Blood Sport Page 25

  Roots stared gloomily into space.

  ‘This makes it difficult,’ he said. ‘What you are in fact saying is that we know Offen switched the stallions, because of the tattoo marks, but no one will be able to prove it?’

  I looked down to where Lynnie was jumping into the pool in a big splash contest with Roots’s daughters. Her lighthearted laughter floated up, carefree and very young.

  ‘I wouldn’t try,’ I said. ‘Rightly or wrongly I decided to repossess the stolen goods by stealing them back. First, so that Offen would have no chance of destroying them. Second, so that there shouldn’t be years of delay while lawyers argued the case, years of the stallions standing idle, with their value diminishing day by day and their blood lines wasting. Third, and most important, that there should be no chance of Offen getting them back once the dust had settled. Because if he had any sense he would swear, and provide witnesses to swear, that the horses in dispute were two unraced halfbred animals of no account, and he’d explain the tattoos on their lips by saying he’d used them to try out some new type of ink. What more likely, he would say, than that he should repeat the numbers of his two best horses? He could make it sound a lot more reasonable than that he should have stolen two world famous stallions and conducted a large scale fraud. He has great personal charm.’

  Roots nodded. ‘I’ve met him.’

  ‘Showman and Allyx were being looked after by Offen’s nephew,’ I said. ‘Offen can say he’d lent him two old nags to hack around on, and he can’t imagine why anyone would want to steal them.’

  ‘He could put up an excellent defence, I see that,’ he admitted.

  ‘His present stud groom is innocent,’ I added. ‘And would convince anyone of it. If you leave things as they are, Offen won’t get Allyx and Showman back. If you prosecute him, he may.’

  He looked shattered, staring into his glass but seeing with experienced eyes every side of the sticky problem.

  ‘We could try blood tests,’ he said at last.

  ‘Blood tests?’

  ‘For paternity,’ he nodded. ‘If there is any doubt about which horse has sired a certain foal, we take blood tests. If one disputed sire’s blood is of a similar group to the foal’s, and the other disputed sire’s is different, we conclude that the foal was sired by the similar sire.’

  ‘And like in humans,’ I asked, ‘you can tell which horse could not have sired which foal, but you couldn’t say which, of a similar blood group, actually did?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  We thought it over. Then he said cheerfully, ‘If we can prove that none of the so-called Moviemaker foals could in fact have been sired by Moviemaker, but could all have been sired by Showman, we’ll have Offen sewn up tight.’

  ‘Couldn’t he possibly have made sure, before he ever bought Moviemaker, that his and Showman’s blood groups were similar? I mean, if he’s a breeder, he’d know about blood tests.’

  Roots’s gloom returned. ‘I suppose it’s possible. And possible that Centigrade and Allyx are similar too.’ He looked up suddenly and caught me smiling. ‘It’s all right for you to think it’s funny,’ he said, wryly matching my expression. ‘You don’t have to sort out the mess. What in God’s name are we going to do about the Stud Book? Moviemaker’s … that is, Showman’s … get are already siring foals, in some cases. The mix up is in the second generation. How are we ever going to put it straight?’

  ‘Even if,’ I pointed out, trying hard to keep the humour out of my voice and face, ‘even if you prove Moviemaker couldn’t have sired the foals he’s supposed to have done, you can’t prove Showman did.’

  He gave me a comically pained look. ‘What other sire could have got such brilliant stock?’ He shook his head. ‘We’ll pin it on Offen in the end, even if we have to wait until after Showman and Allyx have been re-syndicated and their first official crops have won as much stake money as all the others. Offen wouldn’t be able to say then that they were two halfbred nags he’d given his nephew to hack around on. We’ll get him in the end.’

  ‘The racing scandal of the year,’ I said smiling.

  ‘Of the year? Are you kidding? Of the century.’

  Lynnie and I flew from Kennedy that night on a Super VC 10, with dinner over Canada at midnight and breakfast over Ireland three hours later. I spent the interval looking at her while she slept beside me in her sloped-back chair. Her skin was close textured like a baby’s, and her face was that of a child. The woman inside was still a bud, with a long way to grow.

  Keeble met us at Heathrow, and as usual it was raining. Lynnie kissed him affectionately. He went so far as to shake my hand. There was a patch of stubble on his left cheek, and the eyes blinked quickly behind the mild glasses. Santa Barbara was six thousand miles away. We were home.

  Keeble suggested a cup of coffee before we left the airport and asked his daughter how she’d enjoyed herself. She told him non-stop for twenty minutes, her suntan glowing in the grey summer morning and her brown eyes alight.

  He looked finally from her to me, and his face subtly contracted.

  ‘And what have you been doing?’ he said.

  Lynnie answered when I didn’t. ‘He’s been with us on the beach a good deal of the time,’ she said doubtfully.

  Keeble stroked her arm. ‘Did you find the horses?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘All three?’

  ‘With help.’

  ‘I told Dave I’d drop you off at the hospital when we leave here,’ he said. ‘He’s still strung up, but he hopes to be out next week.’

  ‘I’ve a lot to tell him, and there’s a lot he’ll have to decide.’ The worst being, I thought, whether to carry on with his move alongside Orpheus Farm, or to disappoint Eunice in her new found business. Nothing was ever simple. Nothing was easy.

  ‘You don’t look well,’ Keeble said abruptly.

  ‘I’ll live,’ I said, and his eyes flickered with a mixture of surprise and speculation. I smiled lopsidedly and said it again, ‘I’ll live.’

  We stood up to go. Instead of shaking hands Lynnie suddenly put her arms round my waist and her head on my chest.

  ‘I don’t want to say goodbye,’ she said indistinctly. ‘I want to see you again.’

  ‘Well,’ I said reasonably. ‘You will.’

  ‘I mean … often.’

  I met Keeble’s eyes over her head. He was watching her gravely, but without disquiet.

  ‘She’s too young,’ I said to him, and he knew exactly what I meant. Not that I was too old for her, but that she was too young for me. Too young in experience, understanding, and wickedness.

  ‘I’ll get older,’ she said. ‘Will twenty-one do?’

  Her father laughed, but she gripped my arm. ‘Will it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said recklessly, and found one second later that I really meant it.

  ‘She’ll change her mind,’ Keeble said with casual certainty.

  I said, ‘Of course,’ to him, but Lynnie looked up into my eyes and shook her head.

  It was late afternoon when I got back to the flat. The tidy, dull, unwelcoming rooms hadn’t changed a bit. When I looked at the kitchen I remembered Lynnie making burnt scrambled egg, and I felt a fierce disturbing wish that she would soon make some more.

  I unpacked. The evening stretched greyly ahead.

  I sat and stared vacantly at the bare walls.

  If was a grinding word, I thought. If Sam Hengelman had taken longer to mend that gasket, Walt would have found us on the road and would have stopped us going to the farm. If Sam had mended it faster, we’d have reached the farm well before Walt, and Matt would have killed me, as he’d meant.

  If I hadn’t decided to recover the horses by stealing them, Walt would be alive. They might collectively be worth nearly five million dollars, but they weren’t worth Walt’s life.

  I wished I’d never started.

  The grey day turned to grey dusk. I got up and switched on the light, and fetched two objects to
put on the low table beside my chair.

  The Luger, and the photograph of Walt with his wife and kids.

  The trouble with being given a gift you don’t really want is that you feel so mean if you throw it away. Especially if it cost more than the giver could afford.

  I won’t throw away Walt’s gift. Even if Lynnie changes her mind, I’ll survive.

  Tired beyond feeling, I went to bed at ten. I put the Luger under the pillow, and hung the photograph on the wall.

  And slept.

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