‘How did you kill him?’ I asked, the bitterness apparent in my voice.
Macrahinish’s reply did not contain the relevant information.
I straightened up and in doing so caught sight of a flat brown attaché case half hidden in the straw by the horse’s tail. I bent down again and picked it up. The sight of it brought a sound and a squirm from Macrahinish, and he began to swear in earnest when I balanced it on the manger and unfastened the clips.
The case contained regular veterinarian equipment, neatly stowed in compartments. I touched only one thing, lifting it carefully out.
A plastic bag containing a clear liquid. A bag plainly proclaiming the contents to be sterile saline solution.
I held it out towards Jody and said, ‘You dripped alcohol straight into my veins.’
‘You were unconscious,’ he said disbelievingly.
‘Shut up, you stupid fool,’ Macrahinish screamed at him.
I smiled. ‘Not all the time. I remember nearly everything about that night.’
‘He said he didn’t,’ Jody said defensively to Macrahinish and was rewarded by a look from the swollen eyes which would have made a non-starter of Medusa.
‘I went to see if you still had Energise,’ I said. ‘And I found you had.’
‘You don’t know one horse from another,’ he sneered. ‘You’re just a mug. A blind greedy mug.’
‘So are you,’ I said. ‘The horse you’ve killed is not Energise.’
‘It is!’
‘Shut up,’ screamed Macrahinish in fury. ‘Keep your stupid sodding mouth shut.’
‘No,’ I said to Jody. ‘The horse you’ve killed is an American horse called Black Fire.’
Jody looked wildly down at the quiet body.
‘It damn well is Energise,’ he insisted. ‘I’d know him anywhere.’
‘Jesus,’ Macrahinish shouted. ‘I’ll cut your tongue out.’
Rupert said doubtfully to me, ‘Are you sure it’s not Energise?’
‘Positive.’
‘He’s just saying it to spite me,’ said Jody furiously. ‘I know it’s Energise. See that tiny bald patch on his shoulder? That’s Energise.’
Macrahinish, beyond speech, tried to attack him, tied hands and dicky ankle notwithstanding. Jody gave him a vague look, concentrating only on the horse.
‘You are saying,’ Rupert suggested, ‘that you came to kill Energise and that you’ve done it.’
‘Yes,’ said Jody triumphantly.
The word hung in the air, vibrating. No one said anything. Jody looked round at each watching face, at first with defiant angry pride, then with the first creeping of doubt, and finally with the realisation of what Macrahinish had been trying to tell him, that he should never have been drawn into admitting anything. The fire visibly died into glum and chilly embers.
‘I didn’t kill him,’ he said sullenly. ‘Macrahinish did. I didn’t want to kill him at all, but Macrahinish insisted.’
A police car arrived with two young and persistent constables who seemed to find nothing particularly odd in being called to the murder of a horse.
They wrote in their notebooks that five witnesses, including a magistrate, had heard Jody Leeds admit that he and a disbarred veterinary surgeon had broken into a racing stable after midnight with the intention of putting to death one of the horses. They noted that a horse was dead. Cause of death, unknown until an autopsy could be arranged.
Hard on their heels came Rupert’s doctor, an elderly man with a paternal manner. Yawning but uncomplaining, he accompanied me to find my security guard, who to my great relief was sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, awake and groaning healthily. We took him into Rupert’s office, where the doctor stuck a plaster on the dried wound on his forehead, gave him some tablets and told him to lay off work for a couple of days. He smiled weakly and said it depended if his boss would let him.
One of the young policemen asked if he’d seen who had hit him.
‘Big man with sunglasses. He was creeping along behind me, holding a ruddy great chunk of wood. I heard something... I turned and shone my torch, and there he was. He swung at my head. Gave me a right crack, he did. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground.’
Reassured by his revival I went outside again to see what was happening.
The magistrate and the colonel seemed to have gone home, and Rupert was down in the yard talking to some of his own stable staff who had been woken by the noise.
Macrahinish was hopping about on one leg, accusing me of having broken the other and swearing he’d have me prosecuted for using undue force to protect my property. The elderly doctor phlegmatically examined the limb in question and said that in his opinion it was a sprain.
The police had rashly untied the Macrahinish wrists and were obviously relying on the leg injury to prevent escape. At the milder word sprain they produced handcuffs and invited Macrahinish to stick his arms out. He refused and resisted and because they, as I had done, underestimated both his strength and his violence, it took a hectic few minutes for them to make him secure.
‘Resisting arrest,’ they panted, writing it in the notebooks. ‘Attacking police officers in the course of their duty.’
Macrahinish’s sunglasses lay on the gravel in the main yard, where he had lost them in the first tackle. I walked down to where they shone in the light and picked them up. Then I took them slowly back to him and put them in his handcuffed hands.
He stared at me through the raw-looking eyelids. He said nothing. He put the sunglasses on, and his fingers were trembling.
‘Ectropion,’ said the doctor, as I walked away.
‘What?’ I said.
‘The condition of his eyes. Ectropion. Poor fellow.’
The police made no mistakes with Jody. He sat beside Macrahinish in the back of the police car with handcuffs on his wrists and the Arctic in his face. When the police went to close the doors ready to leave, he leant forwards and spoke to me through rigid lips.
‘You shit,’ he said.
Rupert invited the rest of my security firm indoors for warmth and coffee and in his office I introduced them to him.
‘My friend in grey flannel,’ I said, ‘is Charlie Canter-field. My big man in blue is Bert Huggerneck. My injured friend with the dried blood on his face is Owen Idris.’
Rupert shook hands with each and they grinned at him. He sensed immediately that there was more in their smiles than he would have expected, and he turned his enquiring gaze on me.
‘Which firm do they come from?’ he asked.
‘Charlie’s a merchant banker, Bert’s a bookies’ clerk, and Owen helps in my workshop.’
Charlie chuckled and said in his fruitiest Eton, ‘We also run a nice line in a census, if you should ever need one.’
Rupert shook his head helplessly and fetched brandy and glasses from a cupboard.
‘If I ask questions,’ he said, pouring lavishly, ‘will you answer them?’
‘If we can,’ I said.
‘That dead horse in the stable. Is it Energise?’
‘No. Like I said, it’s a horse I bought in the States called Black Fire.’
‘But the bald patch... Jody was so certain.’
‘I did that bald patch with a razor blade. The horses were extraordinarily alike, apart from that. Especially at night, because of being black. But there’s one certain way of identifying Black Fire. He has his American racing number tattoed inside his lip.’
‘Why did you bring him here?’
‘I didn’t want to risk the real Energise. Before I saw Black Fire in America I couldn’t see how to entice Jody safely. Afterwards, it was easier.’
‘But I didn’t get the impression earlier this evening,’ Rupert said pensively, ‘that you expected them to kill the horse.’