Under the pink shirt beat a stony heart; inside the sprouting head hung a big ‘So What?’ Yet it was because this amusing, ambitious, unsocial creature invariably arrived well before his due hour to get his office arrangements ready for the day that he had found me before I died. There was a moral there, somewhere.
He gave me a look. ‘The corpse has returned, I see.’
‘Thanks to you,’ I said idly, but he knew I meant it. He didn’t care, though.
He said, ‘Your blood and stuff ran through a crack in the linoleum and soaked the wood underneath. The old man was wondering if it would start dry rot or something.’
‘Jones-boy,’ protested Dolly, looking sick. ‘Get the hell out of here, and shut up.’
The telephone rang on her desk. She picked it up and listened, said, ‘All right,’ and disconnected.
‘The old man wants to see you. Right away.’
‘Thanks.’ I stood up.
‘The flipping boot?’ asked Jones-boy interestedly.
‘Keep your snotty nose out,’ said Chico.
‘And balls to you…’
I went out smiling, hearing Dolly start to deal once again with the running dog fight Chico and Jones-boy never tired of. Downstairs, across the hall, into Joanie’s little office and through into Radnor’s.
He was standing by the window, watching the traffic doing its nut in the Cromwell Road. This room, where the clients poured out their troubles, was restfully painted a quiet grey, carpeted and curtained in crimson and furnished with comfortable arm-chairs, handy little tables with ashtrays, pictures on the walls, ornaments, and vases of flowers. Apart from Radnor’s small desk in the corner, it looked like an ordinary sitting-room, and indeed everyone believed that he had bought the room intact with the lease, so much was it what one would expect to find in a graceful, six-storeyed, late Victorian town house. Radnor had a theory that people exaggerated and distorted facts less in such peaceful surroundings than in the formality of a more orthodox office.
‘Come in, Sid,’ he said. He didn’t move from the window, so I joined him there. He shook hands.
‘Are you sure you’re fit enough to be here? You haven’t been as long as I expected. Even knowing you…’ he smiled slightly, with watching eyes.
I said I was all right. He remarked on the weather, the rush-hour and the political situation, and finally worked round to the point we both knew was at issue.
‘So, Sid, I suppose you’ll be looking around a bit now?’
Laid on the line, I thought.
‘If I wanted to stay here…’
‘If? Hm, I don’t know.’ He shook his head very slightly.
‘Not on the same terms, I agree.’
‘I’m sorry it hasn’t worked out.’ He sounded genuinely regretful, but he wasn’t making it easy.
I said with careful calm. ‘You’ve paid me for nothing for two years. Well, give me a chance now to earn what I’ve had. I don’t really want to leave.’
He lifted his head slightly like a pointer to a scent, but he said nothing. I ploughed on.
‘I’ll work for you for nothing, to make up for it. But only if it’s real, decent work. No more sitting around. It would drive me mad.’
He gave me a hard stare and let out a long breath like a sigh.
‘Good God. At last,’ he said. ‘And it took a bullet to do it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sid, have you ever seen a zombie wake up?’
‘No,’ I said ruefully, understanding him. ‘It hasn’t been as bad as that?’
He shrugged one shoulder. ‘I saw you racing, don’t forget. You notice when a fire goes out. We’ve had the pleasant, flippant ashes drifting round this office, that’s all.’ He smiled deprecatingly at his flight of fancy: he enjoyed making pictures of words. It wasted a lot of office time, on the whole.
‘Consider me alight again, then,’ I grinned. ‘And I’ve brought a puzzle back with me. I want very much to sort it out.’
‘A long story?’
‘Fairly, yes.’
‘We’d better sit down, then.’
He waved me to an arm-chair, sank into one himself, and prepared to listen with the stillness and concentration which sent him time and time again to the core of a problem.
I told him about Kraye’s dealing in racecourses. Both what I knew and what I guessed. When at length I finished he said calmly, ‘Where did you get hold of this?’
‘My father-in-law, Charles Roland, tossed it at me while I was staying with him last week-end. He had Kraye as a house guest.’ The subtle old fox, I thought, throwing me in at the deep end: making me wake up and swim.
‘And Roland got it from where?’
‘The Clerk of the Course at Seabury told him that the directors were worried about too much share movement, that it was Kraye who got control of Dunstable, and they were afraid he was at it again.’
‘But the rest, what you’ve just told me, is your own supposition?’
‘Yes.’
‘Based on your appraisal of Kraye over one week-end?’
‘Partly on what he showed me of his character, yes. Partly on what I read of his papers…’ With some hesitation I told him about my snooping and the photography. ‘… The rest, I suppose, a hunch.’
‘Hmm. It needs checking… Have you brought the films with you?’
I nodded, took them out of my pocket, and put them on the little table beside me.
‘I’ll get them developed.’ He drummed his fingers lightly on the arm of the chair, thinking. Then, as if having made a decision, said more briskly, ‘Well, the first thing we need is a client.’
‘A client?’ I echoed absent-mindedly.
‘Of course. What else? We are not the police. We work strictly for profit. Ratepayers don’t pay the overheads and salaries in this agency. The clients do.’
‘Oh… yes, of course.’
‘The most likely client in this case is either Seabury Racecourse executive, or perhaps the National Hunt Committee. I think I should sound out the Senior Steward first, in either case. No harm in starting at the top.’
‘He might prefer to try the police,’ I said, ‘free.’
‘My dear Sid, the one thing people want when they employ private investigators is privacy. They pay for privacy. When the police investigate something, everyone knows about it. When we do, they don’t. That’s why we sometimes get criminal cases when it would undoubtedly be cheaper to go to the police.’
‘I see. So you’ll try the Senior Steward…’
‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘You will.’
‘I?’
‘Naturally. It’s your case.’
‘But it’s your agency… he is used to negotiating with you.’
‘You know him too,’ he pointed out.
‘I used to ride for him, and that puts me on a bad footing for this sort of thing. I’m a jockey to him, an ex- jockey. He won’t take me seriously.’
Radnor shrugged a shoulder. ‘If you want to take on Kraye, you need a client. Go and get one.’
I knew very well that he never sent even senior operatives, let alone inexperienced ones, to arrange or angle for an assignment, so that for several moments I couldn’t really believe that he intended me to go. But he said nothing else, and eventually I stood up and went towards the door.
‘Sandown Races are on today,’ I said tentatively. ‘He’s sure to be there.’
‘A good opportunity.’ He looked straight ahead, not at me.
‘I’ll try it, then.’
‘Right.’
He wasn’t letting me off. But then he hadn’t kicked me out either. I went through the door and shut it behind me, and while I was still hesitating in disbelief I heard him inside the room give a sudden guffaw, a short, sharp,
