High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,71

sound and a squirm from Macrahinish, and he began to swear in earnest when I balanced it on the manger and unfastened the clips.

The case contained regular veterinarian equipment, neatly stowed in compartments. I touched only one thing, lifting it carefully out.

A plastic bag containing a clear liquid. A bag plainly proclaiming the contents to be sterile saline solution.

I held it out towards Jody and said, ‘You dripped alcohol straight into my veins.’

‘You were unconscious,’ he said disbelievingly.

‘Shut up, you stupid fool,’ Macrahinish screamed at him.

I smiled. ‘Not all the time. I remember nearly everything about that night.’

‘He said he didn’t,’ Jody said defensively to Macrahinish and was rewarded by a look from the swollen eyes which would have made a non-starter of Medusa.

‘I went to see if you still had Energise,’ I said. ‘And I found you had.’

‘You don’t know one horse from another,’ he sneered. ‘You’re just a mug. A blind greedy mug.’

‘So are you,’ I said. ‘The horse you’ve killed is not Energise.’

‘It is!’

‘Shut up,’ screamed Macrahinish in fury. ‘Keep your stupid sodding mouth shut.’

‘No,’ I said to Jody. ‘The horse you’ve killed is an American horse called Black Fire.’

Jody looked wildly down at the quiet body.

‘It damn well is Energise,’ he insisted. ‘I’d know him anywhere.’

‘Jesus,’ Macrahinish shouted. ‘I’ll cut your tongue out.’

Rupert said doubtfully to me, ‘Are you sure it’s not Energise?’

‘Positive.’

‘He’s just saying it to spite me,’ said Jody furiously. ‘I know it’s Energise. See that tiny bald patch on his shoulder? That’s Energise.’

Macrahinish, beyond speech, tried to attack him, tied hands and dicky ankle notwithstanding. Jody gave him a vague look, concentrating only on the horse.

‘You are saying,’ Rupert suggested, ‘that you came to kill Energise and that you’ve done it.’

‘Yes,’ said Jody triumphantly.

The word hung in the air, vibrating. No one said anything. Jody looked round at each watching face, at first with defiant angry pride, then with the first creeping of doubt, and finally with the realisation of what Macrahinish had been trying to tell him, that he should never have been drawn into admitting anything. The fire visibly died into glum and chilly embers.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ he said sullenly. ‘Macrahinish did. I didn’t want to kill him at all, but Macrahinish insisted.’

A police car arrived with two young and persistent constables who seemed to find nothing particularly odd in being called to the murder of a horse.

They wrote in their notebooks that five witnesses, including a magistrate, had heard Jody Leeds admit that he and a disbarred veterinary surgeon had broken into a racing stable after midnight with the intention of putting to death one of the horses. They noted that a horse was dead. Cause of death, unknown until an autopsy could be arranged.

Hard on their heels came Rupert’s doctor, an elderly man with a paternal manner. Yawning but uncomplaining, he accompanied me to find my security guard, who to my great relief was sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, awake and groaning healthily. We took him into Rupert’s office, where the doctor stuck a plaster on the dried wound on his forehead, gave him some tablets and told him to lay off work for a couple of days. He smiled weakly and said it depended if his boss would let him.

One of the young policemen asked if he’d seen who had hit him.

‘Big man with sunglasses. He was creeping along behind me, holding a ruddy great chunk of wood. I heard something… I turned and shone my torch, and there he was. He swung at my head. Gave me a right crack, he did. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground.’

Reassured by his revival I went outside again to see what was happening.

The magistrate and the colonel seemed to have gone home, and Rupert was down in the yard talking to some of his own stable staff who had been woken by the noise.

Macrahinish was hopping about on one leg, accusing me of having broken the other and swearing he’d have me prosecuted for using undue force to protect my property. The elderly doctor phlegmatically examined the limb in question and said that in his opinion it was a sprain.

The police had rashly untied the Macrahinish wrists and were obviously relying on the leg injury to prevent escape. At the milder word sprain they produced handcuffs and invited Macrahinish to stick his arms out. He refused and resisted and because they, as I had done, underestimated both his strength and