High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,38

I hadn’t dropped in by parachute.’

He smiled faintly and lowered the level in his glass to a spoonful.

‘Shall I get you something to eat, sir?’

‘I don’t feel…’

‘Better to eat. Really it is. I’ll pop out to the take-away.’ He put his glass down and departed before I could argue and came back in ten minutes with a wing of freshly roasted chicken.

‘Didn’t think you’d fancy the chips,’ he said. He put the plate beside me, fetched knife, fork and napkin, and drained his own glass.

‘Be going now, sir,’ he said, ‘if you’re all right.’

8

Whether it was Owen’s care or the natural course of events, I felt a great deal better in the morning. The face peering back at me from the bathroom mirror, though adorned now with two days’ stubble, had lost the grey look and the dizzy eyes. Even the bags underneath were retreating to normal.

I shaved first and bathed after, and observed that at least twenty per cent of my skin was now showing bruise marks. I supposed I should have been glad I hadn’t been awake when I collected them. The bothersome aches they had set up the day before had more or less abated, and coffee and breakfast helped things along fine.

The police were damping on the matter of stolen Lamborghinis. They took particulars with pessimism and said I might hear something in a week or so; then within half an hour they were back on the line bristling with irritation. My car had been towed away by colleagues the night before last because I’d parked it on a space reserved for taxis in Leicester Square. I could find it in the pound at Marble Arch and there would be a charge for towing.

Owen arrived at nine with a long face and was hugely cheered when I told him about the car.

‘Have you seen the papers, sir?’

‘Not yet.’

He held out one of his own. ‘You’d better know,’ he said.

I unfolded it. Allie had been right about the gossip columnist. The paragraph was short and sharp and left no one in any doubt.

Red-face day for Steven Scott (35), wealthy racehorse owner, who was scooped by police from a Soho gutter early yesterday. At Marlborough Street Court, Scott, looking rough and crumpled, pleaded guilty to a charge of drunk and incapable. Save your sympathy. Race-followers will remember Scott recently dumped Jody Leeds (28), trainer of all his winners, without a second’s notice.

I looked through my own two dailies and the Sporting Life. They all carried the story and in much the same vein, even if without the tabloid heat. Smug satisfaction that the kicker-of-underdogs had himself bitten the dust.

It was fair to assume that the story had been sent to every newspaper and that most of them had used it. Even though I’d expected it, I didn’t like it. Not a bit.

‘It’s bloody unfair,’ Owen said, reading the piece in the Life.

I looked at him with surprise. His usually non-committal face was screwed into frustrated anger and I wondered if his expression was a mirror-image of my own.

‘Kind of you to care.’

‘Can’t help it, sir.’ The features returned more or less to normal, but with an effort. ‘Anything I can do, sir?’

‘Fetch the car?’

He brightened a little. ‘Right away.’

His brightness was short-lived because after half an hour he came back white-faced and angrier than I would have thought possible.

‘Sir!’

‘What is it?’

‘The car, sir. The car.’

His manner said it all. He stammered with fury over the details. The nearside front wing was crumpled beyond repair. Headlights smashed. Hub cap missing. Bonnet dented. All the paintwork on the nearside scratched and scored down to the metal. Nearside door a complete right-off. Windows smashed, handle torn away.

‘It looks as if it was driven against a brick wall, sir. Something like that.’

I thought coldly of the nearside of Jody’s horsebox, identically damaged. My car had been smashed for vengeance.

‘Were the keys in it?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t locked. Couldn’t be, with one lock broken. I looked for your wallet, like you said, but it wasn’t there. None of your things, sir.’

‘Is the car drivable?’

He calmed down a little. ‘Yes, the engine’s all right. It must have been going all right when it was driven into Leicester Square. It looks a proper wreck, but it must be going all right, otherwise how could they have got it there?’

‘That’s something, anyway.’

‘I left it in the pound, sir. It’ll have to go back to the coach builders, and they might as well