‘I used to work with Alan O’Connor.’

  He stepped down to the ground so that his eyes were level with mine. ‘That’s hardly likely to impress me. And with Al everything’s ‘used to’ these days isn’t it?’

  ‘We went our separate ways a few years ago,’ I explained. If Mullender hadn’t seen O’Connor as a friend, then it might do better to emphasize my own differences with him. ‘I didn’t agree with his methods.’

  ‘Very wise of you. So why are you talking to me?’

  ‘He had your name in his notebook.’

  ‘Just mine?’

  ‘There was a list. All of them work here at the races.’ There was no point in not telling him the whole story. ‘Some have ticks against them; others have crosses. You’ve got a cross.’

  Mullender chuckled. ‘That’s a very restrained way for him to express it. What I actually told him was that he should go shove his head up his arse, and if he came near me again I’d make sure he did. I do hope I’m not going to have to do the same with you.’

  ‘What did he want from you?’

  He cocked his head to one side, insofar as a man with such a thick neck could, and narrowed his eyes. ‘No harm in telling, I suppose. He wanted a list of my punters.’

  ‘All of them?’

  He shook his head. ‘Just the losers.’

  ‘There must be a few of those,’ I observed.

  ‘The real losers. The ones who lose and lose again and keep coming back. The ones you know would lie or steal or kill just to get hold of a few bob they could put on a nag.’

  ‘Why did he want them?’

  Mullender snorted. ‘Don’t be green.’

  ‘And what did he do when you wouldn’t tell him?’

  ‘How many names on that list of yours?’

  ‘About twenty.’

  ‘And how many are ticked?’

  ‘More than half.’

  ‘Then he obviously tried it with the others – and succeeded, too. All the better for me.’

  ‘How come?’

  He turned his head to take in the crowd before explaining. ‘A man and his bookmaker, it’s something special, something private. It’s like with his doctor or his lawyer. If people can trust me to keep my mouth shut – more than they can trust the others – that’s business that comes my way.’

  ‘So you told everyone what O’Connor was up to?’

  ‘Not everyone, just the ones he was trying to do the dirty on. Just the losers.’

  I was about to ask the obvious question but stopped myself. If O’Connor had managed to get the information he was after from another bookie, then any one of those losers might have had a very good reason to kill him. And so if Mullender could give me those names, it would make a list of very likely suspects. But I remembered his response to O’Connor himself asking the very same question.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Mullender, ‘what you done to piss off Frank Dudley so much?’

  I looked at him questioningly. He nodded over my shoulder and I turned to see Dudley’s flunky a few yards off, uncertain of whether to approach. ‘Ah!’ I said.

  ‘Any reason I shouldn’t just let Frank’s colleague there deal with you?’

  ‘Dudley had a tick by his name.’

  Mullender considered this for a moment, then grinned. ‘In that case our interests would seem to coincide. Make sure you don’t dilly-dally.’ He walked straight past me and I turned to watch as he shook Dudley’s man firmly by the hand and placed the other hand on his shoulder. I stepped back a few paces and saw the thug’s eyes following me, but he was unable to move, either through actual physical restraint on Mullender’s part or merely out of fear of him. I didn’t wait to see how long the bookie’s hold over him would last. I made myself scarce.

  The crowd had compacted itself now, half a dozen bodies deep and pressing close to the rail. The first race was about to begin. Behind them, the bookies were left alone at their pitches. Soon they would be paying out for whichever horses had won or placed – hoping the winner would be an outsider. I felt the ground begin to shake and then heard shouting from the crowd as the pack approached. The racing itself was of no interest to me, but I was always fascinated to see the excitement on the faces of the punters – expressions I could never create in my own imagination, but which I could store in my memory to reproduce on paper or canvas at some later time. Not that I often got to draw anything other than those cheap portraits on the pier.

  But then I spotted a face I knew – or a profile at least. It was Tremaine. His appearance was as dapper as ever, putting him out of place here – more suited to the members’ enclosure. My first assumption was that he had come here to see me; to find out what I was doing. But I couldn’t fathom how he’d got on to me so quickly, unless he’d simply been following me – or had had me followed. But that assumption was a little arrogant of me. It was just as likely that his own enquiries had brought him here quite independently. It had happened before at the hotel. For the moment, however, his attention was concentrated entirely on the race – just like any of the punters around him. His look of intense passion surprised me, but I didn’t want to let myself be distracted. I knew I had to get finished here. Remick’s stand was not far away. Although I’d got nothing out of him before, things were different now.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked aggressively, as I approached. He was smoking a pipe; during the actual races was probably one of the few times he got the chance. ‘I told you to get stuffed.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s not what you told O’Connor, is it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did he offer you a lump sum – or a cut of the profits?’

  ‘What for?’ Remick’s voice showed he was afraid.

  ‘For the list. The list of your customers. Your least successful customers.’

  ‘You’re guessing.’

  I was guessing about the payment, but Mullender had explained enough about the rest. And either way his face told me I was right. ‘They’d all have something to hide, wouldn’t they?’ I continued. ‘They’d all have lied or stolen or worse. They’d want all that kept secret. They’d pay to have it kept secret.’

  Remick began talking quickly. ‘He didn’t tell me why he wanted the names, and I didn’t ask. He just paid me: a guinea a name. Easy money. For all I know, he might have been planning to help them out.’

  I laughed. It didn’t sound like O’Connor. ‘Well, maybe I should help them out, too. Why don’t you give me their names?’

  ‘Don’t be a mug, Woolf. You won’t get a thing out of me.’

  ‘In that case I’ll just have to tell everyone, won’t I?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, if you’re not going to tell me precisely who you sold out to O’Connor, all I can do is warn all your punters.’ I turned to face the crowd beside the track, cupping my hands to my mouth. ‘Roll up! Roll up!’ I shouted, though there was no chance they would hear me. ‘Come and learn —’

  I felt the feeble blow of Remick’s fist on my back, but it was no effort for me to turn and knock him aside. He fell to the grass. He wasn’t a big man like Mullender, and couldn’t afford muscle, like Dudley employed. Even if the boy I’d seen earlier was still around, he wouldn’t have been much help. The son was even punier than the father. I didn’t like to play the bully, but sometimes it got results.

  ‘You’d better tell me then, hadn’t you,’ I said, deliberately standing over him.

  ‘Not here.’ He seemed genuinely afraid, and it was more than just my doing. ‘I’ll telephone.’

  ‘You do that.’ I reached into my pocket and took out one of my calling cards. I flicked it towards him and watched it spin through the air, landing neatly in the centre of his chest. Nine times out of ten it would have missed him completely, but today I was lucky. I knew it would help reinforce his impression of me – make it even more likely he would contact me with the names. But I’d learned enough up here on the Race Hill. It was time to go. With a smile on my face I turned away.

  CHAPTER 15

  The fist caught me right in the middle of the belly. The pain was indescribable. I doubled up and began to retch, but that only made the agony in my stomach muscles worse. The fist came down again, this time on the back of my head and I fell to the ground. A foot came in at the side of my ribs, kicking me over on to my back. I looked up, raising a hand to block out the high sun, though it must have looked like I was trying to defend myself. Perhaps that would have been wiser. I recognized the face; I shouldn’t have been in any doubt. It was Dudley’s flunky. I might have managed to lose him twice, but he hadn’t given up the chase. He held out a fat, meaty paw.

  ‘The notebook,’ he said.

  ‘What notebook?’ I’ve no idea why I bothered to lie. It seemed like the right thing to do, even though he’d seen it in my hand less than an hour before.

  He kicked me again, this time in the thigh, then reached into the side pocket of his jacket and brought out something long and thin, the colour of tortoiseshell. He flicked his wrist to reveal the blade. It was the favoured weapon at racecourses up and down the country: a straight-razor – easy to conceal and with a variety of uses. You could inflict pain, you could scar, you could kill. And more than that, the very sight of it would scare most adversaries into doing just what you wanted them to. It worked on me. I fumbled in my pocket and brought out the black notebook, proffering it to him from my position on the ground. He took hold of it but, either out of fear or stupidity, my fingers didn’t release. He raised the blade and slashed at them, without much force, but the sudden movement returned me to my senses and I let go before the razor’s edge could connect. It cut harmlessly through the air.

  His broad figure loomed over me, considering what to do next, then suddenly his attitude changed. He quickly slipped the notebook and the razor into his pocket and reached out towards me, as if offering to help me stand up. I wasn’t fool enough to respond to the gesture, and moments later I understood what he was up to. We were surrounded now by hordes of stampeding feet, migrating away from the track and back to the bookies’ stands. The race was over; the result known. Some were returning to collect their winnings, others to place their next bet. They might have done something about my prostrate figure and the man standing over it, but if one was seen helping the other, it could be regarded as someone else’s problem.

  Once the crowd had enveloped us, however, the thug’s mood changed again. We were now screened by the mass of bodies. He grinned and reached for the razor once more, opening it slowly with one hand, keeping it tight against the side of his leg so no one would see. He leaned forward and raised his hand to the side, not very far, but he wouldn’t need much of a swing for the blade to prove effective. I tried to work out where he was aiming, raising my hands to cover my face – though I wasn’t certain as to which I valued more. But, as I peeked between my fingers, his expression changed again. His eyes widened and his mouth opened to emit a low grunt. His free hand reached behind him to press against his kidney as he straightened and turned. I saw the face of the man who had punched him. It was Tremaine.

  The heavy lifted his blade high this time, but Tremaine was too quick for him, bringing the back of his clenched fist down hard against his opponent’s wrist. The thug’s fingers snapped open and the razor fell to the ground. In the same movement Tremaine’s other fist hit him hard in the stomach. It wasn’t a boxer’s punch. Given his line of work, Tremaine would have been trained in unarmed combat, and I suspected the influence of the oriental martial arts. There was no sense of gentlemanly fisticuffs to his actions. The flunkey had doubled up and Tremaine clasped his hands together and brought them down on the back of the fellow’s head. A fraction of a second later he raised his knee. The thug’s face bounced off it and his body fell to one side, his hands covering his bloodied nose. Tremaine took a moment to brush his trouser leg where it had made contact. Somehow he retained his usual rakishness. He squatted down and hauled me to my feet.

  ‘You damned fool!’ he muttered. I was upright now, but staggering to one side. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked with genuine concern.

  His vanquished foe was just beginning to stand up, whereupon Tremaine gave him a light kick to the backside He stumbled forwards but managed to transform the action into a staggering run. He disappeared into the crowd.

  Tremaine led me out of the enclosure with considerable force, his hand gripping my upper arm firmly. He knew what he was doing. I was dazed from the attack, even though my injuries didn’t feel too serious. Once we were out from among the crowd, I began to feel better, and could walk alongside him unaided. We didn’t speak. He seemed to know where he was going and soon we were entering a little pub that I’d not been aware existed. He sat me down and went over to the bar, quickly returning with three Scotches, two of which he put in front of me. I downed one immediately, then began the second at a more reasonable pace. I was the first to speak.

  ‘I never took you for a racing type.’

  He assumed an expression of mock offence. ‘Me? One of the Eloi?’

  ‘So you didn’t bet?’

  He looked me in the eye, evaluating me. It had been an offhand remark on my part, but when I’d first caught sight of him up at the track, as the horses raced past, I’d seen the look of excitement on his face. It wasn’t the expression of a disinterested onlooker.

  ‘I had a flutter,’ he conceded. He brought his hand out of his pocket and showed me a crumpled betting slip, before tossing it into the ashtray between us. ‘She came in seventh,’ he added.

  ‘So why were you really there?’

  ‘Well, obviously I was following you.’

  It was much as I’d suspected. He certainly hadn’t been on either of the trams I’d taken. But if he had a car, or had hired a taxi, it wouldn’t have been difficult.

  ‘You been following me all week?’ I asked.

  ‘What would be the point?’

  ‘Then why now?’

  He leaned forward and spoke a little more softly. ‘Look, when a chap telephones the London embassy of a major power, someone in Whitehall inevitably gets to hear about it. When a chap rings the German Embassy, then my organization hears about it. And if this chap asks to speak to Herr Ernst Metzger of the Reichskirchenministerium, then I hear about it. And it doesn’t take long to find out where the call came from, and the name of the chap who was calling.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, embarrassed at my own stupidity.

  ‘So question number one is: how did you know?’

  ‘That he works at the embassy? You told me yourself.’ I felt like I was cheeking a teacher – gaining a small, temporary victory.

  ‘I told you that much,’ Tremaine confirmed steadily, ‘but I didn’t tell you his name.’

  It wouldn’t have been any real problem to reveal the truth – that the information came from Marchant – but that would hardly be fair. And it would ensure that Marchant never confided in me again. ‘I got hold of O’Connor’s notebook,’ I explained instead. ‘He’d written it down.’

  He raised an eyebrow and I realized the potential mistake I’d made. I couldn’t be sure that Tremaine had ever given the name to O’Connor. But he didn’t question what I’d said.

  ‘A notebook?’ he asked. ‘Where did you find that?’

  ‘I’d rather not say.’

  His nostrils flared briefly, but he contained his anger. ‘Professional confidentiality?’ he said. I nodded. ‘And does that confidentiality extend to you allowing me to have a look at this notebook.’

  ‘I don’t have it any more,’ I confessed.

  ‘Oh, come on! You don’t have to lie to me.’

  ‘That bloke with the razor, he took it. Thanks, by the way.’ Up until that point I’d failed to display any gratitude for Tremaine’s actions.

  ‘You’d have done the same,’ he said dismissively. I wasn’t sure I’d even have tried, but I certainly wouldn’t have been as successful as he was. ‘I take it you can remember what else was in the notebook.’

  ‘Some of it.’

  ‘And it relates to Metzger?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Oh!’ He sounded disappointed.

  ‘Let me ask you a question,’ I said. ‘You ever heard of a man named Dudley? Frank Dudley?’ It occurred to me that I’d read O’Connor’s note the wrong way round. It might not be that Dudley knew something about Tremaine, but the reverse.

  He looked thoughtful for a moment, but shook his head, at first slowly, then faster. ‘Should I?’

  ‘He’s a bookie. He was up at the races. It was his man beating me up.’

  He looked at me blankly. ‘I still don’t see how he fits in.’

  ‘I’ll level with you,’ I said. ‘I don’t think Metzger killed O’Connor.’

  He laughed but his heart wasn’t in it. ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Because it’s not Metzger in the photographs.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. I’ve seen them … and him. There’s no mistake.’

  ‘Have you shown them to Metzger yet? Sprung your trap?’

  He downed the last of his Scotch, then leaned back in his chair, rubbing his chin and lips and eyeing me warily. ‘Not as such, no.’

  ‘When you show him those photos, he’ll laugh in your face.’ I told him the details of what I’d discovered. I described the additional photographs – though not where I’d found them – and my trip to London, and finally the confrontation with Metzger. ‘I think O’Connor was trying to put one over on you,’ I concluded.

  ‘So O’Connor found a lookalike? But … why? Metzger’s an old dog. He’d jump into the sack with anyone, certainly a cutie like … well, like that.’

  ‘I don’t know – and I’m not sure I care. What it means is, Metzger had no reason to kill him. Metzger was never at the Metropole. I doubt he even knows of O’Connor’s existence.’

  ‘And you think O’Connor’s death is to do with something else, then? Something up at the races?’ I nodded. Tremaine sat in pensive silence for several seconds. Then abruptly he switched on a smile. ‘Not my case then. I should leave you to it. All previous embargoes lifted.’