Bonecrack

He read the letter through twice. Then he slowly folded it and put it back in the envelope.

'He won't like it,' he said. 'He never lets anyone threaten him.'

'He shouldn't have tried threatening me,' I said mildly.

'He thought it would be your father- and old people frighten more easily, my father says.'

I took my eyes off the road for two seconds to glance at him. He was no more disturbed by what he had just said than when he had said his father would kill me. Frightening and murdering had been the background to his childhood, and he still seemed to consider them normal.

'Do you really have all those things?' he asked. 'The blood test result- and the syringe?'

'I do indeed.'

'But Carlo always wears gloves-' He stopped.

'He was careless,' I said.

He brooded over it. 'If my father makes Carlo break any more horses' legs, will you really get me warned off?'

'I certainly will.'

'But after that you would have no way of stopping him from destroying the stables in revenge.'

'Would he do that?' I asked. 'Would he bother?'

Alessandro gave me a pitying, superior smile. 'My father would be revenged if someone ate the cream cake he wanted.'

'So you approve of vengeance?' I said.

'Of course.'

'It wouldn't get you back your licence,' I pointed out, 'And anyway I doubt whether he could actually do it, because there would then be no bar to police protection and the loudest possible publicity.'

He said stubbornly, 'There wouldn't be any risk at all if you would agree to my riding Pease Pudding and Archangel.'

'It never was possible for you to ride them without any experience, and if you'd had any sense you would have known it.'

The haughty look flooded back, but diluted from the first time I'd seen it.

'So,' I went on, 'although there's always a risk in opposing extortion, in some cases it is the only thing to do. And starting from there, it's just a matter of finding ways of opposing that don't land you in the morgue empty-handed.'

There was another long pause while we skirted Grantham and Newark. It started raining. I switched on the wipers and the blades clicked like metronomes over the glass.

'It's seems to me,' Alessandro said glumly, 'as if you and my father have been engaged in some sort of power struggle, with me being the pawn that both of you push around.'

I smiled, surprised both at his perception and that he should have said it aloud.

That's right,' I agreed. 'That's how it's been from the beginning.'

'Well, I don't like it.'

'It only happened because of you. And if you give up the idea of being a jockey, it will all stop.'

'But I want to be a jockey,' he said, as if that were the end of it. And as far as his doting father concerned, it was. The beginning of it, and the end of it.

Ten wet miles further on, he said, 'You tried to get rid of me, when I came.'

'Yes, I did.'

'Do you still want me to leave?'

'Would you?' I sounded hopeful.

'No,' he said.

I twisted my mouth. 'No,' he 'Because between you, you and my father have made it impossible for me to go to any other stable and start again.'

Another long pause. 'And anyway,' he said. 'I don't want to go to any other stable. I want to stay at Rowley Lodge.'

'And be Champion Jockey?' I murmured.

'I only told Margaret-' he began sharply, and then put a couple of things together. 'She told you I asked about Buckram,' he said bitterly. 'And that's how you caught Carlo.'

In justice to Margaret I said, 'She wouldn't have told me if I hadn't directly asked her what you wanted.'

'You don't trust me,' he complained.

'Well, no,' I said ironically. 'I would be a fool to.'

The rain fell more heavily against the windscreen. We stopped at a red light in Bawtry and waited while a lollipop man shepherded half a school across in front of us.

'That bit in your letter about helping me to be a good jockey- do you mean it?'

'Yes, I do,' I said. 'You ride well enough at home. Better than I expected, to be honest.'

'I told you-' he began, lifting the arching nose.

'That you were brilliant,' I finished, nodding. 'So you did.'

'Don't laugh at me.'-The ready fury boiled up.

'All you've got to do is win a few races, keep your head, show a judgement of pace and an appreciation of tactics, and stop relying on your father.'

He was unpacified. 'It is natural to rely on one's father,' he said stiffly.

'I ran away from mine when I was sixteen.'

He turned his head. I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was both surprised and unimpressed.

'Obviously he did not, like mine, give you everything you wanted.'

'No,' I agreed. 'I wanted freedom.'

I judged that freedom was the one thing that Enso wouldn't give his son for the asking: the obsessively generous were often possessive as well. There was no hint of freedom in the fact that Alessandro carried no money, couldn't drive, and had Carlo around to supervise and report on every move. But then freedom didn't seem to be high on Alessandro's list of desirables. The perks of serfdom were habit-forming, and sweet.

I spent most of the afternoon meeting the people who knew my father: other trainers, jockeys, officials, and some of the owners. They were all without exception helpful and informative, so that by the end of the day I had learned what I would be expected (and just as importantly, not expected) to do in connection with Pease Pudding for the Lincoln.

Tommy Hoylake, with an expansive grin, put it succinctly. 'Declare it, saddle it, watch it win, and stick around in case of objections.' 'Do you think we have any chance?' 'Oh, must have,' he said. 'It's an open race, anything could win. Lap of the Gods, you know. Lap of the Gods.' By which I gathered that he still hadn't made up his mind about the trial, whether Lancat was good or Pease Pudding bad.

I drove Alessandro back to Newmarket and asked how he had got on. As his expression whenever I had caught sight of him during the afternoon had been a mixture of envy and pride, I knew without him telling me that he had been both titillated to be recognisable as a jockey, because of his size, and enraged that a swarm of others should have started the season without him. The look he had given the boy who had won the apprentice race would have frightened a rattlesnake.

'I cannot wait until next Wednesday,' he said. 'I wish to begin tomorrow.'

'We have no runners before next Wednesday,' I said calmly.

'Pease Pudding.' He was fierce. 'On Saturday.'

'We've been through all that.'

'I wish to ride him.'

'No.'

He seethed away in the passenger seat. The actual sight and sound and smell of the races had excited him to the pitch where he could scarcely keep still. The approach to reasonableness which had been made on the way up had all blown away in the squally wind on Doncaster's Town Moor, and the first half of the journey back was a complete waste, as far as I was concerned. Finally, though, the extreme tenseness left him, and he slumped back in his seat in some species of gloom.

At that stage, I said, 'What sort of race do you think you should ride on Pullitzer?'

His spine straightened again instantly and he answered with the same directness as he had after the trial.

'I looked up his last year's form,' he said. 'Pullitzer was consistent, he came third or fourth or sixth, mostly. He was always near the front for most of the race but then faded out in the last furlong. Next Wednesday at Catterick it is seven furlongs. It says in the book that the low numbers are the best to draw, so I would hope for one of those. Then I will try to get away well at the start and take a position next to the rails, or with only one other horse inside me, and I will not go too fast, but not too slow either. I will try to stay not further back than two and a half lengths behind the leading horse, but I will not try to get to the front until right near the end. The last sixty yards, I think. And I will try to be in front only about fifteen yards before the winning post. I think he does not race his best if he is in front, so he mustn't be in front very long.'