Vic was in his stable, a brick-built quadrangle standing apart from the house. He came out of its archway, saw me standing by my car and walked across with no welcome written plain on his large unsmiling face.
‘What the hell do you want?’ he said.
‘To talk to you.’
The cold sky was thick with clouds and the first heavy drops spoke of downpours to come. Vic looked irritated and said he had nothing to say.
‘I have,’ I said.
It began to rain in earnest. Vic turned on his heel and hurried away towards the house, and I followed him closely. He was even more irritated to find me going in with him through his own door.
‘I’ve nothing to say,’ he repeated.
‘You’ll listen, then.’
We stood in a wide passage running between the old part of the house and the new, with central heating rushing out past us into the chilly air of Surrey. Vic tightened his mouth, shut the outer door, and jerked his head for me to follow.
Money had nowhere been spared. Large expanses of pale blue carpeting stretched to the horizon. Huge plushy sofas stood around. Green plants the size of saplings sprouted from Greek looking pots. He probably had a moon bath, I thought, with gold taps: and a water bed for sleep.
I remembered the holes in Antonia Huntercombe’s ancient chintz. Vic’s legal robbery had gone a long way too far.
He took me to the room at the far end of the hallway, his equivalent of my office. From there the one window looked out to the pool, with the guest rooms to the left, and the garden room to the right. His rows of record books were much like mine, but there ended the resemblance between the two rooms. His had bright new paint, pale blue carpet, three or four Florentine mirrors, Bang and Olufsen stereo and a well stocked bar.
‘Right,’ Vic said. ‘Get it over. I’ve no time to waste.’
‘Ever heard of a horse called Polyprint?’ I said.
He froze. For countable seconds not a muscle twitched. Then he blinked.
‘Of course.’
‘Died of tetanus.’
‘Yes.’
‘Ever heard of Nestegg?’
If I’d run him through with a knitting needle he would have been no more surprised. The stab went through him visibly. He didn’t answer.
‘When Nestegg was foaled,’ I said conversationally, ‘There was some doubt as to his paternity. One of two stallions could have covered the dam. So the breeder had Nestegg’s blood typed.’
Vic gave a great imitation of Lot’s wife.
‘Nestegg’s blood was found to be compatible with one of the stallions, but not with the other. Records were kept. Those records still exist.’
No sign.
‘A full brother of Polyprint is now in training in Newmarket.’
Nothing.
I said, ‘I have arranged a blood test for the horse now known as Nestegg. You and I both know that his blood type will be entirely different from that recorded for Nestegg as a foal. I have also arranged a blood test for Polyprint’s full brother. And his blood type will be entirely compatible with the one found in the supposed Nestegg.’
‘You bugger.’ The words exploded from him, all the more forceful for his unnatural immobility.
‘On the other hand,’ I said, ‘The tests have not yet been made, and in certain circumstances I would cancel them.’
His breath came back. He moved. ‘What circumstances?’ he said.
‘I want an introduction.’
‘A what?’
‘To a friend of yours. The friend who drew up the agreement that the breeder of the Transporter colt signed. The friend who decided to burn my stable.’
Vic moved restlessly.
‘Impossible.’
I said without heat, ‘It’s either that or I write to the High Power Insurance people.’
He fidgeted tensely with some pens lying on his desk.
‘What would you do if you met... this friend?’
‘Negotiate for permanent peace.’
He picked up a calendar, looked at it unseeingly, and put it down.
‘Today’s Saturday,’ I said. ‘The blood tests are scheduled for Monday morning. If I meet your friend today or tomorrow, I’ll call them off.’
He was more furious than frightened, but he knew as well as I did that those blood tests would be his first step to the dock. What I didn’t know was whether Vic like Fred Smith would swallow the medicine with, so to speak, his mouth shut.
Vic said forcefully, ‘You’d always have that threat over me. It’s bloody blackmail.’
‘Sort of,’ I agreed.
Ripples of resentment screwed up his face. I watched him searching for a way out.
‘Face to face with your friend,’ I said. ‘Five minutes will do. That’s not much when you think what you stand to lose if I don’t get it.’ I gestured round his bright room and out to the luxurious pool. ‘Built on Polyprint’s insurance, no doubt.’
He banged his fist down on the desk, making the pins rattle.
‘Bloody Fynedale told you,’ he shouted. ‘It must have been. I’ll murder the little rat.’
I didn’t exactly deny it, but instead I said matter-of-factly, ‘One calculation you left out... my brother Crispin worked for High Power.’
15
Crispin stood in the yard at home looking miserable and broody. I stopped the car on my return from Vic’s and climbed out to meet him.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said.
‘Oh...’ He swung an arm wide in inner frustration, indicating the flattened stable area and the new scaffolding climbing up to the burnt part of the roof.
‘All this... If I hadn’t been drunk it wouldn’t have happened.’
I looked at him. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘But I do. If I’d been around... if there had been lights on in the house... that man wouldn’t have set fire...’
‘You don’t know that he wouldn’t,’ I said.
‘Stands to reason.’
‘No. Come on in, it’s cold out here.’
We went into the kitchen and I made coffee. Crispin’s mood of self-abasement flickered on fitfully while he watched me put the water and coffee grounds into the percolator.
‘It would have been better if you had let me die.’
‘It was a good job you passed out in the bathroom,’ I said. ‘It was the only room which had natural ventilation through an airbrick.’
He wasn’t cheered. ‘Better if I’d snuffed it.’
‘Want some toast?’
‘Stop bloody talking about food. I’m saying you should have let me die.’
‘I know you are. It’s damn silly. I don’t want you dead. I want you alive and well and living in Surrey.’
‘You don’t take me seriously.’ His voice was full of injured complaint.
I thought of all the other conversations we’d had along those lines. I ought to have let him drown in the bath, the time he went to sleep there. I ought to have let him drive into a tree, the time I’d taken his car keys away. I ought to have let him fall off the Brighton cliffs, the time he tottered dizzily to the edge.
Blaming me for not letting him die was his way of laying all his troubles at my door. It was my fault he was alive, his mind went, so it was my fault if he took refuge in drink. He would work up his resentment against me as a justification for self-pity.
I sighed inwardly and made the toast. Either that day or the next he would be afloat again on gin.
There was no word from Vic. I spent all day working in the office and watching racing on television, with Crispin doing his best to put his mind to my accounts.
‘When you worked for High Power,’ I said, ‘Did you have anything to do with a claim for a horse called Polyprint?’