‘I’ll tell you what you’ve been doing,’ I said. ‘Benjy Usher owns a stable in France where he discovered last year by chance that the horses there were falling ill with an unspecified fever. He learned that there was a possibility that the fever was carried by ticks. So he thought it a good wheeze to bring the illness to England and give it to a few horses here so as to clear his path a bit to winners he might not otherwise have. The problem was how to bring the ticks to England; and first of all, you tried to bring them on soap which you carried in a cash box stuck to the bottom of one of my nine-boxes that you were driving at the time.’
Lewis went on looking dumbfounded, a pulse throbbing now in a swelled vein on his forehead.
‘The ticks didn’t survive that journey. They don’t, as you now know, survive long enough on soap. A different way of travel had to be found. An animal. A hamster, maybe. Or a rabbit. How are we doing?’
Silence.
‘You looked after the Watermeads’ rabbits. Perfect. You thought they wouldn’t miss one or two, but they did. Anyway, last year, driving Pat’s four-box, you went to France to the Ecurie Bonne Chance, that’s Benjy Usher’s place outside Belley, down near the River Rhône, and you wiped ticks onto a rabbit. You brought it back here, wiped the ticks from the rabbit on to two old horses that Benjy Usher had in a paddock outside his drawing-room window, and although one of them died, there you both were with flourishing live ticks on the other, ready to be transferred to any horse that Benjy decided on, and that you could get close to by driving it to the races.’
I wondered what incipient heart failure looked like.
‘The ticks are unpredictable,’ I continued, ‘and in the end probably just disappeared, so in August you went again to France, but this time taking the box Phil drives now, which you used to drive regularly at that time. But on that occasion, things went wrong. The horsebox was due for maintenance and was driven straight to the barn on your return. The cap had unscrewed itself from the tube, perhaps from vibration. Before you could retrieve the rabbit, it fell into the inspection pit and died, and Jogger threw it away, ticks and all.’
Strangled silence.
‘So this year,’ I said, ‘you went in the new super-six to fetch the two-year-olds for Michael Watermead, and you took a rabbit with you. The ticks came back alive and were transferred to the old horse, Peterman. But Peterman went to Marigold English, not Benjy Usher, and Peterman died. The ticks died soon after him. So now we have the Flat season about to start and all the Chester Vase and Dante Stakes contestants this year are strong and healthy still, so you set off with the rabbit to fetch Benjy Usher’s colt from Milan, and on the way back you stopped at the Ecurie Bonne Chance, and what will you bet that in the tube container above the fuel tanks of this horsebox we’ll find a rabbit with ticks on?’
Silence.
I asked, ‘Why didn’t you just wipe ticks straight onto Benjy’s colt?’
‘He wants it to race again when its leg gets healed.’
The admission slipped painlessly out. Lewis’s voice was hoarse. He didn’t even try to protest innocence.
‘So now,’ I said, ‘we’re going to take the rabbit straight to Centaur Care, where the two old horses destined for Benjy’s field are waiting. This time you are not going to have to retrieve the rabbit from the tube at eleven o’clock at night, and hit me on the head when I catch you at it.’
‘I never,’ he said fiercely. ‘I never hit you.’
‘You did drop me into the water, though. And you said “If this doesn’t give him flu, nothing will.” ’
Lewis seemed to have gone beyond being astounded and had reached the stage of anxiety to salvage whatever he could.
‘I needed the money,’ he said, ‘for my kid’s education.’
One more shock, I thought, and he would really start talking.
I said, ‘If it came to a choice, which would you prefer, to drive Irkab Alhawa to the Derby and maybe bring him back as the winner in your own box on the television to this village, or to infect him with ticks to stop him even running?’
‘He’d never do that!’ he said. His horror, indeed, looked genuine.
‘He’s violent and spiteful,’ I said, ‘so why not?’
‘No!’ He stared at me, belatedly thinking. ‘Who are you talking about?’
‘John Tigwood, of course.’
Lewis closed his eyes.
‘Benjy’s reward is winning,’ I said. ‘Yours is money. Tigwood’s is the power to spoil other people’s achievements. That’s a commoner sin than you may think. Knocking people is a major sport.’
To win by cheating. Ambition for one’s child. Malice and secretly-enjoyed destructive power, bolstering an inadequate personality. To each his driving force.
And mine? Ah, mine. Who ever understood his own?
Lewis looked sick.
‘Does Benjy Usher pay Tigwood?’ I asked.
Lewis said without humour, ‘He gives him wads of the stuff in one of those collecting tins, right out in public.’
After a pause I said, ‘Tell me what happened the night you chucked me in the water.’
He practically moaned, ‘I’m no grass.’
‘You’re a witness,’ I said. ‘Witnesses get off lighter.’
‘I didn’t do your car.’
‘You didn’t kill Jogger,’ I pointed out, ‘because you were in France. But as for my car, you certainly could have done it.’
‘I didn’t. I never. He did.’
‘Well... why?’
Lewis stared at me, his eyes deep in their sockets.
‘See, he was like a wild thing. Going on about you having everything so easy. Why should you have everything, he said, when he had nothing. There you were, he said, with your house and your money and your looks and your business and being a top jockey all that time and everyone liking you, and what did he have, people never looked pleased to see him, they turned away from him. Whatever he did, he would never be you. He absolutely hated you. It turned my stomach, like, but I reckoned he might turn on me if I contradicted him so I went along with him... and he had the axe with him in his car...’
‘Did he hit me with the axe?’ I asked incredulously.
‘No. A rusty old tyre lever. He had a lot of tools in his car, he said. When he hit you we put you in the boot of my car, as there was more room and he told me to drive to the Docks. He was laughing, see!’
‘Did you think I was dead?’
‘I didn’t know, like. But you weren’t. You were talking, sort of delirious, when we got there. I never meant to kill you. Honest.’
‘Mm.’
‘He said we were in it together. He said how would I like him to get me in trouble. How would I like to lose my job and not drive the best horses any more.’
Lewis stopped talking, looking now at a future which meant all those things.
‘Bloody bugger,’ he said.
‘So you came back from Southampton,’ I said, taking it for granted, ‘and collected the axe and chopped up my house and my car and my sister’s helicopter.’
‘He did that. He did it. He was shouting and raving and laughing. He chopped all the stuff in your room. So bloody strong. I’ll tell you, he frightened me rigid.’
‘You watched him?’
‘Well... yeah.’
‘And enjoyed it?’
‘Never.’
But he had, I saw. He might just possibly have been frightened by the vigour of that attack but deep down there had been an awestruck guilty pleasure.
Ruefully, I restarted the engine.