Rat Race - By Dick Francis Page 0,4

do understand that we’re all going on to Newmarket after the races, and not back to Newbury?’

‘Yes,’ I assured her. ‘That’s what I was told.’

‘Good.’

‘If we don’t go to jail,’ Kenny said under his breath. Golden-berg looked at me sharply to see if I’d heard that, and I gave no sign of it. Whatever they were about, it was as little my concern as who killed Cock Robin.

Major Tyderman pushed at his moustache with a hand rigid with nervous energy and said, ‘Last race at four thirty. Need a drink after that. Ready to start back at, say, five fifteen. That all right with you?’

‘Perfectly, Major,’ I nodded.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Good.’ His gaze was flicking from one to another of his travelling companions, assessing and suspicious. His eyes narrowed fiercely at Kenny Bayst, opened and narrowed again rapidly on Goldenberg, relaxed on Anne Villars and went cold on the vanishing back of Colin Ross. The thoughts behind the outward physical reactions were unguessable, and when he finally looked back at me he didn’t really see me, he was busy with the activity inside his head.

‘Five fifteen,’ he repeated vaguely. ‘Good.’

Kenny said to me, ‘Don’t waste your money in the three thirty, sport;’ and Goldenberg raised his fist with a face going purple with anger and nearly hit him.

Anne Villars’ voice rapped into him, the steel sticking through the cream with a vengeance, the top-brass quality transcendent and withering.

‘Control your temper, you stupid man.’

Goldenberg’s mouth literally dropped open, to reveal a bottom row of unappetising brown stained teeth. His raised fist lowered slowly, and he looked altogether foolish.

‘As for you,’ she said to Kenny, ‘I told you to keep your tongue still, and that was your last chance.’

‘Are you sacking me?’ he asked.

‘I’ll decide that at the end of the afternoon.’

Kenny showed no anxiety about keeping his job, and I realised that in fact what he had been doing was trying to provoke them into getting rid of him. He’d got himself into nutcrackers and while they squeezed he couldn’t get out.

I became mildly curious to see what would happen in the three thirty. It would help to pass the afternoon.

They straggled off towards the stands, Kenny in front, the Major and Goldenberg together, with Annie Villars several paces behind. The Major kept stopping and looking back and waiting for her, but every time just as she reached him he turned and went off again in front, so that as a piece of courtesy, the whole thing was wasted. He reminded me vividly of an aunt who had taken me for childhood walks in just that way. I remembered quite clearly that it had been infuriating.

I sighed, shut the baggage doors and tidied up the aeroplane. Annie Villars had been smoking thin brown cigars. Goldenberg had been eating indigestion tablets, each from a square wrapper. The Major had left his Sporting Life in a tumbled heap on the floor.

While I was fiddling around with the debris, two more aeroplanes flew in, a four seat high winged Cessna and a six seat twin engined Aztec.

I watched their touchdowns with an uncritical eye, though I wouldn’t have given the Aztec pilot a gold medal for his double bounce. Several small men disgorged themselves and made a dart like a flock of starlings across the track towards the paddock. They were followed by three or four larger and slower-moving people slung around with binoculars and what I later learned to be bags for carrying sets of racing colours. Finally out of each aircraft popped the most leisurely of all the inmates, a man dressed very much as I was, in dark trousers, white shirt, neat dark tie.

They strolled towards each other and lit cigarettes. After a while, not wanting to seem unsociable, I wandered across to join them. They turned and watched me come, but with no welcome in unsmiling faces.

‘Hello,’ I said moderately. ‘Nice day.’

‘Perhaps,’ said one.

‘You think so?’ said the other.

They offered me fish-eyed stares but no cigarette. I had grown hardened to that sort of thing. I turned half away from them and read the names of the firms they flew for, which were painted on the tails of their aircraft. It was the same name on both. Polyplane Services.

How dreary of them, I thought, to be so antagonistic. I gave them the benefit of a very small doubt and made one more approach.

‘Have you come far?’

They didn’t answer. Just gave me the stares, like two cod.

I laughed at them as