Longshot

by Dick Francis

  I could go much faster than they could. When I saw them again I dropped down on one knee, knowing that even though they were constantly looking back they wouldn’t see me at that low level, in my nature-colored clothes.

  Besides the map, I’d brought along my faithful compass, and by its reckoning checked the boys’ direction all the time. They wandered off to the northeast a bit but not badly enough to get really lost, and after a while made a correction to drift back to north.

  The pale-cream splashes were easy to spot, never far apart. Gareth had intelligently chosen smooth-barked saplings all the way, and all the marks were at the same height, at about waist level, where painting came to him most naturally, it seemed.

  I kept the boys in sight intermittently all the way. They were talking to each other loudly as if to keep lurking wood-spirits at bay, and I did vividly remember that teenage spooky feeling of being alone in wild woodland and at the mercy of supernatural eyes. Even in sunshine one could be nervous. At night a couple of times at fifteen I’d been terrified.

  On that day, as I slowly followed the trail, I simply felt at home and at peace. There were birds singing, though not yet many, and apart from the boys’ voices the quiet was as old and deep as the land. The woods still waited the stirring of spring, lying chilly and patient with sleeping buds and butterflies in cocoons. The smells of autumn, of compost and rot, still faintly lingered into the winter thaw, only the pines and firs remaining fragrant if one brushed them. Pine resin, collected by tapping, dried to lumps that made brilliant firelighters.

  It was a slow-going mile, but towards the end one could hear occasional cars along the road ahead and Gareth and Coconut with whoops crashed through the last few yards, again, as the week before, relieved to be back in the space age.

  I speeded up and stepped out behind them, much to Gareth’s surprise.

  “We thought you were miles back,” he exclaimed.

  “You laid an excellent trail.”

  “The paint’s nearly finished.” He held it up to show me and the jar slipped out of his hand, rolling the remains of its contents onto the earth. “Hey, sorry,” he said. “But there wasn’t much left.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” I picked up the jar, which was slippery on the outside from dripped paint and, screwing its lid on, dropped it with the brush into a plastic bag before stowing it again in my pouch.

  “Can we get some more?” Coconut asked.

  “Sure. No problem. Ready to go home?”

  The boys, both pumped up by their achievement, ran and jumped all along the road to the Land-Rover that we found around the next bend, and rode back in euphoric good spirits.

  “Terrific,” Gareth told Tremayne, bursting into the family room after we’d dropped Coconut and returned to Shellerton. “Fantastic.”

  Whether they wanted to or not, Tremayne, Mackie and Perkin received a minute-by-minute account of the whole day with the sole exception of the discussion about Angela Brickell. Tremayne listened with veiled approval, Mackie with active interest, Perkin with boredom.

  “It’s real wilderness,” Gareth said. “You can’t hear anything. And I took lashings of photos—” He stopped, suddenly frowning. “Hold on a minute.”

  He sped out of the room and came back with his blue knapsack, searching the contents worriedly.

  “My camera’s not here!”

  “The one I gave you for Christmas?” Tremayne asked, not overpleased.

  “Perhaps Coconut’s got it,” Perkin suggested languidly.

  “Thanks.” Gareth leaped to the telephone in hopes that were all too soon dashed. “He says he didn’t see it after lunchtime.” He looked horrified. “We’ll have to go back at once.”

  “No, you certainly won’t,” Tremayne said positively. “It sounds a long way and it’ll be getting dark soon.”

  “But it’s luminous paint,” Gareth begged. “That’s the whole point, you can see it in the dark.”

  “No,” said his father.

  Gareth turned to me. “Can’t we go back?”

  I shook my head. “Your father’s right. We could get lost in those woods at night, paint or no paint. You’ve only got to miss one mark and you’d be out there till morning.”

  “You wouldn’t get lost.”

  “I might,” I said. “We’re not going.”

  “Did you drop it on the path back?” Mackie asked sympathetically.

  “No . . .” He thought about it. “I must have left it where we had lunch. I hung it on a branch to keep it from getting damp. I just forgot it.”

  He was upset enough for me to say, “I’ll get it tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Will you?” Disaster swung back to hope. “Oh, great.”

  Tremayne said doubtfully, “Will you find one little camera hanging in all those square miles of nothing?”

  “Of course he will,” Gareth told him confidently. “I told you, we left a trail. And oh!” He thought of something. “Isn’t it lucky I dropped all the paint, because now you can see where the trail starts, because we didn’t paint any trees once we could see the road.”

  “Do explain,” Mackie said.

  Gareth explained.

  “Will you really find the trail?” Mackie asked me, shaking her head.

  “As long as someone hasn’t parked on the patch of paint and taken it all away on their tires.”

  “Oh, no,” Gareth said, anguished.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’ll find your camera if it’s still in the clearing.”

  “It is. I’m sure. I remember hanging it up.”

  “All right then,” Tremayne said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Grub?” Gareth asked hopefully. “Pizza?”

  16

  On Monday morning, first lot, I was back on Drifter. “He’s entered in a race at Worcester the day after tomorrow,” Tremayne said as we walked out to the yard at seven in the half-dawn. “Today’s his last training gallop before that, so don’t fall off again. The vet’s been here already this morning to test his blood.”

  Tremayne’s vet took small blood samples of all the stable’s runners prior to their last training gallop before they raced, the resulting detailed analysis being able to reveal a whole host of things from a raised lymphocyte count to excreted enzymes due to muscle damage. If there were too many contraindications in the blood, the vet would advise Tremayne that the horse was unlikely to run well or win. Tremayne said the process saved the owners from wasting money on fruitless horse-box expenses and jockey fees and also saved himself a lot of inexplicable and worrying disappointments.

  “Are you going to Worcester yourself?” I asked.

  “Probably. Might send Mackie. Why?”

  “Er ... I wondered if I could go to see Drifter race.”

  He turned his head to stare at me as if he couldn’t at once comprehend my interest, but then, understanding, said of course I could go if I wanted to.

  “Thanks.”

  “You can gallop Fringe this morning, second lot.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “And thanks to you for giving Gareth such a good day yesterday.”

  “I enjoyed it.”

  We reached the yard and stood watching the last preparations as usual.

  “That’s a good camera,” Tremayne said regretfully. “Stupid boy.”

  “I’ll get it back.”

  “Along his precious trail?” He was doubtful.

  “Maybe. But I had a map and a compass with me yesterday. I know pretty well where we went.”

  He smiled, shaking his head. “You’re the most competent person ... Like Fiona says, you put calamities right.”

  “It’s not always possible.”

  “Give Drifter a good gallop.”

  We went up to the Downs and at least I stayed in the saddle, and felt indeed a new sense of being at home there, of being at ease. The strange and difficult was becoming second nature in the way that it had when I’d learned to fly. Racehorses, hel
icopters; both needed hands responsive to the messages reaching them, and both would usually go where you wanted if you sent the right messages back.

  Drifter flowed up the gallop in a smooth fast rhythm and Tremayne said he would have a good chance at Worcester if his blood was right.

  When I’d left the horse in the yard and gone in for breakfast I found both Mackie and Sam Yaeger sitting at the table with Tremayne, all of them discussing that day’s racing at Nottingham. The horse that Tremayne had been going to run had gone lame, and another of Sam’s rides had been withdrawn because its owner’s wife had died.

  “I’ve only got a no-hoper left,” Sam complained. “It’s not bloody worthwhile going. Reckon I’ll catch flu and work on the boat.” He telephoned forthwith, made hoarse-voiced excuses and received undeserved sympathy. He grinned at me, putting down the receiver. “Where’s the toast, then?”

  “Coming.”

  “I hear you played cowboys and Indians all over Berkshire with Gareth and Coconut yesterday.”

  “News travels,” I said resignedly.

  “I told him,” Mackie said, smiling. “Any objections?”

  I shook my head and asked her how she was feeling. She’d stopped riding out with the first lot because of nausea on waking, and Tremayne, far from minding, continually urged her to rest more.

  “I feel sick,” she said to my inquiry. “Thank goodness.”

  “Lie down, my dear girl,” Tremayne said.

  “You all fuss too much.”

  Sam said to me, “Doone spent all Saturday afternoon at the boatyard.”

  “I thought he was off duty.”

  “He got a message from you, it seems.”

  “Mm. I did send one.”

  “What message?” Tremayne asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sam answered. “Doone phoned me yesterday to say he’d been to the boatyard and taken away some objects for which he would give me a receipt.”

  “What objects?” asked Tremayne.

  “He wouldn’t say.” Sam looked at me. “Do you know what they were? You steered him to them, it seems. He sounded quite excited.”

  “What was the message?” Mackie asked me.

  “Um . . .” I said. “I asked him why the floorboards didn’t float.”

  Tremayne and Mackie appeared mystified but Sam immediately understood and looked thunderstruck.

  “Bloody hell—how did you think of it?”

  “Don’t know,” I said. “It just came.”

  “Do explain,” Mackie begged.

  I told her what I’d told Erica at Tremayne’s dinner, and said it might not lead to anything helpful.

  “But it certainly might,” Mackie said.

  Sam said to me thoughtfully, “If you hadn’t stopped me, I’d have rolled up the curtain so as to go into the dock in a boat, and all that stuff under the water would have slithered away into the river and no one would have been any the wiser.”

  “Fiona’s sure John will find out, before Doone does, who set that trap for Harry,” Mackie said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know who it was. Wish I did.”

  “Matter of time,” Tremayne said confidently. He looked at his watch. “Talking of time, second lot.” He stood up. “Sam, I want a trial of that new horse Roydale against Fringe. You ride Roydale, John’s on Fringe.”

  “OK,” Sam said easily.

  “John.” Tremayne turned to me. “Don’t try to beat Sam as if it were a race. This is a fact-finder. I want to see which has most natural speed. Go as fast as you can but if you feel Fringe falter, don’t press him, just ease back.”

  “Right.”

  “Mackie, talk to Dee-Dee or something. I’m not taking you up there to vomit in the Land-Rover.”

  “Oh, Tremayne, as if I would.”

  “Not risking it,” he said gruffly. “Don’t want you bouncing about on those ruts.”

  “I’m not an invalid,” she protested, but she might as well have argued with a rock. He determinedly left her behind and drove Sam and me up to the gallops.

  On the way, Sam said to me dryly, “Nolan usually rides any trials. He’ll be furious.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  Tremayne said repressively, “I’ve told Nolan he won’t be riding work here again until he cools off.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows comically. “Do you want John shot? Nolan’s a whiz with a gun.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” Tremayne said a shade uneasily, and bumped the Land-Rover across the ruts of the track and onto the smooth upland grass before drawing to a halt. “Keep your mind on Roydale. He belongs to a new owner. I want your best judgment. His form’s not brilliant, but nor is the trainer he’s come from. I want to know where we’re at.”

  “Sure,” Sam said.

  “Stay upside Fringe as long as you can.”

  Sam nodded. We took Roydale and Fringe from the lads and when Tremayne had driven off and positioned himself on his hillock we started together up the all-weather gallop, going the fastest I’d been ever. Fringe, flat-out at racing pace, had a wildness about him I couldn’t really control and I guessed it was that quality which won him races. Whenever Roydale put his nose in front, Fringe found a bit extra, but it seemed there wasn’t much between them, and with the end of the wood chippings in sight the contest was still undecided. I saw Sam sit up and ease the pressure, and copied him immediately, none too soon for my taxed muscles and speed-starved lungs. I finished literally breathless but Sam pulled up nonchalantly and trotted back to Tremayne for a report in full voice.

  “He’s a green bugger,” he announced. “He has a mouth like elephant skin. He shies at his own shadow and he’s as stubborn as a pig. Apart from that, he’s fast, as you saw.”

  Tremayne listened impassively. “Courage?”

  “Can’t tell till he’s on a racecourse.”

  “I’ll enter him for Saturday. We may as well find out. Perhaps you’d better give him a pop over hurdles tomorrow.”

  “OK.”

  We handed the horses back to their respective lads and went down the hill again with Tremayne and found Doone waiting for us, sitting in his car.

  “That man gives me the bloody creeps,” Sam said as we disembarked.

  The grayly persistent detective chief inspector emerged like a turtle from his shell when he saw us arrive, and he’d come alone for once: no silent note-taker in his shadow.

  “Which of us do you want?” Tremayne inquired bullishly.

  “Well, sir.” The singsong voice took all overt menace away, yet there was still a suggestion that collars might be felt at any minute. “All of you, sir, if you don’t mind.”

  Just the same if we did mind, he meant.

  “You’d better come in, then,” Tremayne offered, shrugging.

  Doone followed us into the kitchen, removed a gray tweed overcoat and sat by the table in his much-lived-in gray suit. He felt comfortable in kitchens, I thought. Tremayne vaguely suggested coffee, and I made a mug of instant for each of us.

  Mackie came through from having breakfasted with Perkin, saying she wanted to know how the trial had gone. She wasn’t surprised to see Doone, only resigned. I made her some coffee and she sat and watched while Doone picked a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and handed it to Sam.

  “A receipt, sir,” he said, “for three lengths of floorboard retrieved from the dock in your boathouse.”

  Sam unfolded the paper and looked at it dumbly.

  “Why didn’t they float?” Tremayne asked bluntly.

  “Ah. So everyone knows about that?” Doone seemed disappointed.

  Tremayne nodded. “John just told us.”

  Doone gave me a sorrowful stare, but I hadn’t given a thought to his wanting secrecy.

  “They didn’t float, sir, because they were weighted.”

  “With what?” Sam asked.

  “With pieces of paving stone. There are similar pieces of paving stone scattered on a portion of your boatyard property.”
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  “Paving stone?” Sam sounded bemused, then said doubtfully, “Do you mean broken slabs of pink and gray marble?”

  “Is that what it is, sir, marble?” Doone didn’t know much about marble, it appeared.

  “It might be.”

  Doone pondered, made up his mind, went out to his car and returned carrying a five-foot plank which he laid across the kitchen table. The old gray wood, though still dampish, looked as adequate for its purpose as its fellows still forming the boathouse floor and didn’t seem to have been weakened in any way. Slightly towards one end, on the surface that was now uppermost on the table, rested a long, unevenly shaped darkish slab of what I might have thought was rough-faced granite.

  “Yes,” Sam said, glancing at it. “That’s marble.” He stretched out his hand and tried to pick it up, and the plank came up an inch with it. Sam let it drop, frowning.

  “It’s stuck on,” Doone said, nodding. “From the looks of the other pieces lying about, the surface that’s stuck to the wood is smooth and polished.”

  “Yes,” Sam said.

  “Superglue, we think,” Doone said, “would make a strong enough bond.”

  “A lot of plastic adhesives would,” Sam said, nodding.

  “And how do you happen to have chunks of marble lying about?” Doone asked, though not forbiddingly.

  “It came with a job lot of stuff I bought from a demolition firm,” Sam explained without stress. “They had some paneling I wanted for a boat I did up, and some antique bathroom fittings. I had to take a lot of oddments as well, like the marble. It came from a mansion they were pulling down. They sell off things, you know. Fireplaces, doors, anything.”

  Doone asked conversationally, “Did you stick the marble onto the floorboards, sir?”

  “No, I bloody well did not,” Sam said explosively.

  “Onto the underside of the floorboards,” I said. “There were no slabs of marble in sight when Harry and I went into the upstairs room of the boathouse. I expect, if there are some other blocks still in place, that you can see them from underneath, in the dock.”

  Doone with slight reluctance admitted that there seemed to be marble stuck to the underside of one more floorboard on each side of the hole.

  The plank on the table was about eight inches across. Harry had taken three of them down with him; five altogether had been doctored. The trap with its missing section of beam had been three and a half feet across, and Harry, taking the envelope bait, had gone through its center.