High Stakes

by Dick Francis

  Department of the Environment

  Census point

  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.

  13

  Charlie, Allie, Bert and Owen were all in the caravan when I drove back there, drinking coffee and laughing like kids.

  ‘Here,’ Bert said, wheezing with joy. ‘A bleeding police car came along a second after I’d picked up the census notices and all those cones. Just a bleeding second.’

  ‘It didn’t stop, I hope.’

  ‘Not a bleeding chance. Mind you, I’d taken off the fancy clobber. First thing. The fuzz don’t love you for impersonating them, even if your hatband is only a bit of bleeding ribbon painted in checks.’

  Charlie said more soberly. ‘It was the only police car we’ve seen.’

  ‘The cones were only in the road for about ten minutes,’ Allie said. ‘It sure would have been unlucky if the police had driven by in that time.’

  She was sitting by one of the desks looking neat but unremarkable in a plain skirt and jersey. On the desk stood my typewriter, uncovered, with piles of stationery alongside. Charlie, at the other desk, wore an elderly suit, faintly shabby and a size too small. He had parted his hair in the centre and brushed it flat with water, and had somehow contrived
a look of middling beaurocracy instead of world finance. Before him, too, lay an impressive array of official forms and other literature and the walls of the caravan were drawing-pinned with exhortative Ministry posters.

  ‘How did you get all this bleeding junk?’ said Bert, waving his hand at it.

  ‘Applied for it,’ I said. ‘It’s not difficult to get government forms or information posters. All you do is ask.’

  ‘Blimey.’

  ‘They’re not census forms, of course. Most of them are application forms for driving licences and passports and things like that. Owen and I just made up the census questions and typed them out for Charlie, and he pretended to put the answers on the forms.’

  Owen drank his coffee with a happy smile and Charlie said, chuckling, ‘You should have seen your man here putting on his obstructive act. Standing there in front of me like an idiot and either answering the questions wrong or arguing about answering them at all. The two men from the horsebox thought him quite funny and made practically no fuss about being kept waiting. It was the other man, Pete Duveen, who was getting tired of it, but as he was at the back of the queue he couldn’t do much.’

  ‘Four minutes,’ Owen said. ‘You said you needed a minimum of four. So we did our best.’

  ‘You must have given me nearer five,’ I said gratefully. ‘Did you hear anything?’

  Allie laughed. ‘There was so much darned racket going on in here. Owen arguing, me banging away on the typewriter, the traffic outside, pop radio inside, and that heater… How did you fix that heater?’

  We all looked at the calor gas heater which warmed the caravan. It clattered continually like a broken fan.

  ‘Screwed a small swinging flap up at the top here, inside. The rising hot air makes it bang against the casing.’

  ‘Switch it off,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s driving me mad’.

  I produced instead a screwdriver and undid the necessary screws. Peace returned to the gas and Charlie said he could see the value of a college education.

  ‘Pete Duveen knew the other box driver,’ Allie said conversationally. ‘Seems they’re all one big club.’

  ‘See each other every bleeding day at the races,’ Bert confirmed. ‘Here, that box driver made a bit of a fuss when I said the lad had to go into the caravan too. Like you said, they aren’t supposed to leave a racehorse unguarded. So I said I’d bleeding guard it for him. How’s that for a laugh? He said he supposed it was okay, as I was the police. I said I’d got instructions that everyone had to go into the census, no exceptions.’

  ‘People will do anything if it looks official enough,’ Charlie said, happily nodding.

  ‘Well…’ I put down my much needed cup of coffee and stretched my spine. ‘Time to be off, don’t you think?’

  ‘Right,’ Charlie said. ‘All this paper and stuff goes in Owen’s van.’

  They began moving slowly, the reminiscent smiles still in place, packing the phoney census into carrier bags. Allie came out with me when I left.

  ‘We’ve had more fun…’ she said. ‘You can’t imagine.’

  I supposed that I felt the same way, now that the flurry was over. I gave her a hug and a kiss and told her to take care of herself, and she said you, too.

  ‘I’ll call you this evening,’ I promised.

  ‘I wish I was coming with you.’

  ‘We can’t leave that here all day,’ I said, pointing to the Land-Rover and the trailer.

  She smiled. ‘I guess not. Charlie says we’d all best be gone before anyone starts asking what we’re doing.’

  ‘Charlie is a hundred per cent right.’

  I went to Stratford on Avon races.

  Drove fast, thinking of the righting of wrongs without benefit of lawyers. Thinking of the ephemeral quality of racehorses and the snail pace of litigation. Thinking that the best years of a hurdler’s life could be wasted in stagnation while the courts deliberated to whom he belonged. Wondering what Jody would do when he found out about the morning’s work and hoping that I knew him well enough to have guessed right.

  When I drew up in the racecourse car park just before the first race, I saw Jody’s box standing among a row of others over by the entrance to the stables. The ramp was down and from the general stage of activity I gathered that the horse was still on board.

  I sat in my car a hundred yards away, watching through raceglasses. I wondered when the lad would realise he had the wrong horse. I wondered if he would realise at all, because he certainly wouldn’t expect to set off with one and arrive with another, and he would quite likely shrug off the first stirring of doubt. He was new in the yard since I had left and with average luck, knowing Jody’s rate of turnover, he would be neither experienced nor very bright.

  Nothing appeared to be troubling him at that moment. He walked down the ramp carrying a bucket and a bundle of other equipment and went through the gate to the stables. He looked about twenty. Long curly hair. Slight in build. Wearing flashy red trousers. I hoped he was thinking more of his own appearance than his horse’s. I put the glasses down and waited.

  My eye was caught by a woman in a white coat striding across the car park towards the horse boxes, and it took about five seconds before I realised with a jolt who she was.

  Felicity Leeds.

  Jody might have taken his knowing eyes to Chepstow, but Felicity had brought hers right here.

  I hopped out of the car as if stung and made speed in her direction.

  The lad came out of the stable, went up the ramp and shortly reappeared, holding the horse’s head. Felicity walked towards him as he began to persuade the horse to disembark.

  ‘Felicity,’ I called.

  She turned, saw me, looked appalled, threw a quick glance over her shoulder at the descending horse and walked decisively towards me.

  When she stopped I looked over her shoulder and said with the sort of puzzlement which takes little to tip into suspicion, ‘What horse is that?’

  She took another hurried look at the black hindquarters now disappearing towards the stable and visibly gathered her wits.

  ‘Padellic. Novice hurdler. Not much good.’

  ‘He reminds me…’ I said slowly.

  ‘First time out, today,’ Felicity said hastily. ‘Nothing much expected.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, not sounding entirely reassured. ‘Are you going into the stables to see him, because I…’

  ‘No,’ she said positively. ‘No need. He’s perfectly all right.’ She gave me a sharp nod and walked briskly away to the main entrance to the course.

  Without an accompanying trainer no one could go into the racecourse stables. She knew I would have to contain my curiosity until the horse came out for its race and until then, from her point of view, she was safe.

  I, however, didn’t want her visiting the stables herself. There was no particular reason why she should, as trainers mostly didn’t when the journey from home to course was so short. All the same I thought I might as well fill up so much of her afternoon that she scarcely had time.

  I came up with her again outside the weighing room, where she vibrated with tension from her patterned silk headscarf to her high-heeled boots. There were sharp patches of colour on her usually pale cheeks and the eyes which regarded me with angry apprehension were as hot as fever.

  ‘Felicity,’ I said. ‘Do you know anything about a load of muck that was dumped in my front garden?’

  ‘A what?’ The blank look she gave me was not quite blank enough.

  I described at some length the component parts and all-over consistency of the obstruction and remarked on their similarity to the discard pile at her own home.

  ‘All muck heaps are alike,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t tell where one particular load came from.’

  ‘All you’d need is a sample for forensic analysis.’

  ‘Did you take one?’ she said sharply.

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘You and Jody seem t
he most likely to have done it.’

  She looked at me with active dislike. ‘Everyone on the racecourse knows what a shit you’ve been to us. It doesn’t surprise me at all that someone has expressed the same opinion in a concrete way.’

  ‘It surprises me very much that anyone except you should bother.’

  ‘I don’t intend to talk about it,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Well I do,’ I said, and did, at some length, repetitively.

  The muck heap accounted for a good deal of the afternoon, and Quintus, in a way, for the rest.

  Quintus brought his noble brow and empty mind on to the stands and gave Felicity a peck on the cheek, lifting his hat punctiliously. To me he donated what could only be called a scowl.

  Felicity fell upon him as if he were a saviour.

  ‘I didn’t know you were coming!’ She sounded gladder than glad that he had.

  ‘Just thought I would, you know, my dear.’

  She drew him away from me out of earshot and began talking to him earnestly. He nodded, smiling, agreeing with her. She talked some more. He nodded benignly and patted her shoulder.

  I homed in again like an attacking wasp.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, leave the bloody subject alone,’ Felicity exploded.

  ‘What’s the fella talking about?’ Quintus said.

  ‘A muck heap on his doorstep.’

  ‘Oh,’ Quintus said. ‘Ah…’

  I described it all over again. I was getting quite attached to it, in retrospect.

  Quintus was distinctly pleased. Chuckles quivered in his throat and his eyes twinkled with malice.

  ‘Serves you right, what?’ he said.

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Shit to a shit,’ he said, nodding with satisfaction.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Er… nothing.’

  Realisation dawned on me with a sense of fitness. ‘You did it yourself,’ I said with conviction,

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He was still vastly amused.

  ‘Lavatory humour would be just your mark.’

  ‘You are insulting.’ Less amusement, more arrogance.