High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,72

his violence, it took a hectic few minutes for them to make him secure.

‘Resisting arrest,’ they panted, writing it in the notebooks. ‘Attacking police officers in the course of their duty.’

Macrahinish’s sunglasses lay on the gravel in the main yard, where he had lost them in the first tackle. I walked down to where they shone in the light and picked them up. Then I took them slowly back to him and put them in his handcuffed hands.

He stared at me through the raw-looking eyelids. He said nothing. He put the sunglasses on, and his fingers were trembling.

‘Ectropion,’ said the doctor, as I walked away.

‘What?’ I said.

‘The condition of his eyes. Ectropion. Poor fellow.’

The police made no mistakes with Jody. He sat beside Macrahinish in the back of the police car with handcuffs on his wrists and the Arctic in his face. When the police went to close the doors ready to leave, he leant forwards and spoke to me through rigid lips.

‘You shit,’ he said.

Rupert invited the rest of my security firm indoors for warmth and coffee and in his office I introduced them to him.

‘My friend in grey flannel,’ I said, ‘is Charlie Canter-field. My big man in blue is Bert Huggerneck. My injured friend with the dried blood on his face is Owen Idris.’

Rupert shook hands with each and they grinned at him. He sensed immediately that there was more in their smiles than he would have expected, and he turned his enquiring gaze on me.

‘Which firm do they come from?’ he asked.

‘Charlie’s a merchant banker, Bert’s a bookies’ clerk, and Owen helps in my workshop.’

Charlie chuckled and said in his fruitiest Eton, ‘We also run a nice line in a census, if you should ever need one.’

Rupert shook his head helplessly and fetched brandy and glasses from a cupboard.

‘If I ask questions,’ he said, pouring lavishly, ‘will you answer them?’

‘If we can,’ I said.

‘That dead horse in the stable. Is it Energise?’

‘No. Like I said, it’s a horse I bought in the States called Black Fire.’

‘But the bald patch… Jody was so certain.’

‘I did that bald patch with a razor blade. The horses were extraordinarily alike, apart from that. Especially at night, because of being black. But there’s one certain way of identifying Black Fire. He has his American racing number tattoed inside his lip.’

‘Why did you bring him here?’

‘I didn’t want to risk the real Energise. Before I saw Black Fire in America I couldn’t see how to entice Jody safely. Afterwards, it was easier.’

‘But I didn’t get the impression earlier this evening,’ Rupert said pensively, ‘that you expected them to kill the horse.’

‘No… I didn’t know about Macrahinish. I mean, I didn’t know he was a vet, or that he could over-rule Jody. I expected Jody just to try to steal the horse and I wanted to catch him in the act. Catch him physically committing a positive criminal act which he couldn’t possibly explain away. I wanted to force the racing authorities, more than the police, to see that Jody was not the innocent little underdog they believed.’

Rupert thought it over. ‘Why didn’t you think he would kill him?’

‘Well… it did cross my mind, but on balance I thought it unlikely, because Energise is such a good horse. I thought Jody would want to hide him away somewhere so that he could make a profit on him later, even if he sold him as a point-to-pointer. Energise represents money, and Jody has never missed a trick in that direction.’

‘But Macrahinish wanted him dead,’ Rupert said.

I sighed. ‘I suppose he thought it safer.’

Rupert smiled. ‘You had put them in a terrible fix. They couldn’t risk you being satisfied with getting your horse back. They couldn’t be sure you couldn’t somehow prove they had stolen it originally. But if you no longer had it, you would have found it almost impossible to make allegations stick.’

‘That’s right,’ Charlie agreed. ‘That’s exactly what Steven thought.’

‘Also,’ I said, ‘Jody wouldn’t have been able to bear the thought of me getting the better of him. Apart from safety and profit, he would have taken Energise back simply for revenge.’

‘You know what?’ Charlie said, ‘it’s my guess that he probably put his entire bank balance on Padellic at Stratford, thinking it was Energise, and when Padellic turned up sixth he lost the lot. And that in itself is a tidy little motive for revenge.’

‘Here,’ Bert said appreciatively. ‘I wonder how much Ganser bleeding Mays is down the drain for! Makes