Knock Down - By Dick Francis Page 0,4

truer had repeatedly left a wake of smaller operatives who sadly wished they had never been flattered by his attention. I didn’t know exactly what his business was, only that he dealt in property and thought in millions, and was now trying to build up the best collection of horses in the country. I had guessed it was being best that interested him more than the actual horses.

When I was ready to leave the Sales the best thing of the day was due to come up in the ring, so it seemed that everyone was flocking in one direction to watch it while I went in the other towards the cars. I could see Kerry Sanders sitting waiting, her head turned towards me behind the rain-speckled glass. Two men were leaning on the car beside mine, cupping their hands over matches while they lit cigarettes.

When I passed them, one of them picked up some sort of bar from the bonnet of the car and hit me a crunching blow on the head.

Dazed and astonished I staggered and sagged and saw all those stars they print in comic strips. Vaguely I heard Kerry Sanders shouting and opening the door of my car, but when the world stopped whirling a little I saw that she was still sitting inside. Door shut, window open. Her expression as much outrage as fright.

One of the men clutched my right arm which probably stopped me falling flat on my face. The other calmly stood and watched. I leaned against the car next to mine and weakly tried to make sense of it.

‘Muggers,’ Kerry Sanders said scathingly. I thought she said ‘buggers’ with which I agreed, but finally understood what she meant.

‘Four pounds,’ I said. ‘Only got four pounds.’ It came out as a mumble. Indistinct.

‘We don’t want your money. We want your horse.’

Dead silence. They shouldn’t have hit my head so hard if they wanted sense.

Kerry Sanders made things no clearer. ‘I’ve already told you once,’ she said icily, ‘That I intend to keep him.’

‘You told us, but we don’t believe you.’

The one doing the talking was a large cheerful man with a bouncer’s biceps and frizzy mouse-brown hair standing round his head like a halo.

‘A fair profit, I offered you,’ he said to Kerry. ‘Can’t say fairer than that, now can I, darlin’.’

‘What the hell,’ I said thickly, ‘is going on?’

‘See now,’ he said, ignoring me. ‘Three thousand six. Can’t say fairer than that.’

Kerry Sanders said no.

Frizzy Hair turned his reasonable smile on me.

‘Look now, lover boy, you and the lady is going to sell us the horse. Now we might as well do it civilised like. So give her some of your expensive advice and we’ll be on our way.’

‘Buy some other horse,’ I said. Still a mumble.

‘We haven’t got all afternoon, lover boy. Three thousand six. Take it.’

‘Or leave it,’ I said automatically.

Kerry Sanders almost laughed.

Frizzy Hair dug into an inner pocket and produced wads of cash. Peeling a few notes away from one packet he threw the bulk of it through the car window onto Kerry Sanders’ lap, followed by three closely taped packets which he didn’t count. The lady promptly threw the whole lot out again and it lay there in the mud of the car park, lucre getting suitably filthy.

The haze in my head began to clear and my buckling knees to straighten. Immediately, sensing the change, Frizzy Hair shed the friendly persuader image in favour of extortionist, grade one.

‘Let’s forget the games,’ he said. ‘I want that horse and I’m going to get it. See?’

He unzipped the front of my rain-proof jacket.

I made a mild attempt at freeing myself from the other man’s grasp, but my co-ordination was still shot to pieces. The net result was nothing except a fresh whirling sensation inside my skull, and I’d been knocked out often enough in the past to know that the time of profitable action was still a quarter of an hour ahead.

Under my jacket I wore a sweater, and under that a shirt. Frizzy Hair slid his hand up between these two layers until his fingers encountered the webbing strap I wore across my chest. He smiled with nasty satisfaction, yanked up the sweater, found the buckle on the strap, and undid it.

‘Now you see, don’t you, lover boy,’ he said, ‘How I’m going to get that horse?’

2

I sat in the driving seat of my car leaning my head against the window. Kerry Sanders sat beside me with the muddy