Rat Race - By Dick Francis Page 0,6

my brother. I saw him just now in the paddock and I said, ‘Has he brought my handbag?’ and he shook his head and started to say something, but I belted off over here in a fury without stopping to listen, and I suppose he was going to tell me it wasn’t Larry who had come in the plane.… Oh damn it, I hate being robbed. Colin would have lent him a hundred quid if he was that desperate. He didn’t have to pinch it.’

‘It was a lot of money to have in a handbag,’ I suggested.

‘Colin had just given it to me, you see. In the plane. Some owner had handed him a terrific present in readies, and he gave me a hundred of it to pay a bill with, which was really sweet of him, and I can hardly expect him to give me another hundred just because I was silly enough to leave the first one lying about…’ Her voice tailed off in depression.

‘The bill,’ she added wryly, ‘Is for flying lessons.’

I looked at her with interest. ‘How far have you got?’

‘Oh, I’ve got my licence,’ she said. ‘These were instrument flying lessons. And radio navigation, and all that jazz. I’ve done about ninety-five hours, altogether. Spread over about four years, though, sad to say.’

That put her in the experienced-beginner class and the dangerous time bracket. After eighty hours flying, pilots are inclined to think they know enough. After a hundred hours, they are sure they don’t. Between the two, the accident rate is at its peak.

She asked me several questions about the aeroplane, and I answered them. Then she said, ‘Well, there’s no point in sitting here all afternoon,’ and began to lever herself out on to the wing. ‘Aren’t you coming over to the races?’

‘No,’ I shook my head.

‘Oh come on,’ she said. ‘Do.’

The sun was shining and she was very pretty. I smiled and said ‘O.K.,’ and followed her out on to the grass. It is profitless now to speculate on the different course things would have taken if I’d stayed where I was.

I collected my jacket from the rear baggage compartment and locked all the doors and set off with her across the track. The man on the gate duly let me into the paddock and Colin Ross’s sister showed no sign of abandoning me once we were inside. Instead she diagnosed my almost total ignorance and seemed to be pleased to be able to start dispelling it.

‘You see that brown horse over there,’ she said, steering me towards the parade ring rails, ‘That one walking round the far end, number sixteen, that’s Colin’s mount in this race. It’s come out a bit light but it looks well in its coat.’

‘It does?’

She looked at me in amusement. ‘Definitely.’

‘Shall I back it, then?’

‘It’s all a joke to you.’

‘No,’ I protested.

‘Oh yes indeed,’ she nodded. ‘You’re looking at this race meeting in the way I’d look at a lot of spiritualists. Disbelieving and a bit superior.’

‘Ouch.’

‘But what you’re actually seeing is a large export industry in the process of marketing its wares.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

‘And if the industry takes place out of doors on a nice fine sunny day with everyone enjoying themselves, well, so much the better. ’

‘Put that way,’ I agreed, ‘It’s a lot more jolly than a car factory,’

‘You will get involved,’ she said with certainty.

‘No.’ I was equally definite.

She shook her head. ‘You will, you know, if you do much racecourse taxi work. It’ll bust through that cool shell of yours and make you feel something, for a change.’

I blinked. ‘Do you always talk like that to total strangers?’

‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘I don’t.’

The bright little jockeys flooded into the parade ring and scattered to small earnest owner-trainer groups where there were a lot of serious conversations and much nodding of heads. On the instructions of Colin Ross’s sister I tried moderately hard to take it all seriously. Not with much success.

Colin Ross’s sister…

‘Do you have a name?’ I asked.

‘Often.’

‘Thanks.’

She laughed. ‘It’s Nancy. What’s yours?’

‘Matt Shore.’

‘Hm. A flat matt name. Very suitable.’

The jockeys were thrown up like confetti and landed in their saddles, and their spindly shining long-legged transportation skittered its way out on to the track. Two-year-olds, Nancy said.

She walked me back towards the stands and proposed to smuggle me into the ‘Owners and Trainers’. The large official at the bottom of the flight of steps beamed at her until his eyes disappeared and he failed to inspect me for the