Knock Down - By Dick Francis Page 0,22

a year.’

‘I am too old. I have high blood pressure and my ankles swell up.’

It was the first really human thing she’d said. I smiled at her. She did not smile back.

‘It’s the best I can do,’ I said, standing up.

‘Don’t shut the front door when you go out,’ she said. ‘Or I’ll have to get up to open it for the dogs.’

It was barely five miles from Paley to where I had arranged to meet the horsebox bringing River God from Devon. I had expected to reach the rendezvous first, but from some distance away I could see a blue box already parked in the designated place.

I had chosen one of those useful half moons carved by road straightening programmes where the loop of old country road remained as a leafy lay-by. There was one other car there, an old green Zodiac station wagon, which hadn’t been cleaned for weeks. I passed it and the horsebox, and stopped in front, getting out to go back to talk to the driver.

Talking to the driver had to be postponed, as he was otherwise engaged. I found him standing with his back to that side of the box which faced away from the gaze of passing motorists on the main road. He was standing with his back to the box because he could retreat no further. Before him, adopting classic threatening poses, were two men.

I knew them well enough. I had met them at Ascot.

Frizzy Hair and his mate.

They hadn’t expected to see me either and it gave me at least an equal chance. I picked up the nearest weapon to hand, which was a nice solid piece of branch fallen from one of the road-lining trees, and positively raced to the attack. If I’d stopped to think I might not have done it, but fury is a great disregarder of caution.

My face must have been an accurate mirror of my feelings. Frizzy Hair for one indecisive moment looked mesmerised, horrified, paralysed by the spectacle of a normally moderate man rushing at him murderously, and because of it he moved far too slowly. I cracked the branch down on him with a ferocity that frightened me as much as him.

He screeched and clutched at the upper reaches of his left arm, and his mate made an equally comprehensive assessment of my general intentions and bolted towards the green wagon.

Frizzy Hair followed him, flinging nothing into the battle but one parting verbal shot.

‘It won’t help you.’

I ran after him, still holding the stick. He was going like a quarter horse and the mate was already in the driving seat with the motor turning over.

Frizzy Hair gave me a sick look over his shoulder, scrambled into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Short of being dragged along the highway I could see no way of stopping them: but I could and did take a quick look at the mud-coated number plate as they shot away, and before I could forget it I fished out pen and paper and wrote it down.

I went much more slowly back to the driver, who was staring at me much as if I were a little green man from outer space.

‘’Struth,’ he said. ‘I thought you was going to kill ‘em.’

Hell hath no fury like the vanquished getting his own back.

I said ‘What did they want?’

‘Blimey…’ He pulled out a crumpled handkerchief and wiped his face. ‘Didn’t you even know?’

‘Only in general,’ I said. ‘What in particular?’

‘Eh?’ He seemed dazed.

‘What did they want?’

‘Got a fag?’

I gave him one and lit for us both. He sucked in the smoke as if it were oxygen to the drowning.

‘I s’pose you are… Jonah Dereham?’ he said.

‘Who else?’

‘Yeah… I thought you were smaller, like.’

Five feet nine inches. Eleven stone. Couldn’t be more average. ‘A lot of jump jockeys are taller,’ I said.

He began to look less stirred up. He ran his tongue round his teeth and seemed to feel a fresh flow of saliva to a dry mouth.

‘What did they want?’ I asked for the third time.

‘That one you hit… with all that fluffy sort of hair… it was him did the talking.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Rum sort of bloke. All smiley. Came up to me cab as nice as you please asking for the loan of a spanner for ‘is brokendown car.’ He stopped to look at the empty road along which the brokendown car had vanished at high speed.

‘Yeah… Well, see, I reached back to the tool kit and asked what