Дик Фрэнсис - High Stakes

‘Come off it,’ Charlie said amiably. ‘His breeding’s as impeccable as yours and mine.’

‘Huh.’ Total disbelief didn’t stop Bert Huggerneck accepting more toast. ‘Got any jam?’ he said.

‘Sorry.’

He made do with half a jar of marmalade.

‘What’s that about breeding?’ he said suspiciously to Charlie. ‘ Capit alists are all snobs.’

‘His grandfather was a mechanic,’ Charlie said. ‘Same as mine was a milkman and yours a navvie.’

I was amused that Charlie had glossed over my father and mother, who had been school teacher and nurse. Far more respectable to be able to refer to the grandfather-mechanic, the welder-uncle and the host of card-carrying cousins. If politicians of all sorts searched diligently amongst their antecedents for proletarianism and denied aristocratic contacts three times before cockcrow every week-day morning, who was I to spoil the fun? In truth the two seemingly divergent lines of manual work and schoolmastering had given me the best of both worlds, the ability to use my hands and the education to design things for them to make. Money and experience had done the rest.

‘I gather Mr Huggerneck is here against his will,’ I observed.

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Charlie said. ‘He wants your help.’

‘How does he act if he wants to kick you in the kidneys?’

‘He wouldn’t eat your food.’

Fair enough, I thought. Accept a man’s salt, and you didn’t boot him. Times hadn’t collapsed altogether where that still held good.

We were sitting round the kitchen table with Charlie smoking a cigarette and using his saucer as an ashtray and me wondering what he considered so urgent. Bert wiped his plate with a spare piece of toast and washed that down with coffee.

‘What’s for lunch?’ he said.

I took it as it was meant, as thanks for breakfast.

‘Bert,’ said Charlie, coming to the point, ‘is a bookie’s clerk.’

‘Hold on,’ Bert said. ‘Not is. Was.’

‘Was,’ Charlie conceded, ‘and will be again. But at the moment the firm he worked for is bankrupt.’

‘The boss went spare,’ Bert said, nodding. ‘The bums come and took away all the bleeding office desks and that.’

‘And all the bleeding typists?’

‘Here,’ said Bert, his brows suddenly lifting as a smile forced itself at last into his eyes. ‘You’re not all bad, then.’

‘Rotten to the core,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, see, the boss got all his bleeding sums wrong, or like he said, his mathematical computations were based on a misconception.’

‘Like the wrong horse won?’

Bert’s smile got nearer. ‘Cotton on quick, don’t you? A whole bleeding row of wrong horses. Here, see, I’ve been writing for him for bleeding years. All the big courses, he has... well, he had... a pitch in Tatt’s and down in the Silver Ring too, and I’ve been writing for him myself most of the time, for him personally, see?’

‘Yes.’ Bookmakers always took a clerk to record all bets as they were made. A bookmaking firm of any size sent out a team of two men or more to every allowed enclosure at most race meetings in their area: the bigger the firm, the more meetings they covered.

‘Well, see, I warned him once or twice there was a leary look to his book. See, after bleeding years you get a nose for trouble, don’t you? This last year or so he’s made a right bleeding balls-up more than once and I told him he’d have the bums in if he went on like that, and I was right, wasn’t I?’

‘What did he say?’

‘Told me to mind my own bleeding business,’ Bert said. ‘But it was my bleeding business, wasn’t it? I mean, it was my job at stake. My livelihood, same as his. Who’s going to pay my H.P. and rent and a few pints with the lads, I asked him, and he turned round and said not to worry, he had it all in hand, he knew what he was doing.’ His voice held total disgust.

‘And he didn’t,’ I remarked.

‘Of course he bleeding didn’t. He didn’t take a blind bit of notice of what I said. Bleeding stupid, he was. Then ten days ago he really blew it. Lost a bleeding packet. The whole works. All of us got the push. No redundancy either. He’s got a bleeding big overdraft in the bank and he’s up to the eyeballs in debt.’

I glanced at Charlie who seemed exclusively interested in the ash on his cigarette.

‘Why,’ I asked Bert, ‘did your boss ignore your warnings and rush headlong over the cliff?’

‘He didn’t jump over no cliff, he’s getting drunk every night down the boozer.’

‘I meant...’

‘Hang on, I get you. Why did he lose the whole bleeding works? Because someone fed him the duff gen, that’s my opinion. Cocky as all get out, he was, on the way to the races. Then coming home he tells me the firm is all washed up and down the bleeding drain. White as chalk, he was. Trembling, sort of. So I told him I’d warned him over and over. And that day I’d warned him too that he was laying too much on that Energise and not covering himself, and he’d told me all jolly like to mind my own effing business. So I reckon someone had told him Energise was fixed not to win, but it bleeding did win, and that’s what’s done for the firm.’

Bert shut his mouth and the silence was as loud as bells. Charlie tapped the ash off and smiled.

I swallowed.

‘Er...’ I said eventually.

‘That’s only half of it,’ Charlie said, interrupting smoothly. ‘Go on, Bert, tell him the rest.’

Bert seemed happy to oblige. ‘Well, see, there I was in the boozer Saturday evening. Last Saturday, not the day Energise won. Four days ago, see? After the bums had been, and all that. Well, in walks Charlie like he sometimes does and we had a couple of jars together, him and me being old mates really on account of we lived next door to each other when we were kids and he was going to that la-di-da bleeding Eton and someone had to take him down a peg or two in the holidays. So, anyway, there we were in the boozer and I pour out all my troubles and Charlie says he has another friend who’d like to hear them, so... well... here we are.’

‘What are the other troubles, then?’ I asked.

‘Oh... Yeah. Well, see, the boss had a couple of betting shops. Nothing fancy, just a couple of betting shops in Windsor and Staines, see. The office, now, where the bailiffs came and took everything, that was behind the shop in Staines. So there’s the boss holding his head and wailing like a siren because all his bleeding furniture’s on its way out, when the phone rings. Course by this time the phone’s down on the floor because the desk it was on is out on the pavement. So the boss squats down beside it and there’s some geezer on the other end offering to buy the lease.’

He paused more for dramatic effect than breath.

‘Go on,’ I said encouragingly.

‘Manna from Heaven for the boss, that was,’ said Bert, accepting the invitation. ‘See, he’d have had to go on paying the rent for both places even if they were shut. He practically fell on the neck of this geezer in a manner of speaking, and the geezer came round and paid him in cash on the nail, three hundred smackers, that very morning and the boss has been getting drunk on it ever since.’

A pause. ‘What line of business’ I asked, ‘is this geezer in?’

‘Eh?’ said Bert, surprised. ‘Bookmaking, of course.’

Charlie smiled.

‘I expect you’ve heard of him,’ Bert said. ‘Name of Ganser Mays.’

It was inevitable, I supposed.

‘In what way,’ I asked, ‘do you want me to help?’

‘Huh?’

‘Charlie said you wanted my help.’

‘Oh that. I dunno, really. Charlie just said it might help to tell you what I’d told him, so I done it.’