High Stakes

12

Eight o’clock, Saturday morning.

I sat in my hired Cortina in a lay-by on the road over the top of the Downs, watching the drizzly dawn take the eye-strain out of the passing headlights.

I was there much too early because I hadn’t been able to sleep. The flurry of preparations all Friday afternoon and evening had sent me to bed still in top gear and from then on my brain had whirred relentlessly, thinking of all the things which could go wrong.

Snatches of conversation drifted back.

Rupert Ramsey expressing doubts and amazement on the other end of the telephone.

‘You want to do what?’

‘Take Energise for a ride in a horsebox. He had a very upsetting experience in a horsebox at Sandown, in a crash... I thought it might give him confidence to go for an uneventful drive.’

‘I don’t think it would do much good,’ he said.

‘All the same I’m keen to try. I’ve asked a young chap called Pete Duveen, who drives his own box, just to pick him up and take him for a ride. I thought tomorrow would be a good day. Pete Duveen says he can collect him at seven thirty in the morning. Would you have the horse ready?’

‘You’re wasting your money,’ he said regretfully. ‘I’m afraid there’s more wrong with him than nerves.’

‘Never mind. And... will you be at home tomorrow evening?’

‘After I get back from Chepstow races, yes.’

The biggest race meeting of the day was scheduled for Chepstow, over on the west side of the Bristol Channel. The biggest prizes were on offer there and most of the top trainers, like Rupert, would be going.

‘I hope you won’t object,’ I said, ‘but after Energise returns from his ride, I’d like to hire a security firm to keep an eye on him.’

Silence from the other end. Then his voice, carefully polite. ‘What on earth for?’

‘To keep him safe,’ I said reasonably. ‘Just a guard to patrol the stable and make regular checks. The guard wouldn’t be a nuisance to anybody.’

I could almost feel the shrug coming down the wire along with the resigned sigh. Eccentric owners should be humoured. ‘If you want to, I suppose... But why?’

‘If I called at your house tomorrow evening,’ I suggested diffidently, ‘I could explain.’

‘Well...’ He thought for a bit. ‘Look, I’m having a few friends to dinner. Would you care to join us?’

‘Yes, I would,’ I said positively. ‘I’d like that very much.’

I yawned in the car and stretched. Despite anorak, gloves and thick socks the cold encroached on fingers and toes, and through the drizzle-wet windows the bare rolling Downs looked thoroughly inhospitable. Straight ahead through the windscreen wipers I could see a good two miles of the A34. It came over the brow of a distant hill opposite, swept down into a large valley and rose again higher still to cross the Downs at the point where I sat.

A couple of miles to my rear lay the crossroads with the traffic lights, and a couple of miles beyond that, the fruit stall.

Bert Huggerneck, wildly excited, had telephoned at six in the evening.

‘Here, know what? There’s a squeezer on tomorrow!’

‘On Padellic?’ I said hopefully.

‘What else? On bleeding little old Padellic.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Listened at the bleeding door,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The two smart alecs was talking. Stupid bleeding gits. All over the whole bleeding country Ganser Mays is going to flood the little bookies’ shops with last minute bets on Padellic. The smart alecs are all getting their girl friends, what the little guys don’t know by sight, to go round putting on the dough. Hundreds of them, by the sound of it.’

‘You’re a wonder, Bert.’

‘Yeah,’ he said modestly. ‘Missed my bleeding vocation.’

Owen and I had spent most of the afternoon loading the big hired van from Chiswick and checking that we’d left nothing out. He worked like a demon, all energy and escaping smiles.

‘Life will seem flat after this,’ he said.

I had telephoned Charlie from Hantsford Manor and caught him before he went to lunch.

‘We’re off,’ I said. ‘Stratford, tomorrow.’

‘Tally bloody ho!’

He rang me from his office again at five. ‘Have you seen the evening papers?’

‘Not yet,’ I said.

‘Jody has two definite runners at Chepstow as well.’

‘Which ones?’

‘Cricklewood in the big race and Asphodel in the handicap chase.’

Cricklewood and Asphodel both belonged to the same man, who since I’d left had become Jody’s number one owner. Cricklewood was now also ostensibly the best horse in the yard.

‘That means,’ I said, ‘that Jody himself will almost certainly go to Chepstow.’

‘I should think so,’ Charlie agreed. ‘He wouldn’t want to draw attention to Padellic by going to Stratford, would you think?’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

‘Just what we wanted,’ Charlie said with satisfaction. ‘Jody going to Chepstow.’

‘We thought he might.’

Charlie chuckled. ‘You thought he might.’ He cleared his throat. ‘See you tomorrow, in the trenches. And Steven...’

‘Yes?’

‘Good luck with turning the handle.’

Turning the handle...

I looked at my watch. Still only eight-thirty and too early for any action. I switched on the car’s engine and let the heater warm me up.

All the little toys, revolving on their spindles, going through their programmed acts. Allie, Bert, Charlie and Owen. Felicity and Jody Leeds, Ganser Mays. Padellic and Energise and Black Fire. Rupert Ramsey and Pete Duveen.

And one little toy I knew nothing about.

I stirred, thinking of him uneasily.

A big man who wore sunglasses. Who had muscles, and knew how to fight.

What else?

Who had bought Padellic at Doncaster Sales?

I didn’t know if he had bought the horse after Jody had found it, or if he knew Energise well enough to look for a double himself; and there was no way of finding out.

I’d left no slot for him in today’s plan. If he turned up like a joker, he might entirely disrupt the game.

I picked up my raceglasses which were lying on the seat beside me and started watching the traffic crossing the top of the opposite distant hill. From two miles away, even with strong magnification, it was difficult to identify particular vehicles, and in the valley and climbing the hill straight towards me they were head-on and foreshortened.

What looked like a car and trailer came over the horizon. I glanced at my watch. If it was Allie, she was dead on time.

I focused on the little group. Watched it down into the valley. Definitely a Land-Rover and animal trailer. I got out of the car and watched it crawling up the hill, until finally I could make out the number plate. Definitely Allie.

Stepping a pace on to the road, I flagged her down. She pulled into the lay-by, opened her window, and looked worried.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘Not a thing.’ I kissed her. ‘I got here too early, so I thought I’d say good morning.’

‘You louse. When I saw you standing there waving I thought the whole darned works were all fouled up.’

‘You found the way, then.’

‘No problem.’

‘Sleep well?’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘I guess so. But oh boy, that’s some crazy house. Nothing works. If you want to flush the John you have to get Miss Johnston. No one else has the touch. I guess they’re really sweet, though, the poor old ducks.’

‘Shades of days gone by,’ I said.

‘Yeah, that’s exactly right. They showed me their scrap books. They were big in the horse world thirty-forty years ago. Won things at shows all over. Now they’re struggling on a fixed income and I guess they’ll soon be starving.’

‘Did they say so?’

‘Of course not. You can see it, though.’

‘Is Black Fire all right?’

‘Oh sure. They helped me load him up, which was lucky because I sure would have been hopeless on my own.’

‘Was he any trouble?’

‘Quiet as a little lamb.’

I walked round to the back of the trailer and looked in over the three-quarter door. Black Fire occupied the left-hand stall. A full hay net lay in the right. The ladies might starve, but their horses wouldn’t.

I went back to Allie. ‘Well...’ I said. ‘Good luck.’

‘To you too.’

She gave me the brilliant smile, shut the window and with care pulled out of the lay-by into the stream of northbound traffic.

Time and timing, the two essentials.

I sat in the car metaphorically chewing my nails and literally looking at my watch every half minute.

Padellic’s race was the last of the day, the sixth race, the slot often allotted to that least crowd-pulling of events, the novice hurdle. Because of the short January afternoon, the last race was scheduled for three-thirty.

Jody’s horses, like those of most other trainers, customarily arrived at a racecourse about two hours before they were due to run. Not often later, but quite often sooner.

The journey by horsebox from Jody’s stable to Stratford on Avon racecourse took two hours. The very latest, therefore, that Jody’s horsebox would set out would be eleven-thirty.

I thought it probable it would start much sooner than that. The latest time allowed little margin for delays on the journey or snags on arrival and I knew that if I were Jody and Ganser Mays and had so much at stake, I would add a good hour for contingencies.

Ten-thirty... But suppose it was earlier...

I swallowed. I had had to guess.

If for any reason Jody had sent the horse very early and it had already gone, all our plans were for nothing.

If he had sent it the day before... If he had sent it with another trainer’s horses, sharing the cost... If for some unimaginable reason the driver took a different route...

The ifs multiplied like stinging ants.

Nine-fifteen.

I got out of the car and extended the aerial of a large efficient walkie-talkie. No matter that British civilians were supposed to have permission in triple triplicate before operating them: in this case we would be cluttering the air for seconds only, and lighting flaming beacons on hill-tops would have caused a lot more fuss.

‘Charlie?’ I said, transmitting.

‘All fine here.’

‘Great.’ I paused for five seconds, and transmitted again. ‘Owen?’

‘Here, sir.’

‘Great.’

Owen and Charlie could both hear me but they couldn’t hear each other, owing to the height of the Downs where I sat. I left the aerial extended and the switches to ‘receive’, and put the gadget back in the car.

The faint drizzle persisted, but my mouth was dry.

I thought about the five of us, sitting and waiting. I wondered if the others like me were having trouble with their nerves.

The walkie-talkie crackled suddenly. I picked it up.

‘Sir?’

‘Owen?’

‘Pete Duveen just passed me.’

‘Fine.’

I could hear the escaping tension in my own voice and the excitement in his. The on-time arrival of Pete Duveen signalled the real beginning. I put the walkie-talkie down again and was disgusted to see my hand shaking.

Pete Duveen in his horsebox drove into the lay-by nine and a half minutes after he had passed Owen, who was stationed in sight of the road to Jody’s stable. Pete owned a pale blue horsebox with his name, address and telephone number painted in large black and red letters on the front and back. I had seen the box and its owner often at race meetings and it was he, in fact, whom I had engaged at Sandown on my abortive attempt to prevent Jody taking Energise home.

Pete Duveen shut down his engine and jumped from the cab.

‘Morning, Mr Scott.’

‘Morning,’ I said, shaking hands. ‘Glad to see you.’

‘Anything to oblige.’ He grinned cheerfully, letting me know both that he thought I was barmy and also that I had every right to be, as long as I was harmless and, moreover, paying him.

He was well-built and fair, with weatherbeaten skin and a threadbare moustache. Open-natured, sensible and honest. A one-man transport firm, and making a go of it.

‘You brought my horse?’ I said.

‘Sure thing.’

‘And how has he travelled?’

‘Not a peep out of him the whole way.’

‘Mind if I take a look at him?’ I said.

‘Sure thing,’ he said again. ‘But honest, he didn’t act up when we loaded him and I wouldn’t say he cared a jimmy riddle one way or another.’

I unclipped and opened the part of the side of the horsebox which formed the entrance ramp for the horses. It was a bigger box than Jody’s, but otherwise much the same. The horse stood in the front row of stalls in the one furthest across from the ramp, and he looked totally uninterested in the day’s proceedings.

‘You never know,’ I said, closing the box again. ‘He might be all the better for the change of routine.’

‘Maybe,’ Pete said, meaning he didn’t think so.

I smiled. ‘Like some coffee?’

‘Sure would.’

I opened the boot of my car, took out a thermos, and poured us each a cup.

‘Sandwich?’ I offered.

Sandwich accepted. He ate beef-and-chutney with relish. ‘Early start,’ he said, explaining his hunger. ‘You said to get here soon after nine-thirty.’

‘That’s right,’ I agreed.

‘Er... why so early?’

‘Because,’ I said reasonably, ‘I’ve other things to do all the rest of the day.’

He thought me even nuttier, but the sandwich plugged the opinion in his throat.

The sky began to brighten and the tiny-dropped drizzle dried away. I talked about racing in general and Stratford on Avon in particular, and wondered how on earth I was to keep him entertained if Jody’s box should after all not leave home until the last possible minute.

By ten-fifteen we had drunk two cups of coffee each and he had run out of energy for sandwiches. He began to move restively and make ready-for-departure signs of which I blandly took no notice. I chatted on about the pleasures of owning racehorses and my stomach bunched itself into anxious knots.

Ten-twenty. Ten twenty-five. Ten-thirty. Nothing.

It had all gone wrong, I thought. One of the things which could have sent everything awry had done so.

Ten thirty-five.

‘Look,’ Pete said persuasively. ‘You said you had a great deal to do today, and honestly, I don’t think...’

The walkie-talkie crackled.

I practically leapt towards the front of the car and reached in for it.

‘Sir?’

‘Yes, Owen.’

‘A blue horsebox just came out of his road and turned south.’

‘Right.’

I stifled my disappointment. Jody’s two runners setting off to Chepstow, no doubt.

‘What’s that?’ Pete Duveen said, his face appearing at my shoulder full of innocent enquiry.

‘Just a radio.’

‘Sounded like a police car.’

I smiled and moved away back to the rear of the car, but I had hardly got Pete engaged again in useless conversation when the crackle was repeated.

‘Sir?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘A fawn coloured box with a red slash, sir. Just turned north.’ His voice trembled with excitement.

‘That’s it, Owen.’

‘I’m on my way.’

I felt suddenly sick. Took three deep breaths. Pressed the transmit button.

‘Charlie?’

‘Yes.’

‘The box is on its way.’

‘Halle-bloody-lujah.’

Pete was again looking mystified and inquisitive. I ignored his face and took a travelling bag out of the boot of my car.

‘Time to go,’ I said pleasantly. ‘I think, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see how my horse behaves while going along, so could you start the box now and take me up the road a little way?’

He looked very surprised, but then he had found the whole expedition incomprehensible.

‘If you like,’ he said helplessly. ‘You’re the boss.’

I made encouraging signs to him to get into his cab and start the engine and while he was doing it I stowed my bag on the passenger side. The diesel engine whirred and coughed and came to thunderous life, and I went back to the Cortina.

Locked the boot, shut the windows, took the keys, locked the doors, and stood leaning against the wing holding binoculars in one hand and walkie-talkie in the other.

Pete Duveen had taken nine and a half minutes from Jody’s road to my lay-by and Jody’s box took exactly the same. Watching the far hill through raceglasses I saw the big dark blue van which contained Owen come over the horizon, followed almost immediately by an oblong of fawn.

Watched them down into the valley and on to the beginning of the hill.

I pressed the transmit button.

‘Charlie?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Seven minutes. Owen’s in front.’

‘Right.’

I pushed down the aerial of the walkie-talkie and took it and myself along to the passenger door of Pete’s box. He looked across and down at me enquiringly, wondering why on earth I was still delaying.

‘Just a moment,’ I said, giving no explanation, and he waited patiently, as if humouring a lunatic.

Owen came up the hill, changed gears abreast of the lay-by, and slowly accelerated away. Jody’s horsebox followed, doing exactly the same. The scrunched nearside front had been hammered out, I saw, but respraying lay in the future. I had a quick glimpse into the cab: two men, neither of them Jody, both unknown to me; a box driver who had replaced Andy-Fred and the lad with the horse. Couldn’t be better.

I hopped briskly up into Pete’s box.

‘Off we go, then.’

My sudden haste looked just as crazy as the former dawdling, but again he made no comment and merely did what I wanted. When he had found a gap in the traffic and pulled out on to the road there were four or five vehicles between Jody’s box and ourselves, and this seemed to me a reasonable number.

I spent the next four miles trying to look as if nothing in particular was happening while listening to my heart beat like a discotheque. Owen’s van went over the traffic lights at the big crossroads a half second before they changed to amber and Jody’s box came to a halt as they showed red. The back of Owen’s van disappeared round a bend in the road.

Between Jody’s box and Pete’s there were three private cars and one small van belonging to an electrical firm. When the lights turned green one of the cars peeled off to the left and I began to worry that we were getting too close.

‘Slow down just a fraction,’ I suggested.

‘If you like... but there’s not a squeak from the horse.’ He glanced over his shoulder to where the black head looked patiently forward through a small observation hatch, as nervous as a suet pudding.

A couple of private cars passed us. We motored sedately onwards and came to the bottom of the next hill. Pete changed his gears smoothly and we lumbered noisily up. Near the top, his eye took in a notice board on a tripod at the side of the road.

‘Damn,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Did you see that?’ he said. ‘Census point ahead.’

‘Never mind, we’re not in a hurry.’

‘I suppose not.’

We breasted the hill. The fruit stall lay ahead on our left, with the sweep of car park beside it. Down the centre of the road stood a row of the red and white cones used for marking road obstructions and in the northbound lane, directing the traffic, stood a large man in navy blue police uniform with a black and white checked band round his cap.

As we approached he waved the private cars past and then directed Pete into the fruitstall car park, walking in beside the horsebox and talking to him through the window.

‘We’ll keep you only a few minutes, sir. Now, will you pull right round in a circle and park facing me just here, sir?’

‘All right,’ Pete said resignedly and followed the instructions. When he pulled the brake on we were facing the road. On our left, about ten feet away, stood Jody’s box, but facing in the opposite direction. On the far side of Jody’s box was Owen’s van. And beyond Owen’s van, across about twenty yards of cindery park, lay the caravan, its long flat windowless side towards us.

The Land-Rover and trailer which Allie had brought stood near the front of Jody’s box. There was also the car hitched to the caravan and the car Bert had hired, and all in all the whole area looked populated, official, and busy.

A second large notice on a tripod faced the car park from just outside the caravan.

and near a door at one end of the caravan a further notice on a stand said ‘Way In’.

Jody’s horsebox driver and Jody’s lad were following its directions, climbing the two steps up to the caravan and disappearing within.

‘Over there, please sir,’ A finger pointed authoritatively. ‘And take your driving licence and log book, please.’

Pete shrugged, picked up his papers, and went. I jumped out and watched him go.

The second he was inside Bert slapped me on the back in a most unpolicemanlike way and said ‘Easy as Blackpool tarts.’

We zipped into action. Four minutes maximum, and a dozen things to do.

I unclipped the ramp of Jody’s horsebox and let it down quietly. The one thing which would bring any horsebox driver running, census or no census, was the sound of someone tampering with his cargo; and noise, all along, had been one of the biggest problems.

Opened Pete Duveen’s ramp. Also the one on Allie’s trailer.

While I did that, Bert brought several huge rolls of three-inch thick latex from Owen’s van and unrolled them down all the ramps, and across the bare patches of car park in between the boxes. I fetched the head collar bought for the purpose from my bag and stepped into Jody’s box. The black horse looked at me incuriously, standing there quietly in his travelling rug and four leg-guards. I checked his ear for the tiny nick and his shoulder for the bald pennyworth, and wasted a moment in patting him.

I knew all too well that success depended on my being able to persuade this strange four-footed creature to go with me gently and without fuss, and wished passionately for more expertise. All I had were nimble hands and sympathy, and they would have to be enough.

I unbuckled his rug at high speed and thanked the gods that the leg-guards Jody habitually used for travelling his horses were not laboriously wound-on bandages but lengths of plastic-backed foam rubber fastened by strips of velcro.

I had all four off before Bert had finished the soundproofing. Put the new head collar over his neck; unbuckled and removed his own and left it swinging, still tied to the stall. Fitted and fastened the new one, and gave the rope a tentative tug. Energise took one step, then another, then with more assurance followed me sweetly down the ramp. It felt miraculous, but nothing like fast enough.

Hurry. Get the other horses, and hurry.

They didn’t seem to mind walking on the soft spongy surface, but they wouldn’t go fast. I tried to take them calmly, to keep my urgency to myself, to stop them taking fright and skittering away and crashing those metal-capped feet on to the car park.

Hurry. Hurry.

I had to get Energise’s substitute into his place, wearing the right rug, the right bandages, and the right head collar, before the box driver and the lad came out of the caravan.

Also his hooves... Racing plates were sometimes put on by the blacksmith at home, who then rubbed on oil to obliterate the rasp marks of the file and give the feet a well-groomed appearance. I had brought hoof oil in my bag in case Energise had already had his shoes changed and he had.

‘Hurry for gawd’s sake,’ said Bert, seeing me fetch the oil. He was running back to the van with relays of re-rolled latex and grinning like a Pools winner.

I painted the hooves a glossy dark. Buckled on the swinging head collar without disturbing the tethering knot, as the lad would notice if it were tied differently. Buckled the rug round the chest and under the belly. Fastened the velcro strips on all four leg-guards. Shut the folding gates to his stall exactly as they had been before, and briefly looked back before closing the ramp. The black head was turned incuriously towards me, the liquid eye patient and unmoved. I smiled at him involuntarily, jumped out of the box, and with Bert’s help eased shut the clips on the ramp.

Owen came out of the caravan, ran across, and fastened the ramp on the trailer. I jumped in with the horse in Pete’s box. Bert lifted the ramp and did another silent job on the clips.

Through the windscreen of Pete’s box the car park looked quiet and tidy.

Owen returned to the driving seat of his van and Bert walked back towards the road.

At the same instant Jody’s driver and lad hurried out of the caravan and tramped across to their horsebox. I ducked out of sight, but I could hear one of them say, as he re-embarked, ‘Right lot of time-wasting cobblers, that was.’

Then the engine throbbed to life, the box moved off, and Bert considerately held up a car or two so that it should have a clear passage back to its interrupted journey. If I hadn’t had so much still to do I would have laughed.

I fastened the rug. Tied the head collar rope. Clipped on the leg guards. I’d never worked so fast in my life.

What else? I glanced over my beautiful black horse, seeking things undone. He looked steadfastly back. I smiled at him, too, and told him he was a great fellow. Then Pete came out of the caravan and I scrambled through to the cab, and tried to sit in the passenger seat as if bored with waiting instead of sweating with effort and with a heart racing like tappets.

Pete climbed into his side of the cab and threw his log book and licence disgustedly on to the glove shelf.

‘They’re always stopping us nowadays. Spot check on log books. Spot check on vehicles. Half an hour a time, those. And now a census.’

‘Irritating,’ I agreed, making my voice a lot slower than my pulse.

His usual good nature returned in a smile. ‘Actually the checks are a good thing. Some lorries, in the old days, were death on wheels. And some drivers, I dare say.’ He stretched his hand towards the ignition. ‘Where to?’ he said.

‘Might as well go back. As you say, the horse is quiet. If you could take me back to my car?’

‘Sure thing,’ he said. ‘You’re the boss.’

Bert shepherded us solicitously on to the southbound lane, holding up the traffic with a straight face and obvious enjoyment. Pete drove steadfastly back to the lay-by and pulled in behind the Cortina.

‘I expect you think it a wasted day,’ I said. ‘But I assure you from my point of view it’s been worth it.’

‘That’s all that matters,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Take good care of this fellow going home,’ I said, looking back at the horse. ‘And would you remind the lads in Mr Ramsey’s yard that I’ve arranged for a security guard to patrol the stable at night for a while? He should be arriving there later this afternoon.’

‘Sure,’ he said, nodding.

‘That’s all then, I guess.’ I took my bag and jumped down from the cab. He gave me a final wave through the window and set off again southwards along the A34.

I leaned against the Cortina, watching him go down the hill, across the valley, and up over the horizon on the far side.

I wondered how Energise would like his new home.