Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,25

off and walked away.’

I found myself thinking about it, trying to explain. ‘One moment you’re in partnership with that big creature, and maybe you like him, and the next moment he’s going to die … So I’ve not wanted to stay to watch. It may be odd to you, especially as I was brought up in a racing stable, but I never have seen the gun actually put to the head, and I’ve always vaguely imagined it was shot from the side, like through a human temple.’

‘Well,’ he said, still surprised and mildly amused, ‘you’d better get educated. You of all people. Look,’ he said, ‘look at Cotopaxi’s head.’ He picked his way over the stiff chestnut legs until he could show me what he wanted. Cotopaxi’s eyes were half open and milky, and although Robin Curtiss was totally unmoved, to me it was still no everyday matter.

‘A horse’s brain is only the size of a bunched fist,’ he said. ‘I suppose you know that?’

‘Yes, I know it’s small.’

He nodded. ‘Most of a horse’s head is empty space, all sinuses. The brain is up between the ears, at the top of the neck. The bone in that area is pretty solid. There’s only the one place where you can be sure a bolt will do the job.’ He picked up Cotopaxi’s forelock and pointed to a small disturbance of the pale hairs. ‘You take a line from the right ear to the left eye,’ he said, ‘and a line from the left ear to the right eye. Where the lines cross, that’s the best … more or less the only … place to aim. And see? The bolt went into Cotopaxi at that exact spot. It wasn’t any old haphazard job. Whoever did this knew exactly what to do.’

‘Well,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘now you’ve told me, I’d know what to do.’

‘Yes, but don’t forget, you have to get the angle right as well as the place. You have to aim straight at the spot where the spinal cord and the brain meet. Then the result’s instantaneous and, as you can see, there’s no blood.’

‘And meanwhile,’ I suggested ironically, ‘the horse is simply standing still letting all this happen?’

‘Funnily enough, most of them do. Even so, I’m told that for short people it’s difficult to get the hand up to the right angle at the right height.’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I said. I looked down at the waste of the great racing spirit. I’d sat on that back, shared that mind, felt the fluid majesty of those muscles, enjoyed his triumphs, schooled him as a young horse, thrilled to his growing strengths. I would still walk away, I thought, if another time came.

I made my way back to the outside air and Robin Curtiss followed me out, still matter-of-factly continuing my education.

‘Apart from the difficulty of hitting the right spot, the bolt has another disadvantage, which is that although it retracts at once, the horse begins to fall just as quick, and the hard skull bones tend to bend the bolt after a lot of use, and the gun no longer works.’

‘So now you use something else?’

‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘A free bullet. I’ll show you, if you like. I’ve a pistol in my car.’

We walked unhurriedly out of the courtyard to where his car was parked not far from the princess’s Rolls. He unlocked the boot, and in there unlocked an attaché case, and from it produced a brown cloth which he unwrapped.

Inside lay an automatic Luger-type pistol, which looked ordinary except for its barrel. Instead of the straight narrow barrel one would expect, there was a wide bulbous affair with a slanted oval opening at the end.

‘This barrel sends the bullet out spinning in a spiral,’ he explained.

‘Any old bullet?’

‘It has to be the right calibre, but yes, any old bullet, and any old gun. That’s one big advantage, you can weld a barrel like this onto any pistol you like. Well … the bullet leaves the gun with a lot of short-range energy, but because it’s going in a spiral, almost any obstruction will stop it. So if you shoot a horse, the bullet will stop in its head. Mostly, that is.’ He smiled cheerfully. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to be so accurate, as with a bolt, because the wobbling bullet does a lot more damage.’

I looked at him thoughtfully. ‘How can you be so sure those two were killed with a bolt?’

‘Oh … with the free bullet you get