Knock Down - By Dick Francis Page 0,38

next I saw Eddy Ingram he was beaming away at Vic, and Marji likewise. All three of them in a little huddle, as thick as thieves.

I reflected uncharitably that I was in no way bound to tell Eddy there was nothing wrong with the filly. If she turned out to be the best brood mare of the century it would serve him damn well right.

Towards the end of the evening, after Nicol had left to have dinner, my arm was grabbed by a man who said fiercely, ‘I want to talk to you,’ and such was the readiness of my flight reflexes that I nearly hit and ran before I realised that his grievance was not with me. He was, he said, the breeder of the Transporter colt which Wilton Young’s agent Fynedale had bought for seventy-five thousand pounds. He nearly spat the words out and did not look as one should if one’s produce were among the top prices in the sales.

He insisted that he should buy me a drink and that I should listen to him.

‘All right,’ I said.

We stood in a corner of the bar drinking brandy and ginger ale while the bitterness poured out of him like acid.

‘I heard Vic Vincent’s out to get you. That’s why I’m telling you this. He came down to my place last week and bought my colt for thirty thousand.’

‘Oh did he,’ I said.

Private sales before the auctions were not supposed to take place. Every horse in the catalogue had to appear in the sale ring unless excused by a vet’s certificate, because otherwise, as the auctioneers complained with some reason, the buyers and sellers would just use their catalogue as a free information and advertising medium, and not send their horses to the auction at all. The auctioneers produced the catalogue and set up the sales, and wanted their ten per cents for their trouble. At one or two sales the catalogue had not been produced until the very last minute because of the number of private bargains which had been struck at other times before the auction.

Late catalogues made my job a lot more difficult. On the other hand I knew that some breeders were avoiding paying the auctioneers’ commission by selling privately for a good sum and then doing everything they could to keep the auction price at rock bottom. One couldn’t blame the auctioneers for fighting back.

‘Vic gave me a double promise,’ said the breeder, his lips tight with fury. ‘He said they wouldn’t bid the price up to thirty thousand if nobody else was trying to buy.’

‘So that you wouldn’t have to pay the full commission to the auctioneers?’

He stared. ‘Nothing wrong in that, is there? Business is business.’

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘He said that if the price went up to fifty thousand he would give me half of everything over thirty.’

He drank, nearly choking himself. I watched.

‘And then… then…’ He spluttered, hardly able to get the words out. ‘Do you know what he has the gall to say? He says our agreement only went as far as fifty thousand. Everything over that, he takes it all.’

I admired the beauty of it in an odd sort of way.

‘Was the agreement in writing?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said furiously.

‘Unfortunate.’

‘Unfortunate! Is that all you have to say?’

I sighed. ‘Why didn’t you let the colt take its chance at the sale instead of selling to Vic first?’

‘Because he didn’t think it would make as much as thirty at auction, but he had a client who would give that much, and he said I might as well benefit.’

‘Have you ever dealt with Vic before?’ I asked curiously.

‘Not directly. No. And to be honest, I was flattered when he came to my place specially…. Flattered!’

He crashed his empty glass with a bang on to one of the small tables scattered in the bar. A man sitting at the table looked up and waved a beckoning arm.

‘Join the club,’ he said.

I knew him slightly; a small-scale trainer from one of the northern counties who came down south occasionally to buy new horses for his owners. He knew as much about horses as any agent, and I reckoned his owners had been lucky he could buy for them himself as it saved them having to pay an agent’s commission.

He was lightly smashed, if not drunk.

‘That bastard,’ he said. ‘Vic Vincent. Join the anti-Vic-Vincent club.’

The breeder, hardly attending, said, ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Can you beat it?’ the trainer asked of the world in general.