brown liquid and several sausage rolls in progress. I took a tray, slid it along the rails in front of the glass-fronted serving display and picked a slice of cheesecake from behind one of the small hinged doors. I actually approved of the glass-door arrangement: it meant that with luck one's cheesecake wouldn't have been sneezed on by the general public, but only by a cook or two and the snack-bar staff.
Millington eyed my partially hygienic wedge and said he preferred the lemon meringue pie, himself.
'I like that too,' I said equably.
Millington was a big beer-and-any-kind-of-pie man who must have given up thankfully on weight control when he left the police. He looked as if he now weighed about seventeen stone, and while not gross was definitely a solid mass, but with an agility also that he put to good use in his job. Many petty racecourse crooks had made the mistake of believing Millington couldn't snake after them like an eel through the crowds, only to feel the hand of retribution falling weightily on their collar. I'd seen Millington catch a dipping pickpocket on the wind, an impressive sight
The large convenience-food snack-bar, bright and clean, was always infernally noisy, pop music thumping away to the accompaniment of chairs scraping the floor and the clatter of meals at a gallop. The clientele were mostly travellers, coming or going on trains lacking buffet cars, starving or prudent, travellers checking their watches, gulping too-hot coffee, uninterested in others, leaving in a hurry. No one ever gave Millington and me a second glance, and no one could ever have overheard what we said.
We never met there when there was racing at places like Plumpton, Brighton, Lingfield and Folkestone, on those days the whole racing circus could wash through Victoria Station. We never met, either, anywhere near the Security Service head office in the Jockey Club, in Portman Square. It was odd, I sometimes thought, that I'd never once been through my employer's door.
Millington said, 'I don't approve of you travelling with Filmer.'
'So I gathered,' I said. 'You said so earlier.'
'The man's a murderer '
He wasn't concerned for my safety, of course, but thought me unequal to the contest.
'He may not actually murder anyone on the train,' I said flippantly.
'It's no joke,' he said severely. 'And after this he'll know you, and you'll be no use to us on the racecourse, as far as he's concerned.'
'There are about fifty people going on the trip, the Brigadier said. I won't push myself into Filmer's notice. He quite likely won't remember me afterwards.'
'You'll be too close to him,' Millington said obstinately.
'Well,' I said thoughtfully, 'it's the only chance we've ever had so far to get really close to him at all. Even if he's only going along for a harmless holiday, we'll know a good deal more about him this way.'
'I don't like wasting you,' Millington said, shaking his head.
I looked at him in real surprise. 'That's a change,' I said.
'I didn't want you working for us, to begin with,' he said, shrugging. 'Didn't see what good you could do, thought it was stupid. Now you're my eyes. The eyes in the back of my head, that the villains have been complaining about ever since you started. I've got the sense to know it. And if you must know, I don't want to lose you. I told the Brigadier we were wasting our trump card, sending you on that train. He said we might be playing it, and if we could get rid of Filmer, it was worth it.'
I looked at Millington 's worried face. I said slowly, 'Do you, and does the Brigadier, know something about Filmer's travel plans that you've not told me?'
'When he said that,' Millington said, looking down at his sausage rolls, 'I asked him that same question. He didn't answer. I don't know of anything myself. I'd tell you, if I did.'
Perhaps he would, I thought. Perhaps he wouldn't.
The next day, Tuesday, I drove north to Nottingham for a normal day's hard work hanging around doing nothing much at the races.
I'd bought the new clothes and a new suitcase and had more or less packed ready for my departure the next morning, and the old long-distance wanderlust that had in the past kept me travelling for seven years had woken from its recent slumber and given me a sharp nudge in the ribs. Millington shouldn't fear losing me to Filmer, I thought, so much as to the old seductive tug of moving on, moving on… seeing what lay round the next corner.
I could do it now, I supposed, in five-star fashion, not back-packing; in limousines, not on buses; eating haute cuisine, not hot dogs; staying in Palm Beach, not dusty backwoods. Probably I'd enjoy the lushness for a while, maybe even for a long while, but in the end, to stay real, I'd have to get myself out of the sweet shop and do some sort of work, and not put it off and off until I no longer had a taste for plain bread.
I was wearing, perhaps as a salute to plain bread, a well-worn leather jacket and a flat cloth cap, the binoculars-camera slung round my neck, a race-card clutched in my hand. I stood around vaguely outside the weighing-room, watching who came and who went, who talked to whom, who looked worried, who happy, who malicious.
A young apprentice with an ascendant reputation came out of the weighing-room in street clothes, not riding gear, and stood looking around as if searching for someone. His eyes stopped moving and focused, and I looked to see what had caught his attention. He was looking at the Jockey Club's paid steward, who was acting at the meeting as the human shape of authority. The steward was standing in social conversation with a pair of people who had a horse running that day, and after a few minutes he raised his hat to the lady and walked out towards the parade ring.
The apprentice calmly watched his departing back, then made another sweep of the people around. Seeing nothing to worry about he set off towards the stand the jockeys watched the races from and joined a youngish man with whom he walked briefly, talking. They parted near the stands, and I, following, transferred my attention from the apprentice and followed the other man instead; he went straight into the bookmakers' enclosure in front of the stands, and along the rows of bookmakers to the domain of Collie Goodboy who was shouting his offered odds from the height of a small platform the size of a beer-crate.
The apprentice's contact didn't place a bet. He picked up a ledger and began to record the bets of others. He spoke to Collie Goodboy (Les Morris to his parents) who presently wiped off the offered odds from his board, and chalked up new ones. The new odds were generous. Collie Goodboy was rewarded by a rush of eager punters keen to accept the invitation. Collie Goodboy methodically took their money.
With a sigh I turned away and wandered off up to the stands to watch the next race, scanning the crowds as usual, watching the world revolve. I ended up standing not far from the rails dividing the bookmakers' section of the stands (called the Tattersalls enclosure) from the club, the more expensive end. I often did that, as from there one could see the people in both enclosures easily. One could see also who came to the dividing rails to put bets on with the row of bookmakers doing business in that privileged position. The 'rails' bookmakers were the princes of their trade, genial, obliging, fair, flint-hearted, brilliant mathematicians.
I watched as always to see who was betting with whom, and when I came to the bookmaker nearest to the stands, nearest to me, I saw that the present customer was Filmer.
I was watching him bet, thinking of the rail journey ahead, when he tilted his head back and looked straight up into my eyes.
Chapter Three
I looked away instantly but smoothly, and presently glanced back.
Filmer was still talking to the bookmaker. I edged upwards through the crowd behind me until I was about five steps higher and surrounded by other racegoers.
Filmer didn't look back to where I'd been standing. He didn't search up or down or sideways to see where I had gone.
My thumping heart quietened down a bit. The meeting of eyes had been accidental: had to have been. Dreadfully unwelcome, all the same, particularly at this point.
I hadn't expected him to have been at Nottingham, and hadn't looked for him. Two of his horses were
