I switched on the torch. Saw the neat navy uniform and the blood glistening red on the forehead. Saw the shut eyes and the lax limbs of the man who should have been sitting on the empty kitchen chair.
‘Oh God,’ I said desperately, and thought I would never ever forgive myself. I knelt beside him and fumbled for his pulse.
‘He’s alive,’ said my friend in the grey flannel suit. He sounded reassuring and confident. ‘Look at him breathing. He’ll be all right, you’ll see.’
All I could see was a man who was injured because I’d stationed him in the path of danger. ‘I’ll get a doctor,’ I said, standing up.
‘What about the horse?’
‘Damn the horse. This is more important.’
‘I’ll stay here with him till you get back.’
I nodded and set off anxiously towards the house, shining the torch now without reservations. If permanent harm came to that man because of me...
I ran.
Burst in through Rupert’s front door and found him standing there in the hall talking to the lady magistrate and the colonel, who were apparently just about to leave. She was pulling a cape around her shoulders and Rupert was holding the colonel’s coat. They turned and stared at me like a frozen tableau.
‘My guard’s been attacked. Knocked out,’ I said. ‘Could you get him a doctor?’
‘Sure,’ Rupert said calmly. ‘Who attacked him?’
‘I didn’t see.’
‘Job for the police?’
‘Yes, please.’
He turned to the telephone, dialling briskly. ‘What about the horse?’
‘They didn’t come in a horsebox.’
We both digested implications while he got the rescue services on the move. The colonel and the magistrate stood immobile in the hall with their mouths half open and Rupert, putting down the telephone, gave them an authoritative glance.
‘Come out into the yard with us, will you?’ he said. ‘Just in case we need witnesses?’
They weren’t trained to disappear rapidly at the thought. When Rupert hurried out of the door with me at his heels they followed more slowly after.
Everything still looked entirely quiet outside.
‘He’s in a sort of alley between two blocks of boxes,’ I said.
‘I know where you mean,’ Rupert nodded. ‘But first we’ll just check on Energise.’
‘Later.’
‘No. Now. Why bash the guard if they weren’t after the horse?’
He made straight for the main yard, switched on all six external lights, and set off across the brightly illuminated gravel.
The effect was like a flourish of trumpets. Noise, light and movement filled the space where silence and dark had been total.
Both halves of the door of box fourteen swung open about a foot, and two dark figures catapulted through the gap.
‘Catch them!’ Rupert shouted.
There was only one way out of the yard, the broad entrance through which we had come. The two figures ran in curving paths towards the exit, one to one side of Rupert and me, one to the other.
Rupert rushed to intercept the smaller who was suddenly, as he turned his head to the light, recognisable as Jody.
I ran for the larger. Stretched out. Touched him.
He swung a heavy arm and threw out a hip and I literally bounced off him, stumbling and falling.
The muscles were rock hard. The sunglasses glittered.
The joker was ripping through the pack.
Jody and Rupert rolled on the gravel, one clutching, one punching, both swearing. I tried again at Muscles with the same useless results. He seemed to hesitate over going to Jody’s help, which was how I’d come to be able to reach him a second time, but finally decided on flight. By the time I was again staggering to my feet he was on his way to the exit with the throttle wide open.
A large figure in navy blue hurtled straight at him from the opposite direction and brought him down with a diving hug round the knees. The sunglasses flew off in a shiny arc and the two large figures lay in a writhing entwined mass, the blue uniform uppermost and holding his own. I went to his help and sat on Muscles’ ankles, crushing his feet sideways with no compunction at all. He screeched with pain and stopped struggling, but I fear I didn’t immediately stand up.
Jody wrenched himself free from Rupert and ran past me. The colonel, who with his lady had been watching the proceedings with astonishment, decided it was time for some soldierly action and elegantly stuck out his foot.
Jody tripped over and fell sprawling. The colonel put more energy into it, leant down and took hold of the collar of Jody’s coat. Rupert, rallying, came to his aid, and between them they too more or less sat on Jody, pinning him to the ground.
‘What now?’ Rupert panted.
‘Wait for the police,’ I said succinctly.
Muscles and Jody both heaved about a good deal at this plan but didn’t succeed in freeing themselves. Muscles complained that I’d broken his ankle. Jody, under the colonel’s professional ministrations, seemed to have difficulty saying anything at all. The colonel was in fact so single-handedly efficient that Rupert stood up and dusted himself down and looked at me speculatively.
I jerked my head in the direction of box fourteen, where the door still stood half open, showing only darkness within. He nodded slowly and went that way. Switched on the light. Stepped inside. He came back with a face of stone and three bitter words.
‘Energise is dead.’
15
Rupert fetched some rope with which he ignominiously tied Jody’s hands behind his back before he and the colonel let him get up, and the colonel held the free end of rope so that Jody was to all intents on a lead. Once up, Jody aimed a kick at the colonel and Rupert told him to stop unless he wanted his ankles tied as well.
Rupert and my man in blue uniform did a repeat job on Muscles, whose ankles were not in kicking shape and whose language raised eyebrows even on the lady magistrate, who had heard more than most.
The reason for Muscles’ ubiquitous sunglasses was at once apparent, now that one could see his face. He stood glowering like a bull, seething with impotent rage, hopping on one foot and pulling against the tethering rope which led back from his wrists to my man in blue. His eyelids, especially the lower, were grossly distorted, and even in the outside lighting looked bright pink with inflammation. One could pity his plight, which was clearly horrid.
‘I know you,’ Rupert said suddenly, looking at him closely. ‘What’s the matter with your eyes?’
‘Mind your own effing business.’
‘Macrahinish. That’s what your name is. Macrahinish.’
Muscles didn’t comment. Rupert turned to me. ‘Don’t you know him? Perhaps he was before your time. He’s a vet. A struck-off vet. Struck off the vets’ register and warned off the racecourse. And absolutely not allowed to set foot in a racing stable.’
Muscles-Macrahinish delivered himself of an unflattering opinion of racing in general and Rupert in particular.
Rupert said, ‘He was convicted of doping and fraud and served a term in jail. He ran a big doping ring and supplied all the drugs. He looks older and there’s something wrong with his eyes, but that’s who this is, all right. Macrahinish.’
I turned away from the group and walked over to the brightly lit loosebox. Swung the door wide. Looked inside.
My beautiful black horse lay flat on his side, legs straight, head flaccid on the straw. The liquid eye was dull and opaque, mocking the sheen which still lay on his coat, and he still had pieces of unchewed hay half in and half out of his mouth. There was no blood, and no visible wound. I went in and squatted beside him, and patted him sadly with anger and regret.
Jody and Macrahinish had been unwillingly propelled in my wake. I looked up to find them inside the box, with Rupert, the colonel, his wife, and the man in blue effectively blocking the doorway behind them.