Ross raised his head.
‘The old horse did rather well, don’t you think?’ the voice went on.
Ross blinked into the evening sunlight, trying to focus on a coolly handsome face under a white Panama. He had had no idea Roland was even on the showground.
‘Oh, hi! Where did you spring from?’
‘Got a lift up with a friend,’ Roland said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for someone who professed little interest in horses to make the journey halfway across England to visit a show. ‘Thing is, can’t go back with him. Wondered if you’d consider giving me a lift home?’
‘’Fraid not, old boy,’ Ross mimicked him, shaking his head regretfully. ‘But you can drive, if you want.’
Roland smiled happily. ‘Love to,’ he said. ‘If I can just remember how . . .’
‘Just follow the white lines and stop at the red lights,’ Ross said dryly. ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it.’
In due course, with horses loaded and pulling at haynets, and Ross and Danny slumped in contented exhaustion beside him, Roland proceeded to handle the heavy lorry with the offhand expertise that characterised most things he did.
After ten minutes or so of silence, Danny initiated Roland into the numberplate game and badgered Ross to join in. The game continued fitfully for most of the journey, with the suggestions becoming steadily more far-fetched and decidedly more ribald, and they arrived home in good spirits. Roland displayed a needle-sharp wit and Danny rapidly warmed to him. Even Ross, in whom memory of past behaviour advised caution, found himself unable to withstand Roland’s whimsical charm.
Thursday was quiet in the yard. The sky was overcast but the heat continued unabated; a sultry, energy-sapping warmth that rendered even the smallest of tasks a chore. They gave the horses only light exercise, and Ross and Sarah devoted the afternoon to tidying and cleaning the tackroom, which was one of the coolest places in the yard with its thick, windowless brick walls.
After the evening meal, Ross reluctantly gathered hammer and nails, and armed with the necessary posts and lengths of wood, headed for the schooling arena to mend a section of fence which Fly had thoughtfully demolished a couple of days earlier.
Ten minutes later, Lindsay and James appeared. Lindsay had intended taking advantage of the relative cool of the evening to school Gypsy over a fence or two but Ross suggested she use the cross-country course instead. It would be even cooler in the wood. Lindsay agreed cheerfully and departed to saddle up.
James hesitated, watching Ross’ awkward attempts to hold a post and simultaneously drive it into the hard ground with a mallet.
‘Here, let me help,’ he said after a moment. ‘You need three hands for that job.’
They worked steadily, side by side, saying little but companionable enough for all that. After a minute or two they heard Gypsy’s hooves on the cobbles as Lindsay rode out of the yard. A quarter of an hour later, they stood back and surveyed their handiwork.
‘A beer, I think,’ Ross said, brushing sawdust and sand from his jeans. ‘What d’you say?’
They crossed the school together, carrying the tools, but in an instant the tempting prospect of ice-cold beer was forgotten as with a sharp clatter of hooves Gypsy careered into the yard, riderless and trailing a broken rein.
One look at the horse was enough. Leaf mould and twiggery adorned her head and mane, and one knee was cut. Across her lower chest a horizontal wound showed scarlet.
‘My God!’ James turned a stricken face towards Ross. ‘Where did she go? Where is the cross-country course?’
‘The copse. The other side of the home field.’ Ross pointed, moving to catch Gypsy’s rein as she tried to dodge past. James sped off in the direction he had indicated.
Ross swore. For the first time he felt his injury as a real handicap. Instinct urged him to run after James but common sense held him back. He would be no help to anyone if his knee let him down.
Clumsily he knotted Gypsy’s broken reins as she whirled round him in agitated circles and, with an inelegant flying leap, launched himself at the saddle using her momentum to swing his leg over her back. Still held tightly, she made another frantic turn, then slipped and scrabbled on the cobbles as Ross drummed his heels into her sides.
As they burst into the home field, Ross could see James disappearing through the gate on the far side. He gave the mare her head and thundered in pursuit.
At the edge of the trees he reined her in hard and slid off. In the comparative gloom of the copse he could see James’ pale shirt as he moved diagonally ahead. Beyond him, on the ground, a slight figure lay motionless. Ross’ heart did a slow roll and started beating with heavy, rib-thumping strokes.
After tying Gypsy to the gate, he limped after James. He saw him crouch down beside Lindsay and heard her soft cry as she sat up and buried her face in his shoulder.
Ross stopped, relief giving way to a sharp stab of envy. He laughed sardonically at himself. What had he expected? That she would turn to him in her distress? She was engaged to James, for God’s sake! He turned away as the two embraced, feeling like a third person in a honeymoon suite. At his feet, deep sliding hoofmarks scored the earth, evidence of Gypsy’s struggle to regain her feet. Lindsay must have been thrown well clear.
‘Is she all right?’ he called.
‘Just winded, I think.’ James looked at him over her blonde head.
Lindsay raised her face and smiled tremulously at Ross through tear-filled eyes. ‘Gypsy?’
‘Oh, she’ll be okay. What happened exactly?’ He was inspecting the jump at which the mare had fallen. It was a ‘bullfinch’, a double post and rail fence, in-filled with brush which extended a good three feet above it and was intended to be jumped through, rather than over. Not a difficult fence for an experienced horse and Gypsy was certainly that.
Lindsay shook her head. ‘I don’t know. She was going beautifully and then she took off and just . . . well, tipped over. I can’t explain it.’
‘I think I can.’ Grimly, Ross reached down into the leaves at his feet and held up the frayed end of a six-foot length of rope. It would have been a simple matter to conceal it stretched in the midst of the brush.
‘Ross!’ Lindsay’s eyes opened wide with shock. ‘Who would do such a thing?’
Well, Leo for a start, Ross thought dryly, and possibly our nameless extortionist. He shook his head, his face registering only bewilderment.
‘Kids, maybe? Or the Colonel’s hippies? Whoever it was, it wasn’t meant for you. Nobody could have known you’d be riding here tonight. You were just unlucky.’
‘Ross!’ The inflection had changed. The implication of what he had just said was not lost on her.
‘Never mind, Princess,’ he said quickly. ‘Look, if you’re sure you’re okay, I’ll take Gypsy on back. One white knight is enough for any damsel.’
The incident left him feeling unsettled and faintly troubled. If this had been Leo’s work then his vendetta was beginning to assume far more serious dimensions than Ross had anticipated. In spite of the violence of his leaving, Ross had not really considered the possibility that Leo would take his feud further. It certainly hadn’t occurred to him that those around him would also be at risk.
He shuddered to think how badly Lindsay might have been hurt if she hadn’t been thrown clear. She could easily have broken her neck or been pinned beneath the falling horse, as he himself knew only too well. The sight of her, shocked and bruised, clinging to James for comfort, haunted him all evening.
James had taken Lindsay straight to her uncle, and the Colonel had called the police who, after a perfunctory survey of the scene, said they thought it unlikely they would ever find out who had been responsible.
They showed faint stirrings of interest when Ross told them briefly of Leo’s angry departure, but beyond advocating a general tightening of security could offer no further advice.
Now Ross sat in his over-warm room with the window open behind him and
the dog stretched companionably at his feet, fighting an almost overwhelming temptation to make ‘medicinal’ use of the bottle of whisky in his suitcase. His knee ached fiercely but without the kind of intense, stabbing pain that would justify recourse to alcohol.
You’re getting soft, he told himself severely.
In the end he compromised by making coffee with a shot incorporated and fell asleep on top of the bed, clad only in shorts and praying for a storm to clear the air.
Friday dawned with the same unremitting heat. Breakfast was interrupted by a call from the Colonel who said he’d had word of a dealer with a couple of useful young horses. Ross and Bill were to accompany him to look them over that afternoon.
Ross received the news with a decided upturn in spirits. New horses in the yard would help lay any rumours to rest.
At lunchtime he had a call from Franklin Richmond, inviting him out for a meal that evening, ostensibly to celebrate the success of his horses at the Three Counties. They agreed a time and place and Richmond rang off, leaving Ross to wonder if this meant there had been new developments in the war against Mr X.
Ross, Bill and the Colonel travelled to the dealer’s yard in the Land-Rover rather than the Jag, to avoid appearing too obviously affluent. As they got out they were hailed from across the yard by an ageless, wiry, ginger-haired man who introduced himself as Declan O’Connell. He was as Irish as the Blarney Stone and, Ross decided, had probably been born with his lips pressed firmly against it. He greeted them all warmly and proceeded to give them a potted autobiography as an assurance of his fitness to judge good horseflesh.
According to O’Connell he had once been a steeplechase jockey of quite remarkable talent, and if it hadn’t been for an equally remarkable run of bad luck he would surely have been Champion Jockey several times over in the late-seventies.
The Colonel allowed himself to be outwardly impressed by the Irishman’s history but at one point, when Ross caught his eye, smiled and winked surreptitiously.
Even if one did believe all O’Connell said, Ross couldn’t see that knowing a good horse was any guarantee you were selling one.
Whatever the case, the Irishman seemed good-natured and was highly amusing. One glance at Bill, however, showed that he didn’t consider him so, at all. He was trailing behind the others, looking distinctly sour.
The yard was on the shabby side of average, with grass sprouting through cracks in the concrete underfoot. Most of the stable doors had dropped on their hinges and been chewed along the top by countless equine teeth, and the sprawling manure heap by the gate would have kept Kew Gardens in compost for the foreseeable future. Stable cats abounded, as presumably did mice, and several Jack Russell terriers followed the four of them around.
However, the occupants of these doubtful premises shone in their deep, peaty beds like diamonds in a coal cellar, radiating health and contentment.
Several of these gems were already saddled, and when the visitors had completed their tour of the yard, the horses were taken, one at a time, to a jumping ring behind the stables for Ross to try their paces.
Of these five horses two showed not more than average scope over the schooling fences, two were promising, and one did its best to scrape Ross off on the perimeter fence and declined to leave the ground at all. Of the two promising youngsters, one was regretfully discounted as not being quite up to Ross’ weight, but the other, a big, deep-chested grey, was felt to be a definite possibility.
‘What’s the story on the brown gelding?’ Ross enquired of O’Connell. Its unreasonable behaviour had aroused his interest.
‘Well, you see, it’s like this . . .’ the Irishman began.
‘The real story,’ Ross cut in quickly. ‘Straight up.’
Briefly, O’Connell affected hurt, then gave in.
‘Straight up? All right then. To tell you the truth, I don’t know. He came to me with two others, halfbrothers they were, the lot of ’em. The others jumped like stags, but him? Well, you found out for yourself. In the open, over hedges and the like, he’s a grand little fella. But give him a wall alongside and you can say a fond fare-thee-well to the skin on your knees.’ He shook his red head sadly. ‘I almost sold him twice, but back he came like a bad penny.’
‘Well, it was good of you to warn me,’ Ross said with heavy sarcasm.
‘I keep hoping he’ll maybe take a shine to someone and behave hisself,’ O’Connell explained sheepishly. ‘I could see you could take care of yourself by the way you rode the others.’
Ross raised a disbelieving eyebrow at this and drew the Colonel to one side for a moment to make a suggestion. His employer nodded a time or two, then turned to O’Connell.
‘We’ll take the grey, subject to vetting,’ he announced. ‘And we’ll take the brown gelding for half what you’re asking and after fourteen days’ trial.’
‘Ah, you drive a hard bargain,’ O’Connell complained, peevishly.
‘Take it or leave it,’ the Colonel offered. ‘For my part, I think he’s probably a waste of time anyway.’
‘Well now, let’s not be too hasty,’ O’Connell suggested. ‘He’s a valuable horse but let nobody say I’m not a fair man. Add a hundred guineas and we’ve got a deal.’
The Colonel beat him down to seventy-five and they shook hands on it.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Bill muttered from behind Ross, who ignored him. He didn’t give a damn what Bill Scott thought any more.
O’Connell walked the Colonel back to the Land-Rover and then turned to say goodbye to Ross and Bill.
‘Nice to be meeting you, Ross. And good luck to you.’ He turned to Bill then and as they shook hands a light of recognition dawned in his face.
‘Scott . . . Bill Scott!’ he said on a note of discovery. ‘Of course! I knew the name was familiar.’
He glanced at Ross. ‘This fella was the brightest young talent on the steeplechasing circuit when I made my debut as an amateur. I used to copy the way he rode a finish. “The Flying Scott” we called him. Rode like there was no tomorrow. We were all convinced he’d be Champion Jockey one day and he would’ve been too if it hadn’t been for that accident . . . How’re you doing now, Bill? It’s grand to see you.’
Far from looking as though the pleasure was mutual, Bill murmured something unintelligible and stared at his feet.
Declan O’Connell appeared not to notice. He managed to recall several occasions when the two of them had raced side by side, and various thrilling incidents they had shared. Bill had obviously either forgotten them or wished to be allowed to, for he edged inexorably towards the Land-Rover, and as soon as was politely possible, if not a little before, took his leave of the Irishman.
On the way back, Ross pondered Bill’s obvious reluctance to talk to his fellow ex-jockey, and after they had dropped the Colonel at his front door said conversationally, ‘You didn’t tell me you’d ridden in the Grand National.’
‘It had nothing to do with you,’ Bill said in a tone that discouraged further comment.
Ross ignored the warning signals. Bill had never spared his feelings and he saw no reason to be charitable in return.
‘Why did you stop racing?’ he persisted. ‘Was it because of the accident he spoke of?’
‘Mind your own bloody business!’ Bill snarled. ‘And keep your nose out of mine.’
‘I take it you don’t want to talk,’ Ross observed mildly.
Bill didn’t bother to answer.
At the yard, Ross was met with the information that Franklin had rung back and rescheduled their meal for half-an-hour later. Quite frankly, he was relieved, as there was still a fair amount of preparation to be done for the following day’s show.
At half-past seven, when Ross had to forsake the yard for a bath and a change of clothes, Sarah and Danny were still going strong, Sarah quietly flapping because she was expecting Darcy Richmond to arrive within the hour to take her out for a drink and she wanted time to change.
Just af
ter eight, scrubbed and more presentably dressed, Ross climbed into the jeep and set off, written directions in hand, for a country pub called the Dovecote, a gourmet’s delight apparently, hidden deep in the Wiltshire countryside.
Barely a mile up the road, he cursed and slammed on the brakes. He had forgotten the one thing Franklin had asked him to bring – Clown’s trophy and rosette from the Three Counties, for Peter. He’d put them in his room ready to take, and then walked out without them.
Cursing, he backed down the road and into a field gateway to turn, then headed at top speed back to the yard.
Leaving the engine running and the dog in the back, he raced through the door and took the stairs two at a time. His door was unlocked, and making a mental note to remember to lock it on the way out, Ross pushed it open and strode in.
A noise and a half-seen movement on the periphery of his vision caused him to turn his head but the action was never completed. Something hit him hard just above his left ear and he was out cold before he hit the floor.
Ross had been knocked out several times before and it was a breeze. It was the coming round that was tiresome.
This time, hearing returned first, but for a few moments the sounds were muffled and confused. He became aware that he was lying on something soft and thought he must be in bed.
Was it morning already? he wondered muzzily. What day was it?
He heard a movement to his right and opened his eyes, turning towards it.
Shades of colour swam about, making no sense at all. He blinked. Somebody was approaching. Memory returned and alarm bells rang. He blinked again and struggled to focus, feeling desperately vulnerable. The figure, slightly clearer now, came closer. Ross felt he ought to try and move.
‘I should lie still if I were you, old boy,’ an unmistakable voice advised him. ‘You don’t look at all the thing.’
Ross closed his eyes and opened them slowly.
That was better. His vision was ninety-five per cent but with it came a crashing headache. He groaned and closed his eyes again. He was lying on the big settee in his bedsit. For some reason that he couldn’t be bothered to wrestle with, Roland was there and he was holding . . .
Cut Throat Page 20
