Whip Hand

When Charles had gone home to Aynsford I wandered aimlessly round the flat, tie off and in shirtsleeves, trying to be sensible. I told myself that nothing much had happened, only that Trevor Deansgate had used a lot of horrible threats to get me to stop doing something that I hadn't yet started. But I couldn't dodge the guilt. Once he'd revealed himself, once I knew he would do something, I could have stopped him, and I hadn't.

If he hadn't got me so effectively out of Newmarket I would very likely have still been prodding unproductively away, unsure even if there was anything to discover, right up to the moment in the Guineas when Tri-Nitro tottered in last. But I would also be up there now, I thought, certain and inquisitive; and because of his threat, I wasn't.

I could call my absence prudence, commonsense, the only possible course in the circumstances. I could rationalise and excuse. I could say I wouldn't have been doing anything that wasn't already being done by the Jockey Club. I came back, all the time, to the swingeing truth, that I wasn't there now because I was afraid to be

Chico came back from his judo class and set to again to find out where I'd been; and for the same reasons I didn't tell him, even though I knew he wouldn't despise me as I despised myself.

'All right,' he said finally. 'You just keep it all bottled up and see where it gets you. Wherever you've been, it was bad. You've only got to look at you. It's not going to do you any good to shut it all up inside.'

Shutting it all up inside, however, was a lifelong habit, a defence learned in childhood, a wall against the world, impossible to change.

I raised at least half a smile. 'You setting up in Harley Street?'

'That's better,' he said. 'You missed all the fun, did you know? Tri-Nitro got stuffed after all in the Guineas yesterday, and they're turning George Caspar's yard inside out. It's all here, somewhere, in the Sporting Life. The Admiral brought it. Have you read it?'

I shook my head.

'Our Rosemary, she wasn't bonkers after all, was she? How do you think they managed it?'

'They?' I said. 'Whoever did it.'

'I don't know.'

'I went along to see the gallop on Saturday morning,' he said. 'Yeah, yeah, I know you sent the telegram about leaving, but I'd got a real little dolly lined up for a bit of the other on Friday night, so I stayed. One more night wasn't going to make any difference, and besides, she was George Caspar's typist.'

'She was…'

'Does the typing. Rides the horses sometimes. Into everything, she is, and talkative with it.'

The new scared Sid Halley didn't even want to listen.

'There was a right old rumpus all day Wednesday in George Caspar's house,' Chico said. 'It started at breakfast when that Inky Poole turned up and said Sid Halley had been asking questions that he, Inky Poole, didn't like.'

He paused for effect. I simply stared.

'Are you listening?' he said.

'Yes.'

'You got your stone face act on again.'

'Sorry.'

'Then Brothersmith the vet turned up and heard Inky Poole letting off, and he said funny, Sid Halley had been around him asking questions too. About bad hearts, he said. Same horses as Inky Poole was talking about. Bethesda, Gleaner and Zingaloo. And how was Tri-Nitro's heart, for good measure. My little dolly typist said you could've heard George Caspar blowing up all the way to Cambridge. He's real touchy about those horses.'

Trevor Deansgate, I thought coldly, had been at George Caspar's for breakfast, and had heard every word.

'Of course,' Chico said, 'some time later they checked the studs, Garvey's and Thrace 's, and found you'd been there too. My dolly says your name is mud.' I rubbed my hand over my face. 'Does your dolly know you were working with me?'

'Do us a favour. Of course not.'

'Did she say anything else?' What the hell am I asking for, I thought.

'Yeah. Well, she said Rosemary got on to George Caspar to change all the routine for the Saturday morning gallop, nagged him all day Thursday and all day Friday and George Caspar was climbing the walls. And at the yard they had so much security they were tripping over their own alarm bells.' He paused for breath. 'After that she didn't say much else on account of three martinis and time for tickle.'

I sat on the arm of the sofa and stared at the carpet.

'Next morning,' Chico said, 'I watched the gallop, like I said. Your photos came in very handy. Hundreds of ruddy horses… Someone told me which were Caspar's, and there was Inky Poole, scowling like in the pictures, so I just zeroed in on him and hung about. There was a lot of fuss when it came to Tri-Nitro. They took the saddle off and put a little one on, and Inky Poole rode on that.'

'It was Inky Poole, then, who rode Tri-Nitro, same as usual?'

'They looked just like your pictures,' Chico said. 'Can't swear to it more than that.'

I stared some more at the carpet.

'So what do we do next?' he said.

'Nothing… We give Rosemary her money back and draw a line.'

'But hey,' Chico said in protest. 'Someone got at the horse. You know they did.'

'Not our business, any more.'

I wished that he, too, would stop looking at me. I felt a distinct need to crawl into a hole and hide. The doorbell rang with the long peal of a determined thumb.

'We're out,' I said; but Chico went and answered it.

Rosemary Caspar swept past him, through the hall and into the sitting room, advancing in the old fawn raincoat and a fulminating rage. No scarf, no false curls, and no loving kindness.

'So there you are,' she said forcefully. 'I knew you'd be here, skulking out of sight. Your friend kept telling me when I telephoned that you weren't here, but I knew he was lying.'

'I wasn't here,' I said. As well try damming the St Lawrence with a twig. 'You weren't where I paid you to be, which was up in Newmarket. And I told you from the beginning that George wasn't to find out you were asking questions, and he did, and we've been having one God-awful bloody row ever since, and now Tri-Nitro has disgraced us unbearably and it's all your bloody fault.'

Chico raised his eyebrows comically. 'Sid didn't ride it… or train it.'

She glared at him with transferred hatred. 'And he didn't keep him safe, either.'

'Er, no,' Chico said. 'Granted.'

'As for you,' she said, swinging back to me. 'You're a useless bloody humbug. It's all rubbish, this detecting. Why don't you grow up and stop playing games? All you did was stir up trouble, and I want my money back.'

'Will a cheque do?' I said. 'You're not arguing, then?'

'No,' I said.

'Do you mean you admit that you failed?'

After a small pause, I said, 'Yes.'

'Oh.' She sounded as if I had unexpectedly deprived her of a good deal of what she had come to say, but while I wrote out a cheque for her she went on complaining sharply enough.

'All your ideas about changing the routine, they were useless. I've been on and on at George about security and taking care, and he says he couldn't have done any more, no one could, and he's in absolute despair- and I'd hoped, I'd really hoped, what a laugh, that somehow or other you would work a miracle, and that Tri-Nitro would win, because I was so sure, so sure… and I was right.'

I finished writing. 'Why were you always so sure?' I said.

'I don't know. I just knew. I've been afraid of it for weeks… otherwise I would not have been so desperate as to try you, in the first place. And I might as well not have bothered… it's caused so much trouble, and I can't bear it. I can't bear it. Yesterday was terrible. He should have won… I knew he wouldn't. I felt ill. I still feel ill.'

She was trembling again. The pain in her face was acute. So many hopes, so much work had gone into Tri-Nitro, such anxiety and such care. Winning races was to a trainer like a film to a film maker. If you got it right, they applauded: wrong, and they booed. And either way you'd poured your soul into it, and your thoughts and your skill and weeks of worry. I understood what the lost race meant to George, and to Rosemary equally, because she cared so much.