Dick Francis - Crossfire

"Do you think he'll win?" It was a moment before I realized that Rebecca Garraway was talking to me.

"Sorry?" I said.

"Do you think he'll win?" she repeated.

"Who?" I asked.

"Newark Hall, of course," she said. "Our horse."

I hadn't realized that the Garraways were Newark Hall's owners. I looked down at my race card, but it stated that the horse was owned by a company called Budsam Ltd.

"He has a good chance," I said back to her.

In truth, he had a better chance than she appreciated.

Ewen Yorke was standing to my left, looking through his large racing binoculars towards the two-and-a-half-mile start.

"Oh, hello," he said without lowering his binoculars. "Seems we have a problem."

"What problem?" Rebecca Garraway demanded with concern in her voice.

"It's OK," Ewen said, while still looking. "It's not Newark Hall, it's Scientific. Seems his reins have snapped. He's running away."

I looked down the course in horror, but without the benefit of Ewen's multi-magnification, I was unable to see exactly what was going on. I took a large gulp of my champagne. I should have asked Jackson for a whisky.

"Good. They've caught him," Ewen said, putting down his glasses. "No real harm done."

"So what will happen now?" I asked, trying hard to keep my voice as normal as possible. "Will Scientific be withdrawn?"

"Oh no, he'll run, all right, no problem. They'll just fit a new bridle on him down at the start," Ewen said. "The starter always has a spare, just in case something breaks. Indeed, just for situations like this. Most unlike your mother to have a tack malfunction." He almost laughed.

I felt sick. All that hard work with the scalpel, to say nothing about the expenditure of so much nervous energy since, and for what? Nothing. The horse would now run with perfect, uncut, unbreakable reins.

"That's good," I said, not actually thinking it was good for a second.

What, I wondered, would the blackmailer do if Scientific won?

I was doubly glad that I wasn't standing next to my mother on the owners' and trainers' stand. By now she would have become more of a head case than was usual. I just hoped she wasn't planning an Emily Davison suffragette-style dash out in front of her horse during the race to prevent it from winning. But in her present state of mind, I'd not put anything past her.

"They're off!" announced the public-address system, and all twelve runners moved away slowly, not one of the jockeys eager to set the early pace. They jumped the first fence without even breaking into a proper gallop, and only then did the horses gather pace and the race was on.

Even though I wanted to, I couldn't take my eyes off Scientific.

I suppose I was hoping he might have crossfired and cut into himself, but the horse appeared to gallop along easily, without any problems. Perhaps he would make an error, I thought, peck badly on landing, and unseat his rider.

But he didn't.

My mother had said that Scientific was a good novice but that the Game Spirit Steeplechase was a considerable step up in class. It didn't show. The horse jumped all the way around without putting a hoof wrong, and he was well placed in the leading trio as they turned into the finishing straight for the second and final time. The other two contenders were, as my mother had predicted they would be, Newark Hall and Sovereign Owner.

The three horses jumped the last fence abreast and battled together all the way to the finish line with the crowd cheering them on. Even the quiet, reserved Rebecca Garraway was jumping up and down, screaming encouragement, urging Newark Hall to summon up one last ounce of energy.

"Photograph, photograph!" announced the judge as the horses flashed past the winning post, each of them striving to get his nose in front.

No one in the box was sure which of the three had won.

Ewen Yorke and the Garraways rushed out to get to the winner's enclosure, confident that their horse had done enough, and Jackson went with them, leaving me in the box alone with Isabella and Julie.

"Do you think we won?" Julie asked, without much enthusiasm.

I was about to say that I had no idea when the public address announced, "Here is the result of the photograph. First number ten, second number six, third number eleven."

Number ten, the winner, was Scientific. He'd won by a short head from Newark Hall. Sovereign Owner had been third, another nose behind.

Oh shit, I thought.

"Oh, well," said Julie, shrugging her shoulders. "There's always next time. But Ewen will be like a caged tiger tonight, he hates so much to lose." She smiled at me again and raised her eyebrows in a seductive and questioning manner.

It wasn't Ewen, I thought, who was the caged tiger, it was his wife. And I had no desire to release her.

I watched on the television in the corner of the box as my mother greeted her winner, a genuine smile of triumph on her face. In the euphoria of victory, in the moment of ecstasy of beating Ewen Yorke, she had clearly forgotten that she had disobeyed the instructions of the man who might hold the keys to her prison cell.

It was too late to change anything now, I thought, so she might as well enjoy it while she could. Perhaps the stewards would find that Scientific had bumped into or somehow impeded one of the other horses.

But, of course, they didn't. And there were no objections, other than mine, and that wouldn't carry much authority with the stewards.

Scientific had won against the orders.

Only time would tell what the blackmailer thought.

What the bloody hell is going on?" Ian Norland stood full square in the middle of the Kauri House kitchen, shouting at my mother and me. He had thrown the bridle with the broken reins onto the bleached pine table.

"Ian, please don't shout at me," my mother said. "And what's the problem anyway? Scientific won, didn't he?"

"More by luck than judgment," Ian almost shouted at her. "It was just fortunate that the reins parted on the way to the start rather than in the race itself."

Or unfortunate, I thought.

"Why?" Ian said in exasperation. "Just tell me why."

"Why what?" I asked.

"Why did you made the reins break?"

"Are you accusing us of deliberately sabotaging the reins?" my mother asked in her most pompous manner.

"Yes," he said flatly. "I am. There's no other explanation. This bridle was brand-new. I put the Australian noseband on it myself just a few days ago."

"Perhaps there was a fault in its manufacture," I said.

He looked at me with contempt. "Do you take me for an idiot or something?"

I assumed it was a rhetorical question, and so I kept quiet.

"If I don't get some answers," he said, "then I'm leaving here tonight for good, and I will take this to the racing authorities on Monday morning." He picked up the bridle in his hand.

I wondered if it was worth pointing out to him that the bridle was not actually his to take away.

"But why?" my mother said. "Nothing happened. Scientific won the race."

"But you tried to make him lose it," Ian said, his voice again rising in volume towards a shout.

"What on earth makes you think we had anything to do with the reins breaking?" I asked him, all innocently.

He again gave me his contemptuous look. "Because you've been so bloody interested in the racing tack all week, asking questions and all. What else am I going to think?"

"Don't be ridiculous," said my mother.

"And how about the others?" he said.

"What others?" my mother asked rather carelessly.

"Pharmacist last week and Oregon the week before. Did you stop them from winning too?"

"No, of course not." My mother sounded affronted.

"Why should I believe you?" Ian said.

"Because, Ian," I said, in my best voice-of-command, "you must." He turned to look at me with fire in his eyes. I ignored him. "Of course you can go to the authorities if that is what you want. But what would you tell them? That you suspect your employer of stopping her horses. But why? And how? By cutting the reins? But it would not have been the first time that reins have broken on a racetrack, now, would it?"