Rat Race

by Dick Francis

  The remaining two aircraft were a small single engined trainer, and a twin engined eight year old Aztec equipped with every possible flying aid, for which Harley was paying through the nose on a five year lease.

  The girl, Honey, his brother’s daughter, worked for love and peanuts and was the keystone which held up the arch. I knew her voice better than her face, as she sat up in the control tower all day directing such air traffic as came along. Between times she typed all the letters, kept the records, did the accounts, answered the telephone if her uncle didn’t and collected landing fees from visiting pilots. She was reputed to be suffering from a broken heart about Larry and consequently came down from her crow’s nest as seldom as possible.

  ‘She’s made puff balls out of her eyes, crying for that louse’ was how my part-time colleague put it. ‘But you wait just a week or two. She’ll lie down for you instead. Never refused a good pilot yet, our Honey hasn’t.’

  ‘How about you?’ I asked, amused.

  ‘Me? She’d squeezed me like a lemon long before that Goddamned Larry ever turned up.’

  Harley said crossly ‘We’ve lost two charters since the bomb. They say the Aztec’s too expensive, they would rather go by road.’ He ran his hand over his head. ‘There’s another Cherokee Six up at Liverpool that’s available to lease. I’ve just been talking to them on the phone. It sounds all right. They’re bringing it across here tomorrow afternoon, so you can take it up when you get back from Newmarket and see what you think.’

  ‘How about the insurance on the old one?’ I asked idly. ‘It would be cheaper in the long run to buy rather than lease.’

  ‘It was on hire purchase’ he said gloomily. ‘We’ll be lucky if we get a penny. And it’s not really your business.’

  Harley was slightly plump and slightly bald and just not quite forceful enough to lift Derrydowns up by its bootstraps. His manner to me was more bossy than friendly, a reaction I understood well enough.

  ‘The last person on earth to put a bomb on any aircraft would be Joe,’ he said explosively. ‘He looks after them like a mother. He polishes them.’

  It was true. The Derrydown aircraft sparkled outside and were shampooed inside. The engines ran like silk. The general, slightly misleading, air of prosperity which clung around the public face of the firm was mostly Joe’s work.

  The Board of Trade came back from the hangar looking vaguely sheepish. The rough side of Joe’s tongue, I guessed. At sixty-nine and with savings in the bank, he was apt to lay down his own laws. He had taken exception to my theory that a pulley on the elevator wires had come adrift. No such thing was possible in one of his aircraft, he had told me stiffly, and I could take my four gold rings away and I knew what I could do with them. As I hadn’t worn my captain’s jacket for nearly two years I told him the moths had beaten me to it, and although it was a feeble joke he gave me a less sour look and told me that it couldn’t have been a broken pulley, he was sure it couldn’t, and if it was, it was the manufacturer’s fault, not his.

  ‘It saved Colin Ross’s life,’ I pointed out. ‘You should claim a medal for it.’ Which opened his mouth and shut him up.

  The Board of Trade trooped into Harley’s office. The tall man sat in the armchair and Green Pencil on the hard one. Harley behind his desk. I leant against the wall, on my feet.

  ‘Well now,’ said the tall man. ‘It seems as if everyone on this airfield had a chance to tamper with the Cherokee. Everyone in the company, and any customers who happened to be here that morning, and any member of the public wandering around for a look-see. We’ve assumed the bomb was aimed at Colin Ross, but we don’t really know that. If it was, someone had a pretty accurate idea of when he would be in the aircraft.’

  ‘Last race four thirty. He was riding in it,’ Harley said. ‘Doesn’t take too much figuring to assume that at five forty he’d be in the air.’

  ‘Five forty seven’ said the tall man. ‘Actually.’

  ‘Any time about then,’ said Harley irritably.

  ‘I wonder what the bomb was in,’ said the tall man reflectively. ‘Did you look inside the first aid tin?’

  ‘No,’ I said, startled. ‘I just checked that it was there. I’ve never looked inside it. Or inside the fire extinguishers, or under the seats or inside the life jacket covers…’

  The tall man nodded. ‘It could have been in any of those places. Or it could after all have been in that fancy parcel.’

  ‘Ticking away,’ said Harley.

  I peeled myself slowly off the wall. ‘Suppose,’ I said hesitantly, ‘Suppose it wasn’t in any of those places. Suppose it was deeper, out of sight. Somewhere between the cabin wall and the outer skin… like a limpet mine, for instance. Suppose that that bumpy ride… and all those turns I did to avoid the cu-nims… dislodged it, so that it was getting jammed in the elevator wires… Suppose that was what I could feel… and why I decided to land… and that what saved us… was the bomb itself.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next day I took five jockeys and trainers from Newmarket to Newcastle races and back in the Aztec and listened to them grousing over the extra expense, and in the evening I tried out the replacement Cherokee, which flew permanently left wing down on the auto pilot, had an unserviceable fuel flow meter, and an overload somewhere on the electrical circuit.

  ‘It isn’t very good,’ I told Harley. ‘It’s old and noisy and it probably drinks fuel and I shouldn’t think the battery’s charging properly.’

  He interrupted me. ‘It flies. And it’s cheap. And Joe will fix it. I’m taking it.’

  ‘Also it’s orange and white, just like the Polyplanes.’

  He gave me an irritable glare. ‘I’m not blind. I know it is. And it’s not surprising, considering it used to belong to them.’

  He waited for me to protest so that he could slap me down, so I didn’t. I shrugged instead. If he wanted to admit to his bitterest rivals that his standards were down to one of their third hand clapped out old buggies, that was his business.

  He signed the lease on the spot and gave it to the pilot who had brought the aeroplane to take back with him on the train, and the pilot smiled a pitying smile and went off shaking his head.

  The orange and white Cherokee went down to the hangar for Joe to wave his wand over, and I walked round the perimeter track to home sweet home.

  One caravan, pilots’ for the use of. Larry had lived in it before me, and others before him: Harley’s taxi pilots stayed, on average, eight months, and most of them settled for the caravan because it was easiest. It stood on a dusty square of concrete which had once been the floor of a R.A.F. hut, and it was connected to the mains electricity, water and drainage which had served the long departed airmen.

  As caravans go it must once have held up its head, but generations of beer drinking bachelors had left tiny teeth marks of bottle-caps along the edges of all the fitments, and circular greasy head marks on the wall above every seat. Airport dirt had clogged the brown haircord into a greyish cake, relieved here and there by darker irregular stains. Shabby pin-ups of superhuman mammalian development were stuck to the walls with sellotape, and a scatter of tern-off patches of paint showed where dozens of others had been stuck before. Tired green curtains had opened and shut on a thousand hangovers. The fly-blown mirror had stared back at a lot of disillusion, and the bed springs sagged from the weight of a bored succession of pilots with nothing to do except Honey.

  I had forgotten to get anything to eat. There was half a packet of cornflakes in the kitchen and a jar of instant coffee. Neither was much use, as yesterday’s half pint of milk had gone sour in the heat. I damned it all and slouched on the two seat approximation to a sofa, and resignedly dragged out of my pocket the two letters which had lain unopened there since this morning.

  One was from a television rental firm who said they confirmed that they were transferring the rental from Larry’s name to mine, as requested, and could I now be so good as to pay immediately the six weeks
for which he was in arrears. The other, from Susan, said briefly that I was late with the alimony yet again.

  I put down both the letters and stared unseeingly through the opposite window towards the darkening summer sky. All the empty airfield stretched away into the dusk, calm, quiet, undemanding and shadowy, everything I needed for a few repairs to the spirit. The only trouble was, the process was taking longer than I’d expected. I wondered sometimes whether I’d ever get back to where I’d once been. Maybe if you’d hashed up your life as thoroughly as I had, there was never any going back. Maybe one day soon I’d stop wanting to. Maybe one day I would accept the unsatisfactory present not as a healing period but as all there ever was going to be. That would be a pity, I thought. A pity to let the void take over for always.

  I had three pounds in my pocket and sixteen in the bank, but I had finally paid all my debts. The crippling fine, the divorce, and the mountainous bills Susan had run up everywhere in a cold orgy of hatred towards me in the last weeks we were together: everything had been settled. The house had always been in her name because of the nature of my job, and she had clung on to that like a leech. She was still living in it, triumphant, collecting a quarter of everything I earned and writing sharp little letters if I didn’t pay on the nail.

  I didn’t understand how love could curdle so abysmally: looking back, I still couldn’t understand. We had screamed at each other: hit each other, intending to hurt. Yet when we married at nineteen we’d been entwined in tenderness, inseparable and sunny. When it started to go wrong she said it was because I was away so much, long ten day tours to the West Indies all the time, and all she had was her job as a doctor’s secretary and the dull endless housework. In an uprush of affection and concern for her I resigned from B.O.A.C. and joined Interport instead, where I flew short-haul trips, and spent most of my nights at home. The pay was a shade less good, the prospects a lot less good, but for three months we were happier. After that there was a long period in which we both tried to make the best of it, and a last six months in which we had torn each other’s nerves and emotions to shreds.

  Since then I had tried more or less deliberately not to feel anything for anybody. Not to get involved. To be private, and apart, and cold. An ice-pack after the tempest.

  I hadn’t done anything to improve the caravan, to stamp anything of myself upon it. I didn’t suppose I would, because I didn’t feel the need. I didn’t want to get involved, not even with a caravan.

  And certainly not with Tyderman, Goldenberg, Annie Villars and Colin Ross.

  All of them except Goldenberg were on my next racing trip.

  I had spent two more days in the Aztec, chauffeuring some business executives on their regular monthly visit to subsidiary factories in Germany and Luxembourg, but by Saturday Joe had tarted up the replacement Cherokee so I set off in that. The fuel meter still resolutely pointed to nought, which was slightly optimistic, but the electrical fault had been cured: no overload now on the generator. And if it still flew one wing low, at least the wing in question sparkled with a new shine. The cabin smelt of soap and air freshener, and all the ash trays were empty.

  The passengers were to be collected that day at Cambridge, and although I flew into the aerodrome half an hour early, the Major was already there, waiting on a seat in a corner of the entrance hall.

  I saw him before he saw me, and as I walked towards him he took the binoculars out of their case and put them on the low table beside him. The binoculars were smaller than the case suggested. In went his hand again and out came a silver and pigskin flask. The Major took a six second swig and with a visible sigh screwed the cap back into place.

  I slowed down and let him get the binoculars back on top of his courage before I came to a halt beside him and said good morning.

  ‘Oh… Good morning,’ he said stiffly. He stood up, fastening the buckle of the case and giving it a pat as it swung into its usual facing forwards positions on his stomach. ‘All set?’

  ‘The others are not here yet. It’s still early.’

  ‘Ah. No. Of course.’ He wiped his moustache carefully with his hand and tucked his chin back into his neck. ‘No bombs today, I hope?’

  He wasn’t altogether meaning to joke.

  ‘No bombs,’ I assured him.

  He nodded, not meeting my eyes. ‘Very upsetting, last Friday. Very upsetting, you know.’ He paused. ‘Nearly didn’t come, today, when I heard that Colin… er…’ He stopped.

  ‘I’ll stay in the aeroplane all afternoon,’ I promised him.

  The Major nodded again, sharply. ‘Had a Board of Trade fellow come to see me. Did you know that?’

  ‘They told me so.’

  ‘Been to see you too, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They get about a bit.’

  ‘They’re very thorough. They’ll go a hundred miles to get a single answer to a simple question.’

  He looked at me sharply. ‘Speaking from bitter experience?’

  I hadn’t known there was any feeling in my voice. I said. ‘I’ve been told they do.’

  He grunted. ‘Can’t think why they don’t leave it to the police.’

  No such luck, I thought. There was no police force in the world as tenacious as the British Board of Trade.

  Annie Villars and Colin Ross arrived together, deep in a persuasive argument that was getting nowhere.

  ‘Just say you’ll ride my horses whenever you can.’

  ‘… too many commitments.’

  ‘I’m not asking a great deal.’

  ‘There are reasons, Annie. Sorry, but no.’ He said it with an air of finality, and she looked startled and upset.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said to me abstractedly. ‘Morning, Rupert.’

  ‘Morning, Annie,’ said the Major.

  Colin Ross had achieved narrow pale grey trousers and a blue open necked shirt.

  ‘Morning, Matt,’ he said.

  The Major took a step forward, bristling like a terrier. ‘Did I hear you turning down Annie’s proposition?’

  ‘Yes, Major.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked in an aggrieved tone. ‘Our money is as good as anyone else’s, and her horses are always fit.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Major, but no. Just let’s leave it at that.’

  The Major looked affronted and took Annie Villars off to see if the bar was open. Colin sighed and sprawled in a wooden armchair.

  ‘God save me,’ he said, ‘From crooks.’

  I sat down too. ‘She doesn’t seem crooked to me.’

  ‘Who, Annie? She isn’t really. Just not one hundred per cent permanently scrupulous. No, it’s that crummy slob Goldenberg that I don’t like. She does what he says, a lot too much. I’m not taking indirect riding orders from him.’

  ‘Like Kenny Bayst?’ I suggested.

  He looked at me sideways. ‘The word gets around, I see. Kenny reckons he’s well out of it. Well I’m not stepping in.’ He paused reflectively. ‘The Board of Trade investigator who came to see me asked if I thought there was any significance in Bayst having cried off the return trip the other day.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I didn’t. Did you?’

  ‘I confess I wondered, because he did go across to the aeroplane after the races, and he certainly felt murderous, but…’

  ‘But,’ he agreed, ‘Would Kenny Bayst be cold blooded enough to kill you and me as well?’ He shook his head. ‘Not Kenny, I wouldn’t have thought.’

  ‘And besides that,’ I nodded, ‘He only came to the steaming boil after he lost the three thirty, and just how would he rustle up a bomb at Haydock in a little over one hour?’

  ‘He would have to have arranged it in advance.’

  ‘That would mean that he knew he would lose the race…’

  ‘It’s been done,’ said Colin dryly.

  There was a pause. Then I said, ‘Anyway, I think we had it with us all the time. Right from before I left base.’

  He sw
ivelled his head and considered it. ‘In that case… Larry?’

  ‘Would he?’

  ‘God knows. Sneaky fellow. Pinched Nancy’s hundred quid. But a bomb… and what was the point?’

  I shook my head.

  Colin said, ‘Bombs are usually either political or someone’s next of kin wanting to collect the insurance.’

  ‘Fanatics or family…’ I stifled the beginnings of a yawn.

  ‘You don’t really care, do you?’ he said.

  ‘Not that much.’

  ‘It doesn’t disturb you enough to wonder whether the bomb merchant will try again?’

  ‘About as much as it’s disturbing you.’

  He grinned. ‘Yes… well. It would be handy to know for sure whose name was on that one. One would look so damn silly taking fiddly precautions if it was the Major who finally got clobbered. Or you.’

  ‘Me?’ I said in astonishment.

  ‘Why not?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t stand in anyone’s way to anything.’

  ‘Someone may think you do.’

  ‘Then they’re nuts.’

  ‘It takes a nut… a regular psycho… to put a bomb in an aeroplane…’

  Tyderman and Annie Villars came back from the direction of the bar with two more people, a man and a woman.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Colin said under his breath. ‘Here comes my own personal Chanter.’ He looked at me accusingly. ‘You didn’t tell me who the other passengers were.’

  ‘I don’t know them. Who are they? I don’t do the bookings.’

  We stood up. The woman, who was in her thirties but dressed like a teenager, made a straight line for Colin and kissed him exuberantly on the cheek.

  ‘Colin, darling, there was a spare seat and Annie said I could come. Wasn’t that absolutely super of her?’

  Colin glared at Annie who pretended not to notice.

  The girl-woman had a strong upper class accent, white knee socks, a camel coloured high waisted dress, several jingling gold bracelets, streaky fair brawn long hair, a knock-you-down exotic scent and an air of expecting everyone to curl up and die for her.