Дик Фрэнсис - High Stakes

My sudden haste looked just as crazy as the former dawdling, but again he made no comment and merely did what I wanted. When he had found a gap in the traffic and pulled out on to the road there were four or five vehicles between Jody’s box and ourselves, and this seemed to me a reasonable number.

I spent the next four miles trying to look as if nothing in particular was happening while listening to my heart beat like a discotheque. Owen’s van went over the traffic lights at the big crossroads a half second before they changed to amber and Jody’s box came to a halt as they showed red. The back of Owen’s van disappeared round a bend in the road.

Between Jody’s box and Pete’s there were three private cars and one small van belonging to an electrical firm. When the lights turned green one of the cars peeled off to the left and I began to worry that we were getting too close.

‘Slow down just a fraction,’ I suggested.

‘If you like... but there’s not a squeak from the horse.’ He glanced over his shoulder to where the black head looked patiently forward through a small observation hatch, as nervous as a suet pudding.

A couple of private cars passed us. We motored sedately onwards and came to the bottom of the next hill. Pete changed his gears smoothly and we lumbered noisily up. Near the top, his eye took in a notice board on a tripod at the side of the road.

‘Damn,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Did you see that?’ he said. ‘Census point ahead.’

‘Never mind, we’re not in a hurry.’

‘I suppose not.’

We breasted the hill. The fruit stall lay ahead on our left, with the sweep of car park beside it. Down the centre of the road stood a row of the red and white cones used for marking road obstructions and in the northbound lane, directing the traffic, stood a large man in navy blue police uniform with a black and white checked band round his cap.

As we approached he waved the private cars past and then directed Pete into the fruitstall car park, walking in beside the horsebox and talking to him through the window.

‘We’ll keep you only a few minutes, sir. Now, will you pull right round in a circle and park facing me just here, sir?’

‘All right,’ Pete said resignedly and followed the instructions. When he pulled the brake on we were facing the road. On our left, about ten feet away, stood Jody’s box, but facing in the opposite direction. On the far side of Jody’s box was Owen’s van. And beyond Owen’s van, across about twenty yards of cindery park, lay the caravan, its long flat windowless side towards us.

The Land-Rover and trailer which Allie had brought stood near the front of Jody’s box. There was also the car hitched to the caravan and the car Bert had hired, and all in all the whole area looked populated, official, and busy.

A second large notice on a tripod faced the car park from just outside the caravan.

Department of the Environment

Census point

and near a door at one end of the caravan a further notice on a stand said ‘ Way In ’.

Jody’s horsebox driver and Jody’s lad were following its directions, climbing the two steps up to the caravan and disappearing within.

‘Over there, please sir,’ A finger pointed authoritatively. ‘And take your driving licence and log book, please.’

Pete shrugged, picked up his papers, and went. I jumped out and watched him go.

The second he was inside Bert slapped me on the back in a most unpolicemanlike way and said ‘Easy as Blackpool tarts.’

We zipped into action. Four minutes maximum, and a dozen things to do.

I unclipped the ramp of Jody’s horsebox and let it down quietly. The one thing which would bring any horsebox driver running, census or no census, was the sound of someone tampering with his cargo; and noise, all along, had been one of the biggest problems.

Opened Pete Duveen’s ramp. Also the one on Allie’s trailer.

While I did that, Bert brought several huge rolls of three-inch thick latex from Owen’s van and unrolled them down all the ramps, and across the bare patches of car park in between the boxes. I fetched the head collar bought for the purpose from my bag and stepped into Jody’s box. The black horse looked at me incuriously, standing there quietly in his travelling rug and four leg-guards. I checked his ear for the tiny nick and his shoulder for the bald pennyworth, and wasted a moment in patting him.

I knew all too well that success depended on my being able to persuade this strange four-footed creature to go with me gently and without fuss, and wished passionately for more expertise. All I had were nimble hands and sympathy, and they would have to be enough.

I unbuckled his rug at high speed and thanked the gods that the leg-guards Jody habitually used for travelling his horses were not laboriously wound-on bandages but lengths of plastic-backed foam rubber fastened by strips of velcro.

I had all four off before Bert had finished the soundproofing. Put the new head collar over his neck; unbuckled and removed his own and left it swinging, still tied to the stall. Fitted and fastened the new one, and gave the rope a tentative tug. Energise took one step, then another, then with more assurance followed me sweetly down the ramp. It felt miraculous, but nothing like fast enough.

Hurry. Get the other horses, and hurry.

They didn’t seem to mind walking on the soft spongy surface, but they wouldn’t go fast. I tried to take them calmly, to keep my urgency to myself, to stop them taking fright and skittering away and crashing those metal-capped feet on to the car park.

Hurry. Hurry.

I had to get Energise’s substitute into his place, wearing the right rug, the right bandages, and the right head collar, before the box driver and the lad came out of the caravan.

Also his hooves... Racing plates were sometimes put on by the blacksmith at home, who then rubbed on oil to obliterate the rasp marks of the file and give the feet a well-groomed appearance. I had brought hoof oil in my bag in case Energise had already had his shoes changed and he had.

‘Hurry for gawd’s sake,’ said Bert, seeing me fetch the oil. He was running back to the van with relays of re-rolled latex and grinning like a Pools winner.

I painted the hooves a glossy dark. Buckled on the swinging head collar without disturbing the tethering knot, as the lad would notice if it were tied differently. Buckled the rug round the chest and under the belly. Fastened the velcro strips on all four leg-guards. Shut the folding gates to his stall exactly as they had been before, and briefly looked back before closing the ramp. The black head was turned incuriously towards me, the liquid eye patient and unmoved. I smiled at him involuntarily, jumped out of the box, and with Bert’s help eased shut the clips on the ramp.

Owen came out of the caravan, ran across, and fastened the ramp on the trailer. I jumped in with the horse in Pete’s box. Bert lifted the ramp and did another silent job on the clips.

Through the windscreen of Pete’s box the car park looked quiet and tidy.

Owen returned to the driving seat of his van and Bert walked back towards the road.

At the same instant Jody’s driver and lad hurried out of the caravan and tramped across to their horsebox. I ducked out of sight, but I could hear one of them say, as he re-embarked, ‘Right lot of time-wasting cobblers, that was.’

Then the engine throbbed to life, the box moved off, and Bert considerately held up a car or two so that it should have a clear passage back to its interrupted journey. If I hadn’t had so much still to do I would have laughed.

I fastened the rug. Tied the head collar rope. Clipped on the leg guards. I’d never worked so fast in my life.