Whip Hand

by Dick Francis

  Rosemary looked at me stonily, unforgiving.

  ‘I told you they were being nobbled. I told you. You didn’t believe me.’

  Lucas looked surprised. ‘But I thought you understood, Mrs Caspar. Sid did believe you. It was Sid who did all this investigating, not the Jockey Club.’

  Her mouth opened, and stayed open, speechlessly.

  ‘Look,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I’ve brought you a present. Ken Armadale along at the Equine Research has done a lot of work for you. and he thinks Tri-Nitro can be cured, by a course of some rather rare antibiotics. I’ve brought them with me from London.’

  I stood up and took the box to Rosemary: put it into her bands, and kissed her cheek.

  ‘I’m sorry. Rosemary love, that it wasn’t in time for the Guineas. Maybe the Derby … but anyway the Irish Derby and the Diamond Stakes, and the Arc de Triomphe. Tri-Nitro will be fine for those.’

  Rosemary Caspar, that tough lady, burst into tears.

  We didn’t get back to London until nearly five, owing to Lucas insisting on going to see Ken Armadale and Henry Thrace himself, face to face. The Director of Security to the Jockey Club was busy making everything official.

  He was visibly relieved when Ken absolved the people who’d done blood tests on the horses after their disaster races.

  ‘The germ makes straight for the heart valves, and in the acute stage you’d never find it loose in the blood, even if you were thinking of illness and not merely looking for dope. It’s only later, sometimes, that it gets freed into the blood, as it had in Zingaloo, when we took that sample.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ Lucas demanded, ‘that if you did a blood test on Tri-Nitro at this minute you couldn’t prove he had the disease?’

  Ken said, ‘You would only find antibodies.’

  Lucas wasn’t happy. ‘Then how can we prove in court that he has got it?’

  ‘Well,’ Ken said, ‘you could do an erysipelas antibody count today and another in a week’s time. There would be a sharp rise in the number present, which would prove the horse must have the disease, because he’s fighting it.’

  Lucas shook his head mournfully. ‘Juries won’t like this.’

  ‘Stick to Gleaner,’ I said, and Ken agreed.

  At one point Lucas disappeared into the Jockey Club rooms in the High Street and Chico and I drank in the White Hart and felt hot.

  I changed the batteries. Routine. The day crawled.

  ‘Let’s go to Spain,’ I said.

  ‘Spain?’

  ‘Anywhere.’

  ‘I could just fancy a señorita.’

  ‘You’re disgusting.’

  ‘Look who’s talking.’

  We reordered and drank and still felt hot.

  ‘How much do you reckon we’ll get?’ Chico said.

  ‘More or less what we ask.’

  George Caspar had promised, if Tri-Nitro recovered, that the horse’s owner would give us the earth.

  ‘A fee will do.’ I said drily.

  Chico said, ‘What will you ask, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps five per cent of his prize money.’

  ‘He couldn’t complain.’

  We set off southwards, finally, in the cooling car, and listened on the radio to the Dante Stakes at York.

  Flotilla, to my intense pleasure, won it.

  Chico, in the back seat, went to sleep. Lucas drove as impatiently as on the way up: and I sat and thought of Rosemary and Trevor Deansgate, and Nicholas Ashe, and Trevor Deansgate, and Louise, and Trevor Deansgate.

  Stab. Stab. ‘I’ll do what I said.’

  Lucas dropped us at the entrance to the car park where I’d left the Scimitar. It would be like a furnace inside. I thought, sitting there all day in the sun. Chico and I walked over to it across the uneven stone-strewn ground.

  Chico yawned.

  A bath, I thought. A long drink. Dinner. Find a hotel room again … not the flat.

  There was a Land Rover with a two-horse trailer parked beside my car. Odd, I thought idly, to see them in central London. Chico, still yawning, walked between the trailer and my car to wait for me to unlock the doors.

  ‘It’ll be baking,’ I said, fishing down into my pocket for the keys, and looking downwards into the car.

  Chico made a choking sort of noise. I looked up, and thought confusedly how fast, how very fast a slightly boring hot afternoon could turn to stone cold disaster.

  A large man stood in the space between the trailer and my car with his left arm clamped around Chico, who was facing me. The man was more or less supporting Chico’s weight, because Chico’s head lolled forward.

  In his right hand the man held a small pear-shaped black truncheon.

  The second man was letting down the ramp at the rear of the trailer.

  I had no difficulty in recognizing them. The last time I’d seen them I’d been with a fortune teller who hadn’t liked my chances.

  ‘Get in the trailer, laddie,’ the one holding Chico said to me. ‘The right-hand stall, laddie. Nice and quick. Otherwise I’ll give your friend another tap or two. On the eyes, laddie. Or the base of the brain.’

  Chico, on the far side of the Scimitar, mumbled vaguely and moved his head. The big man raised his truncheon and produced another short burst of uncompromising Scottish accent.

  ‘Get in the trailer,’ he said. ‘Go right in, to the back.’

  Seething with fury, I walked round the back of my car and up the ramp into the trailer. The right-hand stall, as he’d said. To the back. The second man stood carefully out of hitting distance, and there was no one else in the car park.

  I found I was still holding my car keys, and put them back automatically into my pocket Keys, handkerchief, money … and in the left-hand pocket, only a discharged battery. No weapon of any sort. A knife in the sock, I thought I should have learned from Nicholas Ashe.

  The man holding Chico came round to the back of the trailer and half dragged, half carried Chico into the left-hand stall.

  ‘You make a noise, laddie,’ he said, putting his head round to my side of the central partition, ‘and I’ll hit your friend here. On the eyes, laddie, and the mouth. You try and get help by shouting, laddie, and your friend won’t have much face to speak of. Get it?’

  I thought of Mason in Tunbridge Wells. A vegetable, and blind.

  I said nothing at all.

  ‘I’m travelling in here with your friend, all the way,’ he said. ‘Just remember that, laddie.’

  The second man closed the ramp, shutting out the sunlight, creating instant night Where many trailers were open at the top at the back, this one was not.

  Numb, I suppose, is how I felt.

  The engine of the Land Rover started, and the trailer moved, backing out of the parking slot. The motion was enough to rock me against the trailer’s side, enough to show I wasn’t going very far standing up.

  My eyes slowly adjusted to a darkness which wasn’t totally black owing to various points where the ramp fitted less closely than others against the back of the trailer. In the end I could see clearly, as if it mattered, the variations that had been done to turn an ordinary trailer into an escape-proof transport. The extra piece at the back, closing the gap usually left open for air, and the extra piece inside, lengthways, raising the central partition from head height to the roof.

  Basically, it was still a box built to withstand the weight and kicks of horses. I sat helplessly on the floor, which was bare of everything except muddy dust, and thought absolutely murderous thoughts.

  After all that unpredictable travelling around I had agreed to go with Lucas and had stupidly left my car in plain vulnerable view all day. They must have picked me up at the Jockey Club, I thought. Either yesterday, or this morning. Yesterday, I thought, there had been no room in the car park, and I’d left my car in the street and got a ticket …

  I hadn’t been to my flat. I hadn’t been back to Aynsford. I hadn’t been to the Cavendish, or to any routine place.
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  I had, in the end, gone to the Jockey Club.

  I sat and cursed and thought about Trevor Deansgate.

  The journey lasted for well over an hour: a hot, jolting, depressing time which I spent mostly in consciously not wondering what lay at the end of it. After a while I could hear Chico talking, through the partition, though not the words. The flat, heavy, Glaswegian voice made shorter replies, rumbling like thunder.

  A couple of pros from Glasgow, Jacksy had said. The one in with Chico, I thought, was certainly that. Not an average bashing mindless thug, but a hard man with brain power; and so much the worse.

  Eventually the jolting stopped, and there were noises of the trailer being unhitched from the coupling: the Land Rover drove away, and in the sudden quiet I could hear Chico plainly.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he said, and sounded still groggy.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough, laddie.’

  ‘Where’s Sid?’ he said.

  ‘Be quiet, laddie.’

  There was no sound of a blow, but Chico was quiet.

  The man who had raised the ramp came and lowered it, and six-thirty, Wednesday evening, flooded into the trailer.

  ‘Out,’ he said.

  He was backing away from the trailer as I got to my feet, and he held a pitchfork at the ready, the sharp tines pointing my way.

  From deep in the trailer I looked out and saw where we were. The trailer itself, disconnected from the Land Rover, was inside a building, and the building was the indoor riding school on Peter Rammileese’s farm.

  Timber-lined walls, windows in the roof, open because of the heat. No way that anyone could see in, casually, from outside.

  ‘Out,’ he said again, jerking the fork.

  ‘Do what he says, laddie,’ said the threatening voice of the man with Chico. ‘At once.’

  I did what he said.

  Walked down the ramp on to the quiet tan-coloured riding· school floor.

  ‘Over there.’ He jerked the fork. ‘Against the wall.’ His voice was rougher, the accent stronger, than the man with Chico. For sheer bullying power, there wasn’t much to choose.

  I walked, feeling that my feet didn’t belong to me.

  ‘Back to the wall. Face this way.’

  I turned with my shoulders lightly touching the wood.

  Behind the man with the pitchfork, standing where from in the trailer I hadn’t been able to see him, was Peter Rammileese. His face bore a nasty mixture of satisfaction, sneer, and anticipation, quite unlike the careful intentness of the two Scots. He had driven the Land Rover, I supposed; out of my sight.

  The man with Chico brought Chico to the top of the ramp and held him there, Chico half stood and half lay against him, smiling slightly and hopelessly disorganized.

  ‘Hallo, Sid,’ he said.

  The man holding him lifted the hand holding the truncheon, and spoke to me.

  ‘Now listen, laddie. You stand quite still. Don’t move. I’ll finish your friend so quick you won’t see it happen, if you move. Get it?’

  I made no response of any kind, but after a moment he nodded sharply to the one with the pitchfork.

  He came towards me slowly; warily. Showing me the prongs.

  I looked at Chico. At the truncheon. At damage I couldn’t risk.

  I stood … quite still.

  The man with the pitchfork raised it from pointing at my stomach to pointing at my heart, and from there, still higher. Slowly, carefully, one step at a time, he came forward until one of the prongs brushed my throat.

  ‘Stand still,’ said the man with Chico, warningly.

  I stood.

  The prongs of the pitchfork slid past my neck, one each side, below my chin, until they came to rest on the wooden surface behind me. Pushing my head back. Pinning me by the neck against the wall, unharmed. Better than through the skin, I thought dimly, but hardly a ball for one’s self-respect.

  When he’d got the fork aligned as he wanted it, he gave the handle a strong thrusting jerk, digging the sharp tines into the wood. After that he put his weight into pushing against the handle, so that I shouldn’t dislodge what he’d done, and get myself free. I had seldom felt more futile or more foolish.

  The man holding Chico moved suddenly as if relaxed, carrying Chico bodily down the ramp and giving him a rough over-balancing shove at the bottom. As weak as a rag doll, Chico sprawled on the soft wood shavings, and the man strode over to me to feel for himself the force being applied in keeping me where I was.

  He nodded to his partner. ‘And you keep your mind on your business,’ he said to him. ‘Never mind yon other laddie. I’ll see to him.’

  I looked at their faces, remembering them for ever.

  The hard callous lines of cheekbone and mouth. The cold eyes, observant and unfeeling. The black hair and pale skins. The set of a small head on a thick neck, the ears flat. The heavy shape of a jaw blue with beard. Late thirties, I guessed. Both much alike, and both giving forth at great magnitude the methodical brutality of the experienced mercenary.

  Peter Rammileese, approaching, seemed in comparison a matter of sponge. Despite his chums’ disapproval he too put a hand on the pitchfork handle and tried to give it a shake. It seemed to surprise him that he couldn’t.

  He said to me, ‘You’ll keep your snotty nose out, after this.’

  I didn’t bother to answer. Behind them, Chico got to his feet, and for one surging moment I thought that he’d been fooling them a bit with the concussed act, and was awake and on the point of some effective judo.

  It was only a moment. The kick he aimed at the man who had been holding him wouldn’t have knocked over a house of cards. In sick and helpless fury I watched the truncheon land again on Chico’s head, sending him down on to his knees, deepening the haze in his brain.

  The man with the pitchfork was doing what he’d been told and concentrating on keeping up the pressure on the handle. I tugged and wrenched at it with desperation to get free, and altogether failed, and the big man with Chico unfastened his belt.

  I saw with incredulity that what he’d worn round his waist was not a leather strap but a length of chain, thin and supple, like the stuff in grandfather clocks. At one end he had fixed some sort of handle, which he grasped; and he swung his arm so that the free end fizzed through the air and wrapped itself around Chico.

  Chico’s head snapped up and his eyes and mouth opened wide with astonishment, as if the new pain had cleared away the mists like a flamethrower. The man swung his arm again and the chain landed on Chico, and I could hear myself shouting ‘Bastards, bloody bastards …’ and it made no difference at all.

  Chico swayed to his feet and took some stumbling steps to get away, and the man followed him, hitting him all over with unvarying ferocity, taking a pride in his work.

  I yelled incoherently … unconnected words, screaming at him to stop … feeling anger and grief and an agony of responsibility. If I hadn’t taken Chico to Newmarket … if I hadn’t been afraid of Trevor Deansgate … it was because of my fear that Chico was there … on that day … God … Bastard. Stop it … Stop … Wrenched at the pitchfork and couldn’t get free.

  Chico lurched and stumbled and finally crawled in a wandering circle round the riding school, and ended lying on his stomach not far away from me. The thin cotton of his shirt twitched when the chain landed, and I saw dotted red streaks of blood in the fabric here and there.

  Chico … God …

  It wasn’t until he lay entirely still that the torment stopped. The man stood over him, looking down judiciously, holding his chain in a relaxed grasp.

  Peter Rammileese looked if anything disconcerted and scared, and it was he who had got us there, he who had arranged it.

  The man holding the pitchfork stopped looking at me for the first time and switched his attention to where Chico lay. It was only a partial shift of his balance, but it made all the difference to the pressure on my neck. I wrenched at the handle with a force he wasn’t ready for,
and finally got myself away and off the wall: and it wasn’t the man with Chico I sprang at in bloodlusting rage, but Peter Rammileese himself, who was nearer.

  I hit him on the side of the face with all my strength, and I hit him with my hard left arm, two thousand quid’s worth of delicate technology packed into a built-in club.

  He screeched and raised his arms round his head, and I said ‘Bastard’ with savage intensity and hit him again, on the ribs.

  The man with Chico turned his attentions to me, and I discovered, as Chico had, that one’s first feeling was of astonishment. The sting was incredible: and after the lacerating impact, a continuing fire.

  I turned on the man in a rage I wouldn’t have thought I could feel, and it was he who backed away from me.

  I caught the next swing of his chain on my unfeeling arm. The free end wrapped itself round the forearm, and I tugged with such fierceness that he lost his grip on the handle. It swung down towards me, a stitched piece of leather; and if there had been just the two of us I would have avenged Chico and fought our way out of there, because there was nothing about cold blood in the way I went for him.

  I grasped the leather handle, and as the supple links unwound and fell off my arm I swung the chain in a circle above my head and hit him an almighty crack around the shoulders. From his wide opening eyes and the outraged Scottish roar I guessed that he was learning for the first time what he had inflicted on others.

  The man with the pitchfork at that point brought up the reserves, and although I might perhaps have managed one, it was hopeless against two.

  He came charging straight at me with the wicked prongs and although I dodged them like a bullfighter the first man grabbed my right arm with both of his, intent on getting his chain back.

  I swung round towards him in a sort of leap, and with the inside of my metal wrist hit him so hard on the ear and side of the head that the jolt shuddered up through my elbow and upper arm into my shoulder.

  For a brief second I saw into his eyes at very close quarters: saw the measure of a hard fighting man, and knew he wasn’t going to sit on the ramp of the trailer and wail, as Peter Rammileese was doing.

  The crash on the head all the same loosened his grasp enough for me to wrench myself free, and I lunged away from him, still clutching his chain, and turned to look for the pitchfork. The pitchfork man, however, had thrown the fork away and was unfastening his own. belt. I jumped towards him while he had both his hands at his waist and delivered to him too the realities of their chosen warfare.