Dick Francis - Bonecrack

'Want to bet?'

'Oh-' he said in exasperation. 'You and my father, you tear me apart.'

'You'll have to choose your own life,' I said matter-of-factly. 'And if it still includes being a jockey, mind you win at Catterick. I'm running Buckram there in the apprentice race, and I should give one of the other lads the chance, but I'm putting you up again, and if you don't win they will likely lynch you.'

The ghost of the arrogant lift of the nose did its best. His heart was no longer in it.

'And on Thursday, here at Newmarket, you can ride Lancat in the Heath Handicap. It's a straight mile, for three-year-olds only, and I reckon he should win it, on his Teesside form. So get cracking, study those races and know approximately what the opposition might do. And you bloody well win them both. Understand?'

He gave me a long stare in which there was all of the old intensity but none of the old hostility.

'Yes,' he said finally. 'I understand. I am to bloody well win them both.' A faint smile rose and died in his eyes over the first attempt at a joke I had ever heard him make.

Etty was tight-lipped and angry over Buckram. My father would not approve, she said; and another private report was clearly on its way.

I sent Vic Young up to Catterick and went myself with three other horses to Ascot, telling myself that I was in duty bound to escort the owners at the biggest meeting, and that it had nothing to do with wanting to avoid Enso.

Out on the Heath during the wait at the bottom of Side Hill for two other stables to complete their canters, I discussed with Alessandro the tactics he proposed using. Apart from the shadows which persisted round his eyes he seemed to have regained some of his former race-day icy calm. It had yet to survive a long drive in his father's company, but it was a hopeful sign.

Buckram finished second. I felt distinctly disappointed when I saw his name on the 'Results from Other Meetings' board at Ascot, but when I got back to Rowley Lodge Vic Young was just returning with Buckram, and he was, for him, enthusiastic

'He rode a good race,' he said, nodding. 'Intelligent, you might say. Not his fault he got beat. Not like those stinking efforts last week. He didn't look the same boy, not at all.'

The boy walked into the Newmarket parade ring the following afternoon with all the inward-looking self-possession I could want.

'It's a straight mile,' I said, 'Don't get tempted by the optical illusion that the winning post is much nearer than it really is. You'll know where you are by the furlong posts. Don't pick him up until you've passed the one with two on it, by the bushes, even if you think it looks wrong.'

'I won't,' he said seriously. And he didn't.

He rode a copybook race, cool, well paced, unflustered. From looking boxed-in two furlongs out he suddenly sprinted through a split-second opening and reached the winning post an extended length ahead of his nearest rival. With his 5 lb. apprentice allowance and his Teesside form he had carried a lot of public money, and he earned his cheers.

When he slid down from Lancat in the winner's unsaddling enclosure he gave me again the warm rare smile, and I reckoned that as well as too much weight and too much arrogance, he was going to kick the worst problem of too much father.

But his focus shifted to somewhere behind me and the smile changed and disintegrated, first into a deprecating smirk and then into plain apprehension.

I turned round.

Enso stood inside the small white railed enclosure.

Enso, staring at me with the towering venom of the dispossessed.

I stared back. Nothing else to do. But for the first time, I feared I couldn't contain him.

For the first time, I was afraid.

I dare say it was asking for trouble to work at the desk in the oak room after I'd seen round the stables and poured myself a modest scotch. But this time it was a fine light evening on the last day in April, not midnight in a freezing February.

The door opened with an aggressive crash and Enso walked through it with his two men behind him, the stony faced familiar Carlo and another with a long nose, small mouth and no evidence of loving-kindness.

Enso was accompanied by his gun, and the gun was accompanied by its silencer.

'Stand up' he said.

I slowly stood.

He waved the gun towards the door.

'Come,' he said.

I didn't move.

The gun steadied on the central area of my chest. He handled the wicked looking thing as coolly, as familiarly, as a toothbrush.

'I am close to killing you,' he said in such a way that I saw no reason not to believe him. 'If you do not come at once, you will go nowhere.'

This time there were no little jokes about only killing people if they insisted. But I remembered; and I didn't insist. I moved out from behind the desk and walked woodenly towards the door.

Enso moved back to let me pass, too far away from me for me to jump him. But with the two now barefaced helpers at hand, I would have had no chance at all if I had tried.

Across the large central hall of Rowley Lodge the main front door stood open. Outside, through the lobby and the further doors, stood a Mercedes. Not Alessandro's. This one was maroon, and a size larger.

I was invited inside it. The American ex-rubber face drove. Enso sat on my right side in the back, and Carlo on the left. Enso held his gun in his right hand, balancing the silencer on his rounded knee, and his fingers never relaxed. I could feel the angry tension in all his muscles whenever the moving car swayed his weight against me.

The American drove the Mercedes northwards along the Norwich road, but only for a short distance. Just past the Limekilns and before the bridge over the railway line he swung off to the left into a small wood, and stopped as soon as the car was no longer in plain sight of the road.

He had stopped on one of the regular and often highly populated walking grounds. The only snag was that as all horses had to be off the Heath by four o'clock every afternoon, there was unlikely to be anyone at that hour along there to help.

'Out,' Enso said economically; and I did as he said.

There was a short pause while the American, who seemed to be known as Cal to his friends, walked around to the back of the car and opened the boot. From it he took first a canvas grip, which he handed to Carlo. Next he produced a long darkish grey gaberdine raincoat, which he put on although the weather was as good as the forecast. Finally he picked out with loving care a Lee Enfield 303.

Protruding from its underside was a magazine for ten bullets. He very deliberately worked the bolt to bring the first of them into the breach. Then he pulled back the short lever which locked the firing mechanism in the safety position.

I looked at the massive rifle which he handled so carefully yet with such accustomed precision. It was a gun to frighten with as much as to kill, though from what I knew of it, a bullet from it would blow a man to pieces at a hundred yards, would pierce the brick walls of an average house like butter, would penetrate fifteen feet into sand, and if unimpeded would carry accurately for five miles. Compared with a shotgun, which wasn't reliably lethal at a range of more than thirty yards, the Lee Enfield 303 was a dambuster to a peashooter. Compared with the silenced pistol, which couldn't be counted on even as far as a shotgun, it gave making a dash for it over the Heath as much chance of success as a tortoise in the Olympics.

I raised my eyes from the source of these unprofitable thoughts and met the unwinking gaze of its owner. He was obscurely amused, enjoying the effect his pet had had on me. I had never as far as I knew met an assassin before; but without any doubt, I knew then.

'Walk along there,' Enso said, pointing with his pistol up the walking ground. So I walked, thinking that a Lee Enfield made a lot of noise, and that someone would hear, if they shot me with it. The only thing was, the bullet travelled one and a half times as fast as sound, so that you'd be dead before you heard the bang.