Wild Horses

by Dick Francis

We did the interview, Nash and I side by side. Greg introduced us to the viewers, asked if Nash had backed the winner of the Lincoln - Gallico - congratulated him and said he hoped Nash was enjoying his visit to Britain.

  Nash said, “I'm making a film here. Very enjoyable.” He nodded affably. He added a few details casually, as Greg had wanted, but left no listeners in doubt that the racing film we were making in Newmarket was going well.

  “Didn't I read an uncomplimentary report...?” Greg prompted quizzically.

  “Yes,” Nash agreed, nodding. “Words were put into my mouth that I never said. So what else is new? Never believe newspapers.”

  “You're playing a trainer, aren't you?” Greg asked the questions we had asked him to ask as if he'd just that minute thought of them. “How's it going with the riding?”

  “I can sit on a horse,” Nash smiled. “I can't ride like Thomas.”

  “Do you ride in the film?” Greg asked me helpfully.

  “No, he doesn't,” Nash said, “but he takes a horse out on the Heath to gallop it sometimes. Still, I can beat him at golf.”

  The affection in his voice said more than a thousand words. Greg wound up the interview good-naturedly and expertly handed on the couch potatoes to the paddock commentator for profiles of the next race's runners.

  “Thank you,” I said, “very much.”

  “A row of seats,” he nodded. “Don't forget.” He paused, and added cynically, “Do you play golf, Thomas?”

  “I can always beat him,” Nash confirmed.

  “You're a double act!” Greg said.

  O'Hara had watched the interview in the television company's headquarters in London, and he buzzed my telephone before I'd found a quiet spot for reaching him.

  “Brilliant!” he said, almost laughing. “Brotherly love all over the screen. Not a dry eye in the house.”

  “Will it work?”

  “Of course it will work.”

  “Will it get to the meeting in time?”

  “Cancel the anxiety, Thomas. The people here have been real helpful. Their fee would launch a Hubble telescope, but the moguls will see the show with their wheaties.”

  “Thanks, O'Hara.”

  “Give me Nash.”

  I handed the phone over and watched Nash deliver a series of nods and yeses.

  “Yes, of course he suggested my lines,” Nash said, “and he got that pal of his to ask the right questions. How? Hell knows. The old jockey network, I guess.”

  The last few races crawled by and, having thanked our hosts, we flew back to Newmarket with still no further word from O'Hara. After-breakfast time in Los Angeles. What were the moguls doing?

  “Stop biting your nails,” Nash said.

  His chauffeured Rolls took us back to Bedford Lodge, where Nash suggested I join him in his rooms so that we might both hear what O'Hara might report.

  The film company had engaged four comfortable suites in the hotel; the best for Nash, one for Silva, one for me and one (often empty) for O'Hara or other visiting mogul. Rooms in the hotel were provided for Moncrieff and for Howard: the rest of the approximately sixty people working on the film, those in scene-setting, wardrobe, make-up, those in technical trades, those who were assistants or production staff or couriers, all those inescapably involved were staying in various other hotels, motels or private lodgings. Most of the stable lads were housed in a hostel. The horse-master/assistant trainer went home to his wife. The overall logistics of keeping everyone fed and working within union guidelines were, thankfully, not my job.

  Nash's rooms looked out over pleasant gardens and provided large armchairs fit for soothing limbs made weary by hours of pretending to be someone else; or rather by hours of waiting around in order to pretend to be someone else, for five minutes or so, now and then. Moncrieff and I might work frantically non-stop. Actors stood around getting bored, waiting for us to be ready. Actors, lengthily immobile, grew tired, while Moncrieff and I did not.

  Nash sank into his favourite armchair and for about the four-hundredth time looked at his watch.

  Five hours had gone. Almost six. I'd spent a great deal of the time sweating.

  My mobile phone buzzed. My mouth went dry. Buzz, buzz.

  “Answer it!” Nash commanded crossly, seeing my reluctance.

  I said, “Hello.” More of a croak.

  “Thomas?” O'Hara said. “You're not fired.”

  “Thomas? Did you hear? Get on with the film.”

  “I... er ...”

  “For hell's sake! Is Nash there?”

  I handed the phone to the green light whose reaction to the news was a robust, “I should damn well think so. Yes, of course he's been worried, he's only human.”

  He gave me the phone back. O'Hara said, “There are strings attached. I have to spend more time in Newmarket supervising you. One of the big boys is coming to visit, in order to be satisfied that their money is being spent reasonably. They waffled on for far too long about who they could put in to direct in your place. But in the end your television clip did the trick. Nash convinced them. They still think he can do no wrong. If Nash is happy, they'll keep you on.”

  “I'm coming back to Newmarket tomorrow. It's a goddamn nuisance as I was planning to fly to LA, but there it is. Like you said, it's my head on the block alongside yours. What will you be doing tomorrow morning?”

  “Horses galloping on the Heath.”

  “And Nash?”

  “Sitting on a horse, watching. In the afternoon, we ferry the horses to Huntingdon racecourse. Monday we set up and rehearse the crowd scenes at the races. Some of the crews are moving to motels around Huntingdon, but Nash and I, and a few others, are staying in our rooms here in Newmarket.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Only about thirty-eight miles. Where do you want to sleep?”

  “Newmarket.” No hesitation. “Get yourself a driver, Thomas. I don't want you falling asleep at the wheel with those long hours you work.”

  “I like to drive myself, and it's not very far.”

  “Get a driver.”

  It was an order. I said OK. I was grateful to be still employed. He said, “See you, fellow,” and I said, “Thanks, O'Hara,” and he left one further report: “Howard will have his claws well clipped. Stupid son of a bitch.”

  “There you go,” Nash said, smiling, when I switched the phone off. “Drink? Eat with me, why not?”

  Nash had most of his meals alone upstairs, brought by room service. Unlike most actors he had a solitary streak to which, because of his wife's absence, he had given free rein. Surprised, therefore, but pleased not to be dining alone myself, I stayed for soup, lamb and claret and a step into a positive friendship that I wouldn't, a couple of weeks earlier, have thought likely.

  Relaxed after the day's troubles, I decided to make a brief call on Dorothea, to see if she needed anything, before my scheduled meeting with Moncrieff to plan the morning's activities on the Heath.

  I expected to find a quiet sorrowful house. Instead, when I arrived there, I found flashing lights, a police car, and an ambulance.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A policeman barred my attempt to walk up the concrete path.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Clear the path, please, sir.” He was young, big, businesslike, and unsympathetic with unknown members of the public. He had kept - and was keeping - a small crowd of onlookers from stepping too close to the goings-on.

  I tried again. “The people who live here are my friends.”

  “Stand back, if you please, sir.” He scarcely looked at me, unintentionally impressive, a large physical barrier that I had no inclination to fight.

  I retreated through the curious crowd and from behind them used my constant companion, the portable telephone, to ring Dorothea's number. After what seemed a very long time a distressed woman's voice said, “Hello.”

  “Dorothea?” I said. “It's Thomas.”

  “Oh. Oh, no, I'm Betty. Where are you, Thom
as? Can you come?” I explained I was outside but obstructed and in a few seconds she was hurrying down the path to collect me. The large policeman stepped aside, shrugging, not caring one way or the other, and I hastened with Betty towards the front door.

  “What's happened?” I asked her.

  “Someone broke in. It's terrible ... they've nearly killed Dorothea ... how could they? Dr Gill has just come and the police too and there's so much blood and they're taking photographs and it's all unbelievable ...”

  We went into the house which looked inside as if it had been swept through by a tornado.

  Valentine's bedroom by the front door had been wrecked: drawers were upturned on the floor, their contents scattered. The wardrobe stood open, empty. Pictures had been torn from the walls, their frames smashed. Mattress and pillows were ripped, guts spilling.

  “It's all like this,” Betty wailed. “Even the bathrooms and the kitchen. I must go back to Dorothea ... I'm afraid she'll die ...”

  She left me and vanished into Dorothea's bedroom where I with hesitation followed, stepping round a wide drying sea of blood in the hall.

  I needn't have felt I might be intruding: the room was full of people. Robbie Gill obstructed my view of most of Dorothea, who was lying unspeaking but in shoes and stockings on the sliced ruins of her bed. Two ambulancemen filled half the available space with a stretcher on wheels. A uniformed policewoman and a photographer were busy. Betty threaded a way into the throng, beckoning me to follow.

  Robbie Gill glanced up, saw me, nodded recognition and took a pace back with the result that I saw all of Dorothea, and became sickened and overwhelmingly angry.

  She was bleeding, swollen and unconscious, with great gashes in the flesh of her cheek and forehead and a red mess where her mouth was.

  “Her right arm's broken,” Robbie Gill dictated to the note-taking policewoman. “She has internal injuries ...” He stopped. Even for a doctor, it was too much. Dorothea's clothes were ripped open, her old breasts and stomach bare, two slashed wounds on her body bleeding copiously, one so deep that a bulge of intestines protruded through the abdomen wall, a glistening pale swelling island in a wet scarlet ocean. The smell of blood was overpowering.

  Robbie Gill took sterile dressings from his bag and told everyone except the policewoman to leave. She herself looked over-pale, but stood her ground as the rest of us silently obeyed.

  Betty was shaking, tears on her cheeks.

  “I came over to make sure she'd given herself something to eat. She doesn't take care of herself, now Valentine's gone. I came in through the back door, into the kitchen, and it's wrecked ... it's terrible ... and I found her, she was bleeding on the floor in the hall, and I thought she was dead ... so I phoned Dr Gill because his number is right beside the phone in the kitchen, and he brought the police here and the ambulancemen ... and they carried her into the bedroom. Do you think she'll be all right?” Her anxiety shook her. “She won't die, not like this. How could anyone do this?”

  I had imagined and I had filmed scenes as bad or worse, but the blood we'd used had often been lipstick dissolved in oil - to give it viscosity - and intestines made of inflated sausage skin, and sweat sprayed through an atomiser onto grey-greasepainted faces.

  More people came, apparently plain-clothes policemen. Betty and I retreated to Dorothea's sitting-room where, again, comprehensive chaos paralysed thought.

  “How could anyone do this?” Betty repeated numbly. “Why would anyone do it?”

  “Did she have anything valuable?” I asked.

  “Of course she didn't. Just her little knick-knacks. Trinkets and souvenirs. They've even torn the photo of her and Bill's wedding. How could they?” She picked up the ruins of a photo frame, crying for her friend's pain. “And her pretty pink vase ... it's in splinters. She loved that vase.”

  I stared at the pink pieces, and then went down on one knee and fruitlessly searched the carpet around them.

  “I've put the key in the pink vase in my sitting-room.”

  Dorothea's voice spoke clearly in my memory. The key of Valentine's study, in safekeeping to prevent her son Paul from taking the books.

  Bitterly but silently swearing I went along the passage and pushed open the study's half-closed door. The key was in the lock. Inside, Valentine's sanctum had been ravaged like the rest of the house; everything breakable had been demolished, everything soft slashed, all his photographs destroyed.

  Every book had gone.

  I opened the cupboard where I knew he kept the scrapbooks containing every column he'd ever written for newspapers.

  Every shelf was bare.

  Betty, trembling, put her hand on my arm and said, “Dorothea told me Valentine wanted you to have his books. Where have they gone?”

  With Paul, I automatically thought. But he couldn't have inflicted such wounds on his mother. A pompous, bombastic man, yes; but not to this extent vicious.

  I asked Betty, “Where is Paul? Her son.”

  :Oh, dear! Oh, dear! He went home yesterday. He doesn't know ... And I don't know his number ...” She swayed. “I can't bear it.”

  “Don't worry,” I said. “Sit down. I'll find his number. I'll get you some tea. Where's your husband?”

  “It's his darts night... at the pub.”

  “Which pub?”

  “Oh, dear... The Dragon.”

  First things first, I thought, heading for the kitchen. Hot sweet tea prevented a lot of breakdowns from shock. No figure of authority stopped me, though the little house seemed crowded with them. I took the cup and saucer to Betty who held them clattering in both hands as she sat in Valentine's room.

  In the old man's fortunately unshredded phone book I looked up The Dragon's number and spoiled Betty's husband's treble twenty by asking him to come home quickly. Then I searched around for Paul's number and ran it to earth on the notepad attached to the extension phone in the kitchen.

  Paul answered, and I listened to his obnoxious voice with relief. If he were at home in Surrey he couldn't have attacked his mother a hundred miles away in Newmarket, not with her wounds so recent and bleeding. Even if she lived, she couldn't have mentally recovered from being attacked by her own son.

  He sounded as appalled as he ought to be. He announced he would set off at once.

  “I don't know which hospital they'll take her to,” I said.

  “Is she going to die?” he interrupted.

  “Like I told you, I don't know. Hold on for a bit and I'll get Dr Gill to talk to you.”

  “Useless man!”

  “Stay on the line,” I said. “Wait.”

  I left the kitchen, found the plain-clothes men starting to blow dust on things for fingerprints and hovered until Dorothea's door opened to let out the policewoman who was beckoning to the men to bring back the stretcher.

  I said to her, “Mrs Pannier's son is on the telephone. Please can Dr Gill talk to him?”

  She looked at me vaguely and retreated into Dorothea's room with the ambulance people, but it seemed that she did pass on the message because presently Robbie Gill opened the bedroom door again and asked me if Paul were actually on the line.

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “He's waiting to talk to you.”

  “Tell him I won't be long.”

  I relayed the message to Paul. He was impatiently displeased. I told him to wait and left him. Angry and anxious about Dorothea, and concerned about the missing books, I found reassuring Paul impossible. I couldn't even be decently sympathetic. I was sure he wouldn't give the books back unless I took him to court, and even then I had no list of what I'd lost.

  Robbie Gill accompanied Dorothea on the rolling stretcher right out to the ambulance, solicitously making sure she was gently treated. Then, looking stern, he came back into the house, strode down the hall to where I waited by the kitchen door, walked over to the central table and picked up the receiver.

  “Mr Pannier?” he asked, then grimaced crossly as Paul spoke on the other end.

/>   “Mr Pannier,” Robbie said forcefully, “your mother has been beaten about the head. She's unconscious from those blows. Her right arm is broken. In addition, she has knife wounds to her body. I am sending her to Cambridge ...” he named the hospital ... “where she will receive the best attention. I cannot tell you whether or not she will survive.” He listened with disgust to Paul's reply. “No, she was not sexually assaulted. I have done everything possible. I suggest you check with the hospital later. It is now out of my hands.” He thrust the receiver back into its cradle, compressed his mouth as if physically restraining himself from swearing, and squeezed his eyes with finger and thumb.

  “How is she really?” I asked.

  He shrugged wearily, his expression relaxing. “I don't know. She put up a fight, I should think. Tried to defend herself with her arm. It's odd ... it's almost as if she had two assailants ... one that hit her arm and her head with something hard and jagged, and one that used a knife. Or perhaps there was only one assailant, but with two weapons.”

  “It's a useless question,” I said, “but why attack her?”

  A dear good old lady! The world's grown vicious.

  “Old ladies get attacked. I detest that son of hers. I shouldn't say that. Pay no attention. He wanted to know if she'd been raped.”

  “He's the ultimate four-letter case.”

  “The police want to know why the whole house is in this state.” He waved an arm at the devastation around. “How do I know? They weren't poor, they weren't rich. Poor old bodies. They relied on you lately, you know. They loved you, in a way. Pity you weren't their son.”

  “Valentine was part of my childhood.”

  “Yes. He told me.”

  “Well... what happens next?”

  “The police are talking about attempted murder, because of the knife wounds. But... I don't know ...”

  “What?” I prompted, as he hesitated.

  “It may be fanciful ... I don't know if I'll say it to the police ... but it would have taken so little to finish her off. Just one stab in the right place.” He paused. “You saw her, didn't you?”

  “Yes, when you moved back from her bed.”