Дик Фрэнсис: High Stakes

‘Energise,’ I said.

He screwed up his mouth and considered whether to answer. I supposed that he could find no reason against it except natural unhelpfulness, because in the end he said grudgingly, ‘Would it be a black horse trained by Leeds?’

‘It would.’

‘Gone, then,’ he said.

‘Gone?’

‘S’right. Lad took him off, couple of minutes ago.’ He jerked his head in the general direction of the path down to the area where the motor horseboxes were parked. ‘Leeds was with him. Ask me, they’ll have driven off by now.’ The idea seemed to cheer him. He smiled.

I left him to his sour satisfaction and took the path at a run. It led down between bushes and opened abruptly straight on to the gravelled acre where dozens of horseboxes stood in haphazard rows.

Jody’s box was fawn with scarlet panels along the sides: and Jody’s box was already manoeuvring out of its slot and turning to go between two of the rows on its way to the gate.

I slid my binoculars to the ground and left them, and fairly sprinted. Ran in front of the first row of boxes and raced round the end to find Jody’s box completing its turn from between the rows about thirty yards away, and accelerating straight towards me.

I stood in its path and waved my arms for the driver to stop.

The driver knew me well enough. His name was Andy-Fred. He drove my horses regularly. I saw his face, looking horrified and strained, as he put his hand on the horn button and punched it urgently.

I ignored it, sure that he would stop. He was advancing between a high wooden fence on one side and the flanks of parked horseboxes on the other, and it wasn’t until it became obvious that he didn’t know what his brakes were for that it occurred to me that maybe Energise was about to leave over my dead body, not Jody’s.

Anger, not fear, kept me rooted to the spot.

Andy-Fred’s nerve broke first, thank God, but only just. He wrenched the wheel round savagely when the massive radiator grill was a bare six feet from my annihilation and the diesel throb was a roar in my ears.

He had left it too late for braking. The sudden swerve took him flatly into the side of the foremost of the parked boxes and with screeching and tearing sounds of metal the front corner of Jody’s box plowed forwards and inwards until the colliding doors of the cabs of both vehicles were locked in one crumpled mess. Glass smashed and tinkled and flew about with razor edges. The engine stalled and died.

The sharp bits on the front of Jody’s box had missed me but the smooth wing caught me solidly as I leapt belatedly to get out of the way. I lay where I’d bounced, half against the wooden fence, and wholly winded.

Andy-Fred jumped down unhurt from the unsmashed side of his cab and advanced with a mixture of fear, fury and relief.

‘What the bloody hell d’you think you’re playing at?’ he yelled.

‘Why...’ I said weakly, ‘didn’t... you... stop?’

I doubt if he heard me. In any case, he didn’t answer. He turned instead to the exploding figure of Jody, who arrived at a run along the front of the boxes, the same way that I had come.

He practically danced when he saw the crushed cabs and rage poured from his mouth like fire.

‘You stupid bugger? he shouted at Andy-Fred. ‘You stupid sodding effing...’

The burly box driver shouted straight back.

‘He stood right in my way.’

‘I told you not to stop.’

‘I’d have killed him.’

‘No you wouldn’t.’

‘I’m telling you. He stood there. Just stood there...’

‘He’d have jumped if you’d kept on going. You stupid bugger. Just look what you’ve done. You stupid...’

Their voices rose, loud and acrimonious, into the wind. Further away the commentator’s voice boomed over the tannoy system, broadcasting the progress of the steeplechase. On the other side of the high wooden fence the traffic pounded up and down the London to Guildford road. I gingerly picked myself off the cold gravel and leaned against the weathered planks.

Nothing broken. Breath coming back. Total damage, all the buttons missing from my overcoat. There was a row of small right-angled tears down the front where the buttons had been. I looked at them vaguely and knew I’d been lucky.

Andy-Fred was telling Jody at the top of a raucous voice that he wasn’t killing anyone for Jody’s sake, he was bloody well not.

‘You’re fired,’ Jody yelled.

‘Right.’

He took a step back, looked intensely at the mangled horseboxes, looked at me, and looked at Jody. He thrust his face close to Jody’s and yelled at him again.

‘Right.’

Then he stalked away in the direction of the stables and didn’t bother to look back.

Jody’s attention and fury veered sharply towards me. He took three or four purposeful steps and yelled, ‘I’ll sue you for this.’

I said, ‘Why don’t you find out if the horse is all right?’

He couldn’t hear me for all the day’s other noises.

‘What?’

‘Energise,’ I said loudly. ‘Is he all right?’

He gave me a sick hot look of loathing and scudded away round the side of the box. More slowly, I followed. Jody yanked open the groom’s single door and hauled himself up inside and I went after him.

Energise was standing in his stall quivering from head to foot and staring wildly about with a lot of white round his eyes. Jody had packed him off still sweating from his race and in no state anyway to travel and the crash had clearly terrified him: but he was none the less on his feet and Jody’s anxious search could find no obvious injury.

‘No thanks to you,’ Jody said bitterly.

‘Nor to you.’

We faced each other in the confined space, a quiet oasis out of the wind.

‘You’ve been stealing from me,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to believe it. But from now on... I’m not giving you the chance.’

‘You won’t be able to prove a thing.’

‘Maybe not. Maybe I won’t even try. Maybe I’ll write off what I’ve lost as the cost of my rotten judgement in liking and trusting you.’

He said indignantly, ‘I’ve done bloody well for you.’

‘And out of me.’

‘What do you expect? Trainers aren’t in it for love, you know.’

‘Trainers don’t all do what you’ve done.’

A sudden speculative look came distinctly into his eyes. ‘What have I done, then?’ he demanded.

‘You tell me,’ I said. ‘You haven’t even pretended to deny you’ve been cheating me.’

‘Look, Steven, you’re so bloody unworldly. All right, so maybe I have added a bit on here and there. If you’re talking about the time I charged you travelling expenses for Hermes to Haydock the day they abandoned for fog before the first... well, I know I didn’t actually send the horse... he went lame that morning and couldn’t go. But trainer’s perks. Fair’s fair. And you could afford it. You’d never miss thirty measly quid.’

‘What else?’ I said.

He seemed reassured. Confidence and a faint note of defensive wheedling seeped into his manner and voice.

‘Well...’ he said. ‘If you ever disagreed with the totals of your bills, why didn’t you query it with me? I’d have straightened things out at once. There was no need to bottle it all up and blow your top without warning.’

Ouch, I thought. I hadn’t even checked that all the separate items on the monthly bills did add up to the totals I’d paid. Even when I was sure he was robbing me, I hadn’t suspected it would be in any way so ridiculously simple.

‘What else?’ I said.

He looked away for a second, then decided that I couldn’t after all know a great deal.

‘Oh all right,’ he said, as if making a magnanimous concession. ‘It’s Raymond, isn’t it?’