said, ‘The stands were cleaned yesterday.’
Roger sighed. ‘They were cleaned. They were clean. No explosives. Certainly no det cord running round that staircase. I walked everywhere myself, checking. I make rounds continually.’
‘But not on Good Friday morning.’
‘Late yesterday afternoon. Five o’clock. Went round with my foreman.’
‘It wasn’t a matter of killing people ’ I said.
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘It was to kill one main grandstand, on one of the very few weekdays in the year when there are no race meetings anywhere in Britain. Precisely not to kill people, in fact.’
‘I expect you have a night watchman,’ I said.
‘Yes, we do.’ He shook his head frustratedly. ‘He makes his rounds with a dog. He says he heard nothing. He didn’t hear people drilling holes in the walls. He saw no lights moving in the stands. He clocked out at seven this morning and went home.’
‘The police asked him?’
‘The police asked him. I asked him. Conrad asked him. The poor man was brought back here soggy with sleep and bombarded with accusing questions. He’s not ultra-bright at the best of times. He just blinked and looked stupid. Conrad blames me for employing a thicko.’
‘Blame will be scattered like confetti,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘The air’s dense with it already. Mostly everything’s my fault.’
‘Which Strattons came?’ I asked.
‘Which didn’t?’ He sighed. ‘All of them except Rebecca that were here for the shareholders’ meeting, plus Conrad’s wife, Victoria, plus Keith’s wife Imogen who was squinting drunk, plus Hannah’s layabout son Jack, plus Ivan’s mousy wife, Dolly. Marjorie Binsham used her tongue like a whip. Conrad can’t stand up to her. She had the police pulverised. She wanted to know why you, particularly, hadn’t stopped the stands blowing up once your infant child had done the trouble-spotting for you.’
‘Dear Marjorie!’
‘Someone told her you’d damn nearly been killed and she said it served you right.’ He shook his head. ‘Sometimes I think the whole family’s unhinged.’
‘There’s some Scotch and glasses in that cupboard above your head,’ I said.
He loosened into a smile and poured into two tumblers. ‘It won’t make you feel better,’ he observed, placing one on the built-in table with drawers under it that marked the end of my bed. ‘And where did you get this splendid bus? I’ve never seen anything like it. When I drove it down here with the boys on board they showed me all round it. They seemed to think you built the interior with your own hands. I reckon you had a yacht designer.’
‘Both right.’
He tossed off his drink neat in two gulps, army fashion, and put down the glass.
‘We can’t give your boys beds, not enough room, but we could do food.’
‘Thanks, Roger. I’m grateful. But there’s enough food in this bus for a battalion, and the battalion’s had a good deal of practice in do-it-yourself.’
Despite his assurances I could see his relief. He was indeed, if anything, more exhausted than myself.
I said, ‘Do me a favour, though?’
‘If I can.’
‘Be vague about my whereabouts tonight? If, say, the police or the Strattons should ask.’
‘Somewhere to the left of Mars do you?’
‘One day,’ I said, ‘I’ll repay you.’
The real world, as Toby would have said, had a go in the morning.
Travelling uncomfortably, I went along with Roger in his jeep to his office beside the parade ring, having left the five boys washing the outside of the bus with buckets of detergent, long-handled brushes and mops and the borrowed use of the Gardners’ outdoor tap and garden hose.
Such mammoth splashy activity terminated always in five contentedly soaked children (they loved water-clown acts in circuses) and an at least half-clean bus. I’d advised Mrs Gardner to go indoors and close her eyes and windows, and after the first bucketful of suds had missed the windscreen and landed on Alan, she’d given me a wild look and taken my advice.
‘Don’t you mind their getting wet?’ Roger asked as we left the scene of potential devastation.
‘They’ve a lot of compressed steam to get rid of,’ I said.
‘You’re an extraordinary father.’
‘I don’t feel it.’
‘How are the cuts?’
‘Ghastly.’
He chuckled, stopped beside the office door and handed me the walking frame once I was on my feet. I would have preferred not to have needed it, but the only strength left anywhere, it seemed, was in my arms.
Although it was barely eight-thirty, the first car-load of trouble drew up on the tarmac before Roger had finished unlocking his office door. He looked over his shoulder to see who had come, and said a heartfelt ‘Bugger!’