High Stakes

14

Rupert Ramsey met me with a stony face, not at all the expression one would normally expect from a successful trainer who had invited one of his owners to dinner.

‘I’m glad you’re early,’ he said forbiddingly. ‘Please come into the office.’

I followed him across the hall into the familiar room which was warm with a living log fire. He made no move to offer me a drink and I thought I might as well save him some trouble.

‘You’re going to tell me,’ I said, ‘that the horse which left here this morning is not the one which returned.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘So you don’t deny it?’

‘Of course not.’ I smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have thought all that much of you if you hadn’t noticed.’

‘The lad noticed. Donny. He told the head lad, and the head lad told me, and I went to see for myself. And what I want is an explanation.’

‘And it had better be good,’ I added, imitating his schoolmasterly tone. He showed no amusement.

‘This is no joke.’

‘Maybe not. But it’s no crime, either. If you’ll calm down a fraction, I’ll explain.’

‘You have brought me a ringer. No trainer of any sense is going to stand for that.’ His anger was cold and deep.

I said, ‘The horse you thought was Energise was the ringer. And I didn’t send him here, Jody did. The horse you have been trying to train for the Champion Hurdle and which left here this morning, is a fairly useless novice called Padellic.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘As Energise,’ I pointed out, ‘you have found him unbelievably disappointing.’

‘Well...’ The first shade of doubt crept into his voice.

‘When I discovered the wrong horse had been sent here, I asked you expressly not to run him in any races, because I certainly did not want you to be involved in running a ringer, nor myself for that matter.’

‘But if you knew... why on earth didn’t you immediately tell Jody he had made a mistake?’

‘He didn’t,’ I said simply. ‘He sent the wrong one on purpose.’

He walked twice around the room in silence and then still without a word poured us each a drink.

‘Right,’ he said, handing me a glass. ‘Pray continue.’

I continued for quite a long while. He gestured to me to sit down and sat opposite me himself, and listened attentively with a serious face.

‘And this security firm...’ he said at the end. ‘Are you expecting Jody to try to get Energise back?’

I nodded. ‘He’s an extremely determined man. I made the mistake once of underestimating his vigour and his speed, and that’s what lost me Energise in the first place. I think when he got home from Chepstow and heard what Felicity and the box driver and the lad had to say, he would have been violently angry and would decide to act at once. He’s not the sort to spend a day or so thinking about it. He’ll come tonight. I think and hope he will come tonight.’

‘He will be sure Energise is here?’

‘He certainly should be,’ I said. ‘He’ll ask his box driver about the journey and his box driver will tell him about the census. Jody will question closely and find that Pete Duveen was there too. Jody will, I think, telephone to ask Pete Duveen if he saw anything unusual and Pete, who has nothing to hide, will tell him he brought a black horse from here. He’ll tell him he took a black horse home again. And he’ll tell him I was there at the census point. I didn’t ask him not to tell and I am sure he will, because of his frank and open nature.’

Rupert’s lips twitched into the first hint of a smile. He straightened it out immediately. ‘I don’t really approve of what you’ve done.’

‘Broken no laws,’ I said neutrally, neglecting to mention the shadowy area of Bert’s police-impression uniform.

‘Perhaps not.’ He thought it over. ‘And the security firm is here both to prevent the theft of Energise and to catch Jody red-handed?’

‘Exactly so.’

‘I saw them in the yard this evening. Two men. They said they were expecting instructions from you when you arrived, though frankly at that point I was so angry with you that I was paying little attention.’

‘I talked to them on my way in,’ I agreed. ‘One will patrol the yard at regular intervals and the other is going to sit outside the horse’s box. I told them both to allow themselves to be enticed from their posts by any diversion.’

‘To allow?’

‘Of course. You have to give the mouse a clear view of the cheese.’

‘Good God.’

‘And I wondered... whether you would consider staying handy, to act as a witness if Jody should come a-robbing.’

It seemed to strike him for the first time that he too was Jody’s victim. He began to look almost as Charlie had done, and certainly as Bert had done, as if he found counter-measures attractive. The tugging smile reappeared.

‘It depends of course on what time Jody comes... if he comes at all... but two of my guests tonight would be the best independent witnesses you could get. A lady magistrate and the local vicar.’

‘Will they stay late?’ I asked.

‘We can try.’ He thought for a bit. ‘What about the police?’

‘How quickly can they get here if called?’

‘Um... Ten minutes. Quarter of an hour.’

‘That should be all right.’

He nodded. A bell rang distantly in the house, signalling the arrival of more guests. He stood up, paused a moment, frowned and said, ‘If the guard is to allow himself to be decoyed away, why plant him outside the horse’s door in the first place?’

I smiled. ‘How else is Jody to know which box to rob?’

The dinner party seemed endless, though I couldn’t afterwards remember a word or a mouthful. There were eight at table, all better value than myself, and the vicar particularly shone because of his brilliance as a mimic. I half-heard the string of imitated voices and saw everyone else falling about with hysterics and could think only of my men outside in the winter night and of the marauder I hoped to entice.

To groans from his audience the vicar played Cinderella at midnight and took himself off to shape up to Sunday, and three others shortly followed. Rupert pressed the last two to stay for nightcaps: the lady magistrate and her husband, a quiet young colonel with an active career and a bottomless capacity for port. He settled happily enough at the sight of a fresh decanter, and she with mock resignation continued a mild flirtation with Rupert.

The wheels inside my head whirred with the same doubts as in the morning. Suppose I had been wrong. Suppose Jody didn’t come. Suppose he did come, but came unseen, and managed to steal the horse successfully.

Well... I’d planned for that, too. I checked for the hundredth time through the ifs. I tried to imagine what I hadn’t already imagined, see what I hadn’t seen, prepare for the unprepared. Rupert cast an amused glance or two at my abstracted expression and made no attempt to break it down.

The door bell rang sharply, three long insistent pushes.

I stood up faster than good manners.

‘Go on,’ Rupert said indulgently. ‘We’ll be right behind you, if you need us.’

I nodded and departed, and crossed the hall to open the front door. My man in a grey flannel suit stood outside, looking worried and holding a torch.

‘What is it?’

‘I’m not sure. The other two arc patrolling the yard and I haven’t seen them for some time. And I think we have visitors, but they haven’t come in a horsebox.’

‘Did you see them? The visitors?’

‘No. Only their car. Hidden off the road in a patch of wild rhododendrons. At least... there is a car there which wasn’t there half an hour ago. What do you think?’

‘Better take a look,’ I said.

He nodded. I left the door of Rupert’s house ajar and we walked together towards the main gate. Just inside it stood the van which had brought the security guards, and outside, less than fifty yards along the road, we came to the car in the bushes, dimly seen even by torchlight.

‘It isn’t a car I recognise,’ I said. ‘Suppose it’s just a couple of lovers?’

‘They’d be inside it on a night like this, not out snogging in the freezing undergrowth.’

‘You’re right.’

‘Let’s take the rotor arm, to make sure.’

We lifted the bonnet and carefully removed the essential piece of electrics. Then, shining the torch as little as possible and going on grass whenever there was a choice, we hurried back towards the stable. The night was windy enough to swallow small sounds, dark enough to lose contact at five paces and cold enough to do structural damage to brass monkeys.

At the entrance to the yard we stopped to look and listen.

No lights. The dark heavy bulk of buildings was more sensed than seen against the heavily overcast sky.

No sounds except our own breath and the greater lungs of the wind. No sign of our other two guards.

‘What now?’

‘We’ll go and check the horse,’ I said.

We went into the main yard and skirted round its edges, which were paved with quieter concrete. The centre was an expanse of crunchy gravel, a giveaway even for cats.

Box fourteen had a chair outside it. A wooden kitchen chair planted prosaically with its back to the stable wall. No guard sat on it.

Quietly I slid back the bolts on the top half of the door and looked inside. There was a soft movement and the sound of a hoof rustling the straw. A second’s flash of torch showed the superb black shape patiently standing half-asleep in the dark, drowsing away the equine night.

I shut the door and made faint grating noises with the bolt.

‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘Let’s see if we can find the others.’

He nodded. We finished the circuit of the main yard and started along the various branches, moving with caution and trying not to use the torch. I couldn’t stop the weird feeling growing that we were not the only couple groping about in the dark. I saw substance in shadows and reached out fearfully to touch objects which were not there, but only darker patches in the pervading black. We spent five or ten minutes feeling our way, listening, taking a few steps, listening, going on. We completed the tour of the outlying rows of boxes, and saw and heard nothing.

‘This is no good,’ I said quietly. ‘There isn’t a sign of them, and has it occurred to you that they are hiding from us, thinking we are the intruders?’

‘Just beginning to wonder.’

‘Let’s go back to the main yard.’

We turned and retraced our steps, taking this time a short cut through a narrow alleyway between two sections of boxes. I was in front, so it was I who practically tripped over the huddled bundle on the ground.

I switched on the torch. Saw the neat navy uniform and the blood glistening red on the forehead. Saw the shut eyes and the lax limbs of the man who should have been sitting on the empty kitchen chair.

‘Oh God,’ I said desperately, and thought I would never ever forgive myself. I knelt beside him and fumbled for his pulse.

‘He’s alive,’ said my friend in the grey flannel suit. He sounded reassuring and confident. ‘Look at him breathing. He’ll be all right, you’ll see.’

All I could see was a man who was injured because I’d stationed him in the path of danger. ‘I’ll get a doctor,’ I said, standing up.

‘What about the horse?’

‘Damn the horse. This is more important.’

‘I’ll stay here with him till you get back.’

I nodded and set off anxiously towards the house, shining the torch now without reservations. If permanent harm came to that man because of me...

I ran.

Burst in through Rupert’s front door and found him standing there in the hall talking to the lady magistrate and the colonel, who were apparently just about to leave. She was pulling a cape around her shoulders and Rupert was holding the colonel’s coat. They turned and stared at me like a frozen tableau.

‘My guard’s been attacked. Knocked out,’ I said. ‘Could you get him a doctor?’

‘Sure,’ Rupert said calmly. ‘Who attacked him?’

‘I didn’t see.’

‘Job for the police?’

‘Yes, please.’

He turned to the telephone, dialling briskly. ‘What about the horse?’

‘They didn’t come in a horsebox.’

We both digested implications while he got the rescue services on the move. The colonel and the magistrate stood immobile in the hall with their mouths half open and Rupert, putting down the telephone, gave them an authoritative glance.

‘Come out into the yard with us, will you?’ he said. ‘Just in case we need witnesses?’

They weren’t trained to disappear rapidly at the thought. When Rupert hurried out of the door with me at his heels they followed more slowly after.

Everything still looked entirely quiet outside.

‘He’s in a sort of alley between two blocks of boxes,’ I said.

‘I know where you mean,’ Rupert nodded. ‘But first we’ll just check on Energise.’

‘Later.’

‘No. Now. Why bash the guard if they weren’t after the horse?’

He made straight for the main yard, switched on all six external lights, and set off across the brightly illuminated gravel.

The effect was like a flourish of trumpets. Noise, light and movement filled the space where silence and dark had been total.

Both halves of the door of box fourteen swung open about a foot, and two dark figures catapulted through the gap.

‘Catch them!’ Rupert shouted.

There was only one way out of the yard, the broad entrance through which we had come. The two figures ran in curving paths towards the exit, one to one side of Rupert and me, one to the other.

Rupert rushed to intercept the smaller who was suddenly, as he turned his head to the light, recognisable as Jody.

I ran for the larger. Stretched out. Touched him.

He swung a heavy arm and threw out a hip and I literally bounced off him, stumbling and falling.

The muscles were rock hard. The sunglasses glittered.

The joker was ripping through the pack.

Jody and Rupert rolled on the gravel, one clutching, one punching, both swearing. I tried again at Muscles with the same useless results. He seemed to hesitate over going to Jody’s help, which was how I’d come to be able to reach him a second time, but finally decided on flight. By the time I was again staggering to my feet he was on his way to the exit with the throttle wide open.

A large figure in navy blue hurtled straight at him from the opposite direction and brought him down with a diving hug round the knees. The sunglasses flew off in a shiny arc and the two large figures lay in a writhing entwined mass, the blue uniform uppermost and holding his own. I went to his help and sat on Muscles’ ankles, crushing his feet sideways with no compunction at all. He screeched with pain and stopped struggling, but I fear I didn’t immediately stand up.

Jody wrenched himself free from Rupert and ran past me. The colonel, who with his lady had been watching the proceedings with astonishment, decided it was time for some soldierly action and elegantly stuck out his foot.

Jody tripped over and fell sprawling. The colonel put more energy into it, leant down and took hold of the collar of Jody’s coat. Rupert, rallying, came to his aid, and between them they too more or less sat on Jody, pinning him to the ground.

‘What now?’ Rupert panted.

‘Wait for the police,’ I said succinctly.

Muscles and Jody both heaved about a good deal at this plan but didn’t succeed in freeing themselves. Muscles complained that I’d broken his ankle. Jody, under the colonel’s professional ministrations, seemed to have difficulty saying anything at all. The colonel was in fact so single-handedly efficient that Rupert stood up and dusted himself down and looked at me speculatively.

I jerked my head in the direction of box fourteen, where the door still stood half open, showing only darkness within. He nodded slowly and went that way. Switched on the light. Stepped inside. He came back with a face of stone and three bitter words.

‘Energise is dead.’