High Stakes Read online

  Ouch, I thought. I hadn’t even checked that all the separate items on the monthly bills did add up to the totals I’d paid. Even when I was sure he was robbing me, I hadn’t suspected it would be in any way so ridiculously simple.

  ‘What else?’ I said.

  He looked away for a second, then decided that I couldn’t after all know a great deal.

  ‘Oh all right,’ he said, as if making a magnanimous concession. ‘It’s Raymond, isn’t it?’

  ‘Among other things.’

  Jody nodded ruefully. ‘I guess I did pile it on a bit, charging you for him twice a week when some weeks he only came once.’

  ‘And some weeks not at all.’

  ‘Oh well…’ said Jody deprecatingly. ‘I suppose so, once or twice.’

  Raymond Child rode all my jumpers in races and drove fifty miles some mornings to school them over fences on Jody’s gallops. Jody gave him a fee and expenses for the service and added them to my account. The twice a week schooling session fees had turned up regularly for the whole of July, when in fact, as I had very recently and casually discovered, no horses had been schooled at all and Raymond himself had been holidaying in Spain.

  ‘A tenner here or there,’ Jody said persuasively. ‘It’s nothing to you.’

  ‘A tenner plus expenses twice a week for July came to over a hundred quid.’

  ‘Oh.’ He tried a twisted smile. ‘So you really have been checking up.’

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘You’re so easy going. You’ve always paid up without question.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘No… Look, Steven, I’m sorry about all this. If I give you my word there’ll be no more fiddling on your account… If I promise every item will be strictly accurate… why don’t we go on as before? I’ve won a lot of races for you, after all.’

  He looked earnest, sincere and repentant. Also totally confident that I would give him a second chance. A quick canter from confession to penitence, and a promise to reform, and all could proceed as before.

  ‘It’s too late,’ I said.

  He was not discouraged; just piled on a bit more of the ingratiating manner which announced ‘I know I’ve been a bad bad boy but now I’ve been found out I’ll be angelic.’

  ‘I suppose having so much extra expense made me behave stupidly,’ he said. ‘The mortgage repayments on the new stables are absolutely bloody, and as you know I only moved there because I needed more room for all your horses.’

  My fault, now, that he had had to steal.

  I said, ‘I offered to build more boxes at the old place.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have done,’ he interrupted hastily: but the truth of it was that the old place had been on a plain and modest scale where the new one was frankly opulent. At the time of the move I had vaguely wondered how he could afford it. Now, all too well, I knew.

  ‘So let’s call this just a warning, eh?’ Jody said cajolingly. ‘I don’t want to lose your horses, Steven. I’ll say so frankly. I don’t want to lose them. We’ve been good friends all this time, haven’t we? If you’d just said… I mean, if you’d just said, “Jody, you bugger, you’ve been careless about a bill or two…” Well, I mean, we could have straightened it out in no time. But… well… When you blew off without warning, just said you were taking the horses away, straight after Energise won like that… well, I lost my temper real and proper. I’ll admit I did. Said things I didn’t mean. Like one does. Like everyone does when they lose their temper.’

  He was smiling in a counterfeit of the old way, as if nothing at all had happened. As if Energise were not standing beside us sweating in a crashed horsebox. As if my overcoat were not torn and muddy from a too close brush with death.

  ‘Steven, you know me,’ he said. ‘Got a temper like a bloody rocket.’

  When I didn’t answer at once he took my silence as acceptance of his explanations and apologies, and briskly turned to practical matters.

  ‘Well now, we’ll have to get this lad out of here.’ He slapped Energise on the rump. ‘And we can’t get the ramp down until we get this box moved away from that other one.’ He made a sucking sound through his teeth. ‘Look, I’ll try to back straight out again. Don’t see why it shouldn’t work.’

  He jumped out of the back door and went round to the front of the cab. Looking forward through the stalls I could see him climb into the driver’s seat, check the gear lever, and press the starter: an intent, active, capable figure dealing with an awkward situation.

  The diesel starter whirred and the engine roared to life. Jody settled himself, found reverse gear, and carefully let out the clutch. The horsebox shuddered and stood still. Jody put his foot down on the accelerator.

  Through the windscreen I could see two or three men approaching, faces a mixture of surprise and anger. One of them began running and waving his arms about in the classic reaction of the chap who comes back to his parked car to find it dented.

  Jody ignored him. The horsebox rocked, the crushed side of the cab screeched against its mangled neighbour, and Energise began to panic.

  ‘Jody, stop,’ I yelled.

  He took no notice. He raced the engine harder, then took his foot off the accelerator, then jammed it on again. Off, on, repeatedly.

  Inside the box it sounded as if the whole vehicle were being ripped in two. Energise began whinnying and straining backwards on his tethering rope and stamping about with sharp hooves. I didn’t know how to begin to soothe him and could hardly get close enough for a pat, even if that would have made the slightest difference. My relationship with horses was along the lines of admiring them from a distance and giving them carrots while they were safely tied up. No one had briefed me about dealing with a hysterical animal at close quarters in a bucketing biscuit tin.

  With a final horrendous crunch the two entwined cabs tore apart and Jody’s box, released from friction, shot backwards. Energise slithered and went down for a moment on his hindquarters and I too wound up on the floor. Jody slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the cab and was promptly clutched by the three newcomers, one now in a full state of apoplectic rage.

  I stood up and picked bits of hay off my clothes and regarded my steaming, foam-flaked, terrified, four-footed property.

  ‘All over, old fellow,’ I said.

  It sounded ridiculous. I smiled, cleared my throat, tried again.

  ‘You can cool off, old lad. The worst is over.’

  Energise showed no immediate signs of getting the message. I told him he was a great horse, he’d won a great race, he’d be king of the castle in no time and that I admired him very much. I told him he would soon be rugged up nice and quiet in a stable somewhere though I hadn’t actually yet worked out exactly which one, and that doubtless someone would give him some excessively expensive hay and a bucket of nice cheap water and I dared say some oats and stuff like that. I told him I was sorry I hadn’t a carrot in my pocket at that moment but I’d bring him one next time I saw him.

  After a time this drivel seemed to calm him. I put out a hand and gave his neck a small pat. His skin was wet and fiery hot. He shook his head fiercely and blew out vigorously through black moist nostrils, but the staring white no longer showed round his eye and he had stopped trembling. I began to grow interested in him in a way which had not before occurred to me: as a person who happened also to be a horse.

  I realised I had never before been alone with a horse. Extraordinary, really, when Energise was the twelfth I’d owned. But racehorse owners mostly patted their horses in stables with lads and trainers in attendance, and in parade rings with all the world looking on, and in unsaddling enclosures with friends pressing round to congratulate. Owners who like me were not riders themselves and had nowhere of their own to turn horses out to grass seldom ever spent more than five consecutive minutes in a horse’s company.

  I spent longer with Energise in that box than in all the past five months since I’d bought him.

  Outside, Jody
was having troubles. One of the men had fetched a policeman who was writing purposefully in a notebook. I wondered with amusement just how Jody would lay the blame on my carelessness in walking in front of the box and giving the driver no choice but to swerve. If he thought he was keeping my horses, he would play it down. If he thought he was losing them, he’d be vitriolic. Smiling to myself I talked it over with Energise.

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I don’t know why I haven’t told him yet that I know about his other fraud, but as it turns out I’m damn glad I haven’t. Do you know?’ I said. ‘All those little fiddles he confessed to, they’re just froth.’

  Energise was calm enough to start drooping with tiredness. I watched him sympathetically.

  ‘It isn’t just a few hundred quid he’s pinched,’ I said. ‘It’s upwards of thirty-five thousand.’

  2

  The owner of the crunched box accepted my apologies, remembered he was well insured and decided not to press charges. The policeman sighed, drew a line through his notes and departed. Jody let down the ramp of his box, brought out Energise and walked briskly away with him in the direction of the stables. And I returned to my binoculars, took off my battered coat and went thoughtfully back towards the weighing room.

  The peace lasted for all of ten minutes—until Jody returned from the stables and found I had not cancelled my cancellation of his authority to act.

  He sought me out among the small crowd standing around talking on the weighing room verandah.

  ‘Look, Steven,’ he said. ‘You’ve forgotten to tell them I’m still training for you.’

  He showed no anxiety, just slight exasperation at my oversight. I weakened for one second at the thought of the storm which would undoubtedly break out again and began to make all the old fatal allowances: he was a good trainer, and my horses did win, now and again. And I could keep a sharp eye on the bills and let him know I was doing it. And as for the other thing… I could easily avoid being robbed in future.

  I took a deep breath. It had to be now or never.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ I said slowly. ‘I meant what I said. I’m taking the horses away.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I am taking them away.’

  The naked enmity that filled his face was shocking.

  ‘You bastard,’ he said.

  Heads turned again in our direction.

  Jody produced several further abusive epithets, all enunciated very clearly in a loud voice. The Press notebooks sprouted like mushrooms in little white blobs on the edge of my vision and I took the only way I knew to shut him up.

  ‘I backed Energise today on the Tote,’ I said.

  Jody said ‘So what?’ very quickly in the second before the impact of what I meant hit him like a punch.

  ‘I’m closing my account with Ganser Mays,’ I said.

  Jody looked absolutely murderous, but he didn’t ask why. Instead he clamped his jaws together, cast a less welcoming glance at the attentive Press and said very quietly and with menace, ‘If you say anything I’ll sue you for libel.’

  ‘Slander,’ I said automatically.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Libel is written, slander is spoken.’

  ‘I’ll have you,’ he said, ‘if you say anything.’

  ‘Some friendship,’ I commented.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘It was a pleasure,’ he said, ‘to take you for every penny I could.’

  A small silence developed. I felt that racing had gone thoroughly sour and that I would never get much fun from it again. Three years of uncomplicated enjoyment had crumbled to disillusionment.

  In the end I simply said, ‘Leave Energise here. I’ll fix his transport,’ and Jody turned on his heel with a stony face and plunged in through the weighing room door.

  The transport proved no problem. I arranged with a young owner-driver of a one-box transport firm that he should take Energise back to his own small transit yard overnight and ferry him on in a day or two to whichever trainer I decided to send him.

  ‘A dark brown horse. Almost black,’ I said. ‘The gate-keeper will tell you which box he’s in. But I don’t suppose he’ll have a lad with him.’

  The owner-driver, it transpired, could provide a lad to look after Energise. ‘He’ll be right as rain,’ he said. ‘No need for you to worry.’ He had brought two other horses to the course, one of which was in the last race, and he would be away within an hour afterwards, he said. We exchanged telephone numbers and addresses and shook hands on the deal.

  After that, more out of politeness than through any great appetite for racing, I went back to the private box of the man who had earlier given me lunch and with whom I’d watched my own horse win.

  ‘Steven, where have you been? We’ve been waiting to help you celebrate.’

  Charlie Canterfield, my host, held his arms wide in welcome, with a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigar in the other. He and his eight or ten other guests sat on dining chairs round a large central table, its white cloth covered now not with the paraphernalia of lunch, but with a jumble of half full glasses, race cards, binoculars, gloves, handbags and betting tickets. A faint haze of Havana smoke and the warm smell of alcohol filled the air, and beyond, on the other side of snugly closed glass, lay the balcony overlooking the fresh and windy racecourse.

  Four races down and two to go. Mid afternoon. Everyone happy in the interval between coffee-and-brandy and cake-and-tea. A cosy little roomful of chat and friendliness and mild social smugness. Well-intentioned people doing no one any harm.

  I sighed inwardly and raised a semblance of enjoyment for Charlie’s sake, and sipped champagne and listened to everyone telling me it was great that Energise had won. They’d all backed it, they said. Lots of lovely lolly, Steven dear. Such a clever horse… and such a clever little trainer, Jody Leeds.

  ‘Mm,’ I said, with a dryness no one heard.

  Charlie waved me to the empty chair between himself and a lady in a green hat.

  ‘What do you fancy for the next race?’ he asked.

  I looked at him with a mind totally blank.

  ‘Can’t remember what’s running,’ I said.

  Charlie’s leisured manner skipped a beat. I’d seen it in him before, this split-second assessment of a new factor, and I knew that therein lay the key to his colossal business acumen. His body might laze, his bonhomie might expand like softly whipped cream, but his brain never took a moment off.

  I gave him a twisted smile.

  Charlie said ‘Come to dinner.’

  ‘Tonight, do you mean?’

  He nodded.

  I bit my thumb and thought about it. ‘All right.’

  ‘Good. Let’s say Parkes, Beauchamp Place, eight o’clock.’

  ‘All right.’

  The relationship between Charlie and me had stood for years in that vague area between acquaintanceship and active friendship where chance meetings are enjoyed and deliberate ones seldom arranged. That day was the first time he had invited me to his private box. Asking me for dinner as well meant a basic shift to new ground.

  I guessed he had misread my vagueness, but all the same I liked him, and no one in his right mind would pass up a dinner at Parkes. I hoped he wouldn’t think it a wasted evening.

  Charlie’s guests began disappearing to put on bets for the next race. I picked up a spare race card which was lying on the table and knew at once why Charlie had paid me such acute attention: two of the very top hurdlers were engaged in battle and the papers had been talking about it for days.

  I looked up and met Charlie’s gaze. His eyes were amused.

  ‘Which one, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Crepitas.’

  ‘Are you betting?’

  I nodded. ‘I did it earlier. On the Tote.’

  He grunted. ‘I prefer the bookmakers. I like to know what odds I’m getting before I lay out my cash,’ And considering his business was investment banking that was consistent thinking. ‘I can’t be bothered to wa
lk down, though.’

  ‘You can have half of mine, if you like,’ I said.

  ‘Half of how much?’ he said cautiously.

  ‘Ten pounds.’

  He laughed. ‘Rumour says you can’t think in anything less than three noughts.’

  ‘That was an engineering joke,’ I said, ‘which escaped.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I sometimes use a precision lathe. You can just about set it to an accuracy of three noughts… point nought nought nought one. One ten thousandth of an inch. That’s my limit. Can’t think in less than three noughts.’

  ‘He chuckled. ‘And you never have a thousand on a horse?’

  ‘Oh, I did that too, once or twice.’

  He definitely did, that time, hear the arid undertone. I stood up casually and moved towards the glass door to the balcony.

  ‘They’re going down to the post,’ I said.

  He came without comment, and we stood outside watching the two stars, Crepitas and Waterboy, bouncing past the stands with their jockeys fighting for control.

  Charlie was a shade shorter than I, a good deal stouter, and approximately twenty years older. He wore top quality clothes as a matter of course and no one hearing his mellow voice would have guessed his father had been a lorry driver. Charlie had never hidden his origins. Indeed he was justly proud of them. It was simply that under the old educational system he’d been sent to Eton as a local boy on Council money, and had acquired the speech and social habits along with the book learning. His brains had taken him along all his life like a surf rider on the crest of a roller, and it was probably only a modest piece of extra luck that he’d happened to be born within sight of the big school.

  His other guests drifted out on to the balcony and claimed his attention. I knew none of them well, most of them by sight, one or two by reputation. Enough for the occasion, not enough for involvement.

  The lady in the green hat put a green glove on my arm. ‘Waterboy looks wonderful, don’t you think?’

  ‘Wonderful,’ I agreed.