by Dick Francis
I said aloud and precisely about four obscene words and then shrugged and turned to go back into the racecourse to telephone. The AA could deal with it. I could hire another car. The things I’d feared losing were safe in the Golden Lion and if that was what the vandals had been looking for, they were out of luck.
Most people had already left, but there were still a few cars in the park, still a person or two moving about. I was thinking chiefly of inconvenience and paying little attention to anything else, and very suddenly there was a voice at my left ear saying, ‘Stand still, Fielding’, and another man crowding against my right elbow with the same message.
I did stand still, too taken by surprise to think of doing anything else.
From each side the message reached me clearly.
Reached throught my jacket, through my shirt and into my skin, somewhere above the money-belt.
‘That’s right,’ said the one who’d spoken before. ‘We’ve come to repossess some property. You don’t want to get cut, do you?’
THIRTEEN
I certainly didn’t.
‘See that grey Ford over there right by the road,’ said the man on my left. ‘We’re going to get into it, nice and easy. Then you’ll tell us where to go for some jackets and the things in the pockets. We’ll be sitting one each side of you on the back seat, and we’re going to tie your hands, and if you make any sudden moves we’ll slice your tendons so you won’t stand again, never mind ride horses. You got that?’
Dry mouthed, I nodded.
‘You’ve got to learn there’s people you can’t push around. We’re here to teach you. So now walk.’
They were not Owen Watts and Jay Erskine. Different build, different voices, older and much heavier. They underlined their intentions with jabs against my lower ribs, and I did walk. Walked stiff-legged towards the grey Ford.
I would give them what they wanted: that was simple. Owen Watts’s credit cards and Jay Erskine’s Press Club pass weren’t worth being crippled for. It was what would happen after the Golden Lion that seized up the imagination and quivered in the gut. They weren’t going to release me with a handshake and a smile. They had as good as said so.
There was a third man, a driver, sitting in the Ford. At our approach he got out of the car and opened both rear doors. The car itself was pointing in the direction of the way out to the main road.
There seemed to be no one within shouting distance. No one near enough to help. I decided sharply and suddenly that all the same I wouldn’t get into the car. I would run. Take my chances in the open air. Better under the sky than in some little dark corner; than on the back seat of a car with my hands tied. I would have given them the jackets but their priority was damage, and their intention of it was reaching me like shock waves.
It came to the point of now or never, and I was already tensing my muscles for it to be now, when a large quiet black car rolled along the road towards the racecourse exit and stopped barely six feet away from where I stood closely flanked. The nearside rear window slid down and a familiar voice said, ‘Are you in trouble, Kit?’
I never was more pleased to see the princess in all my life.
‘Say no,’ the man on the left directed into my ear, screwing his knife round a notch. ‘Get rid of them.’
‘Kit?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
The princess’s face didn’t change. The rear door of her Rolls swung widely open and she said economically, ‘Get in.’
I leapt. I jumped. I dived into her car head first, landing on my hands as lightly as possible across her ankles and Danielle’s, flicking from there to the floor.
The car was moving forward quite fast even before the princess said, ‘Drive on, Thomas’ to her chauffeur, and I saw the angry faces of my three would-be captors staring in through the windows, heard their fists beating on the glossy bodywork, their hands trying to open the already centrally locked doors.
‘They’ve got knives,’ Danielle said in horror. ‘I mean… knives.’
Thomas accelerated further, setting the heavy men running alongside and then leaving them behind, and I fumbled my way up on to one of the rear-facing folding seats and said I was sorry.
‘Sorry!’ Danielle exclaimed.
‘For involving you in such a mess,’ I said to the princess. I rubbed my hand across my face. ‘I’m very sorry.’
Thomas said without noticeable alarm, ‘Madam, those three men are intending to follow us in a grey Ford car.’
I looked out through the tinted rear window and saw that he was right. The last of them was scrambling in, fingers urgently pointing.
‘Then we’d better find a policeman,’ the princess said calmly; but as on every other racing day the police had left the racecourse as soon as the crowds had gone. There was no one at the racecourse gate directing traffic, since there was no longer any need. Thomas slowed and turned in the direction of London and put his foot smoothly on the accelerator.
‘If I might suggest, madam?’ he said.
‘Yes. Go on.’
‘You would all be safer if we kept going. I don’t know where the police station is in Stony Stratford, which is the first town we come to. I would have to stop to ask directions.’
if we go to a police station,’ Danielle said anxiously, ‘they’ll keep us there for ages, taking statements, and I’ll be terribly late.’
‘Kit?’ the princess asked.
‘Keep going,’ I said, ‘If that’s all right.’
‘Keep going then, Thomas,’ said the princess, and Thomas, nodding, complied. ‘And now, Kit,’ she said, ‘tell us why you needed to be rescued in such a melodramatic fashion.’
‘They had knives on him,’ Danielle said.
‘So I observed. But why?’
‘They wanted something I’ve got.’ I took a deep breath, trying to damp down the incredible relief of not being a prisoner in the car behind, trying to stop myself trembling, it started with some newspaper articles about my brother-in-law, Bobby Allardeck.’
She nodded, ‘I heard about those from Lord Vaughnley yesterday, after you’d gone.’
‘I’ve got blood on my leg,’ Danielle said abruptly. ‘How did I get…’ She was looking down at her ankles, and then lifted her head suddenly and said to me, ‘When you flew in like an acrobat, were you bleeding? Are you still bleeding?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘What do you mean, you suppose so? Can’t you feel it?’
‘No.’ I looked inside my jacket, right and left.
‘Well?’ Danielle demanded.
‘A bit,’ I said.
Maybe the heavies hadn’t expected me to jump with their knives already in. Certainly they’d reacted too slowly to stop me, ripping purposefully, but too late. The sting had been momentary, the aftermath ignorable. A little blood, however, went a long way.
The princess said resignedly, ‘Don’t we carry a first-aid box, Thomas?’
Thomas said ‘Yes, madam’ and produced a black box from a built-in compartment. He held it over his shoulder, and I took it, opened it, and found it contained useful-sized padded absorbent sterile dressings and all manner of ointments and sticky tapes. I took out one of the thick dressings and found two pairs of eyes watching.
‘Excuse me,’ I said awkwardly.
‘You’re embarrassed!’ Danielle said.
‘Mm.’
I was embarrassed by the whole situation. The princess turned her head away and studied the passing fields while I groped around under my shirt for somewhere to stick the dressing. The cuts, wherever they were, proved to be too far round for me to see them.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ Danielle said, still watching, ‘let me do it.’
She removed herself from the rear seat facing me to the folding seat by my side, took the dressing out of my hand and told me to hold my shirt and jacket up so that she could see the action. When I did she lifted her head slowly and looked at me directly.
‘I simply don’t believe yo
u can’t feel that.’
I smiled into her eyes. Whatever I felt was a pinprick to what I’d been facing. ‘Stick the dressing on,’ I said.
‘All right.’
She stuck it on, and we changed places so she could do the other one, on my left. ‘What a mess,’ she said, wiping her hands and returning to the rear seat while I tucked my shirt untidily into my trousers. ‘That first cut is long and horribly deep and needs stitches.’
The princess stopped staring out of the window and looked at me assessingly.
‘I’ll be all right for racing tomorrow,’ I said.
Her mouth twitched. ‘I would expect you to say that, if you had two broken legs.’
‘I probably would.’
‘Madam,’ Thomas said, ‘we’re approaching the motorway and the grey Ford is still on our tail.’
The princess made an indecisive gesture with her hands. ‘I suppose we’d better go on,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
‘On,’ Danielle said positively, and Thomas and I nodded.
‘Very well. On to London. And now, Kit, tell us what was happening.’
I told them about Bobby and me finding the journalists dismantling their wire-tap, and about removing their jackets before letting them go.
The princess blinked.
I said I had offered to return the jackets if the Flag would print an apology to Bobby and also pay some compensation. I explained about finding my car broken into, and about the suddenness with which my assailants had appeared.
‘They wanted those jackets,’ I said. ‘And although I’d thought about robbery, I hadn’t expected violence.’ I couldn’t think why not, after the violence of Bobby’s assault on Owen Watts. I paused. ‘I can’t thank you enough.’
‘Thank Thomas,’ the princess said. ‘Thomas said you were in trouble. I wouldn’t have known.’
‘Thank you, Thomas.’
‘You could see it a mile off,’ he said.
‘You were pretty quick getting away.’
‘I went to a lecture once about how not to get your employer kidnapped.’
‘Thomas!’ said the princess. ‘Did you really?’
He said seriously, ‘I wouldn’t want to lose you, madam.’
The princess was moved and for once without an easy surface answer. Thomas, who had driven her devotedly for years, was a large quiet middle-aged Londoner with whom I talked briefly most days in racecourse car parks, where he sat and read books in the Rolls. I’d asked him once long ago if he didn’t get bored going to the races every day when he wasn’t much interested in horses and didn’t gamble, and he’d said no, he liked the long journeys, he liked his solitude and most of all he liked the princess. He and I both, in many ways opposites, would I dare say have died for the lady.
I thought, all the same, that she wouldn’t much care for the alarms of the continuing present. I looked back to the grey car still steadfastly following and began to consider what to do to vanish. I was thinking about perhaps diving down into thick undergrowth once we’d left the motorway, when the car behind suddenly swerved dangerously from the centre lane, cut across the slow lane to a wild blowing of horns and disappeared down a side road.
Thomas made a sort of growl in his throat and said, ‘They’ve gone into the service station’ with relief.
‘You mean we’ve lost them?’ Danielle said, twisting to look back.
‘They peeled off.’ To telephone, I supposed, a no-success story.
The princess said ‘Good’ as if that ended the matter entirely, and, greatly released, began to talk of her horses, of the day’s triumphs, of more pleasing excitements, tracking with intent and expertise away from the alien violent terror of maiming steel back to the safe familiar danger of breaking one’s neck.
By the time we reached central London she had returned the atmosphere to a semblance of full normality, behaving as if my presence in her car were commonplace, the tempestuous entrance overlooked. She would have gone with good manners to the scaffold, I thought, and was grateful for the calm she had laid upon us.
Within the last mile home, with dusk turning to full night, the princess asked Thomas if he would drive her niece to Chiswick as usual and return for her when she’d finished work.
‘Certainly, madam.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘I could fetch Danielle instead? Save Thomas the trip.’
‘At two in the morning?’ Danielle said.
‘Why not?’
‘OK.’
The princess made no comment, showed no feeling. ‘It seems you have the night off, Thomas’ was all she said; and to me, ‘If you are wanting to go to the police, Thomas will drive you.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m not going to the police.’
‘But,’ she said doubtfully, ‘those horrid men…’
‘If I go to the police, you will be in the newspapers.’
She said ‘Oh’ blankly. Cavorting about saving her jockey from a bunch of knife-wielding heavies was not the sort of publicity she yearned for. ‘Do what you think best,’ she said faintly.
‘Yes.’
Thomas braked to a halt outside her house in Eaton Square and opened the car door for us to disembark. On the pavement I thanked the princess for the journey. Politeness conquered all. With the faintest gleam of amusement she said she would no doubt see me at Ascot, and as on ordinary days held out her hand for a formal shake, accepting the sketch of a bow.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Danielle said.
‘If you get the form of things right,’ the princess said to her sweetly, ‘every peril can be tamed.’
I bought a shirt and an anorak and booked into a hotel for the night, stopping in the lobby to rent a car from an agency booth there.
‘I want a good one,’ I said. ‘A Mercedes, if you have one.’
They would try, they assured me.
Upstairs I changed from the slashed bloodstained shirt and jacket into the new clothes, and began another orgy of telephoning.
The Golden Lion via directory enquiries said there was no problem, they would hold my room for another day, they had my credit card number, too bad I’d been unexpectedly detained, my belongings would be perfectly safe.
The AA said not to worry, they would rescue my car from Towcester racecourse within the hour. If I phoned in the morning, they would tell me where they’d taken it for repairs.
My answering system in the cottage had been hard-worked with please-ring-back messages from the police, my neighbour, my bank manager, Rose Quince, three trainers and Sam Leggatt.
My neighbour, an elderly widow, sounded uncommonly agitated, so I called her back first.
‘Kit, dear, I hope I did right,’ she said. ‘I saw a strange man moving about in your cottage and I told the police.’
‘You did right,’ I agreed.
‘It was lunchtime and I knew you’d be at Towcester, I always follow your doings. Four winners! It was on the radio just now. Well done.’
‘Thanks… What happened at the cottage?’
‘Nothing, really. I went over when the police came to let them in with my key. They couldn’t have been more than five minutes getting there, but there wasn’t anyone in the cottage. I felt so foolish, but then one of the policemen said a window was broken, and when they looked around a bit more they said someone had been in there searching. I couldn’t see anything missing. Your racing trophies weren’t touched. Just the window broken in the cloakroom.’
I sighed. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You are a dear.’
‘I got Pedro from down the road to mend the window. I didn’t like to leave it. I mean, anyone could get in.’
‘I’ll take you for a drink in the pub when I get back.’
She chuckled. ‘Thank you, dear. That’ll be nice.’
The police themselves had nothing to add. I should return, they said, to check my losses.
I got through to my bank manager at his home and listened to him chewing while he spoke. ‘Sorry. Piece of toast,
’ he said. ‘A man came into the bank at lunchtime to pay three thousand pounds into your account.’
‘What man?’
‘I didn’t see him, unfortunately. I was out. It was a banker’s draft, not a personal cheque.’
‘Damn,’ I said feelingly.
‘Don’t worry, it won’t appear on your account. I’ve put a stop on anything being paid into it, as we agreed. The banker’s draft is locked in the safe in my office. What do you want me to do with it?’
‘Tear it up in front of witnesses,’ I said.
‘I can’t do that,’ he protested. ‘Someone paid three thousand pounds for it.’
‘Where was it issued?’
‘At a bank in the City.’
‘Can you ask them if they remember who bought it?’
‘Yes, I’ll try tomorrow. And be a good chap, let me have the no-paying-in instruction in writing pronto.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And well done with the winners. It was on the radio.’
I thanked him and disconnected, and after some thought left the hotel, walked down the street to an Underground station and from a public phone rang Sam Leggatt at the Flag.
There was no delay this time. His voice came immediately on the line, brisk and uncompromising.
‘Our lawyers say that what you said here yesterday was tantamount to blackmail.’
‘What your reporters did at my brother-in-law’s house was tantamount to a jail sentence.’
‘Our lawyers say if your brother-in-law thinks he has a case for settlement out of court, his lawyers should contact our lawyers.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘And how long would that take?’
‘Our lawyers are of the opinion that no compensation should be paid. The information used in the column was essentially true.’
‘Are you printing the apology?’
‘Not yet. We haven’t gone to press yet.’
‘Will you print it?’
He paused too long.
‘Did you know,’ I said, ‘that today someone searched my cottage, someone smashed their way into my car, two men attacked me with knives, and someone tried to bribe me with three thousand pounds, paid directly into my bank account?’