High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,8

young owner-driver I’d hired for Energise.

‘What is it? Box broken down?’

‘No… look, you did say your horse was black, didn’t you? I mean, I did get that right, didn’t I?’

Anxiety sharpened my voice. ‘Is there anything wrong with him?’

‘No… at least… not with him, no. But the horse which Mr Leeds has left for me to take is… well… a chestnut mare.’

I went with him to the stables. The gatekeeper still smiled with pleasure at things going wrong.

‘S’right,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Leeds went off a quarter of an hour ago in one of them hire boxes, one horse. Said his own box had had an accident and he was leaving Energise here, instructions of the owner.’

‘The horse he’s left is not Energise,’ I said.

‘Can’t help that, can I?’ he said virtuously.

I turned to the young man. ‘Chestnut mare with a big white blaze?’

He nodded.

‘That’s Asphodel. She ran in the first race today. Jody Leeds trains her. She isn’t mine.’

‘What will I do about her then?’

‘Leave her here,’ I said. ‘Sorry about this. Send me a bill for cancellation fees.’

He smiled and said he wouldn’t, which almost restored my faith in human nature. I thanked him for bothering to find me instead of keeping quiet, taking the wrong horse and then sending me a bill for work done. He looked shocked that anyone could be so cynical, and I reflected that until I learnt from Jody, I wouldn’t have been.

Jody had taken Energise after all.

I burnt with slow anger, partly because of my own lack of foresight. If he had been prepared to urge Andy-Fred to risk running me down I should have known that he wouldn’t give up at the first setback. He had been determined to get the better of me and whisk Energise back to his own stable and I’d under-estimated both his bloody-mindedness and his nerve.

I could hardly wait to be free of Jody. I went back to my car and drove away from the racecourse with no thoughts but of which trainer I would ask to take my horses and how soon I could get them transferred from one to the other.

Charlie smiled across the golden polished wood of the table in Parkes and pushed away his empty coffee cup. His cigar was half smoked, his port half drunk, and his stomach, if mine were anything to go by, contentedly full of some of the best food in London.

I wondered what he had looked like as a young man, before the comfortable paunch and the beginning of jowls. Big businessmen were all the better for a little weight, I thought. Lean-and-hungry was for the starters, the hotheads in a hurry. Charlie exuded maturity and wisdom with every excess pound.

He had smooth greying hair, thin on top and brushed back at the sides. Eyes deep set, nose large, mouth firmly straight. Not conventionally a good-looking face, but easy to remember. People who had once met Charlie tended to know him next time.

He had come alone, and the restaurant he had chosen consisted of several smallish rooms with three or four tables in each; a quiet place where privacy was easy. He had talked about racing, food, the Prime Minister and the state of the Stock Market, and still had not come to the point.

‘I get the impression,’ he said genially, ‘that you are waiting for something.’

‘You’ve never asked me to dine before.’

‘I like your company.’

‘And that’s all?’

He tapped ash off the cigar. ‘Of course not,’ he said.

‘I thought not,’ I smiled. ‘But I’ve probably eaten your dinner under false pretences.’

‘Knowingly?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know exactly what’s in your mind.’

‘Your vagueness,’ he said. ‘When someone like you goes into a sort of trance…’

‘I thought so,’ I sighed. ‘Well, that was no useful productive otherwhereness of mind, that was the aftermath of a practically mortal row I’d just had with Jody Leeds.’

He sat back in his chair. ‘What a pity.’

‘Pity about the row, or a pity about the absence of inspiration?’

‘Both, I dare say. What was the row about?’

‘I gave him the sack.’

He stared. ‘What on earth for?’

‘He said if I told anyone that, he’d sue me for slander.’

‘Oh, did he indeed!’ Charlie looked interested all over again, like a horse taking fresh hold of its bit. ‘And could he?’

‘I expect so.’

Charlie sucked a mouthful of smoke and trickled it out from one corner of his mouth.

‘Care to risk it?’ he said.

‘Your discretion’s better than most…’

‘Absolute,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

I believed him. I said, ‘He found a way of

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