Longshot. Part 31

Dee-Dee nodded.

'Right then. That's about it.' He turned to me. 'We'll leave for Windsor at twelve-thirty.'

'Fine,' I said.

He went up to the Downs to watch the second lot, driving the newly acquired Land Rover. Sam Yaeger took the pick-up round to Perkin's half of the house and loaded up his teak. Dee-Dee took her coffee into the office and I made a determined attempt to sort each year's clippings into order of significance, the most newsworthy on top.

At about that time, Detective Chief Inspector Doone went into the formerly unused office that had been dubbed 'Incident Room' for the bones investigation and laid out on a trestle table the bits and pieces that his men had gleaned from the woodland.

There were the clothes found originally, now drying out in the centrally-heated air. There was also a pair of well-worn and misshapen trainers, still sodden, which might once have been white.

Apart from those, there were four old, empty and dirty soft drink cans, a heavily rusted toy fire-engine, a pair of broken sungla.s.ses, a puckered leather belt with split st.i.tches, a gin bottle, a blue plastic comb uncorrupted by time, a well-chewed rubber ball, a gold-plated ball-point pen, a pink lipstick, chocolate bar wrappers, a pitted garden spade and a broken dog collar.

Detective Chief Inspector Doone walked broodingly round the table staring at the haul from all angles.

'Speak to me, girl,' he said. 'Tell me who you are.'

The clothes and the shoes made no answer.

He called in his men and told them to go back to the woods and widen the search, and he himself, as he had the day before, went through the lists of missing persons, trying to make a match.

He knew it was possible the young woman had been a far stranger to the area but thought it more likely that she was within fifty miles of her home. They usually were, these victims. He decided automatically to beam in on the locally lost.

He had a list of twelve persistent adolescent runaways: all possibles. A list of four defaulters from youth custody. A short list of two missing prost.i.tutes. A list of six missing for 'various reasons'.

One of those was Angela Brickell. The reason given was: 'Probably doped a racehorse in her charge. Skipped out.'

Doone's attention pa.s.sed over her and fastened thoughtfully on the wayward daughter of a politician. Reason for being missing: 'Mixed with bad crowd. Unmanageable.'

It might do his stalled career a bit of good, Doone reckoned, if it turned out to be her.

CHAPTER 9.

Tremayne told me that the only place that he couldn't take me on Windsor racecourse was into the Holy of Holies, the weighing room. Everywhere else, he said, I should stay by his side. He wouldn't forever be looking back to make sure I was with him: I was to provide my own glue.

Accordingly I followed him doggedly, at times at a run. Where he paused briefly to talk to other people he introduced me as a friend, John Kendall, not as Boswell. He left me to sort out for myself the information bombarding me from all sides, rarely offering explanations, and I could see that explanations would have been a burden for him when he was so busy. His four runners, as it happened, were in four consecutive races. He took me for a quick sandwich and a drink soon after our arrival on the racecourse and from then on began a darting progress: into the weighing room to fetch his jockey's saddle and weight cloth containing the correct amount of lead; off at a trot to the saddling boxes to do up the girths himself and straighten the tack to send the horse out looking good; into the parade ring to join the owners and give last-minute orders to the jockey; off up to the stands to watch the horse run; down again to the unsaddling areas, hoping to greet a winner, otherwise to listen to the why-not story from the jockey, and then off to the weighing room to pick up another saddle and weight cloth to start all over again.

Nolan was there, anxiously asking if Tremayne had received any thumbs-down from the Jockey Club.

'No,' Tremayne said. 'Have you?'

'Not an effing peep.'

'You ride, then,' Tremayne said. 'And don't ask questions. Don't invite a no. They'll tell you quickly enough if they want you off. Apply your mind to winning. Telebiddy's owners are here with their betting money burning holes in their pockets, so deliver the goods, eh?'

'Tell them I want a better effing present than last time.'

'Win the race first,' Tremayne said.

He made one of his dives into the weighing room, leaving me outside with Nolan who had come dressed to stifle criticism. All the same he complained to me bitterly that the effing media had snapped him coming through the main gate and he could do without their sodding attentions, the obscene so and sos.

The filth of Nolan's language tended to wash over one, I found: the brain tended finally to filter it out.

Much the same could be said about Sam Yaeger who slouched up beside us and annoyed Nolan by patting him on the back. Sam, too, was transformed by tidiness and I gradually observed that several of the jockeys arrived and departed from the racecourse dressed for the boardroom. Their working clothes might be pink, purple and the stuff of fantasy but they were saving they were businessmen first.

The physical impact of each of Nolan and Sam was diluted and dissipated by the open air that incidentally was still as cold as their relations.h.i.+p.

'Go easy on Bluecheesecake,' Nolan said. 'I don't want him effing loused up before the Kim Muir at Cheltenham.'

Sam answered, 'I'm not nannying any sodding amateur.'

'The Kim Muir is his main effing target.'

'Eff his sodding target.'

Did anyone ever grow up, I wondered. The school playground had a lot to answer for.

Away from each other, as I discovered during the afternoon, they were a.s.sured, sensible and supremely expert.

Sam made no concessions on Bluecheesecake. Through a spare pair of Tremayne's binoculars I watched his gold cap from start to finish, seeing the smooth pattern of his progress along the rails, staying in third or fourth place while others surged forward and fell back on his outside.

The steeplechase course at Windsor proved to be a winding figure-of-eight, which meant that tactics were important. At times one saw the runners from head-on; difficult to tell who was actually in front. Coming round the last of several bends Bluecheesecake made a mess of one head-on-view fence, his nose going down to the ground, Sam's back wholly visible from shoulders down to bottom up. Tremayne beside me let go of a Nolan-strength curse, but both horse and jockey righted themselves miraculously without falling and lost, Sam said afterwards, no more than three or four lengths.

Perhaps because of having to make up for those lengths in limited time before the winning post, Sam, having given his mount precious extra seconds for recovery of balance, rode over the last two fences with what even I could see was total disregard for his own safety and pressed Bluecheesecake unceremoniously for every ounce of effort.

Tremayne put down his gla.s.ses and watched the rocketing finish almost impa.s.sively, giving no more than a satisfied grunt when in the last few strides Bluecheesecake's nose showed decisively in front.

Before the cheers had died Tremayne had set off at a run to the winners' enclosure with me in pursuit, and after he'd received his due congratulations, inspected his excited, sweating, breathless charge for cuts and damage (none), and talked briefly to the press he followed Sam into the weighing room to fetch the saddle again for Just The Thing.

When he came out he was escorted by Nolan who fell into step beside him complaining ferociously that Sam had given Bluecheesecake a viciously hard race and spoiled his, Nolan's, chances at Cheltenham.

'Cheltenham is six weeks off,' Tremayne said calmly. 'Plenty of time.'

Nolan repeated his gripe.

Tremayne said with amazing patience, 'Sam did exactly right. Go and do the same on Telebiddy.'

Nolan stalked away still looking more furious than was sensible in his position and Tremayne allowed himself a sigh but no comment. He took a lot more from Nolan, I reflected, than he would allow from Sam, even though it seemed to me that he liked Sam better. A lot of things were involved there: status, accent, connections; all the signal flags of cla.s.s.

Sam rode Just The Thing in the next event, a hurdle race, with inconspicuous gallantry, providing the green mare with a clear view of the jumps and urging her on at the end to give her a good idea of what was expected. She finished a respectable third to Tremayne's almost tangible pleasure: and it was fascinating to me to have heard the plans beforehand and see them put into exact effect.

While Tremayne was on his way from weighing room to saddling boxes for Telebiddy in the next race he handed me an envelope and asked me to put the contents for him on the Tote; Telebiddy, all to win.

'I don't like people to see me bet,' he said, 'because for one thing it shows them I'm pretty confident, so they put their money on too and it shortens the odds. I usually bet by phone with a bookmaker, but today I wanted to judge the state of the ground first. It can be treacherous, after snow. You don't mind, do you?'

'Not at all.'

He nodded and hurried off, and I made my way to the Tote windows and disposed of enough to keep me in food for a year. Small, as in Tremayne's 'small bet', was a relative term, I saw.