Johnnie Duke had greeted Martin Retsov’s announcement of his chosen profession with a huge relieved grin.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I can steal horses. Which ones?’
‘It’s not so easy round here,’ Martin Retsov said. ‘Training stables and stud farms have good security arrangements.’ But he knew them all; he had been assiduously studying them for three years.
He gave Johnnie Duke a list of things to buy and some money for himself, and two days later they inspected together the resulting mole-grip wrench and bolt cutters.
‘There is no time to waste,’ Martin Retsov said. ‘We will go ahead tomorrow night.’
‘So soon?’
Martin Retsov smiled. ‘We are taking two brood mares. One is near to foaling. We want her safely away before that happens.’
Johnnie Duke looked at him in long surprise. ‘Why don’t we take good fast racers?’ he said.
‘They’re too easily identified. Tattoo marks and registrations see to that. But foals, now. Newborn foals. Who’s to say which is which? So we take a top-class mare, now in foal by the best sire, and we drive her a long way off and sell her at the end of the journey to some owner or trainer who is glad to get a fabulously bred foal for a fraction of what it would cost him at auction.
‘The star foal is swapped soon after birth with any other one handy, and is registered and tattooed in its new identity. Its new owner knows what he’s really got, so after racing it he keeps it for stud. Some of my clients in the past have made millions out of these foals. I always collect a small percentage.’
Johnnie Duke listened with his mouth open.
‘This is not casual thieving,’ Martin Retsov said with a certain pride. ‘This is like stealing the Mona Lisa.’
‘But what happens to the brood mare afterwards? And to the other foal?’
‘Some of my clients have consciences. For these, for a consideration, I collect the mare and foal and dump them in any convenient field. If the owner of the field is honest, she gets identified and sent home.’
Johnnie Duke did not ask what happened when the client had no conscience. He swallowed.
‘Do you already have a buyer for the two we’re taking tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘Of course. You don’t steal a Leonardo da Vinci on spec’ Martin Retsov laughed at the idea, showing a strong row of teeth. ‘When we’ve got the mares I’ll tell you where to go. You will go alone. And you will bring back the money.’
Johnnie Duke was again surprised. ‘Can you trust me?’ he asked.
‘I want to find out.’
The following evening at dusk they collected the newly-bought car and hitched on the trailer. Martin Retsov had difficulty manoeuvring the two linked vehicles in the small courtyard which enclosed the lock-up garage, and Johnnie Duke, trying to be helpful, went to the rear of the trailer to report how much space there was for reversing.
‘Get away from there,’ Martin Retsov said sharply. ‘Get away at once.’ He stood up out of the car and Johnnie Duke saw that he was shaking.
‘I was only...’ he began.
‘You are never to go behind the trailer. Understand? Never.’
‘Well, all right. If you say so.’
Martin Retsov took several deep breaths and wiped the palms of his hands on his trousers. He was horrified at the strength of his own reaction. Three years, he thought, had hardly blunted the terror at all. He wondered whether, if his nerves were so jumpy, it might not be better to abandon the whole project. He wondered whether the fact that it had taken him three years to get back to his business meant that deep down he was afraid to get back.
He licked his lips. His heart-beat settled down. This time there would be no ambush when he took the horses. That last time his potential client had betrayed him to the police, but this time it was perfectly safe. This client had bought three top-grade foals in the past and had been delighted to hear he could now have two more. Martin Retsov eased himself back into the car, and Johnnie Duke climbed in beside him.
‘What’s the matter?’ Johnnie asked.
‘I saw an accident once. Man fell behind a horsebox.’
‘Oh.’
Martin Retsov shut his mouth on the untellable details, but they rolled on inexorably through his mind. The ambush. Police spotlights suddenly shining out before his father was safe up beside him in the horsebox’s cab. He’d had to reverse a yard or two to get a clear run at the only space left between the police cars and the fence. He’d thrown the lever, stamped on the accelerator, shot backwards — he would never forget his father’s scream. Never.
Just one scream, cut short. He’d jumped from the cab and seen the tyre cutting into the belly, seen the blood pouring out of the dying mouth... and the other man, the policeman, standing there looking down and doing nothing to help.
‘Help him!’ Retsov had said frantically.
‘Help him yourself.’
He leaped back to the cab, climbed panic-stricken into the driving seat, knowing even as he pushed at the gear lever with a disembodied hand that his father was dead.
Dead. Past help, past saving, past everything.
He rolled the horsebox forward off the crushed body and he kept on going. He took the police by surprise. He drove the horsebox at 65 for two miles, and long before they caught up he had abandoned it and taken to the woods.
The police had not known his name, which he prudently never divulged to his clients. All the police had was one quick sight of him in extremis, which was not enough, and evasion and escape had in the end proved the smallest of his personal problems.
He had never forgotten the face of the policeman who had looked down at his father. A senior policeman, wearing authority and insignia. He saw him too often in his uneasy dreams...
Martin Retsov shook off the regretted past and applied his concentration to the theft in hand. He had expected to feel the old anticipation, the old excitement, the pleasing racing of the pulse. He felt none of these things. He felt old.
‘Come on,’ said Johnnie Duke. ‘Or it will be light again before I deliver the goods.’
Martin Retsov nodded unwillingly and committed them both to the enterprise. Half an hour later when they pulled up in a dark side road he had succeeded in thrusting his soul’s shadows back into their closet and was approaching the next half-hour with cool, calm practicality.
They stepped quietly from the car and let down the ramp of the trailer. The night closed around them — small sounds, light sighing wind, stars showing in sparkling bunches between greyly drifting clouds. Traffic on the high road half a mile away swept past now and then, more a matter of flashing lights than of noise. Martin Retsov waited for his eyes to grow used to the dark, then he put his hand lightly on the young man’s arm.
‘This way,’ he said. His voice was a gentle whisper and when he moved his feet were soundless on the grass verge. Johnnie Duke followed him, marvelling at the big man’s silence and easy speed.
‘Where are we?’ Johnnie whispered. ‘Whose horses are we taking?’
‘Never you mind.’
They came to a gate, padlocked. The bolt cutter made it easy. They slid through into the field. Martin Retsov whistled gently in the dark, a seductive gypsy trill in the teeth.
He pulled out a handful of Thoroughbred horse nuts and called persuasively into the blackness ahead.