The Edge Read Free Page A

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    Millington told me to follow Derry Welfram if I saw him again at the races, to see who else he talked to, which I’d been doing for about a month on the day the navy-suit fell on its buttons. Welfram had talked intensely to about ten people by then and proved he was comprehensively a bearer of bad news, leaving behind him a trail of shocked, shivering, hollow-eyed stares at unwelcome realities. And because I had an ingenious camera built into binoculars (and another that looked like a cigarette lighter) we had recognisable portraits of most of Welfram’s shattered contacts, though so far identifications for less than half. Millington’s men were working on it.
    Millington had come to the conclusion that Welfram was a frightener hired to shake out bad debts: a rent-a-thug in general, not solely Filmer’s man. I had seen him speak to Filmer only once since the first occasion, which didn’t mean he hadn’t done so more often. There were usually race meetings at three or more different courses in England each day, and it was a toss-up, sometimes, to guess where either of the quarries would go. Filmer, moreover, went racing less often than Welfram, two or three times a week at most. Filmer had shares in a great many horses and usually went where they ran; and I checked their destinations every morning in the racing press.
    The problem with Filmer was not what he did, but catching him doing it. At first sight, second sight, third sight he did nothing wrong. He bought racehorses, put them in training, went to watch them run, enjoyed all the pleasures of an owner. It was only gradually, over the ten years since Filmer had appeared on the scene, that there had been eyebrows raised, frowns of disbelief, mouths pursed in puzzlement.
    Filmer bought horses occasionally at auction through an agent or a trainer but chiefly acquired them by deals struck in private, a perfectly proper procedure. Any owner was always at liberty to sell his horsesto anyone else. The surprising thing about some of Filmer’s acquisitions was that no one would have expected the former owner to sell the horse at all.
    I had been briefed about him by Millington during my first few weeks in the Service, but then only as someone to be generally aware of, not as a number one priority.
    ‘He leans on people,’ Millington said. ‘We’re sure of it, but we don’t know how. He’s much too fly to do anything where we can see him. Don’t think you’ll catch him handing out bunches of money for information, nothing crude like that. Look for people who’re nervous when he’s near, right?’
    ‘Right.’
    I had spotted a few of those. Both of the trainers who trained his horses treated him with caution, and most of the jockeys who rode them shook his hand with their fingertips. The Press, who knew who wouldn’t answer questions, hardly bothered to ask them. A deferential decorative girlfriend jumped when he said jump, and the male companion frequently in attendance fairly scuttled. Yet there was nothing visibly boorish about his general manner at the races. He smiled at appropriate moments, nodded congratulations to other owners in the winners’ enclosures and patted his horses when they pleased him.
    He was in person forty-eight, heavy, about five foot ten in height. Millington said the weight was mostly muscle, as Filmer spent time three days a week raising a sweat in a gym. Above the muscle there was a well-shaped head, large flat ears and thick black hair flecked with grey. I hadn’t been near enough to see the colour of his eyes, but Millington had them down as greenish brown.
    Rather to Millington’s annoyance I refused to follow Filmer about much. For one thing in the end he would have been certain to have spotted me, and for another it wasn’t necessary. Filmer was a creature of habit, moving from car to lunch to bookmaker to grandstand to paddock at foreseeable intervals. At each track he had a favourite place to watch the races from, a