by Francis - TO THE HILT

'It means polished but uncut. No facets. Rounded, like pebbles. Not made to sparkle.' I paused. 'They don't look real. They're big.'

'You mean, you've actually seen this thing?'

'I think it's what I got bashed for.'

'So where is it now?'

'You,' I said smiling, 'are - I hope - going to prevent anyone else from trying to bash that information out of me.'

'Oh.' He blinked. 'How difficult would it be to make you tell?'

'Fairly easy.' But, I thought, it might depend on who was asking.

'You'd fold? You surprise me.'

'The chalice isn't mine.'

'Reasonable. OK. I'll start on the gyms.'

'Be careful,' I said.

'Sure.' He sounded lighthearted. 'Black eyes will cost you extra.'

He wanted to know if I were serious about a bodyguard, and we agreed that identifying my robbers took priority.

Ah well.

Returning by train, tube and legs to Park Crescent I was met by my mother in a state of agitation: that is to say, she was looking out for me and told me calmly but at once that I should telephone Emily immediately.

'What about?'

'Golden Malt got loose.'

Damnation, I thought; fuck it .

'How's Ivan?' I asked.

'Not bad. Phone Emily, won't you?'

I phoned her.

'Golden Malt got loose on the Downs at Foxhill,' she said. 'He's not an easy ride, as you know. He bucked off the exercise lad and got loose and they couldn't catch him.'

'But racehorses often go home by themselves, don't they? Surely he'll turn up-'

'He has turned up,' she interrupted. 'He's found his way back here . Don't ask me how. He's been in this yard for five years, ever since Ivan bought him as a foal, and, first chance he got, he came home.'

'Bugger.'

'The thing is, what do you want me to do?'

'Keep him. I'll think.'

'I've had a phone call from Surtees. He says he's coming to collect him.'

'He said what ?

'He says the horse is Patsy's.'

I took a steadying breath. 'The horse is Ivan's.'

'Surtees says Patsy's going to sell the horse to prevent you getting your hands on it. He says you've stolen the King Alfred Cup and you'll steal Golden Malt and rob Patsy and the brewery. I said you wouldn't do that, but he's bringing a trailer to collect Golden Malt and take him to his stud farm for safe keeping.'

I tried to organise scattered thoughts.

'When do you expect him?' I asked.

'He'll be on his way already.'

I groaned. I'd just come from Reading, about thirty miles from Lambourn, and now, in London, it was nearer eighty.

'How did Surtees know you have the horse back?' I asked.

'I don't know. But he also knows he was in Foxhill. All my lads know, too. I can't send the horse back there.'

'Well, I'll come as soon as I can. Don't let Surtees take Golden Malt.'

She said despairingly, 'But how do I stop him?'

'Let down the tyres of the trailer. Build a Great Wall. Anything.'

I explained the problem briefly to my mother, who said at once that I could borrow Ivan's car.

Two hours at least by car. Roadworks and hold-ups in tortoise-slow traffic. Also, remembering the gauge from Saturday, I would have to stop for petrol.

I chose a train. I wasn't bad at trains. I ran and was lucky, catching an underground without waiting and a non-stop express from Paddington to Didcot junction and a taxi driver who hurried his wheels to Lambourn for a bonus. I took with me my mother's cash card and her phone card and all her available money, and my own new credit card and cheques, and also a zipped bag containing the things I'd borrowed ten days earlier from Emily - helmet, padded jacket, jodhpur boots - that my mother hadn't yet returned to her.

Helter-skelter though I went, Surtees had arrived first. He had brought with him not only a trailer for the horse but an assistant horse-handler in the shape of his nine-year-old daughter, Xenia.

Surtees, Emily, Xenia and Golden Malt were all out in the stable yard, Emily holding the horse by his bridle and arguing angrily with the others.

Emily's Land Rover stood in the driveway behind Surtees's trailer, effectively blocking his way out. The exit on the far side of the yard, the wide earth track used by the horses on their way out to exercise, was at present impassable as it seemed a lorry delivering hay had carelessly shed its load of bales there.

I paid the taxi driver his bonus and with reluctance walked into the angry scene. Emily looked relieved to see me, Surtees furious. Xenia gave me a head-to-toe sneer and in a voice just like her mother's said, 'What do you think you look like?'

'Good afternoon, Surtees,' I said. 'Having trouble?'

Surtees said with unthrottled rage, 'Tell your wife to get out of my way. That horse is Patsy's, and I'm taking it.'

I said, 'It's Ivan's, and I'm looking after Ivan's things, as you know.'

'Get out of my way!'

'The horse is officially in training here with Emily. It can't race from your stud farm. You surely know the rules.'

'Bugger the rules!'

Xenia, giving me the insolent stare she'd learned from her parents, said, 'You're a thief. Mummy says so.'

She was dressed in riding breeches, navy hacking jacket, polished boots and black velvet helmet, as if for a showground. Not a bad kid. Fair haired, blue eyed, hopelessly spoiled.

'Why aren't you in school?' I asked.

'I have riding lessons on Monday afternoons,' she answered automatically, and then added, 'and it's none of your business.'

Surtees, presumably deciding that argument would get him nowhere, made a sudden rugger charge at me while my head and attention were turned towards Xenia, and with his shoulder cannon-balling into my stomach, knocked me over.

He fell on top of me, seeking to damage. Neither rugger nor any form of contact sport had ever been my choice or capability. I rolled over and over in the gravelly dirt with Surtees, scrambling for a weight advantage, trying to disconnect myself and stand up.

I could sense Xenia jumping up and down and screaming, 'Kill him, Daddy. Kill him.'

The whole situation was idiotic. Farcical. Killing me was definitely outside Surtees's imagination, but the prospect of offering Golden Malt to Patsy as a symbol of his virility and superiority over the hated stepbrother lent him a strength and viciousness hard to deal with.

Neither of us landed a decisive punch. Surtees, as Chris Young had sworn, wasn't the boxing-gym type.

Add in Xenia who, as befitted her clothes, carried a riding crop, and we arrived at a childish form of warfare in which a bodyguard would have lightened the load.

Surtees clutched my hair and tried to bang my head on the ground, which gave me the idea of doing it to him, with equal lack of effectiveness, while Xenia danced around us lashing out with the riding crop which usually landed on me though occasionally on her father, to his bellowing disgust.

I scrambled finally to my feet, but dragged Surtees up with me as he wouldn't leave go. Xenia hit my legs. Surtees tried a sweeping too-slow wide-armed clout to my head that gave me a chance to both duck the blow and get hold of his clothes and fling him with all my strength away from me so that he overbalanced and staggered backwards and, falling, cracked his head against a brick stable wall.

It stunned him. He slid to his knees. Xenia screamed, 'You've killed my Daddy,' though I clearly hadn't, and I wrapped my arms round her writhing little body, lifting her off her feet, and yelled to Emily, 'Are any of these boxes empty?'

'The end two,' she shouted, and struggled to hold Golden Malt in control, the horse stamping around, upset by the noise.

The top half door of the end box stood open, the bottom half closed and bolted. I carried the frantically struggling child over there and dropped her over the lower half of the door, closing the top half and sliding home a bolt before she could climb out.