‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I did take care. Instead of going back into the hotel, I rang up.’
The manager said, ‘Sid, where on earth are you, people have been trying to reach you all the evening… the police too.’
‘Yes, Joe, I know. It’s all right. I’ve talked to the people in London. Now, has anyone actually called at the hotel, wanting me?’
‘There’s someone up in your room, yes. Your father-in-law, Admiral Roland.’
‘Oh really? Does he look like an Admiral?’
‘I suppose so,’ he sounded puzzled.
‘A gentleman?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Not Fred, then.
‘Well, he isn’t my father-in-law. I’ve just been talking to him in his house in Oxfordshire. You collect a couple of helpers and chuck my visitor out.’
I put down the receiver sighing. A man up in my room meant everything I’d brought to Seabury would very likely be ripped to bits. That left me with just the clothes I stood in, and the car…
I fairly sprinted round to where I’d left the car. It was locked, silent and safe. No damage. I patted it thankfully, climbed in, and drove out to the racecourse.
FIFTEEN
All was quiet as I drove through the gates and switched off the engine. There were lights on — one shining through the windows of the Press room, one outside the weighing room door, one high up somewhere on the stands. The shadows in between were densely black. It was a clear night with no moon.
I walked across to the Press room, to see if the security patrols had anything to report.
They hadn’t.
All four of them were fast asleep.
Furious, I shook the nearest. His head lolled like a pendulum, but he didn’t wake up. He was sitting slumped into his chair. One of them had his arms on the table and his head on his arms. One of them sat on the floor, his head on the seat of the chair and his arms hanging down. The fourth lay flat, face downwards, near the opposite wall.
The stupid fools, I thought violently. Ex-policemen letting themselves be put to sleep like infants. It shouldn’t have been possible. One of their first rules in guard work was to take their own food and drink with them and not accept sweets from strangers.
I stepped round their heavily breathing hulks and picked up one of the Press telephones to ring Chico for reinforcements. The line was dead. I tried the three other instruments. No contact with the exchange on any of them.
I would have to go back and ring up from Seabury, I thought. I went out of the Press room but in the light pouring out before I shut the door I saw a dim figure walking towards me from the direction of the gate.
‘Who’s that?’ he called imperiously, and I recognised his voice. Captain Oxon.
‘It’s only me, Sid Halley.’ I shouted back. ‘Come and look at this.’
He came on into the light, and I stood aside for him to go into the Press room.
‘Good heavens. What on earth’s the matter with them?’
‘Sleeping pills. And the telephones don’t work. You haven’t seen anyone about who ought not to be?’
‘No. I haven’t heard anything except your car. I came down to see who had come.’
‘How many lads are there staying overnight in the hostel? Could we use some of those to patrol the place while I ring the agency to get some more men?’
‘I should think they’d love it,’ he said, consideringly. ‘There are about five of them. They shouldn’t be in bed yet. We’ll go over and ask them, and you can use the telephone from my flat to ring your agency.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That’s fine.’
I looked round the room at the sleeping men. ‘I think perhaps I ought to see if any of them tried to write a message. I won’t be a minute.’
He waited patiently while I looked under the head and folded arms of the man at the table and under the man on the floor, and all round the one with his head on the chair seat, but none of them had even reached for a pencil. Shrugging, I looked at the remains of their supper, lying on the table. Half eaten sandwiches on grease-proof paper, dregs of coffee in cups and thermos flasks, a couple of apple cores, some cheese sections and empty wrappings, and an unpeeled banana.
‘Found anything?’ asked Oxon.
I shook my head in disgust. ‘Not a thing. They’ll have terrible headaches when they wake up, and serve them right.’
‘I can understand you being annoyed…’ he began. But I was no longer really listening. Over the back of the chair occupied by the first man I had shaken was hanging a brown leather binoculars case: and on its lid were stamped three black initials: L.E.O. Leo.
‘Something the matter?’ asked Oxon.
‘No.’ I smiled at him and touched the strap of the binoculars. ‘Are these yours?’
‘Yes. The men asked if I could lend them some. For the dawn, they said.’
‘It was very kind of you.’
‘Oh. Nothing.’ He shrugged, moving out into the night. ‘You’d better make the phone call first. We’ll tackle the boys afterwards.’
I had absolutely no intention of walking into his flat.
‘Right,’ I said.
We went out of the door, and I closed it behind us.
A familiar voice, loaded with satisfaction, spoke from barely a yard away. ‘So you’ve got him, Oxon. Good.’
‘He was coming…’ began Oxon in anxious anger, knowing that ‘got him’ was an exaggeration.
‘No,’ I said, and turned and ran for the car.
When I was barely ten yards from it someone turned the lights on. The headlights of my own car. I stopped dead.
Behind me one of the men shouted and I heard their feet running. I wasn’t directly in the beam, but silhouetted against it. I swerved off to the right, towards the gate. Three steps in that direction, and the headlights of a car turning in through it caught me straight in the eyes.
There were more shouts, much closer, from Oxon and Kraye. I turned, half dazzled, and saw them closing in. Behind me now the incoming car rolled forward. And the engine of my Mercedes purred separately into life.
I ran for the dark. The two cars, moving, caught me again in their beams. Kraye and Oxon ran where they pointed.
I was driven across and back towards the stands like a coursed hare, the two cars behind inexorably finding me with their lights and the two men running with reaching, clutching hands. Like a nightmare game of ‘He’, I thought wildly, with more than a child’s forfeit if I were caught.
Across the parade ring, across the flat tarmac stretch beyond it, under the rails of the unsaddling enclosure and along the weighing room wall. Sometimes only a foot from hooking fingers. Once barely a yard from a speeding bumper.
But I made it. Safe, panting, in the precious dark, on the inside of the door into the trainers’ luncheon room and through there without stopping into the kitchen. And weaving on from there out into the members’ lunch room, round acres of tables with upturned chairs, through the far door into the wide passage which cut like a tunnel along the length of the huge building, across it, and up a steep stone staircase emerging half way up the open steps of the stands, and sideways along them as far as I could go. The pursuit was left behind.
I sank down, sitting with one leg bent to run, in the black shadow where the low wooden wall dividing the Members from Tattersalls cut straight down the steps separating the stands into two halves. On top of the wall
