‘Bingo.’
‘Mm... You know something odd?’
‘What?’
‘The insurance company that Vic swindled was the one Crispin used to work for.’
Sophie made us tea in her flat. We sat side by side on the sofa, bodies casually touching in intimate friendship, sipping the hot reviving liquid.
‘I ought to sleep a bit,’ she said. ‘I’m on duty at eight.’
I looked at my watch. Four thirty, and darkening already towards the winter night. It had seemed a long day.
‘Shall I go?’
She smiled. ‘Depends how sore you are.’
‘Sex is a great anaesthetic.’
‘Nuts.’
We went to bed and put it fairly gently to the test, and certainly what I felt most was not the stab along my rib.
The pattern as before: sweet, intense, lingering, a vibration of subtle pleasure from head to foot. She breathed softly and slowly and smiled with her eyes, as close as my soul and as private as her own.
Eventually she said sleepily, ‘Do you always give girls what suits them best?’
I yawned contentedly. ‘What suits them best is best for me.’
‘The voice of experience...’ She smiled drowsily, drifting away.
We woke to the clatter of her alarm less than two hours later.
She stretched out a hand to shut it off, then rolled her head over on the pillow for a kiss.
‘Better than sleeping pills,’ she said. ‘I feel as if I’d slept all night.’
She made coffee and rapid bacon and eggs, because to her it seemed time for breakfast, and in an organised hurry she offered her cheek in goodbye on the pavement and drove away to work.
I watched her rear lights out of sight. I remembered I had read somewhere that air traffic controllers had the highest divorce rates on earth.
Wilton Young came to Cheltenham races the following day in spite of the basic contempt he held for steeple-chasing because of is endemic shortage of brass. He came because the rival tycoon who was sponsoring the day’s big race had asked him, and the first person he saw at the pre-lunch reception was me.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said bluntly.
‘I was invited.’
‘Oh.’
He didn’t quite ask why, so I told him. ‘I rode a few winners for our host.’
He cast his mind back and gave a sudden remembering nod. ‘Ay. So you did.’
A waiter offered a silver tray with glasses of champagne. Wilton Young took one, tasted it with a grimace, and said he would tell me straight he would sooner have had a pint of bitter.
‘I’m afraid I may have some disappointing news for you,’ I said.
He looked immediately belligerent. ‘Exactly what?’
‘About Fynedale.’
‘Him!’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Any bad news about him is good news.’
I said, ‘The man I sent to South Africa says he can’t swear the extra horses he looked after on the way were yours.’
‘You seemed sure enough that he would.’
‘He says he had the impression they were yours, but he couldn’t be sure.’
‘That’ll not stand up in court.’
‘No.’
He grunted. ‘I’ll not sue, then. I’ll not throw good brass after bad. Suing’s a mug’s game where there’s any doubt.’
His plain honesty rebuked me for the lie I’d told him. My man had been absolutely positive about the horses’ ownership: he’d seen the papers. I reckoned my promise to get Fynedale off was fully discharged and from there on he would have to take his chances.
‘What’s past is past,’ Wilton Young said. ‘Cut your losses. Eh, lad?’
‘I guess so,’ I said.
‘Take my word for it. Now, look here. I’ve a mind to buy an American horse. Tough, that’s what they are. Tough as if they came from Yorkshire.’ He wasn’t joking. ‘There’s one particular one I want you to go and buy for me. He comes up for sale soon after Christmas.’
I stared at him, already guessing.
‘Phoenix Fledgeling. A two-year-old. Ever heard of it?’
‘Did you know,’ I said, ‘That Constantine Brevett is after it too?’
He chuckled loudly. ‘Why the hell do you think I want it? Put his bloody superior nose out of joint. Eh, lad?’
The bloody superior nose chose that precise moment to arrive at the reception, closely accompanied by the firm mouth, smooth grey hair, thick black spectacle frames and general air of having come straight from some high up chairmanship in the City.
As his height and booming voice instantly dominated the assembly, I reflected that the advantage always seemed to go to the one who arrived later: maybe if Constantine and Wilton Young both realised it they would try so hard to arrive after each other that neither would appear at all, which might be a good idea all round. Constantine’s gaze swept authoritatively over the guests and stopped abruptly on Wilton Young and me. He frowned very slightly. His mouth marginally compressed. He gave us five seconds uninterrupted attention, and then looked away.
‘Has it ever occurred to you,’ I said slowly, ‘That it might just be your nose that he’s putting out of joint?’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘How many times have you had to out-bid him to get a horse?’
He chuckled. ‘Can’t remember. I’ve beaten him more times than he’s sold office blocks.’
‘He’s cost you a great deal of money.’
The chuckle died ‘That was bloody Fynedale and Vic Vincent.’
‘But... what if Constantine approved... or even planned it?’
‘You’re chasing the wrong rabbit, I tell thee straight.’
I chewed my lower lip. ‘As long as you’re happy.’
‘Ay.’
Nicol won the amateurs’ race by some startlingly aggressive tactics that wrung obscenities from his opponents and some sharp-eyed looks from the Stewards. He joined me afterwards with defiance flying like banners.
‘How about that, then?’ he said, attacking first.
‘If you were a pro on the Flat you’d have been suspended.’
‘That’s right.’
‘A proper sportsman,’ I said dryly.
‘I’m not in it for the sport.’
‘What then?’
‘Winning.’
‘Just like Wilton Young,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Neither of you cares what winning costs.’
He glared. ‘It cost you enough in your time in smashed up bones.’
‘Well... maybe everyone pays in the way that matters to them least.’
‘I don’t give a damn what the others think of me.’
‘That’s what I mean.’
We stood in silence, watching horses go by. All my life I’d stood and watched horses go by. There were a lot worse ways of living.
‘When you grow up,’ I said, ‘You’ll be a bloody good jockey.’
‘You absolute sod.’ The fury of all his twenty-two pampered years bunched into fists. Then with the speed of all his mercurial changes he gave me instead the brief, flashing, sardonic smile. ‘OK. OK. OK. I just aged five years.’
He turned on his heel and strode away, and although I didn’t know it until afterwards, he walked straight into the Clerk of the Course’s office and filled out an application form for a licence.
Vic didn’t come to Cheltenham races. I had business with him, however, so after a certain amount of private homework I drove to his place near Epsom early on the following morning.
He lived as he dressed, a mixture of distinguished traditional and flashy modern. The house, down a short well-kept drive off a country by-road on the outskirts of Oxshott Woods, had at heart the classically simple lines of early Victorian stone. Stuck on the back was an Edwardian outcrop of kitchens and bathrooms and to one side sprawled an extensive new single storey wing which proved to embrace a swimming pool, a garden room, and a suite for guests.