Дик Фрэнсис - High Stakes

‘And was he?’ she said, fascinated.

‘I couldn’t tell. I found I didn’t know Hermes well enough and anyway if Jody did switch Hermes he probably did it before his last two races last summer, because the horse did no good at all in those and trailed in at the back of the field.’

‘Good God,’ Charlie said. ‘And did you find Hermes at Jody’s place too?’

‘I don’t know. There were three chestnuts there. No markings, same as Hermes. All much alike. I couldn’t tell if any of them was Hermes. But it was in one of the chestnut’s boxes that Jody and the others found me, and they were certainly alarmed as well as angry.’

‘But what would he get out of it?’ Allie asked.

‘He owns some horses himself,’ I said. ‘Trainers often do. They run them in their own names, then if they’re any good, they sell them at a profit, probably to owners who already have horses in the stable.’

‘You mean...’ she said, ‘that he sent a horse he owned himself to Rupert Ramsey and kept Energise. Then when Energise wins another big race he’ll sell him to one of the people he trains for, for a nice fat sum, and keep on training him himself?’

‘That’s about it.’

‘Wow.’

‘I’m not so absolutely sure,’ I said with a sardonic smile, ‘that he hasn’t in the past sold me my own horse back after swopping it with one of his own.’

‘Je- sus ,’ Charlie said.

‘I had two bay fillies I couldn’t tell apart. The first one won for a while, then turned sour. I sold her on Jody’s advice and bought the second, which was one of his own. She started winning straight away.’

‘How are you going to prove it?’ Allie said.

‘I don’t see how you can,’ said Charlie. ‘Especially not after this drinking charge.’

We all three contemplated the situation in silence.

‘Gee, dammit,’ said Allie finally and explosively. ‘I just don’t see why that guy should be allowed to rob you and make people despise you and get away with it.’

‘Give me time,’ I said mildly, ‘and he won’t.’

‘Time?’

‘For thinking,’ I explained. ‘If a frontal assault would land me straight into a lawsuit for slander, which it would, I’ll have to come up with a sneaky scheme which will creep up on him from the rear.’

Allie and Charlie looked at each other.

Charlie said to her, ‘A lot of the things he’s invented as children’s toys get scaled up very usefully.’

‘As if Cockerell had made the first Hovercraft for the bath tub?’

‘Absolutely.’ Charlie nodded at her with approval. ‘And I dare say it was a gentle-seeming man who thought up gunpowder.’

She flashed a smiling look from him to me and then looked suddenly at her watch and got to her feet in a hurry.

‘Oh golly! I’m late. I should have gone an hour ago. My sister will be so mad. Steven...’

Charlie looked at her resignedly and took the plates out to the kitchen. I shifted my lazy self off the sofa and stood up.

‘I wish you weren’t going,’ I said.

‘I really have to.’

‘Do you mind kissing an unshaven drunk?’

It seemed she didn’t. It was the best we’d achieved.

‘The Atlantic has shrunk,’ I said, ‘since Columbus.’

‘Will you cross it?’

‘Swim, if necessary.’

She briefly kissed my bristly cheek, laughed and went quickly. The room seemed darker and emptier. I wanted her back with a most unaccustomed fierceness. Girls had come and gone in my life and each time afterwards I had relapsed thankfully into singleness. Maybe at thirty-five, I thought fleetingly, what I wanted was a wife.

Charlie returned from the kitchen carrying a cup and saucer.

‘Sit down before you fall down,’ he said. ‘You’re swaying about like the Empire State.’

I sat on the sofa.

‘And drink this.’

He had made a cup of tea, not strong, not weak, and with scarcely any milk. I took a couple of sips and thanked him.

‘Will you be all right if I go?’ he said. ‘I’ve an appointment.’

‘Of course, Charlie.’

‘Take care of your damned silly self.’

‘Yeah.’

He buttoned his overcoat, gave me a sympathetic wave and departed. Owen had long since finished changing the locks and had set off with a spare set of keys to fetch the car. I was alone in the flat. It seemed much quieter than usual.

I drank the rest of the tea, leaned back against the cushions, and shut my eyes, sick and uncomfortable from head to foot. Damn Jody Leeds, I thought. Damn and blast him to hell.

No wonder, I thought, that he had been so frantically determined to take Energise back with him from Sandown. He must already have had the substitute in his yard, waiting for a good moment to exchange them. When I’d said I wanted Energise to go elsewhere immediately he had been ready to go to any lengths to prevent it. I was pretty sure now that had Jody been driving the horsebox instead of Andy-Fred I would have ended up in hospital if not in the morgue.

I thought about the passports which were the identity cards of British thoroughbreds. A blank passport form bore three stylised outlines of a horse, one from each side and one from head on. At the time when a foal was named, usually as a yearling or two-year-old, the veterinary surgeon attending the stable where he was being trained filled in his markings on the form and completed a written description alongside. The passport was then sent to the central racing authorities who stamped it, filed it and sent a photocopy back to the trainer.

I had noticed from time to time that my horses had hardly a blaze, star or white sock between them. It had never struck me as significant. Thousands of horses had no markings. I had even preferred them without.

The passports, once issued, were rarely used. As far as I knew, apart from travelling abroad, they were checked only once, which was on the day of the horse’s very first race; and that not out of suspicion, but simply to make sure the horse actually did match the vet’s description.

I didn’t doubt that the horse now standing instead of Energise at Rupert Ramsey’s stable matched Energise’s passport in every way. Details like the shape of the nose, the slant of the stomach, the angle of the hock, wouldn’t be on it.

I sighed and shifted a bit to relieve various aches. Didn’t succeed. Jody had been generous with his boots.

I remembered with satisfaction the kick I’d landed in Ganser Mays’ stomach. But perhaps he too had taken revenge.

It struck me suddenly that Jody wouldn’t have had to rely on Raymond Child to ride crooked races. Not every time, anyway. If he had a substitute horse of poor ability, all he had to do was send him instead of the good one whenever the race had to be lost.

Racing history was packed with rumours of ringers, the good horses running in the names of the bad. Jody, I was sure, had simply reversed things and run bad horses in the names of good.

Every horse I’d owned, when I looked back, had followed much the same pattern. There would be at first a patch of sporadic success, but with regular disasters every time I staked a bundle, and then a long tail-off with no success at all. It was highly likely that the no success was due to my now having the substitute, which was running way out of its class.

It would explain why Ferryboat had run badly all autumn. Not because he resented Raymond Child’s whip, but because he wasn’t Ferryboat. Wrecker, too. And at least one of the three older horses I’d sent up north.

Five at least, that made. Also the filly. Also the first two, now sold as flops. Eight. I reckoned I might still have the real Dial and I might still have the real Bubbleglass, because they were novices who had yet to prove their worth. But they too would have been matched, when they had.