Wild Horses - By Dick Francis Page 0,72

you.’

‘Sorry I was so uncouth.’

I smiled at her blue eyes. ‘A wise child,’ I said.

‘I am not a child.’

‘Stay beside me,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell Moncrieff it’s OK.’

‘Who’s Moncrieff?’

‘The Director of Photography. Very important man.’

She looked at me dubiously when I introduced her to the untidy beard and the earthquake-victim clothes, but after allowing us one old-fashioned sideways look he took a fancy to her and let her get in his way without cursing.

She looked colourfully bright in a scarlet short coat over clean new blue jeans, and mentally bright with noticing eyes and a firm calm mouth. She watched the proceedings without senseless chatter.

‘I told Dad about that knife,’ she told me after a while.

‘What did he say?’

‘Funny, that’s exactly what he said. He said, “What did he say?’ ”

‘Did he?’ I considered her guileless expression. ‘And what did you say I said?’

Her forehead wrinkled. ‘I told him the knife looked beautiful, but you hadn’t said much at all. I told Dad it hadn’t pleased the producer, O’Hara, and I didn’t know why.’

‘O’Hara doesn’t like knives,’ I said, dismissing it.

‘Oh, I see. Dad said it might be because someone had tried to cut Nash Rourke, like he’d heard on the radio, but it was his stand-in, not Nash himself.’

‘That, too,’ I agreed.

‘Dad said directors don’t have a stand-in,’ she was teasing, unaware, ‘and you don’t know which they are until someone points them out.’

‘Or when they come to your home.’

‘Goodness, yes. Did the photo of Sonia come out all right?’

‘I’m sure it did, but I won’t see it until I go back to Newmarket this evening.’

She said, hesitantly, ‘I didn’t tell Dad. He really wouldn’t like it.’

‘I won’t mention it. The actress playing Yvonne – that’s Nash’s wife, in the film – starts work on set next week. I promise she won’t look like the photo. She won’t upset your father.’

She smiled her appreciation and thanks, exonerated from her deception. I hoped no deadly harm would come to her, but in so many lives, it did.

First on the afternoon’s schedule was the last of the wide crowd shots round the parade ring; the mounting of the jockeys onto their horses and their walk out towards the course. Even though the action would in the end be peripheral to the human story, we had to get the race-day sequences right to earn credibility. We positioned the owner-trainer groups again as before, each of them attended by their allotted jockey. Moncrieff checked the swivelling camera and gently moved Lucy out of shot.

Nash arrived in the ring trailing clouds of security and de-toured to tell me a friend of mine was looking for me.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Your TV pal from Doncaster.’

‘Greg Compass?’

He nodded. ‘Outside the weighing—room. He’s been yacking with the jockeys. He’ll meet you there, he said.’

‘Great.’

We rehearsed the mounting scene twice and shot it three times from two camera angles until the horses grew restive, and then asked all the townspeople to go round to the course side of the stands, to watch the string cantering down to the start.

During the inevitable delay for camera-positioning I left Lucy with Moncrieff and walked over to the weighing—room to meet Greg, whom I found in a milk-of-human-kindness mood, dressed in an expensive grey suit and wide open to suggestions from me that he might like to earn an unexpected fee by briefly taking on his usual persona and interviewing the winning trainer; in other words, Nash.

‘It won’t be more than a few seconds on screen,’ I said. ‘Just enough to establish your pretty face.’

‘Don’t see why not.’ He was amused and civilised; friendly.

‘In half an hour?’

‘Done.’

‘Incidentally, do you yourself remember anything about the trainer whose wife was hanged, who we’re making this saga about?’

‘Jackson Wells?’

‘Yes. He’s here, himself, today. So is his present wife. So’s his daughter. And his brother.’

‘Before my time, old lad.’

‘Not much,’ I assured him. ‘You must have been about sixteen when Jackson stopped training. You rode in your first race not long after that. So, did you hear anything from the older jockeys about… well… anything?’

He looked at me quizzically. ‘I can’t say I haven’t thought about this since last Saturday, because of course I have. As far as I know, the book, Unstable Times, is sentimental balls. The jockeys who knew the real Yvonne were not dream lovers, they were a randy lot of activists.’

I smiled.

‘You knew?’ he asked.

‘It sort of stands to reason. But they’re still going to be dream lovers in the film.’ I paused. ‘Do