Sophie just couldn’t believe it.
“Are you absolutely sure?” she asked.
I nodded. “I found out most of it yesterday,” I said. “When I went to see her.”
“Did she tell you all this?” Sophie asked with a degree of skepticism.
“Yes,” I said.
“But how? She’s losing her marbles. Most days, she can’t remember what she had for breakfast.”
“She was quite lucid when I spoke with her yesterday,” I said.
“Surprisingly so, in fact. She couldn’t really remember who you were, but there was nothing much wrong with her memory of the events of thirty-six years ago.”
“Was she sorry?” Sophie asked.
“No, not really,” I said. “I think that’s what I found the hardest to bear.”
We sat together silently in the car for some while.
All around us were happy families: mums and dads with their children, running up and down the hills, chasing their dogs and flying their kites in the wind. All the things that normal people do on a Sunday afternoon.
The horrors were only inside the car, and in our minds.
22
On Monday morning, I picked up Luca and Duggie early from the Hilton Hotel parking lot at Junction 15 on the M40 motorway, and the three of us set off for the Bangor-on-Dee races with happy hearts but with mischief in mind.
The bruises on my abdomen, inflicted by fists and steel toe caps at the Kempton Park races, had finally begun to fade, but the fire of revenge still burned bright in my belly. I had told Larry Porter that I would get even with the bastard who had ordered the beatings, and today was going to be my day.
“Did you check with Larry?” I said to Luca. “Has he got the stuff?”
“Relax,” Luca said to me. “Don’t worry. Larry will be there in good time.”
“Did you speak to any of your friends?” I asked Duggie. “To remind them?”
“All OK,” he replied. “As Luca said, relax, everything is fine.”
I hoped he was right.
We arrived at the racetrack early, and I parked in one of the free parking lots. I went to pay the fee at the bookmakers’ badge entrance while Luca and Duggie unloaded the equipment and pulled it through to the betting ring.
“Where’s the bloody grandstand?” said Duggie, looking around.
I laughed. “There isn’t one.”
“You’re putting me on,” he said.
“No,” I said. “There really aren’t any grandstands at Bangor.”
“How do the punters see the racing, then?” he asked.
“It’s a natural grandstand,” I said. “The people stand on the hill to watch the racing.” The ground fell away down towards the track, giving ample room for a good view of the horses.
“I’ve seen it all now,” he said.
“No, you haven’t,” I said. “In southern Spain, they race along a beach, with the crowd wearing swimming trunks and sitting under sun umbrellas. It’s proper racing with starting stalls, betting, the lot. It even gets TV coverage.”
“And in St. Moritz, in Switzerland,” Luca said, “every year they race on a frozen lake. I’ve seen it. It’s amazing. But there are no swimming trunks, though, more like fur coats: it’s midwinter.”
“They race on snow in Russia too,” I said. “And back in the eighteen hundreds, they used to have racing right along the frozen Moscow River-actually on the ice.”
“Then why do they cancel racing here whenever it snows?” Duggie asked.
“Good question,” I said. “Obviously, the wrong kind of snow.”
We giggled. But it was nervous laughter.
We set up our pitch, and Luca commented favorably on the new name on our board. I had spent the previous evening painting over the TRUST TEDDY TALBOT slogan and had replaced it with, it had to be said, some pretty poorly painted white letters saying simply TALBOT AND MANDINI.
“I’ll have to change the wording on our tickets as well,” Luca said. “I’ll do it now.”
He set to work while I went to the Gents’. The nerves were clearly beginning to get to me.
“There’s a public pay phone on the wall round there,” I said when I came back. I pointed down the side of the building between the seafood bar and the Gents’.
“I’ll have to be making a call to my granny, then, at the appropriate time,” said Luca, smiling.
“No way,” I said. “I’ll need you here, on the pitch.”
“What’s the problem?” Duggie said.
“I don’t want anyone being able to use the public pay phone when the mobiles stop working,” I said.
“That’s easy,” said Duggie. “I’ll go and fix it.” And off he went before I had a chance to stop him.
He was back in a couple of minutes.
“All done,” he said. “No one’s going to use that phone today.”
Luca and I looked at each other.
“What did you do?” I asked Duggie.
“What do you think?” he said. “I broke it. Then I went into the office and complained that the phone wouldn’t work. They’ve put an OUT OF ORDER sign on it now.”
I laughed. “Well done.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But they offered me the use of the secretary’s phone instead if it were urgent like.”
“Ah,” I said. I didn’t want anyone using the secretary’s phone either.
“It’s simple,” said Duggie. “I got the secretary’s phone number, so I get a mate to call it at the right time and then not hang up. It will tie up the line so no one can call in or out on it. In fact, I’ll get a few of my mates to all call just in case they have more than one line on that number. That’ll tie them all up.”
“But won’t your mates’ numbers show up on caller ID?” I said. “I don’t want them traced.”
“So I’ll get my mates to withhold their numbers, or they can call from the pay phones in Wycombe,” he said. “It’s dead easy.”
“OK,” I said. “Fix it.”
Larry Porter arrived and began to set up his pitch alongside ours.
“Have you got the equipment?” I asked him.
“Yes. All set,” Larry said. “Bill’s coming separately, later.”
Bill, I assumed, was the man I had seen at Ascot in the white shirt and fawn chinos who had placed the “two monkeys” bet with me when the Internet and phones had gone down just before the Gold Cup.
The maiden hurdle was the fifth race of the afternoon, and I became more and more nervous as the clock ticked around to four-thirty, race time. Monday-afternoon racing anywhere was always quiet, and today was no exception. But the lack of activity in the betting ring did nothing to help settle the butterflies in my stomach.
In all, the bookmaker turnout was reasonable. I counted sixteen of us in the main betting ring, and there were a few others over near the course, all of us chasing the meager pickings from the sparse Monday crowd. But other than Larry and Norman, I didn’t recognize any of the other bookies, as we were at the northern extent of our usual patch and wouldn’t normally be standing at Bangor.
At long last, it was nearing the maiden hurdle race time. The horses were in the saddling boxes and the punters were beginning to make their selections. There were nineteen runners, with Pool House the fairly short-priced favorite at six-to-four. The horse had raced three times previously and finished second on the last two occasions. And today it was being ridden by the many-times-champion jockey who had made the journey from Lambourn especially to ride this one horse, so he, for one, expected it to win. And all the newspapers agreed with him.
With the horses in the parade ring, and with precisely six minutes to go before the scheduled start time, I nodded imperceptibly to Larry, who pushed his out-of-sight switch to turn on the phone jammer. At the same time, I nudged Luca, who activated his virus on the racetrack’s Internet server, effectively putting it out of action and isolating the track from the outside world.