‘He wants us to go up,’ said Lorna.
‘I’m not going,’ said Hood, and without looking again at Rutter he steered Lorna quickly to the bar at the top of the second-class enclosure. He ordered drinks and said, ‘Aren’t we going to bet on this race?’
Lorna shrugged. ‘I should have known we’d see Willy here. I’ll bet he’s with the rest of them. I don’t want to talk to him.’
‘Then drink up and we’ll go.’
‘Go? What for? I’m not leaving just because that fucker’s here.’
‘Right.’ Hood looked for the man’s face, the stringy head in the crowd. There’s your friend: the man would expose him, and if he was exposed it was all over. The friendship he had contrived with Lorna would be proved a fraud; he would lose her. He did not worry about himself, but he feared for her. He said, ‘Let’s go around back.’
‘What’s the rush? We can give this one a miss. There’s still one more race. I’ll put a tenner on the last race — I’ve never bet a tenner before.’
They watched the preparations for the race, a handicap with staggered traps in pairs along the last stretch. When the lights went out and the race began, Hood said, ‘Let’s go to the paddock now.’ He did not wait for a reply. He helped her through the darkness of the enclosure, taking care not to alert her that he was running away from the man she had named.
In the paddock he instinctively looked for another exit. Seeing none he felt cornered. Lorna was at the fence, examining the dogs. The fence was a semi-circle, gateless, meeting the back of the grandstand at one end and joined to the gangway, leading to the track, at the other. Beyond it, above the dogs’ stalls, was the railway. He was trapped. The dogs began to moan loudly, a wolfish baying that made his own throat dry.
‘I’ve seen all I want,’ said a man near Lorna, and he started away. The rest of the men left and the dogs themselves were led out. The dogs’ close pelts gave them a look of nakedness, exaggerating their skinny, punished bodies, and they shook as they trotted beside the fence. From trap to trap, with the interruption of a futile chase: the agony was as familiar to Hood as waking to life.
He said, ‘So let’s go.’
‘I haven’t made up my mind.’
‘Decide at the window. It never fails.’ He took her arm and tried to hurry her, but as he turned the paddock entrance, that small alley, filled with three men.
‘There she is,’ one said, and the men started towards them. The smallest, whom Hood took to be Rutter, was in the middle; the two others marched at his elbows.
‘Here comes trouble,’ said Lorna into her hand.
Hood faced them. The paddock was empty — the dogs, the attendants, the starter had gone for the last race, and Hood could hear the voice quacking on the loudspeaker, urging people to place their bets: Ladies and gentlemen, the race will begin in three minutes. In the paddock there were only the cries of the dogs locked in their stalls, and the light broken by posts and trees into blocks of shadow that half hid the approaching men.
‘Hello, Willy.’
‘Lorna, baby,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you. Sorry about Ron.’
Hood said, ‘We were just leaving.’
‘Who are you?’ As Rutter spoke the two other men drew close to Hood, preventing him from moving on.
‘He a friend of yours, Lorna?’ said Rutter.
‘What if he is?’ she said.
‘You’re in the way,’ said Hood. ‘We’re betting on this race.’
‘I got a tip for you,’ said Rutter. He lifted his hands and pointed at Hood. ‘Start talking.’
‘Put your cock-scratchers back in your pocket or I’ll break them off.’
‘You didn’t answer my question. You one of the family?’
‘Who wants to know?’ said Hood snarling and trying to keep back from the men so that they couldn’t slip behind him. A dog began to yelp from his box and he started more shrill baying from the others.
Rutter said, ‘Because if you’re one of the family, then maybe it don’t matter. But I think you’re crow-barring in, and the thing is, we’re looking after Lorna. Aren’t we, baby?’
‘I can look after myself,’ she said.
‘Ron was a mate of mine,’ said Rutter. ‘More than business. We done each other favours. When he copped it I cried like he was my own brother.’
‘Get out of the way, shorty,’ said Hood.
‘Don’t push your luck,’ said Rutter. ‘You can go if you want, but Lorna and me are going to have a little chat. Come on, baby, leave this geezer.’ He went to put his arm around Lorna, but as he did Hood chopped at his shoulder and Rutter staggered back.
Lorna screamed, and from the far side of the grandstand there was the muffled bang of the traps opening, the snare-drum mutter of the crowd, the whine of the fleeing rabbit.
Rutter clutched his bruised shoulder and yelled, ‘Okay, Fred! Do him! Do him!’
The taller of the two came at Hood, but the men were working to a plan he saw only when it was too late. As Hood prepared to throw Fred off, the second man jumped him from behind and began kicking him. Hood felt one tearing at his sleeve and he tried to swing on him, but still he felt the weight of the other on his back, choking him and booting his legs and trying to drag him down. Lorna was screaming still, and there was more noise: the thunder of the train above the dogs’ howls, the deafening clatter of the tracks banging above the railway embankment. He imagined from her shrieking that Lorna had been pounced on, and he tried to reach her. But the sound smothered him and as he stumbled he sensed the paddock’s lights tipping into his eyes. He was being pulled in two directions; he fought to stay upright and he felt warm blood trickling down his legs and gathering in his shoes. Then the train died on the rails. The men’s grip loosened on him. He heard strangled woofs. He steadied himself to hammer the nearest man when he heard an excited stutter.
‘If anyone moves, this fucker gets it in the chops.’
Murf held Rutter’s head in the crook of his elbow. They were almost the same size, both very short, but Murf had a demon’s insect face, his ear-ring twitched back and forth, and he stood just behind Rutter in a grotesque embrace, as if he was about to devour him. He had jabbed his hunting knife under the knot of Rutter’s tie and he was moving it menacingly against his throat. Rutter had gone white, and for a moment Hood imagined the knife halfway through his windpipe, preventing utterance.
The men backed away from Hood. Lorna ran to the exit, stumbling in her new boots. Hood went over to Murf, who still hugged Rutter tightly.
Murf said, ‘You want to put the boot in?’
‘Drop him,’ said Hood. He straightened his jacket and started to limp away.
Murf swung Rutter around, gagging him with the knife at his throat. Using the same childlike plea he had at the house — as if there was no knife, no thugs, as if they were alone — he said, ‘Now can I come wif you?’
‘Come on, brother.’
Part Four
18
Once the boat was out of sight of Tower Bridge, travelling downriver on this bleak backwater lined with ghostly rotting warehouses, there were no more landmarks to distract Lady Arrow, and her memory was buoyed by the river’s surge. Her mind began to move with the current. So much better than the bounce and stink of a taxi, though at first on the excursion boat she had felt only nausea. She had been struck by the discomfort, the choppy water under the grey sky, and up close she could see that what she had taken for turbulence were chunks of rocking flotsam, the arm of a chair, a cupboard door, a greasy eel of rope, a bar of yellow factory froth, all simulating the dance of waves. Like the boat itself: a deception. She had seen it gliding towards the quay at Westminster and had a foretaste of pleasure; but on board, the engine droned against her feet and set her teeth on edge, and then she worried that the flimsy craft might go under, slip beneath the water’s garish tincture of chemicals and sink before she gained the Embankment walls. She was sickened by the motion and noise and bad air, and she decided that she had been so far from the boat and water she had mistaken clumsiness for grace. She had reached for something tranquil and seized disorder; her snaring hands had put the peaceful bird to flight. The boat was frantic; it tipped and rattled; the smell of gas made her dizzy. The four other passengers huddled at the edges of the cabin like stowaways. The windows were splashed, but there was nothing to see except a zone of water distorting her landmarks and suddenly the rusty hull of a looming tug — she heard its hoot — and behind it, on a cable, its ark of sewage.