Дик Фрэнсис - High Stakes

One of the young policemen asked if he’d seen who had hit him.

‘Big man with sunglasses. He was creeping along behind me, holding a ruddy great chunk of wood. I heard something... I turned and shone my torch, and there he was. He swung at my head. Gave me a right crack, he did. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground.’

Reassured by his revival I went outside again to see what was happening.

The magistrate and the colonel seemed to have gone home, and Rupert was down in the yard talking to some of his own stable staff who had been woken by the noise.

Macrahinish was hopping about on one leg, accusing me of having broken the other and swearing he’d have me prosecuted for using undue force to protect my property. The elderly doctor phlegmatically examined the limb in question and said that in his opinion it was a sprain.

The police had rashly untied the Macrahinish wrists and were obviously relying on the leg injury to prevent escape. At the milder word sprain they produced handcuffs and invited Macrahinish to stick his arms out. He refused and resisted and because they, as I had done, underestimated both his strength and his violence, it took a hectic few minutes for them to make him secure.

‘Resisting arrest,’ they panted, writing it in the notebooks. ‘Attacking police officers in the course of their duty.’

Macrahinish’s sunglasses lay on the gravel in the main yard, where he had lost them in the first tackle. I walked down to where they shone in the light and picked them up. Then I took them slowly back to him and put them in his handcuffed hands.

He stared at me through the raw-looking eyelids. He said nothing. He put the sunglasses on, and his fingers were trembling.

‘Ectropion,’ said the doctor, as I walked away.

‘What?’ I said.

‘The condition of his eyes. Ectropion. Poor fellow.’

The police made no mistakes with Jody. He sat beside Macrahinish in the back of the police car with handcuffs on his wrists and the Arctic in his face. When the police went to close the doors ready to leave, he leant forwards and spoke to me through rigid lips.

‘You shit ,’ he said.

Rupert invited the rest of my security firm indoors for warmth and coffee and in his office I introduced them to him.

‘My friend in grey flannel,’ I said, ‘is Charlie Canter-field. My big man in blue is Bert Huggerneck. My injured friend with the dried blood on his face is Owen Idris.’

Rupert shook hands with each and they grinned at him. He sensed immediately that there was more in their smiles than he would have expected, and he turned his enquiring gaze on me.

‘Which firm do they come from?’ he asked.

‘Charlie’s a merchant banker, Bert’s a bookies’ clerk, and Owen helps in my workshop.’

Charlie chuckled and said in his fruitiest Eton, ‘We also run a nice line in a census, if you should ever need one.’

Rupert shook his head helplessly and fetched brandy and glasses from a cupboard.

‘If I ask questions,’ he said, pouring lavishly, ‘will you answer them?’

‘If we can,’ I said.

‘That dead horse in the stable. Is it Energise?’

‘No. Like I said, it’s a horse I bought in the States called Black Fire.’

‘But the bald patch... Jody was so certain.’

‘I did that bald patch with a razor blade. The horses were extraordinarily alike, apart from that. Especially at night, because of being black. But there’s one certain way of identifying Black Fire. He has his American racing number tattoed inside his lip.’

‘Why did you bring him here?’

‘I didn’t want to risk the real Energise. Before I saw Black Fire in America I couldn’t see how to entice Jody safely. Afterwards, it was easier.’

‘But I didn’t get the impression earlier this evening,’ Rupert said pensively, ‘that you expected them to kill the horse.’

‘No... I didn’t know about Macrahinish. I mean, I didn’t know he was a vet, or that he could over-rule Jody. I expected Jody just to try to steal the horse and I wanted to catch him in the act. Catch him physically committing a positive criminal act which he couldn’t possibly explain away. I wanted to force the racing authorities, more than the police, to see that Jody was not the innocent little underdog they believed.’

Rupert thought it over. ‘Why didn’t you think he would kill him?’

‘Well... it did cross my mind, but on balance I thought it unlikely, because Energise is such a good horse. I thought Jody would want to hide him away somewhere so that he could make a profit on him later, even if he sold him as a point-to-pointer. Energise represents money, and Jody has never missed a trick in that direction.’

‘But Macrahinish wanted him dead,’ Rupert said.

I sighed. ‘I suppose he thought it safer.’

Rupert smiled. ‘You had put them in a terrible fix. They couldn’t risk you being satisfied with getting your horse back. They couldn’t be sure you couldn’t somehow prove they had stolen it originally. But if you no longer had it, you would have found it almost impossible to make allegations stick.’

‘That’s right,’ Charlie agreed. ‘That’s exactly what Steven thought.’

‘Also,’ I said, ‘Jody wouldn’t have been able to bear the thought of me getting the better of him. Apart from safety and profit, he would have taken Energise back simply for revenge.’

‘You know what?’ Charlie said, ‘it’s my guess that he probably put his entire bank balance on Padellic at Stratford, thinking it was Energise, and when Padellic turned up sixth he lost the lot. And that in itself is a tidy little motive for revenge.’

‘Here,’ Bert said appreciatively. ‘I wonder how much Ganser bleeding Mays is down the drain for! Makes you bleeding laugh, don’t it? There they all were, thinking they were backing a ringer, and we’d gone and put the real Padellic back where he belonged.’

‘Trained by Rupert,’ I murmured, ‘to do his best.’

Rupert looked at us one by one and shook his head. ‘You’re a lot of rogues.’

We drank our brandy and didn’t dispute it.

‘Where did the American horse come from?’ Rupert asked.

‘Miami.’

‘No... This morning.’

‘A quiet little stable in the country,’ I said. ‘We had him brought to the census point...’

‘And you should have bleeding seen him,’ Bert interrupted gleefully. ‘Our capit alist here, I mean. Whizzing those three horses in and out of horseboxes faster than the three card trick.’

‘I must say,’ Rupert said thoughtfully, ‘that I’ve wondered just how he managed it.’

‘He took bleeding Energise out of Jody’s box and put it in the empty stall of the trailer which brought Black Fire, Then he put Padellic where Energise had been, in Jody’s box. Then he put bleeding Black Fire where Padellic had been, in your box, that is. All three of them buzzing in a circle like a bleeding merry-go-round.’

Charlie said, smiling, ‘All change at the census. Padellic started from here and went to Stratford. Black Fire started from the country and came here. And Energise started from Jody’s...’ He stopped.

‘And went to where?’ Rupert asked.

I shook my head. ‘He’s safe, I promise you.’ Safe with Allie at Hantsford Manor, with Miss Johnston and Mrs Fairchild-Smith. ‘We’ll leave him where he is for a week or two.’

‘Yeah,’ Bert said, explaining. ‘Because, see, we’ve had Jody Leeds and that red-eyed hunk of muscle of his exploding all over us with temper-temper, but what about that other one? What about that other one we’ve kicked right where it hurts, eh? We don’t want to risk Energise getting the chop after all from Mr Squeezer bleeding Ganser down the bleeding drain Mays.’