East of the City by Grant Sutherland Page B

me to move the tickets from one stack to another and adding them up. Later on, when I got the hang of it, I wasn’t allowed to count them, I had to keep track of it all in my head. If he’d been a carpenter it would have been a toy hammer, but he was a bookie, so I got the betting slips instead. He didn’t force me to do it, he made it a game. I spent hours under that bloody kitchen table. Hell, thirty years back. A long time.
    ‘What've you got in this one?’ Nev Logan had come up beside me. He wasn’t looking nearly so bad as he had at the Gallon.
    Swordplay, I told him.
    He checked the form.
    ‘Just twenty,’ I said.
    ‘Just as well.’
    There was an announcement — the race was delayed for five minutes — and Nev led me away to the bar.
    I had a beer and Nev had a lemonade, we sat watching the dogs up on the big screen. I wondered where Katy was, if she was okay, but when I mentioned it to Nev he said, ‘She’s got plenty of mates here. Let her be.’ He sipped his lemonade and studied the screen over the brim of his glass. ‘What’s the problem with Ward?’
    I looked at him. He kept his eyes on the screen.
    ‘You show up at the Gallon the first time in Christ knows how many years, next thing Tubs is askin’ about Sebastian Ward?’ He put down his glass and faced me. ‘I’ve got cancer, Ian, but it hasn’t made me brain dead.' His look went right through me, I wasn’t sure what to say. ‘But if you don’t wanna tell me,’ he said turning back to the screen, ‘no big deal.’
    The dogs were being taken up to the traps, the announcer’s voice came over the speakers in the bar. Nev meant what he'd said; it hadn’t put his nose out of joint not being in on things, he’d just been curious, that was all. So I asked him how his betting shops were doing.
    He said, ‘Tubs never told you?’ When I shook my head, he shrugged. ‘They’re on the block.’
    ‘For sale?’
    ‘No pockets in a shroud.’ He explained that he wanted to cash-in while he still had some chance of spending it. So far the only one to show any interest in the three leases was an American hamburger chain.
    I mumbled something stupid about him still having plenty of time, and he said. ‘The other one plays "Jingle Bells".’ He reached over and clinked his glass against mine.
    What the hell, I thought.
    And I said, ‘Sebastian’s house burnt down.’
    ‘I heard.’
    ‘Eddie Pike died in the fire.’
    ‘I heard that too.' He coughed, it racked his whole body. ‘Can’t say as I cried me eyes out, the man was a bloody weasel. Always was.’
    Surprised, I asked how well he’d known Eddie.
    ‘Well enough. Just about the biggest hit I ever took was down to Eddie bloody Pike.’  It was in the Cesarewich, he told me, one of the classics; there’d been big money on the favourite but Nev hadn’t taken much on it, he thought the favourite was a certainty. Then ten minutes before start time another big wave of money came into the ring, this lot on the second favourite. Nev took a set against her, by the time he realized he’d overdone it, the odds had plunged everywhere; he couldn’t lay off without taking a bath. ‘So I held on.’
    ‘A mistake?'
    He laughed, it turned into a cough, and he covered his mouth. ‘Lost me soddin’ shirt.’ Above his hand his eyes glistened; you could see Nev Logan wasn’t long for this world. ‘A week later, I drop in at the favourite’s kennels. Took a bottle with me, you know. Me and the trainer, drown our sorrows. Guess who’s just resigned from the place?’
    ‘Eddie Pike?’
    ‘Our friend Eddie.’ Nev paused, his look becoming less cheerful. ‘Eddie, the nobbler.’
    ‘They tested the bitch?’
    ‘Clear on the night, but she died two weeks later.’ Nev watched me as I took that in. He had another shot from his lemonade. ‘Like I said. A weasel.’
    Up on the big screen the kennel lads were stuffing the dogs into the traps. Around the bar, heads were turning. Swordplay, I