Blood Sport by Dick Francis
‘It’ll vacuum quite easily, won’t it? It’s not sticky and it doesn’t stain.’
But she couldn’t be consoled, even when he reminded her that the money was safe, and that her mink wrap hadn’t been stolen.
‘But Matt says’, she wailed, ‘that it was white.’
‘Flour will shake out … and might even clean it.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Sure I do, Yola,’ he said patiently. ‘You feel like it was you who was assaulted, not your house. You feel dirty and furious and you’d like to kick the bastards who did it. Sure, I know. We had thieves in here once, when your Aunt Ellen was alive. They stole all her rings, and she said it was like being raped.’
They talked about the break-in for a good while longer, and Walt raised an eyebrow and remarked that I seemed to have gotten reasonable revenge for that clap on the head.
We were both yawning by the time Offen was through for the evening. The last half hour consisted of him telling his houseboy his plans and requirements, and none of these betrayed any anxiety or uncertainty. Culham James was confident, and I was glad of it. Worried men patrol their defences.
Walt went off to bed, and although I hadn’t slept at all the previous night I woke again after only three hours. The coloured lights on the outside of the motel threw prismatic reflections on the ceiling. I stared up at them, trying to make patterns and shapes, trying any silly ruse to stop my mind from nose-diving into the pit. The tug of the unfinished chase was very faint, and whether Allyx and Showman ever sired another foal seemed a matter of supreme unimportance. Fraud, theft, attempted murder … who cared?
I had left the Luger in its belt holster across the room on a chair. Neither the Clives nor Offen were likely to come creeping through the night to do me in, and my usual enemies were six thousand miles to the east. The only danger lay in myself, the deadliest enemy of the lot. The theory that going to bed with the gun out of reach would lessen its magnetic temptation was proving a dreary flop.
One more day, I thought in the end. Anyone could manage just one more day. If you said that firmly enough every night, one might even finish the course.
Dawn crept up on the coloured bulbs and washed them out. I took a shower and shaved, and admitted that I had seen healthier looking men than the one in my reflection.
Walt came along to my room when I was midway through orange juice and coffee at eight-thirty. ‘What you need,’ he said, eyeing this, ‘is some good solid food.’
‘I don’t feel hungry.’
His eyes slid to my face and away. ‘Come on down and eat with me.’
I shook my head. ‘I’ll wait for you.’
He wouldn’t go alone. He ordered hot-cakes and eggs and coffee from room service, and we got straight down to business while he demolished them.
‘It’ll take two and a half days for Sam Hengelman to get to Kingman,’ I said.
He nodded with his mouth full.
‘He was starting early this morning,’ I went on, ‘I called him last night, after you’d been through from Las Vegas. He’s driving the van himself, and he’s coming alone. That means his journey time will be longer, but it seemed better that way from the secrecy point of view.’
‘Did you tell him it was another snatch?’ Walt said doubtfully.
I smiled. ‘I engaged him to come and collect a horse belonging to Dave Teller. He asked if we were likely to be collecting this one in a lonely place at night, and I said yes, we probably would.’
‘And he didn’t back out?’
‘He merely remarked that he had no great objection to an easy buck if I would assure him he couldn’t go to jail for it.’
Walt wiped errant egg off his chin. ‘And could he?’
‘I couldn’t tell him it was impossible. Odds of a thousand to one, I said. He said a thousand bucks against one chance of going to jail wasn’t enough.’
Walt laughed. ‘So how much is he coming for?’
‘Fifteen hundred, plus the normal hiring fee, plus expenses.’
‘Not bad for one week’s work.’ He paused, stirring sugar, then said tentatively, ‘What do you get out of this yourself?’
‘Me?’ I said in surprise. ‘I’ve no idea. Three weeks’ heatwave instead of the English summer …’
‘Didn’t you negotiate a fee?’
‘No.’
‘How come?’
‘It didn’t occur to me.’
His face crinkled into a mixture of emotions with what appeared to be amazement and pity coming out on top.
‘How about you?’ I said.
‘I’m not on vacation,’ he pointed out. ‘I get a pretty good salary, and also a cut of everything I save the company.’
‘So Chrysalis has been worth the extra work?’
‘At a million and a half, are you kidding?’ Walt looked at me earnestly. ‘Look, Gene, I’m going to give you one half of that cut …’
‘No,’ I said, interrupting. ‘I don’t want it.’
‘You know darned well I wouldn’t have found that horse, not in a million years. Nor got him back alive so quickly. And as for these other two …’
‘You keep it for your kids,’ I said. ‘But thanks, anyway.’
He would have gone on insisting, but I wouldn’t listen, and after two attempts he gave it up. In the back of my mind, as I outlined what I suggested we should do next, there lingered a bitter suspicion that I hadn’t accepted his gift because it would be a selfish waste if I didn’t stick around to spend it. I had rejected any strings of conscience tying me to life. The death-seeking force was up to another of its tricks.
‘A pincer movement, I think,’ I said. ‘Or rather, a simultaneous attack on two fronts.’
‘Huh?’
‘Keep Culham James Offen’s attention riveted on the Moviemaker and Centigrade he has on his farm while we spirit away the others.’
‘Er, quite,’ Walt agreed.
‘You can take Offen,’ I said.
‘And you take the horses?’
I nodded. Walt considered what might happen if we exchanged roles, and didn’t argue.
‘What are the chances of finding out which company Matt insures the Las Vegas house with?’
Walt thought about it. ‘Our agent there might be able to. But why?’
‘I … er … would rather take those horses when I know Matt is safely away.’
Walt smiled.
‘So,’ I went on, ‘it shouldn’t be too difficult to get him to go back to the house on Pitts. Say for instance his insurance company required him to make an inspection of his security arrangements and sign some document or other, before they would renew full cover? We know from the telephone calls to Offen that Matt and Yola have a safe in the den with a lot of money in it. Matt won’t want to be uninsured for more than a minute, after having one break-in already.’
‘We couldn’t ask his company to do that …’ Walt paused and looked at me with suspicion.
‘Quite right,’ I nodded. ‘You can. You know all the jargon. As soon as we hear from Sam Hengelman that he has reached the Arizona border, you can start the spiel on Matt.’
‘From here?’
‘Yes. Ask him what time would be convenient for him, but try to manoeuvre him into coming late in the afternoon or early evening, say six or seven. Then it would be dark when he got home, and late, which should hamper him a bit when he finds the horses are gone … he might even stop off in Las Vegas for a couple of hours at the tables.’
Walt said thoughtfully, ‘I reckon I’d better go to the house on Pittsville and meet him.’
‘No,’ I said abruptly.
He looked at me. ‘You’d thought of it?’
‘You are not going anywhere near Matt Clive.’
‘And why not?’
‘You want a split skull or something?’
‘Like webbed feet.’ The smiled hovered. ‘All the same, what is Matt going to do when he arrives at his house and no insurance man turns up?
‘He wouldn’t risk calling in cops.’
‘He might reckon that if he was losing everything anyway, he’d make sure you went down as well. And I mean down.’
Every instinct told me not to let Walt meet Matt Clive.
‘Suppose he won’t make a late appointment?’ he said. ‘When I grant most of the company would have gone home, and it would be more difficult to check. Suppose he insists on three in the afternoon, or even the next morning? Do you want to snatch those horses by day?’
‘Not much. But it would take him at least two hours each way. Add an hour for waiting and checking. Even if he called the police, it wouldn’t be for three hours after he left home. We’d have been gone with the horses for two of those.’
Walt obstinately shook his head. ‘The limits are too narrow. A horse van won’t be liable to do better than thirty miles an hour on the farm road, if that much. You have to go into Kingman, which is in the opposite direction from Kentucky, and then round and across Arizona … there aren’t too many roads in that state, it’s mostly desert. The police could find you too easily.’
‘Down through Phoenix …’
‘The road to Phoenix twists through mountains, with hairpin curves most of the way.’
‘I don’t want you walking into an empty house with Matt Clive.’
He looked at me without expression. ‘But you would go. If he didn’t know you, I mean.’
‘That’s different.’
‘How?’ he said, half insulted, half challenging.
I looked at him sideways. ‘I bet I can run faster than you.’
His forehead relaxed. ‘You’re in pretty good shape, I’ll give you that. All the same, I’m going to Las Vegas.’
He’d manoeuvred me into not being able to persuade him against it on the grounds of safety; and from all other points of view it was a good idea. Against my instinct I agreed in the end that he should go.
‘I’ll drift on out tomorrow and look at the farm beyond Kingman,’ I said. ‘I suppose you couldn’t see whether there were any other horses there besides the two we’re after?’
He looked startled. ‘You mean there might be another identification problem?’
‘Perhaps. Though I’d say it’s certain our two have Moviemaker’s and Centigrade’s stud book numbers tattooed inside their mouths. They would have to, to satisfy visiting grooms, for instance, that their mares were being mated with the right stallion. But I’ve never seen them … Showman and Allyx. If there are other horses there, it’ll simply mean going round peering into all their mouths until I find the right ones.’
Walt raised his eyes to heaven. ‘You make everything sound so darned easy. Like it’s only five miles to the top of Everest, and everyone can walk five miles, can’t they?’
Smiling, I asked him for precise directions to the farm, and he told me.
‘And now this end …’ I said. ‘How many strings can you pull with the Los Angeles fraud squad?’
‘Not many,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anyone out there.’
‘But with Buttress Life behind you?’
He sighed. ‘I suppose you want me to go and dip my toes in the water?’
‘Jump right in,’ I agreed. ‘Talk your way to the top chap, and tell him Buttress Life suspect that Moviemaker and Centigrade are Showman and Allyx. Get everything nicely stirred up. Make Offen prove beyond any doubt that the two horses at Orpheus literally are Moviemaker and Centigrade.’
He nodded. ‘OK. I’ll start this morning. Have to go a little carefully, though, or Offen will come up so fast with a libel suit that we’ll wonder what hit us.’
‘You must be used to ducking.’
‘Yeah.’
I gave him the page Miss Britt had written out for me in Lexington.
‘Here are the figures. No one can question these, not even Offen. You might find them useful in getting the law moving.’
He tucked the paper into his pocket and nodded, and shortly after, with the habitual martyred sigh, levered himself out of his chair and ambled on his way.
I sat and thought for a while but got nowhere new. There was going to be little else for me to do but wait and watch for the next few days while Sam Hengelman rolled his way two thousand miles across the continent.
When I went down to lunch I found Eunice and Lynnie sitting in cool bright dresses under the dappled shade of the sea-facing terrace. Their hair was glossy and neat, their big earrings gently swinging, their legs smooth and tanned, the whites of their eyes a detergent white.
They didn’t get the lingering scrutiny they deserved. With them, equally crisp, equally at ease, sat Culham James Offen, Uncle Bark.
All three seemed a scrap disconcerted when I folded myself gently on to the fourth chair round the low table on which stood their long frosted drinks.
Offen and I nodded to each other. There was still in his manner the superior, self-satisfied amusement he had treated me with at his house. Reassuring. Lynnie smiled, but with a quick sidelong glance at Eunice to make sure such treachery hadn’t been noticed. Eunice had on an ‘I-am-your-employer‘s-wife’ face, which didn’t wipe from my mind, nor hers, I imagine, the memory of the fluffy pink wrapper.
‘We thought you’d gone to LA with Walt,’ Lynnie said.
Eunice gave her a sharp glance which she didn’t see. ‘We ran into Mr Offen in the lobby here, wasn’t that extraordinary?’
‘Extraordinary,’ I agreed.
Offen’s white eyebrows went up and down in an embarrassment he couldn’t entirely smother.
‘It sure has been a pleasure,’ he said, ‘to get to know you folks better.’ He spoke exclusively to Eunice, however.
She had warmed again to the charm he had switched on for her, and gave me the tag end of a scornful glance. How could I, she inferred, imagine this nice influential citizen could be a crook.
‘How are Matt and Yola these days?’ I said conversationally.
Offen visibly jumped, and a blight fell on the party. ‘Such charming young people,’ I said benignly, and watched Eunice remembering what had happened to Dave, and also perhaps what Walt had told her about their attack on me. ‘Your nephew and niece, I believe?’
Offen’s pale blue eyes were the least impressive feature in his tanned face with its snow-white frame. I read in them a touch of wariness, and wondered whether in prodding Eunice to face reality I had disturbed his complacency too far.
‘They would sure like to meet you again,’ he said slowly, and the heavy ill-feeling behind the words curdled finally for Eunice his milk-of-human-kindness image.
‘Are you expecting them within the next few days?’ I asked, dropping in the merest touch of anxiety.
He said he wasn’t, and his inner amusement abruptly returned. I had succeeded in convincing him I would be trying to remove his horses from Orpheus pretty soon now; and shortly afterwards he got purposefully to his feet, bent a beaming smile on Eunice, a smaller one on Lynnie and a smug one on me, and made an important exit through the motel.
After a long pause Eunice said flatly, ‘I guess I was wrong about that guy being sweet.’
We ate an amicable lunch and spent the afternoon on the beach under a fringed umbrella, with the bright green-blue Pacific hissing gently on the sand. Out on the rollers the golden boys rode their surfboards, and flat by my side little Lynnie sighed to the bottom of her lungs with contentment.
‘I wish this could go on for ever,’ she said.
‘So do I.’
Eunice, on the other side of Lynnie, propped herself
‘In a minute,’ Lynnie said lazily, and Eunice went alone. We watched her tight well-shaped figure walk unwaveringly down to the water, and Lynnie said what I was thinking. ‘She hardly drinks at all now.’
‘You’re good for her.’
‘Oh sure.’ She laughed gently, stretching like a cat. ‘Isn’t this heat just gorgeous?’
‘Mm.’
‘What are all those scars on you?’
‘Lions and tigers and appendicitis.’
She snorted. ‘Shall we go in and swim?’
‘In a minute. What did you and Eunice and Offen say to each other before I arrived?’
‘Oh …’ She sounded bored. ‘He wanted to know what you were doing. Eunice told him you and Walt were cooking something up but she didn’t really know what. And … er … yes … he asked if Walt was really an insurance man, and Eunice said he was … and he asked other things about you, what your job was and so on, and why you were out here with us …’
‘Did Eunice tell him I got her to show him that photograph on purpose? Did she tell him that I was certain that the horses he has at Orpheus Farm are Moviemaker and Centigrade?’
Lynnie shook her head.
‘You’re quite sure?’
‘Yes, absolutely. Would it have been a nuisance if we had?’
‘A fair way to being disastrous.’
‘Don’t worry then. He was only here about a quarter of an hour before you came down, and all Eunice said was that you were er … er … well her actual words were, some dim bloody little office worker on vacation.’ Lynnie laughed. ‘She said her husband had been grateful to you for saving his life and was paying your bill here, and that all you seemed to be interested in at present was a girl up in San Francisco.’
I looked down to where Eunice’s head bobbed in the surf and wondered whether she’d given him perfect answers from design or bitchiness.
‘What’s she like?’ Lynnie said.
‘Who?’
‘The girl in San Francisco.’
‘You’d better ask Walt,’ I said, turning my head to look at her. ‘He invented her.’
She gasped and laughed in one. ‘Oh good! I mean … er … then what were you really doing?’