Knock Down

by Dick Francis

  Afterwards, over coffee, I told her about Frizzy Hair turning up to take River God. It did nothing much to improve her view of my job. I told her about the flourishing feud between Constantine Brevett and Wilton Young, and also about Vic Vincent, the blue eyed boy who could do no wrong.

  ‘Constantine thinks the yearlings he’s bought must be good because they were expensive.’

  ‘It sounds reasonable.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Year after year top prices get paid for the prize flops.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because,’ I said, ‘yearlings haven’t been raced yet, and no one knows whether they will actually be any good. They make their price on their breeding.’ And that too could be rigged, though I didn’t think I had better tell her.

  ‘This Vic Vincent… he’s been paying high prices for good breeding?’

  ‘High prices for moderate breeding. Vic Vincent is costing Constantine a packet. He’s the biggest kickback merchant of the lot, and getting greedier every minute.’

  She looked more disgusted than horrified. ‘My aunt was right about you all being crooks.’

  ‘Your aunt wouldn’t tell me who demanded half her profits… if you ring her again, ask her if she’s ever heard of Vic Vincent, and see what she says.’

  ‘Why not right now?’

  She dialled her aunt’s number, and asked, and listened. Antonia Huntercombe spoke with such vehemence that I could hear her from the other side of the room, and her words were earthy Anglo-saxon. Sophie made a face at me and nearly burst out laughing.

  ‘All right,’ she said, putting down the receiver. ‘It was Vic Vincent. That’s one of life’s little mysteries cleared up. Now what about the rest?’

  ‘Let’s forget them.’

  ‘Let’s absolutely not. You can’t just forget two fights in three days.’

  ‘Not to mention a loose horse.’

  She stared. ‘Not the one…’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I might have believed that I hadn’t shut a stable door properly for the first time in eighteen years, but not that a horse could get out of his rug by undoing the buckles.’

  ‘You said… he was darker without his rug.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mean… someone took off his rug and shooed him out in front of my car… just to cause a crash?’

  ‘To injure the horse,’ I said. ‘Or even to kill it. I’d have been in very great trouble if you hadn’t reacted so quickly and missed him.’

  ‘Because you would have been sued for your horse causing an accident?’

  ‘No. The law is the other way round, if anything. Loose animals are no one’s fault, like fallen trees. No… The way the insurance on that horse was fixed, I could have lost seventy thousand pounds if he’d been damaged but not dead. And that,’ I added fervently, ‘is a position I am never going to be in again.’

  ‘Have you got seventy thousand pounds?’

  ‘Along with six castles in Spain.’

  ‘But…’ She wrinkled her forehead. ‘Letting that horse loose means that whoever it is is attacking you personally. Not Kerry Sanders or the Brevetts… but you.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must have some idea.’

  I shook my head. ‘As far as I know I’ve done no one any harm. I’ve thought about little else for two days but I can’t think of anyone with a big enough grudge to go to all this trouble.’

  ‘What about small grudges?’

  ‘Dozens of them, I dare say. They flourish like weeds.’

  She looked disapproving.

  ‘You get them everywhere,’ I said mildly. ‘In every working community. Schools, offices, convents, horse shows… all seething with little grudges.’

  ‘Not in control towers.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘You’re a cynic’

  ‘A realist; How about marriage?’

  She shook her head with a smile that took the suggestion still as a joke, and her hand strayed for the twentieth time to the little gold aeroplane on its slender chain.

  ‘Tell me about him,’ I said.

  Her eyes opened wide with shock. ‘How did you…?’

  ‘The aeroplane. You wear it for someone else.’

  She looked down at her hand and realised how often she held it in just that position, touching the talisman.

  ‘I… He’s dead.’

  She stood up abruptly and carried the coffee pot out to the kitchen. I stood also. She came back immediately with the calm friendly face, no grief showing and no encouragement either. She gestured to me to sit down again and we took our former places, me on the sofa, her in an adjacent armchair. There was a lot of space beside me on the sofa, but no way of getting her to sit there before she was ready.

  ‘We lived together,’ she said. ‘For nearly four years. We never bothered to marry. It didn’t seem to matter. At the beginning we never expected it to last… and it just grew more and more solid. I suppose we might have taken out a licence in the end…’

  Her eyes looked back into the past.

  ‘He was a pilot. A first officer on Jumbos, always on long trips to Australia…. We were used to being apart.’

  Still no emotion in her voice. ‘He didn’t die in an aeroplane.’ She paused. ‘Eighteen months ago yesterday he died in a hospital in Karachi. He had a two day rest stop there and developed an acute virus infection.… It didn’t respond to antibiotics.’

  I looked at her in silence.

  ‘I was mad to say I would marry you,’ she said. A smile twitched the corners of her eyes. ‘It was just… a rather nice bit of nonsense.’

  ‘A nonsense a day is good for the digestion.’

  ‘Then you certainly will never get ulcers.’

  We looked at each other. A moment like that in the kitchen, but with this time no Crispin to interrupt.

  ‘Would you consider,’ I said, ‘coming to sit on the sofa?’

  ‘Sit on it. Not lie on it.’

  Her meaning was plain.

  ‘All right.’

  She moved to the sofa without fuss.

  ‘I’ll say one thing for you,’ she said. ‘When you make a contract, you keep it.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Too proud not to.’

  ‘Beast.’

  She laughed. She put her head on my shoulder and her mouth eventually on mine, but it was more a matter of warmth than of kindling passions. I could feel the withdrawal lying in wait only a fraction below the surface, a tenseness in the muscles warning me how easily I could go too far.

  ‘Stop worrying,’ I said. ‘A contract’s a contract, like you said.’

  ‘Is this enough for you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She relaxed a good deal. ‘Most men nowadays think dinner leads straight to bed.’

  Most men, I reflected, had exactly the right idea. I put my arm round her and shoved the most basic of urges back into its cave. I had won a lot of waiting races in my time. Patience was an old friend.

  She lifted her head off my chest and rubbed her cheek.

  ‘Something’s scratching me.’

  I explained about the dislocating shoulder, and the strap I wore to keep it anchored in place. She traced the line of webbing across my chest and rubbed her fingers on the scratching buckle.

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘A small strap round my arm is linked to the one round my chest. It stops me lifting my arm up.’

  ‘Do you wear it always?’

  I nodded. ‘Mm.’

  ‘Even in bed?’

  ‘Not this one. A softer one.’

  ‘Isn’t it a nuisance?’

  ‘I’m so used to it I never notice.’

  She looked up at my face. ‘Couldn’t you get it fixed? Isn’t there an operation?’

  ‘I’m allergic to scalpels.’

  ‘Reasonable.’


  She stretched for a cigarette and I lit it, and we sat side by side talking about her job, and mine, her childhood and mine, her tastes in books and places and people, and mine.

  Exploration, not conflagration.

  When the time was right I kissed her again. And went home.

  7

  I spent most of the next week in Newmarket, staying with a trainer friend for the sales and the races.

  Crispin, sober and depressed, had sworn to stay off drink in my absence and find a job, and as usual I had assured him he had the willpower to do both. Experience always proved me wrong, but to him the fiction was a prop.

  Sophie had worked awkward hours all week-end and Monday but said she would come down to my house for lunch the next Sunday, if I would like. I could bear it, I said.

  The whole mob was at Newmarket. All the bloodstock agents, big and small. All the trainers with runners, all the jockeys with mounts, all the owners with hopes. All the clients with their cheque books ready. All the breeders with their year’s work at stake. All the bookies looking for mugs. All the Press looking for exclusives.

  I had commissions for eleven yearlings if I could find good ones at the right price, and in most cases my clients’ money was already in my bank. I should have been feeling quietly pleased with the way business was expanding but found instead a compulsive tendency to look over my shoulder for Frizzy Hair.

  The fact that nothing else had happened over the weekend had not persuaded me that nothing would. The attacks still seemed senseless to me, but someone somewhere must have seen a point to them, and the point was in all likelihood still there.

  Crispin had sworn on everything sacred from the Bible to his 2nd XV rugger cap that he had found the bottle of whiskey standing ready and uncapped on the kitchen table,and had smelled it as soon as he went through the door. At the tenth vehement repetition, I believed him.

  Someone knew about my shoulder. Knew about my brother. Knew I kept horses in transit in my yard. Knew I was buying a horse for Kerry Sanders to give to Nicol Brevett. Someone knew a damn sight too much.

  The Newmarket sale ring would have suited Kerry Sanders: a large enclosed amphitheatre, warm, well lit and endowed with tip-up armchairs. At ground level round the outside, under the higher rows of seating, were small offices rented by various bloodstock agents. Each of the large firms had its own office, and also a few individuals like Vic Vincent. One had to do a good deal of business to make the expense worth it, though the convenience was enormous. I would have arrived, I thought, when I had my own little office at every major sale ring. As it was I did my paperwork as usual in the margins of the catalogue and conducted meetings in the bar.

  I turned up on the first day, Tuesday, before the first horse was sold, because often there were bargains to be had before the crowds came, and was buttonholed just inside the gate by Ronnie North.

  ‘I got your cheque for River God,’ he said. ‘Now tell me, wasn’t that just what you wanted?’

  ‘You should have seen it.’

  He looked pained. ‘I saw it race last spring.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think it had been groomed since.’

  ‘You can’t have everything for that money.’

  He was a small whippet of a man, as quick on his feet as in his deals. He never looked anyone in the face for long. His eyes were busy as usual, looking over my shoulder to see who was arriving, who going and what chance of the quick buck he might be missing.

  ‘Did he like it?’ he asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nicol Brevett.’

  Something in my stillness drew his attention. The wander ing eyes snapped back to my face and he took rapid stock of his indiscretion.

  I said, ‘Did you know it was for Nicol before you sold it to me?’

  ‘No,’ he said, but his fractional hesitation meant ‘yes’.

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Common knowledge,’ he said.

  ‘No, it wasn’t. How did you know?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’ He showed signs of having urgent business elsewhere and edged three steps sideways.

  ‘You just lost a client,’ I said.

  He stopped. ‘Honest, Jonah, I can’t tell you. Leave it at that, there’s a pal. More than my life’s worth to say more, and if you want to do me a favour you’ll forget I mentioned…’

  ‘A favour for a favour,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Start the bidding for number four.’

  ‘You want to buy it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He looked at me doubtfully. No one who wanted to buy liked to show eagerness by making the first bid, but on the other hand no astute bloodstock dealer ever told another which horse he was after. I produced all the earnest naivety I could muster and he smirked a little and agreed to bid. When he had darted off I slowly followed, and saw him from across the paddock talking excitedly to Vic Vincent.

  Together they turned the first few pages of the catalogue and read the small print. Vic Vincent shook his head. Ronnie North talked quickly, but Vic Vincent shook his head even harder.

  I shrugged. All I’d proved was that Ronnie North wouldn’t do me a favour without clearing it with Vic Vincent. It didn’t follow that it was Vic Vincent who had told him that River God was for Nicol Brevett.

  The first few horses were being led up from the stables to the collecting rings, and I leaned on the rails and took a close look at number four. A chestnut colt grown out of proportion with a rear end too tall for its front. Time would probably right that, but would do little to improve the narrow head. Its breeding was fairly good, its full sister had won a decent race, and it was being offered for sale by Mrs Antonia Huntercombe of Paley Stud.

  ‘Morning, Jonah,’ said a voice half behind me.

  I turned. Jiminy Bell, half ingratiating, half aggressive, as at Ascot. A great one for arriving unheard at one’s elbow. He looked pinched with cold in the brisk wind because his overcoat was too thin for the job.

  ‘Hullo,’ I said. ‘Care to earn a tenner?’

  ‘You’re on.’ No hesitation at all.

  ‘Start the bidding on number four.’

  ‘What?’ His mouth stayed open with surprise.

  ‘Go up to two thousand.’

  ‘But you never… you never…’

  ‘Just this once,’ I said.

  He gulped, nodded, and presently disappeared. He was less obvious than Ronnie North, but in a remarkably short time he too fetched up beside Vic Vincent, and he too got the emphatic shake of the head.

  I sighed. Sophie’s Aunt Antonia was about to make another loss. For Sophie’s sake I had tried to ensure her a good price, but if Vic Vincent had put the evil eye on the colt I was going to get it for almost nothing. I thought on the whole that I had better not buy it. I wouldn’t be able to explain it to either Sophie or her aunt.

  Very much to my surprise I found Vic himself drifting round to my side. He rested his elbows on the rails beside me, and nodded a greeting.

  ‘Jonah.’

  ‘Vic’

  We exchanged minimal smiles that were more a social convention than an expression of friendship. Yet I could have liked him, and once had, and still would have done had he not twice pinched my clients by telling them lies.

  It was so easy to believe Vic Vincent. He had a large weatherbeaten face with a comfortable double chin and a full mouth which smiled easily and turned up at the corners even in repose. A lock of reddish brown hair growing forward over his forehead gave him a boyish quality although he must have been forty, and even his twinkling blue eyes looked sincere.

  The bonhomie was barely skin deep. When I protested about my lost clients he had laughed and told me that all was fair in love, war and bloodstock, and if I didn’t like the heat to get out of the kitchen but he would stoke up the fire as much as he liked.

  He turned up his sheepskin coat collar round his ears and banged one thickly gloved hand against the other.

 
‘Parky this morning.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I heard you had a spot of bother at Ascot,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Constantine Brevett told me.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He paused. ‘If Mrs Sanders wants any more horses, you’d better let me get them.’

  ‘Did Constantine say so?’

  ‘He did.’

  He watched the first horses walk round the ring. Number four looked reasonable from behind but scratchy in front.

  ‘I bought a colt just like that, once,’ Vic observed. ‘I thought his shoulders would develop. They never did. Always a risk when they grow unevenly.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. Poor Antonia.

  He stayed a few more seconds, but he had delivered his two messages as succinctly as if he’d said straight out ‘Don’t step on my toes, and don’t buy that colt.’ He gave me the sort of reinforcing nod that the boss gives the cowed and ambled bulkily away.

  The loudspeakers coughed and cleared their throats and said good morning everyone the sale is about to begin.

  I went inside. Apart from four or five earnestly suited auctioneers in their spacious rostrum the place was deserted. Electric lights augmenting the daylight shone brightly on tiers of empty seats, and the sand on the circular track where the merchandise would walk was raked fine and flat. The auctioneers looked hopefully towards the door from the collecting ring and Lot 1 made its apologetic appearance attended by a few worried-looking people who were apparently its vendors.

  There was no bid. No one there bidding. Lot 1 made its way out through the far door and the worried people went after it.

  There was no bid for Lot 2 and ditto for Lot 3. British auctioneers tended to arrange their catalogues so that the potential money-makers came up in mid-session, and small studs like Antonia’s got the cold outer edges.

  Lot 4 looked better under bright lights. All horses always did, like jewellery, which was why auctioneers and jewellers spent happily on electricity.

  The auctioneer dutifully started his sale while clearly expecting nothing to come of it. He stretched the price up to one thousand without one genuine bid, at which point I rather undecidedly waved my catalogue. Antonia would be livid if I got it for a thousand.

  ‘Thank you sir,’ he said sounding surprised, and picked ‘Eleven hundred’ expertly out of the totally empty ranks of seats facing him.