Дик Фрэнсис - High Stakes

‘Long story.’

‘Hm. Will your man get us some coffee?’

‘Ask him... he’ll be in the workshop. Intercom over there.’ I nodded towards the far door and wished I hadn’t. My whole brain felt like a bruise.

Charlie talked to Owen on the intercom and Owen came up with his ultra polite face and messed around with filters in the kitchen.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Charlie asked.

‘Knocked out, drunk and...’ I stopped.

‘And what?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You need a doctor.’

‘I saw a police surgeon. Or rather... he saw me.’

‘You can’t see the state of your eyes,’ Charlie said seriously. ‘And whether you like it or not, I’m getting you a doctor.’ He went away to the kitchen to consult Owen and I heard the extension bell there tinkling as he kept his promise. He came back.

‘What’s wrong with my eyes?’

‘Pinpoint pupils and glassy daze.’

‘Charming.’

Owen brought the coffee, which smelled fine, but I found I could scarcely drink it. Both men looked at me with what I could only call concern.

‘How did you get like this?’ Charlie asked.

‘Shall I go, sir?’ Owen said politely.

‘No. Sit down, Owen. You may as well know too...’ He sat comfortably in a small armchair, neither perching on the front nor lolling at ease in the depths. The compromise of Owen’s attitude to me was what made him above price, his calm understanding that although I paid for work done, we each retained equal dignity in the transaction. I had employed him for less than a year: I hoped he would stay till he dropped.

‘I went down to Jody Leeds’ stable, last night, after dark,’ I said. ‘I had no right at all to be there. Jody and two other men found me in one of the boxes looking at a horse. There was a bit of a struggle and I banged my head... on the manger, I think... and got knocked out.’

I stopped for breath. My audience said nothing at all.

‘When I woke up, I was sitting on a pavement in Soho, dead drunk.’

‘Impossible,’ Charlie said.

‘No. It happened. The police scooped me up, as they apparently do to all drunks littering the footpaths. I spent the remains of the night in a cell and got fined five pounds, and here I am.’

There was a long pause.

Charlie cleared his throat. ‘Er... various questions arise.’

‘They do indeed.’

Owen said calmly, ‘The car, sir. Where did you leave the car?’ The car was his especial love, polished and cared for like silver.

I told him exactly where I’d parked it. Also that I no longer had its keys. Nor the keys to the flat or the workshop, for that matter.

Both Charlie and Owen showed alarm and agreed between themselves that the first thing Owen would do, even before fetching the car, would be to change all my locks.

‘I made those locks,’ I protested.

‘Do you want Jody walking in here while you’re asleep?’

‘No.’

‘Then Owen changes the locks.’

I didn’t demur any more. I’d been thinking of a new form of lock for some time, but hadn’t actually made it. I would soon, though. I would patent it and make it as a toy for kids to lock up their secrets, and maybe in twenty years time half the doors in the country would be keeping out burglars that way. My lock didn’t need keys or electronics, and couldn’t be picked. It stood there, clear and sharp in my mind, with all its working parts meshing neatly.

‘Are you all right?’ Charlie said abruptly.

‘What?’

‘For a moment you looked...’ He stopped and didn’t finish the sentence.

‘I’m not dying, if that’s what you think. It’s just that I’ve an idea for a new sort of lock.’

Charlie’s attention sharpened as quickly as it had at Sandown.

‘Revolutionary?’ he asked hopefully.

I smiled inside. The word was apt in more ways than one, as some of the lock’s works would revolve.

‘You might say so,’ I agreed.

‘Don’t forget... my bank.’

‘I won’t.’

‘No one but you would be inventing things when he’s half dead.’

‘I may look half dead,’ I said, ‘but I’m not.’ I might feel half dead, too, I thought, but it would all pass.

The door bell rang sharply.

‘If it’s anyone but the doctor,’ Charlie told Owen, ‘tell them our friend is out.’

Owen nodded briefly and went downstairs, but when he came back he brought not the doctor but a visitor less expected and more welcome.

‘Miss Ward, sir.’

She was through the door before he had the words out, blowing in like a gust of fresh air, her face as smooth and clean and her clothes as well-groomed as mine were dirty and squalid. She looked like life itself on two legs, her vitality lighting the room.

‘Steven!’

She stopped dead a few feet from the sofa, staring down. She glanced at Charlie and at Owen. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘Rough night on the tiles,’ I said. ‘D’you mind if I don’t get up?’

‘How do you do?’ Charlie said politely. ‘I am Charlie Canterfield. Friend of Steven’s.’ He shook hands with her.

‘Alexandra Ward,’ she replied, looking bemused.

‘You’ve met,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘In Walton Street.’

They looked at each other and realised what I meant. Charlie began to tell Allie how I had arrived in this sorry state and Owen went out shopping for locks. I lay on the sofa and drifted. The whole morning seemed disjointed and jerky to me, as if my thought processes were tripping over cracks.

Allie pulled up a squashy leather stool and sat beside me, which brought recovery nearer. She put her hand on mine. Better still.

‘You’re crazy,’ she said.

I sighed. Couldn’t have everything.

‘Have you forgotten I’m going home this evening?’

‘I have not,’ I said. ‘Though it looks now as though I’ll have to withdraw my offer of driving you to the airport. I don’t think I’m fit. No car, for another thing.’

‘That’s actually what I came for.’ She hesitated. ‘I have to keep peace with my sister...’ She stopped, leaving a world of family tensions hovering unspoken. ‘I came to say goodbye.’

‘What sort of goodbye?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Goodbye for now,’ I said, ‘or goodbye for ever?’

‘Which would you like?’

Charlie chuckled. ‘Now there’s a double-edged question if I ever heard one.’

‘You’re not supposed to be listening,’ she said with mock severity.

‘Goodbye for now,’ I said.

‘All right.’ She smiled the flashing smile. ‘Suits me.’

Charlie wandered round the room looking at things but showed no signs of going. Allie disregarded him. She stroked my hair back from my forehead and kissed me gently. I can’t say I minded.

After a while the doctor came. Charlie went down to let him in and apparently briefed him on the way up. He and Allie retired to the kitchen where I heard them making more coffee.

The doctor helped me remove all clothes except underpants. I’d have been much happier left alone. He tapped my joints for reflexes, peered through lights into my eyes and ears and prodded my many sore spots. Then he sat on the stool Allie had brought, and pinched his nose.

‘Concussion,’ he said. ‘Go to bed for a week.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I protested.

‘Best,’ he said succinctly.

‘But the jump jockeys get concussion one minute and ride winners the next.’

‘The jump jockeys are bloody fools.’ He surveyed me morosely. ‘If you’d been a jump jockey I’d say you’d been trampled by a field of horses.’

‘But as I’m not?’

‘Has someone been beating you?’

It wasn’t the sort of question somehow that one expected one’s doctor to ask. Certainly not as matter-of-factly as this.