High Stakes

by Dick Francis

  ‘That,’ said Allie, pointing at the sea, ‘is Hawk Channel.’

  ‘Can’t see any hawks.’

  ‘You’d want cooks in Cook Strait.’

  She took off the loose white dress she’d worn on the way down and dropped it on the sand. Underneath she wore a pale blue and white bikini, and underneath that, warm honey coloured skin.

  She took the skin without more ado into the sea and I stripped off shirt and trousers and followed her. We swam in the free warm-cool water and it felt the utmost in luxury.

  ‘Why are these islands so uninhabited?’ I asked.

  ‘Too small, most of them. No fresh water. Hurricanes, as well. It isn’t always so gentle here. Sizzling hot in the summer and terrible storms.’

  The wind in the palm tree tops looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth. We splashed in the shallows and walked up the short beach to regain the warm little hollow, Allie delivering on the way a fairly non-stop lecture about turtles, bonefish, marlin and tarpon. It struck me in the end that she was talking fast to hide that she was feeling self-conscious.

  I fished in my jacket pocket and brought out a twenty dollar bill.

  ‘Bus fare home,’ I said, holding it out to her.

  She laughed a little jerkily. ‘I still have the one you sent from England.’

  ‘Did you bring it?’

  She smiled, shook her head, took the note from me, folded it carefully and pushed it into the wet top half of her bikini.

  ‘It’ll be safe there,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘How about a vodka martini?’

  She had brought drinks, ice and delicious food. The sun in due course shifted thirty degrees round the sky, and I lay lazily basking in it while she put the empties back in the picnic box and fiddled with spoons.

  ‘Allie?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘How about now?’

  She stopped the busy rattling. Sat back on her ankles. Pushed the hair out of her eyes and finally looked at my face.

  ‘Try sitting here,’ I said, patting the sand beside me with an unemphatic palm.

  She tried it. Nothing cataclysmic seemed to happen to her in the way of fright.

  ‘You’ve done it before,’ I said persuasively, stating a fact.

  ‘Yeah… but…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I didn’t really like it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t like the boy enough, I expect.’

  ‘Then why the hell sleep with him?’

  ‘You make it sound so simple. But at college, well, one sort of had to. Three years ago, most of one summer. I haven’t done it since. I’ve been not exactly afraid to, but afraid I would… be unfair…’ She stopped.

  ‘You can catch a bus whenever you like,’ I said.

  She smiled and bit by bit lay down beside me. I knew she wouldn’t have brought me to this hidden place if she hadn’t been willing at least to try. But acquiescence, in view of what she’d said, was no longer enough. If she didn’t enjoy it, I couldn’t.

  I went slowly, giving her time. A touch. A kiss. An undemanding smoothing of hand over skin. She breathed evenly through her nose, trusting but unaroused.

  ‘Clothes off?’ I suggested. ‘No one can see us.’

  ‘… Okay.’

  She unhitched the bikini top, folded it over the twenty dollars, and put it on the sand beside her. The pants in a moment followed. Then she sat with her arms wrapped round her knees, staring out to sea.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, smiling, my shorts joining hers. ‘The fate worse than death isn’t all that bad.’

  She laughed with naturalness and lay down beside me, and it seemed as if she’d made up her mind to do her best, even if she found it unsatisfactory. But in a while she gave the first uncontrollable shiver of authentic pleasure, and after that it became not just all right but very good indeed.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said in the end, half laughing, half gasping for air. ‘I didn’t know…’

  ‘Didn’t know what?’ I said, sliding lazily down beside her.

  ‘At college… he was clumsy. And too quick.’

  She stretched out her hand, fumbled in the bikini and picked up the twenty dollar note.

  She waved it in the air, holding it between finger and thumb. Then she laughed and opened her hand, and the wind blew her fare home away along the beach.

  11

  London was cold enough to encourage emigration. I arrived back early Tuesday morning with sand in my shoes and sympathy for Eskimos, and Owen collected me with a face pinched and blue.

  ‘We’ve had snow and sleet and the railways are on strike’ he said, putting my suitcase in the hired Cortina. ‘Also the mild steel you ordered hasn’t come and there’s a cobra loose somewhere in Regent’s Park.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘Not at all, sir.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘A Mr. Kennet rang from Newmarket to say Hermes has broken down. And… sir…’

  ‘What?” I prompted, trying to dredge up resignation.

  ‘Did you order a load of manure, sir?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  The total garden in front of my house consisted of three tubs of fuchsia, an old walnut tree and several square yards of paving slabs. At the rear, nothing but workshop.

  ‘Some has been delivered, sir.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I can’t see the dustmen moving it.’

  He drove steadily from Heathrow to home, and I dozed from the jet-lag feeling that it was midnight. When we stopped it was not in the driveway but out on the road, because the driveway was completely blocked by a dunghill five feet high.

  It was even impossible to walk round it without it sticking to one’s shoes. I crabbed sideways with my suitcase to the door, and Owen drove off to find somewhere else to park.

  Inside, on the mat, I found the delivery note. A postcard handwritten in ball point capitals, short and unsweet.

  ‘Shit to the shit.’

  Charming little gesture. Hardly original, but disturbing all the same, because it spoke so eloquently of the hatred prompting it.

  Felicity, I wondered?

  There was something remarkably familiar about the consistency of the load. A closer look revealed half rotted horse droppings mixed with a little straw and a lot of sawdust. Straight from a stable muck heap, not from a garden supplier: and if it looked exactly like Jody’s own familiar muck heap, that wasn’t in itself conclusive. I dared say one vintage was much like another.

  Owen came trudging back and stared at the smelly obstruction in disgust.

  ‘If I hadn’t been using the car to go home, like you said, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the garage this morning to fetch you.’

  ‘When was it dumped?’

  ‘I was here yesterday morning, sir. Keeping an eye on things. Then this morning I called round to switch on the central heating, and there it was.’

  I showed him the card. He looked, read, wrinkled his nose in distaste, but didn’t touch.

  ‘There’ll be fingerprints on that, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Do you think it’s worth telling the police?’ I asked dubiously.

  ‘Might as well, sir. You never know, this nutter might do something else. I mean, whoever went to all this trouble is pretty sick.’

  ‘You’re very sensible, Owen.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  We went indoors and I summoned the constabulary, who came in the afternoon, saw the funny side of it, and took away the card in polythene.

  ‘What are we going to do with the bloody stuff?’ said Owen morosely. ‘No one will want it on their flower beds, it’s bung full of undigested hay seeds and that means weeds.’

  ‘We’ll shift it tomorrow.’

  ‘There must be a ton of it.’ He frowned gloomily.

  ‘I didn’t mean spadeful by spadeful,’ I said. ‘Not you and I. We’ll hire a grab.’

  Hiring t
hings took the rest of the day. Extraordinary what one could hire if one tried. The grab proved to be one of the easiest on a long list.

  At about the time merchant bankers could reasonably be expected to be reaching for their hats, I telephoned to Charlie.

  ‘Are you going straight home?’ I asked.

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Care for a drink?’

  ‘On my way,’ he said.

  When he arrived, Owen took his Rover to park it and Charlie stood staring at the muck heap, which looked no more beautiful under the street lights and was moreover beginning to ooze round the edges.

  ‘Someone doesn’t love me,’ I said with a grin. ‘Come on in and wipe your feet rather thoroughly on the mat.’

  ‘What a stink.’

  ‘Lavatory humour,’ I agreed.

  He left his shoes alongside mine on the tray of newspaper Owen had prudently positioned near the front door and followed me upstairs in his socks.

  ‘Who?’ he said, shaping up to a large scotch.

  ‘A shit is what Jody’s wife Felicity called me after Sandown.’

  ‘Do you think she did it?’

  ‘Heaven knows. She’s a capable girl.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone see the… er… delivery?’

  ‘Owen asked the neighbours. No one saw a thing. No one ever does, in London. All he discovered was that the muck wasn’t there at seven yesterday evening when the man from two doors along let his labrador make use of my fuchsia tubs.’

  He drank his whisky and asked what I’d done in Miami. I couldn’t stop the smile coming. ‘Besides that,’ he said.

  ‘I bought a horse.’

  ‘You’re a glutton for punishment.’

  ‘An understudy,’ I said, ‘for Energise.’

  ‘Tell all to your Uncle Charlie.’

  I told, if not all, most.

  ‘The trouble is though, that although we must be ready for Saturday at Stratford, he might choose Nottingham on Monday or Lingfield on Wednesday,’ I said.

  ‘Or none of them.’

  ‘And it might freeze.’

  ‘How soon would we know?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘He’ll have to declare the horse to run four days before the race, but he then has three days to change his mind and take him out again. We wouldn’t know for sure until the runners are published in the evening papers the day before. And even then we need the nod from Bert Huggerneck.’

  He chuckled. ‘Bert doesn’t like the indoor life. He’s itching to get back on the racecourse.’

  ‘I hope he’ll stick to the shop.’

  ‘My dear fellow!’ Charlie lit a cigar and waved the match. ‘Bert’s a great scrapper by nature and if you could cut him in on the real action he’d be a lot happier. He’s taken a strong dislike to Ganser Mays, and he says that for a capitalist you didn’t seem half bad. He knows there’s something afoot and he said if there’s a chance of anyone punching Ganser Mays on the long bleeding nose he would like it to be him.’

  I smiled at the verbatim reporting. ‘All right. If he really feels like that, I do indeed have a job for him.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Directing the traffic.’

  He puffed at the cigar. ‘Do you know what your plan reminds me of?’ he said. ‘Your own Rola toys. There you are, turning the single handle, and all the little pieces will rotate on their spindles and go through their allotted acts’.

  ‘You’re no toy,’ I said.

  ‘Of course I am. But at least I know it. The real trick will be programming the ones who don’t.’

  ‘Do you think it will all work?’

  He regarded me seriously. ‘Given ordinary luck, I don’t see why not.’

  ‘And you don’t have moral misgivings?’

  His sudden huge smile warmed like a fire. ‘Didn’t you know that merchant bankers are pirates under the skin?’

  Charlie took Wednesday off and we spent the whole day prospecting the terrain. We drove from London to New-bury, from Newbury to Stratford on Avon, from Stratford to Nottingham, and from Nottingham back to Newbury. By that time the bars were open, and we repaired to the Chequers for revivers.

  ‘There’s only the one perfect place,’ Charlie said, ‘and it will do for both Stratford and Nottingham.’

  I nodded. ‘By the fruit stall.’

  ‘Settle on that, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if he isn’t down to run at either of those courses we spend Sunday surveying the road to Lingfield?’

  ‘Right.’

  He smiled vividly. ‘I haven’t felt so alive since my stint in the army. However this turns out, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

  His enthusiasm was infectious and we drove back to London in good spirits.

  Things had noticeably improved in the garden. The muck heap had gone and Owen had sloshed to some effect with buckets of water, though without obliterating the smell. He had also stayed late, waiting for my return. All three of us left our shoes in the hall and went upstairs.

  ‘Too Japanese for words,’ Charlie said.

  ‘I stayed, sir,’ Owen said, ‘because a call came from America.’

  ‘Miss Ward?’ I said hopefully.

  ‘No, sir. About a horse. It was a shipping firm. They said a horse consigned to you would be on a flight to Gatwick Airport tonight as arranged. Probable time of arrival, ten a.m. tomorrow morning. I wrote it down.’ He pointed to the pad beside the telephone. ‘But I thought I would stay in case you didn’t see it. They said you would need to engage transport to have the horse met.’

  ‘You,’ I said, ‘will be meeting it.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ he said calmly.

  ‘Owen,’ Charlie said, ‘if he ever kicks you out, come to me.’

  We all sat for a while discussing the various arrangements and Owen’s part in them. He was as eager as Charlie to make the plan work, and he too seemed to be plugged into some inner source of excitement.

  ‘I’ll enjoy it, sir,’ he said, and Charlie nodded in agreement. I had never thought of either of them as being basically adventurous and I had been wrong.

  I was wrong also about Bert Huggerneck, and even in a way about Allie, for they too proved to have more fire than reservations.

  Charlie brought Bert with him after work on Thursday and we sat round the kitchen table poring over a large scale map.

  ‘That’s the A34,’ I said, pointing with a pencil to a red line running south to north. ‘It goes all the way from Newbury to Stratford. For Nottingham, you branch off just north of Oxford. The place we’ve chosen is some way south of that. Just here…’ I marked it with the pencil. ‘About a mile before you reach the Abingdon bypass.’

  ‘I know that bleeding road,’ Bert said. ‘Goes past the Harwell atomic.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll find that. Easy as dolly-birds.’

  ‘There’s a roadside fruit stall there,’ I said. ‘Shut, at this time of year. A sort of wooden hut.’

  ‘Seen dozens of ’em,’ Bert nodded.

  ‘It has a good big space beside it for cars.’

  ‘Which side of the road?’

  ‘On the near side, going north.’

  ‘Yeah. I get you.’

  ‘It’s on a straight stretch after a fairly steep hill. Nothing will be going very fast there. Do you think you could manage?’

  ‘Here,’ he complained to Charlie. ‘That’s a bleeding insult.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Is that all I do, then? Stop the bleeding traffic?’ He sounded disappointed; and I’d thought he might have needed to be persuaded.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘After that you do a lot of hard work extremely quickly.’

  ‘What, for instance?’

  When I told him, he sat back on his chair and positively beamed.

  ‘That’s more bleeding like it,’ he said. ‘Now that’s a daisy, that is. Now you might think I’m slow on my feet, like, with bein
g big, but you’d be bleeding wrong.’

  ‘I couldn’t do it at all without you.’

  ‘Hear that?’ he said to Charlie.

  ‘It might even be true,’ Charlie said.

  Bert at that point described himself as peckish and moved in a straight line to the store cupboard. ‘What’ve you got here, then? Don’t you ever bleeding eat? Do you want this tin of ham?’

  ‘Help yourself,’ I said.

  Bert made a sandwich inch-deep in mustard and ate it without blinking. A couple of cans of beer filled the cracks.

  ‘Can I chuck the betting shop, then?’ he asked between gulps.

  ‘What have you learned about Ganser Mays?’

  ‘He’s got a bleeding nickname, that’s one thing I’ve learned. A couple of smart young managers run his shops now, you’d never know they was the same place. All keen and sharp and not a shred of soft heart like my old boss.’

  ‘A soft-hearted bookmaker?’ Charlie said. ‘There’s no such thing.’

  ‘Trouble was,’ Bert said, ignoring him, ‘he had a bleeding soft head and all.’

  ‘What is Ganser Mays’ nickname?’ I asked.

  ‘Eh? Oh yeah. Well, these two smart alecs, who’re sharp enough to cut themselves, they call him Squeezer. Squeezer Mays. When they’re talking to each other, of course, that is.’

  ‘Squeezer because he squeezes people like your boss out of business?’

  ‘You don’t hang about, do you? Yeah, that’s right. There’s two sorts of squeezer. The one they did on my boss, telling him horses were fixed to lose when they wasn’t. And the other way round, when the smart alecs know a horse that’s done no good before is fixed to win. Then they go round all the little men putting thousands on, a bit here and a bit there, and all the little men think it’s easy pickings because they think the bad horse can’t win in a month of bleeding Sundays. And then of course it does, and they’re all down the bleeding drain.’

  ‘They owe Ganser Mays something like the National Debt.’

  ‘That’s right. And they can’t raise enough bread. So then Mr pious bleeding Mays comes along and says he’ll be kind and take the shop to make up the difference. Which he does.’

  ‘I thought small bookies were more clued up nowadays,’ I said.

  ‘You’d bleeding well think so, wouldn’t you? They’ll tell you they are, but they bleeding well aren’t. Oh sure, if they find afterwards there’s been a right fiddle, like, they squeal blue murder and refuse to pay up, but take the money in the first place, of course they do. Like bleeding innocent little lambs.’