Blood Sport

by Dick Francis

  ‘German,’ I said, raising a dutiful social smile.

  The way I’d been taught languages, it took a week for a smattering, three months for fluency, and two years to bring one to the point of recognizing typical speech and thought patterns when one heard them translated back into perfect English. In one period of seven years, in my twenties, I’d been crammed with German, Hungarian, and five Slavonic languages, from Russian and Czech to Serbo-Croat. None of them was likely to come in handy for finding stallions, and in any case they were almost out of date. The new boys were learning Swahili, Arabic, and Chinese.

  ‘And French, I suppose?’ she said.

  ‘A little,’ I agreed.

  ‘Enough for the necessities of life, I expect.’ Her expression and emphasis gave the word necessities a precise meaning, which wasn’t food and drink.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I agreed, acknowledging her definition.

  She laughed. Nothing frail or fine-boned about that.

  ‘Chrysalis,’ she said, ‘is a right bloody nuisance. He wouldn’t have been my choice in the first place; that Purple Emperor strain is as soft as an old man’s pencil and he’s passing it on, they always do. Moth won the Derby in a shockingly bad year and if anything had given him half a race he’d have folded like a wet sheet.’ She took a deep swallow. ‘Do you know the first bloody thing about horses?’

  ‘What is the first bloody thing about horses?’

  She gave me a startled stare which turned into an incredulous laugh. ‘The first bloody thing about horses is that they make bloody fools of men.’

  I smiled back spontaneously, amused by the contrast between her robustness of thought and language and her delicacy of frame.

  ‘I’m going for a swim,’ she said. ‘Bring your drink.’

  She mixed herself a new one in passing, and without looking back crossed the green carpet, pulled open a sliding glass door, pushed through the insect screen outside it, and walked with rock-like steadiness across a paved terrace and on to a deep green lawn. Sighing, I got to my feet and followed her. The grass was thick and resilient, a different species altogether from English turf, and a sprinkler on one side threw diamond sprays around like water.

  She stopped on another paved area round a kidney-shaped pool and unfastened some clips on her yellow dress, which came off in one piece, and left two more in view underneath. Her body was slender and well cared for, but not at all a young girl’s. Middle to late forties, I thought: and the sort of woman who would have been uninteresting under thirty.

  She slipped into the water and floated, and I watched the sun make watered silk ripples over her brown stomach.

  ‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘There are plenty of swim suits in the hut.’

  I smiled and shook my head, and sat down on one of the soft plastic pool-side chairs. She took her time, humming and splashing gently with her hands. The sun was hot, but not like in the city. I took my jacket off and felt heat baking into my skin through the white cotton shirt. Peacefulness gradually seeped in too. I was in no hurry for her to rejoin me, which she presently did, the water drops shining singly on her oiled skin.

  ‘You’ve hardly touched your drink,’ she observed accusingly. ‘Surely you’re not one of those soft buggers who can’t hold their liquor?’ She picked up her own glass and went on proving that she, at any rate, wasn’t.

  ‘Chrysalis …’ I began.

  She interrupted immediately. ‘Do you ride?’

  ‘I can,’ I said, ‘but I don’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I haven’t a horse. Nor a kingdom to give for one.’

  ‘Drink your whisky,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘In a while.’

  ‘Then strip off and get in the pool.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I like it as I am.’ And I had too many bruises, from the weir.

  She shrugged, half annoyed. ‘Don’t you do any bloody thing?’

  ‘How many people knew at what hour Chrysalis would leave Kennedy Airport?’

  ‘God,’ she said, ‘you’re a bloody bore.’

  ‘Don’t you want the horse back?’

  ‘No,’ she said vehemently, ‘as far as I’m concerned, we’d be far better off with the insurance.’

  ‘Two hundred thousand dollars’, I agreed, ‘is a heck of a gamble. Supposing he never sired another like Moth?’

  ‘There’s no stopping Dave, when he’s set his mind on something.’ She sat on the edge of a full-length chair bed and smoothed cream on to her face from a dusky pink tube. ‘And he had meant to sell off a bit of that, when he got back. God knows what will happen now he’s strung up in those goddam pulleys.’

  ‘He’ll be home in about four weeks.’

  ‘Yeah. So he said.’ She lay down flat and closed her eyes. ‘I told him to take his time. It’s too bloody expensive being ill over here.’

  Five quiet minutes passed. A single jet plane flew across, a silver streak so high up one couldn’t hear it until it had gone. The air was still. The oiled brown body in the yellow bikini took in a hefty dose of ultra violet and the ice cubes melted in the drinks.

  ‘Take your clothes off, for God’s sake,’ she said, without opening her eyes. ‘Or are you ashamed of that pink-white slug of a body the English usually bring over here?’

  ‘I’d better be going.’

  ‘Do what you damn well like.’ She fluttered a lax wrist in a double gesture which said, equally well, stay or goodbye.

  I stood up and walked over to the hut, a large beautifully made pinewood structure with a protruding front roof, for shade. Inside were a bathroom and two changing rooms, and in the tiny lobby some shelves in a cupboard held bright coloured towels and swimsuits. I took a pair of blue shorts and put them on. The bruises on my legs very nearly matched. I left my shirt on, picked up a towel for a pillow, and went back and lay down on the next bed to hers.

  She merely grunted with her eyes still shut, but after another minute she said, ‘If you want to know about the timetable for Chrysalis, you’d better ask Sam Hengelman in Lexington. He fixed the van. He runs a private service from here. Dave called me and told me the date the horse was being shipped over, and I called Sam Hengelman. And he took it from there.’

  ‘Who else did you tell the shipping date to?’

  ‘It wasn’t any goddam secret, for God’s sake. I called six or seven of the syndicate to let them know. Dave asked me to. Half Kentucky knew about it, I guess.’

  She suddenly sat up straight and opened her eyes.

  ‘Why the hell does it matter how many people knew when Chrysalis was coming? It wasn’t him the hi-jackers wanted. They simply made a balls of it and took the wrong truck.’

  ‘Supposing they got just what they wanted?’

  ‘Were you born yesterday? The blood-line is what breeders pay stud fees for. Chrysalis isn’t worth a sou to anyone, if they can’t use his pedigree. No one’s going to even send a decent mare to a stallion someone just happens to have handy, which has no name in the stud book, no history, and no papers; let alone pay fifteen thousand dollars for the privilege.’

  ‘Buttress Life have been looking for an insurance swindle.’

  ‘They can look till they’re blue in the face.’ She picked up her glass, swallowed, and grimaced. ‘This drink’s as warm as that pool and just as sodden. Mix me another, will you?’ She held out the glass to me and I unwound myself from the bed and took it and my own back into the house. I mixed her the same size dose as before, concocted a different one for myself, and took them both back, the ice clinking coolly as I walked.

  ‘Thanks.’ She sank almost half. ‘That’s better.’

  I stood beside the pool and put one toe in the water. It was blood warm, or more.

  ‘What’s the matter with your legs?’ she said.

  ‘The same as your husband’s, only mine didn’t break.’

  ‘What’s under the shirt?’

  ‘The sun’s to
o hot. I can do without a sunburn.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She lay flat again. ‘Pink-white slug.’

  Smiling, I sat down on the edge of the pool with my back towards her and dangled my feet in the water. I ought, I supposed, to go away and do something more useful, like interviewing Sam Hengelman. But Walt would no doubt have thought of that, and done it, since his threatening migraine would only have lasted until the car we had rented had taken me out of sight. Walt and Dave’s wife hadn’t exactly clicked.

  ‘Mr Hawkins,’ she said from behind me.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘What do you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m a civil servant.’

  ‘With this?’

  There was a sharp metallic click, the one sound guaranteed to raise the hairs on my neck as if I’d never left the jungle.

  ‘Do you know what you’re doing with that thing?’ I asked, as conversationally as I could.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then put the safety on.’

  She didn’t answer, and I stood up and turned round, and looked straight into the barrel of my own gun.

  I deserve it, I thought. Slow, careless, and stupid. I was anything one cared to mention.

  She was sitting with her legs curled underneath her, the Luger lodged unwaveringly in her fist. The gap between us, five yards at least, was too great for anything constructive in the way of action, so I simply stood still.

  ‘You’re a cool bastard, I’ll say that for you.’

  ‘You won’t shoot me,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m not insured for a million and a half.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Does that mean that you think that I … I … shot Chrysalis?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  She stared. ‘You’re a goddam fool.’

  ‘So are you, if I may say so. That gun goes off very easily.’

  She looked down at it vaguely and before I could stop her she threw it away from her on to the paving stones. The jar as it hit the ground inevitably fired it. Flame streaked out of the barrel, and the bullet smashed through the whisky glass which stood on the ground beside her long chair, nine inches from her body.

  It took her a second to realize what had happened, then she shuddered heavily and put her hands over her face. I walked across to fetch the gun, and put the safety on, and then perched on the bed facing her.

  ‘Games,’ she said in a shattered voice. ‘What do I have but games? Bridge and golf. All games.’

  ‘This too?’ I put the Luger back in the under-arm niche and buttoned the strap.

  ‘I just thought I’d make you sweat.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s a bloody good question. A bloody good question. All games. Life is all bloody games.’

  ‘And we’re all poor bloody losers,’ I agreed sardonically.

  She put her hands down and looked at me. Her eyes were dry, but half her assurance had drained away.

  ‘It was only a game. I didn’t mean you any harm.’

  She thought she was telling the truth, but I’d met too many of the tricks the unconscious mind gets up to. Perhaps because I’d saved her husband, or was looking for his horse, or merely represented some obscure form of male challenge, she’d had an undoubted urge to destroy me. And she was a very troubled lady in far more obvious ways than that.

  ‘Give me your drink,’ she said abruptly.

  ‘I’ll get you some more whisky,’ I said.

  ‘Yours will do,’ she insisted.

  I gave her the glass, but one sip was enough. Dry ginger ale. On the rocks.

  ‘Do you cheat all along the line?’

  ‘Whenever it’s kinder, or safer, or gets better results.’

  I walked away across the lawn and brought her back another glass. She took a moderate pull and put it down amid the ruins of the first one.

  ‘Stay to dinner,’ she said. She made it a casual suggestion rather than a warm invitation, and I answered her need, not her tone.

  ‘All right.’

  She nodded briefly and flattened herself face down, to roast her back. I lay with one arm over my eyes to shield them from the direct sun, and thought about all the things she hadn’t asked, like how was Dave when I saw him and how bad was the broken thigh.

  After a while she went back to floating.

  ‘Come on in,’ she called.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Don’t be so prissy,’ she said. ‘I’m not a swooning virgin. If your legs are like that, the rest of you must be the same. Take that bloody shirt off and give yourself a break.’

  It was indeed very hot, and the clear blue water looked good. I sighed, stood up, took the shirt off, and slid down into the pool. Its lukewarm antigravitational gentleness unlocked knots and tensions in my nerves and muscles that I hadn’t even realized were there, and I swam and floated tranquilly for nearly an hour. When finally I hauled myself out over the edge she was smoothing on another coating of oil. Her whisky glass was empty.

  ‘Is Dave in that state too?’ she asked, eyeing me.

  ‘Pretty much.’

  She grimaced slightly and said nothing when I put my shirt back on.

  The sun had begun to lose its height in the sky and shadows were fanning out from the trees. A golden sheen lay on the big cream colonial type house across the green lawn. The pool water stilled, and the quietness of the place crept subtly into all the senses.

  ‘It’s so beautiful here,’ I said. A banal enough phrase for the promise of peace.

  She looked round casually. ‘I suppose it is. But we’re moving, of course.’

  ‘Moving?’

  ‘Yes. To California.’

  ‘Moving the stud? Horses, and everything?’

  ‘That’s right. Dave’s just bought a farm down near Santa Barbara, and we’re moving over there in the fall.’

  ‘I would have thought you were settled here for life. Wasn’t this Dave’s father’s place?’

  ‘Oh no. We moved here about ten years ago. The old farm was on the other side of Lexington, out on the Versailles Road.’

  ‘California is a long way,’ I commented. But she didn’t respond with a reason for the move, and after a pause I said, ‘If it wouldn’t be much trouble to you, I’d like very much to see the horses and stables you have here.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Business or pleasure?’

  ‘Both,’ I smiled.

  She shrugged. ‘Help yourself. But get me another drink first.’

  A pool-side icebox, I reflected, would save a lot of walking: but maybe she still needed the illusion that she didn’t drink in the afternoon. I fetched her a refill, changed into my clothes, and found her still face down in the bikini.

  ‘Say I sent you,’ she said.

  Before I could move, however, Dave rang from England, and Eva brought a portable telephone out and plugged the long cord into a socket in the hut. Dave’s wife made three or four unanxious inquiries about her husband’s condition, and then said, ‘Yes, he’s here right now.’ She held out the receiver to me. ‘He wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Gene?’ His voice was as clear as if he’d been in Lexington, and much stronger than it had been the previous morning.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Look fella, Sim and I want you back here for a conference. Can you get a plane tomorrow?’

  ‘But the fare …’ I protested mildly.

  ‘To hell with the fare. You’ve got a return ticket.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You haven’t found the horse yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think you will?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  He sighed. ‘See you Thursday, then,’ and the line went dead.

  The stables lay some distance away on the far side of the house. I walked round there and was shortly talking to the stud groom, Chub Lodovski, a large good-natured man with slow speech, a bird head, and great ham-like hands. He showed me round the whol
e setup with unlimited patience and an obvious pride in his job. The state of the place was his testimonial. The mares and foals ate peacefully in neatly railed paddocks reached by impeccable narrow drives with sharply cut grass edges. The stallions lived in a short row of six large airy box-stalls in a spacious barn, with a wooden railed exercise paddock in front, flanked by two high-walled mating compounds.

  Only five of these stalls were occupied. The vacancy was for Chrysalis.

  ‘Is this where you kept Allyx?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s right. Second stall from the end. He was only in it four days.’

  ‘And where was the fire?’

  He frowned. ‘It started in some straw one night, just about here.’ We were fairly central. ‘It wasn’t much. Mostly smoke.’

  ‘And you turned the horses out into the exercise paddock in front here?’

  ‘That’s right. Just as a precaution. But one of those doggone animals got scared and broke a rail on the far side, and the whole bunch got out across that stretch of grass on to that dirt road over there. We never did find Allyx. There hasn’t been sight nor sound of him since.’

  We talked for a while about the search they’d made next morning, but, Lodovski said, the whole of Kentucky was plastered with horses, and no one thought much about it if they saw one loose, and although a reward had been offered, and the insurance people had swarmed around like bloodhounds, they’d never found him.

  ‘And now Chrysalis,’ I sighed sympathetically.

  ‘Sure. And they say lightning never strikes the same place twice!’

  He was moderately upset that the stud looked like losing another major attraction, but it wasn’t his money that was involved, and besides that he was proud enough of the stallions remaining in residence. I asked him if he’d ever been to California.

  ‘The farm’s moving out there, did you know?’ he said.

  ‘Are you going, yourself?’

  ‘Mebbe, mebbe not. Depends on the missus, and she can’t make up her mind.’ He grinned comfortably and accepted the note I gave him with dignity.

  When I got back to the pool Dave’s wife had got her dress on again and Eva was brushing the splinters of whisky glass into a dustpan, which she carried carefully away across the lawn.