replied. ‘I’ve no runners today.’
‘Do you only go to the races if you have a runner?’ I asked.
She looked at me as if I was a fool. ‘Of course.’
‘I thought you might go just for the enjoyment of it.’ I said.
‘Going to the races is my job,’ she said. ‘Would you do your job on days you didn’t have to just for the enjoyment?’
Actually, I would have but, there again, I enjoyed doing the things others might have found squeamish.
‘I might,’ I said.
‘Not to Ludlow or Carlisle on a cold winter Wednesday, you wouldn’t.’ She had a point. ‘It’s not like Royal Ascot in June.’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘So you can show me which bridle Scientific will use after lunch when the stable staff are off.’
‘Do you really think you can make the reins break during the race?’ she asked.
‘I had a good look at them,’ I said. ‘I think it might be possible.’
‘But how?’
‘The reins are made of leather but they have a non-slip rubber covering sewn round them, like the rubber on a table-tennis bat but with smaller pimples.’ She nodded. ‘The rubber is thin and not very strong. If I was able to break the leather inside the rubber then it wouldn’t be visible and the reins would part during the race when the jockey pulls on them.’
‘It seems very risky,’ she said.
‘Would you rather use your green-potato-peel soup?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said adamantly. ‘That would ruin the horse for ever.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘You show me which bridle Scientific will wear and I’ll do the rest.’
Was I getting myself in too deep here?
Was I about to become an accessory to a fraud on the betting public as well as to tax evasion?
Yes. Guilty on both counts.
8
I spent much of Thursday morning on a reasonably fruitful journey to Oxford.
Banbury Drive was in Summertown, a northern suburb of the city, and number 26 was one of a row of 1950s built semi-detached houses with bay windows and pebble-dash walls. This was the supposed address of Mrs Jane Philips, my mother, which Roderick Ward had included on her tax return.
I parked my Jaguar a little way down the road, so it wouldn’t be so visible, and walked to the front door of number 26. I rang the bell.
I didn’t really know what to expect but, nevertheless, I was a little surprised when the door was opened a fraction by an elderly white-haired gentleman wearing maroon carpet slippers, no socks, and brown trousers that had been pulled up a good six inches too far.
‘What do you want?’ he snapped at me through the narrow gap.
‘Does someone called Mr Roderick Ward live here?’ I asked.
‘Who?’ he said, cupping a hand to his ear.
‘Roderick Ward,’ I repeated.
‘Never heard of him,’ said the man. ‘Now go away.’
The door began to close.
‘He was killed in a car crash last July,’ I said quickly, but the door continued to close. I placed my false foot into the diminishing space between the door and the frame. At least it wouldn’t hurt if he tried to slam the door shut.
‘He had a sister called Stella,’ I said loudly. ‘Stella Beecher.’
The door stopped moving and reopened just a fraction. I removed my foot.
‘Do you know Stella?’ I asked him.
‘Someone called Stella brings my meals-on-wheels,’ the man said.
‘Every day?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘What time?’ I asked. It was already nearly twelve o’clock.
‘Around one,’ he said.
‘Thank you, sir,’ I said formally. ‘And what is your name, please?’
‘Are you from the council?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘Then you should know my bloody name,’ he said, and he slammed the door shut.
Damn it, I thought. That was stupid.
I stood on the pavement for a while but it was cold and my real toes became chilled inside my inappropriately thin leather loafers.
Of course, I had no toes on my right side but that didn’t mean that I had no feeling there. The nerves that had once stretched all the way to my toes now ended seven inches below my knee. However, they often sent signals as if they had come from my foot.
In particular, when my real left foot was cold, the nerves in my right leg tended to confuse the situation by sometimes sending cold signals to my brain or worse, as now, hot ones. It felt like I had one foot inside a block of ice while the other was resting on a red-hot griddle plate. The sensation from the truncated nerves may only have been from a phantom limb but they were