Decider. Part 14

'I do. Lord Stratton arranged it. Keith disapproves. He says it's an invitation to fraud. Judges me by himself, of course. Anyway, the only pay cheques I can't sign are Oliver's and my own.'

'Have you made them out ready?'

'My secretary did.'

'Give them to me, then.'

'To you?'

'I'll get the old bird to sign them.'

He didn't ask how. He merely opened a desk drawer, took out an envelope and held it towards me.

'Put it in my jacket,' I said.

He looked at the walking frame, shook his head at his thoughts, and tucked the cheques into my jacket pocket.

'Are the stands,' I asked, 'a total loss?'

'You'd better see for yourself. Mind you, no one can get close. The police have cordoned everything off.'

From the office window, little damage was visible. One could see the end wall, the roof, and an oblique side view of the open steps.

'I'd rather see the holes unaccompanied by Strattons,' I said.

Roger almost grinned. 'They're all afraid to let the others out of their sight.'

'I thought so too.'

'I suppose you do know you're bleeding.'

'Staining the wall, Marjorie said.' I nodded. 'It's stopped by now, I should think.'

'But...' He fell silent.

'I'll go back for running repairs,' I promised. 'Though G.o.d knows when. They keep one waiting so long.'

He said diffidently, 'One of the racecourse doctors would be quicker. I could ask him for you, if you like. He's very obliging.'

'Yes,' I said tersely.

Roger reached for his telephone and rea.s.sured the doctor that racing was still going ahead as planned on Monday. Meanwhile, as a favour, could a casualty be st.i.tched? When? At once, preferably. Thanks very much.

'Come on, then,' he said to me, replacing the receiver. 'Can you still walk?'

I could and did, pretty slowly. The police protested at my vanishing again. Back in an hour or so, Roger said soothingly. The Strattons were nowhere in sight, though their cars were still parked. Roger aimed his jeep towards the main gates, and Mr Harold Quest refrained from planting his obsessions in our path.

The doctor was the one who had attended the fallers at the open ditch, businesslike and calm. When he saw what he was being asked to do, he didn't want to.

'GPs don't do this sort of thing any more,' he told Roger. 'They refer people to hospitals. He should be in a hospital. This level of pain is ridiculous.'

'It comes and goes,' I said. 'And suppose we were out in the Sahara Desert?'

'Swindon is not the Sahara.'

'All life's a desert.'

He muttered under his breath and stuck me together again with what looked like adhesive tape.

'Haven't I seen you before?' he asked, puzzled, finishing.

I explained about the fence.

'The man with the children!' He shook his head regretfully. 'They saw a horror, I'm afraid.'

Roger thanked him for his services to me, and I also. The doctor told Roger that the racing authorities had received a complaint from Rebecca Stratton about his professional competency, or lack of it. They wanted a full report on his decision to recommend that she should be stood down for concussion.

'She's a b.i.t.c.h,' Roger said, with feeling.

The doctor glanced my way uneasily.

'He's safe,' Roger a.s.sured him. 'Say what you like.'

'How long have you known him?'

'Long enough. And it was Strattons that kicked his wounds open again.'

It had to be h.e.l.lish, I thought, being in even the smallest way reliant on the Strattons for employment. Roger truly lived on the edge of an abyss: and out of his job would mean out of his home.

He drove us carefully back to the racecourse, forbearing from lecturing me about the hand I clamped over my face, or my drooping head. As far as he was concerned, what I chose to do about my troubles was my own affair. I developed strong feelings of friendship and grat.i.tude.

Big-beard stepped in front of the jeep. I wondered if his name was really Quest, or if he'd made it up. Not a tactful question to ask at that time. He barred our way through the main gates peremptorily, and Roger, to my surprise, smartly backed away from him, swung the jeep round and drove off down the road, continuing our journey.

'It just occurred to me,' he said judiciously, 'that if we go in by the back road we not only avoid words with that maniac, but you could call at your bus for clean clothes.'

'I'm running out of them.'

He glanced across doubtfully. 'Mine aren't really big enough.'

'No. It's OK.'

I was down to a choice between well-worn working jeans and race going tidiness. I opted for the jeans and a lumberjack-type wool checked shirt and dumped the morning's bloodied garments in a washing locker already filled with sopping smaller clothes.

The boys had finished sluicing both the bus and themselves. The bus looked definitely cleaner. The boys must be dry, even though nowhere in sight. I descended slowly to the ground again and found Roger walking round the home-from-home, interested but reticent, as ever.

'It used to be a long-distance touring coach,' I said. 'I bought it when the bus company replaced its cosy old fleet with modern gla.s.s-walled crowd-pleasers.'

'How... I mean, how do you manage the latrines?'

I smiled at the army parlance. 'There were huge s.p.a.ces for suitcases, underneath. I replaced some of them with water and sewage tanks. Every rural authority runs pump-out tankers for emptying far-flung cesspits. And there are boatyards. It's easy to get a pump-out, if you know who to ask.'

'Amazing.' He patted the clean coffee-coloured paintwork, giving himself another interval, I saw again, before having to go back to the distasteful present.

He sighed. 'I suppose...'

I nodded.

We climbed back into the jeep and returned to the grandstands, where, leaning again on the walking frame, I took my first objective look at the previous day's destructive mayhem. We stood prudently outside the police tapes, but movement had ceased in the pile.

First thought: incredible incredible that Toby and I had come out of that mess alive. that Toby and I had come out of that mess alive.

The building had been centrally disembowelled, its guts spilling out in a monstrous cascade. The weighing room, changing rooms and Oliver Wells's office, which jutted forward from the main structure, had been crushed flat under the spreading weight of the collapsing floors above. The long unyielding steel and concrete ma.s.s of the course-facing viewing steps had meant that all the explosive force had been directed one way, into the softer resistance of the brick, wood and plaster of dining rooms, bars and staircase.

Above the solidly impacted rubble, a hollow column of s.p.a.ce rose through the upper floors like an exclamation mark, topped with a few stark remaining fingers of the Stewards' viewing box pointing skyward.

I said slowly, under my breath, 'Jesus Christ.'

After a while, Roger asked, 'What do you think?'

'Chiefly,' I said, 'how the h.e.l.l are you going to hold a race meeting here the day after tomorrow?'

He rolled his eyes in frustration, 'It's Easter weekend. More weddings today than on any other day of the year. Monday, horse shows, dog shows, you name it, all over the place. I spent all yesterday afternoon trying to get hire firms to bring marquees. Any Any sort of tent. But every sc.r.a.p of canvas is already out in service. We're shutting off the whole of this end of the stands, of course, and are having to move everyone and everything along into Tattersalls, but so far I've only managed a promise of a couple of Portakabins for the changing rooms and it looks as if we're going to have to have the scales out in the open air, as they used to do at point-to-points. And as for food and extra bars...' He shrugged helplessly. 'We've told the caterers to make their own arrangements and they say they're stretched already. G.o.d help us if it rains, we'll be working under umbrellas.' sort of tent. But every sc.r.a.p of canvas is already out in service. We're shutting off the whole of this end of the stands, of course, and are having to move everyone and everything along into Tattersalls, but so far I've only managed a promise of a couple of Portakabins for the changing rooms and it looks as if we're going to have to have the scales out in the open air, as they used to do at point-to-points. And as for food and extra bars...' He shrugged helplessly. 'We've told the caterers to make their own arrangements and they say they're stretched already. G.o.d help us if it rains, we'll be working under umbrellas.'

'Where were you planning to put tents?' I asked.

'In the members' car park.' He sounded disconsolate. 'The Easter Monday holiday meeting is our biggest money-spinner of the year. We can't afford to cancel it. And both Marjorie Binsham and Conrad are adamant that we go ahead. We've told all the trainers to send their runners for the races. The stables are all right. We'll still comply with all the regulations such as six security boxes, and so on. The saddling stalls are fine. The parade ring's OK. Oliver can use my office.'

He turned away from his gloomy contemplation of the ruined grandstand and we began a slow traverse towards his telephone. He had to confirm some electrical plans, he said.

His office was full of Strattons. Conrad sat in Roger's chair behind the desk. Conrad was talking on Roger's telephone, taking charge.

Conrad was saying, 'Yes, I know you told my manager that all your tents were out, but this is Lord Stratton himself speaking, and I'm telling you to dismantle and bring in a suitable marquee from anywhere at all, and put it up here tomorrow. I don't care where you get it from, just get it.'

I touched Roger's arm before he could make any protest, and waved to him to retreat. Outside the office, ignored by all the Strattons, I suggested he drive us both back to the bus.

'I've a telephone in it,' I explained. 'No interruptions.'

'Did you hear what Conrad was saying?'

'Yes, I did. Will he be successful?'

'If he is, my job's gone.'

'Drive down to the bus.'

Roger drove and, to save having to get in and out of the bus again, I told him where to find the mobile phone and asked him to bring it out, along with a book of private phone numbers he would find beneath it. When he climbed down the steps with the necessary, I looked up a number and made a call.

'Henry? Lee Morris. How goes it?'

'Emergency? Crisis? The roof's fallen in?'

'How did you guess?'

'Yes, but Lee, my usual big top is out as an indoor pony school. Little girls in hard hats. They've got it for the year.'

'What about the huge one that takes so much moving?'

A resigned sigh came down the wire. Henry, long-time pal, general large-scale junk dealer, had acquired two big tops from a bankrupt travelling circus and would rent them out to me from time to time to enclose any thoroughly gutted ruin I wanted to shield from the weather.

I explained to him what was needed and why, and I explained to Roger who he was going to be talking to, and I leaned peacefully on the walking frame while they discussed floor s.p.a.ce, budget and transport. When they seemed to be reaching agreement I said to Roger, 'Tell him to bring all the flags.'

Roger, mystified, relayed the message and got a reply that made him laugh. 'Fine,' he said, 'I'll phone back to confirm.'

We took the telephone and the numbers book with us in the jeep and returned to the office. Conrad was still shouting down the phone there but, judging from the impatience now manifest in the Stratton herd, was achieving nil results.

'You're on,' I murmured to Roger. 'Say you you found the tent.' found the tent.'

It didn't come naturally to him to take another man's credit, but he could see the point in it. The Strattons could perversely turn down any suggestion of mine, even if it were to their own advantage to adopt it.

Roger walked over to his desk as Conrad slammed down the receiver in fury.

'I... er... I've located a tent,' he said firmly.

'About time!' Conrad said.

'Where?' Keith demanded, annoyed.

'A man in Hertfordshire has one. He can ship it here by tomorrow morning, and he'll send a crew to erect it.'

Conrad was grudgingly pleased but wouldn't admit it.

'The only thing is,' Roger continued, 'that he doesn't supply this tent on short leases. We would need to keep it for a minimum of three months. However,' he hurried on, sensing interruptions, 'that condition could be to our advantage, as the grandstands will be out of operation for much longer than that. We could keep the tent for as long as we need. And this tent has a firm floor and versatile dividing part.i.tions and sounds stronger than a normal marquee.'

'Too expensive,' Keith objected.

'Less expensive, actually,' Roger said, 'than erecting tents separately for each meeting.'

Marjorie Binsham's gaze by-pa.s.sed both Roger and her family and fastened on me.

'Any ideas?' she asked.

'Ignore him,' Keith insisted.

I said neutrally, 'All four directors are here. Hold a board meeting and decide.'

A smile, quickly hidden, tugged at Marjorie's lips. Dart, though, grinned openly.

'Give us the details,' Marjorie commanded Roger, and he, consulting his notes, told them the s.p.a.ce and price involved, and said the insurance from non-availability of the stands would easily cover it.