High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,42
of nature, harnessed and insulated and delivered on tap. My welder-uncle had made electricity seem a living person to me as a child. “Electricity will catch you if you don’t look out.” He said it as a warning; and I thought of Electricity as a fiery monster hiding in the wires and waiting to pounce.
The stiff yellowish pages of the Racing Calendar crackled familiarly as I opened their double spread and folded them back. The Calendar, racing’s official weekly publication, contained lists of horses entered for forthcoming races, pages and pages of them, four columns to a page. The name of each horse was accompanied by the name of its owner and trainer, and also by its age and the weight it would have to carry if it ran.
With pencil in hand to act as insurance against skipping a line with the eye, I began painstakingly, as I had the previous week and the week before that, to check the name, owner, and trainer of every horse entered in hurdle races.
Grapevine (Mrs R. Wantage) B. Fritwell
..
6
11
11
Pirate Boy (Lord Dresden) A. G. Barnes
..
10
11
4
Hopfield (Mr Paul Hatheleigh) K. Poundsgate
5
11
2
There were reams of them. I finished the Worcester entries with a sigh. Three hundred and sixty-eight down for one novice hurdle and three hundred and forty-nine for another, and not one of them what I was looking for.
My coffee was nearly cold. I drank it anyway and got on with the races scheduled for Taunton.
Hundreds more names, but nothing.
Ascot, nothing. Newcastle, nothing. Warwick, Teesside, Plumpton, Doncaster, nothing.
I put the Calendar down for a bit and went out onto the balcony for some air. Fiercely cold air, slicing down to the lungs. Primeval arctic air carrying city gunge: the mixture as before. Over in the Park the zoo creatures were quiet, sheltering in warmed houses. They always made more noise in the summer.
Return to the task.
Huntingdon, Market Rasen, Stratford on Avon… I sighed before starting Stratford and checked how many more still lay ahead. Nottingham, Carlisle and Wetherby. I was in for another wasted morning, no doubt.
Turned back to Stratford, and there it was.
I blinked and looked again carefully, as if the name would vanish if I took my eyes off it.
Half way down among sixty-four entries for the Shakespeare Novice Hurdle.
Padellic (Mr J. Leeds) J. Leeds .. .. .. ..
5
10
7
Padellic.
It was the first time the name had appeared in association with Jody. I knew the names of all his usual horses well, and what I had been searching for was a new one, an unknown. Owned, if my theories were right, by Jody himself. And here it was.
Nothing in the Calendar to show Padellic’s colour or markings. I fairly sprinted over to the shelf where I kept a few form books and looked him up in every index.
Little doubt, I thought. He was listed as a black or brown gelding, five years old, a half-bred by a thorough-bred sire out of a hunter mare. He had been trained by a man I’d never heard of and he had run three times in four-year-old hurdles without being placed.
I telephoned to the trainer at once, introducing myself as a Mr Robinson trying to buy a cheap novice.
‘Padellic?’ he said in a forthright Birmingham accent. ‘I got shot of that bugger round October time. No bloody good. Couldn’t run fast enough to keep warm. Is he up for sale again? Can’t say as I’m surprised. He’s a right case of the slows, that one.’
‘Er… where did you sell him?’ I asked tentatively.
‘Sent him to Doncaster mixed sales. Right bloody lot they had there. He fetched four hundred quid and I reckon he was dear at that. Only the one bid, you see. I reckon the bloke could’ve got him for three hundred if he’d tried. I was right pleased to get four for him, I’ll tell you.’
‘Would you know who bought him?’
‘Eh?’ He sounded surprised at the question. ‘Can’t say. He paid cash to the auctioneers and didn’t give his name. I saw him make his bid, that’s all. Big fellow. I’d never clapped eyes on him before. Wearing sunglasses. I didn’t see him after. He paid up and took the horse away and I was right glad to be shot of him.’
‘What is the horse like?’ I asked.
‘I told you, bloody slow.’
‘No, I mean to look at.’
‘Eh? I thought you were thinking of buying him.’
‘Only on paper, so to speak. I thought,’ I lied, ‘that he still belonged to you.’
‘Oh, I see. He’s black, then.