Flying finish / Бурный финиш. Книга для чтения на английском языке

‘The day we did two trips, when we took her over in the morning and brought her back in the afternoon, that day it was no accident the return horses weren’t at the airport to come back on the first trip. Not even you could risk unloading the mare and promptly loading her up again straight away. So you made a “mistake” and put fifteen hundred hours on the trainer’s travelling instructions instead of ten hundred hours, you, who never make such mistakes, whose accuracy is so phenomenal usually that no one queries or checks up on what you do.’

‘How’, he said dully. ‘How did you work it out?[226]’

‘I came from Anglia Bloodstock,’ I said gently. ‘Don’t you remember? I used to fill up the same export forms as you do. I used to send them to you from the transport section. But I might not have remembered about the government bonus if I hadn’t heard three business men discussing it ten days ago, and last night while I was wondering how anyone could gain from shufling that mare over and back, the whole thing just clicked[227].’

‘Clicked,’ he said gloomily.

I nodded. ‘No markings on the mare, either. You couldn’t keep sending her in her own name, someone would have noticed at once. I would have done, for a start. But all you had to do was go through the stud book, and choose other unmarked mares of approximately the same age and fill up the export forms accordingly. The customs certify a brown mare was actually exported from here, and the French customs certify it was imported there. No trouble at all. No one bothers to check with an owner that he has sold his horse. Why ever should they?[228] And coming back, you go through the same process with the French stud book, only this time you have to be a bit careful your faked mare isn’t too well bred because you can’t spend more than two thousand in sterling abroad without searching enquiries, which you couldn’t risk.’

‘Got it all buttoned up[229], haven’t you?’ he said bitterly.

‘I was thinking about it nearly all night.’

‘Who are you going to tell?’

I glanced at him and away, uncomfortably.

‘Yardman?’ he asked.

I didn’t answer.

‘The police?’

I looked at the flickering fire. I wouldn’t have told anyone had it not been for… ‘Did you,’ I said painfully, ‘did you have to get Billy to knock me about?’

‘Henry!’ He looked shattered. ‘I didn’t. How can you think I did that?’

I swallowed. ‘He’s been on all the trips with the mare, and he’s never given me a moment’s peace on any of them, except perhaps the first. He’s punched me and poured syrupy coffee on my hair, and yesterday when I was looking at the mare he hit me with a chain. He’s not doing it because he dislikes me… or not only. It’s a smoke screen[230] to keep me away from looking too closely at the horses. That’s why he didn’t smash my face in. He was fighting for a purpose, not from real fury.’

‘Henry, I promise you, it isn’t true.’ He seemed deeply distressed. ‘I wouldn’t hurt you, for God’s sake.’

He put out his hand for his drink and took a long swallow. There was no more steam: drink and friendship were both cold.

‘Don’t look like that,’ he said shivering. ‘Like an iceberg.’ He drank again. ‘All right, you’ve got it right about the mare. I’ll admit that, but as God’s my judge[231], I didn’t put Billy on to you. I can’t stand him. He’s a young thug. Whatever he’s been doing to you, it’s from his own bloody nature. I promise you, Henry, I promise you.’

I looked at him searchingly, wanting very much to believe him, and feeling I’d merely be fooling myself if I did.

‘Look,’ he said anxiously, leaning forward, ‘would you have sicked him on to me?[232]’

‘No.’

‘Well, then.’ He leaned back again. ‘I didn’t either.’ There was a long, long pause.

‘What do you do with the money?’ I asked, shelving it.

He hesitated. ‘Pay my gambling debts.’

I shook my head. ‘You don’t gamble.’

‘I do.’

‘No.’

‘You don’t know everything.’

‘I know that,’ I said tiredly. ‘I know that very well. You’re not interested in racing. You never ask me for tips[233], never even ask me if I expect to win myself. And don’t say you gamble at cards or something feeble like that, if you gambled enough to have to steal to pay your debts, you’d gamble on anything, horses as well. Compulsively.’

He winced. ‘Steal is a hard word.’ He leaned forward, picked up my untasted drink, and swallowed the lot.

‘There’s no pension at Yardman’s,’ he said.

I looked into his future, into his penurious retirement. I would have the remains of the Creggan fortune to keep me in cars and hot rums. He would have what he’d saved. ‘You’ve banked it?’

‘Only a third,’ he said. ‘A third is my cousin’s. He’s the one who keeps the mare on his smallholding and drives her to the airport at this end. And a third goes to a chap with a horse dealing business in France. He keeps the mare when she is over there, and drives her back and fore to the planes. They put up most of the stake[234], those two, when I thought of it. I hadn’t anything like enough on my own.’