To the hilt [en]

'Tobe promised me you were good,' I said.

'Just good?'

'Brilliant. A genius, actually.'

He grinned immodestly. 'Tobe told me you were a walking brain and not to be put off by your good manners.'

'I'll kill him.'

'Tobe told me you were raised in a castle.'

'It was cold.'

'Yeah. I drew an orphanage. Warm.'

We got on fine. I made a drawing of King Alfred's golden chalice, and he phoned back to his goldsmith informant with a detailed description. 'And it has engraved lines round it that look just like random patterns but are some sort of verse in Anglo-Saxon. Yeah, yeah, that's what I said, Anglo-bloody-Saxon. See what you can do.'

He put down the receiver. 'Those specs you gave me,' he said, 'you can buy them anywhere.'

I nodded.

'I'd use them myself for disguises, if I could see through them.'

'I reckon that's why the robber took them off.'

'That's another thing,' Chris Young said. 'Boxing gyms. Your spanking pal Surtees never goes near a gym. He's as unfit as a leaking balloon. I've tailed him until I've had it up to here with him, and besides, none of the gyms in his area have ever heard of him.'

'Fingers doing the walking?'

'Sure.'

'Suppose he uses a different name?'

Chris Young sighed. 'He's not the gym type, I'm telling you. Which leaves me - and don't point it out -with no option but to flash your drawings of your robbers all over the place hoping for a fist in the guts.'

I stared.

'An adverse reaction,' he said carefully, in his incongruous voice, 'is a positive indication of a nerve touched.'

'You've been reading books!'

'I've been bashed a few times. It always tells me something. Like being bashed told you quite a lot, didn't it?'

'I suppose it did.'

'See? If anyone bashes you again, learn from it.'

'I don't intend to be bashed again.'

'No? That's why you asked about bodyguards?'

'Exactly why.'

He grinned. 'I've a friend who's a jockey over the jumps. He's broken his bones about twenty times. It'll never happen again, he says. He says it every time.'

'Mad,' I agreed.

'Have you ever met a jump jockey?'

'I was married once to a trainer in Lambourn.'

'Emily Cox,' he said.

I was still.

'I like to know who I'm working for,' he said.

'And to check up on whether I would lie to you?'

'Most of my clients do.'

I would, I acknowledged to myself, have lied to him if I'd wanted to.

His telephone rang and he answered it formally, 'Young and Uttley, can I help you?'

He listened and said, 'Thank you' half a dozen times, and wrote a few words onto a notepad, and disconnected.

'Your chalice,' he said, 'was inscribed with something called Bede's Death Song. It sounds a right laugh. It was made in 1867 to the order of a Mr Hanworth Hill of Wantage, Berkshire, probably to impress the neighbours. It cost an arm and a leg because it was solid gold inlaid with emeralds, sapphires and rubies.'

'Real ones?' I exclaimed, surprised.

Chris consulted his notes. 'Cabochon gems, imperfect.' He looked up. 'What does cabochon mean?'

'It means polished but uncut. No facets. Rounded, like pebbles. Not made to sparkle.' I paused. 'They don't look real. They're big.'

'You mean, you've actually seen this thing?'

'I think it's what I got bashed for.'

'So where is it now?'

'You,' I said smiling, 'are - I hope - going to prevent anyone else from trying to bash that information out of me.'

'Oh.' He blinked. 'How difficult would it be to make you tell?'

'Fairly easy.' But, I thought, it might depend on who was asking.

'You'd fold? You surprise me.'

'The chalice isn't mine.'

'Reasonable. OK. I'll start on the gyms.'

'Be careful,' I said.

'Sure.' He sounded lighthearted. 'Black eyes will cost you extra.'

He wanted to know if I were serious about a bodyguard, and we agreed that identifying my robbers took priority.

Ah well.

Returning by train, tube and legs to Park Crescent I was met by my mother in a state of agitation: that is to say, she was looking out for me and told me calmly but at once that I should telephone Emily immediately.

'What about?'

'Golden Malt got loose.'

Damnation, I thought; fuck it.

'How's Ivan?' I asked.

'Not bad. Phone Emily, won't you?'

I phoned her.

'Golden Malt got loose on the Downs at Foxhill,' she said. 'He's not an easy ride, as you know. He bucked off the exercise lad and got loose and they couldn't catch him.'

'But racehorses often go home by themselves, don't they? Surely he'll turn up-'

'He has turned up,' she interrupted. 'He's found his way back here. Don't ask me how. He's been in this yard for five years, ever since Ivan bought him as a foal, and, first chance he got, he came home.'

'Bugger.'

'The thing is, what do you want me to do?'

'Keep him. I'll think.'

'I've had a phone call from Surtees. He says he's coming to collect him.'

'He said what?

'He says the horse is Patsy's.'

I took a steadying breath. 'The horse is Ivan's.'

'Surtees says Patsy's going to sell the horse to prevent you getting your hands on it. He says you've stolen the King Alfred Cup and you'll steal Golden Malt and rob Patsy and the brewery. I said you wouldn't do that, but he's bringing a trailer to collect Golden Malt and take him to his stud farm for safe keeping.'

I tried to organise scattered thoughts.

'When do you expect him?' I asked.

'He'll be on his way already.'

I groaned. I'd just come from Reading, about thirty miles from Lambourn, and now, in London, it was nearer eighty.

'How did Surtees know you have the horse back?' I asked.

'I don't know. But he also knows he was in Foxhill. All my lads know, too. I can't send the horse back there.'

'Well, I'll come as soon as I can. Don't let Surtees take Golden Malt.'

She said despairingly, 'But how do I stop him?'

'Let down the tyres of the trailer. Build a Great Wall. Anything.'

I explained the problem briefly to my mother, who said at once that I could borrow Ivan's car.

Two hours at least by car. Roadworks and hold-ups in tortoise-slow traffic. Also, remembering the gauge from Saturday, I would have to stop for petrol.

I chose a train. I wasn't bad at trains. I ran and was lucky, catching an underground without waiting and a non-stop express from Paddington to Didcot junction and a taxi driver who hurried his wheels to Lambourn for a bonus. I took with me my mother's cash card and her phone card and all her available money, and my own new credit card and cheques, and also a zipped bag containing the things I'd borrowed ten days earlier from Emily - helmet, padded jacket, jodhpur boots - that my mother hadn't yet returned to her.

Helter-skelter though I went, Surtees had arrived first. He had brought with him not only a trailer for the horse but an assistant horse-handler in the shape of his nine-year-old daughter, Xenia.

Surtees, Emily, Xenia and Golden Malt were all out in the stable yard, Emily holding the horse by his bridle and arguing angrily with the others.

Emily's Land Rover stood in the driveway behind Surtees's trailer, effectively blocking his way out. The exit on the far side of the yard, the wide earth track used by the horses on their way out to exercise, was at present impassable as it seemed a lorry delivering hay had carelessly shed its load of bales there.

I paid the taxi driver his bonus and with reluctance walked into the angry scene. Emily looked relieved to see me, Surtees furious. Xenia gave me a head-to-toe sneer and in a voice just like her mother's said, 'What do you think you look like?'