Bonecrack

On Monday morning, tapping away, Margaret said, 'Susie's friend's mum says she has just happened to see Alessandro's passport.'

'Which just happened,' I said dryly, 'to be well hidden away in Alessandro's bedroom.'

'Let us not stare at gift horses.'

'Let us not,' I agreed.

'Susie's friend's mum says that the address on the passport was not in Italy, but in Switzerland. A place called Bastagnola. Is that any use?'

'I hope Susie's friend's mum won't lose her job.'

'I doubt it,' Margaret said. 'She hops into bed with the manager, when his wife goes shopping in Cambridge.'

'How do you know?'

Her eyes laughed. 'Susie's friend told me.'

I telephoned to an importer of cameras who owed me a favour and asked him if he had any contacts in the town of Bastagnola.

'Not myself. But I could establish one, if it's important.'

'I want any information anyone can dig up about a man called Enso Rivera. As much information as possible.'

He wrote it down and spelled it back. 'See what I can do,' he said.

He rang two days later and sounded subdued.

'I'll be sending you an astronomical bill for European phone calls.'

That's all right.'

'An awful lot of people didn't want to talk about your man. I met an exceptional amount of resistance.'

'Is he Mafia, then?' I asked.

'No. Not Mafia. In fact, he and the Mafia are not on speaking terms. On stabbing terms, maybe, but not speaking. There seems to be some sort of truce between them.' He paused.

'Go on,' I said.

'Well- As far as I can gather- and I wouldn't swear to it- he is a sort of receiver of stolen property. Most of it in the form of currency, but some gold and silver and precious stones from melted down jewellery. I heard- and it was at third hand from a high-up policeman, so you can believe it or not as you like- that Rivera accepts the stuff, sells or exchanges it, takes a large commission, and banks the rest in Swiss accounts which he opens up for his clients. They can collect their money any time they like- and it is believed that he has an almost world-wide connection. But all this goes on behind a supposedly legitimate business as a dealer in watches. They've never managed to bring him to court. They can never get witnesses to testify.'

'You've done marvels,' I said.

'There's a bit more.' He cleared his throat. 'He has a son, apparently, that no one cares to cross. Rivera has been known to ruin people who don't immediately do what the son wants. He only has this one child. He is reputed to have deserted his wife- well, a lot of Italian men do that-'

'He is Italian, then?'

'By birth, yes. He's lived in Switzerland for about fifteen years, though. Look, I don't know if you're intending to do business with him, but I got an unmistakable warning from several people to steer clear of him. They say he's dangerous. They say if you fall foul of him you wake up dead. Either that, or- well, I know you'll laugh- but there's a sort of superstition that if he looks your way you'll break a bone.'

I didn't laugh. Not a chuckle.

Almost as soon as I put the receiver down the telephone rang again.

Dainsee.

'I've got your X-ray pictures in front of me,' he said. 'But they're inconclusive, I'm afraid. It just looks a pretty ordinary fracture. There's a certain amount of longitudinal splitting, but then there often is with cannon bones.'

'What would be the simplest way to break a bone on purpose?' I asked.

Twist it,' he said promptly. 'Put it under stress. A bone under stress would snap quite easily if you gave it a bang. Ask any footballer or any skater. Stress, that's what does it.'

'You can't see stress on the X-rays-'

'Afraid not. Can't rule it out, though. Can't rule it in, either. Sorry.'

'It can't be helped.'

'But the blood test,' he said. 'I've had the results, and you were bang on target.'

'Anaesthetic?'

'Yep. Some brand of promazine. Sparine, probably.'

I'm no wiser,' I said. 'How would you give it to a horse?'

'Injection,' Dainsee said promptly. 'Very simple intramuscular injection, nothing difficult. Just punch the needle in anywhere handy. It's often used to shoot into mania patients in mental hospitals, when they're raving. Puts them out for hours.'

Something about promazine rung a highly personal note.

'Does the stuff work instantly?' I asked.

'If you give it intravenously, it would. But intramuscularly, what it's equally designed for, it would take a few minutes, probably. Ten to fifteen minutes on a human; don't know for a horse.'

'If you injected it into a human, could you do it through clothes?'

'Oh sure. Like I said. They use it as a standby in mental hospitals. They wouldn't get people in a manic state to sit nice and quiet and roll their sleeves up.'

CHAPTER NINE

For three weeks the status at Rowley Lodge remained approximately quo.

I heavily amended my father's entry forms and sent them in, and sold six of the half shares to various acquaintances, without offering Lancat to any of them.

Margaret took to wearing green eye shadow, and Susie's friend reported that Alessandro had made a telephone call to Switzerland and didn't wear pyjamas. Also that the chauffeur always paid for everything, as Alessandro didn't have any money.

Etty grew more tense as the beginning of the season drew nearer, and lines of anxiety seldom left her forehead. I was leaving a great deal more to her judgement than my father did, and she was in consequence feeling insecure. She openly ached for his return.

The horses all the same were working well. We had no further mishaps except that a two-year-old filly developed severe sinus trouble, and as far as I could judge from watching the performances of the other forty-five stables using Newmarket Heath, the Rowley Lodge string was as forward as any.

Alessandro turned up day after day and silently rode what and how Etty told him to, though with a ramrod spine of protest. He said no more about not taking orders from a woman, and I imagined that even he could see that without Etty there would be fewer winners on the horizon. She herself had almost stopped complaining about him and was watching him with a more objective eye; because there was no doubt that after a month's concentrated practice he was riding better than the other apprentices.

He was also growing visibly thinner, and no longer looked well. Small-framed though he might be, the six stone seven pounds that he was aiming to shrink his body down to was punitive for five foot four.

Alessandro's fanaticism was an awkward factor. If I had imagined that by making the going as rough as I dared he would give up his idle fancy and depart, I had been wrong. This was no idle fancy. It was revealing itself all too clearly as a consuming ambition: an ambition strong enough to make him starve himself, take orders from a woman, and perform what were evidently miracles of self-discipline, considering that it was probably the first time in his life that he had had to use any.

Against Etty's wishes I put him up one morning on Archangel.

'He's not ready for that,' she protested, when I told her I was going to.

There isn't another lad in the yard who will take more care of him,' I said.

'But he hasn't the experience.'

'He has, you know. Archangel is only more valuable, not more difficult to ride, than the others.'

Alessandro received the news not with joy but with an 'at last' expression, more scorn than patience. We went down to the Waterhall canter, away from public gaze, and there Archangel did a fast six furlongs and pulled up looking as if he had just walked out of his box.

'He had him balanced,' I said to Etty. 'All the way.'

'Yes, he did,' she said grudgingly. 'Pity he's such an obnoxious little squirt.'