High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,3

as the cost of my rotten judgement in liking and trusting you.’

He said indignantly, ‘I’ve done bloody well for you.’

‘And out of me.’

‘What do you expect? Trainers aren’t in it for love, you know.’

‘Trainers don’t all do what you’ve done.’

A sudden speculative look came distinctly into his eyes. ‘What have I done, then?’ he demanded.

‘You tell me,’ I said. ‘You haven’t even pretended to deny you’ve been cheating me.’

‘Look, Steven, you’re so bloody unworldly. All right, so maybe I have added a bit on here and there. If you’re talking about the time I charged you travelling expenses for Hermes to Haydock the day they abandoned for fog before the first… well, I know I didn’t actually send the horse… he went lame that morning and couldn’t go. But trainer’s perks. Fair’s fair. And you could afford it. You’d never miss thirty measley quid.’

‘What else?’ I said.

He seemed reassured. Confidence and a faint note of defensive wheedling seeped into his manner and voice.

‘Well…’ he said. ‘If you ever disagreed with the totals of your bills, why didn’t you query it with me? I’d have straightened things out at once. There was no need to bottle it all up and blow your top without warning.’

Ouch, I thought. I hadn’t even checked that all the separate items on the monthly bills did add up to the totals I’d paid. Even when I was sure he was robbing me, I hadn’t suspected it would be in any way so ridiculously simple.

‘What else?’ I said.

He looked away for a second, then decided that I couldn’t after all know a great deal.

‘Oh all right,’ he said, as if making a magnanimous concession. ‘It’s Raymond, isn’t it?’

‘Among other things.’

Jody nodded ruefully. ‘I guess I did pile it on a bit, charging you for him twice a week when some weeks he only came once.’

‘And some weeks not at all.’

‘Oh well…’ said Jody deprecatingly. ‘I suppose so, once or twice.’

Raymond Child rode all my jumpers in races and drove fifty miles some mornings to school them over fences on Jody’s gallops. Jody gave him a fee and expenses for the service and added them to my account. The twice a week schooling session fees had turned up regularly for the whole of July, when in fact, as I had very recently and casually discovered, no horses had been schooled at all and Raymond himself had been holidaying in Spain.

‘A tenner here or there,’ Jody said persuasively. ‘It’s nothing to you.’

‘A tenner plus expenses twice a week for July came to over a hundred quid.’

‘Oh.’ He tried a twisted smile. ‘So you really have been checking up.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘You’re so easy going. You’ve always paid up without question.’

‘Not any more.’

‘No… Look, Steven, I’m sorry about all this. If I give you my word there’ll be no more fiddling on your account… If I promise every item will be strictly accurate… why don’t we go on as before? I’ve won a lot of races for you, after all.’

He looked earnest, sincere and repentant. Also totally confident that I would give him a second chance. A quick canter from confession to penitence, and a promise to reform, and all could proceed as before.

‘It’s too late,’ I said.

He was not discouraged; just piled on a bit more of the ingratiating manner which announced ‘I know I’ve been a bad bad boy but now I’ve been found out I’ll be angelic.’

‘I suppose having so much extra expense made me behave stupidly,’ he said. ‘The mortgage repayments on the new stables are absolutely bloody, and as you know I only moved there because I needed more room for all your horses.’

My fault, now, that he had had to steal.

I said, ‘I offered to build more boxes at the old place.’

‘Wouldn’t have done,’ he interrupted hastily: but the truth of it was that the old place had been on a plain and modest scale where the new one was frankly opulent. At the time of the move I had vaguely wondered how he could afford it. Now, all too well, I knew.

‘So let’s call this just a warning, eh?’ Jody said cajolingly. ‘I don’t want to lose your horses, Steven. I’ll say so frankly. I don’t want to lose them. We’ve been good friends all this time, haven’t we? If you’d just said… I mean, if you’d just said, “Jody, you bugger, you’ve been careless about a bill or two…” Well, I mean, we could have straightened it out in no time. But…