Flying finish / Бурный финиш. Книга для чтения на английском языке

I did a good deal of hard thinking that night and I didn’t like my thoughts. In the morning I waited outside Yardman’s office, and fell into step with Simon as he shambled out to lunch.

‘Hullo,’ he said, beaming. ‘Where did you spring from? Come and have a warmer[220] up at the Angel’.

I nodded and walked beside him, shufling on the thawing remains of the previous week’s snow. Our breaths shot out in small sharp clouds. The day was misty and overcast; the cold, raw, damp, and penetrating, exactly matched my mood.

Simon pushed the stained glass and entered the fug; swam on to his accustomed stool, tugged free his disreputable corduroy jacket and hustled the willing barmaid into pouring hot water on to rum and lemon juice, a large glass each. There was a bright new modern electric fire straining at its kilowatts in the old brick fireplace, and the pulsating light from its imitation coal base lit warmly the big smiling face opposite me, and shone brightly on the friendliness in his eyes.

I had so few friends. So few.

‘What’s the matter then?’ he said, sipping his steaming drink. ‘You’re excessively quiet today, even for you.’

I watched the fake flames for a while, but it couldn’t be put off for ever. ‘I have found out,’ I said slowly, ‘about the brown mare.’

He put down his glass with a steady hand but the smile drained completely away. ‘What brown mare?’

I didn’t answer. The silence lengthened hopelessly.

‘What do you mean?’ he said at last.

‘I escorted a brown mare to France and back twice in a fortnight. The same brown mare every time.’

‘You must be mistaken.’

‘No.’

There was a pause. Then he said again, but without conviction, ‘You are mistaken.’

‘I noticed her the day she went over in the morning and came back the same afternoon. I wondered when she went over again last Thursday… and I was certain it was the same horse yesterday, when she came back.’

‘You’ve been on several other trips. You couldn’t remember one particular mare out of all those you dealt with.’

‘I know horses,’ I said.

‘You’re too quick[221]’, he said, almost to himself. ‘Too quick’.

‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘You were. You shouldn’t have done it again so soon; then I might not have realised.’

He shook himself suddenly, the bulk quivering in folds. ‘Done what?’ he said more firmly. ‘What if a horse did go over and back twice? And what’s it got to do with me?’

‘There’s no point in telling you what you already know.’

‘Henry,’ he leaned forward. ‘I know what I know, but I don’t know what you think you know. You’ve got some damn-fool notion in your head and I want to hear what it is.’

I watched the steam rise gently from my untouched drink and wished I hadn’t come. ‘Nice little fiddle[222],’ I sighed. A‘ sweet, neat little fraud. Easy as shelling peas.[223]

A few hundred quid every time you send the mare to France.’

He looked at me without speaking, waiting, making me say it all straight out.

‘All right then. You sell a horse – the brown mare – to an accomplice in France. He arranges for his bank to transfer the purchase price to England and the bank over here certifies that it has been received. You put in a claim to the government that one thoroughbred has been exported for x thousand francs: part of the great bloodstock industry. The grateful government pays you the bonus, the one and three quarters per cent bonus on exports, and you put it in your pocket. Meanwhile you bring the horse back here and smuggle the money back as cash to France and you’re ready to start again.’

Simon sat like a stone, staring at me.

‘All you really need is the working capital,’ I said. ‘A big enough sum to make the one and three quarters per cent worth the trouble. Say twenty thousand pounds, for argument’s sake. Three hundred and fifty pounds every time the mare goes across. If she went only once a month that would make an untaxed dividend of over 20 per cent on the year. Four thousand or more, tax free. You’d have a few expenses, of course, but even so…’

‘Henry!’ his voice was low and stunned.

‘It’s not a big fraud[224]’, I said. ‘Not big. But pretty safe. And it had to be you, Simon, because it’s all a matter of filling up the right forms, and you fill the forms at Yardman’s. If anyone else, an outsider, tried it, he’d have to pay the horse’s air passage each way, which would make the whole business unprofitable. No one would do it unless they could send the horse for nothing. You can send one for nothing[225], Simon. You just put one down on the flying list, but not on the office records. Every time there’s room on a flight to France, you send the mare. Yardman told me himself there would be seven three-year-olds going over last Thursday, but we took eight horses, and the eighth wasn’t a three-year old, it was the brown mare.