‘...Bare-faced bloody fraud,’ Wilton Young was shouting, the Yorkshire accent thick and blunt. ‘I tell thee straight, no one makes a bloody monkey out of me and gets away with it. You don’t buy no more horses for me, I tell thee straight. And I want back from you every penny you’ve swindled out of me these past two years.’
‘You’ve no bloody chance,’ scoffed Fynedale, driving nails into his own coffin with the recklessness of all hotheads. ‘You paid a fair price for those horses and if you don’t like it you can bloody lump it.’
‘A fair price to you and that damned Vic Vincent is every penny you can screw out of people who trust you. All right, I’ve been a right bloody fool, but that’s all finished, I tell you straight.’ He stabbed the air with his forefinger, emphasising every angry word. ‘I’ll sue you for that money, see if I don’t.’
‘Don’t bother. Tha’ll not win.’
‘Enough mud’ll stick on you to save any other mugs wasting their brass. I tell thee straight, mister, by the time I’ve finished every single person in this country is going to know they pay through the bloody nose for every horse you buy them.’
‘I’ll bloody sue you for libel,’ Fynedale yelled.
‘And it’ll be bloody worth it.’
‘I’ll take you for millions,’ Fynedale screamed, almost jumping up and down with fury.
‘You do already.’
The row hotted up in noise level and degenerated to straight abuse, and when the race began the unprintable insults rose in volume above the commentary. Along with many others I was chuckling so much I couldn’t hold my race glasses still enough to watch the distant runners. Nicol, standing beside me, had tears running down his cheeks.
‘Oh my God,’ he said, gasping for breath. ‘What is a fat-arsed hyena-faced blood-sucking son of a sodding bitch?’
‘A mongrel,’ I said.
‘Oh don’t. It hurts.’ He pressed a hand to his heaving ribs. ‘It’s too much.’
Even after the main row was over little eddies of it persisted all afternoon, both Wilton Young and Fynedale separately being anxious to air their grievances loudly to all who would listen. Wilton Young’s forefinger stabbed the air as if he were poking holes in it and Fynedale’s voice took on a defensive whine. I kept away from them for most of the time but before the end they both came looking for me.
Wilton Young said, ‘Like a bloody piece of quick-silver, you are. I keep seeing you in the distance and then when I go that way you’ve disappeared.’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘You were right and I was wrong. There you are then.’ He made a large gesture of magnanimity, letting me know how generous he thought himself to be making such an admission. “The little tyke was swindling me. Like you said. All legal like, mind. I’ve been told this afternoon I won’t have a chance of getting anything back.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Cut your losses, that’s what I always say. Any line in my mail order business that’s not pulling its weight, I scrap it. Same with my horses. Same with employees, see?’
‘I see.’
‘You don’t approve. I can see it in your face. You’re soft, lad, you’ll never get anywhere.’
‘Depends where you want to go,’ I said.
He stared, then laughed. ‘Right, then. You go to the sales next week and buy me a horse. Any horse you think is good. Then we’ll see.’
‘Good for what?’
‘A fair return for outlay.’
‘In cash terms?’
‘Naturally in cash terms. What else is there?’
If he didn’t know, I couldn’t tell him.
‘I wasn’t born in Yorkshire,’ I said.
‘What the hell has that got to do with it?’
‘You only employ Yorkshiremen.’
‘And look where it bloody got me. No, lad, you buy me a good horse and I’ll overlook you being born in the wrong place.’
Nicol drifted near and Wilton Young gave him a stare suitable for the son of his dearest enemy, even if the two of them had the common bond of victims.
‘Another thing you can do for me,’ Wilton Young said to me, stabbing the inoffensive air. ‘Find me a way of taking that effing Fynedale for every penny he screwed out of me. I tell thee straight, I’ll not rest till I’m satisfied.’
I hesitated, but I’d already gone a long way down the road. I said slowly, ‘I do know...’
He seized on it. ‘What? What do you know?’
‘Well...’ I said. ‘You remember those three horses you sent out to race in South Africa?’
‘Damned waste of good money. They had useful form here, but they never did any good in Durban. The climate was all wrong. And of course they couldn’t come back because of the quarantine laws.’
‘One died soon after it arrived in South Africa,’ I said. ‘And the other two never saw a racecourse.’
He was surprised. ‘How the hell do you know?’
‘They went by sea,’ I said.
‘They didn’t then,’ he interrupted positively. “They went by air. Had a bad flight, by all accounts.’
‘They went by sea,’ I said. ‘I sent two horses out there,and they went on the same boat. I sent a groom with mine, and quantities of food. Your three travelled alone for three weeks with no one to look after them. They were shipped with a total of half a ton of hay, and not even good hay at that. No oats, bran, or horse cubes. Just a starvation ration of poor hay, and no one to see that they even got that. The man I sent looked after them as best he could and gave them enough of my food to keep them alive, but when they reached Durban they were in such a poor state that they were almost not allowed into the country.’
He listened in disbelief. ‘I sent them by air,’ he repeated.
‘You thought you did. I read in the Sporting Life that they’d flown out to Durban. But when my man came back, he told me what had really happened.’
‘But I paid for air... I paid more than four thousand quid.’
‘And who did you pay?’
‘By God.’ He looked murderous. ‘I’ll screw him to the wall, I tell thee straight.’
‘Get a lawyer to do it,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell him which ship it was, and give him the name and address of the groom I sent.’
‘By God I will,’ he said. He turned on his heel and hurried off as if going to do it there-and then.
Nicol said, ‘When you start a fire you do it properly.’
‘They shouldn’t have burned my stable.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘That was a bad mistake.’
Fynedale’s anger was in a different category altogether. He caught me fiercely by the arm outside the weighing room and his face made me determine to stay in well-lit populated places.
‘I’ll kill you,’ he said.
‘You could have had a truce,’ I said.
‘Vic will kill you.’
It sounded ridiculous. Fynedale might do at a pinch, but Vic wasn’t the killing sort.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘You two can’t even light your own fires. And Fred Smith won’t kill me for you, he’s in clink.’
‘Someone else will.’
‘Jimmy Bell?’ I suggested. ‘Ronnie North? You’re all good at using threats but you need a Fred Smith to carry them out. And Fred Smiths don’t grow on trees.’
‘We keep telling you,’ he said fiercely. ‘We didn’t pay Fred Smith. We didn’t tell him to burn your yard. We didn’t.’
‘Who did?’
‘Vic did. No... Vic didn’t.’
‘Sort it out.’
‘Vic reported that you wouldn’t play ball. He said you needed a bloody good lesson.’