Rat Race Part 24

'Couldn't do much harm.'

'I'll have a go,' he said. 'But he's fantastically keen on him.' He thought deeply and came up with a grin. 'I must say,' he said, 'That he has awfully good chocolate orange peel.'

Annie Villars was upset about Kenny Bayst. 'I went to sec him for a few moments this morning. He's broken both legs and his face was cut by flying gla.s.s. He won't be riding again before next season, he says. Luckily he's insured with the Racegoers' Fund. Sent them a tenner, he told me, so he's hoping to collect two thousand pounds at least. Marvellous thing, that Fund.'

'Did you join?'

'I certainly did. After that bomb. Didn't know it was Rupert, then, of course. Still, better to do things at once rather than put them off, don't you agree?'

'Were Kitch and the stable lads insured too, do you know?'

She nodded. 'They were all Kitch's own lads. He'd advised them all to join. Even offered to deduct the premium from their wages bit by bit. Everyone in Newmarket is talking about it, saying how lucky it was. All the stable lads in the town who hadn't already joined are sending their fivers along in the next few days.'

I hesitated. 'Did you read about Rupert Tyderman in the Sporting Life Sporting Life?'

A twinge of regret twisted her face: her mouth for the first time since I had known her took on a soft curve that was not consciously constructed.

'Poor Rupert.... What an end, to be murdered.'

'There isn't any doubt, then?'

She shook her head. 'When I saw the report, I rang the local newspaper down at Kemble... that's where they found him. He was lying, they said, at the bottom of an embankment near a road bridge over the railway. The local theory is that he could have been brought there by car during the night, and not fallen from a train at all...' She shook her head in bewilderment. 'He had one stab wound below his left shoulder-blade, and he had been dead for hours and hours when he was found.'

It took a good deal of lying-in-wait to catch the Duke without Carthy-Todd at his elbow, but I got him in the end.

'I've left my wallet in the Accident Fund office,' I said. 'Must have left it on the desk when I paid my premium.... Do you think, sir, that you could let me have a key, if you have one, so that I can slip along and fetch it?'

'My dear chap, of course.' He produced a small bunch from his pocket and sorted out a bright new yale. 'Here you are. That's the one.'

'Very kind, sir. I won't be long.' I took a step away and then turned back, grinning, making a joke.

'What happens, sir, if it's you who gets killed in a car crash? What happens to the Fund then?'

He smiled back rea.s.suringly in a patting-on-the-shoulder avuncular manner. 'All taken care of, my dear chap. Some of the papers I signed, they dealt with it. The Fund money would be guaranteed from a special arrangement with my estate.'

'Did Charles see to it?'

'Naturally. Of course. He understands these things, you know.'

Between the Duke and the main gate a voice behind me crisply shouted.

'Matt.'

I stopped and turned. It was Colin, hurrying towards me, carrying the saddle from the loser he'd partnered in the first race.

'Can't stop more than a second,' he said. 'Got to change for the next. You weren't leaving, were you? Have you seen Nancy?'

'No. I've been looking. I thought... perhaps...'

He shook his head. 'She's here. Up there, on the balcony, with Midge.'

I followed where he was looking, and there they were, distant, high up, talking with their heads together, two halves of one whole.

'Do you know which is Nancy?' Colin asked.

I said without hesitation, 'The one on the left.'

'Most people can't tell.'

He looked at my expression and said with exasperation, 'If you feel like that about her, why the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l don't you let her know? She thinks she made it all up... she's trying to hide it but she's pretty unhappy.'

'She'd have to live on peanuts.'

'For crying out loud, what does that matter? You can move in with us. We all want you. Midge wants you... and now, not some distant time when you think you can afford it. Time for us is now, this summer. There may not be much after this.' He hitched the saddle up on his arm and looked back towards the weighing room. 'I'll have to go. We'll have to talk later. I came after you now, though, because you looked as though you were leaving.'

'I'm coming back soon.' I turned and walked along with him towards the weighing-room. 'Colin... I ought to tell someone... you never know...' He gave me a puzzled glance and in three brief sentences I told him why the Accident Fund was a fraud, how he and the bomb had been used to drum up business, and in what way Carthy-Todd was a fake.

He stopped dead in his tracks. 'Good G.o.d,' he said. 'The Fund was such a great idea. What a b.l.o.o.d.y shame.'

Sat.u.r.day afternoon. The Board of Trade had gone home to its lawn mowing and the wife and kids. I put down the telephone and considered the police.

The police were there, on the racecourse, all ready and able. But willing? Hardly. They were there to direct the traffic; a crime not yet committed would not shift them an inch.

Both lots, if they believed me, might eventually arrive on Carthy-Todd's doorstep. By appointment, probably; especially the Board of Trade.

There would be no Carthy-Todd to welcome them in. No records. No Fund. Possibly no Duke...

I always told myself to stay out of trouble.

Never listened.

No clocks ticked in Carthy Todd's office. The silence was absolute. But it was only in my mind that it was ominous and oppressive. Carthy-Todd was safe at the races and I should have a clear hour at least: or so my brain told me. My nerves had other ideas.

I found myself tiptoeing across to the desk. Ridiculous. I half laughed at myself and put my feet down flat on the soundless carpet.

Nothing on the desk top except a blotter without blots, a tray of pens and pencils, a green telephone, a photograph of a woman, three children and a dog in a silver frame, a desk diary, closed, and the red and gold tin of chocolate orange peel.

The drawers contained stationery, paper clips, stamps, and a small pile of the 'insure against bombs on the way home' brochures. Two of the four drawers were completely empty.

Two filing cabinets. One unlocked. One locked. The top of the three drawers of the unlocked cabinet contained the packets of proposal forms and insurance certificates, and a third packet containing claim forms; in the second, the completed and returned forms of those insured, filed in a rank of folders from AZ; and the third, almost empty, contained three folders only, one marked 'Claims settled'; one 'Claims pending', and the other 'Receipts.'

'Claims settled' embraced the records of two separate outgoing payments of one thousand pounds, one to Acey Jones and one to a trainer in Kent who had been kicked in the face at evening stables. Three hundred pounds had been paid to a stable girl in Newmarket in respect of fracturing her wrist in a fall from a two-year-old at morning exercise. The claim forms, duly filled in, and with doctor's certificates attached, were stamped 'paid' with a date.

'Claims pending' was fatter. There were five letters of application for claim forms, annotated 'forms sent', and two forms completed and returned, claiming variously for a finger bitten off by a hungry hurdler and a foot carelessly left in the path of a plough. From the dates, the claimants had only been waiting a month for their money, and few insurance companies paid out quicker than that.

The thin file 'Receipts' was in many ways the most interesting. The record took the form of a diary, with the number of new insurers entered against the day they paid their premiums. From sporadic twos and threes during the first week of operation the numbers had grown like a mushroom.

The first great spurt was labelled in the margin in small tidy handwriting 'A. C. Jones, etc.' The second, an astronomical burst, was noted 'Bomb!' The third, a lesser spurt, 'Pamphlet'. The fourth, a noticeable upthrust, 'Electric failure'. After that, the daily average had gone on climbing steadily. The word, by then, had reached pretty well every ear.

The running total in two months had reached five thousand, four hundred and seventy-two. The receipts, since some insurers had paid double premiums for double benefits, stood at 28,040.

With the next inrush of premiums after the Kitch-Ambrose accident (which Carthy-Todd certainly had not engineered, as only non-claiming accidents were any good to him) there would almost have been enough in the kitty to settle all the claims. I sighed, frowning. It was, as Colin had said, a b.l.o.o.d.y shame. The Duke's view of the Fund was perfectly valid. Run by an honest man, and with its ratio of premiums to pay-off slightly adjusted, it could have done good all round.

I slammed the bottom drawer shut with irritation and felt the adrenalin race through my veins as the noise reverberated round the empty room.

No one came. My nerves stopped registering tremble; went back to itch.

The locked second cabinet was proof only against casual eyes. I tipped it against the wall and felt underneath, and sure enough it was the type worked on one connecting rod up the back: pushed the rod up from the bottom and all the drawers became unlocked.

I looked through all of them quickly, the noise I had made seeming to act as an accelerator. Even if I had all the time in the world, I wanted to be out of there, to be gone.

The top drawer contained more folders of papers. The middle drawer contained a large grey metal box. The bottom drawer contained two cardboard boxes and two small square tins.

Taking a deep breath I started at the top. The folders contained the setting-up doc.u.ments of the Fund and the papers which the Duke had so trustingly signed. The legal language made perfect camouflage for what Carthy-Todd had done. I had to read them twice, to take a strong grip and force myself to concentrate, before I understood the two covenants the Duke had given him.

The first, as the Duke had said, transferred one hundred thousand pounds from his estate into a guarantee trust for the Fund, in the event of his death. The second one at first sight looked identical, but it certainly wasn't. It said in essence that if the Duke died within the first year of the Fund, a further one hundred thousand pounds from his estate was to be paid into it.

In both cases, Carthy-Todd was to be sole Trustee.

In both cases, he was given absolute discretion to invest or use the money in any way he thought best.

Two hundred thousand pounds... I stared into s.p.a.ce. Two hundred thousand pounds if the Duke died. A motive to make tongue-silencing look frivolous.

The twenty-eight thousand of the Fund money was only the beginning. The bait. The jackpot lay in the dead Duke.

His heirs would have to pay. Young Matthew, to be precise. The papers looked thoroughly legal, with signatures witnessed and stamped, and in fact it seemed one hundred per cent certain that Carthy-Todd wouldn't have bothered with them at all if they were not foolproof.

He wouldn't waste much more time, I thought. Not with the claims for the Ambrose accident coming in. With the Duke dead, the two hundred thousand would have to be paid almost at once, because the covenants would be a first charge on his estate, like debts. There would be no having to wait around for probate. If Carthy-Todd could stave off the claims for a while, he could skip with both the Duke's money and the whole Fund.

I put the papers back in their folder, back in the drawer. Closed it. Gently. My heart thumped.

Second drawer. Large metal box. One could open it without removing it from the cabinet. I opened it. Lots of s.p.a.ce, but few contents. Some cottonwool, cold cream, glue, and a half used stick of greasepaint. I shut the lid, shut the drawer. Only to be expected.

Bottom drawer. Knelt on the floor. Two small square tins, one empty, one full and heavy and fastened all round with adhesive tape. Looked inside the two cardboard boxes first and felt the breath go out of my body as if I'd been kicked.

The cardboard boxes contained the makings of a radio bomb. Solonoids, transmitters, fuse wire, a battery and a small container of gunpowder in the first box. Plastic explosive wrapped in tin foil in the other.

I sat on my heels looking at the small square heavy tin. Heard in my mind the tall man from the Board of Trade: the tighter you pack a bomb the more fiercely it explodes.

Decided not to open the small square tin. Felt the sweat stand out in cold drops on my forehead.

I shut the bottom drawer with a caution which seemed silly when I remembered the casual way I'd tilted the whole cabinet over to open it. But then the bomb wouldn't get the signal where it was, not with those precious doc.u.ments in the cabinet just above.

I wiped my hand over my face. Stood up. Swallowed.

I'd found everything I came to find, and more. All except for one thing. I glanced round the office, looking for somewhere else. Somewhere to hide something big...

There was a door in the corner behind Carthy-Todd's desk which I a.s.sumed connected with the secretary's office next door. I went over to it. Tried the handle. It was locked.

I let myself out of Carthy-Todd's office and went into the secretary's room, whose door was shut but had no keyhole. Stared, in there, at an L-shaped blank wall. No connecting door to Carthy-Todd. It was a cupboard, with the door on his side.

I went back to Carthy-Todd's office and stood contemplating the door. If I broke it open, he would know. If I didn't, I could only guess at what was inside. Evidence of a fraud committed, that would spur the Board of Trade to action. Evidence that would make the Duke rescind his covenants, or at least rewrite them so that they were no longer death warrants...

Carthy-Todd hadn't been expecting trouble. He had left the key to the cupboard on his desk in the tray of pens and pencils. I picked up the single key which lay there, and it fitted.

Opened the cupboard door. It squeaked on its hinges, but I was too engrossed to notice.

There he was. Mr Acey Jones. The crutches, leaning against the wall. The white plaster cast lying on the floor.

I picked up the cast and looked at it. It had been slit neatly down the inside leg from the top to the ankle. One could put one's foot into it like a boot, with the bare toes sticking out of the end and the metal walking support under the arch. There were small grip-clips like those used on bandages sticking into the plaster all down the opening. Put your foot into the cast, fasten the clips, and bingo, you had a broken ankle.

Acey Jones, loudly drumming up business for the Fund.

Acey Jones, Carthy-Todd. Confidence tricksters were the best actors in the world.

I didn't hear him come.

I put the cast back on the floor just where it had been, and straightened up and started to shut the cupboard door, and saw him moving out of the corner of my eye as he came into the room. I hadn't shut the office door behind me, when I'd gone back. I hadn't given myself any time at all.

His face went rigid with fury when he saw what I'd seen.

'Meddling pilot,' he said. 'When the Duke told me he'd given you the key...' He stopped, unable to speak for rage. His voice was different, neither the Eton of Carthy-Todd, nor the Australian of Acey Jones. Just ordinary uninflected English. I wondered fleetingly where he came from, who he really was... a thousand different people, one for every crime.

Unblinking behind the black-framed gla.s.ses the pale blue grey eyes all but sizzled. The incongruous white eyelashes, which Matthew had noticed, gave him now a fierce fanatical ruthlessness. The decision he was coming to wasn't going to be for my good.

He put his hand into his trouser pocket and briefly pulled it out again. There was a sharp click. I found myself staring at the knife which had snapped out, and thought with a horrific shiver of Rupert Tyderman tumbling down dead beside the railway line...

He took a step sideways and kicked shut the office door. I twisted round towards the mantelshelf to pick up whatever I could find there... a photograph, a cigarette box... anything I could use as a weapon or a shield.

I didn't even get as far as taking anything into my hand, because he didn't try to stab me with the knife.

He threw it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

It hit me below the left shoulder and the jolt threw me forward on my twisting legs so that I hit my forehead solidly on the edge of the marble slab mantelshelf. Blacking out, falling, I put out a hand to stop myself, but there was nothing there, only the empty black hollow of the fireplace, and I went on, right down, smashing and crashing amongst the bra.s.s fire irons... but I heard them only dimly... and then not at all.

I woke up slowly, stiffly, painfully, after less than a quarter of an hour. Everything was silent. No sound. No people. Nothing.

I couldn't remember where I was or what had happened. Not until I tried to get up. Then the tearing soreness behind my shoulder stung me straight back into awareness.

Had a knife sticking in my back.