Knock Down - By Dick Francis Page 0,39

‘I’ve bought horses for an owner of mine for years. Damn good horses. Then what happens? He meets Vic Vincent and Vic persuades him to let him buy him a horse. So he buys it. And then what happens? Then I buy him a horse, like I’ve always done. And then what happens? Vic Vincent complains to my owner, saying I shouldn’t buy the horses because it does him, Vic Vincent, out of the fair commission he would be getting if he bought them. Can you believe it? So I complain to my owner about him buying horses through Vic Vincent because I like to train horses I choose, not horses Vic Vincent chooses, and then what do you think happens?’

He threw his arms wide theatrically and waited for his cue.

‘What happens?’ I supplied obligingly.

‘Then my owner says I’m not being fair to Vic Vincent and he takes his horses away from me and sends them to another trainer that Vic Vincent picked out for him and now between them they’re rooking my owner right and left, but he doesn’t even realise, because he thinks horses must be twice as good if they cost twice as much.’

The breeder listened in silence because he was deep anyway in his own grudges; and I listened in silence because I believed every incredible word of it. People who bought racehorses could be-more easily conned than any old lady parting with her savings to a kind young man on the doorstep. People who bought racehorses were buying dreams and would follow anyone who said he knew the way to the end of the rainbow. A few had found the crock of gold there, and the rest never gave up looking. Someone ought to start a Society for the Protection of Gullible Owners, I thought smiling, with Constantine and Wilton Young as its first cases.

The breeder and the trainer bought large refills and sat down to compare wounds. I left them to their sorrows, went back to the ring, and bid unsuccessfully for a well-grown colt who went to Vic Vincent for nearly double my authorised limit.

The under bidder was Jiminy Bell. I saw Vic giving him a tenner afterwards and patting him on the back. Some other Gullible Owner would be paying Vic. It was enough to make you laugh.

Vic was not laughing, however, in the car park.

I was fishing out my keys to unlock the car door when someone shone a torch straight at my face.

‘Turn that bloody thing off,’ I said.

The light went out. When the dazzle cleared from my eyes there were six or seven men standing round me in a ring at a distance of six feet.

I looked at them one by one. Vic Vincent and the carrot-headed Yorkshireman Fynedale, Ronnie North and Jiminy Bell. Three others I met every day at the sales.

All deadly serious.

‘What have we here?’ I said. ‘A lynch mob?’

No one thought it funny. Not even me.

9

Vic said, ‘You’re going to have to be told, Jonah.’

‘Told what?’

There were people within shouting distance, going to their cars. I thought maybe I would shout, but not perhaps just yet.

The seven men took a small step forwards almost as if moved by a signal. I stood with my back against my car and thought I was getting tired of being attacked in car parks. Have to travel more by train.

‘You’re going to do what we tell you, whether you like it or not.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not.’

They took another step and stood in a solid wall, shoulder to shoulder. If I reached out I could touch them.

‘You’ll fall over yourselves in a minute,’ I said.

They didn’t like me trying to make a joke of them. The anger Vic had throttled earlier rose up again in his face and none of his clients would have recognised their friendly neighbourhood bloodsucker. A vein in his forehead swelled and throbbed.

The Yorkshireman Fynedale put his shoulder in front of Vic’s as if to hold him back.

‘You’re more trouble than you’re worth,’ he told me, ‘And you might as well get this straight. You’re not to bid when we say not. Right?’

Vic elbowed him back. Vic didn’t like his lieutenant usurping the role of number one thug.

‘If we get rough, you’ve asked for it,’ he said.

‘Get,’ I said, ‘What do you call that bang on the head at Ascot? A friendly pat?’

He snapped out, ‘That wasn’t us,’ and instantly regretted it. His face closed like a slammed door.

I glanced round the ring of