Dick Francis - Odds against

‘Yes, sir,’ her voice came tinnily out of the speaker.

‘Here,’ said Radnor, picking up a shallow brown cardboard box. ‘Look at these.’

The box contained a thick wad of large glossy photographs. I looked at them one by one and heaved a sigh of relief. They had all come out sharp and clear, except some of the ones I had duplicated at varying exposures.

The telephone on Radnor’s desk rang once, quietly. He lifted the receiver.

‘Oh, good morning Lord Hagbourne. Radnor here. Yes, that’s right…’ He gestured to me to sit down, and I stayed there listening while he negotiated terms in a smooth, civilised, deceptively casual voice.

‘And of course in a case like this, Lord Hagbourne, there’s one other thing: we make a small surcharge if our operatives have to take out of the ordinary risks… Yes, as in the Canlas case, exactly. Right then, you shall have a preliminary report from us in a few days. Yes… good-bye.’

He put down the receiver, bit his thumb-nail thoughtfully for a few seconds, and said finally, ‘Right, then, Sid. Get on with it.’

‘But…’ I began.

‘But nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s your case. Get on with it.’

I stood up, holding the packet of photographs. ‘Can I… can I use Bona Fides and so on?’

He waved his hand permissively. ‘Sid, use every resource in the agency you need. Keep an eye on expenses though, we don’t want to price ourselves out of business. And if you want leg work done, arrange it through Dolly or the other department heads. Right?’

‘Won’t they think it odd? I mean… I don’t amount to much around here.’

‘And whose fault is that? If they won’t do what you ask, refer them to me.’ He looked at me expressionlessly.

‘All right.’ I walked to the door. ‘Er… who…’ I said, turning the knob, ‘gets the danger money? The operative or the agency?’

‘You said you would work for nothing,’ he observed dryly.

I laughed. ‘Just so. Do I get expenses?’

‘That car of yours drinks petrol.’

‘It does twenty,’ I protested.

‘The agency rate is based on thirty. You can have that. And other expenses, yes. Put in a chit to accounts.’

‘Thanks.’

He smiled suddenly, the rare sweet smile so incongruous to his military bearing, and launched into another elaborate metaphor.

‘The tapes are up,’ he said. ‘What you do with the race depends on your skill and timing, just as it always used to. I’ve backed you with the agency’s reputation for getting results, and I can’t afford to lose my stake. Remember that.’

‘Yes,’ I said soberly. ‘I will.’

I thought, as I took my stupidly aching stomach up two storeys to Bona Fides, that it was time Radnor had a lift installed: and was glad I wasn’t bound for Missing Persons away in the rarefied air of the fifth floor. There was a lot more character, I supposed, in the spendidly proportioned, solidly built town house that Radnor had chosen on a corner site in the Cromwell Road, but a flat half-acre of modern office block would have been easier on his staff. And about ten times as expensive, no doubt.

The basement, to start at the bottom, was — except for the kitchen — given over entirely to files and records. On the ground floor, besides Radnor himself and Joanie, there were two interview-cum-waiting rooms, and also the Divorce Section. On the first floor; the Racing Section, Accounts, another interview room and the general secretarial department. Up one was Bona Fides, and above that, on the two smaller top floors, Guard and Missing Persons. Missing Persons alone had room to spare. Bona Fides, splitting at the seams, was encroaching on Guard. Guard was sticking in its toes.

Jones-boy, who acted as general messenger, must have had legs like iron from pounding up and down the stairs, though thanks to a tiny service lift used long ago to take nursery food to top floor children, he could haul his tea trays up from landing to landing instead of carrying them.

In Bona Fides there was the usual chatter of six people talking on the telephone all at once. The department head, receiver glued to one ear and finger stuck in the other, was a large bald-headed man with half-moon spectacles sitting half way down a prominent nose. As always, he was in his shirt sleeves, teamed with a frayed pullover and baggy grey flannels. No tie. He seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of old clothes but never any new ones, and Jones-boy had a theory that his wife dressed him from jumble sales.

I waited until he had finished a long conversation with a managing director about the character of the proposed production manager of a glass factory. The invaluable thing about Jack Copeland was his quick and comprehensive grasp of what dozens of jobs entailed. He was speaking to the glass manufacturer as if he had grown up in the industry: and in five minutes, I knew, he might be advising just as knowledgeably on the suitability of a town clerk. His summing up of a man went far beyond the basic list of honesty, conscientiousness, normality and prudence, which was all that many employers wanted. He liked to discover his subject’s reaction under stress, to find out what he disliked doing, and what he often forgot. The resulting footnotes to his reports were usually the most valuable part of them, and the faith large numbers of industrial firms had in him bore witness to his accuracy.

He wielded enormous power but did not seem conscious of it, which made him much liked. After Radnor, he was the most important person in the agency.

‘Jack,’ I said, as he put down the receiver. ‘Can you check a man for me, please?’

‘What’s wrong with the Racing Section, pal?’ he said, jerking his thumb towards the floor.

‘He isn’t a racing person.’

‘Oh? Who is it?’

‘A Howard Kraye. I don’t know if he has a profession. He speculates on the stock market. He is a rabid collector of quartz.’ I added Kraye’s London address.

He scribbled it all down fast.

‘O.K., Sid. I’ll put one of the boys on to it and let you have a prelim. Is it urgent?’

‘Fairly.’

‘Right.’ He tore the sheet off the pad. ‘George? You still doing that knitting wool client’s report? When you’ve finished, here’s your next one.’

‘George,’ I said. ‘Be careful.’

They both looked at me, suddenly still.

‘An unexploded bomb,’ I observed. ‘Don’t set him off.’

George said cheerfully, ‘Makes a nice change from knitting wool. Don’t worry, Sid. I’ll walk on eggs.’

Jack Copeland peered at me closely through the half specs.

‘You’ve cleared it with the old man, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘It’s a query fraud. He said to check with him if you wanted to.’

He smiled briefly. ‘No need, I guess. Is that all then?’

‘For the moment, yes, thanks.’

‘Just for the record, is this your own show, or Dolly’s, or whose?’

‘I suppose… mine.’

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, accenting the second syllable. ‘The wind of change, if I read it right?’

I laughed. ‘You never know.’

Down in the Racing Section I found Dolly supervising the reshuffling of the furniture. I asked what was going on, and she gave me a flashing smile.

‘It seems you’re in, not out. The old man just rang to say you needed somewhere to work, and I’ve sent Jones-boy upstairs to pinch a table from Missing Persons. That’ll do for now, won’t it? There isn’t a spare desk in the place.’

A series of bangs from outside heralded the return of Jones-boy, complete with a spindly plywood affair in a sickly lemon colour. ‘How that lot ever find a missing person I’ll never know. I bet they don’t even find their missing junk.’