Дик Фрэнсис - High Stakes

A large figure in navy blue hurtled straight at him from the opposite direction and brought him down with a diving hug round the knees. The sunglasses flew off in a shiny arc and the two large figures lay in a writhing entwined mass, the blue uniform uppermost and holding his own. I went to his help and sat on Muscles’ ankles, crushing his feet sideways with no compunction at all. He screeched with pain and stopped struggling, but I fear I didn’t immediately stand up.

Jody wrenched himself free from Rupert and ran past me. The colonel, who with his lady had been watching the proceedings with astonishment, decided it was time for some soldierly action and elegantly stuck out his foot.

Jody tripped over and fell sprawling. The colonel put more energy into it, leant down and took hold of the collar of Jody’s coat. Rupert, rallying, came to his aid, and between them they too more or less sat on Jody, pinning him to the ground.

‘What now?’ Rupert panted.

‘Wait for the police,’ I said succinctly.

Muscles and Jody both heaved about a good deal at this plan but didn’t succeed in freeing themselves. Muscles complained that I’d broken his ankle. Jody, under the colonel’s professional ministrations, seemed to have difficulty saying anything at all. The colonel was in fact so single-handedly efficient that Rupert stood up and dusted himself down and looked at me speculatively.

I jerked my head in the direction of box fourteen, where the door still stood half open, showing only darkness within. He nodded slowly and went that way. Switched on the light. Stepped inside. He came back with a face of stone and three bitter words.

‘Energise is dead.’

Rupert fetched some rope with which he ignominiously tied Jody’s hands behind his back before he and the colonel let him get up, and the colonel held the free end of rope so that Jody was to all intents on a lead. Once up, Jody aimed a kick at the colonel and Rupert told him to stop unless he wanted his ankles tied as well.

Rupert and my man in blue uniform did a repeat job on Muscles, whose ankles were not in kicking shape and whose language raised eyebrows even on the lady magistrate, who had heard more than most.

The reason for Muscles’ ubiquitous sunglasses was at once apparent, now that one could see his face. He stood glowering like a bull, seething with impotent rage, hopping on one foot and pulling against the tethering rope which led back from his wrists to my man in blue. His eyelids, especially the lower, were grossly distorted, and even in the outside lighting looked bright pink with inflammation. One could pity his plight, which was clearly horrid.

‘I know you,’ Rupert said suddenly, looking at him closely. ‘What’s the matter with your eyes?’

‘Mind your own effing business.’

‘Macrahinish. That’s what your name is. Macrahinish.’

Muscles didn’t comment. Rupert turned to me. ‘Don’t you know him? Perhaps he was before your time. He’s a vet. A struck-off vet. Struck off the vets’ register and warned off the racecourse. And absolutely not allowed to set foot in a racing stable.’

Muscles-Macrahinish delivered himself of an unflattering opinion of racing in general and Rupert in particular.

Rupert said, ‘He was convicted of doping and fraud and served a term in jail. He ran a big doping ring and supplied all the drugs. He looks older and there’s something wrong with his eyes, but that’s who this is, all right. Macrahinish.’

I turned away from the group and walked over to the brightly lit loosebox. Swung the door wide. Looked inside.

My beautiful black horse lay flat on his side, legs straight, head flaccid on the straw. The liquid eye was dull and opaque, mocking the sheen which still lay on his coat, and he still had pieces of unchewed hay half in and half out of his mouth. There was no blood, and no visible wound. I went in and squatted beside him, and patted him sadly with anger and regret.

Jody and Macrahinish had been unwillingly propelled in my wake. I looked up to find them inside the box, with Rupert, the colonel, his wife, and the man in blue effectively blocking the doorway behind them.

‘How did you kill him?’ I asked, the bitterness apparent in my voice.

Macrahinish’s reply did not contain the relevant information.

I straightened up and in doing so caught sight of a flat brown attaché case half hidden in the straw by the horse’s tail. I bent down again and picked it up. The sight of it brought a sound and a squirm from Macrahinish, and he began to swear in earnest when I balanced it on the manger and unfastened the clips.

The case contained regular veterinarian equipment, neatly stowed in compartments. I touched only one thing, lifting it carefully out.

A plastic bag containing a clear liquid. A bag plainly proclaiming the contents to be sterile saline solution.

I held it out towards Jody and said, ‘You dripped alcohol straight into my veins.’

‘You were unconscious,’ he said disbelievingly.

‘Shut up, you stupid fool,’ Macrahinish screamed at him.

I smiled. ‘Not all the time. I remember nearly everything about that night.’

‘He said he didn’t,’ Jody said defensively to Macrahinish and was rewarded by a look from the swollen eyes which would have made a non-starter of Medusa.

‘I went to see if you still had Energise,’ I said. ‘And I found you had.’

‘You don’t know one horse from another,’ he sneered. ‘You’re just a mug. A blind greedy mug.’

‘So are you,’ I said. ‘The horse you’ve killed is not Energise.’

‘It is!’

‘Shut up,’ screamed Macrahinish in fury. ‘Keep your stupid sodding mouth shut.’

‘No,’ I said to Jody. ‘The horse you’ve killed is an American horse called Black Fire.’

Jody looked wildly down at the quiet body.

‘It damn well is Energise,’ he insisted. ‘I’d know him anywhere.’

‘Jesus,’ Macrahinish shouted. ‘I’ll cut your tongue out.’

Rupert said doubtfully to me, ‘Are you sure it’s not Energise?’

‘Positive.’

‘He’s just saying it to spite me,’ said Jody furiously. ‘I know it’s Energise. See that tiny bald patch on his shoulder? That’s Energise.’

Macrahinish, beyond speech, tried to attack him, tied hands and dicky ankle notwithstanding. Jody gave him a vague look, concentrating only on the horse.

‘You are saying,’ Rupert suggested, ‘that you came to kill Energise and that you’ve done it.’

‘Yes,’ said Jody triumphantly.

The word hung in the air, vibrating. No one said anything. Jody looked round at each watching face, at first with defiant angry pride, then with the first creeping of doubt, and finally with the realisation of what Macrahinish had been trying to tell him, that he should never have been drawn into admitting anything. The fire visibly died into glum and chilly embers.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ he said sullenly. ‘Macrahinish did. I didn’t want to kill him at all, but Macrahinish insisted.’

A police car arrived with two young and persistent constables who seemed to find nothing particularly odd in being called to the murder of a horse.

They wrote in their notebooks that five witnesses, including a magistrate, had heard Jody Leeds admit that he and a disbarred veterinary surgeon had broken into a racing stable after midnight with the intention of putting to death one of the horses. They noted that a horse was dead. Cause of death, unknown until an autopsy could be arranged.

Hard on their heels came Rupert’s doctor, an elderly man with a paternal manner. Yawning but uncomplaining, he accompanied me to find my security guard, who to my great relief was sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, awake and groaning healthily. We took him into Rupert’s office, where the doctor stuck a plaster on the dried wound on his forehead, gave him some tablets and told him to lay off work for a couple of days. He smiled weakly and said it depended if his boss would let him.