Rat Race by Dick Francis
‘Right. The easiest way to ignite gunpowder, from a distance, that is, is to pack it round a thin filament of fuse wire. Then you pass an electric current through the filament. It becomes red hot, ignites the gunpowder…’
‘And boom, you have no Cherokee Six.’
‘Er, yes. Now, in this type of bomb you have a battery, a high voltage battery about the size of a sixpence, to provide the electric current. The filament will heat up if you bend it round and fasten one end to one terminal of the battery, and the other to the other.’
‘Clear,’ I said. ‘And the bomb goes off immediately.’
He raised his eyes to Heaven. ‘Why did I ever start this? Yes, it would go off immediately. So it is necessary to have a mechanism that will complete the circuit after the manufacturer is safely out of the way.’
‘By a spring?’ I suggested.
‘Yes. You hold the circuit open by a hair spring on a catch. When the catch is removed, the spring snaps the circuit shut, and that’s that. Right? Now, the catch can be released by a time mechanism like an ordinary alarm clock. Or it can be released by a radio signal from a distance, via a receiver, an amplifier and a solonoid, like mechanisms in a space craft.’
‘What is a solonoid, exactly?’
‘A sort of electric magnet, a coil with a rod in the centre. The rod moves up and down inside the coil, when a pulse is passed through the coil. Say the top of the rod is sticking up out of the coil to form the catch on the spring, when the rod moves down into the coil the spring is released.
I considered it. ‘What is there to stop somone detonating the bomb by accident, by unknowingly transmitting on the right frequency? The air is packed with radio waves… surely radio bombs are impossibly risky?’
He cleared his throat. ‘It is possible to make a combination type release mechanism. One could make a bomb in which, say, three radio signals had to be received in the correct order before the circuit could be completed. For such a release mechanism, you would need three separate sets of receivers, amplifiers and solonoids to complete the circuit… We were exceptionally fortunate to find this amplifier. We doubt if it was the only one…’
‘It sounds much more complicated than the alarm clock.’
‘Oh yes, it is. But also more flexible. You are not committed to a time in advance to set it off.’
‘So no one had to know what time we would be leaving Haydock. They would just have to see us go.’
‘Yes… Or be told you had gone.’
I thought a bit. ‘It does put a different slant, doesn’t it?’
‘I’d appreciate your thinking.’
‘You must be thinking the same,’ I protested. ‘If the bomb could be set off at any hour, any day, any week even, it could have been put in the aircraft at any time after the last maintenance check.’
He smiled thinly. ‘And that would let you half way off the hook?’
‘Half way,’ I agreed.
‘But only half.’
‘Yes.’
He sighed. ‘I’ve sprung this on you. I’d like you to think it over, from every angle. Seriously. Then tell me if anything occurs to you. If you care at all to find out what happened, that is, and maybe prevent it happening again.’
‘You think I don’t care?’
‘I got the impression.’
‘I would care now,’ I said slowly, ‘If Colin Ross were blown up.’
He smiled. ‘You are less on your guard, today.’
‘You aren’t sniping at me from behind the bushes.’
‘No…’ He was surprised. ‘You’re very observant, aren’t you?’
‘More a matter of atmosphere.’
He hesitated. ‘I have now read the whole of the transcript of your trial.’
‘Oh.’ I could feel my face go bleak. He watched me.
‘Did you know,’ he said. ‘That someone has added to the bottom of it in pencil a highly libellous statement?’
‘No,’ I said. Waited for it.
‘It says that the Chairman of Interport is of the undoubtedly correct opinion that the First Officer lied on oath throughout, and that it was because of the First Officer’s own gross negligence, not that of Captain Shore, that the airliner strayed so dangerously off course.’
Surprised, shaken, I looked away from him, out of the window, feeling absurdly vindicated and released. If that postscript was there for anyone who read the transcript to see, then maybe my name hadn’t quite so much mud on it as I’d thought. Not where it mattered anyway.
I said without heat, ‘The Captain is always responsible. Whoever does what.’
‘Yes.’
A silence lengthened. I brought my thoughts back from four years ago and my gaze from the empty airfield.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He smiled very slightly. ‘I wondered why you hadn’t lost your licence… or your job. It didn’t make sense to me that you hadn’t. That’s why I read the transcript, to see if there was any reason.’
‘You’re very thorough.’
‘I like to be.’
‘Interport knew one of us was lying… we both said the other had put the ship in danger… but I was the Captain. It inevitably came back to me. It was, in fact, my fault.’
‘He wilfully disobeyed your instructions…’
‘And I didn’t find out until it was nearly too late.’
‘Quite… but he need not have lied about it.’
‘He was frightened,’ I sighed. ‘Of what would happen to his career.’
He let half a minute slip by without comment. Then he cleared his throat and said ‘I suppose you wouldn’t like to tell me why you left the South American people?’
I admired his delicate approach. ‘Gap in the dossier?’ I suggested.
His mouth twitched. ‘Well, yes.’ A pause. ‘You are of course not obliged…’
‘No’ I said. ‘Still…’ Something for something. ‘I refused to take off one day because I didn’t think it was safe. They got another pilot who said it was. So he took off, and nothing happened. And they sacked me. That’s all.’
‘But,’ he said blankly, ‘It’s a Captain’s absolute right not to take off if he thinks it’s unsafe.’
‘There’s no B.A.L.P.A. to uphold your rights there, you know. They said they couldn’t afford to lose custom to other airlines because their Captains were cowards. Or words to that effect.’
‘Good gracious.’
I smiled. ‘Probably the Interport business accounted for my refusal to take risks.’
‘But then you went to Africa and took them,’ he protested.
‘Well… I needed money badly, and the pay was fantastic. And you don’t have the same moral obligation to food and medical supplies as to airline passengers.’
‘But the refugees and wounded, coming out?’
‘Always easier flying out than in. No difficulties finding the home base, not like groping for some jungle clearing on a black night.’
He shook his head wonderingly, giving me up as a bad job.
‘What brought you back here to something as dull as crop spraying?’
I laughed. Never thought I could laugh in front of the Board of Trade. ‘The particular war I was flying in ended. I was offered another one a bit further south, but I suppose I’d had enough of it. Also I was nearly solvent again. So I came back here, and crop spraying was the first thing handy.’
‘What you might call a chequered career,’ he commented.
‘Mild compared with some.’
‘Ah yes. That’s true.’ He stood up and threw his empty coffee beaker into the biscuit tin which served as a waste paper basket. ‘Right then… You’ll give a bit of thought to this bomb business?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll be in touch with you again.’ He fished in an inner pocket and produced a card. ‘If you should want me, though, you can find me at this number.”
‘O.K.’
He made a wry face. ‘I know how you must feel about u
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Never mind.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
For most of that week I flew where I was told to, and thought about radio bombs, and sat on my own in the caravan in the evenings.
Honey didn’t come back, but on the day after her visit I had returned from Rotterdam to find a large bag of groceries en the table: eggs, butter, bread, tomatoes, sugar, cheese, powdered milk, tins of soup. Also a pack of six half pints of beer. Also a note from Honey: ‘Pay me next week.’
Not a bad guy, Honey Harley. I took up eating again. Old habits die hard.
Tuesday I took Colin and four assorted others to Wolver-hampton races, Wednesday, after the Board of Trade departed, I took a politician to Cardiff to a Union strike meeting, and Thursday I took the racehorse trainer to various places in Yorkshire and Northumberland to look at some horses to see if he wanted to buy any.
Thursday evening I made myself a cheese and tomato sandwich and a cup of coffee, and ate them looking at the pin-ups, which were curling a bit round the edges. After I’d finished the sandwich I unstuck the sellotape and took all the bosomy ladies down. The thrusting pairs of heavily ringed nipples regarded me sorrowfully, like spaniels’ eyes. Smiling, I folded them decently over and dropped them in the rubbish bin. The caravan looked just as dingy, however, without them.
Friday morning, when I was in Harley’s office filing flight records, Colin rang Harley and said he wanted me to stay overnight at Cambridge, ready again for Saturday.
Harley agreed. ‘I’ll charge Matt’s hotel bill to your account.’
Colin said ‘Fine. But he can stay with me again if he likes.’
Harley relayed the message. Did I like? I liked.
Harley put down the receiver. ‘Trying to save money,’ he said disparagingly, ‘Having you to stay.’ He brightened: ‘I’ll charge him the hangarage, though.’
I took the Cherokee over to Cambridge and fixed for them to give it shelter that night. When Colin came he was with four other jockeys: three I didn’t know, and Kenny Bayst. Kenny said how was I. I was fine, how was he? Good as new, been riding since Newbury, he said.
Between them they had worked out the day’s shuttle. All to Brighton, Colin to White Waltham for Windsor, aeroplane to return to Brighton, pick up the others, return to White Waltham, return to Cambridge.
‘Is that all right?’ Colin asked.
‘Sure. Anything you say.’
He laughed. ‘The fusses we used to have when we used to ask this sort of thing…’
‘Don’t see why’ I said.
‘Larry was a lazy sod…’
They loaded themselves on board and we tracked down east of the London control zone and over the top of Gatwick to Shoreham airport for Brighton. When we landed Colin looked at his watch and Kenny nodded and said, ‘Yeah, he’s always faster than Larry. I’ve noticed it too.’
‘Harley will give him the sack,’ Colin said dryly, unfastening his seatbelt.
‘He won’t, will he?’ Kenny sounded faintly anxious. Quicker journeys meant smaller bills.
‘It depends on how many customers he pinches from Poly-planes through being fast.’ Colin grinned at me. ‘Am I right?’
‘You could be,’ I agreed.
They went off laughing about it to the waiting taxi. A couple of hours later Colin came back at a run in his breeches and colours and I whisked him over to White Waltham. He had won, it appeared, at Brighton. A close finish. He was still short of breath. A fast car drove right up to the aircraft as soon as I stopped and had him off down the road to Windsor in a cloud of dust. I went more leisurely back to Shoreham and collected the others at the end of their programme. It was a hot sunny day, blue and hazy. They came back sweating.
Kenny had ridden a winner and had brought me a bottle of whisky as a present. I said he didn’t need to give me a present.
‘Look, sport, if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be riding any more bleeding winners. So take it.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Thanks yourself.’
They were tired and expansive. I landed at White Waltham before Colin arrived back from Windsor, and the other four yawned and gossiped, opening all the doors and fanning themselves.
‘… gave him a breather coming up the hill.’
‘That was no breather. That was the soft bugger dropping his bit. Had to give him a sharp reminder to get him going again.’
‘Can’t stand that fellow Fossel…’
‘Why do you ride for him then?’
‘Got no choice, have I? Small matter of a retainer…’
‘… What chance you got on Candlestick?’
‘Wouldn’t finish in the first three if it started now…’
‘Hey,’ said Kenny Bayst, leaning forward and tapping me on the shoulder. ‘Got something that might interest you, sport.’ He pulled a sheet of paper out of his trouser pocket. ‘How about this, then?’
I took the paper and looked at it. It was a leaflet, high quality printing on good glossy paper. An invitation to all racegoers to join the Racegoers’ Accident Fund.
‘I’m not a racegoer,’ I said.
‘No, read it. Go on,’ he urged. ‘It came in the post this morning. I thought you’d be interested, so I brought it.’
I read down the page. ‘Up to one thousand pounds for serious personal injury, five thousand pounds for accidental death. Premium five pounds. Double the premium double the insurance. The insurance everyone can afford. Stable lads, buy security for your missus. Jockeys: out of work but in the money. Race crowds, protect yourself against road accidents on the way home. Trainers who fly to meetings, protect yourself against bombs!’
‘Damn it,’ I said.
Kenny laughed. ‘I thought you’d like it.’
I handed the leaflet back, smiling. ‘Yeah. The so-and-sos.’
‘Might not be a bad idea, at that.’
Colin’s hired car drove up and decanted the usual spent force. He climbed wearily into his seat, clipped shut his belt, and said ‘Wake me at Cambridge.’
‘How did it go?’ Kenny asked.
‘Got that sod Export home by a whisker… But as for Uptight,’ he yawned, “They might as well send him to the knackers. Got the slows right and proper, that one has.’
We woke him at Cambridge. It was a case of waking most of them, in point of fact. They stretched their way onto the tarmac, shirt necks open, ties hanging loose, jackets on their arms. Colin had no jacket, no tie: for him, the customary jeans, the rumpled sweat shirt, the air of being nobody, of being one in a crowd, instead of a crowd in one.
Nancy and Midge had come in the Aston Martin to pick us up.
‘We brought a picnic,’ Nancy said, ‘as it’s such a super evening. We’re going to that place by the river.’
They had also brought swimming trunks for Colin and a pair of his for me. Nancy swam with us, but Midge said it was too cold. She sat on the bank wearing four watches on her left arm and stretching her long bare legs in the sun.
It was cool and quiet and peaceful in the river after the hot sticky day. The noise inside my head of engine throb calmed to silence. I watched a moorhen gliding along by the reeds, twisting her neck cautiously to fasten me with a shiny eye, peering suspiciously at Colin and Nancy floating away ahead. I pushed a ripple towards her with my arm. She rode on it like a cork. Simple being a moorhen, I thought. But it wasn’t really. All of nature had its pecking order. Everywhere, someone was the pecked.
Nancy and Colin swam back. Friendly eyes, smiling faces. Don’t get involved, I thought. Not with anyone. Not yet.
The girls had brought cold chicken and long crisp cos lettuce leaves with a tangy sauce to dip them in. We ate while the sun went down, and drank a cold bottle of Chablis, sitting on a large blue rug and throwing the chewed bones into the river for the fishes to nibble.
When she had finished Midge lay back on the rug and shielded her eyes from the last slanting rays.
&
‘We could go and live in the south of France, if you like,’ Nancy said.
‘Don’t be silly… Who would look after Colin?’
They smiled, all three of them. The unspoken things were all there. Tragic. Unimportant.
The slow dusk drained all colours into shades of grey. We lazed there, relaxing, chewing stalks of grass, watching the insects flick over the surface of the water, talking a little in soft summer evening murmuring voices.
‘We both lost a stone in Japan, that year we went with Colin…’
‘That was the food more than the heat.’
‘I never did get to like the food…’
‘Have you ever been to Japan, Matt?’
‘Used to fly there for B.O.A.C.’
‘B.O.A.C.?’ Colin was surprised. ‘Why ever did you leave?’
‘Left to please my wife. Long time ago, now, though.’
‘Explains how you fly.’
‘Oh sure…’
‘I like America better,’ Midge said. ‘Do you remember Mr Kroop in Laurel, where you got those riding boots made in a day?’
‘Mm…’
‘And we kept driving round that shopping centre there and getting lost in the one way streets…’
‘Super that week was…’
‘Wish we could go again…’
There was a long regretful silence. Nancy sat up with a jerk and slapped her leg.
‘Bloody mosquitoes.’
Colin scratched lazily and nodded. ‘Time to go home.’
We wedged back into the Aston Martin. Colin drove. The twins sat on my legs, leaned on my chest and twined their arms behind my neck for balance. Not bad, not bad at all. They laughed at my expression.
‘Too much of a good thing,’ Nancy said.
When we went to bed they both kissed me goodnight, with identical soft lips, on the cheek.
Breakfast was brisk, businesslike, and accompanied throughout by telephone calls. Annie Villars rang to ask if there was still a spare seat on the Cherokee.
‘Who for?’ Colin asked cautiously. He made a face at us. ‘Bloody Fenella,’ he whispered over the mouthpiece. ‘No, Annie, I’m terribly sorry, I’ve promised Nancy…’