The exchange looked as if navy-suit asked Filmer the time. Filmer looked at his watch and spoke. Navy-suit nodded and walked on. Navy-suit was Filmer’s man, all right, but was never to be seen to be that in public: just like me and Millington.
I followed navy-suit from the racecourse in the going-home traffic and telephoned from my car to Millington.
‘He’s driving a Jaguar,’ I said, ‘licence number A576 FDD. He spoke to Filmer. He’s our man.’
‘Right.’
‘How’s the lady?’ I asked.
‘Who? Oh, her. I had to send Harrison all the way back to Newmarket with her. She was half off her rocker again. Have you still got our man in sight?’
‘Yep.’
‘I’ll get back to you.’
Harrison was one of Millington’s regular troops, an ex-policeman, heavy, avuncular, near to pensioned retirement. I’d never spoken to him, but I knew him well by sight, as I knew all the others. It had taken me quite a while to get used to belonging to a body of men who didn’t know I was there; rather as if I were a ghost.
I was never noticeable. I was twenty-nine, six foot tall, brown haired, brown eyed, twelve stone in weight with, as they say, no distinguishing features. I was always part of the moving race crowd, looking at my race-card, wandering about, looking at horses, watching races, having a bet or two. It was easy because there were always a great many other people around doing exactly the same thing. I was a grazing sheep in a flock. I changed my clothes and general appearance from day to day and never made acquaintances, and it was lonely quite often, but also fascinating.
I knew by sight all the jockeys and trainers and very many owners, because all one needed for that was eyes and race-cards, but also I knew a lot of their histories from long memory, as I’d spent much of my childhood and teens on racecourses, towed along by the elderly race-mad aunt who had brought me up. Through her knowledge and via her witty tongue I had become a veritable walking data bank; and then, at eighteen, after her death, I’d gone world-wandering for seven years. When I returned, I no longer looked like the unmatured youth I’d been, and the eyes of the people who had known me vaguely as a child slid over me without recognition.
I returned to England finally because at twenty-five I’d come into the inheritances from both my aunt and my father, and my trustees were wanting instructions. I had been in touch with them from time to time, and they had despatched funds to far-flung outposts fairly often, but when I walked into the hushed book-lined law office of the senior partner of Cornborough, Cross and George, old Clement Cornborough greeted me with a frown and stayed sitting down behind his desk.
‘You’re not … er …’ he said, looking over my shoulder for the one he’d expected.
‘Well … yes, I am. Tor Kelsey.’
‘Good Lord.’ He stood up slowly, leaning forward to extend a hand. ‘But you’ve changed. You … er …’
‘Taller, heavier and older,’ I said, nodding. Also sun-tanned, at that moment, from a spell in Mexico.
‘I’d … er … pencilled in lunch,’ he said doubtfully.
‘That would be fine,’ I said.
He took me to a similarly hushed restaurant full of other solicitors who nodded to him austerely. Over roast beef he told me that I would never have to work for a living (which I knew) and in the same breath asked what I was going to do with my life, a question I couldn’t answer. I’d spent seven years learning how to live, which was different, but I’d had no formal training in anything. I felt claustrophobic in offices and I was not academic. I understood machines and was quick with my hands. I had no overpowering ambitions. I wasn’t the entrepreneur my father had been, but nor would I squander the fortune he had left me.
‘What have you been doing?’ old Cornborough said, making conversation valiantly. ‘You’ve been to some interesting places, haven’t you?’
Travellers’ tales were pretty boring, I thought. It was always better to live it. ‘I mostly worked with horses,’ I said politely. ‘Australia, South America, United States, anywhere. Racehorses, polo ponies, a good deal in rodeos. Once in a circus.’
‘Good heavens.’
‘It’s not easy now, though, and getting harder, to work one’s passage. Too many countries won’t allow it. And I won’t go back to it. I’ve done enough. Grown out of it.’