Trying to unlock the code

Temple spent the rest of his Sunday afternoon and evening trying to make sense of Eager's notebooks. The writing was difficult enough to decipher without dealing with the cross-referencing between the books. He saw that whenever an entry in the racing details had a large question mark beside it, there was sure to be an equivalent comment in the other book. This would include the same date and dog name followed by the letters BE and SM with either a tick or question mark next to them.

Temple found it all increasingly boring and, after a time, he nodded off in his armchair. He woke some half hour later in a state of panic. The books had fallen to the floor, he had been dreaming again of the War, of the time in Italy when his battalion had crossed the Garigliano river. The nightmare of that crossing still haunted his dreams, even after all the years that had passed. It was the death of his best friend, Gerry, that he could not forget; he still saw him disappearing into the dark fast flowing waters of the river.

Temple's regular yelling out at night had driven his wife into a fury. Her solution was that he should 'pull himself together'. That, he thought, was much easier said than done. Now, he had no one to disturb at night. No one to hear his shouts through the thick walls of the flat.

He shook his head and got up. For a moment he was tempted to pour himself a large whiskey to steady his shaking hands. He glanced at the clock, it was only five o'clock. Instead, he made a pot of tea and opened a packet of biscuits. Then, he returned to the chair and the notebooks. So many deaths end in water, he thought. First Gerry's in Italy, then Ben Ellacott then Eager Beaver here in Devon.

He dunked his digestive biscuit into the tea and cursed as half of it broke off and sank into the cup. Then, he froze as the significance of the notebook entries suddenly hit him. BE was Ben Ellacott; SM was Stuart McBride. The races marked with the question marks always coincided with very fast times for the winning dogs. Eager Beaver had put two and two together and guessed that the dogs were being doped and that BE and SM were somehow providing the drugs.

Had Eager then grown too cocky and tried a little blackmail? Bloody fool, Temple thought, he didn't know who he was dealing with.

Now with BE out of the way, Temple wondered how the group would cope? Could a local family doctor get his hands on drugs as easily as when he had a tame pharmacist to hand?

Feeling quite pleased with the day's work, he packed up the books. Then he sauntered down the road to the pub. He had earned the whiskeys he was about to drink.