High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,43

More or less black, with a bit of brown round the muzzle.’

‘Any white about him?’

‘Not a hair. Black all over. Black ’uns are often no good. I bred him, see? Meant to be bay, he was, but he turned out black. Not a bad looker, mind. He fills the eye. But nothing there where it matters. No speed.’

‘Can he jump?’

‘Oh ay. In his own good time. Not bad.’

‘Well, thanks very much.’

‘You’d be buying a monkey,’ he said warningly. ‘Don’t say as I didn’t tell you.’

‘I won’t buy him,’ I assured him. ‘Thanks again for your advice.’

I put down the receiver reflectively. There might of course be dozens of large untraceable men in sunglasses going round the sales paying cash for slow black horses with no markings; and then again there might not.

The telephone bell rang under my hand. I picked up the receiver at the first ring.

‘Steven?’

No mistaking that cigar-and-port voice. ‘Charlie.’

‘Have you lunched yet?’ he said. ‘I’ve just got off a train round the corner at Euston and I thought…’

‘Here or where?’ I said.

‘I’ll come round to you.’

‘Great.’

He came, beaming and expansive, having invested three million somewhere near Rugby. Charlie, unlike some merchant bankers, liked to see things for himself. Reports on paper were all very well, he said, but they didn’t give you the smell of a thing. If a project smelt wrong, he didn’t disgorge the cash. Charlie followed his nose and Charlie’s nose was his fortune.

The feature in question buried itself gratefully in a large scotch and water.

‘How about some of that nosh you gave Bert?’ he suggested, coming to the surface. ‘To tell you the truth I get tired of eating in restaurants.’

We repaired amicably to the kitchen and ate bread and bacon and curried baked beans and sausages, all of which did no good at all to anyone’s waistline, least of all Charlie’s. He patted the bulge affectionately. ‘Have to get some weight off, one of these days. But not today,’ he said.

We took coffee back to the sitting-room and settled comfortably in armchairs.

‘I wish I lived the way you do,’ he said. ‘So easy and relaxed.’

I smiled. Three weeks of my quiet existence would have driven him screaming to the madhouse. He thrived on bustle, big business, fast decisions, financial juggling and the use of power. And three weeks of all that, I thought in fairness, would have driven me mad even quicker.

‘Have you made that lock yet?’ he asked. He was lighting a cigar round the words and they sounded casual, but I wondered all of a sudden if that was why he had come.

‘Half,’ I said.

He shook his match to blow it out. ‘Let me know,’ he said.

‘I promised.’

He drew in a lungful of Havana and nodded, his eyes showing unmistakably now that his mind was on duty for his bank.

‘Which would you do most for,’ I asked. ‘Friendship or the lock?’

He was a shade startled. ‘Depends what you want done.’

‘Practical help in a counter-offensive.’

‘Against Jody?’

I nodded.

‘Friendship,’ he said. ‘That comes under the heading of friendship. You can count me in.’

His positiveness surprised me. He saw it and smiled.

‘What he did to you was diabolical. Don’t forget, I was here. I saw the state you were in. Saw the humiliation of that drink charge, and the pain from God knows what else. You looked a little below par and that’s a fact.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be. If it was just your pocket he’d bashed, I would probably be ready with cool advice but not active help.’

I hadn’t expected anything like this. I would have thought it would have been the other way round, that the loss of property would have angered him more than the loss of face.

‘If you’re sure…’ I said uncertainly.

‘Of course.’ He was decisive. ‘What do you want done?’

I picked up the Racing Calendar, which was lying on the floor beside my chair, and explained how I’d looked for and found Padellic.

‘He was bought at Doncaster sales for cash by a large man in sunglasses and he’s turned up in Jody’s name.’

‘Suggestive.’

‘I’d lay this house to a sneeze,’ I said, ‘that Rupert Ramsey is worrying his guts out trying to train him for the Champion Hurdle.’

Charlie smoked without haste. ‘Rupert Ramsey has Padellic, but thinks he has Energise. Is that right?’

I nodded.

‘And Jody is planning to run Energise at Stratford on Avon in the name of Padellic?’

‘I would think so,’ I said.

‘So would I.’

‘Only it’s not entirely so simple.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ I said, ‘I’ve found two other races for which Padellic is