Cut Throat (2 page)

Ross stayed motionless, sighing as he heard the door slam and her footsteps recede down the gravel path. He was disgusted with himself, but most of all he was conscious of having lost Lindsay's respect, and that hurt. She, of all people, deserved better treatment. Throughout his long hospitalisation and convalescence following the accident, she had been one of his most frequent visitors, and one of the few to continue to support him as his attempted comeback fell apart around him.

He looked across at the open liquor cabinet but made no move towards it. Before the previous night's binge, he had never used alcohol to drown his sorrows and the way he felt this morning didn't encourage him to change his habits. He ran his fingers through his hair and groaned, wondering if his mother kept any antidote to the poison she stored in such quantity.

The doorbell buzzed again. Crossing to the door, he opened it a crack and peered through.

‘My car keys,' Lindsay said huffily.

Ross obligingly fetched them but kept them enclosed in his hand.

‘Stay and eat?' he suggested sheepishly.

‘I shouldn't have thought you'd feel like food,' she remarked, avoiding his gaze.

Ross considered this.

‘Guess you're right,' he agreed, holding the keys out obediently.

Suddenly, Lindsay smiled.

‘Thanks, I'd love to stay.'

He could never say for sure just how the decision was made, but the following week found Ross alighting on to the tarmac at Heathrow after a flight from Miami that had been delayed by a bomb hoax and endless security checks.

Lindsay had painted a very tempting picture of life in her uncle's small Wiltshire yard, although Ross nursed no illusions that it would be a bed of roses. But when the alcohol-induced depression wore off and his natural resilience edged back, the challenge of a completely new start began to exercise a strong attraction. He was honest enough to admit, if only to himself, that no small part of its allure lay in the knowledge that Lindsay stabled her own horse in the yard and would sooner or later return to her home just three miles away.

He phoned the Colonel before taking an airport bus to Woking, from where a train connection delivered him safely to Salisbury, albeit some seven hours late. Here he was met by a neatly dressed man of fifty or so, who announced that he had been sent to collect Ross and led the way to a gleaming, dove-grey Jaguar.

He learned that his driver went by the name of Masters and that he worked for Colonel Preston – Lindsay's Uncle John – but not a lot else. Ross settled back wearily in the sumptuous leather-covered seats and in the fading light of the early evening marvelled, as he had done on the train, at the constantly changing scenery. Houses, woods, fields and moorland, all within the space of a few miles. In the States, you would have to travel for days to see such varied terrain.

It was nearly dark when Masters turned the Jaguar off the road and on to a gravel drive set between two huge limes, the car's headlights picking out a sign that announced Oakley Manor.

‘I'll take you straight to the yard,' he told Ross, breaking a long silence. ‘The Colonel won't be able to see you at the moment. You were expected earlier and he's had to go out.'

‘Yeah, well, nothing I could do about it,' Ross said. ‘I spent most of the night at Miami airport.'

Masters shrugged non-committally.

The car swept between two single-storey buildings into a well-lit yard and the middle of a crisis.

No sooner had they rolled to a halt than a stocky young female burst out of a nearby doorway at a run. She checked in obvious disappointment as Ross climbed out of the Jaguar.

‘Oh, I thought you were the vet!' she wailed. ‘I called him ages ago. What am I going to do? Sailor's dying, I'm sure he is!'

‘Okay. Slow down. What's the problem here?' Ross asked, his fatigue instantly forgotten.

There was a moment's hesitation as the girl stared at him. ‘Oh, you're the new rider, of course. It's Sailor – one of the two-year-olds in the bottom field – I think he's got colic. Bill's out, and when I went down to check on them after dinner, Sailor was thrashing about on the ground, covered in sweat and kind of drooling at the mouth. I tried to get him up, but I couldn't get near him. It was awful!'

‘Is anyone with the horse now?'

‘Yes, Leo's down there but
he
can't get him up either. Oh, thank God!' she exclaimed as a Range Rover rapidly decelerated into the yard and stopped beside the Jag. ‘Here's Rober.'

The occupant of the Range Rover, a youngish man with a friendly face and a shock of curly hair, leaned across and opened the passenger door. ‘Where's the patient?' he asked without preamble.

‘Bottom field,' the stocky girl told him.

‘Okay, Sarah, jump in. We'll go down in this. Is Bill there?'

‘No, he's not here. He's gone to a tack auction with the Colonel. They should have been back by now. Oh, God! It
would
happen tonight.'

As the girl climbed in next to the yet, Ross slipped, uninvited, into the back seat and slammed the door hastily as the vehicle lurched forward. Nobody queried his right to be there and Masters, who had remained silent throughout the exchange, watched his departure with a resigned shake of his head.

They crossed the yard, swung left and bumped perhaps two hundred yards down a grassy track, with Sarah repeating her tale to the vet as they went. The track ended at a metal field gate, where the three of them scrambled out, leaving the Range Rover's headlights on to illuminate the area beyond. A few strides took them to where the stricken horse lay, convulsing weakly.

A lean, wiry figure rose to its feet at their approach and Ross could just make out the aquiline features of a young man with close-cropped dark hair and a glint of gold in one ear. Leo, he presumed.

‘Hi,' Roger said. ‘How is he now?'

‘Quieter. He's stopped thrashing about.'

‘Hmm, that's not necessarily a good sign,' the vet said as he put his bag down and knelt at the horse's head. ‘How long has he been like this?'

‘I found him about forty minutes ago,' Sarah told him, her voice shaking. ‘He was much worse then – thrashing about and scraping at the ground with his feet. I rang you straight away, but they said you were already out.'

‘Yeah, another emergency. A difficult foaling. I came as quickly as I could.'

‘What d'you think's wrong with him?'

‘Can't say for sure,' Roger said, shining a pocket torch into the horse's accessible eye and then moving to listen to his heart and lungs through a stethoscope. The horse moved feebly, giving a long-drawn-out, breathy groan, and he patted it, soothingly. ‘His pupils are dilated and his pulse is rapid and very weak.'

‘There's shit all over the place,' Leo commented. ‘I nearly slipped up in it.'

‘It
could
be colic,' Roger went on, moving his stethoscope to listen to Sailor's gut. ‘But I think there's something else. I'm worried about the salivation. It's not usual.'

‘Poisoning?' Ross suggested.

The vet looked up, noting his presence with a momentary frown. ‘It's a possibility,' he admitted. ‘All I can do at the moment is try and make him more comfortable.' He straightened up and headed for the Range Rover. ‘I'm afraid, whatever it is, we're probably going to lose him.'

In the light from the vehicle, Sailor shuddered and kicked all four legs as a spasm took him. Beside Ross, Sarah made a small despairing sound, and without thinking, he put a hand out to squeeze her arm comfortingly.

‘Diazepam,' Roger said, coming back, syringe in hand. ‘An anti-convulsant. It'll help relax his muscles.'

The horse groaned and kicked again as he knelt to inject it.

‘Poor old fella,' he said softly.

Less than twenty seconds later, Sailor heaved a huge, rattling sigh and relaxed.

‘Ah,' the vet said regretfully, patting the still neck. ‘That's not the drug. I'm sorry, I'm afraid he's gone. Is he one of the Colonel's?'

‘No. Mr Richmond's,' Sarah told him, staring wide-eyed at the corpse, and Ross recalled from Lindsay's briefing that Franklin Richmond was a wealthy businessman and one of two owners besides John Preston himself who kept horses in training at the Oakley Manor yard.

‘Oh, Christ! It would be, wouldn't it?' Roger said heavily.

Sarah stifled a sob. ‘I can't believe it! He was so full of life this morning. We had the digger down here, clearing the ditches, and the youngsters were all racing round together. How could it have happened?'

‘This field's quite marshy, isn't it?' the vet commented thoughtfully, packing his stethoscope away.

‘Yes. Why?'

‘Are there any other horses still in here?' he asked, ignoring the question.

‘Yes . . .'

‘Right. Well, I think we should get them back to the yard where we can keep an eye on them. Just as a precaution. Come on, I'll give you a hand.'

Even though they were wearing headcollars, the operation to catch the remaining four two-year-olds and persuade them to pass the body of their erstwhile companion took nearly a quarter of an hour. Halfway back to the yard the vet received another call-out on his mobile phone, handed his charge to Leo, and departed to patch up a pony that had got hung up in a barbed-wire fence.

The remaining group were met in the yard by a wiry, taciturn little man who introduced himself to Ross as Bill Scott, stable manager, and suggested that the youngsters be put in the schooling area for the night. It seemed that Roger had given him the bad news on his way through the yard, and had promised to return first thing in the morning.

‘Give them plenty of hay, Sarah,' Scott instructed as she led the way to a gate in the corner of the yard.

Ross let his two-year-old loose in the school along with the others, and turned back to the yard where Scott stood waiting.

‘So, you're Ross Wakelin. You're late,' he observed.

‘I phoned from the airport,' Ross said, surprised. ‘The flight was delayed.'

‘Yes, I know.' Scott's tone implied that this was no excuse. ‘Well, I've got work to do so I'll show you your room. The Colonel said to tell you he'd see you in the morning.'

Ross wasn't sorry. He had slept very little at the airport the previous night, and at that moment desired nothing more than a bite to eat and a bed to black out in. He certainly felt in no fit state to confront his future boss.

Scott led the way across the yard to a door set between two stables. Automatic security floodlights came on at their approach and horses peered out at them, wisps of hay trailing from their muzzles.

‘This used to be a coachhouse. The Colonel had it converted,' Scott told him, opening the door to reveal a flight of wooden steps leading steeply upwards. ‘Now it's two bedsits. Your room is on the left; the other belongs to Leo. Bathroom's straight ahead. You'll eat with me and the missus in the cottage. Dinner's normally at seven-thirty but she'll have saved you something, so come over when you're ready.'

Without further ado he turned and ambled away with that rolling, slightly bow-legged gait peculiar to seasoned horsemen. Ross wondered with momentary amusement if
he
would end up walking like that, given time.

He found his room to be quaint and surprisingly comfortable. Long and low, it had cream-painted walls and masses of dark beams. The floor was of uneven boards liberally scattered with bright rugs, and against one wall sagged a huge sofa that had seen better days but was preserving its dignity under a striped horse blanket. A wood-effect electric fire promised warmth if needed, and entertainment came in the shape of three rather discoloured Stubbs prints and a portable TV. Seated smugly on top of this was a polished mahogany Buddha, a souvenir of some far-off land, and on top of the fire an ancient Bakelite-cased clock ticked loudly. At the far end of the room, underneath the sharply sloping ceiling and partly obscured by a half-drawn partitioning curtain, was the bed.

Ross' last meal was a distant memory, so pushing the recent tragedy determinedly to the back of his mind, he dumped his bags, combed his hair and went in search of Bill Scott's ‘missus' and something to eat.

The door of the Scotts' cottage stood open, spilling a column of light into the yard. Ross found himself in a large room that obviously served as kitchen, dining room and lounge, and bore signs of once having been three smaller rooms. Directly in front of him was a scrubbed pine table round which you could comfortably have accommodated a baseball team, and beyond it, sprawled in an armchair and watching a game show on the television, was Bill Scott. He didn't look up as his wife bustled forward to greet Ross, and beyond telling him to come in and shut the door behind him took little notice of the American. Ross wondered what he could have done to antagonise the older man; after all, they had barely exchanged a dozen words.

‘I'll do it, Ross. You sit down,' Mrs Scott said, pulling a chair out for him. ‘Your dinner's just on ready.'

A pie with melt-in-the-mouth pastry and boiled potatoes appeared before him almost before he had settled into his chair, followed shortly by a large wedge of something she called Dundee cake and a mug of steaming coffee. Whatever else might befall him in his new job, Ross reflected, he wouldn't starve.

It seemed Bill hadn't eaten either. He came to sit at the table but his attention was clearly still on the television quiz and it was left to his wife to initiate conversation, which she did with a shocked reference to the fate of poor Sailor.