Dick Francis - Wild Horses

When we’d finished the close-ups and the day’s work was safely on its way to London for processing I ran the previous day’s rushes in the screening room, happy for Bill Robinson’s sake that he and his monster bike positively quivered with shining power, filling Nash’s character with the determination he needed if he were to take action.

From fantasy, courage, I thought. I wanted the film to assert that old idea, but without ramming it down anyone’s throat. I wanted people to see that they had always known it. To open doors. A door-opener; that was my function.

It stopped raining more or less at the time forecast — miraculous — and Moncrieff busied himself in the stable-yard supervising the loading of cameras, films, lights and crews onto trucks for the ‘moonlit’ shots of Nash on the Heath.

Nash arrived to the minute, no surprise, and came out of the house half an hour later in riding clothes and night-time makeup, carrying his helmet and demanding a thoroughly tranquillised mount.

‘If your fans could only hear you!’ I remarked dryly.

‘You, Thomas,’ he said, smiling, ‘can go try 6G in a brake turn at low level.’

I shook my head. Nash could fly fast jet aircraft — when not under a restrictive contract in mid-film — and I couldn’t. Nash’s pre-mega-star hair-raising CV included air force service in fighters, all part of his mystique.

‘The scene comes a night or two before the motor bikes,’ I said. ‘You have been accused. You are worried. OK?’

He nodded. The screenplay had included the night-on-the-horse scene from the beginning, and he was prepared.

We drove the camera truck slowly up the road by the hill, Nash in the saddle beside us (the horse in dim ‘moonlight’) looking worried and thoughtful. We then filmed him sitting on the ground with his back to a wind-bent tree, the horse cropping grass nearby. We’d more or less finished when the thick clouds unexpectedly parted and blew in dramatic shapes across the real full moon, and Moncrieff turned his camera heavenwards for more than sixty seconds, and beamed at me triumphantly through his straggly beard.

The long day ended. Back at Bedford Lodge I found three more boxes itemised, plus a note from Lucy saying she hoped I didn’t mind but her parents wanted her home for Sunday after all. Back Monday, she wrote.

Box VIII. Form books. Flat racing.

Box IX. Horseshoes.

Box X. Encyclopaedias, A-F.

The horseshoes were actual horseshoes, each saved in a plastic bag and labelled with the name of the horse that had worn it, complete with winning date, racecourse and event. Valentine had been a true collector, squirreling his successes away.

I pulled out the first of the encyclopedias without anything particular in mind and, finding a slip of paper in it acting as a bookmark, opened it there. Autocrat : an absolute ruler. Multiple examples followed.

I closed the book, rested my head against the back of my armchair, decided it was time to take off the Delta-cast and drifted towards sleep.

The thought that galvanised me to full wakefulness seemed to come from nowhere but was a word seen peripherally, unconsidered.

Autocrat...

Further down the page came Auto-erotism .

I picked the volume out of the box and read the long entry. I learned much more than I wanted to about various forms of masturbation, though I could find nothing of much significance. Vaguely disappointed, I started to replace the bookmarker, but glanced at it and kept it in my hand. Valentine’s bookmarker bore the one word ‘Paraphilia’.

I didn’t know what paraphilia was, but I searched through several unopened boxes and finally found the P volume of the encyclopedia, following where Valentine had directed.

The P volume also had a bookmark, this time in the page for Paraphilia .

Paraphilia I read, consisted of many manifestations of perverted love. One of them was listed as ‘erotic strangulation — the starvation of blood to the brain to stimulate sexual arousal’.

Valentine’s knowledge of self-asphyxia, the process he had described to Professor Derry, had come from this book.

‘In 1791 in London,’ I read, ‘at the time of Haydn, a well-known musician died as a result of his leaning towards paraphilia. One Friday afternoon he engaged a prostitute to tie a leash round his neck which he could then tighten to the point of his satisfaction. Unfortunately he went too far and throttled himself. The prostitute reported his death and was tried for murder, but acquitted, as the musician’s perversion was well known. The judge ordered the records of the case not to be published, in the interests of decency.’

One lived and learned, I thought tolerantly, putting the encyclopedia back in its box. Poor old Professor Derry. Just as well, perhaps, that he hadn’t acted on Valentine’s information.

Before throwing them both away I glanced at Valentine’s second bookmark. On the strip of white paper he’d written, ‘Tell Derry this’ and, lower down, ‘Showed this to Pig’.

I went along to O’Hara’s room, retrieved the folder and ‘The Clang’ photograph from the safe, and sat in his armchair looking at them and thinking long and hard.

Eventually, I slept in his bed, as it was safer.

The film company’s car brought Ridley Wells to the stables on time and sober the next morning. We sent him into the house to the wardrobe department, and I took the opportunity to telephone Robbie Gill on my mobile.

I expected to get his message service at that early hour, but in fact he was awake and answered my summons himself.

‘Still alive?’ he asked chattily.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘So what do you need?’

As always with Robbie, straight to the point.

‘First,’ I said, ‘who gave you the list of knife specialists?’

‘My professional colleague in the police force,’ he said promptly. ‘The doctor they call out locally. He’s a randy joker, ex-rugger player, good for a laugh and a jar in the pub. I asked him for known knife specialists. He said the force had drawn up the list themselves recently and asked him if he could add to it. He couldn’t. The people he knows who carry knives tend to be behind bars.’

‘Did he attend Dorothea?’

‘No, he was away. Anything else?’

‘How is she?’

‘Dorothea? Still sedated. Now Paul’s gone, do you still want to pay for the nursing home?’

‘Yes, I do, and I want to see her soon, like this afternoon.’

‘No problem. Just go. She’s still in a side ward because of Paul, but physically she’s healing well. We could move her by Tuesday, I should think.’

‘Good,’ I said.

‘Take care.’

I said wryly, ‘I do.’

In the stable yard the lads were readying for morning exercise, saddling and bridling the horses. As it was Sunday, I told them, we would again have the Heath gallops more or less to ourselves, but we wouldn’t be filming exactly the same scenes as the week before.

‘You were all asked to wear what you did last Sunday,’ I said. ‘Did you all check with our continuity girl if you couldn’t remember?’

I got nods.

‘Fine. Then all of you will canter up the hill and stop where you stopped and circled last week. OK?’

More nods.

‘You remember the rider who came from nowhere and made a slash at Ivan?’

They laughed. They wouldn’t forget it.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘today we don’t have Ivan, but we’re going to stage that attack ourselves, and put it into the film. Today it will be a fictional affair. OK? The knife used will not be a real knife but one that’s been made out of wood by our production department. What I want you to do is exactly the sort of thing you were doing last Sunday — circling, talking, paying not much attention to the stranger. Right?’