‘What’s all that for?’ he demanded.
‘What’s all what for?’
‘Making me run.’
‘You’ve broken the lock on my trunk.’
‘What?’ He looked baffled. ‘I only gave it a clout. I didn’t have a key.’ No key; a clout. Obvious, his manner said.
‘Who’s going to pay to get it mended?’ I asked.
He said impatiently, as if he couldn’t understand such small-mindedness, ‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘With what?’
‘With the colt.’
Resignedly I leaned across and pulled up the locking knob on the front passenger door. He went around there and climbed in beside me. I noted with interest that he was hardly out of breath.
Jonathan’s haircut, I thought as he settled into his seat and neglected to buckle the seat belt, shouted an indication of his adolescent insecurity, of his desire to shock or at least to be noticed. He had, I thought, bleached inexpert haphazard streaks into his hair with a comb dipped in something like hydrogen peroxide. Straight and thick, the mop was parted in the center with a wing on each side curving down to his cheek, making a curtain beside his eye. From one ear backwards, and around to the other ear, the hair had been sliced off in a straight line. Below the line, his scalp was shaved. To my eyes it looked ugly, but then I wasn’t fifteen.
Making a statement through hairstyle was universal, after all. Men with bald crowns above pigtails, men with plaited beards, women with severely scraped-back pinnings, all were saying ‘This is me, and I’m different.’ In the days of Charles I, when long male hair was normal, rebellious sons had cut off their curls to have roundheads. Archie Kirk’s gray hair had been short, neat and controlled. My own dark hair would have curled girlishly if allowed to grow. A haircut was still the most unmistakable give-away of the person inside.
Conversely, a wig could change all that.
I asked Jonathan, ‘Have you remembered something else?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Then why did you stow away?’
‘Come on, man, give me a break. What am I supposed to do all day in that graveyard of a house? The aunt’s whining drives me insane and even Karl Marx would have throttled Esther.’
He did, I supposed, have a point.
I thoughtfully coasted down the last hill towards Lambourn.
‘Tell me about your uncle, Archie Kirk,’ I said.
‘What about him?’
‘You tell me. For starters, what does he do?’
‘He works for the government.’
‘What as?’
‘Some sort of civil servant. Dead boring.’
Boring, I reflected, was the last adjective I would have applied to what I’d seen in Archie Kirk’s eyes.
‘Where does he live?’ I asked.
‘Back in Shelley Green, a couple of miles from Aunt Betty. She can’t climb a ladder unless he’s holding it.’
Reaching Lambourn itself, I took the turn that led to the equine hospital. Slowly though I had made the journey, the horse ambulance had been slower. They were still unloading the colt.
From Jonathan’s agog expression, I guessed it was in fact the first view he’d had of a shorn-off leg, even if all he could now see was a surgical dressing.
I said to him, ‘If you want to wait half an hour for me, fine. Otherwise, you’re on your own. But if you try stealing a car, I’ll personally see you lose your probation.’
‘Hey. Give us a break.’
‘You’ve had your share of good breaks. Half an hour. OK?’
He glowered at me without words. I went across to where Bill Ruskin, in a white coat, was watching his patient’s arrival. He said, ‘Hello, Sid,’ absentmindedly, then collected the bucket containing the foot and, with me following, led the way into a small laboratory full of weighing and measuring equipment and microscopes.
Unwrapping the foot, he stood it on the bench and looked at it assessingly.
‘A good, clean job,’ he said.
‘There’s nothing good about it.’
‘Probably the colt hardly felt it.’
‘How was it done?’ I asked.
‘Hm.’ He considered. ‘There’s no other point on the leg that you could amputate a foot without using a saw to cut through the bone. I doubt if a single swipe with a heavy knife would achieve this precision. And achieve it several times, on different animals, right?’
I nodded.
‘Yes, well, I think we might be looking at game shears.’
‘Game shears?’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you mean those sort of heavy scissors that will cut up duck and pheasant?’
‘Something along those lines, yes.’
‘But those shears aren’t anywhere near big enough for this.’
He pursed his mouth. ‘How about a gralloching knife, then? The sort used for disemboweling deer out on the mountains?’
‘Jeez.’
‘There are signs of compression, though. On balance, I’d hazard heavy game shears. How did he get the colt to stand still?’
‘There were horse nuts on the ground.’
He nodded morosely. ‘Slimeball.’
‘There aren’t any words for it.’
He peered closely at the raw red and white end of the pastern. ‘Even if I can reattach the foot, the colt will never race.’
‘His owner knows that. She wants to save his life.’
‘Better to collect the insurance.’
‘No insurance. A quarter of a million down the drain. But it’s not the money she’s grieving over. What she’s feeling is guilt.’
He understood. He saw it often.
Eventually he said, ‘I’ll give it a try. I don’t hold out much hope.’
‘You’ll photograph this as it is?’
He looked at the foot. ‘Oh, sure. Photos, X rays, blood tests on the colt, micro-stitching, every luxury. I’ll get on with anesthetizing the colt as soon as possible. The foot’s been off too long…’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Phone my mobile.’ I gave him the number. ‘Anytime.’
‘See you, Sid. And catch the bugger.’
He bustled away, taking the foot with him, and I returned to my car to find Jonathan not only still there but jogging around with excitement.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘That Land-Rover that pulled the trailer that brought the colt…’
‘What about it?’
‘It’s got a red dragon on the windshield!’
‘What? But you said a blue—’
‘Yeah, yeah, it wasn’t the vet’s Land-Rover I saw in the lane, but it’s got a red dragon transfer on it. Not exactly the same, I don’t think, but definitely a red dragon.’
I looked around, but the horse ambulance was no longer in sight.
‘They drove it off,’ Jonathan said, ‘but I saw the transfer close to, and it has letters in it.’ His voice held triumph, which I allowed was justified.
‘Go on, then,’ I said. ‘What letters?’
‘Aren’t you going to say “well done”?’
‘Well done. What letters?’
‘E.S.M. They were cut out of the red circle. Gaps, not printed letters.’ He wasn’t sure I understood.
‘I do see,’ I assured him.
I returned to the hospital to find Bill and asked him when he’d bought his Land-Rover.
‘Our local garage got it for us from a firm in Oxford.’
‘What does E.S.M. stand for?’
‘God knows.’
‘I can’t ask God. What’s the name of the Land-Rover firm in Oxford?’
He laughed and thought briefly. ‘English Sporting Motors. E.S.M. Good Lord.’
‘Can you give me the name of someone there? Who did you actually deal with?’
With impatience he said, ‘Look, Sid, I’m trying to scrub up to see what I can do about sticking the colt’s foot back on.’