by Dick Francis
I looked at my watch. Almost eight o’clock. It was a fine, clear night, and the sky was luminous with the white blaze of the stars. I still hadn’t learned the northern hemisphere patterns except for the Great Bear and Pole Star. And there was Venus dazzling away to the west-south-west. A pity that I hadn’t thought of buying an astral map to pass the time.
Down in the yard the kitchen door opened, spilling out an oblong of light. Cecil’s figure stayed there for a few seconds silhouetted; then he came out and shut the door, and I couldn’t see him in the dark. Off to his bottle, no doubt.
I ate some pie, and a while later, a bar of chocolate.
Time passed. Nothing happened down in Humber’s yard. Occasionally a car sped along the road behind me, but none stopped. Nine o’clock came and went. Colonel Beckett would be dining at his Club, and I could after all have gone safely down to ring him up. I shrugged in the darkness. He would get my letter in the morning, anyway.
The kitchen door opened again, and two or three lads came out, picking their way with a torch round to the elementary sanitation. Upstairs in the hay-loft a light showed dimly through that half of the window not pasted over with brown paper. Bed-time. Cecil reeled in, clutching the door post to stop himself from falling. The downstairs light went out, and finally the upper one as well.
The night deepened. The hours passed. The moon rose and shone brightly. I gazed out over the primeval rolling moors and thought some unoriginal thoughts, such as how beautiful the earth was, and how vicious the ape creature who inhabited it. Greedy, destructive, unkind, power-hungry old homo sapiens. Sapiens, meaning wise, discreet, judicious. What a laugh. So fair a planet should have evolved a sweeter-natured, saner race. Nothing that produced people like Adams and Humber could be termed a roaring success.
At four o’clock I ate some more chocolate and drank some water, and for some time thought about my stud farm sweltering in the afternoon sun twelve thousand miles away. A sensible, orderly life waiting for me when I had finished sitting on wintry hillsides in the middle of the night.
Cold crept through the blanket as time wore on, but it was no worse than the temperature in Humber’s dormitory. I yawned and rubbed my eyes, and began to work out how many seconds had to pass before dawn. If the sun rose (as expected) at ten to seven, that would be a hundred and thirteen times sixty seconds, which made it six thousand seven hundred and eighty ticks to Thursday. And how many to Friday? I gave up. It was quite likely I would still be sitting on the hillside, but with a little luck there would be a Beckett-sent companion to give me a pinch when things started moving.
At six fifteen the light went on again in the lads’ quarters, and the stable woke up. Half an hour later the first string of six horses wound its way out of the yard and down the road to Posset. No gallops on the moors on Thursday. Road work day.
Almost before they were out of sight Jud Wilson drove into the yard in his substantial Ford and parked it beside the horse box shed. Cass walked across the yard to meet him, and the two of them stood talking together for a few minutes. Then through the binoculars I watched Jud Wilson go back to the shed and open its big double doors, while Cass made straight for Kandersteg’s box, the fourth door from the end.
They were off.
And they were off very slickly. Jud Wilson backed the box into the centre of the yard and let down the ramp. Cass led the horse straight across and into the horse box, and within a minute was out helping to raise and fasten the ramp again. There was then a fractional pause while they stood looking towards the house, from where almost instantly the limping back-view of Humber appeared.
Cass stood watching while Humber and Jud Wilson climbed up into the cab. The horse box rolled forward out of the yard. The loading up had taken barely five minutes from start to finish.
During this time I dropped the rug over the suitcase and kicked the brushwood away from the bike. The binoculars I slung round my neck and zipped inside the leather jacket. I put on my crash helmet, goggles and gloves.
In spite of my belief that it would be to the north or the west that Kandersteg would be taken, I was relieved when this proved to be the case. The horse box turned sharply west and trundled up the far side of the valley along the road which crossed the one I was stationed on.
I wheeled the bike on to the road, started it, and abandoning (this time with pleasure) my third clump of clothes, rode with some despatch towards the cross-roads. There from a safe quarter of a mile away I watched the horse box slow down, turn right, northwards, and accelerate.
Chapter 16
I crouched in a ditch all day and watched Adams, Humber and Jud Wilson scare Kandersteg into a lathering frenzy.
It was wicked.
The means they used were as simple in essence as the scheme, and consisted mainly in the special lay-out of a small two-acre field.
The thin high hedge round the whole field was laced with wire to about shoulder height, strong, but without barbs. About fifteen feet inside this there was a second fence, solidly made of posts and rails which had weathered to a pleasant greyish-brown.
At first glance it looked like the arrangement found at many stud farms, where young stock are kept from damaging themselves on wire by a wooden protective inner fence. But the corners of this inner ring had been rounded, so that what in effect had been formed was a miniature race track between the outer and inner fences.
It all looked harmless. A field for young stock, a training place for racehorses, a show ring… take your pick. With a shed for storing equipment, just outside the gate at one corner. Sensible. Ordinary.
I half-knelt, half-lay in the drainage ditch which ran along behind the hedge, near the end of one long side of the field, with the shed little more than a hundred yards away in the far opposite corner, to my left. The bottom of the hedge had been cut and laid, which afforded good camouflage for my head, but from about a foot above the ground the leafless hawthorn grew straight up, tall and weedy; as concealing as a sieve. But as long as I kept absolutely still, I judged I was unlikely to be spotted. At any rate, although I was really too close for safety, too close even to need to use the binoculars, there was nowhere else which gave much cover at all.
Bare hillsides sloped up beyond the far fence and along the end of the field to my right; behind me lay a large open pasture of at least thirty acres; and the top end, which was screened from the road by a wedge of conifers, was directly under Adams’ and Humber’s eyes.
Getting to the ditch had entailed leaving the inadequate shelter of the last flattening shoulder of hillside and crossing fifteen yards of bare turf when none of the men was in sight. But retreating was going to be less pulse quickening, since I had only to wait for the dark.
The horse box was parked beside the shed, and almost as soon as I had worked my way round the hill to my present position there was a clattering of hooves on the ramp as Kandersteg was unloaded. Jud Wilson led him round through the gate and on to the grassy track. Adams, following, shut the gate and then unlatched a swinging section of the inner fence and fastened it across the track, making a barrier. Walking past Jud and the horse he did the same with another section a few yards further on, with the result that Jud and Kandersteg were now standing in a small pen in the corner. A pen with three ways out; the gate out of the field, and the rails which swung across like level crossing gates on either side.
Jud let go of the horse, which quietly began to eat the grass, and he and Adams let themselves out and disappeared into the shed to join Humber. The shed, made of weathered wood, was built like a single loose box, with a window and a split door, and I imagined it was there that Mickey had spent much of the three days he had been away.
There was a certain amount of clattering and banging in the shed, which went on for some time, but as I had only a sideways view of the door I could see nothing of what was happening.
Presently all three of them came out. Adams walked round behind the shed and reappeared beyond the field, walking up the hills
ide. He went at a good pace right to the top, and stood gazing about him at the countryside.
Humber and Wilson came through the gate into the field, carrying between them an apparatus which looked like a vacuum cleaner, a cylindrical tank with a hose attached to one end. They put the tank down in the corner, and Wilson held the hose. Kandersteg, quietly cropping the grass close beside them, lifted his head and looked at them, incurious and trusting. He bent down again to eat.
Humber walked the few steps along to where the swinging rail was fastened to the hedge, seemed to be checking something, and then went back to stand beside Wilson, who was looking up towards Adams.
On top of the hill, Adams casually waved his hand.
Down in the corner of the field Humber had his hand to his mouth… I was too far away to see with the naked eye if what he held there was a whistle, and too close to risk getting out the glasses for a better look. But even though try as I might I could hear no noise, there wasn’t much room for doubt. Kandersteg raised his head, pricked his ears, and looked at Humber.
Flame suddenly roared from the hose in Wilson’s hand. It was directed behind the horse, but it frightened him badly, all the same. He sat back on his haunches, his ears flattening. Then Humber’s arm moved, and the swinging barrier, released by some sort of catch, sprang back to let the horse out on to the track. He needed no telling.
He stampeded round the field, skidding at the corners, lurching against the inner wooden rail, thundering past ten feet from my head. Wilson opened the second barrier, and he and Humber retired through the gate. Kandersteg made two complete circuits at high speed before his stretched neck relaxed to a more normal angle and his wildly thrusting hind quarters settled down to a more natural gallop.
Humber and Wilson stood and watched him, and Adams strolled down the hill to join them at the gate.
They let the horse slow down and stop of his own accord, which he did away to my right, after about three and a half circuits. Then Jud Wilson unhurriedly swung one of the barriers back across the track, and waving a stick in one hand and a hunting whip in the other, began to walk round to drive the horse in front of him along into the corner. Kandersteg trotted warily ahead, unsettled, sweating, not wanting to be caught.
Jud Wilson swung his stick and his whip and trudged steadily on. Kandersteg trotted softly past where I lay, his hooves swishing through the short grass: but I was no longer watching. My face was buried in the roots of the hedge, and I ached with the effort of keeping still. Seconds passed like hours.
There was a rustle of trouser leg brushing against trouser leg, a faint clump of boots on turf, a crack of the long thong of the whip… and no outraged yell of discovery. He went past, and on up the field.
The muscles which had been ready to expel me out of the ditch and away towards the hidden motor-cycle gradually relaxed. I opened my eyes and looked at leaf mould close to my face, and worked some saliva into my mouth. Cautiously, inch by inch, I raised my head and looked across the field.
The horse had reached the barrier and Wilson was unhooking and swinging the other one shut behind him, so that he was again penned into the small enclosure. There, for about half an hour, the three men left him. They themselves walked back into the shed, where I could not see them, and I could do nothing but wait for them to appear again.
It was a fine, clear, quiet morning, but a bit cold for lying in ditches, especially damp ones. Exercise, however, beyond curling and uncurling my toes and fingers, was a bigger risk than pneumonia; so I lay still, taking heart from the thought that I was dressed from head to foot in black, and had a mop of black hair as well, and was crouched in blackish brown rotting dead leaves. It was because of the protective colouring it offered that I had chosen the ditch in preference to a shallow dip in the hillside, and I was glad I had, because it was fairly certain that Adams from his look – out point would at once have spotted a dark intruder on the pale green hill.
I didn’t notice Jud Wilson walk out of the shed, but I heard the click of the gate, and there he was, going into the little enclosure and laying his hand on Kandersteg’s bridle, for all the world as if he were consoling him. But how could anyone who liked horses set about them with a flame thrower? And Jud, it was clear, was going to do it again. He left the horse, went over to the corner, picked up the hose and stood adjusting its nozzle.
Presently Adams appeared and climbed the hill, and then Humber, limping on his stick, joined Jud in the field.
There was a long wait before Adams waved his hand, during which three cars passed along the lonely moorland road. Eventually Adams was satisfied. His arm languidly rose and fell.
Humber’s hand went immediately to his mouth.
Kandersteg already knew what it meant. He was running back on his haunches in fear before the flame shot out behind him and stopped him dead.
This time there was a fiercer, longer, closer burst of fire, and Kandersteg erupted in greater terror. He came scorching round the track… and round again… it was like waiting for the ball to settle in roulette with too much staked. But he stopped this time at the top end of the field, well away from my hiding place.
Jud walked across the middle of the field to come up behind him, not round the whole track. I sighed deeply with heartfelt relief.
I had folded my limbs originally into comfortable angles, but they were beginning to ache with inactivity, and I had cramp in the calf of my right leg, but I still didn’t dare move while all three men were in my sight and I in theirs.
They shut Kandersteg into his little pen and strolled away into the shed, and cautiously, as quietly as I could in the rotting leaves, I flexed my arms and legs, got rid of the cramp, and discovered pins and needles instead. Ah well… it couldn’t go on for ever.
They were, however, plainly going to repeat the process yet again. The flame thrower still lay by the hedge.
The sun was high in the sky by this time, and I looked at the gleam it raised on the leather sleeve of my left arm, close to my head. It was too shiny. Hedges and ditches held nothing as light-reflecting as black leather. Could Wilson possibly, possibly walk a second time within feet of me without coming close enough to the hedge to see a shimmer which shouldn’t be there?
Adams and Humber came out of the shed and leaned over the gate, looking at Kandersteg. Presently they lit cigarettes and were clearly talking. They were in no hurry. They finished the cigarettes, threw them away, and stayed where they were for another ten minutes. Then Adams walked over to his car and returned with a bottle and some glasses. Wilson came out of the shed to join them and the three of them stood there in the sun, quietly drinking and gossiping in the most commonplace way.
What they were doing was, of course, routine to them. They had done it at least twenty times before. Their latest victim stood warily in his pen, unmoving, frightened, far too upset to eat.
Watching them drink made me thirsty, but that was among the least of my troubles. Staying still was becoming more and more difficult. Painful, almost.
At long last they broke it up. Adams put the bottle and glasses away and strolled off up the hill, Humber checked the quick release on the swinging barrier, and Jud adjusted the nozzle of the hose.
Adams waved. Humber blew.
This time the figure of Kandersteg was sharply, terrifyingly silhouetted against a sheet of flame. Wilson swayed his body, and the brilliant, spreading jet flattened and momentarily swept under the horse’s belly and among his legs.
I nearly cried out, as if it were I that were being burned, not the horse. And for one sickening moment it looked as if Kandersteg were too terrified to escape.
Then, squealing, he was down the track like a meteor, fleeing from fire, from pain, from a dog whistle…
He was going too fast to turn the corner. He crashed into the hedge, bounced off, stumbled and fell. Eyes starting out of his head, lips retracted from his teeth, he scrambled frantically to his feet and bolted on, past my head, up the field, round again, and roun
d again.
He came to a jolting halt barely twenty yards away from me. He stood stock-still with sweat dripping from his neck and down his legs. His flesh quivered convulsively.
Jud Wilson, whip and stick in hand, started on his walk round the track. Slowly I put my face down among the roots and tried to draw some comfort from the fact that if he saw me there was still a heavily wired fence between us, and I should get some sort of start in running away. But the motor-cycle was hidden on rough ground two hundred yards behind me, and the curving road lay at least as far beyond that again, and Adams’ grey Jaguar was parked on the far side of the horse box. Successful flight wasn’t something I’d have liked to bet on.
Kandersteg was too frightened to move. I heard Wilson shouting at him and cracking the whip, but it was a full minute before the hooves came stumbling jerkily, in bursts and stamps, past my head.
In spite of the cold, I was sweating. Dear heavens, I thought, there was as much adrenalin pouring into my bloodstream as into the horse’s; and I realized that from the time Wilson started his methodical walk round the track I had been able to hear my own heart thudding.
Jud Wilson yelled at Kandersteg so close to my ear that it felt like a blow. The whip cracked.
‘Get on, get on, get on there.’
He was standing within feet of my head. Kandersteg wouldn’t move. The whip cracked again. Jud shouted at the horse, stamping his boot on the ground in encouragement. The faint tremor came to me through the earth. He was a yard away, perhaps, with his eyes on the horse. He had only to turn his head… I began to think that anything, even discovery, was preferable to the terrible strain of keeping still.
Then, suddenly, it was over.
Kandersteg skittered away and bumped into the rails, and took a few more uneven steps back towards the top of the field. Jud Wilson moved away after him.
I continued to behave like a log, feeling exhausted. Slowly my heart subsided. I started breathing again… and unclamped my fingers from handfuls of leaf mould.
