Dick Francis - Straight

“But you came to buy his horse,” he said weakly.

“I came to kill him.”

Rollway said it dispassionately, as if it were nothing. But then, he’d tried to before.

Loder’s consternation became as deep as my own.

Rollway moved his gun and pointed it at my ankle. I immediately shifted it, trying desperately to get up, and he brought the spitting end back fast into alignment with my heart.

“Keep still,” he said again. His eyes coldly considered me as I half sat, half lay on the floor, propped on my elbow and without any weapon within reach, not even the one crutch I’d been using. Then, with as little warning as for his first attack, he stamped hard on my ankle and for good measure ground away with his heel as if putting out a cigarette butt. After that he left his shoe where it was, pressing down on it with his considerable weight.

I swore at him and couldn’t move, and thought idiotically, feeling things give way inside there, that it would take me a lot longer now to get fit, and that took my mind momentarily off a bullet that I would feel a lot less, anyway.

“But why? ” Nicholas Loder asked, wailing. “Why are you doing this?”

Good question.

Rollway answered it.

“The only successful murders,” he said, “are those for which there appears to be no motive.”

It sounded like something he’d learned on a course. Something surrealistic. Monstrous.

Nicholas Loder, sitting rigidly to my right in Greville’s chair, said with an uneasy attempt at a laugh, “You’re kidding, Rollo, aren’t you? This is some sort of joke?”

Rollo was not kidding. Rollo, standing determinedly on my ankle between me and the door, said to me, “You picked up a piece of my property at York races. When I found it was missing I went back to look for it. An official told me you’d put it in your pocket. I want it back.”

I said nothing.

Damn the official, I thought. So helpful. So deadly. I hadn’t even noticed one watching.

Nicholas Loder, bewildered, said, “What piece of property?”

“The tube part of the inhaler,” Rollway told him.

“But that woman, Mrs. Ostermeyer, gave it back to your.”

“Only the bulb. I didn’t notice the tube had dropped as well. Not until after the race. After the Stewards’ inquiry.”

“But what does it matter?”

Rollway pointed his gun unwaveringly at where it would do me fatal damage and answered the question without taking his gaze from my face.

“You yourself, Nick,” he informed him, “told me you were worried about Franklin, he was observant and too bright.”

“But that was because I gelded Dozen Roses.”

“So when I found he had the inhaler, I asked one or two other people their opinion of Derek Franklin as a person, not a jockey, and they all said the same. Brainy. Intelligent. Bright.” He paused. “I don’t like that.”

I was thinking that through the door, down the passage and in the street there was sanity and Wednesday and rain and rush hour all going on as usual. Saturn was just as accessible.

“I don’t believe in waiting for trouble,” Rollway said. “And dead men can’t make accusations.” He stared at me. “Where’s the tube?”

I didn’t answer for various reasons. If he took murder so easily in his stride and I told him I’d sent the tube to Phil Urquhart I could be sentencing Phil to death too, and besides, if I opened my mouth for any reason what might come out wasn’t words at all but something between a yell and a groan, a noise I could hear loudly in my head but which wasn’t important either, or not as important as getting out of the sickening prospect of the next few minutes.

“But he would never have suspected...” Loder feebly said.

“Of course he did. Anyone would. Why do you think he’s had that bodyguard glued to him? Why do you think he’s been dodging about so I can’t find him and not going home? And he had the horse’s urine taken in Lambourn for testing, and there’s the official sample too at York. I tell you, I’m not waiting for him to make trouble. I’m not going to jail, I’ll tell you.”

“But you wouldn’t.”

“Be your age, Nick,” Rollway said caustically. “I import the stuff. I take the risks. And I get rid of trouble as soon as I see it. If you wait too long, trouble can destroy you.”

Nicholas Loder said in wailing protest, “I told you it wasn’t necessary to give it to horses. It doesn’t make them go faster.”

“Rubbish. You can’t tell, because it isn’t much done. No one can afford it except people like me. I’m swamped with the stuff at the moment, it’s coming in in bulk from the Medellfn cartel in Madrid... Where’s the tube? ” he finished, bouncing his weight up and down.

If not telling him would keep me alive a bit longer, I wasn’t going to try telling him I’d thrown it away.

“You can’t just shoot him,” Nicholas Loder said despairingly. “Not with me watching.”.

“You’re no danger to me, Nick,” Rollway said flatly. “Where would you go for your little habit? One squeak from you would mean your own ruin. I’d see you went down for possession. For conniving with me to drug horses. They’d take your license away for that. Nicholas Loder, trainer of Classic winners, down in the gutter.” He paused. “You’ll keep quiet, we both know it.”

The threats were none the lighter for being uttered in a measured unexcited monotone. He made my hair bristle. Heaven knew what effect he had on Loder.

He wouldn’t wait much longer, I thought, for me to tell him where the tube was; and maybe the tube would in the end indeed be his downfall, because Phil knew whose it was, and that the Ostermeyers had been witnesses, and if I were found shot perhaps he would light a long fuse... but it wasn’t of much comfort at that moment.

With the strength of desperation I rolled my body and with my right foot kicked hard at Rollway’s leg. He grunted and took his weight off my ankle and I pulled away from him, shuffling backward, trying to reach the chair I’d been sitting on to use it as a weapon against him, or at least not to lie there supinely waiting to be slaughtered, and I saw him recover his rocked balance and begin to straighten his arm, aiming and looking along the barrel so as not to miss.

That unmistakable stance was going to be the last thing I would see: and the last emotion I would feel would be the blazing fury of dying for so pointless a cause.

Nicholas Loder, also seeing that it was the moment of irretrievable crisis, sprang with horror from the armchair and shouted urgently, “No, no. Rollo. No, don’t do it!”

It might have been the droning of a gnat for all the notice Rollo paid him.

Nicholas Loder took a few paces forward and grabbed at Rollway and at his aiming arm.

I took the last opportunity to get my hands on something — anything — and got my fingers on a crutch.

“I won’t let you,” Nicholas Loder frantically persisted. “You mustn’t!”

Rollo shook him off and swung his gun back to me.

“No!” Loder was terribly disturbed. Shocked. Almost frenzied. “It’s wrong. I won’t let you!” He put his body against Rollway’s, trying to push him away.

Rollway shrugged him off, all bull-muscle and undeterrable. Then, very fast, he pointed the gun straight at Nicholas Loder’s chest and without pausing pulled the trigger. Pulled it twice.

I heard the rapid phut, phut. Saw Nicholas Loder fall, saw the blankness on his face, the absolute astonishment.

There was no time to waste on terror, though I felt it. I gripped the crutch I’d reached and swung the heavier end of it at Rollway’s right hand, and landed a blow fierce enough to make him drop the gun.