‘Rooster, are you bloody mad, boy? Come away from there.’
It was the red-faced man.
‘Sorry, Uncle Enoch.’
Obediently, the young man followed him out to the yard. Molly tried to give Tick her father’s instructions but could hardly get the boy to listen. His face was shiny with excitement.
‘Did you hear what he called him? I thought he might be, then I said to myself it couldn’t be. I’d only see’d him from a good way off and he looks different in his clothes. So I put my fists up, joking like, and he…’
‘What are you saying, Tick boy?’
‘The Rhondda Rooster, that’s all. He’s only the Rhondda Rooster!’
‘What’s that?’
‘Only the next British middleweight champion, that’s all. He’ll be fighting for the title in London the day after tomorrow and the money’s on him to win it.’
‘A boxer?’
‘Then he’ll take on the Empire champion after that. Could be world champion. When I see’d him at Cardiff he won by a knockout in three rounds against a heavier man even though there was so much blood pouring down his face he could only see from one eye.’
Molly was a country girl, not squeamish.
‘If he’s as good as you say, how come he’d got so much blood on him?’
‘He’s got a glass eyebrow.’
‘A what?’
‘That’s what they call a weak spot. Hard as iron all the rest of him, only he’s got an old cut over his left eyebrow and if that opens up it pours with blood so the referee would have had to stop the fight if he hadn’t knocked the other chap out first.’
It turned out that her father had heard of the Rhondda Rooster too because he got his head out from under the car just long enough to tell Molly to make the gentlemen comfortable in the front parlour and get something to eat. She rushed round making tea in the good china pot, putting bread, cheese and cold beef on the best tablecloth. Sonny had come out from under the car by then and she was conscious all the time of his eyes on her. The Rooster’s eyes were just as admiring if she’d noticed, but he was nothing beside Sonny – shoulders and chest too broad for the cut of his suit, one ear a bit skew-whiff, big hands that he kept bunching and flexing all the time they weren’t occupied with knife and fork. Under the stern eye of the red-faced man, Uncle Enoch, he had the clumsy good manners of a schoolboy, while Sonny seemed a man of the great world. Occupied with serving them, she missed another milestone in the speeding up of life in Tadley Gate. Another stranger went into the phone kiosk and picked up the receiver. It was the first time since the kiosk was built that it had been used more than once in a day.
The new stranger was small, dark-haired, and twentyish, in a dark suit and cow-dung smeared shoes that hadn’t been designed for country walking. He looked round to see nobody was watching and slid quickly into the box as if glad of its protection from the country all around him. The number he wanted was at an East London exchange.
‘Bit of luck. Their car’s broken down.’
‘Have they seen you?’
‘Naw, we came over a hill and saw them pushing it. So we turned off before they saw us and Gribby and me followed them on foot. Bleeding miles over the fields.’
‘Where’s Gribby?’
‘Keeping watch. Trouble is, they’ve all gone inside this house at the garage place.’
‘They’ll have to come out sometime.’
‘Won’t be easy, making it look like an accident.’
‘You could pay a boy to bung a stone at him.’
‘You joking?’
‘With what I’m paying you, don’t expect jokes as well. Next news I want to hear is the fight’s called off. Understood.’
‘Understood.’
In the parlour, Uncle Enoch was restive.
‘I’m going to see how he’s doing with the car. You stay here, Sonny. Rooster can have another slice of beef if he likes but no more bread and for heaven’s sake don’t let him even sniff those pickled onions.’
There was a tangle of briars and bushes at the back of the garden, clustering around the small stone building that sheltered the earth closet. Two rowans formed an arch over the pathway between the earth closet and the house. They’d been planted in a time when people still believed they kept away witches, all of fifty years ago, by Davy Davitt’s grandfather. Davy kept threatening to cut them down but never got round to it, so they formed a useful screen for Tod and Gribby. Tod came back from making his phone call and found his partner lurking in the bushes.
‘They still inside?’
‘The Rooster and the tall one are. His trainer’s gone inside the forge place. What’s that you got?’
Tod held out his hand to show him. It was a rusty horseshoe, worn thin and sharp on one side.
‘What’s that for then? Bring the Rooster good luck?’
‘Some kind of luck.’
Molly was in the kitchen, washing up. The Rooster was shifting around on his chair in the parlour. Because they’d started so early he’d missed his training run and his internal system was out of rhythm.
‘Where’s the little house then, Sonny boy?’
‘Down the path, back of the house.’
The Rooster went down the path, under the rowan arch and into the stone building, latching the door behind him. Tod, watching from the bushes, gauged exactly the height of the Rooster’s left eyebrow against the rough stonework of the door frame. As soon as the latch clicked down he crept out and wedged the horseshoe into place between two blocks of stone, sharp side towards the privy, so that a man coming out couldn’t help but run into it. The loud sigh of satisfaction that the Rooster gave from the inside when his business was done was echoed more quietly by Tod in the bushes.
The inspector stared out of the window at Constable Price’s potato patch.
‘So Tod and Gribby were in one car and the British Middleweight champion just happened to be in the other,’ he said.
‘He wasn’t that at the time, sir. He didn’t take the title until the fight in London two days later. But yes, they broke down in the village.’
‘Going from the Rhondda to London?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And Tod and his pal were driving from Cardiff to London?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And the shortest and best way from either place doesn’t go within miles of Tadley Gate, does it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘So what in the world were both of them doing there?’
‘The statement from the Rooster’s uncle says he thought a country route might be calming for him.’
‘And Tod – was he doing it to calm his nerves as well?’
‘No, sir. I’d suggest that the presence of both cars in Tadley Gate was not a coincidence.’
‘So you’ve got that far too. Go on.’
‘We know Tod worked for a bookie. We know there was a great deal of money riding on the outcome of that fight. Wouldn’t the bookie want to know how the Rooster was looking, the way they watch racehorses on the gallops?’