Rat Race - By Dick Francis Page 0,1

large friend drank rapidly, muttered unintelligibly, and removed themselves to the gents. The woman eyed the jockey and said in a voice which sounded more friendly than her comment, ‘Are you out of your mind, Kenny Bayst? If you go on antagonising Major Tyderman you’ll be looking for another job.’

Kenny Bayst flicked his eyes to me and away again, compressing his rosebud mouth. He put the half-finished lemonade on the table and picked up one of the raincoats and the racing saddle.

‘Which plane?’ he said to me. ‘I’ll stow my gear.’

He had a strong Australian accent with a resentful bite to it. The woman watched him with what would have passed for a smile but for the frost in her eyes.

‘The baggage door is locked,’ I said. ‘I’ll come over with you.’ To the woman I said, ‘Can I carry your coat?’

‘Thank you.’ She indicated the coat which was obviously hers, a shiny rust-coloured affair with copper buttons. I picked it up, and also the businesslike binoculars lying on top, and followed Kenny Bayst out of the door.

After ten fuming paces he said explosively, ‘It’s too damn easy to blame the man on top.’

‘They always blame the pilot,’ I said mildly. ‘Fact of life.’

‘Huh?’ he said. ‘Oh yeah. Too right. They do.’

We reached the end of the path and started across the grass. He was still oozing grudge. I wasn’t much interested.

‘For the record,’ I said, ‘What are the names of my other passengers? Besides the Major, that is.’

He turned his head in surprise. ‘Don’t you know her? Our Annie Villars? Looks like someone’s cosy old granny and has a tongue that would flay a kangaroo. Everyone knows our little Annie.’ His tone was sour and disillusioned.

‘I don’t know much about racing,’ I said.

‘Oh? Well, she’s a trainer, then. A damned good trainer, I’ll say that for her, I wouldn’t stay with her else. Not with that tongue of hers. I’ll tell you, sport, she can roust her stable lads out on the gallops in words a Sergeant-Major never thought of. But sweet as milk with the owners. Has them eating out of her little hand.’

‘The horses, too?’

‘Uh? Oh, yeah. The horses love her. She can ride like a jock, too, when she’s a mind to. Not that she does it much now. She must be getting on a bit. Still, she knows what she’s at, true enough-. She knows what a horse can do and what it can’t, and that’s most of the battle in this game.’

His voice held resentment and admiration in roughly equal amounts.

I said, ‘What is the name of the other man? The big one.’

This time it was pure resentment: no admiration. He spat the name out syllable by deliberate syllable, curling his lips away from his teeth.

‘Mister Eric Goldenberg.’

Having got rid of the name he shut his mouth tight and was clearly taking his employer’s remarks to heart. We reached the aircraft and stowed the coats and his saddle in the baggage space behind the rear seats.

‘We’re going to Newbury first, aren’t we?’ he asked. ‘To pick up Colin Ross?’

‘Yes.’

He gave me a sardonic look. ‘Well, you must have heard of Colin Ross.’

‘I guess,’ I agreed, ‘That I have.’

It would have been difficult not to, since the champion jockey was twice as popular as the Prime Minister and earned six times as much. His face appeared on half the billboards in Britain encouraging the populace to drink more milk and there was even a picture strip about him in a children’s comic. Everyone, but everyone, had heard of Colin Ross.

Kenny Bayst climbed in through the rear end door and sat in one of the two rear seats. I took a quick look round the outside of the aircraft, even though I’d done a thorough pre-flight check on it not an hour ago, before I left base. It was my first week, my fourth day, my third flight for Derrydown Sky Taxis, and after the way Fate had clobbered me in the past, I was taking no chances.

There were no nuts loose, no rivets missing on the sharp-nosed little six seater. There were eight quarts of oil where there should have been eight quarts of oil, there were no dead birds clogging up the air intakes to the engine, there were no punctures in the tyres, no cracks in the green or red glass over navigation lights, no chips in the propellor blades, no loose radio aerials. The pale blue cowling over the engine was securely