Longshot. Part 56

'He should have had more sense.' Tremayne's voice was rough. Gareth, next to Perkin, looked at his father with apprehension, knowing the portents.

'Nolan's been through a lot,' Fiona said excusingly.

'Nolan's a violent man,' Tremayne stated with fierce irritation. 'You don't go poking a stick at a rattlesnake if you don't want to get bitten.'

'Tremayne!' She was alarmed at his brusqueness, which he immediately softened.

'My dear girl, I know he's your cousin. I know he's been through a lot, I know you're fond of him, but he and Sam shouldn't be in the same room together just now.' He looked from her to me. 'Are you all right?'

'Yes.'

'John was splendid!' Mackie exclaimed, and Perkin scowled.

Erica grinned at me like a witch, saying, 'You're much too physical for the literati.'

'Let's go home,' Tremayne said abruptly. He stood, kissed Fiona, picked up the box containing his silver bowl and waited for obedience from his sons, his daughter-in-law and his prospective biographer. We stood. We followed him meekly. He made a stately, somewhat forbidding exit, his displeasure plainly visible to all around, his mien daring unkind souls to sn.i.g.g.e.r.

No one did. Tremayne was held in genuine respect and I saw more sympathy than smirks: yet he in many respects was the stoker of the ill-feeling between his warring jockeys, and putting me among them wasn't a recipe for a cease-fire.

'Perhaps I'd better not ride schooling in the morning,' I suggested, as we reached the gate to the car park.

'Are you scared?' he demanded, stopping dead.

I stopped beside him as the other three went on ahead.

'Nolan and Sam don't like it, that's all,' I said.

'You b.l.o.o.d.y well ride. I'll get you that permit. I'll tame Nolan by threats. Understand?'

I nodded.

He stared at me intently. 'Is that why Nolan said he would kill you? Besides your making a public fool of him?'

'I think so.'

'Do you want to ride in a race or two, or don't you?'

'I do.'

'School Fringe tomorrow, then. And as for now, you'd better go back with Fiona. Make sure she gets home safe. Harry won't want Nolan pestering her and he's quite capable of it.'

'Right.'

He nodded strongly and went on towards his Volvo, and I returned to find Fiona arguing with Nolan in the entrance hall. She and Erica beside her saw me with relief, Nolan with fresh fury.

'I was afraid you'd gone,' Fiona said.

'Thank Tremayne.'

Nolan said angrily, 'Why is this bag of slime always hanging about?'

He made no move, though, to attack me.

'Harry asked him to see me home,' Fiona said pla-catingly. 'Get some rest, Nolan, or you won't be fit for Groundsel tomorrow.'

He heard, as I did, the faint threat in the cousinly concern, and at least it gave him an excuse for a face-saving exit. Fiona watched his retreating back with a regret neither Erica nor I shared.

I rode Drifter with the first lot in the morning and crashed off on to the wood chippings halfway up the gallop.

Tremayne showed a modic.u.m of anxiety but no sympathy, and the anxiety was for the horse. He sent a lad after it to try to catch it and with disgust watched me limp towards him rubbing a bruised thigh.

'Concentrate,' he said. 'What the h.e.l.l do you think you were doing?'

'He swerved.'

'You weren't keeping him straight. Don't make excuses, you weren't concentrating.'

The lad caught Drifter and brought him to join us.

'Get up,' Tremayne said to me testily.

I wriggled back into the saddle. I supposed he was right about not concentrating: a touch of the morning afters.

They'd all gone to bed the night before when I'd returned from a last noggin with Harry. I'd walked up from the village under a brilliantly starry sky, breathing cold shafts of early-morning air, thinking of murder. Sleep had come slowly with anxiety dreams. I felt unsettled, not refreshed.

I rode Drifter back with the rest of the string and went in to breakfast, half expecting to be told I wouldn't be allowed to ride Fringe. Tremayne's own mood appeared to be a deepening depression over the evening's finale, and I was sorry because he deserved to look back with enjoyment.

He was reading a newspaper when I went in, and scowling heavily.

'How did they get hold of this so d.a.m.ned fast?'

'What?'

This.' He pushed the opened paper violently across the table and I read that a brace of brawling jockeys had climaxed the prestigious award dinner with a b.l.o.o.d.y punch-up. Ex-champion Yaeger and amateur champion Nolan Everard (recently convicted of manslaughter) had been restrained by friends. Tremayne Vickers had said 'no comment'. The sponsor was furious. The Jockey Club were 'looking into it'. End of story.

'It's rubbish,' Tremayne snorted. 'I never said "no comment". No one asked me for any comment. The sponsor had left by the time it happened, so how can he be furious? So had the Jockey Club members. They went after the speeches. I talked to some of them as they were leaving. They congratulated me. Huh!'

'The fuss will die down,' I a.s.sured him.

'Makes me look a b.l.o.o.d.y fool.'

'Make a joke of it,' I suggested.

He stared. 'I don't feel like joking.'

'No one does.'

'It's this business about Harry, isn't it? Upsets everyone. b.l.o.o.d.y Angela Brickell.'