Knock Down

by Dick Francis

  ‘Is that good?’

  I shook my head, smiling, ‘The fastest ones generally don’t do it.’

  We went up to the O shaped sale ring, where the wind whistled through with enthusiasm and the meagre crowd of participants stamped their feet and tucked their hands under their armpits. Ronnie North was there, breathing out clouds of steam and wiping a running nose; and Vic was there, dandified in a belted white shiny jacket with a blue shirt underneath.

  While he was deep in conversation with a client I pointed him out to Sophie.

  ‘But he looks nice,’ she objected.

  ‘Of course he does. Hundreds of people love him.’

  She grinned. ‘Such sarcasm.’

  I bought two three-year-old fillies for a client in Italy and Vic watched broodingly from directly opposite.

  Sophie said ‘When he looks at you like that… he doesn’t look nice at all.’

  I took her to warm up over some coffee. It occurred to me uneasily and belatedly that maybe I had not been clever to bring her to Ascot. It had seemed to me that Vic was as much interested in Sophie herself as in what I was buying, and I wondered if he were already thinking of ways to get at me through her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Sophie said. ‘You’ve gone very quiet.’

  ‘Have a doughnut?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  We munched and drank, and I checked ahead through the catalogue, making memory-jogging notes about the horses we had seen in their boxes.

  ‘Does it go on like this all day?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘A bit boring for you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No… Is this what you do, day after day?’

  ‘On sales days, yes. Other days I fix up deals privately, or go to the races, or see to things like transport and insurance. Since last week I’ve barely had time to cough.’ I told her about Wilton Young and the consequently mushrooming business.

  ‘Are there a lot of horses for sale?’ she said doubtfully. ‘I wouldn’t have thought there were enough for so many people all to be involved in buying and selling.’

  ‘Well… In Britain alone there are at present about seventeen thousand thoroughbred broodmares. A mare can theoretically have a foal every year, but some years they’re barren and some foals die. I suppose there must be about nine thousand new foals or yearlings on the market every season. Then there are about twenty thousand horses in training for flat races, and heaven knows how many jumpers, but more than on the Flat. Horses which belong to the same people from birth to death are exceptions. Most of them change hands at least twice.’

  ‘With a commission for the agent every time?’ Her expression held no approval.

  I smiled, ‘Stockbrokers work for commission. Are they more respectable?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t confuse me.’

  I said, ‘France, Italy and especially America are all at it in the bloodstock business hammer and tongs. There are about thirteen hundred stud farms in the British Isles and thousands more round the world.’

  ‘All churning out horses… and only so that people can gamble.’

  I smiled at her still disapproving expression. ‘Everyone needs some sort of fantasy on their bread.’

  She opened her mouth and shut it, and shook her head. ‘I can never decide whether you are very wise or an absolute fool.’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Dead easy, I’m afraid. Most people are.’

  We went back to the ring and watched Vic and Ronnie North beat up the price of a weedy four-year-old hurdler to twice the figure his form suggested. Vic would no doubt be collecting a sizeable kick-back from the seller along with the commission from his client, and Ronnie North looked expansively pleased both with his status as underbidder for this one horse and with life in general.

  Fynedale’s successor, it seemed to me, had been elected.

  Fynedale himself, I noticed, had arrived in the ring in time to see what was happening. He seemed to be in much the same state as before, white-faced, semi-dazed and radiating unfocused hatred.

  Sophie said, ‘He looks like gelignite on the boil.’

  ‘With luck he’ll explode all over Vic.’

  ‘You’re pretty heartless… he looks ill.’

  ‘Buzz off and mother him then,’ I said.

  ‘No thanks.’

  We looked at some more horses and I bought another; we had some more coffee and the wind blew even colder. Sophie however seemed content.

  ‘Nose needs powdering,’ she said at one point. ‘Where will I meet you?’

  I consulted the catalogue. ‘I’d better look at eighty-seven and ninety-two, in their boxes.’

  ‘O.K. I’ll find you.’

  I looked at eighty-seven and decided against it. Not much bone and too much white around the eye. There was no one with him. I left his box, bolted both halves of the door and went along to ninety-two. There I opened the top half of the door and looked inside. No attendant there either, just patient Lot 92 turning an incurious gaze. I opened the bottom half of the door and went in, letting them swing shut behind me. Lot 92 was securely tied by a headcollar to a ring in the wall, but it was too cold for open doors.

  The horse was a five-year-old hurdler being sold for a quick profit while he still showed promise of being useful at six. I patted his brown flank, ran my hand down his legs, and took a good close look at his teeth.

  When the door opened and closed I paid no especial attention to whatever had come in. It should have been an attendant for the horse or another like me inspecting the goods at close quarters.

  It wasn’t.

  No instinct made me look up as I let go of the hurdler’s mouth, stroked his nose and stood back for a final appraisal.

  I saw only a flash in the air. Felt the thud in my chest. And knew, falling, that the white face of Fynedale was coming forward to finish the job.

  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 peere
d 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.’