Wild Horses

by Dick Francis

  “Still alive?” he asked chattily.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “So what do you need?”

  As always with Robbie, straight to the point.

  “First,” I said, “who gave you the list of knife specialists?”

  “My professional colleague in the police force,” he said promptly. “The doctor they call out locally. He's a randy joker, ex-rugger player, good for a laugh and a jar in the pub. I asked him for known knife specialists. He said the force had drawn up the list themselves recently and asked him if he could add to it. He couldn't. The people he knows who carry knives tend to be behind bars.”

  “Did he attend to Dorothea?”

  “No, he was away. Anything else?”

  “How is she?”

  “Dorothea? Still sedated. Now Paul's gone, do you still want to pay for the nursing home?”

  “Yes, I do, and I want to see her soon, like this afternoon.”

  “No problem. Just go. She's still in a side ward because of Paul, but physically she's healing well. We could move her by Tuesday, I should think.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Take care.”

  I said wryly, “I do.”

  In the stable yard the lads were readying for morning exercise, saddling and bridling the horses. As it was Sunday, I told them, we would again have the Heath gallops more or less to ourselves, but we wouldn't be filming exactly the same scenes as the week before.

  “You were all asked to wear what you did last Sunday,” I said. “Did you all check with our continuity girl if you couldn't remember?”

  I got nods.

  “Fine. Then all of you will canter up the hill and stop where you stopped and circled last week. OK?”

  More nods.

  “You remember the rider who came from nowhere and made a slash at Ivan?”

  They laughed. They wouldn't forget it.

  “Right,” I said, “today we don't have Ivan, but we're going to stage that attack ourselves, and put it into the film. Today it will be a fictional affair. OK? The knife used will not be a real knife but one that's been made out of wood by our production department. What I want you to do is exactly the sort of thing you were doing last Sunday - circling, talking, paying not much attention to the stranger. Right?”

  They understood without trouble. Our young horse-master said, “Who is going to stand in for Ivan?”

  “I am,” I said. “I'm not as broad-shouldered as him or as Nash, but I'll be wearing a jacket like the one Nash usually wears as the trainer. I'll be riding the horse Ivan rode. When we're ready with the cameras, the man playing the knife-attacker will mount and ride that slow old bay that finished last in our race at Huntingdon. The lad who usually rides him will be standing behind the cameras, out of shot. Any questions?”

  One asked, “Are you going to chase him down the hill on the camera truck, like last week?”

  “No,” I said. “He will gallop off down the hill. The camera will film him.”

  I handed over command, so to speak, to the horse-master, who organised the mounting and departure of the string. Ed and Moncrieff were already on the Heath. I went into the wardrobe section to put on Nash's jacket and, Ridley being ready, took him with me in my car up the road to the brow of the hill. Ridley and I, out of the car, walked over to the circling horses, stopping by the camera truck.

  “What we need,” I told Ridley, “is for you to ride into the group from somewhere over there ...” I pointed. “Trot into the group, draw a make-believe knife from a sheath on your belt, slash at one of the group as if you intended to wound him badly, and then, in the ensuing melee, canter off over the brow of the hill and down the wide training ground towards the town. OK?”

  Ridley stared, his eyes darkly intense.

  “You will slash at me, OK? I'm standing in for Nash.”

  Ridley said nothing.

  'Of course,” I told him pleasantly, “when this scene appears in the finished film it will not look like one smooth sequence. There will be flashes of the knife, of horses rearing, of jumbled movement and confusion. There will be a wound. There will be blood. We will fake those later.” Ed brought various props across to where I stood with Ridley, and handed them to him one by one.

  “Make-believe knife in sheath on belt,” Ed said, as if reading from a list. “Please put on the belt.”

  As if mesmerised, Ridley obeyed.

  “Please practise drawing the knife,” I said.

  Ridley drew the knife and looked at it in horror. The production department had faithfully reproduced the American trench knife from my drawing, and although the object Ridley held was light-weight and of painted wood, from three paces it looked like a heavy knuckleduster with a long blade attached to its index finger side.

  “Fine,” I said non-committally. “Put it back in its sheath.”

  Ridley fumbled the knife back into place.

  “Helmet,” Ed said, holding it out.

  Ridley buckled on the helmet.

  “Goggles,” Ed offered.

  Ridley put them on slowly.

  Ridley hesitated.

  “Anything the matter?” I asked.

  Ridley said “No” hoarsely, and accepted a leg-up onto our slowest nag.

  “Great,” I said, “off you go, then. When Ed yells "Action", just trot straight towards me, draw the knife, take a slash, and canter away fast towards Newmarket. Do you want a rehearsal, or do you think you can get it right first time?”

  The helmeted, be-goggled, gloved figure didn't respond.

  “We'll take a bet you can get it right,” I said.

  Ridley seemed incapable of action. I asked the lad whose horse he was riding to lead him over to the starting point, and then let go and clear the shot. While the lad intelligently followed the instruction, the lad on Nash's horse dismounted and gave me a leg-up. The cracked rib tugged sharply. I lengthened the stirrup leathers. Moncrieff opened his floodlights to bathe the scene and augment the daylight.

  Ed yelled, “Action.”

  Ridley Wells kicked his horse into a canter, not a trot. He tugged the knife free with his right hand while holding the reins with his left. He steered his mount with his legs, expert that he was, and he aimed himself straight at me, as murderously intent as one could have hoped.

  The “knife” hit my coat and the carapace beneath and because the imitation blade had no slicing power, the impact knocked the weapon flying out of Ridley's grasp.

  “I've dropped it,” he shouted, and I pointed to the brow of the hill and yelled at him, “Never mind. Gallop.”

  He galloped. He sat down low in the saddle and galloped as if it were a genuine escape.

  The lads on their horses crowded to the top of the hill to watch, just as before, and this time I went after the fugitive on a horse, not in a truck.

  The truck was being driven down the road, camera whirring. The sequence I finally cut together for the film showed 'Nash' closely chasing his assailant; Nash with a deep bleeding wound; Nash losing his quarry, blood dripping everywhere; Nash in pain.

  Lovely stuff,” O'Hara breathed when he saw it. “God, Thomas ...”

  On this Sunday morning, however, there was no blood. I had much the faster horse and I caught up with Ridley before he could vanish into Newmarket's streets.

  He reined furiously to a halt. He tore off the gloves, the goggles and the helmet and threw them on the ground. He struggled out of the anorak we'd dressed him in and flung it away from him.

  “I'll kill you,” he said.

  I said, “I’ll send your fee.”

  His bloated face wavered with irresolution as if he couldn't decide whether or not to attack me there and then, but sense or cowardice prevailed, and he dismounted in a practised slide, facing me, right foot lifting over the horse's neck. He let go of the reins. He turned his back on me and walked off unsteadily in the direction of Newmarket, as if he couldn't feel his feet on the ground.

  I leaned forward, picked u
p the dangling reins and walked both horses back to the stables.

  The lads came back from the hill chattering like starlings, wide eyed.

  “That man looked just the same!” “He was the same!” “He looked like that man last week!” “Didn't he look just like the same man?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  From the wardrobe department, where I shed Nash's coat and helmet, I paid a brief visit upstairs to where the production people were stacking the Athenaeum scenery to one side and filling the space instead with a reproduction of any horse's box in the stable yard.

  As a real natural box was far too small for camera, crew, lights and technicians, let alone a couple of actors, we were fabricating our own version. It was as if a box had been divided into thirds, then spread apart, leaving a large centre area for camera manoeuvring. One third had the split door to the outer world (back projection of the stable yard), one portion contained a manger and water bucket. One, the largest, encompassed the place where a horse would normally stand.

  The walls of the box were being constructed of actual white washed breeze blocks with an open ceiling of heavy rafters. Bales of hay, at present neatly stacked, would be placed on a platform on the rafters above the action. A floor of concrete sections covered with straw was being slotted into each setting. Artistic hoof marks and other signs of wear and habitation showed that this was a box often in use.

  “How's it going?” I asked, looking round with approval.

  “Ready in the morning,” they assured me. “It'll be as solid as a rock, like you asked.”

  Dorothea's cheeks were faintly pink; a great advance.

  We had a few tears on my arrival, but not the racking distress of two days earlier. As her physical state had grown stronger, so had her strength of mind resurfaced. She thanked me for the flowers I'd brought her and said she was sick of a diet of tomato soup.

  “They say it's good for me but I'm growing to hate it. It's true I can't eat meat and salad - have you ever endured a hospital salad? - but why not mushroom, or chicken soup? And none of it's home made, of course.”

  She was longing, she said, to go to the nursing home dear Robbie Gill had suggested, and she hoped her daughter-in-law, Janet, would soon return home to Surrey.

  “We don't like each other,” Dorothea confessed, sighing. “Such a pity.”

  “Mm,” I agreed. “When you're well, will you go back to your house?”

  Tears quivered in her eyes. “Paul died there.”

  Valentine also, I thought.

  “Thomas ... I've been remembering things.” She sounded almost anxious. “That night when I was attacked”

  “Yes?” I prompted, as she stopped. “What do you remember?”

  “Paul was shouting.”

  “Yes, you told me.”

  “There was another man there.”

  I drew the visitor's chair to beside her bed and sat peacefully holding her hand, not wanting to alarm her and smothering my own urgent thoughts.

  I said gently, “Do you remember what he looked like?”

  “I didn't know him. He was there with Paul when I got home from Mona's house ... I'd been watching television with her, you see, but we didn't like the programme and I went home early ... and I went in by the kitchen door as usual and I was so surprised and, well - pleased, of course - to see Paul, but he was so strange, dear, and almost frightened, but he couldn't have been frightened. Why should he have been frightened?”

  “Perhaps because you'd come home while he and the other man were ransacking your house.”

  “Well, dear, Paul shouted ... where was Valentine's photo album, and I'm sure I said he didn't have one, he just kept a few old snaps in a chocolate box, the same as I did, but Paul wouldn't believe me, he kept going on about an album.”

  “So,” I said, “did Valentine ever have an album?”

  “No, dear, I'm sure he didn't. We were never a great family for photos, not like some people who don't believe a thing's happened unless they take snaps of it. Valentine had dozens of pictures of horses, but it was horses, you see, that were his life. Always horses. He never had any children, his Cathy couldn't, you see. He might have been keener on photos if he'd had children.”

  “I keep quite a lot of photos in a box in my bedroom. Photos of us all, long ago. Pictures of Paul...”

  Tears came again, and I didn't tell her I hadn't been able to find those pathetically few mementos in her bedroom. I would give her Valentine's chocolate box instead.

  “Did Paul say why he wanted the photo album?” I asked.

  “I don't think so, dear. Everything was happening so fast and the other man was so angry, and shouting too, and Paul said to me - so frightening, dear, but he said, "Tell him where the album is, he's got a knife." ”

  I asked quietly, “Are you sure about that?”

  “I believed it was a dream.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, now ... I think he must have said it. I can hear my Paul's voice ... oh, dear ... oh, my darling little boy.”

  I hugged her while she sobbed.

  “That other man hit me,” she said, gulping. “Hit my head ... and Paul was shouting, "Tell him, tell him"... and I saw ... he really did have a knife, that man ... or at least he was holding something shiny, but it wasn't a real knife, he had his fingers through it ... dirty fingernails ... it was horrid ... and Paul was shouting, "Stop it ... don't ..." and I woke up in the hospital and I didn't know what had happened, but last night ... well, dear, when I was waking up this morning and thinking about Paul, well, I sort of remembered.”

  “Yes,” I said. I paused, consolidating earlier impressions. “Dearest Dorothea,” I said. “I think Paul saved your life.”

  “Oh! Oh!” She was still crying, but after a while it was from radiant joy, not grinding regret.

  “I think,” I said, “that Paul was so horrified by seeing you attacked with that knife, that he prevented a fatal blow. Robbie Gill thought that the attack on you looked like an interrupted murder. He said that people who inflicted such awful knife wounds were usually in a frenzy, and simply couldn't stop. I think Paul stopped him.”

  “Oh, Thomas!”

  “But I'm afraid,” I said regretfully, “that it means that Paul knew the man who attacked you, and he didn't identify him to the police. In fact, Paul pretended he was in Surrey when you were attacked.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “And,” I said, “Paul tried hard to prevent you from talking to me or to Robbie, or anyone else, until he was sure you remembered nothing about the attack.”

  Dorothea's joy faded somewhat but, underneath, remained.

  “He changed a bit,” I said. “I think at one point he almost told me something, but I don't know what. I do believe, though, that he was feeling remorse over what had happened to you.”

  “Oh, Thomas, I do hope so.”

  “I'm sure of it,” I said, more positively than I felt.

  She thought things over quietly for a while and then said, “Paul would burst out sometimes with opinions as if he couldn't hold them in any more.”

  “Did he?”

  “He said ... I didn't like to tell you, Thomas, but the other day - when he was here with me - he burst out with, "Why did you ever have to make your film?" He was bitter. He said, "I would never have been attacked if you hadn't stirred everything up." Of course I asked what you had stirred up and he said, "It was all in the Drumbeat, but I was to forget what he'd said, only if anything happened to you it would be your own fault." He said ... I'm really sorry ... but he said he would be pleased if you were cut to ribbons like me ... It wasn't like him, really it wasn't.”

  “I did bolt him out of your house,” I reminded her. “He didn't like me much for embarrassing him.”

  “No, but ... well, something was worrying him, I'm sure of it.”

  I stood up and wandered over to the window, looking out aimlessly at the institutionally regular pattern of the windows in the building opposite
and the scrubby patch of garden between. Two people in white coats walked slowly along a path, conversing. Extras playing doctors, I thought automatically - and realised I often saw even real life in terms of film.

  I turned and asked Dorothea, “While you've been here in the hospital, did Paul ask you about a photo album?”

  “I don't think so, dear. Everything gets so muddled, though.” She paused. “He said something about you having taken Valentine's books away, and I didn't tell him you hadn't. I didn't want to argue, you see, dear. I felt too tired.”

  I told her I'd found a photo among Valentine's possessions which I had retrieved from her nice young friend, Bill Robinson - but I couldn't see that it was worth the damage to her house or to herself.

  “If I show it to you,” I said, “will you tell me who the people are?”

  “Of course, dear, if I can.”

  I took 'The Gang' photo out of my pocket and put it into her hand.

  “I need my reading glasses,” she said, peering at it. “That red case on the bedside table.”

  I gave her her glasses and she looked without much reaction at the picture.

  “Did one of those people attack you?” I asked.

  “Oh no, none of those. He was much older. All these people are so young. Why!” she exclaimed, “that's Paul! That one at the end, isn't that Paul? How young he was! So handsome, then.” She let the hand holding the photo rest on the sheet. “I don't know any of the others. I wish Paul was here.”

  Sighing, I took back the photo, replaced it in my pocket and produced the small memo pad I habitually carried.

  I said, “I don't want to upset you, but if I draw a knife will you tell me if it's the one that might have been used on you?”

  “I don't want to see it.”

  “Please, Dorothea.”

  “Paul was killed with a knife,” she wailed, and cried for her son.

  “Dearest Dorothea,” I said after a while, “if it will help to find Paul's killer, will you look at my drawing?”

  She shook her head. I put the drawing close to her hand and, after a long minute, she picked it up.

  “How horrid,” she said, looking at it, “I didn't see a knife like that.” She sounded extremely relieved. “It wasn't anything like that.”