Дик Фрэнсис - Break In

Danielle looked back before getting into the car. ‘I wonder what the house thinks,’ she said.

‘It thinks holy wow.’

‘As a matter of fact, so do I.’

We drove back to London along the old roads, not the motorway, winding through the empty Sunday evening streets of a string of towns, stopping at traffic lights, stretching the journey. I parked the car eventually in central London and we walked for a while, stopping to read menus, and eating eventually in a busy French bistro with red checked tablecloths and an androgynous guitarist; sitting in a corner, holding hands, reading the bill of fare chalked on a blackboard.

‘Aunt Casilia,’ Danielle said, sometime later over coffee, her eyes shining with amusement, ‘said last night, among other things, that while decorum was essential, abstinence was not.’

I laughed in surprise, and kissed her, and in a while and in decorum drove her back to Eaton Square.

I raced at Windsor the next day, parking the car at the railway station and taking a taxi from there right to the jockeys’ entrance gate near the weighing room on the racecourse.

The princess had no runners and wasn’t expected: I rode two horses each for Wykeham and the Lambourn trainer and got all of them round into the first or second place, which pleased the owners and put grins on the stable-lads. Bunty Ireland, beaming, told me I was on the winning streak of all time, and I calculated the odds that I’d come crashing down again by Thursday, and hoped that I wouldn’t, and that he was right.

My valet said, sure, he would return me to the station in his van — a not too abnormal service. He was reading aloud from the Flag with disfavour. ‘Reality is sweaty armpits, sordid sex, junkies dead in public lavatories, it says here.’ He threw the paper on to the bench. ‘Reality is the gas bill, remembering the wife’s birthday, a beer with your mates, that’s more like it. Get in the van, Kit, it’s right outside the weighing room. I’ve just about finished here.’

Reality, I thought, going out, was speed over fences, a game of manners, love in a shower: to each his own.

I travelled without incident back to the hotel and telephoned on time to Wykeham.

‘Where are you?’ he said. ‘People keep asking for you.’

‘Who?’ I said.

‘They don’t say. Four fellows, at least. All day. Where are you?’

‘Staying with friends.’

‘Oh.’ He didn’t ask further. He himself didn’t care. We talked about his winner and his second, and discussed the horses I would be schooling in the morning.

‘One of those fellows who rang wanted you for some lunch party or other in London,’ he said, as if suddenly remembering. ‘They invited me, too. The sponsors of Inch-cape’s race, last Saturday. The princess is going, and they wanted us as well. They said it was a great opportunity as they could see from tomorrow’s race programmes that we hadn’t any runners.’

‘Are you going?’

‘No, no. I said I couldn’t. But it might be better if you came here early, and do the schooling in good time.’

I agreed, and said goodnight.

‘Goodnight, Kit,’ he said.

I got through to my answering machine, and there among the messages were the sponsors of Icefall’s race, inviting me to lunch the next day. They would be delighted if I could join them and the princess in celebrating our victory in their race, please could I ring back at the given number.

I rang the number and got an answering machine referring me on, reaching finally the head of the sponsors himself.

‘Great, great, you can come?’ he said. ‘Twelve-thirty at the Guineas restaurant in Curzon Street. See you there. That’s splendid.’

Sponsors got advertising from racing and in return pumped in generous cash. There was an unspoken understanding among racing people that sponsors were to be appreciated, and that jockeys should turn up if possible where invited. Part of the job. And I wanted to go, besides, to talk to the princess.

I answered my other messages, none of which were important, and then got through to Holly.

‘Bobby spoke to his father,’ she said. ‘The beast said he would come only if you were there. Bobby didn’t like it.’

‘Did Bobby say I would be there anyway?’

‘No, he waited to know what you wanted him to say. He has to ring back to his father.’

I didn’t like it any more than Bobby. ‘Why does Maynard want me?’ I said. ‘I didn’t think he would come at all if he knew I’d be there.’

‘He said he would help Bobby get rid of you once and for all, but that you had to be there.’

Bang, I thought, goes any advantage of surprise. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Tell Bobby to tell him I’ll be coming. At about four o’clock, I should think. I’m going to a sponsors’ lunch in London.’

‘Kit... whatever you’re planning, don’t do it.’

‘Must.’

‘I’ve a feeling...’

‘Stifle it. How’s the baby?’

‘Never have one,’ she said. ‘It’s the pits.’

I collected all four recorded video tapes from the hotel’s vaults and took them with six others, unused, to Chiswick: and kissed Danielle with circumspection at her desk.

‘Hi,’ she said, smiling deeply in her eyes.

‘Hi, yourself.’

‘How did it go, today?’

‘Two wins, two seconds.’

‘And no crunches.’

‘No crunches.’

She seemed to relax. ‘I’m glad you’re OK.’

Joe appeared from the passage to the editing rooms saying he was biting his fingernails with inactivity and had I by any chance brought my tapes. I picked the four recorded tapes off Danielle’s desk and he pounced on them, bearing them away.

I followed him with the spare tapes into an editing room and sat beside him while he played the interviews through, one by one, his dark face showing shock.

‘Can you stick them together?’ I asked, when he’d finished.

‘I sure can,’ he said sombrely. ‘What you need is some voice-over linkage. You got anything else? Shots of scenery, anything like that?’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t think of it.’

it’s no good putting a voice-over on a black screen,’ he explained. ‘You’ve got to have pictures, to hold interest. We’re bound to have something here in the library that we can use.’

Danielle appeared at the doorway, looking enquiring.

‘How’s it going?’ she said.

‘I guess you know what’s on these tapes,’ Joe said.

‘No. Kit hasn’t told me.’

‘Good,’ Joe said. ‘When I’ve finished, we’ll try it out on you. Get a reaction.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘It’s a quiet night for news, thank goodness.’

She went away and Joe got me to speak into a microphone, explaining who the Perrysides were, giving George Tarker a location, introducing Hugh Vaughnley. I wanted them in that order, I said.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now you go away and talk to Danielle and leave it to me, and if you don’t like the result, no problem, we can always change it.’

‘I brought these unused tapes,’ I said, giving them to him. ‘Once we’ve settled on the final version, could we make copies?’

He took one of the new tapes, peeled off the cellophane wrapping and put it into a machine. ‘A breeze,’ he said.

He spent two or three hours on it, coming out whistling a couple of times to see if the station chief was still happy (which he appeared to be), telling me Spielberg couldn’t do better, drinking coffee from a machine, going cheerfully back.

Danielle worked sporadically on a story about a police hunt for a rapist who lurked in bus shelters and had just been arrested, which she said would probably not make it on to network news back home, but kept everyone working, at least. No Devil-Boys, no oil fires that night.