Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,44

I gave Col the smallest of pulls to steady him in third place for the first of the three fences in the straight. This he jumped cleanly and was going equally well within himself as we crossed the next, passing that jockey with his whip up before we reached the last.

Too much daylight, I thought. He liked ideally to jump the last with two or three others still close ahead. He jumped the last with a tremendous leap, though, and it was no problem after all to stoke up the will-win spirit and tell him that now … now … was the time.

Col put his leading foot to the ground and it bent and buckled under him. His nose went down to the grass. The reins slid through my fingers to their full extent and I leaned back and gripped fiercely with my legs, trying not to be thrown off. By some agile miracle, his other foreleg struck the ground solidly, and with all his half-ton weight on that slender fetlock, Col pushed himself upright and kept on going.

I gathered the reins. The race had to be lost, but the fire, so long arriving, couldn’t easily be put out. Come on, now, you great brute, I was saying to him: now’s the time, there is one to beat, get on with it, now show me, show everyone you can do it, you still can do it.

As if he understood every word he put his head forward and accelerated in the brief astonishing last-minute spurt that had snatched last-second victories before from seeming impossibilities.

We nearly made it that time, very nearly. Col ate up the lengths he’d lost and I rode him almost as hard as Cascade but without the fury, and we were up with the other horse’s rump, up with the saddle, up with the neck … and the winning post flashed back three strides too soon.

The princess had said she wouldn’t come down to the unsaddling enclosure unless we won, as it was a long way from her box.

Maynard was there, however, balefully staring at me as I slid to the ground, his eyes dark and his face tight with hate. Why he came near me I couldn’t understand. If I’d hated anyone that much, I would have avoided the sight of them as much as possible: and I did loathe Maynard for what he’d tried to do to Bobby, to brainwash his own son into killing.

Dusty put the sheet over Col’s heaving chestnut sides with a studied lack of comment on the race’s result, and I went and weighed in with much of the afternoon’s dissatisfaction drifting around like a cloud.

I rode the next race for the Lambourn trainer and finished third, a good way back, and with a feeling of having accomplished nothing, changed into street clothes, done for the day.

On my way out of the weighing room, en route to the princess’s box, a voice said, ‘Hey, Kit,’ behind me, and I turned to find Basil Clutter walking quickly in my wake.

‘Are you still looking for Henri Nanterre?’ he said, catching me up.

‘Yes, I am.’ I stopped and he stopped also, although almost jogging from foot to foot, as he could never easily stand still.

The Roquevilles are here today; they had a runner in the first race. They’ve someone with them who knows Henri Nanterre quite well. They said if you were still interested perhaps you’d like to meet her.’

‘Yes, I would.’

He looked at his watch. ‘I’m supposed to be joining them in the owners’ and trainers’ bar for a drink now, so you’d better come along.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘very much.’

I followed him to the bar and, armed with Perrier to their port, met the Roquevilles’ friend, who was revealed as small and French-looking, with a gamine chic that had outlasted her youth. The elfin face bore wrinkles, the club-cut black hair showed greyish roots, and she wore high-heeled black boots and a smooth black leather trouser-suit with a silk scarf knotted at the back of her neck, cowboy fashion.

Her speech, surprisingly, was straightforward earthy racecourse English, and she was introduced to me as Madame Madeleine Darcy, English wife of a French racehorse trainer.

‘Henri Nanterre?’ she said with distaste. ‘Of course I know the bastard. We used to train his horses until he whisked them away overnight and sent them to Villon.’

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She talked with the freedom of pique and the pleasure of entertaining an attentive audience.

‘He’s a cock,’ she said, ‘with a very loud