For Kicks

by Dick Francis

‘And you don’t want to leave here until you’ve finished paying them off.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Will they take your motor-cycle away if you stop paying?’

  ‘Yes sir, they might do.’

  ‘So Mr Humber doesn’t need to worry about you leaving him?’

  I said slowly, unwillingly, but as it happened, truthfully, ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Good,’ he said briskly. ‘Then that clears the air, doesn’t it. And now you can tell me where you find the guts to deal with an unstable, half-mad horse.’

  ‘He’s drugged, sir.’

  ‘You and I both know, Roke, that a drugged horse is not necessarily a safe horse.’

  I said nothing. If there was ever a time when I needed an inspiration, this was it: and my mind was a blank.

  ‘I don’t think, Roke,’ he said softly, ‘that you are as feeble as you make out. I think there is a lot more stuffing in you than you would have us believe.’

  ‘No, sir,’ I said helplessly.

  ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

  He stretched out his hand to Humber, and Humber gave him his walking stick. Adams drew back his arm and hit me fairly smartly across the thigh.

  If I were to stay in the yard I had got to stop him. This time the begging simply had to be done. I slid down the door, gasping, and sat on the ground.

  ‘No sir, don’t,’ I shouted. ‘I got some pills. I was dead scared of Mickey, and I asked the chemist in Posset on Saturday if he had any pills to make me brave, and he sold me some, and I’ve been taking them regular ever since.’

  ‘What pills?’ said Adams disbelieving.

  ‘Tranquil something he said. I didn’t rightly catch the word.’

  ‘Tranquillizers.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it, tranquillizers. Don’t hit me any more sir, please sir. It was just that I was so dead scared of Mickey. Don’t hit me any more, sir.’

  ‘Well I’m damned.’ Adams began to laugh. ‘Well I’m damned. What will they think of next?’ He gave the stick back to Humber, and the two of them walked casually away along to the next box.

  ‘Take tranquillizers to help you out of a blue funk. Well, why not?’ Still laughing, they went in to see the next horse.

  I got up slowly and brushed the dirt off the seat of my pants. Damn it, I thought miserably, what else could I have done? Why was pride so important, and abandoning it so bitter?

  It was more clear than ever that weakness was my only asset. Adams had this fearful kink of seeing any show of spirit as a personal challenge to his ability to crush it. He dominated Humber, and exacted instant obedience from Cass, and they were his allies. If I stood up to him even mildly I would get nothing but a lot of bruises and he would start wondering why I stayed to collect still more. The more tenaciously I stayed, the more incredible he would find it. Hire purchase on the motor-bike wouldn’t convince him for long. He was quick. He knew, if he began to think about it, that I had come from October’s stables. He must know that October was a Steward and therefore his natural enemy. He would remember Tommy Staple-ton. The hyper-sensitivity of the hunted to danger would stir the roots of his hair. He could check and find out from the post office that I did not send money away each week, and discover that the chemist had sold me no tranquillizers. He was in too deep to risk my being a follow-up to Stapleton; and at the very least, once he was suspicious of me, my detecting days would be over.

  Whereas if he continued to be sure of my utter spinelessness he wouldn’t bother about me, and I could if necessary stay in the yard up to five or six weeks more. And heaven forbid, I thought, that I would have to.

  Adams, although it had been instinct with him, not reason, was quite right to be alarmed that it was I and not Jerry who was now looking after Mickey.

  In the hours I had spent close to the horse I had come to understand what was really the matter with him, and all my accumulated knowledge about the affected horses, and about all horses in general, had gradually shaken into place. I did by that day know in outline how Adams and Humber had made their winners win.

  I knew in outline, but not in detail. A theory, but no proof. For detail and proof I still needed more time, and if the only way I could buy time was to sit on the ground and implore Adams not to beat me, then it had to be done. But it was pretty awful, just the same.

  Chapter 12

  October’s reply was unrelenting.

  ‘Six-Ply, according to his present owner, is not going to be entered in any selling races. Does this mean that he will not be doped?

  ‘The answers to your questions are as follows:

  1. The powder is soluble phenobarbitone.

  2. The physical characteristics of Chin-Chin are: bay gelding, white blaze down nose, white sock, off-fore. Kandersteg: gelding, washy chestnut, three white socks, both fore-legs and near hind. Starlamp: brown gelding, near hind white heel.

  3. Blackburn beat Arsenal on November 30th.

  ‘I do not appreciate your flippancy. Does your irresponsibility now extend to the investigation?’

  Irresponsibility. Duty. He could really pick his words.

  I read the descriptions of the horses again. They told me that Starlamp was Mickey. Chin-Chin was Dobbin, one of the two racehorses I did which belonged to Humber. Kandersteg was a pale shambling creature looked after by Bert, and known in the yard as Flash.

  If Blackburn beat Arsenal on November 30th, Jerry had been at Humber’s eleven weeks already.

  I tore up October’s letter and wrote back.

  ‘Six-Ply may now be vulnerable whatever race he runs in, as he is the only shot left in the locker since Old Etonian and Superman both misfired.

  ‘In case I fall on my nut out riding, or get knocked over by a passing car, I think I had better tell you that I have this week realised how the scheme works, even though I am as yet ignorant of most of the details.’

  I told October that the stimulant Adams and Humber used was in fact adrenalin; and I told him how I believed it was introduced into the blood stream.

  ‘As you can see, there are two prime facts which must be established before Adams and Humber can be prosecuted. I will do my best to finish the job properly, but I can’t guarantee it, as the time factor is a nuisance.’

  Then, because I felt very alone, I added impulsively, jerkily, a postscript.

  ‘Believe me. Please believe me. I did nothing to Patty.’

  When I had written it, I looked at this cri de coeur in disgust. I am getting as soft as I pretend, I thought. I tore the bottom off the sheet of paper and threw the pitiful words away, and posted my letter in the box.

  Thinking it wise actually to buy some tranquillizers in case anyone checked, I stopped at the chemist’s and asked for some. The chemist absolutely refused to sell me any, as they could only be had on a doctor’s or dentist’s prescription. How long would it be, I wondered ruefully, before Adams or Humber discovered this awkward fact.

  Jerry was disappointed when I ate my meal in the café very fast, and left him alone to finish and walk back from Posset, but I assured him that I had jobs to do. It was high time I took a look at the surrounding countryside.

  I rode out of Posset and, stopping the motor-cycle in a lay-by, got out the map over which I had pored intermittently during the week. I had drawn on it with pencil and compasses two concentric circles: the outer circle had a radius of eight miles from Humber’s stables, and the inner circle a radius of five miles. If Jud had driven straight there and back when he had gone to fetch Mickey, the place he had fetched him from would lie in the area between the circles.

  Some directions from Humber’s were unsuitable because of open-cast coal-mines: and eight miles to the south-east lay the outskirts of the sprawling mining town called Clavering. All round the north and west sides, however, there was little but moorland interspersed with small valleys like the one in which Humber’s stable lay, small fertile pockets in miles and miles of stark windswept heath.

  Tellbridge, the village wh
ere Adams lived, lay outside the outer circle by two miles, and because of this I did not think Mickey could have been lodged there during his absence from Humber’s. But all the same the area on a line from Humber’s yard to Adams’ village seemed the most sensible to take a look at first.

  As I did not wish Adams to find me spying out the land round his house, I fastened on my crash helmet, which I had not worn since the trip to Edinburgh, and pulled up over my eyes a large pair of goggles, under which even my sisters wouldn’t have recognised me. I didn’t, as it happened, see Adams on my travels; but I did see his house, which was a square, cream-coloured Georgian pile with gargoyle heads adjoining the gate-posts. It was the largest, most imposing building in the tiny group of a church, a shop, two pubs and a gaggle of cottages which made up Tellbridge.

  I talked about Adams to the boy who filled my petrol tank in the Tellbridge garage.

  ‘Mr Adams? Yes, he bought old Sir Lucas’ place three-four years ago. After the old man died. There weren’t no family to keep it on.’

  ‘And Mrs Adams?’ I suggested.

  ‘Blimey, there isn’t any Mrs Adams,’ he said, laughing and pushing his fair hair out of his eyes with the back of his wrist. ‘But a lot of birds, he has there sometimes. Often got a houseful there, he has. Nobs, now, don’t get me wrong. Never has anyone but nobs in his house, doesn’t Mr Adams. And anything he wants, he gets, and quick. Never mind anyone else. He woke the whole village up at two in the morning last Friday because he got into his head that he’d like to ring the church bells. He smashed a window to get in… I ask you! Of course, no one says much, because he spends such a lot of money in the village. Food and drink and wages, and so on. Everyone’s better off, since he came.’

  ‘Does he often do things like that – ringing the church bells?’

  ‘Well, not that exactly, but other things, yes. I shouldn’t think you could believe all you hear. But they say he pays up handsome if he does any damage, and everyone just puts up with it. High spirits, that’s what they say it is.’

  But Adams was too old for high spirits of that sort.

  ‘Does he buy his petrol here?’ I asked idly, fishing in my pocket for some money.

  ‘Not often he doesn’t, he has his own tank.’ The smile died out of the boy’s open face. ‘In fact, I only served him once, when his supplies had run out.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, he trod on my foot. In his hunting boots, too. I couldn’t make out if he did it on purpose, because it seemed like that really, but why would he do something like that?’

  ‘I can’t imagine.’

  He shook his head wondering. ‘He must have thought I’d moved out of his way, I suppose. Put his heel right on top of my foot, he did, and leaned back. I only had sneakers on. Darn nearly broke my bones, he did. He must weigh getting on for sixteen stone, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He sighed and counted my change into my palm, and I thanked him and went on my way thinking that it was extraordinary how much a psychopath could get away with if he was big enough and clever and well-born.

  It was a cold afternoon, and cloudy, but I enjoyed it. Stopping on the highest point of a shoulder of moorland I sat straddling the bike and looking round at rolling distances of bare bleak hills and at the tall chimneys of Clavering pointing up on the horizon. I took off my helmet and goggles and pushed my fingers through my hair to let the cold wind in to my scalp. It was invigorating.

  There was almost no chance, I knew, of my finding where Mickey had been kept. It could be anywhere, in any barn, outhouse or shed. It didn’t have to be a stable, and quite likely was not a stable: and indeed all I was sure of was that it would be somewhere tucked away out of sight and sound of any neighbours. The trouble was that in that part of Durham, with its widely scattered villages, its sudden valleys, and its miles of open heath, I found there were dozens of places tucked away out of sight and sound of neighbours.

  Shrugging, I put my helmet and goggles on again, and spent what little was left of my free time finding two vantage points on high ground, from one of which one could see straight down the valley into Humber’s yard, and from the other a main cross roads on the way from Humber’s to Tellbridge, together with good stretches of road in all directions from it.

  Kandersteg’s name being entered in Humber’s special hidden ledger, it was all Durham to a doughnut that one day he would take the same trail that Mickey-Starlamp had done. It was quite likely that I would still be unable to find out where he went, but there was no harm in getting the lie of the land clear in my head.

  At four o’clock I rolled back into Humber’s yard with the usual lack of enthusiasm, and began my evening’s work.

  Sunday passed, and Monday. Mickey got no better; the wounds on his legs were healing but he was still a risky prospect, in spite of the drugs, and he was beginning to lose flesh. Although I had never seen or had to deal with a horse in this state before, I gradually grew certain that he would not recover, and that Adams and Humber had another misfire on their hands.

  Neither Humber nor Cass liked the look of him either, though Humber seemed more annoyed than anxious, as time went on. Adams came one morning, and from across the yard in Dobbin’s box I watched the three of them standing looking in at Mickey. Presently Cass went into the box for a moment or two, and came out shaking his head. Adams looked furious. He took Humber by the arm and the two of them walked across to the office in what looked like an argument. I would have given much to have overheard them. A pity I couldn’t lip-read, I thought, and that I hadn’t come equipped with one of those long-range listening devices. As a spy, I was really a dead loss.

  On Tuesday morning at breakfast there was a letter for me, post-marked Durham, and I looked at it curiously because there were so few people who either knew where I was or would bother to write to me. I put it in my pocket until I could open it in private and I was glad I had, for to my astonishment it was from October’s elder daughter.

  She had written from her University address, and said briefly,

  ‘Dear Daniel Roke,

  I would be glad if you could call to see me for a few moments sometime this week. There is a matter I must discuss with you.

  Yours sincerely,

  Elinor Tarren.’

  October, I thought, must have given her a message for me, or something he wanted me to see, or perhaps he intended to be there to meet me himself, and had not risked writing to me direct. Puzzled, I asked Cass for an afternoon off, and was refused. Only Saturday, he said, and Saturday only if I behaved myself.

  I thought Saturday might be too late, or that she would have gone to Yorkshire for the week-end, but I wrote to her that I could come only on that day, and walked into Posset after the evening meal on Tuesday to post the letter.

  Her reply came on Friday, brief again and to the point, with still no hint of why I was to go.

  ‘Saturday afternoon will do very well. I will tell the porter you are coming: go to the side door of the College (this is the door used by students and their visitors) and ask to be shown to my room.’

  She enclosed a pencilled sketch to show me where to find the college, and that was all.

  On Saturday morning I had six horses to do, because there was still no replacement for Charley, and Jerry had gone with Pageant to the races. Adams came as usual to talk to Humber and to supervise the loading up of his hunters, but wasted no attention or energy on me, for which I was thankful. He spent half of the twenty minutes he was in the yard looking into Mickey’s box with a scowl on his handsome face.

  Cass himself was not always unkind, and because he knew I particularly wanted the afternoon free he even went so far as to help me get finished before the midday meal. I thanked him, surprised, and he remarked that he knew there had been a lot extra for everyone (except himself incidentally) to do, as we were still a lad short, and that I hadn’t complained about it as much as most of the others. And that, I thought, was a mistake I would not have to make too often.


  I washed as well as the conditions would allow; one had to heat all washing water in a kettle on the stove and pour it into the basin on the marble washstand; and shaved more carefully than usual, looking into the six-by-eight-inch flyblown bit of looking glass, jostled by the other lads who wanted to be on their way to Posset.

  None of the clothes I had were fit for visiting a women’s college. With a sigh I settled for the black sweater, which had a high collar, the charcoal drainpipe trousers, and the black leather jacket. No shirt, because I had no tie. I eyed the sharp-pointed shoes, but I had not been able to overcome my loathing for them, so I scrubbed my jodhpur boots under the tap in the yard, and wore those. Everything else I was wearing needed cleaning, and I supposed I smelled of horses, though I was too used to it to notice.

  I shrugged. There was nothing to be done about it. I unwrapped the motor-bike and made tracks for Durham.

  Chapter 13

  Elinor’s college stood in a tree-lined road along with other sturdy and learned looking buildings. It had an imposing front entrance and a less-imposing tarmacked drive entrance along to the right. I wheeled the motor-cycle down there and parked it beside a long row of bicycles. Beyond the bicycles stood six or seven small cars, one of which was Elinor’s little scarlet two-seater.

  Two steps led up to a large oak door embellished with the single words ‘Students’. I went in. There was a porter’s desk just inside on the right, with a mournful looking middle-aged man sitting behind it looking at a list.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘could you tell me where to find Lady Elinor Tarren?’

  He looked up and said ‘You visiting? You expected?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  He asked my name, and thumbed down the list painstakingly. ‘Daniel Roke to visit Miss Tarren, please show him her room. Yes, that’s right. Come on, then.’ He got down off his stool, came round from behind his desk, and breathing noisily began to lead me deeper into the building.

  There were several twists in the corridors and I could see why it was necessary to have a guide. On every hand were doors with their occupant or purpose written up on small cards let into metal slots. After going up two flights of stairs and round a few more corners, the porter halted outside one more door just like the rest.