.
“Days off tomorrow and Monday, then Towcester on Tuesday evening,” I said.
“No,” he said, irritated.“I meant what’s next with this microcoder thing?”
“How difficult would it be to make another one exactly the same?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “As far as I remember, it’s just a radio transmitter that concentrates the radio signal at a point where you would put the RFID. It didn’t appear that sophisticated.”
“Could you make another one?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said slowly.
“I don’t want you to,” I added quickly. “I just wondered if you could.”