Дик Фрэнсис - High Stakes

I could almost feel the shrug coming down the wire along with the resigned sigh. Eccentric owners should be humoured. ‘If you want to, I suppose... But why?’

‘If I called at your house tomorrow evening,’ I suggested diffidently, ‘I could explain.’

‘Well...’ He thought for a bit. ‘Look, I’m having a few friends to dinner. Would you care to join us?’

‘Yes, I would,’ I said positively. ‘I’d like that very much.’

I yawned in the car and stretched. Despite anorak, gloves and thick socks the cold encroached on fingers and toes, and through the drizzle-wet windows the bare rolling Downs looked thoroughly inhospitable. Straight ahead through the windscreen wipers I could see a good two miles of the A34. It came over the brow of a distant hill opposite, swept down into a large valley and rose again higher still to cross the Downs at the point where I sat.

A couple of miles to my rear lay the crossroads with the traffic lights, and a couple of miles beyond that, the fruit stall.

Bert Huggerneck, wildly excited, had telephoned at six in the evening.

‘Here, know what? There’s a squeezer on tomorrow!’

‘On Padellic?’ I said hopefully.

‘What else? On bleeding little old Padellic.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Listened at the bleeding door,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The two smart alecs was talking. Stupid bleeding gits. All over the whole bleeding country Ganser Mays is going to flood the little bookies’ shops with last minute bets on Padellic. The smart alecs are all getting their girl friends, what the little guys don’t know by sight, to go round putting on the dough. Hundreds of them, by the sound of it.’

‘You’re a wonder, Bert.’

‘Yeah,’ he said modestly. ‘Missed my bleeding vocation.’

Owen and I had spent most of the afternoon loading the big hired van from Chiswick and checking that we’d left nothing out. He worked like a demon, all energy and escaping smiles.

‘Life will seem flat after this,’ he said.

I had telephoned Charlie from Hantsford Manor and caught him before he went to lunch.

‘We’re off,’ I said. ‘Stratford, tomorrow.’

‘Tally bloody ho!’

He rang me from his office again at five. ‘Have you seen the evening papers?’

‘Not yet,’ I said.

‘Jody has two definite runners at Chepstow as well.’

‘Which ones?’

‘Cricklewood in the big race and Asphodel in the handicap chase.’

Cricklewood and Asphodel both belonged to the same man, who since I’d left had become Jody’s number one owner. Cricklewood was now also ostensibly the best horse in the yard.

‘That means,’ I said, ‘that Jody himself will almost certainly go to Chepstow.’

‘I should think so,’ Charlie agreed. ‘He wouldn’t want to draw attention to Padellic by going to Stratford, would you think?’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

‘Just what we wanted,’ Charlie said with satisfaction. ‘Jody going to Chepstow.’

‘We thought he might.’

Charlie chuckled. ‘ You thought he might.’ He cleared his throat. ‘See you tomorrow, in the trenches. And Steven...’

‘Yes?’

‘Good luck with turning the handle.’

Turning the handle...

I looked at my watch. Still only eight-thirty and too early for any action. I switched on the car’s engine and let the heater warm me up.

All the little toys, revolving on their spindles, going through their programmed acts. Allie, Bert, Charlie and Owen. Felicity and Jody Leeds, Ganser Mays. Padellic and Energise and Black Fire. Rupert Ramsey and Pete Duveen.

And one little toy I knew nothing about.

I stirred, thinking of him uneasily.

A big man who wore sunglasses. Who had muscles, and knew how to fight.

What else?

Who had bought Padellic at Doncaster Sales?

I didn’t know if he had bought the horse after Jody had found it, or if he knew Energise well enough to look for a double himself; and there was no way of finding out.

I’d left no slot for him in today’s plan. If he turned up like a joker, he might entirely disrupt the game.

I picked up my raceglasses which were lying on the seat beside me and started watching the traffic crossing the top of the opposite distant hill. From two miles away, even with strong magnification, it was difficult to identify particular vehicles, and in the valley and climbing the hill straight towards me they were head-on and foreshortened.

What looked like a car and trailer came over the horizon. I glanced at my watch. If it was Allie, she was dead on time.

I focused on the little group. Watched it down into the valley. Definitely a Land-Rover and animal trailer. I got out of the car and watched it crawling up the hill, until finally I could make out the number plate. Definitely Allie.

Stepping a pace on to the road, I flagged her down. She pulled into the lay-by, opened her window, and looked worried.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘Not a thing.’ I kissed her. ‘I got here too early, so I thought I’d say good morning.’

‘You louse. When I saw you standing there waving I thought the whole darned works were all fouled up.’

‘You found the way, then.’

‘No problem.’

‘Sleep well?’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘I guess so. But oh boy, that’s some crazy house. Nothing works. If you want to flush the John you have to get Miss Johnston. No one else has the touch. I guess they’re really sweet, though, the poor old ducks.’

‘Shades of days gone by,’ I said.

‘Yeah, that’s exactly right. They showed me their scrap books. They were big in the horse world thirty-forty years ago. Won things at shows all over. Now they’re struggling on a fixed income and I guess they’ll soon be starving.’

‘Did they say so?’

‘Of course not. You can see it, though.’

‘Is Black Fire all right?’

‘Oh sure. They helped me load him up, which was lucky because I sure would have been hopeless on my own.’

‘Was he any trouble?’

‘Quiet as a little lamb.’

I walked round to the back of the trailer and looked in over the three-quarter door. Black Fire occupied the left-hand stall. A full hay net lay in the right. The ladies might starve, but their horses wouldn’t.

I went back to Allie. ‘Well...’ I said. ‘Good luck.’

‘To you too.’

She gave me the brilliant smile, shut the window and with care pulled out of the lay-by into the stream of northbound traffic.

Time and timing, the two essentials.

I sat in the car metaphorically chewing my nails and literally looking at my watch every half minute.

Padellic’s race was the last of the day, the sixth race, the slot often allotted to that least crowd-pulling of events, the novice hurdle. Because of the short January afternoon, the last race was scheduled for three-thirty.

Jody’s horses, like those of most other trainers, customarily arrived at a racecourse about two hours before they were due to run. Not often later, but quite often sooner.

The journey by horsebox from Jody’s stable to Stratford on Avon racecourse took two hours. The very latest, therefore, that Jody’s horsebox would set out would be eleven-thirty.

I thought it probable it would start much sooner than that. The latest time allowed little margin for delays on the journey or snags on arrival and I knew that if I were Jody and Ganser Mays and had so much at stake, I would add a good hour for contingencies.

Ten-thirty... But suppose it was earlier...

I swallowed. I had had to guess.

If for any reason Jody had sent the horse very early and it had already gone, all our plans were for nothing.

If he had sent it the day before... If he had sent it with another trainer’s horses, sharing the cost... If for some unimaginable reason the driver took a different route...