Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [47]
‘Sure. I was raised with them.’
Martin Retsov asked him where, but the young man evasively said he’d had some trouble back home and left in a hurry, and he didn’t exactly want to talk about it. Martin Retsov smiled. He dropped Johnnie Duke in the next town and drove on towards his destination, and it was only when he stopped to fill up his tank that the remains of the smile vanished as smartly as investors in a depression.
Johnnie Duke had stolen his wallet. Retsov kept it in the inside pocket of his jacket, and his jacket, owing to the efficiency of the heater, had been lying on the back seat of the car. He remembered Johnnie Duke putting his hold-all on the floor behind the front seats, and he remembered him leaning over to pick it up. His rugged face hardened to something his customers had never seen, and the eyes slitted as narrow and glittery as ice chips. The sum of money he had lost was small compared to the affront to his self-respect.
For several days he drove round his area actively searching for Johnnie Duke, remembering details about him from their drive together. The hesitation when Martin had said he’d seen him before. The refusal to say where he’d come from. The slickness with which he’d spotted and extracted the wallet. Martin Retsov searched for him with a hard face but without success and finally, after two or three weeks, he accepted the fact that the young man had gone away to another district where irate victims in cars were not looking for him sharp-eyed.
Regularly once a month Martin Retsov called at the furthest stud farm in his area, and it was as he left there, early one evening, that he again saw Johnnie Duke. Standing by the roadside, lifting his thumb, hesitating perhaps when he saw Retsov’s car.
Martin drove up fast beside him, braked to a wheel-locked standstill, opened his door, and stood up smoothly outside it. For a big man he moved like oiled machinery, precise and efficient; and he held a gun. ‘Get in the car,’ he said.
Johnnie Duke looked at the barrel pointing straight at his stomach and turned pale. He swallowed, his larynx making a convulsive movement in his neck, and slowly did as he was told.
‘I’ll pay back the money,’ he said anxiously, as Martin Retsov slid onto the seat beside him. The gun was held loosely now, pointing at the floor, but both were aware that this could change.
‘I should hand you over to the police,’ Martin Retsov said.
The young man dumbly shook his head.
‘Or you could do a little job for me instead.’
The young man looked at Martin Retsov’s slitted eyes and visibly shivered.
‘Is this blackmail?’ he asked him.
‘I’ll pay you, if you’re any good.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Stealing horses,’ Martin Retsov said.
He made his plans as meticulously as in the old days with his father, untraceably buying a two-horse trailer and a car to pull it; and hiding them away in a city lock-up garage. He decided against the large type of motor horsebox he had used with his father, mostly because of the nightmares about those wheels. Besides, he was not sure if his new apprentice would be suitable for long-term planning. They would do one trial run – a test, Martin Retsov thought, before he offered a steady partnership for the future.
Johnnie Duke had greeted Martin Retsov’s announcement of his chosen profession with a huge relieved grin.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I can steal horses. Which ones?’
‘It’s not so easy round here,’ Martin Retsov said. ‘Training stables and stud farms have good security arrangements.’ But he knew them all; he had been assiduously studying them for three years.
He gave Johnnie Duke a list of things to buy and some money for himself, and two days later they inspected together the resulting mole-grip wrench and bolt cutters.
‘There is no time to waste,’ Martin Retsov said. ‘We will go ahead tomorrow night.’
‘So soon?’
Martin Retsov smiled. ‘We are taking two brood mares. One is near to foaling. We want her safely away before that happens.’
Johnnie Duke looked at him in long surprise. ‘Why don’t we take good