Dick Francis - Whip Hand

'You make a noise, laddie,' he said, putting his head round to my side of the central partition, 'and I'll hit your friend here. On the eyes, laddie, and the mouth. You try and get help by shouting, laddie, and your friend won't have much face to speak of. Get it?'

I thought of Mason in Tunbridge Wells. A vegetable, and blind.

I said nothing at all.

'I'm travelling in here with your friend, all the way,' he said. 'Just remember that, laddie.'

The second man closed the ramp, shutting out the sunlight, creating instant night. Where many trailers were open at the top at the back, this one was not.

Numb, I suppose, is how I felt.

The engine of the Land Rover started, and the trailer moved, backing out of the parking slot. The motion was enough to rock me against the trailer's side, enough to show I wasn't going very far standing up.

My eyes slowly adjusted to a darkness which wasn't totally black owing to various points where the ramp fitted less closely than others against the back of the trailer. In the end I could see clearly, as if it mattered, the variations that had been done to turn an ordinary trailer into an escape-proof transport. The extra piece at the back, closing the gap usually left open for air, and the extra piece inside, lengthways, raising the central partition from head height to the roof.

Basically, it was still a box built to withstand the weight and kicks of horses. I sat helplessly on the floor, which was bare of everything except muddy dust, and thought absolutely murderous thoughts.

After all that unpredictable travelling around I had agreed to go with Lucas and had stupidly left my car in plain vulnerable view all day. They must have picked me up at the Jockey Club, I thought. Either yesterday, or this morning. Yesterday, I thought, there had been no room in the car park, and I'd left my car in the street and got a ticket…

I hadn't been to my flat. I hadn't been back to Aynsford. I hadn't been to the Cavendish, or to any routine place.

I had, in the end, gone to the Jockey Club.

I sat and cursed and thought about Trevor Deansgate.

The journey lasted for well over an hour: a hot, jolting, depressing time which I spent mostly in consciously not wondering what lay at the end of it. After a while I could hear Chico talking, through the partition, though not the words. The flat, heavy, Glaswegian voice made shorter replies, rumbling like thunder.

A couple of pros from Glasgow, Jacksy had said. The one in with Chico, I thought, was certainly that. Not an average bashing mindless thug, but a hard man with brain power; and so much the worse.

Eventually the jolting stopped, and there were noises of the trailer being unhitched from the coupling: the Land Rover drove away, and in the sudden quiet I could hear Chico plainly.

'What's happening?' he said, and sounded still groggy.

'You'll find out soon enough, laddie.'

'Where's Sid?' he said.

'Be quiet, laddie.'

There was no sound of a blow, but Chico was quiet. The man who had raised the ramp came and lowered it, and six-thirty, Wednesday evening, flooded into the trailer.

'Out,' he said.

He was backing away from the trailer as I got to my feet, and he held a pitchfork at the ready, the sharp tines pointing my way.

From deep in the trailer I looked out and saw where we were. The trailer itself, disconnected from the Land Rover, was inside a building, and the building was the indoor riding school on Peter Rammileese's farm.

Timber-lined walls, windows in the roof, open because of the heat. No way that anyone could see in, casually, from outside.

'Out,' he said again, jerking the fork.

'Do what he says, laddie,' said the threatening voice of the man with Chico. 'At once.'

I did what he said.

Walked down the ramp onto the quiet tan-coloured riding-school floor. 'Over there.' He jerked the fork. 'Against the wall.' His voice was rougher, the accent stronger, than the man with Chico. For sheer bullying power, there wasn't much to choose.

I walked, feeling that my feet didn't belong to me.

'Back to the wall. Face this way.'

I turned with my shoulders lightly touching the wood. Behind the man with the pitchfork, standing where from in the trailer I hadn't been able to see him, was Peter Rammileese. His face bore a nasty mixture of satisfaction, sneer, and anticipation, quite unlike the careful intentness of the two Scots. He had driven the Land Rover, I supposed; out of my sight.

The man with Chico brought Chico to the top of the ramp and held him there. Chico half stood and half lay against him, smiling slightly and hopelessly disorganised.

'Hallo, Sid,' he said.

The man holding him lifted the hand holding the truncheon, and spoke to me. 'Now listen, laddie. You stand quite still. Don't move. I'll finish your friend so quick you won't see it happen, if you move. Get it?'

I made no response of any kind, but after a moment he nodded sharply to the one with the pitchfork.

He came towards me slowly; warily. Showing me the prongs.

I looked at Chico. At the truncheon. At damage I couldn't risk.

I stood… quite still.

The man with the pitchfork raised it from pointing at my 212

stomach to pointing at my heart, and from there, still higher. Slowly, carefully, one step at a time, he came forward until one of the prongs brushed my throat.

'Stand still,' said the man with Chico, warningly.

I stood.

The prongs of the pitchfork slid past my neck, one each side, below my chin, until they came to rest on the wooden surface behind me. Pushing my head back. Pinning me by the neck against the wall, unharmed. Better than through the skin, I thought dimly, but hardly a ball for one's self-respect.

When he'd got the fork aligned as he wanted it, he gave the handle a strong thrusting jerk, digging the sharp tines into the wood. After that he put his weight into pushing against the handle, so that I shouldn't dislodge what he'd done, and get myself free. I had seldom felt more futile or more foolish.

The man holding Chico moved suddenly as if released, carrying Chico bodily down the ramp and giving him a rough overbalancing shove at the bottom. As weak as a rag doll, Chico sprawled on the soft wood shavings, and the man strode over to me to feel for himself the force being applied in keeping me where I was.

He nodded to his partner. 'And you keep your mind on your business,' he said to him. 'Never mind yon other laddie. I'll see to him.'

I looked at their faces, remembering them for ever.

The hard callous lines of cheekbone and mouth. The cold eyes, observant and unfeeling. The black hair and pale skins. The set of a small head on a thick neck, the ears flat. The heavy shape of a jaw blue with beard. Late thirties, I guessed. Both much alike, and both giving forth at great magnitude the methodical brutality of the experienced mercenary.

Peter Rammileese, approaching, seemed in comparison a matter of sponge. Despite his chums' disapproval he too put a hand on the pitchfork handle and tried to give it a shake. It seemed to surprise him that he couldn't.

He said to me, 'You'll keep your snotty nose out, after this.' I didn't bother to answer. Behind them, Chico got to his feet, and for one surging moment I thought that he'd been fooling them a bit with the concussed act, and was awake and on the point of some effective judo.

It was only a moment. The kick he aimed at the man who had been holding him wouldn't have knocked over a house of cards. In sick and helpless fury I watched the truncheon land again on Chico's head, sending him down onto his knees, deepening the haze in his brain.

The man with the pitchfork was doing what he'd been told and concentrating on keeping up the pressure on the handle. I tugged and wrenched at it with desperation to get free, and altogether failed, and the big man with Chico unfastened his belt.