'Yes, right. See you in about… um… two and a half hours, with luck.'
Two and a half hours later, beer and pork pie time in a dark far corner in a noisy bar, Millington 's preferred sort of habitat.
I gave him the exposed but undeveloped film, which he put in his pocket saying, 'Eyes in the back of my head,' with conspicuous satisfaction.
'Who is Horfitz?' I said, quenching the long drive's thirst in a half-pint of draught. 'Did you know he knew Filmer?'
'No,' he said, answering the second question first. 'And Filmer wouldn't want to be seen with him, nor to be seen in any sort of contact.'
'What you're saying,' I said slowly, 'is that the messenger, the nervous young man, is also known by sight to the stewards… to you yourself probably… because if he were an unidentifiable stranger, why should Filmer react so violently to being seen with him; to being seen accepting something from him?'
Millington gave me a sideways look. 'You've learned a thing or two, haven't you, since you started.' He patted the pocket containing the film. 'This will tell us if we know him. What did he look like?’
'Fairly plump, fairly gormless. Sweaty. Unhappy. A worm between two hawks.'
Millington shook his head. 'Might be anyone,' he said.
'What did Horfitz do?' I asked.
Millington bit into pork pie and took his time, speaking eventually round escaping crumbs of pastry.
'He owned a small stableful of horses in Newmarket and employed his own trainer for them, who naturally did what he was told. Very successful little stable in a quiet way. Amazing results, but there you are, some owners are always lucky. Then the trainer got cold feet because he thought we were on to him, which we actually weren't, we'd never reckoned him for a villain. Anyway, he blew the whistle on the operation, saying the strain was getting too much for him. He said all the horses in the yard were as good as interchangeable. They ran in whatever races he and Horfitz thought they could win. Three-year-olds in two-year-old races, past winners in maidens-at-starting, any old thing. Horfitz bought and sold horses continually so the yard never looked the same from week to week, and the stable lads came and went like yo-yos, like they do pretty much anyway. They employed all sorts of different jockeys. No one cottoned on. Horfitz had some nice long-priced winners but no bookmakers hollered foul. It was a small unfashionable stable, see? Never in the newspapers. Because they didn't run in big races, just small ones at tracks the press don't go to, but you can win as much by betting on those as on any others. It was all pretty low key, but we found out that Horfitz had made literally hundreds of thousands, not just by betting but by selling his winners. Only he always sold the real horses which fitted the names on the race-card, not the horses that had actually run. He kept those and ran them again, and sold the horses in whose names they'd run, and so on and so on. Audacious little fiddle, the whole thing.'
'Yes,' I agreed, and felt a certain amount of awe at the energy and organization put into the enterprise.
'So when the trainer ratted we set a few traps with his help and caught Horfitz with his pants down, so to speak. He got warned off for life and swore to kill his trainer, which he hasn't done so far. The trainer was warned off for three years with a severe caution, but he got his licence back two years ago. Part of the bargain. So he's in business again in a small way but we keep his runners under a microscope, checking their passports every time they run. We're a lot hotter at checking passports randomly all over the place now, as of course you know.'
I nodded.
Then Millington 's jaw literally dropped. I looked at the classic sign of astonishment and said, 'What's the matter?'
'Gawd,' he said. 'What a turn up. Can you believe it? Paul Shacklebury, that murdered stable lad, he was working for Horfitz's old trainer.'
I left Millington frowning with concentration over a replenished pint while he tried to work out the significance of Horfitz's old trainer employing a lad who was murdered for knowing too much about Filmer. What had Paul Shacklebury known, Millington demanded rhetorically for the hundredth time. And, more to the minute, what was in the briefcase, and why was Horfitz giving it to Filmer?
'Work on the sweating messenger,' I suggested, getting up to go. 'He might crack open like the trainer. You never know.'
'Maybe we will,' Millington said. 'And Tor… look out for yourself on the train.'
He could be quite human sometimes, I thought.
I flew to Ottawa the next day and gave in to temptation at Heathrow to the extent of changing my ticket from knees-against-chest economy to full-stretch-out first class. I also asked the Ottawa taxi driver who took me into the city from the airport to find me a decent hotel; he cast a rapid eye over my clothes and the new suitcase and said the Four Seasons should suit.
It suited. They gave me a small pleasant suite and I telephoned straight away to the number I'd been given for Bill Baudelaire. He answered himself at the first ring, rather to my surprise, and said yes, he'd had a telex to confirm I was on my way. He had a bass voice with a lot of timbre even over the wires and was softly Canadian in accent.
He asked where I would be in an hour and said he would come around then to brief me on the matter in hand, and I gathered from his circumspect sentences that he wasn't alone and didn't want to be understood. Just like home, I thought comfortably, and unpacked a few things, and. showered off the journey and awaited events.
Outside, the deepening orange of the autumn sunshine was turning the green copper roofs of the turreted stone government buildings to a transient shimmering gold, and I reflected, watching from the windows, that I'd much liked this graceful city when I'd been here before. I was filled with a serene sense of peace and contentment, which I remembered a few times in the days lying ahead.
Bill Baudelaire came when the sky had grown dark and I'd switched on the lights, and he looked round the suite with quizzical eyebrows.
'I'm glad to see old Val has staked you to rooms befitting a rich young owner.'
I smiled and didn't enlighten him. He'd shaken my hand when I opened the door to him and looked me quickly, piercingly up and down in the way of those used to assessing strangers instantly and with no inhibitions about letting them know it.
I saw a man of plain looks but positive charm, a solid man much younger than the Brigadier, maybe forty, with reddish hair, pale blue eyes and pale skin pitted by the scars of old acne. Once seen, I thought, difficult to forget.
He was wearing a dark grey business suit with a cream shirt and a red tie out of step with his hair, and I wondered if he were colour-blind or simply liked the effect.
He walked straight across the sitting room, sat in the armchair nearest to the telephone and picked up the receiver.
'Room service?' he said. 'Please send up as soon as possible a bottle of vodka and… er…' He raised his eyebrows in my direction, in invitation.
'Wine,' I said. 'Red. Bordeaux preferably.'
Bill Baudelaire repeated my request with a ceiling price and disconnected.
'You can put the drinks on your expense sheet and I'll initial it,' he said. 'You do have an expense sheet, I suppose?'
'I do in England.'
'Then start one here, of course. How are you paying the hotel bills?'
'By credit card. My own.'
'Is that usual? Never mind. You give all the bills to me when you've paid them, along with your expense sheet, and Val and I will deal with it.'
'Thank you,' I said. Val would have a fit, I thought, but then on second thoughts, no he probably wouldn't. He would pay me the agreed budget; fair was fair.
'Sit down,' Bill Baudelaire said, and I sat opposite him in another armchair, crossing one knee over the other. The room seemed hot to me with the central heating, and I wasn't wearing a jacket. He considered me for a while, his brow furrowing with seeming uncertainty.
'How old are you?' he said abruptly.
'Twenty-nine.'
'Val said you were experienced.' It wasn't exactly a question, nor a matter of disbelief.
