Дик Фрэнсис - High Stakes

‘Oh God,’ she said in the end, half laughing, half gasping for air. ‘I didn’t know...’

‘Didn’t know what?’ I said, sliding lazily down beside her.

‘At college... he was clumsy. And too quick.’

She stretched out her hand, fumbled in the bikini and picked up the twenty dollar note.

She waved it in the air, holding it between finger and thumb. Then she laughed and opened her hand, and the wind blew her fare home away along the beach.

London was cold enough to encourage emigration. I arrived back early Tuesday morning with sand in my shoes and sympathy for Eskimos, and Owen collected me with a face pinched and blue.

‘We’ve had snow and sleet and the railways are on strike’ he said, putting my suitcase in the hired Cortina. ‘Also the mild steel you ordered hasn’t come and there’s a cobra loose somewhere in Regent’s Park.’

‘Thanks very much.’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Anything else?’

‘A Mr. Kennet rang from Newmarket to say Hermes has broken down. And... sir...’

‘What?” I prompted, trying to dredge up resignation.

‘Did you order a load of manure, sir?’

‘Of course not.’

The total garden in front of my house consisted of three tubs of fuchsia, an old walnut tree and several square yards of paving slabs. At the rear, nothing but workshop.

‘Some has been delivered, sir.’

‘How much?’

‘I can’t see the dustmen moving it.’

He drove steadily from Heathrow to home, and I dozed from the jet-lag feeling that it was midnight. When we stopped it was not in the driveway but out on the road, because the driveway was completely blocked by a dunghill five feet high.

It was even impossible to walk round it without it sticking to one’s shoes. I crabbed sideways with my suitcase to the door, and Owen drove off to find somewhere else to park.

Inside, on the mat, I found the delivery note. A postcard handwritten in ball point capitals, short and unsweet.

‘Shit to the shit.’

Charming little gesture. Hardly original, but disturbing all the same, because it spoke so eloquently of the hatred prompting it.

Felicity, I wondered?

There was something remarkably familiar about the consistency of the load. A closer look revealed half rotted horse droppings mixed with a little straw and a lot of sawdust. Straight from a stable muck heap, not from a garden supplier: and if it looked exactly like Jody’s own familiar muck heap, that wasn’t in itself conclusive. I dared say one vintage was much like another.

Owen came trudging back and stared at the smelly obstruction in disgust.

‘If I hadn’t been using the car to go home, like you said, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the garage this morning to fetch you.’

‘When was it dumped?’

‘I was here yesterday morning, sir. Keeping an eye on things. Then this morning I called round to switch on the central heating, and there it was.’

I showed him the card. He looked, read, wrinkled his nose in distaste, but didn’t touch.

‘There’ll be fingerprints on that, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Do you think it’s worth telling the police?’ I asked dubiously.

‘Might as well, sir. You never know, this nutter might do something else. I mean, whoever went to all this trouble is pretty sick.’

‘You’re very sensible, Owen.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

We went indoors and I summoned the constabulary, who came in the afternoon, saw the funny side of it, and took away the card in polythene.

‘What are we going to do with the bloody stuff?’ said Owen morosely. ‘No one will want it on their flower beds, it’s bung full of undigested hay seeds and that means weeds.’

‘We’ll shift it tomorrow.’

‘There must be a ton of it.’ He frowned gloomily.

‘I didn’t mean spadeful by spadeful,’ I said. ‘Not you and I. We’ll hire a grab.’

Hiring things took the rest of the day. Extraordinary what one could hire if one tried. The grab proved to be one of the easiest on a long list.

At about the time merchant bankers could reasonably be expected to be reaching for their hats, I telephoned to Charlie.

‘Are you going straight home?’ I asked.

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Care for a drink?’

‘On my way,’ he said.

When he arrived, Owen took his Rover to park it and Charlie stood staring at the muck heap, which looked no more beautiful under the street lights and was moreover beginning to ooze round the edges.

‘Someone doesn’t love me,’ I said with a grin. ‘Come on in and wipe your feet rather thoroughly on the mat.’

‘What a stink.’

‘Lavatory humour,’ I agreed.

He left his shoes alongside mine on the tray of newspaper Owen had prudently positioned near the front door and followed me upstairs in his socks.

‘Who?’ he said, shaping up to a large scotch.

‘A shit is what Jody’s wife Felicity called me after Sandown.’

‘Do you think she did it?’

‘Heaven knows. She’s a capable girl.’

‘Didn’t anyone see the... er... delivery?’

‘Owen asked the neighbours. No one saw a thing. No one ever does, in London. All he discovered was that the muck wasn’t there at seven yesterday evening when the man from two doors along let his labrador make use of my fuchsia tubs.’

He drank his whisky and asked what I’d done in Miami. I couldn’t stop the smile coming. ‘Besides that,’ he said.

‘I bought a horse.’

‘You’re a glutton for punishment.’

‘An understudy,’ I said, ‘for Energise.’

‘Tell all to your Uncle Charlie.’

I told, if not all, most.

‘The trouble is though, that although we must be ready for Saturday at Stratford, he might choose Nottingham on Monday or Lingfield on Wednesday,’ I said.

‘Or none of them.’

‘And it might freeze.’

‘How soon would we know?’ Charlie asked.

‘He’ll have to declare the horse to run four days before the race, but he then has three days to change his mind and take him out again. We wouldn’t know for sure until the runners are published in the evening papers the day before. And even then we need the nod from Bert Huggerneck.’

He chuckled. ‘Bert doesn’t like the indoor life. He’s itching to get back on the racecourse.’

‘I hope he’ll stick to the shop.’

‘My dear fellow!’ Charlie lit a cigar and waved the match. ‘Bert’s a great scrapper by nature and if you could cut him in on the real action he’d be a lot happier. He’s taken a strong dislike to Ganser Mays, and he says that for a capit alist you didn’t seem half bad. He knows there’s something afoot and he said if there’s a chance of anyone punching Ganser Mays on the long bleeding nose he would like it to be him.’

I smiled at the verbatim reporting. ‘All right. If he really feels like that, I do indeed have a job for him.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Directing the traffic.’

He puffed at the cigar. ‘Do you know what your plan reminds me of?’ he said. ‘Your own Rola toys. There you are, turning the single handle, and all the little pieces will rotate on their spindles and go through their allotted acts’.

‘You’re no toy,’ I said.

‘Of course I am. But at least I know it. The real trick will be programming the ones who don’t.’

‘Do you think it will all work?’

He regarded me seriously. ‘Given ordinary luck, I don’t see why not.’

‘And you don’t have moral misgivings?’

His sudden huge smile warmed like a fire. ‘Didn’t you know that merchant bankers are pirates under the skin?’

Charlie took Wednesday off and we spent the whole day prospecting the terrain. We drove from London to New-bury, from Newbury to Stratford on Avon, from Stratford to Nottingham, and from Nottingham back to Newbury. By that time the bars were open, and we repaired to the Chequers for revivers.