Knock Down

13

He had thrown at me like a lance the most lethal of all stable equipment. A pitchfork.

The force behind his arm knocked me off my feet. I lay on my side on the straw with the two sharp prongs embedded and the long wooden handle stretched out in front.

He could see that in spite of a deadly accurate throw and all the hate that went into it he still hadn’t killed me. The glimpse I got of his distorted face convinced me that he intended to put that right.

I knew the pitchfork had gone in, but not how far. I couldn’t feel much. I jerked it out and rolled over and lay on it face down, burying it under me in the straw. He fell on me, pulling, clutching, dragging, trying to get at it, and I simply lay on it like a log, not knowing what else to do.

The door opened again and light poured in from outside. Then a voice shouting. A girl’s voice.

‘Help... Someone help...’

I knew dimly from under the flurry of Fynedale’s exertions that it was Sophie. The troops she mobilised came cautiously to the rescue. ‘I say...’ said a well-bred voice plaintively, and Fynedale took no notice.

‘Here. What’s going on?’

The voice this time was tough and the owner tougher. Hands began to pull Fynedale off me and then others to help him, and when I took my nose out of the straw I could see three men trying to hold on to Fynedale while Fynedale threw them off like pieces of hay.

He crashed out through the door with my rescuers in pursuit, and when I got from my knees to my feet the only audience was Sophie.

‘Thank you,’ I said with feeling.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes... I think so.’

I bent down and picked up the pitchfork.

‘What’s that?’

‘He threw it at me,’ I said.

She looked at the stiletto prongs and shuddered. ‘Good job he missed.’

‘Mm.’ I inspected the two small tears in the front of my anorak. Then I slowly unzipped it and put a hand inside, exploring.

‘He did miss, didn’t he?’ said Sophie, suddenly anxious.

‘Direct hit. Don’t know why I’m not dead.’

I said it lightly and she didn’t believe me, but it was the truth. I could feel the soreness of a tear in my skin and the warm stickiness of blood, but the prongs had not gone through to heart or lungs, and the force with which they’d landed had been enough to get them there.

I smiled idiotically.

‘What is it?’ Sophie asked.

‘Thank the Lord for a dislocating shoulder... The pitchfork hit the strap.’

Unfortunately for Fynedale two policemen in a patrol car had come to the sales on some unrelated errand, but when they saw three men chasing another they caught the fugitive out of habit. Sophie and I arrived to find Fynedale sitting in the police car with one policeman while the other listened to the three chasers saying that if Jonah Dereham wasn’t a hospital case it was because they had saved him.

I didn’t argue with that.

Sophie with unshaken composure told them about the pitchfork, and the policeman, having taken a quick look inside my anorak, told me to go and find a doctor and then come along to the local station to make a statement. I reckoned it would be the same nick I’d been to with Kerry: there would be a certain amount of doubtful eyebrow-raising over a man who got himself attacked twice in the same small sales’ paddock within six weeks.

At the nearest doctor’s surgery the damage resolved itself into one long slit over a rib. The doctor, a girl of less than thirty, swabbed away prosaically and said that ten days earlier she’d been called to attend a farm worker who’d driven a pitchfork right through his own foot. Boot and all, she added.

I laughed. She said she hadn’t meant to be funny. She had nice legs but no sense of humour. My own amusement rather died when she pointed out the state of the buckle on my strap, which she’d taken off to get at the cut. The buckle was bent. The mark of the prong showed clearly.

‘One prong hit the buckle. The other went into you but slid along against a rib. I’d say you were exceptionally lucky.’

I said soberly, ‘I’d say so too.’

She stuck on some plaster, gave me a couple of anti-infection injections, and refused my offer of a fee.

‘On the National Health,’ she said sternly, as if offering to pay were immoral. She handed me the strap. ‘Why don’t you get that shoulder repaired?’

‘Can’t spare the time... and I’m allergic to hospitals.’

She gave my bare chest and arms a quick glance. ‘You’ve been in a few. Several of your bones have been fractured.’

Quite so,’ I agreed.

She allowed herself a sudden small smile. ‘I recognise you now. I’ve seen you on television. I backed your horse once in the Grand National when I was a student. I won six pounds and spent it on a book on blood diseases.’

‘Glad to have been of service,’ I said.

‘I shouldn’t wear that strap for a week or so,’ she said. ‘Otherwise it will rub that wound and prevent it healing.’

‘All right.’

I thanked her for her skill, dressed, collected Sophie from the waiting-room, and drifted along to the police station. Once again Sophie was offered a chair to sit on. She showed signs of exasperated patience and asked if I would be long.

‘Take my car,’ I said contritely. ‘Do some shopping. Go for a walk to Windsor Park.’

She considered it and brightened. ‘I’ll come back in an hour.’

The police wanted a statement from me but I asked if I could first speak to Fynedale.

‘Speak to him? Well... there’s no law against it. He hasn’t been charged yet.’ They shook their heads dubiously. ‘He’s in a violent state, though. Are you sure you want to?’

‘Certain.’

They shrugged. ‘This way, then.’

Fynedale was in a small bare interview room, not sitting beside the table on one of the two plain wooden chairs, but standing in the centre of the largest available clear space. He vibrated still as if strung as tight as piano wire and a muscle jumped spasmodically under his left eye.

The room, brown paint to waist height, cream above, had no windows and was lit by electric light. An impassive young policeman sat in a chair just inside the door. I asked him and the others to leave me and Fynedale to talk alone. Fynedale said loudly ‘I’ve nothing to bloody say to you.’

The policemen thought I was being foolish, but eventually they shrugged and went away.

‘Sit down,’ I said, taking one of the chairs by the table and gesturing to the other.

‘No.’

‘All right, don’t.’ I pulled out cigarettes and lit one. Whatever was said about cancer of the lungs, I thought, there were times worth the risk. I drew the smoke down and was grateful for its comfort.

Fynedale began pacing around in jerky little strides.

‘I told you I’d kill you,’ he said.

‘Your good luck that you didn’t.’

He stopped dead. ‘What did you say?’

‘If you had, you’d have spent ten years inside.’

‘Bloody worth it.’ He went back to pacing.

‘I see Vic’s got another partner,’ I said.

He picked up a chair and threw it viciously against the wall. The door opened immediately and the young policeman stepped hurriedly in.

‘Please wait,’ I said. ‘We’ve hardly started.’

He looked indecisively at Fynedale, the fallen chair, and me sitting calmly smoking, and decided that perhaps after all it would be safe to leave. The door closed quietly behind him.

‘Vic’s done the dirty on you, I reckon,’ I said.

He circled behind me. The hairs on my neck bristled. I took another lungful of smoke and didn’t look round.

‘Getting you into trouble and then ditching you.’

‘It was you got me into trouble.’ The voice was a growl in the throat.

I knew that any tenseness in my body would react on him and screw him up even tighter, but it took a fair amount of concentration to relax every muscle with him out of sight behind my head. I tried to make my voice slow, thoughtful, persuasive, but my mouth was as dry as a Sunday in Salt Lake City.

‘Vic started it,’ I said. ‘Vic and you. Now it’s Vic and Ronnie North. You and I... we’ve both come off worst with Vic...’

He reappeared jerkily into my field of vision. The carrot hair looked bright orange under the electric bulb. His eyes alternately shone with manic fire when the light caught them and receded into secretive shadows when he bent his head. Sophie’s remarks about gelignite on the boil came back to me; and his instability had if anything increased.

‘Cigarette?’ I suggested.

‘Get stuffed.’

It was better when I could see him.

I said ‘What have you told the police?’

‘Nothing. Bloody nothing.’

‘Did they get you to make a statement?’

‘That they bloody did not.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘That simplifies things.’

‘What the hell are you on about?’

I watched the violence and agitation in every physical movement. It was as if his muscles and nerves were acting in spasms, as if some central disorganisation were plucking wires.

I said, ‘What is upsetting you most?’

‘Most?’ he yelled. ‘Most? The fact that you’re bloody walking in here as cool as bloody cucumbers, that’s what. I tried to kill you. Kill you.’

He stopped as if he couldn’t explain what he meant, but he’d got his message across to me loud and clear. He had taken himself beyond the edge of sense in his compulsion to do me harm, and there I was, proving that it had all been for nothing. I guessed that he badly needed not to have failed entirely. I took off my jacket and explained about the strap and buckle saving my life. I undid my shirt, showed him the plaster, and told him what lay underneath.

‘It hurts,’ I said truthfully.

He stopped pacing and peered closely at my face. ‘Does it?’

‘Yes.’

He put out his hand and touched me. I winced.

He stood back, bent and picked up the chair he’d thrown, set it on its feet on the far side of the table, and sat down opposite me. He stretched for the packet of cigarettes and lighter which I’d left lying, and lit one with hands still shaking with tension.

I left my shirt undone and falling open. He sat smoking jerkily, his eyes flicking every few seconds to the strip of plaster. It seemed to satisfy him. To reassure. Finally to soothe. He smoked the whole cigarette through without speaking, but the jerky movements gradually quietened, and by the time he threw the stub on the floor and twisted his foot on it the worst of the jangle had disappeared.

‘I’ll make a bargain with you,’ I said.

‘What bargain?’

‘I’ll say the pitchfork was an accident.’

‘You know bloody well it wasn’t.’

‘I know. You know. The police know. But there were no witnesses... If I swear it was an accident there would be no question of you being even charged with attempted murder, let alone tried and convicted.’

He thought it over. There were a lot of little twitches in the muscles of his face, and the skin stretched gauntly over the cheekbones.

‘You don’t actually want to do time, do you?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Suppose we could get you off all the hooks... Assault, fraud, the lot.’

‘You couldn’t.’

‘I could keep you out of jail, that’s for sure.’

A long pause. Then he said, ‘A bargain. That means you want something in return.’

‘Mm.’

‘What, then?’

I ran my tongue round my teeth and took my time over replying.

‘I want...’ I said slowly, ‘I want you to talk about the way you and Vic tried to make me join your ring.’

He was surprised. ‘Is that all?’

‘It’ll do for a start.’

‘But you know. You know what Vic said to you.’

‘I don’t know what he said to you.’

He shrugged in bewilderment. ‘He just said if you wouldn’t go along with us, we’d break you.’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘The price of your freedom is every word, every scrap of conversation that you can remember. Especially everything about that ally of Vic’s who got my stable burned.’

‘I told you... I don’t know.’

‘If you want to get out of here, you’re going to have to do better than that.’

He stared across the table. I saw his understanding of my offer deepen. He looked briefly round the bleak crowding walls of the little interview room and shivered. The last vestiges of the exalted murderous state evaporated. He looked smaller and colder and no danger to anybody.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I reckon I don’t owe Vic any more. I’ll not go to jail just to save his bloody skin. I’ll tell you what I can.’

It took three more cigarettes and a lot of pauses, but he did his best.

‘I reckon it started about six weeks ago. I mean, for some time before that Vic had said a few things about you being the biggest danger on the horizon, you were pretty good as an agent and dead honest, and he thought you might drain off some of the business which he’d otherwise corner.’

‘Room for us all,’ I murmured.

‘Not what Vic thought. Anyway, about six weeks ago he said it was time to bust you once and for all.’ He thought for a while, sucking deep on his cigarette. ‘See, Vic and I and some of the others had this thing going...’

‘The kick-backs systems,’ I said.

‘Ay. All right, so goody-goody sods like you can look down their noses and sniff, but it’s not illegal and it does a lot of people a lot of bloody good.’

‘Some people.’

‘All right, so the client pays over the odds, so what? Anyway, as Vic always says, the higher the prices the more commission the auctioneers get and the better they like it, so they’re just as bad, running things up as far as they bloody can.’

They also had a duty to the seller, I thought, but it wasn’t the time to argue.

‘Well, there we were, running this little ring and doing better and better out of it and then one day... I suppose it was just before the first yearling sales at Newmarket...’ He paused, looking back in his mind. His voice died away.

‘What happened?’ I prompted.

‘Vic was sort of... I don’t know... know and scared... both at once.’

‘Vic was scared?’ I said sceptically.

‘Ay, he was. Sort of. Sort of excited, though. Like someone had put him up to something he wanted to do but knew he shouldn’t.’

‘Like stealing apples?’

He brushed off the childish parallel. ‘These were no apples. Vic said we’d make so much money that what had gone before was only peanuts. He said there was a deal we could do with a breeder that had a colt by Transporter that was a perfect peach...’

‘Was it Vic’s own idea?’ I asked.

‘I thought so... I don’t know... Anyway, it worked a dream. He gave me five thousand quid just for bidding, and he made twenty out of it himself.’

‘By my reckoning he made thirty.’

‘Oh no...’ He stopped, surprised, then went on more slowly. ‘No... I remember him saying... ten thousand pounds went to the bloke who wrote the agreement that Vic got the breeder to sign. I said I thought it was a lot, but Vic says you have to pay for expert advice.’

‘Does he often pay for expert advice?’

He nodded. ‘All the time.’

‘Cheerfully?’

‘What? Of course.’

‘He isn’t being blackmailed?’

He looked scornful. ‘I’ll say not. You can’t see any piddling little blackmailer putting one over on Vic.’

‘No... but what it amounts to is that Vic is collecting huge kick-backs from breeders and other vendors, and out of that he is paying his own kick-backs to someone else for expert advice.’

He frowned. ‘I suppose you could say so.’

‘But you don’t know who?’

‘No.’

‘How long would you say he had been receiving this advice?’

‘How the hell do I know? A year. Two. About that.’

‘So what was different about the last six weeks?’

‘You were. All of a sudden Vic says it’s time to get rid of you. Either that or make you back down and take your cut with the rest of us. We all thought you’d come in with us with a bit of pressure. Well, see, it didn’t make sense you holding out. Only do yourself a lot of harm. Jiminy Bell, he says now he told us you’d never agree, but he bloody didn’t. That little sod, he said then that you were pretty soft really. A soft touch, he always said. Always good for a sob-story. So now he says he told us you were a tough nut, the squirmy little liar.’

‘Does Vic see this friend of his every day?’

‘Couldn’t say.’

‘Well... think.’

He thought. ‘I’d say that most days he either sees him or talks on the phone. See, Vic always gets things done quickly, like pinching that horse you bought at Ascot...’

‘How was that done?’

He blinked. Shifted uneasily on his chair. I shoved the cigarettes across and tried to look as if the whole question was quite impersonal.

‘Er...’ he said. ‘Vic said you were buying a horse for Mrs Sanders and he couldn’t have that, she was marrying Conslantine Brevett and he was Vic’s exclusive territory.’

‘When did he say that?’

‘At the sales the day you bought Hearse Puller.’

‘Had he already fixed up with Fred Smith?’

He hesitated. ‘He knew Fred Smith was going to take away whatever horse you bought. Yes.’

‘Did Vic himself fix it with Fred Smith?’

‘See, I don’t really know. Vic said he didn’t, but I don’t know, he’d say his grandmother was a pigmy if it suited him.’

‘Ronnie North,’ I said slowly. ‘Did he know Fred Smith?’

Fynedale’s face twisted into the sardonic sneer. ‘Old mates, weren’t they?’

‘Were they?’

‘Well... Ronnie, he came from Stepney way, same as Fred Smith. Ronnie started in the horse coping business in the old days when they sold horses on market days in all the big towns. He started as a boy, helping his dad. Bloody lot of gypsies if you ask me. Up to every damn trick in the book, is Ronnie. But bright, see? Got brains, Ronnie has.’

‘Ronnie sold me the next horse I bought for Kerry Sanders.’

‘Ay. Him and Vic, laughing themselves sick about it, they were. Then Ronnie afterwards said you needed a bloody lesson, busting Fred Smith’s arm.’

‘Did you yourself ever meet Fred Smith?’

‘I saw him, like. Saw him at Ascot, with Ronnie. Ronnie pointed you out to him. We all did, see?’

‘I see.’

‘Then, well, with River God it was dead easy, wasn’t it? Ronnie found which transport firm you’d engaged and got them to tell him their instructions, and he just sent Fred Smith to pick you off on the lay-by.’

‘Ronnie sent him?’

‘Ronnie... or Vic’ He shrugged. ‘One of them.’

‘Not Vic’s unknown friend?’

‘Might have been, I suppose.’ He didn’t think it made much difference. ‘We weren’t going to steal River God, see? Fred Smith had the money for it. He was going to make you take it, like at Ascot.’

‘And River God was going back to Ronnie North?’

‘Ay.’

‘Then why did he agree to sell it to me in the first place?’

He said with exaggerated patience as if telling to a dim child, ‘See, he wasn’t going to, first off. Then he rings Vic and says you’re looking for another horse instead of Hearse Puller. Then Vic rings back and says sell you River God and it’ll be a good opportunity of bashing you up a bit more.’

‘Did you actually hear either of these calls?’

‘Eh?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t live in Vic’s pocket, do I? No, Vic told me.’

I thought for a while. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘Which of you thought of burning my yard?’

He shifted his chair abruptly so that he... was no longer facing me, but spoke to the bare walls.

‘See... Vic said... a real smash, and you’d cave in. See... he saw you talking to that Transporter breeder... and that trainer whose owner he’d swiped... in the bar, see?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ay. Well then, Vic says this time no messing, you’ve got to be put right out of action, because this expert friend of his has thought up a fiddle to make the Transporter colt look like hayseeds, only he wouldn’t tell Vic what it was while you were still around at the sales. Vic said this expert was afraid you would make a public fuss which would mean everyone would be a lot more careful about buying horses in future and that was the last thing they wanted. So Vic said you either had to join in or be got rid of and you’d made it crystal clear you wouldn’t join in, so it was your own bloody fault you got your yard burned.’

I grunted: ‘And what happened afterwards?’

‘Well, there you bloody were at the sales as if nothing had happened. The whole thing had been a flop and Fred Smith was in jail and Vic was furious because he couldn’t start the new fiddle. He said he’d just have to go on with the kick-backs and anyway we’d been doing pretty well out of those for two years so it didn’t seem too bad.’

He swung round again, his face full of renewed anger.

‘And then you had to bugger the whole thing up by ratting to Wilton Young.’

‘Calm down,’ I said flatly. ‘Did you expect me to go on meekly taking whatever you cared to dish out?’

He looked indecisive. ‘Don’t know.’

You know now, I thought.

‘Are Vic and his expert friend still planning this new big fiddle for some time in the future?’

‘Ay. They are. Today... Today?’ He seemed suddenly astounded that it was only that morning that he had gone to Ascot Sales.

‘Today... I could have killed Vic... I told him I could kill him... and kill you too... and he said... why didn’t I just kill you, then he could get on with the fiddle... and he was bloody laughing... but I reckon now he meant to egg me on.’

‘I expect he did,’ I said.

‘Ay. He’d be rid of you and me too. He’d have the whole bloody field to himself.’

He leaned his elbows on the table and picked up my lighter and fidgeted with it.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you something. You can put Vic in the same boat as you did me.’

‘Do you mean... had up for fraud?’

‘Ay... Makes shipping horses by sea instead of air look like kids’ stuff.’

‘Tell me, then.’

He looked up. ‘You meant it straight, didn’t you, about getting me out of here?’

‘I did.’

He sighed. ‘Reckon I can trust you. And that’s a bloody laugh, for a start.’

He threw down the lighter and leaned back.

‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘Vic swindled the High Power Insurance Company out of a hundred and fifteen thousand quid.’