Decider

by Dick Francis

  ‘When?’ I asked.

  ‘This morning, sir.’

  ‘Then… here, I suppose.’

  Conrad, looking at his watch, announced that he had summoned a demolitions expert and an inspector from the local council to come to advise how best to remove the old stands and clear the area ready for rebuilding.

  Keith, in a rage, said, ‘You’ve no right to do that. It’s my racecourse just as much as yours, and I want to sell it, and if we sell to a developer he will clear away the stands at no expense to us. We are not rebuilding.’

  Marjorie, fierce eyed, said they needed an expert opinion on whether or not the stands could be restored as they had been, and whether the racecourse insurance would cover any other course of action.

  ‘Add the insurance to the profit from selling, and we will all benefit,’ Keith obstinately said.

  The policemen, uninterested, retired to their car outside and could be seen talking on their private phone line, consulting their superiors, one supposed.

  I said doubtfully to Roger, ‘Can the stands be restored?’

  He answered with caution. ‘Too soon to say.’

  ‘Of course, they can.’ Marjorie was positive. ‘Anything can be restored, if one insists on it.’

  Replaced as before, or copied, she meant. A mistake, I thought it would be, for Stratton Park’s racing future.

  The family went on quarrelling. They had all turned up early, it appeared, precisely to prevent any unilateral decisionmaking. They left the office in an arguing mass, bound together by fears of what any one could do on his own. Roger watched them go, his expression exasperated.

  ‘What a way to run a business! And neither Oliver nor I have been paid since before Lord Stratton died. He used to sign our cheques personally. The only person empowered to pay us since then is Mrs Binsham. I explained it to her when we were walking round the course last Wednesday, and she said she understood, but when I asked her again yesterday after the stands blew up, when she came here with all the others, she told me not to bother her at such a time.’ He sighed heavily. ‘It’s all very well, but it’s over two months now since we had any salary.’

  ‘Who pays the racecourse staff?’ I asked.

  ‘I do. Lord Stratton arranged it. Keith disapproves. He says it’s an invitation to fraud. Judges me by himself, of course. Anyway, the only pay cheques I can’t sign are Oliver’s and my own.’

  ‘Have you made them out ready?’

  ‘My secretary did.’

  ‘Give them to me, then.’

  ‘To you?’

  ‘I’ll get the old bird to sign them.’

  He didn’t ask how. He merely opened a desk drawer, took out an envelope and held it towards me.

  ‘Put it in my jacket,’ I said.

  He looked at the walking frame, shook his head at his thoughts, and tucked the cheques into my jacket pocket.

  ‘Are the stands,’ I asked, ‘a total loss?’

  ‘You’d better see for yourself. Mind you, no one can get close. The police have cordoned everything off.’

  From the office window, little damage was visible. One could see the end wall, the roof, and an oblique side view of the open steps.

  ‘I’d rather see the holes unaccompanied by Strattons,’ I said.

  Roger almost grinned. ‘They’re all afraid to let the others out of their sight.’

  ‘I thought so too.’

  ‘I suppose you do know you’re bleeding.’

  ‘Staining the wall, Marjorie said.’ I nodded. ‘It’s stopped by now, I should think.’

  ‘But…’ He fell silent.

  ‘I’ll go back for running repairs,’ I promised. ‘Though God knows when. They keep one waiting so long.’

  He said diffidently, ‘One of the racecourse doctors would be quicker. I could ask him for you, if you like. He’s very obliging.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said tersely.

  Roger reached for his telephone and reassured the doctor that racing was still going ahead as planned on Monday. Meanwhile, as a favour, could a casualty be stitched? When? At once, preferably. Thanks very much.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said to me, replacing the receiver. ‘Can you still walk?’

  I could and did, pretty slowly. The police protested at my vanishing again. Back in an hour or so, Roger said soothingly. The Strattons were nowhere in sight, though their cars were still parked. Roger aimed his jeep towards the main gates, and Mr Harold Quest refrained from planting his obsessions in our path.

  The doctor was the one who had attended the fallers at the open ditch, businesslike and calm. When he saw what he was being asked to do, he didn’t want to.

  ‘GPs don’t do this sort of thing any more,’ he told Roger. ‘They refer people to hospitals. He should be in a hospital. This level of pain is ridiculous.’

  ‘It comes and goes,’ I said. ‘And suppose we were out in the Sahara Desert?’

  ‘Swindon is not the Sahara.’

  ‘All life’s a desert.’

  He muttered under his breath and stuck me together again with what looked like adhesive tape.

  ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’ he asked, puzzled, finishing.

  I explained about the fence.

  ‘The man with the children!’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘They saw a horror, I’m afraid.’

  Roger thanked him for his services to me, and I also. The doctor told Roger that the racing authorities had received a complaint from Rebecca Stratton about his professional competency, or lack of it. They wanted a full report on his decision to recommend that she should be stood down for concussion.

  ‘She’s a bitch,’ Roger said, with feeling.

  The doctor glanced my way uneasily.

  ‘He’s safe,’ Roger assured him. ‘Say what you like.’

  ‘How long have you known him?’

  ‘Long enough. And it was Strattons that kicked his wounds open again.’

  It had to be hellish, I thought, being in even the smallest way reliant on the Strattons for employment. Roger truly lived on the edge of an abyss: and out of his job would mean out of his home.

  He drove us carefully back to the racecourse, forbearing from lecturing me about the hand I clamped over my face, or my drooping head. As far as he was concerned, what I chose to do about my troubles was my own affair. I developed strong feelings of friendship and gratitude.

  Big-beard stepped in front of the jeep. I wondered if his name was really Quest, or if he’d made it up. Not a tactful question to ask at that time. He barred our way through the main gates peremptorily, and Roger, to my surprise, smartly backed away from him, swung the jeep round and drove off down the road, continuing our journey.

  ‘It just occurred to me,’ he said judiciously, ‘that if we go in by the back road we not only avoid words with that maniac, but you could call at your bus for clean clothes.’

  ‘I’m running out of them.’

  He glanced across doubtfully. ‘Mine aren’t really big enough.’

  ‘No. It’s OK.’

  I was down to a choice between well-worn working jeans and race going tidiness. I opted for the jeans and a lumberjack-type wool checked shirt and dumped the morning’s bloodied garments in a washing locker already filled with sopping smaller clothes.

  The boys had finished sluicing both the bus and themselves. The bus looked definitely cleaner. The boys must be dry, even though nowhere in sight. I descended slowly to the ground again and found Roger walking round the home-from-home, interested but reticent, as ever.

  ‘It used to be a long-distance touring coach,’ I said. ‘I bought it when the bus company replaced its cosy old fleet with modern glass-walled crowd-pleasers.’

  ‘How… I mean, how do you manage the latrines?’

  I smiled at the army parlance. ‘There were huge spaces for suitcases, underneath. I replaced some of them with water and sewage tanks. Every rural authority runs pump-out tankers for emptying far-flung cesspits. And there are boatyards. It
’s easy to get a pump-out, if you know who to ask.’

  ‘Amazing.’ He patted the clean coffee-coloured paintwork, giving himself another interval, I saw again, before having to go back to the distasteful present.

  He sighed. ‘I suppose…’

  I nodded.

  We climbed back into the jeep and returned to the grandstands, where, leaning again on the walking frame, I took my first objective look at the previous day’s destructive mayhem. We stood prudently outside the police tapes, but movement had ceased in the pile.

  First thought: incredible that Toby and I had come out of that mess alive.

  The building had been centrally disembowelled, its guts spilling out in a monstrous cascade. The weighing room, changing rooms and Oliver Wells’s office, which jutted forward from the main structure, had been crushed flat under the spreading weight of the collapsing floors above. The long unyielding steel and concrete mass of the course-facing viewing steps had meant that all the explosive force had been directed one way, into the softer resistance of the brick, wood and plaster of dining rooms, bars and staircase.

  Above the solidly impacted rubble, a hollow column of space rose through the upper floors like an exclamation mark, topped with a few stark remaining fingers of the Stewards’ viewing box pointing skyward.

  I said slowly, under my breath, ‘Jesus Christ.’

  After a while, Roger asked, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Chiefly,’ I said, ‘how the hell are you going to hold a race meeting here the day after tomorrow?’

  He rolled his eyes in frustration, ‘It’s Easter weekend. More weddings today than on any other day of the year. Monday, horse shows, dog shows, you name it, all over the place. I spent all yesterday afternoon trying to get hire firms to bring marquees. Any sort of tent. But every scrap of canvas is already out in service. We’re shutting off the whole of this end of the stands, of course, and are having to move everyone and everything along into Tattersalls, but so far I’ve only managed a promise of a couple of Portakabins for the changing rooms and it looks as if we’re going to have to have the scales out in the open air, as they used to do at point-to-points. And as for food and extra bars…’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘We’ve told the caterers to make their own arrangements and they say they’re stretched already. God help us if it rains, we’ll be working under umbrellas.’

  ‘Where were you planning to put tents?’ I asked.

  ‘In the members’ car park.’ He sounded disconsolate. ‘The Easter Monday holiday meeting is our biggest money-spinner of the year. We can’t afford to cancel it. And both Marjorie Binsham and Conrad are adamant that we go ahead. We’ve told all the trainers to send their runners for the races. The stables are all right. We’ll still comply with all the regulations such as six security boxes, and so on. The saddling stalls are fine. The parade ring’s OK. Oliver can use my office.’

  He turned away from his gloomy contemplation of the ruined grandstand and we began a slow traverse towards his telephone. He had to confirm some electrical plans, he said.

  His office was full of Strattons. Conrad sat in Roger’s chair behind the desk. Conrad was talking on Roger’s telephone, taking charge.

  Conrad was saying, ‘Yes, I know you told my manager that all your tents were out, but this is Lord Stratton himself speaking, and I’m telling you to dismantle and bring in a suitable marquee from anywhere at all, and put it up here tomorrow. I don’t care where you get it from, just get it.’

  I touched Roger’s arm before he could make any protest, and waved to him to retreat. Outside the office, ignored by all the Strattons, I suggested he drive us both back to the bus.

  ‘I’ve a telephone in it,’ I explained. ‘No interruptions.’

  ‘Did you hear what Conrad was saying?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Will he be successful?’

  ‘If he is, my job’s gone.’

  ‘Drive down to the bus.’

  Roger drove and, to save having to get in and out of the bus again, I told him where to find the mobile phone and asked him to bring it out, along with a book of private phone numbers he would find beneath it. When he climbed down the steps with the necessary, I looked up a number and made a call.

  ‘Henry? Lee Morris. How goes it?’

  ‘Emergency? Crisis? The roof’s fallen in?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘Yes, but Lee, my usual big top is out as an indoor pony school. Little girls in hard hats. They’ve got it for the year.’

  ‘What about the huge one that takes so much moving?’

  A resigned sigh came down the wire. Henry, long-time pal, general large-scale junk dealer, had acquired two big tops from a bankrupt travelling circus and would rent them out to me from time to time to enclose any thoroughly gutted ruin I wanted to shield from the weather.

  I explained to him what was needed and why, and I explained to Roger who he was going to be talking to, and I leaned peacefully on the walking frame while they discussed floor space, budget and transport. When they seemed to be reaching agreement I said to Roger, ‘Tell him to bring all the flags.’

  Roger, mystified, relayed the message and got a reply that made him laugh. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘I’ll phone back to confirm.’

  We took the telephone and the numbers book with us in the jeep and returned to the office. Conrad was still shouting down the phone there but, judging from the impatience now manifest in the Stratton herd, was achieving nil results.

  ‘You’re on,’ I murmured to Roger. ‘Say you found the tent.’

  It didn’t come naturally to him to take another man’s credit, but he could see the point in it. The Strattons could perversely turn down any suggestion of mine, even if it were to their own advantage to adopt it.

  Roger walked over to his desk as Conrad slammed down the receiver in fury.

  ‘I… er… I’ve located a tent,’ he said firmly.

  ‘About time!’ Conrad said.

  ‘Where?’ Keith demanded, annoyed.

  ‘A man in Hertfordshire has one. He can ship it here by tomorrow morning, and he’ll send a crew to erect it.’

  Conrad was grudgingly pleased but wouldn’t admit it.

  ‘The only thing is,’ Roger continued, ‘that he doesn’t supply this tent on short leases. We would need to keep it for a minimum of three months. However,’ he hurried on, sensing interruptions, ‘that condition could be to our advantage, as the grandstands will be out of operation for much longer than that. We could keep the tent for as long as we need. And this tent has a firm floor and versatile dividing partitions and sounds stronger than a normal marquee.’

  ‘Too expensive,’ Keith objected.

  ‘Less expensive, actually,’ Roger said, ‘than erecting tents separately for each meeting.’

  Marjorie Binsham’s gaze by-passed both Roger and her family and fastened on me.

  ‘Any ideas?’ she asked.

  ‘Ignore him,’ Keith insisted.

  I said neutrally, ‘All four directors are here. Hold a board meeting and decide.’

  A smile, quickly hidden, tugged at Marjorie’s lips. Dart, though, grinned openly.

  ‘Give us the details,’ Marjorie commanded Roger, and he, consulting his notes, told them the space and price involved, and said the insurance from non-availability of the stands would easily cover it.

  ‘Who arranged that insurance?’ Marjorie asked.

  ‘Lord Stratton and I and the insurance brokers.’

  ‘Very well,’ Marjorie said crisply, ‘I put forward a motion that the Colonel arranges a contract for the tent on the terms proposed. And Ivan will second it.’

  Ivan, galvanised, said vaguely, ‘Oh? Yes, rather.’

  ‘Conrad?’ Marjorie challenged him.

  ‘Well… I suppose so.’

  ‘Carried,’ Marjorie said.

  ‘I object,’ Keith seethed.

  ‘Your objection is noted,’ Marjorie said. ‘Colonel, summon the tent.’

  Roger turned t
he leaves of my phone book and spoke to Henry.

  ‘Very well done, Colonel!’ Marjorie congratulated him warmly when all was arranged. ‘This place could not function without you.’

  Conrad looked defeated; Ivan, bewildered; and Keith, murderous.

  Jack, Hannah and Dart, minor players, put no thoughts into words.

  The brief ensuing pause in the proceedings came to an end with the arrival of two more cars, one containing, it transpired, two senior policemen with an explosives expert, and the other, Conrad’s demolition man and a heavily moustached manifestation of local authority.

  The Strattons, as a flock, migrated into the open air.

  Roger wiped a hand over his face and said service in Northern Ireland had been less of a strain.

  ‘Do you think we had an Irish bomb here?’ I said.

  He looked startled but shook his head. ‘The Irish boast of it. No one so far has done any crowing. And this one wasn’t aimed at people, don’t forget. The Irish bombers aim to maim.’

  ‘So who?’

  ‘Crucial question. I don’t know. And you don’t need to say it… this may not be the end.’

  ‘What about guards?’

  ‘I’ve press ganged my groundsmen. There are relays of them in pairs patrolling the place.’ He patted the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. ‘They’re reporting all the time to my foreman. If anything looks wrong, he’ll report it to me.’

  The newly-arrived policemen came into the office and introduced themselves as a detective chief inspector and a detective sergeant. An accompanying intense looking young man was vaguely and anonymously introduced as an explosives expert, a defuser of bombs. It was he who asked most of the questions.

  I answered him simply, describing where the det cord had been and how it had looked.

  ‘You and your young son both knew at once what it was?’

  ‘We’d both seen it before.’

  ‘And how close to each other were the charges in the walls?’

  ‘About three feet apart. In some places, less.’

  ‘And how extensive or widespread?’

  ‘All round the stairwell and the landing walls on at least two floors. Perhaps more.’

  ‘We understand you’re a builder. How long, do you think, it would have taken you personally to drill the holes for the charges?’