Wild Horses Part 27

I said, 'Stay.'

After a pause he said, 'If I go, it shows you're totally in command.' Another pause. 'Think it over. We'll decide after the dailies. See you at eleven o clock in the screening room. Will you be fit enough?'

'Yes.'

'I sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't be,' he said, and disconnected.

By nine I'd decided against the great British breakfast and had located Wrigley's garage on a town road map: by nine-fifteen my driver had found it in reality. There was a canopy over the petrol pumps: shelter from rain.

Bill Robinson had long hair, a couple of pimples, a strong East Anglian accent, a short black leather jacket covered in gold studs and a belt of heavy tools strung round his small hips. He took in the fact that I had a chauffeur and offered opportunist respect.

'Wha' can I do for yer?' he enquired, chewing gum.

I'grinned. 'Mrs Dorothea Pannier thinks you're a great guy.'

'Yeah?' He moved his head in pleasure, nodding. 'Not such a bad old duck herself.'

'Did you know she's in hospital?'

His good humour vanished, 'I heard some b.a.s.t.a.r.d carved her up.'

'I'm Thomas Lyon,' I said. 'She gave me your name.'

'Yeah?' He was wary. 'You're not from that son of hers? Right t.u.r.d, that son of hers.'

I shook my head. 'Her brother Valentine left me his books in his will. She told me she'd trusted them to you for safe keeping.'

'Don't give them to no one, that's what she said.' His manner was determined and straightforward. I judged it would be a bad mistake to offer him money, which conferred on him saintly status in the modern scheme of things.

'How about,' I said, 'if we could get her on the phone?'

He could see nothing wrong in that, so I used the mobile to reach the hospital and then, with many clicks and delays, Dorothea herself.

She talked to Bill Robinson in his heavy leather gear and studs, and Bill Robinson's face shone with goodness and pleasure. Hope for the old world yet.

'She says,' he announced, giving me my phone back, 'that the sun shines out of your a.r.s.e and the books are yours.'

'Great.'

'But they aren't here,' he said. 'They're in the garage at home.'

'When could I pick them up?'

'I could go home midday in my lunch hour.' He gazed briefly to one side at a gleaming monster of a motorbike, heavily wheel-chained to confound would-be thieves. 'I don't usually, but I could.'

I suggested buying an hour of his time at once from his boss and not waiting for lunch.

'Cor,' he said, awestruck; but his boss, a realist, accepted the suggestion, and the money, with alacrity, and Bill Robinson rode to his house in my car with undoubted enjoyment.

'How do you know Dorothea?' I asked on the way.

'My girlfriend lives next door to her,' he explained simply. 'We do errands sometimes for the old luv. Carry her shopping, and such. She gives us sweets like we were kids.'

'Er,' I said, 'how old are you, then?'

'Eighteen. What did you think of my bike?'

'I envy you.'

His smile was complacent, and none the worse for that. When we reached his home ('Ma will be out at work, the key's in this thing what looks like a stone'), he unlocked a padlock on the solid doors of a brick-built garage and revealed his true vocation, the care and construction of bikes.

'I buy wrecks and rebuild them,' he explained, as I stood inside the garage gazing at wheels, handlebars, twisted tubing, shining fragments. 'I rebuild them as good as new and then I sell them.'

'Brilliant,' I said absently. 'Do you want to be in a film?'

'Do I what?'

I explained that I was always looking for interesting backgrounds. Would he mind moving some of the parts of motorbikes out of the garage into his short driveway and getting on with some work while we filmed Nash Rourke walking down the street, thinking? 'No dialogue,' I said, 'just Nash strolling by and pausing for a second or two to watch the work in progress. The character he's playing will be walking through Newmarket, trying to make up his mind about something.' I was looking for real Newmarket backgrounds, I said.

'Nash Rourke! Rourke! You're kidding me.' You're kidding me.'

'No. You'll meet him.'

'Mrs Pannier did say you were the one making the film they're talking about. It was in the Drumbeat Drumbeat.'

'The tyrannical bully-boy? Yes, that's me.'

He smiled broadly. 'Your books are in all those boxes.' He pointed to a large random row of cartons that announced their original contents as TV sets, electrical office equipment, microwave ovens and bread-making machines. 'A ton of paper, I shouldn't wonder. It took me the whole of Sat.u.r.day morning to pack it all and shift it here, but Mrs Pannier, dear old duck, she made it worth my while.'

It was approbation rather than a hint, but I said I would do the same, particularly if he could tell me which box held what.

Not a s...o...b..ll's chance, he said cheerfully. Why didn't I look?

The task was too much, both for the available time and my own depleted stamina. I said I'd wrenched my shoulder and couldn't lift the boxes, and asked him to stow as many as possible in the boot of the car. He looked resignedly at the rain but splashed backwards and forwards efficiently, joined after hesitation by my driver who b.u.t.toned his jacket closely and turned up his collar.

The car, including the front pa.s.senger seat, absorbed half of the boxes. I asked what he'd used to transport them on Sat.u.r.day.

'My dad's little old pick-up,' he said. 'It needed three journeys. He takes it to work weekdays, so I can't borrow it till this evening.'

He agreed to load and deliver the rest of the boxes in the pickup, and in cheerful spirits came along to the hotel and helped the porter there stack the cartons in the lobby.

'Do you mean it about me being in your film?' he asked on the way back to Wrigley's garage. 'And... when? when?'

'Tomorrow, maybe,' I said, 'I'll send a message. I'll fix it with your boss, and the film company will pay you a fee for your help.'

'Cor,' he said.

Nash, Silva and Moncrieff all joined O'Hara and me to watch the Huntingdon rushes.

Even without much sound the crowd scenes looked like an everyday race meeting and the race itself was still remarkable for the Victoria Cross riding of the jockeys. The race had been filmed successfully by five cameras and semi-successfully by another. There was easily enough to cut together a contest to stir the pulses of people who'd never seen jump-racing at close quarters: even Silva gasped at one sequence, and Nash looked thoughtful. Moncrieff fussed about shadows in the wrong places, which no one else had noticed.

The close shots with dialogue showed Silva at her most enticing. I praised her interpretation, not her looks, and got a brief nod of acknowledgement. The two days-work, all in all, had been worth the effort.

After the end of the rushes the film developers had joined on the thirty seconds' worth Moncrieff had shot of Lucy's photo. Large and in sharp focus, the two faces appeared on the screen.

'Who are they?' O'Hara asked, perplexed.

'The girl on the left,' I said, 'is Yvonne. Or rather, she was Sonia Wells, the girl who hanged. The real one.'

'Christ,' O'Hara said.

'And who's the man?' Nash asked.

'His name is Pig, I think.' I explained about Lucy's photo. 'I promised her that Yvonne wouldn't look like Sonia.'

The girl on the screen had curly light-brown hair, not a green crewcut or other weirdness. We would give Yvonne a long straight blonde wig and hope for the best.

The screen ran clear. We switched on the lights, talked about what we'd seen and, as always, went back to work.

Later at Huntingdon a photographer, who'd been engaged by the company to chart progress for the publicity department, brought a set of eight- by ten-inch prints for O'Hara to see. He and I took them into the weighing-room and sat at a table there, minutely searching the snap-shots with a magnifying gla.s.s.

We saw nothing of any help. There were photos of Nash signing in the end-of-the-day autograph session. A shot of Howard looking smug, inscribing his own book. Silva being film-star charming. Greg signing racecards. A shot of O'Hara and myself standing together. The lens had been focussed every time on the main subject's face: people around were present, but not warts and all.

'We need blow-ups of the crowd,' O'Hara said.

'We're not going to get nice clear views of the Fury.'

Morosely, he agreed, but ordered blow-ups anyway.

No more knives appeared, in or out of bodies. We filmed the remaining scenes and shipped out the horses. We made sure the whole place was shipshape, thanked Huntingdon racecourse management for their kindnesses, and were back in Newmarket soon after six o clock.

The message light inexorably flashed in my sitting-room: whenever did it not?

Robbie Gill wanted me to phone him, urgently.

I got his answer service: he would be available at seven.

To fill in the time I opened the tops of a few of the cartons of Valentine's books, which now took up a good deal of the floors.p.a.ce, as I'd particularly asked for them not to be put one on top of another. I'd forgotten, of course, that bending down used chest muscles also. On my knees, therefore, I began to inspect my inheritance.

There was too much of it. After the first three boxes had proved to hold part of the collection of biographies and racing histories, after I'd painstakingly taken out every volume, shaken it for insertions and replaced it, I saw the need for secretarial help; for a record keeper with a lap-top computer.

Lucy, I thought. If I had a fantasy, I would materialise her in my sitting-room, like Yvonne's dream lovers. Lucy knew how to work a computer.

Impulsively I phoned her father's house and put a proposition to his daughter.

'You told me you'd left school and are waiting to do a business course. Would you care for a two-week temporary job in Newmarket?' I explained what I needed. 'I am not trying to seduce you,' I said. 'You can bring a chaperon, you can stay anywhere you like, you can drive home every day to Oxfordshire if you prefer. I'll pay you fairly. If you don't want to do it, I'll get someone local.'

She said a shade breathlessly, 'Would I see Nash Rourke again?'

Wryly, I promised that she would. 'Every day.'

'He's... he's...'

'Yes,' I agreed, 'and he's married.'

'It's not that that,' she said disgustedly, 'He's just... nice.'

'True. What about the job?'

'I could start tomorrow.'

The boxes could wait that long, I thought.

At seven I phoned Robbie Gill's number again and reached him promptly.

'Which do you want first,' he asked, 'the good news or the appalling?'

'The good. I'm tired.'

'You don't surprise me. The good news is a list of names of knife experts. Three in London, two in Glasgow, four in Sheffield and one in Cambridge.' He read them all out and took away what little breath I could manage with a broken rib.

I said weakly, 'Say that Cambridge one again.'

He repeated it distinctly, 'Professor Meredith Derry, lecturer in mediaeval history, late of Trinity College, retired.'

Derry.

Knives...

'Do you want the appalling?' Robbie asked.

'I suppose I have to hear it?'

'Afraid so. Paul Pannier has been murdered.'

CHAPTER 13.

'Murdered?'

''Fraid so.'

'Where? And... er... how?'