Дик Фрэнсис - Come to Grief

I looked at the space where a left hand had once been, and I looked at the strong whole right hand that held a glass, and I acknowledged that often, both waking as well as sleeping, I felt, and could not repress, stabs of savage, petrifying fear that one day it would indeed be both. The trick was not to let the fear show, nor to let it conquer, nor rule, my life.

It was pointless to reflect that I’d brought the terrors on myself. I had chosen to be a jockey. I had chosen to go after violent crooks. I was at that moment actively seeking out someone who knew how to cut off a horse’s foot with one chop.

My own equivalent of the off-fore held a glass of milk.

I had to be mentally deranged.

But then there were people like Rachel Ferns.

In one way or another I had survived many torments, and much could have been avoided but for my own obstinate nature. I knew by then that whatever came along, I would deal with it. But that child had had her hair fall out and had found her beloved pony’s foot, and none of that was her fault. No nine-year-old mind could sleep sweetly under such assaults.

Oh God, Rachel, I thought, I would dream your nightmares for you if I could.

In the morning I made a working analysis in five columns of the Ferns pony and the three two-year-olds. The analysis took the form of a simple graph, ruled in boxes. Across the top of the page I wrote: Factors, Ferns, Cheltenham, Aintree, York, and down the left-hand column, Factors, I entered ‘date’, ‘name of owner’, ‘racing programme’, ‘motive’ and finally, ‘who knew of victim’s availability?’ I found that although I could think of answers to that last question, I hadn’t the wish to write them in, and after a bit of indecision I phoned Kevin Mills at The Pump and, by persistence, reached him.

‘Sid,’ he said heartily, ‘the warning will be in the paper tomorrow. You’ve done your best. Stop agitating.’

‘Great,’ I said, ‘but could you do something else? Something that could come innocently from The Pump, but would raise all sorts of reverberations if I asked directly myself.’

‘Such as what?’

‘Such as ask Topline Foods for a list of the guests they entertained at a sponsors’ lunch at Aintree the day before the National.’

‘What the hell for?’

‘Will you do it?’

He said, ‘What are you up to?’

‘The scoop is still yours. Exclusive.’

‘I don’t know why I trust you.’

‘It pays off,’ I said, smiling.

‘It had better.’ He put down his receiver with a crash, but I knew he would do what I asked.

It was Friday morning. At Epsom that day they would be running the Coronation Cup and also the Oaks, the fillies’ equivalent of the Derby. It was also lightly raining: a weak warm front, it seemed, was slowly blighting southern England.

Racecourses still drew me as if I were tethered to them with bungee elastic, but before setting out I telephoned the woman whose colt’s foot had been amputated during the night after the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

‘I’m sorry to bother you again, but would you mind a few more questions?’

‘Not if you can catch the bastards.’

‘Well… was the two-year-old alone in his field?’

‘Yes he was. It was only a paddock. Railed, of course. We kept him in the paddock nearest to the house, that’s what is so infuriating. We had two old hacks turned out in the field beyond him, but the vandals left them untouched.’

‘And,’ I said neutrally, ‘how many people knew the colt was accessible? And how accessible was he?’

‘Sid,’ she exclaimed, ‘don’t think we haven’t racked our brains. The trouble is, all our friends knew about him. We were excited about his prospects. And then, at the Cheltenham meeting, we had been talking to people about trainers. Old Gunners, who used to train for us in the past, has died, of course, and we don’t like that uppity assistant of his that’s taken over the stable, so we were asking around, you see.’

‘Yeah. And did you decide on a trainer?’

‘We did, but, of course…’

‘Such a bloody shame,’ I sympathized. ‘Who did you decide on?’

She mentioned a first-class man. ‘Several people said that with him we couldn’t go wrong.’

‘No.’ I mentally sighed, and asked obliquely, ‘What did you especially enjoy about the festival meeting?’

‘The Queen came,’ she said promptly. ‘I had thick, warm boots on, and I nearly fell over them, curtseying.’ She laughed. ‘And oh, also, I suppose you do know you’re in the Hall of Fame there?’

‘It’s an honor,’ I said. ‘They gave me an engraved glass goblet that I can see across the room right now from where I’m sitting.’

‘Well, we were standing in front of that big exhibit they’ve put together of your life, and we were reading the captions, and dear Ellis Quint stopped beside us and put his arm round my shoulders and said that our Sid was a pretty great guy, all in all.’

Oh shit, I thought.

Her warm smile was audible down the line. ‘We’ve known Ellis for years, of course. He used to ride our horses in amateur races. So he called in at our house for a drink on his way home after the Gold Cup. Such a lovely day.’ She sighed. ‘And then those bastards… You will catch them, won’t you, Sid?’

‘If I can,’ I said.

I left a whole lot of the boxes empty on my chart, and drove to Epsom Downs, spirits as gray as the skies. The bars were crowded. Umbrellas dripped. The brave colors of June dresses hid under drabber raincoats, and only the geraniums looked happy.

I walked damply to the parade ring before the two-year-old colts’ six-furlong race and thoughtfully watched all the off-fore feet plink down lightheartedly. The young, spindly bones of those forelegs thrust thousand-pound bodies forward at sprinting speeds near forty miles an hour. I had mostly raced on the older, mature horses of steeplechasing, half a ton in weight, slightly slower, capable of four miles and thirty jumps from start to finish, but still on legs scarcely thicker than a big man’s wrist.

The anatomy of a horse’s foreleg consisted, from the shoulder down, of forearm, knee, cannon bone, fetlock joint (also known as the ankle), pastern bone, and hoof. The angry Lancashire farmer’s colored photograph had shown the amputation to have been effected straight through the narrowest part of the whole leg, just at the base of the fetlock joint, where the pastern emerged from it. In effect, the whole pastern and the hoof had been cut off.

Horses had very fast instincts for danger and were easily scared. Young horses seldom stood still. Yet one single chop had done the job each time. Why had all those poor animals stood quietly white the deed was done? None of them had squealed loud enough to alert his owner.

I went up on the stands and watched the two-year-olds set off from the spur away to the left at the top of the hill; watched them swoop down like a flock of star lings round Tattenham Comer, and sort themselves out into winner and losers along the straight with its deceptively difficult camber that could tilt a horse towards the rails if his jockey was inexperienced.

I watched, and I sighed. Five long years had passed since I’d ridden my last race. Would regret, I wondered, ever fade?

‘Why so pensive, Sid lad?’ asked an elderly trainer, grasping my elbow. ‘A scotch and water for your thoughts!’ He steered me around towards the nearest bar and I went with him unprotestingly, as custom came my way quite often in that casual manner. He was great with horses and famously mean with his money.

‘I hear you’re damned expensive,’ he began inoffensively, handing me a glass. ‘What will you charge me for a day’s work?’