Wild Horses - By Dick Francis Page 0,33

I said, ‘Thanks, O’Hara,’ and he left one further report, ‘Howard will have his claws well clipped. Stupid son of a bitch.’

‘There you go,’ Nash said, smiling, when I switched the phone off. ‘Drink? Eat with me, why not?’

Nash had most of his meals alone upstairs, brought by room service. Unlike most actors he had a solitary streak to which, because of his wife’s absence, he had given free rein. Surprised, therefore, but pleased not to be dining alone myself, I stayed for soup, lamb and claret and a step into a positive friendship that I wouldn’t, a couple of weeks earlier, have thought likely.

Relaxed after the day’s troubles, I decided to make a brief call on Dorothea, to see if she needed anything, before my scheduled meeting with Moncrieff to plan the morning’s activities on the Heath.

I expected to find a quiet sorrowful house. Instead, when I arrived there, I found flashing lights, a police car, and an ambulance.

CHAPTER 6

A policeman barred my attempt to walk up the concrete path.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Clear the path, please, sir.’ He was young, big, businesslike, and unsympathetic with unknown members of the public. He had kept – and was keeping – a small crowd of onlookers from stepping too close to the goings-on.

I tried again. ‘The people who live here are my friends.’

‘Stand back, if you please, sir.’ He scarcely looked at me, unintentionally impressive, a large physical barrier that I had no inclination to fight.

I retreated through the curious crowd and from behind them used my constant companion, the portable telephone, to ring Dorothea’s number. After what seemed a very long time a distressed woman’s voice said, ‘Hello.’

‘Dorothea?’ I said. ‘It’s Thomas.’

‘Oh. Oh, no, I’m Betty. Where are you, Thomas? Can you come?’ I explained I was outside but obstructed and in a few seconds she was hurrying down the path to collect me. The large policeman stepped aside, shrugging, not caring one way or the other, and I hastened with Betty towards the front door.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked her.

‘Someone broke in. It’s terrible… they’ve nearly killed Dorothea… how could they? Dr Gill has just come and the police too and there’s so much blood and they’re taking photographs and it’s all unbelievable…’

We went into the house which looked inside as if it had been swept through by a tornado.

Valentine’s bedroom by the front door had been wrecked: drawers were upturned on the floor, their contents scattered. The wardrobe stood open, empty. Pictures had been torn from the walls, their frames smashed. Mattress and pillows were ripped, guts spilling.

‘It’s all like this,’ Betty wailed. ‘Even the bathrooms and the kitchen. I must go back to Dorothea… I’m afraid she’ll die…’

She left me and vanished into Dorothea’s bedroom where I with hesitation followed, stepping round a wide drying sea of blood in the hall.

I needn’t have felt I might be intruding: the room was full of people. Robbie Gill obstructed my view of most of Dorothea, who was lying unspeaking but in shoes and stockings on the sliced ruins of her bed. Two ambulancemen filled half the available space with a stretcher on wheels. A uniformed policewoman and a photographer were busy. Betty threaded a way into the throng, beckoning me to follow.

Robbie Gill glanced up, saw me, nodded recognition and took a pace back with the result that I saw all of Dorothea, and became sickened and overwhelmingly angry.

She was bleeding, swollen and unconscious, with great gashes in the flesh of her cheek and forehead and a red mess where her mouth was.

‘Her right arm’s broken,’ Robbie Gill dictated to the note-taking policewoman. ‘She has internal injuries…’ He stopped. Even for a doctor, it was too much. Dorothea’s clothes were ripped open, her old breasts and stomach bare, two slashed wounds on her body bleeding copiously, one so deep that a bulge of intestines protruded through the abdomen wall, a glistening pale swelling island in a wet scarlet ocean. The smell of blood was overpowering.

Robbie Gill took sterile dressings from his bag and told everyone except the policewoman to leave. She herself looked over-pale, but stood her ground as the rest of us silently obeyed.

Betty was shaking, tears on her cheeks.

‘I came over to make sure she’d given herself something to eat. She doesn’t take care of herself, now Valentine’s gone. I came in through the back door, into the kitchen, and it’s wrecked… it’s terrible… and I found her, she was bleeding on the floor in the hall, and I