High Stakes

by Dick Francis

  He shook his head. ‘You’ll never make a million that way.’

  ‘I won’t get ulcers, either.’

  ‘No ambition?’

  ‘To win the Derby and get even with Jody Leeds.’

  I arrived at Jody’s expensive stable uninvited, quietly, at half past midnight, and on foot. The car lay parked half a mile behind me, along with prudence.

  Pale fitful moonlight lit glimpses of the large manor house with its pedimented front door and rows of uniform windows. No lights shone upstairs in the room Jody shared with Felicity, and none downstairs in the large drawing-room beneath. The lawn, rough now and scattered with a few last dead leaves, stretched peacefully from the house to where I stood hidden in the bushes by the gate.

  I watched for a while. There was no sign of anyone awake or moving, and I hadn’t expected it. Jody like most six-thirty risers was usually asleep by eleven at the latest, and telephone calls after ten were answered brusquely if at all. On the other hand he had no reservations about telephoning others in the morning before seven. He had no patience with life-patterns unlike his own.

  To the right and slightly to the rear of the house lay the dimly gleaming roofs of the stables. White railed paddocks lay around and beyond them, with big planned trees growing at landscaped corners. When Berksdown Court had been built, cost had come second to excellence.

  Carrying a large black rubber-clad torch, unlit, I walked softly up the drive and round towards the horses. No dogs barked. No all-night guards sprang out to ask my business. Silence and peace bathed the whole place undisturbed.

  My breath, all the same, came faster. My heart thumped. It would be bad if anyone caught me. I had tried reassuring myself that Jody would do me no actual physical harm, but I hadn’t found myself convinced. Anger, as when I’d stood in the path of the horsebox, was again thrusting me into risk.

  Close to the boxes one could hear little more than from a distance. Jody’s horses stood on sawdust now that straw prices had trebled, and made no rustle when they moved. A sudden equine sneeze made me jump.

  Jody’s yard was not a regular quadrangle but a series of three-sided courts of unequal size and powerful charm. There were forty boxes altogether, few enough in any case to support such a lavish establishment, but since my horses had left I guessed there were only about twenty inmates remaining. Jody was in urgent need of another mug.

  He had always economised on labour, reckoning that he and Felicity between them could do the work of four. His inexhaustible energy in fact ensured that no lads stayed in the yard very long as they couldn’t stand the pace. Since the last so-called head lad had left in dudgeon because Jody constantly usurped his authority, there had been no one but Jody himself in charge. It was unlikely, I thought, that in present circumstances he would have taken on another man, which meant that the cottage at the end of the yard would be empty.

  There were at any rate no lights in it, and no anxious figure came scurrying out to see about the stranger in the night. I went with care to the first box in the first court and quietly slid back the bolts.

  Inside stood a large chestnut mare languidly eating hay. She turned her face unexcitedly in the torchlight. A big white blaze down her forehead and nose. Asphodel.

  I shut her door, inching home the bolts. Any sharp noise would carry clearly through the cold calm air and Jody’s subconscious ears would never sleep. The second box contained a heavy bay gelding with black points, the third a dark chestnut with one white sock. I went slowly round the first section of stables, shining the torch at each horse.

  Instead of settling, my nerves got progressively worse. I had not yet found what I’d come for, and every passing minute made discovery more possible. I was careful with the torch. Careful with the bolts. My breath was shallow. I decided I’d make a rotten burglar.

  Box number nine, in the next section, contained a dark brown gelding with no markings. The next box housed an undistinguished bay, the next another and the next another. After that came an almost black horse, with a slightly Arab looking nose, another very dark horse, and two more bays. The next three boxes all contained chestnuts, all unremarkable to my eyes. The last inhabited box held the only grey.

  I gently shut the door of the grey and returned to the box of the chestnut next door. Went inside. Shone my torch over him carefully inch by inch.

  I came to no special conclusion except that I didn’t know enough about horses.

  I’d done all I could. Time to go home. Time for my heart to stop thudding at twice the speed of sound. I turned for the door.

  Lights came on in a blaze. Startled I took one step towards the door. Only one.

  Three men crowded into the opening.

  Jody Leeds.

  Ganser Mays.

  Another man whom I didn’t know, whose appearance scarcely inspired joy and confidence. He was large, hard and muscular, and he wore thick leather gloves, a cloth cap pulled forward and, at two in the morning, sun glasses.

  Whomever they had expected, it wasn’t me. Jody’s face held a mixture of consternation and anger, with the former winning by a mile.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’ he said.

  There was no possible answer.

  ‘He isn’t leaving,’ Ganser Mays said. The eyes behind the metal rims were narrowed with ill intent and the long nose protruded sharply like a dagger. The urbane manner which lulled the clients while he relieved them of their cash had turned into the naked viciousness of the threatened criminal. Too late to worry that I’d cast myself in the role of threat.

  ‘What?’ Jody turned his face to him, not understanding.

  ‘He isn’t leaving.’

  Jody said ‘How are you going to stop him?’

  Nobody told him. Nobody told me, either. I took two steps towards the exit and found out.

  The large man said nothing at all, but it was he who moved. A large gloved fist crashed into my ribs at the business end of a highly efficient short jab. Breath left my lungs faster than nature intended and I had difficulty getting it back.

  Beyond schoolboy scuffles I had never seriously had to defend myself. No time to learn. I slammed an elbow at Jody’s face, kicked Ganser Mays in the stomach and tried for the door.

  Muscles in cap and sun glasses knew all that I didn’t. An inch or two taller, a stone or two heavier, and warmed to his task. I landed one respectable punch on the junction of his nose and mouth in return for a couple of bangs over the heart, and made no progress towards freedom.

  Jody and Ganser Mays recovered from my first onslaught and clung to me like limpets, one on each arm. I staggered under their combined weight. Muscles measured his distance and flung his bunched hand at my jaw. I managed to move my head just in time and felt the leather glove burn my cheek. Then the other fist came round, faster and crossing, and hit me square. I fell reeling across the box, released suddenly by Ganser Mays and Jody, and my head smashed solidly into the iron bars of the manger.

  Total instant unconsciousness was the result.

  Death must be like that, I suppose.

  6

  Life came back in an incomprehensible blur.

  I couldn’t see properly. Couldn’t focus. Heard strange noises. Couldn’t control my body, couldn’t move my legs, couldn’t lift my head. Tongue paralysed. Brain whirling. Everything disconnected and hazy.

  ‘Drunk,’ someone said distinctly.

  The word made no sense. It wasn’t I who was drunk.

  ‘Paralytic.’

  The ground was wet. Shining. Dazzled my eyes. I was sitting on it. Slumped on it, leaning against something hard. I shut my eyes against the drizzle and that made the whirling worse. I could feel myself falling. Banged my head. Cheek in the wet. Nose in the wet. Lying on the hard wet ground. There was a noise like rain.

  ‘Bloody amazing,’ said a voice.

  ‘Come on, then, let’s be having you.’

  Strong hands slid under my armpits and grasped my ankles. I couldn’t st
ruggle. Couldn’t understand where I was or what was happening.

  It seemed vaguely that I was in the back of a car. I could smell the upholstery. My nose was on it. Someone was breathing very loudly. Almost snoring. Someone spoke. A jumbled mixture of sounds that made no words. It couldn’t have been me. Couldn’t have been.

  The car jerked to a sudden stop. The driver swore. I rolled off the seat and passed out.

  Next thing, bright lights and people carrying me as before.

  I tried to say something. It came out in a jumble. This time I knew the jumble came from my own mouth.

  ‘Waking up again,’ someone said.

  ‘Get him out of here before he’s sick.’

  March, march. More carrying. Loud boots on echoing floors.

  ‘He’s bloody heavy.’

  ‘Bloody nuisance.’

  The whirling went on. The whole building was spinning like a merry-go-round.

  Merry-go-round.

  The first feeling of identity came back. I wasn’t just a lump of weird disorientated sensations. Somewhere, deep inside, I was… somebody.

  Merry-go-rounds swam in and out of consciousness. I found I was lying on a bed. Bright lights blinded me every time I tried to open my eyes. The voices went away.

  Time passed.

  I began to feel exceedingly ill. Heard someone moaning. Didn’t think it was me. After a while, I knew it was, which made it possible to stop.

  Feet coming back. March march. Two pairs at least.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  What was my name? Couldn’t remember.

  ‘He’s soaking wet.’

  ‘What do you expect? He was sitting on the pavement in the rain.’

  ‘Take his jacket off.’

  They took my jacket off, sitting me up to do it. I lay down again. My trousers were pulled off and someone put a blanket over me.

  ‘He’s dead drunk.’

  ‘Yes. Have to make sure though. They’re always an infernal nuisance like this. You simply can’t risk that they haven’t bumped their skulls and got a hairline fracture. You don’t want them dying on you in the night.’

  I tried to tell him I wasn’t drunk. Hairline fracture… Christ… I didn’t want to wake up dead in the morning.

  ‘What did you say?’

  I tried again. ‘Not drunk,’ I said.

  Someone laughed without mirth.

  ‘Just smell his breath.’

  How did I know I wasn’t drunk? The answer eluded me. I just knew I wasn’t drunk… because I knew I hadn’t drunk enough… or any… alcohol. How did I know? I just knew. How did I know?

  While these hopeless thoughts spiralled around in the chaos inside my head a lot of strange fingers were feeling around in my hair.

  ‘He has banged his head, damn it. There’s quite a large swelling.’

  ‘He’s no worse than when they brought him in, doc. Better, if anything.’

  ‘Scott,’ I said suddenly.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Scott.’

  ‘Is that your name?’

  I tried to sit up. The lights whirled giddily.

  ‘Where… am I?’

  ‘That’s what they all say.’

  ‘In a cell, my lad, that’s where.’

  In a cell.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘In a cell at Savile Row police station. Drunk and incapable.’

  I couldn’t be.

  ‘Look, constable, I’ll just take a blood test. Then I’ll do those other jobs, then come back and look at him, to make sure. I don’t think we’ve a fracture here, but we can’t take the chance.’

  ‘Right, doc.’

  The prick of a needle reached me dimly. Waste of time, I thought. Wasn’t drunk. What was I… besides ill, giddy, lost and stuck in limbo? Didn’t know. Couldn’t be bothered to think. Slid without struggling into a whirling black sleep.

  The next awakening was in all ways worse. For a start, I wasn’t ready to be dragged back from the dark. My head ached abominably, bits of my body hurt a good deal and over all I felt like an advanced case of seasickness.

  ‘Wakey, wakey, rise and shine. Cup of tea for you and you don’t deserve it.’

  I opened my eyes. The bright light was still there but now identifiable not as some gross moon but as a simple electric bulb near the ceiling.

  I shifted my gaze to where the voice had come from. A middle-aged policeman stood there with a paper cup in one hand. Behind him, an open door to a corridor. All round me, the close walls of a cell. I lay on a reasonably comfortable bed with two blankets keeping me warm.

  ‘Sobering up, are you?’

  ‘I wasn’t… drunk.’ My voice came out hoarse and my mouth felt as furry as a mink coat.

  The policeman held out the cup. I struggled on to one elbow and took it from him.

  ‘Thanks.’ The tea was strong, hot and sweet. I wasn’t sure it didn’t make me feel even sicker.

  ‘The doc’s been back twice to check on you. You were drunk all right. Banged your head, too.’

  ‘But I wasn’t…’

  ‘You sure were. The doc did a blood test to make certain.’

  ‘Where are my clothes?’

  ‘Oh yeah. We took ’em off. They were wet. I’ll get them.’

  He went out without shutting the door and I spent the few minutes he was away trying to sort out what was happening. I could remember bits of the night, but hazily. I knew who I was. No problem there. I looked at my watch: seven-thirty. I felt absolutely lousy.

  The policeman returned with my suit which was wrinkled beyond belief and looked nothing like the one I’d set out in.

  Set out… Where to?

  ‘Is this… Savile Row? West end of London?’

  ‘You remember being brought in then?’

  ‘Some of it. Not much.’

  ‘The patrol car picked you up somewhere in Soho at around four o’clock this morning.’

  ‘What was I doing there?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? Nothing, as far as I know. Just sitting dead drunk on the pavement in the pouring rain.’

  ‘Why did they bring me here if I wasn’t doing anything?’

  ‘To save you from yourself,’ he said without rancour. ‘Drunks make more trouble if we leave them than if we bring them in, so we bring them in. Can’t have drunks wandering out into the middle of the road and causing accidents or breaking their silly skulls falling over or waking up violent and smashing shop windows as some of them do.’

  ‘I feel ill.’

  ‘What d’you expect? If you’re going to be sick there’s a bucket at the end of the bed.’

  He gave me a nod in which sympathy wasn’t entirely lacking, and took himself away.

  About an hour later I was driven with three other gentlemen in the same plight to attend the Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court. Drunks, it seemed, were first on the agenda. Every day’s agenda.

  In the interim I had become reluctantly convinced of three things.

  First was that even though I could not remember drinking, I had at four a.m. that morning been hopelessly intoxicated. The blood test, analysed at speed because of the bang on my head, had revealed a level of two hundred and ninety milligrammes of alcohol per centilitre of blood which, I had been assured, meant that I had drunk the equivalent of more than half a bottle of spirits during the preceding few hours.

  The second was that it would make no difference at all if I could convince anyone that at one-thirty I had been stone cold sober seventy miles away in Berkshire. They would merely say I had plenty of time to get drunk on the journey.

  And the third and perhaps least welcome of all was that I seemed to have collected far more sore spots than I could account for.

  I had remembered, bit by bit, my visit to Jody. I remembered trying to fight all three men at once, which was an idiotic sort of thing to attempt in the first place, even without the casual expertise of the man in sun glasses. I remembered the squashy f
eel when my fist connected with his nose and I knew all about the punches he’d given me in return. Even so…

  I shrugged. Perhaps I didn’t remember it all, like I didn’t remember getting drunk. Or perhaps… Well, Ganser Mays and Jody both had reason to dislike me, and Jody had been wearing jodhpur boots.

  The court proceedings took ten minutes. The charge was “drunk in charge”. In charge of what, I asked. In charge of the police, they said.

  ‘Guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Guilty,’ I said resignedly.

  ‘Fined five pounds. Do you need time to pay?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Good. Next, please.’

  Outside, in the little office where I was due to pay the fine, I telephoned Owen Idris. Paying after all had been a problem, as there had proved to be no wallet in my rough-dried suit. No cheque book either, nor, when I came to think of it, any keys. Were they all by any chance at Savile Row, I asked. Someone telephoned. No, they weren’t. I had had nothing at all in my pockets when picked up. No means of identification, no money, no keys, no pen, no handkerchief.

  ‘Owen? Bring ten pounds and a taxi to Marlborough Street Court.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Right away.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I felt hopelessly groggy. I sat in an upright chair to wait and wondered how long it took for half a bottle of spirits to dry out.

  Owen came in thirty minutes and handed me the money without comment. Even his face showed no surprise at finding me in such a predicament and unshaven into the bargain. I wasn’t sure that I appreciated his lack of surprise. I also couldn’t think of any believable explanation. Nothing to do but shrug it off, pay the five pounds and get home as best I could. Owen sat beside me in the taxi and gave me small sidelong glances every hundred yards.

  I made it upstairs to the sitting-room and lay down flat on the sofa. Owen had stayed downstairs to pay the taxi and I could hear him talking to someone down in the hall. I could do without visitors, I thought. I could do without everything except twenty-four hours of oblivion.

  The visitor was Charlie.

  ‘Your man says you’re in trouble.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Good God.’ He was standing beside me, looking down. ‘What on earth have you been doing?’