High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,57

more time with horses, that owning them should entail the obligation of intimacy.

His muscles twitched. He threw his head up and down. He whinneyed. He also stood fairly still, so that when I’d finished my delicate scraping he had a small bald patch on his right shoulder, the same size and in the same place as the one on Energise.

Allie leant her elbows on the closed bottom half of the stable door and watched through the open top half.

‘Genius,’ she said smiling, ‘Is nine tenths an infinite capacity for taking pains.’

I straightened, grinned, patted Black Fire almost familiarly, and shook my head. ‘Genius is infinite pain,’ I said. ‘I’m happy. Too bad.’

‘How do you know, then? About genius being pain?’

‘Like seeing glimpses of a mountain from the valley.’

‘And you’d prefer to suffer on the peaks?’

I let myself out of the loose box and carefully fastened all the bolts.

‘You’re either issued with climbing boots, or you aren’t,’ I said. ‘You can’t choose. Just as well.’

The sisters reappeared and invited us to take sherry: a double thimbleful in unmatched cut glasses. I looked at my watch and briefly nodded, and Allie asked if she might use the telephone to call the friends.

In the library, they said warmly. This way. Mind the hole in the carpet. Over there, on the desk. They smiled, nodded and retreated.

Beside the telephone stood a small metal box with a stuck-on notice. Please pay for calls. I dialled the London number of the Press Association and asked for the racing section.

‘Horses knocked out of the novice hurdle at Stratford?’ said a voice. ‘Well, I suppose so, but we prefer people to wait for the evening papers. These enquiries waste our time.’

‘Arrangements to make as soon as possible…’ I murmured.

‘Oh, all right. Wait a sec. Here we are…’ He read out about seven names rather fast. ‘Got that?’

‘Yes, thank you very much,’ I said.

I put down the telephone slowly, my mouth suddenly dry. Jody had declared Padellic as a Saturday Stratford runner three days ago. If he had intended not to go there, he would have had to remove his name by a Friday morning deadline of eleven o’clock…

Eleven o’clock had come and gone. None of the horses taken out of the novice hurdle had been Padellic.

‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘He runs tomorrow.’

‘Oh.’ Allie’s eyes were wide. ‘Oh golly!’

12

Eight o’clock, Saturday morning.

I sat in my hired Cortina in a lay-by on the road over the top of the Downs, watching the drizzly dawn take the eye-strain out of the passing headlights.

I was there much too early because I hadn’t been able to sleep. The flurry of preparations all Friday afternoon and evening had sent me to bed still in top gear and from then on my brain had whirred relentlessly, thinking of all the things which could go wrong.

Snatches of conversation drifted back.

Rupert Ramsey expressing doubts and amazement on the other end of the telephone.

‘You want to do what?’

‘Take Energise for a ride in a horsebox. He had a very upsetting experience in a horsebox at Sandown, in a crash… I thought it might give him confidence to go for an uneventful drive.’

‘I don’t think it would do much good,’ he said.

‘All the same I’m keen to try. I’ve asked a young chap called Pete Duveen, who drives his own box, just to pick him up and take him for a ride. I thought tomorrow would be a good day. Pete Duveen says he can collect him at seven thirty in the morning. Would you have the horse ready?’

‘You’re wasting your money,’ he said regretfully. ‘I’m afraid there’s more wrong with him than nerves.’

‘Never mind. And… will you be at home tomorrow evening?’

‘After I get back from Chepstow races, yes.’

The biggest race meeting of the day was scheduled for Chepstow, over on the west side of the Bristol Channel. The biggest prizes were on offer there and most of the top trainers, like Rupert, would be going.

‘I hope you won’t object,’ I said, ‘but after Energise returns from his ride, I’d like to hire a security firm to keep an eye on him.’

Silence from the other end. Then his voice, carefully polite. ‘What on earth for?’

‘To keep him safe,’ I said reasonably. ‘Just a guard to patrol the stable and make regular checks. The guard wouldn’t be a nuisance to anybody.’

I could almost feel the shrug coming down the wire along with the resigned sigh. Eccentric owners should be humoured. ‘If you want to, I suppose… But why?’

‘If I called