High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,77

one who had brought them about. Racing columnists, though reluctantly convinced of his villainy, referred to him still as the ‘unfortunate’ Jody. Quintus, implacably resentful, was ferreting away against me in the Jockey Club and telling everyone it was my fault his son had made ‘misjudgements’. I had asked him how it could possibly be my fault that Jody had made the misjudgement of taking Macrahinish and Ganser Mays for buddy-buddies, and had received no answer.

I had heard unofficially the results of the autopsy on Black Fire. He had been killed by a massive dose of chloroform injected between the ribs straight into the heart. Quick, painless, and positively the work of a practised hand.

The veterinary bag found beside the dead horse had contained a large hypodermic syringe with a sufficient length of needle; traces of chloroform inside the syringe and Macrahinish’s fingerprints outside.

These interesting facts could not be generally broadcast on account of the forthcoming trial, and my high-up police informant had made me promise not to repeat them.

Jody and Macrahinish were out on bail, and the racing authorities had postponed their own enquiry until the law’s verdict should be known. Jody still technically held his trainer’s licence.

The people who to my mind had shown most sense had been Jody’s other owners. One by one they had melted apologetically away, reluctant to be had for mugs. They had judged without waiting around for a jury, and Jody had no horses left to train. And that in itself, in many eyes, was a further crying shame to be laid at my door.

I went out on the balcony of the kind tycoon’s box and stared vacantly over Cheltenham racecourse. Moral victory over Jody was impossible, because too many people still saw him, despite everything, as the poor hardworking little man who had fallen foul of the rich robber baron.

Charlie came out on the balcony in my wake.

‘Steven? What’s the matter? You’re too damned quiet.’

‘What we did,’ I said sighing, ‘has changed nothing.’

‘Of course it has,’ he said robustly. ‘You’ll see. Public opinion works awful slowly. People don’t like doing about-turns and admitting they were fooled. But you trust your Uncle Charlie, this time next year, when they’ve got over their red faces, a lot of people will quietly be finding you’re one of their best friends.’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘Quintus,’ he said positively, ‘is doing himself a lot of personal no good just now with the hierarchy. The on dit round the bazaars is that if Quintus can’t see his son is a full-blown criminal he is even thicker than anyone thought. I tell you, the opinion where it matters is one hundred per cent for you, and our little private enterprise is the toast of the cigar circuit.’

I smiled. ‘You make me feel better even if you do lie in your teeth.’

‘As God’s my judge,’ he said, virtuously, and spoiled it by glancing a shade apprehensively skywards.

‘I saw Jody,’ I said. ‘Did you know?’

‘No!’

‘In the City,’ I nodded. ‘Him and Felicity, coming out of some law offices.’

‘What happened?’

‘He spat,’ I said.

‘How like him.’

They had both looked pale and worried and had stared at me in disbelief. Jody’s ball of mucus landed at my feet, punctuation mark of how he felt. If I’d known they were likely to be there I would have avoided the district by ten miles, but since we were accidentally face to face I asked him straight out the question I most wanted answered.

‘Did you send Ganser Mays to smash my place up?’

‘He told him how to make you suffer,’ Felicity said spitefully. ‘Serves you right.’

She cured in that one sentence the pangs of conscience I’d had about the final results of the Energise shuttle.

‘You’re a bloody fool, Jody,’ I said. ‘If you’d dealt straight with me I’d’ve bought you horses to train for the Classics. With your ability, if you’d been honest, you could have gone to the top. Instead, you’ll be warned off for life. It is you, believe me, who is the mug.’

They had both stared at me sullenly, eyes full of frustrated rage. If either of them should have a chance in the future to do me further bad turns I had no doubt that they would. There was no one as vindictive as the man who’d done you wrong and been found out.

Charlie said beside me, ‘Which do you think was the boss? Jody or Macrahinish or Ganser Mays?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘How does a triumvirate grab you?’

‘Equal power?’ He considered. ‘Might well