Dick Francis - Crossfire

I looked up at the top of the gates. Did I really have to start climbing again?

No, I didn't. A quick excursion ten yards to the left allowed me to step through a post-and-rail fence. The imposing gates were more for show than for security. But the chain and padlock would have been enough to prevent some passing Nosey Parker from driving up to the house to have a look around, someone who might then have found me in the stables.

There was a plastic sign attached to the outside of one of the gateposts.

"FOR SALE," it said in bold capital letters, then gave the telephone number of a realtor. I recognized the dialing code: 01635 was Newbury.

The realtor's sign was nailed over another wooden notice. I pulled the for-sale sign away to reveal the notice beneath, and I could just see the painted words in the gathering gloom. "Greystone Stables," it read. And in smaller letters underneath, "Larry Webster-Racehorse Trainer."

I could remember someone had told me about this place. "The Webster place," they'd said. "On the hill off the Wantage Road." So I was back in Lambourn, or just outside. And I could see the village lights about half a mile or so away, down the road.

What do I do now, I thought.

Do I phone my mother and ask her to collect me, or do I call the police and report a kidnapping and an attempted murder? I knew I should. It was the right and the sensible thing to do. I should have done it as soon as I found my phone. And then my mother would simply have to take her chances with the tax man, and the courts.

Something was stopping me from calling the police, and it wasn't only the belief that my mother would then end up losing everything: her house, her stables, her business, her freedom and, perhaps worst of all for her to bear, her reputation.

It was something more than that. Maybe it was the need to fight my own battles, to prove to myself that I still could. Possibly it was to show the major from the MOD that I wasn't ready for retirement and the military scrap heap.

But above all, I think it was the desire to inflict personal revenge on the person who had done this to me.

Perhaps it was some sort of madness, but I put the phone in my pocket and called no one. I simply started walking towards the lights, and home.

I was alive and free, and for as long as someone believed that I was tied up and dead, I had the element of surprise on my side. In strategic terms, surprise was everything. The air attack on Pearl Harbor just before eight o'clock on a sleepy Sunday morning in December 1941 was testament to that. Eleven ships had been either sunk or seriously damaged and nearly two hundred aircraft destroyed on the ground for fewer than thirty of the attackers shot down. More than three and a half thousand Americans had been killed or wounded for the loss of just sixty-five Japanese casualties. I knew because at Sandhurst, each officer cadet had to give a presentation to their fellow trainees about a Second World War engagement, and I had been allocated Pearl Harbor.

Surprise had been crucial.

I had already shown myself to the enemy once, and I had barely survived the consequences. Now I would remain hidden, and better still, my enemy must surely believe that I'd already been neutralized and was no longer a threat. Just when he thought I was dead I would rise up and bite him. I wanted my Glenn-Close-in-the-bath moment from Fatal Attraction, but I wasn't going to then get shot and killed, as her character had been.

I walked through the village, keeping to the shadows and avoiding the busy center, where someone might have spotted me near the brightly lit shop windows. Only the damn clink-clink of my right leg could have given me away. I resolved to find a way to make my walking silent once more.

When I arrived at the driveway of Kauri House I paused.

Did I really want my mother and stepfather to know what had happened to me? How could I explain my dirty and disheveled condition to them without explaining how I came to be in such a state? And could I then trust them not to pass on the knowledge to others, even accidentally? Absolute secrecy might be vital. "Loose talk costs lives" had been a wartime slogan. I certainly didn't want it costing mine.

But I urgently needed to eat, and I also wanted to wash and put on some clean clothes.

As I approached I could see that the lights were on in the stables and the staff were busily mucking out and feeding their charges.

I skirted around the house and approached down the outside of the nearest stable rectangle, trying to keep my leg as quiet as possible. Only at the very last instant did I briefly step into the light, and only then when I was sure no one was looking.

I went quickly up the stairs and let myself in to Ian Norland's unlocked flat above the stables.

I'd taken a chance that Ian would not have locked the door while he was downstairs with the horses, and I'd been right. Now I had to decide what to tell him. It had to be enough to engage his help, but amongst other things, I thought it best not to inform him that his employer was effectively trading while insolvent, something that was strictly against the law. And I didn't want to scare him into instantly calling the police. I decided that I wouldn't tell him the whole truth, but I would try not to tell him any outright lies.

While I waited for him to finish with the horses, I raided his refrigerator. Amongst the cans of beer there were precious few food items, so I helped myself to a two-liter plastic bottle of milk. It had been as much as I could do not to go into The Rice Bowl Chinese takeaway in the village on my way through. But I had every intention of convincing Ian that he needed to go there for me the minute he came up from the stables.

I'd completely finished his two liters of milk by the time I heard him climbing the stairs.

I stood tight behind the door as he came in, but he saw me as soon as he closed it. After the cut-bridle altercation of the previous Saturday, I wasn't exactly expecting a warm welcome, and I didn't get it.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he demanded loudly.

"Ian, I need your help," I said quickly.

He looked at me closely, at my filthy and torn clothes and the stubble on my chin. "Why are you in such a mess?" he asked accusingly. "What have you been up to?"

"Nothing," I said. "I'm just a bit dirty and hungry, that's all."

"Why?" he said.

"Why what?" I said.

"Why everything?" he said. "Why are you lurking in my flat like a burglar? Why didn't you go to the house? And why are you hungry and dirty?"

"I'll explain everything," I said. "But I need your help, and I don't really want my mother to know I'm here."

"Why not?" he demanded. "Are you in trouble with the law?"

"No, of course not," I said, trying to sound affronted.

"Then why don't you want your mother to know you're here?"

What could I say that would convince him?

"My mother and I have had an argument," I said. I'd clearly failed dismally in my aim of not telling him any lies.

"What over?" he said.

"Does it matter?" I said. "You know my mother. She can argue over the smallest of things."

"Yeah, I know," he said. "But what was this particular argument about?"

I could see that he was going to be persistent. He needed an answer.

"Over the running of the horses," I said.

Now he was interested.

"Tell me."

"Can I use your bathroom first?" I asked. "I'm desperate for a shower. I don't suppose you have any spare clothes my size?"

"Where are yours?"

"In the house."

"Do you want me to fetch them?" he asked.

"How could you?" I said. "My mother would surely see."

"She's out," he said. "She and Mr. Philips have gone to some big event in London. Saw them go myself round five o'clock.All dressed up to the nines, they were. She told me she'd be back for first lot in the morning."