Enso moved into the Forbury Inn and the very next day the prickles were back in Alessandro's manner. He refused to go to Epsom with me in the Jensen: he was going with Carlo.
'Very well,' I said calmly, and had a distinct impression that he wanted to say something, to explain, to entreat- perhaps something like that- but that loyalty to his father was preventing it. I smiled a bit ruefully at him and added, 'But any day you like, come with me.'
There was a flicker in the black eyes, but he turned away without answering and walked off to where Carlo was waiting: and when we arrived at Epsom I found that Enso had travelled with him as well.
Enso was waiting for me outside the weighing room, a shortish chubby figure standing harmlessly in the April sunshine. No silenced pistol. No rubberfaced henchmen. No ropes round my wrists, needles in my arm. Yet my scalp contracted and the hairs on my legs rose on end.
He held in his hand the letter I had written him, and the hostility in his puffy lidded eyes beat anything Alessandro had ever conjured up by a good twenty lengths.
'You have disobeyed my instructions,' he said, in the sort of voice which would have sent bolder men than I scurrying for shelter. 'I told you that Alessandro was to replace Hoylake. I find that he has not done so. You have given my son only crumbs. You will change that.'
'Alessandro,' I said, with as unmoved an expression as I could manage, 'has had more opportunities than most apprentices get in their first six months.'
The eyes flashed with a thousand kilowatt sizzle. 'You will not talk to me in that tone. You will do as I say. Do you understand? I will not tolerate your continued disregard of my instructions.'
I considered him. Where on the night he had abducted me he had been deliberate and cool, he was now fired by some inner strong emotion. It made him no less dangerous. More, possibly.
'Alessandro is riding a very good horse in the Dean Swift Handicap this afternoon,' I said.
'He tells me this race is not important. It is the Great Metropolitan which is important. He is to ride in that race as well.'
'Did he say he wanted to?' I asked curiously, because our runner in the Great Met was the runaway Traffic, and even Tommy Hoylake regarded the prospect without joy.
'Of course,' Enso insisted, but I didn't wholly believe him. I thought he had probably bullied Alessandro into saying it.
I'm afraid,' I said with insincere regret, 'That the owner could not be persuaded. He insists that Hoylake should ride. He is adamant.'
Enso smouldered, but abandoned the lost cause. He said instead, 'You will try harder in future. Today, I will overlook. But there is to be no doubt, no shadow of doubt, do you understand, that Alessandro is to ride this horse of yours in the Two Thousand Guineas. Next week he is to ride Archangel, as he wishes. Archangel.'
I said nothing. It was still as impossible for Alessandro to be given the ride on Archangel as ever it was, even if I wanted to, which I didn't. The merchant banker was never going to agree to replacing Tommy Hoylake with an apprentice of five weeks' experience, not on the starriest Derby prospect he had ever owned. And for my father's sake also, Archangel had to have the best jockey he could. Enso took my continuing silence for acceptance, began to look less angry and more satisfied, and finally turned his back on me in dismissal.
Alessandro rode a bad race in the Handicap. He knew the race was the Derby distance, and he knew I was giving him practice at the mile and a half because I hoped he would win the big apprentice race of that length two days later: but he hopelessly misjudged things, swung really wide at Tattenham Corner, failed to balance his mount in and out of the dip, and never produced the speed that was there for the asking.
He wouldn't meet my eyes when he dismounted, and after Tommy Hoylake won the Great Met (as much to Traffic's surprise as to mine) I didn't see him for the rest of the day.
Alessandro rode four more races that week, and in none of them showed his former flair. He lost the apprentices' race at Epsom by a glaringly obvious piece of mistiming, letting the whole field slip him half a mile from home and failing to reach third place by a neck, though travelling faster than anything else at the finish.
At Sandown on the Saturday the two owners he rode for both told me after he trailed in mid-field on their fancied and expensive three-year-olds that they did not agree that he was as good as I had made out, that my father would have known better, and that they would like a different jockey next time.
I relayed these remarks to Alessandro by sending into the changing room for him and speaking to him in the weigh-room itself. I was now given little opportunity to talk to him anywhere else. He was wooden in the mornings and left the instant he dismounted, and at the races he was continuously flanked by Enso and Carlo, who accompanied him everywhere like guards.
He listened to me with desperation. He knew he had ridden badly, and made no attempt to justify himself. All he said, when I had finished, was, 'Can I ride Archangel in the Guineas?'
'No,' I said.
His black eyes burned in his distressed face.
'Please,' he said with intensity, 'Please say I can ride him. I beg you.'
I shook my head.
'You don't understand.' It was an entreaty; but I wouldn't and couldn't give him what he wanted.
'If your father will give you anything you ask,' I said slowly, 'Ask him to go back to Switzerland and leave you alone.'
It was he then who shook his head, but helplessly, not in disagreement.
'Please,' he said again, but without any hope in his voice, 'I must- ride Archangel. My father believes that you are going to let me, even though I told him you wouldn't- I am so afraid that if you don't, he really will destroy the stable- and then I will not be able to race again- and I can't- bear-' He limped to a stop.
'Tell him,' I suggested without emphasis, 'That if he destroys the stable you will hate him for ever.'
He looked at me numbly. 'I think I would,' he said.
'Then tell him so, before he does it.'
'I'll-' He swallowed. 'I'll try.'
He didn't turn up to ride out the next morning, the first he had missed since his bump on the head. Etty suggested it was time some of the other apprentices had more chances than the very few I had given them, and indicated that their earlier ill-feeling towards Alessandro had all returned with interest.
I agreed with her for the sake of peace, and drove off for my Sunday visit south.
My father was bearing the stable's successes with fortitude and finding some comfort in its losses. He did however seem genuinely to want Archangel to win the Guineas, and told me he had had long telephone talks with Tommy Hoylake about how it should be ridden.
He said that his assistant trainer was finally showing signs of coming out of his coma, though the doctors feared irreparable brain damage. He thought he would have to find a replacement.
His own leg was mending properly at last, he said. He hoped to be home in time for the Derby; and he wouldn't be needing me after that.
The hours spent with Gillie were the usual oasis of peace and amusement, and bed-time was even more satisfactory than usual.
Most of the newspapers that day carried summings-up of the Guineas, with varying assessments of Archangel's chances. They all agreed that Hoylake's big race temperament was a considerable asset.
I wondered if Enso read the English papers.
I hoped he didn't.
There were to be no race meetings for the next two days, not until Ascot and Catterick on Wednesday, followed by the Newmarket Guineas meeting on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Monday morning, Alessandro appeared on leaden feet with charcoal shadows round his eyes, and said his father was practically raving because Tommy Hoylake was still down to ride Archangel.
'I told him,' he said, That you wouldn't let me ride him. I told him I understood why you wouldn't. I told him I would never forgive him if he did any more harm here. But he doesn't really listen. I don't know- he's different, somehow. Not how he used to be.'
But Enso, I imagined, was what he had always been. It was Alessandro himself who had changed.
I said merely, 'Stop fretting over it and bend your mind to a couple of races you had better win for your own sake.'
'What?' he said vaguely.
'Wake up, you silly nit. You're throwing away all you've worked so hard for. It soon won't matter a damn if you're warned off for life, you're riding so atrociously you won't get any rides anyway.'
He blinked, and the old fury made a temporary comeback. 'You will not speak to me like that.'
'Want to bet?'
'Oh-' he said in exasperation. 'You and my father, you tear me apart.'
'You'll have to choose your own life,' I said matter-of-factly. 'And if it still includes being a jockey, mind you win at Catterick. I'm running Buckram there in the apprentice race, and I should give one of the other lads the chance, but I'm putting you up again, and if you don't win they will likely lynch you.'
The ghost of the arrogant lift of the nose did its best. His heart was no longer in it.
'And on Thursday, here at Newmarket, you can ride Lancat in the Heath Handicap. It's a straight mile, for three-year-olds only, and I reckon he should win it, on his Teesside form. So get cracking, study those races and know approximately what the opposition might do. And you bloody well win them both. Understand?'
He gave me a long stare in which there was all of the old intensity but none of the old hostility.
'Yes,' he said finally. 'I understand. I am to bloody well win them both.' A faint smile rose and died in his eyes over the first attempt at a joke I had ever heard him make.
Etty was tight-lipped and angry over Buckram. My father would not approve, she said; and another private report was clearly on its way.
I sent Vic Young up to Catterick and went myself with three other horses to Ascot, telling myself that I was in duty bound to escort the owners at the biggest meeting, and that it had nothing to do with wanting to avoid Enso.
Out on the Heath during the wait at the bottom of Side Hill for two other stables to complete their canters, I discussed with Alessandro the tactics he proposed using. Apart from the shadows which persisted round his eyes he seemed to have regained some of his former race-day icy calm. It had yet to survive a long drive in his father's company, but it was a hopeful sign.
Buckram finished second. I felt distinctly disappointed when I saw his name on the 'Results from Other Meetings' board at Ascot, but when I got back to Rowley Lodge Vic Young was just returning with Buckram, and he was, for him, enthusiastic
'He rode a good race,' he said, nodding. 'Intelligent, you might say. Not his fault he got beat. Not like those stinking efforts last week. He didn't look the same boy, not at all.'
The boy walked into the Newmarket parade ring the following afternoon with all the inward-looking self-possession I could want.
'It's a straight mile,' I said, 'Don't get tempted by the optical illusion that the winning post is much nearer than it really is. You'll know where you are by the furlong posts. Don't pick him up until you've passed the one with two on it, by the bushes, even if you think it looks wrong.'
'I won't,' he said seriously. And he didn't.
He rode a copybook race, cool, well paced, unflustered. From looking boxed-in two furlongs out he suddenly sprinted through a split-second opening and reached the winning post an extended length ahead of his nearest rival. With his 5 lb. apprentice allowance and his Teesside form he had carried a lot of public money, and he earned his cheers.
When he slid down from Lancat in the winner's unsaddling enclosure he gave me again the warm rare smile, and I reckoned that as well as too much weight and too much arrogance, he was going to kick the worst problem of too much father.
But his focus shifted to somewhere behind me and the smile changed and disintegrated, first into a deprecating smirk and then into plain apprehension.
I turned round.
Enso stood inside the small white railed enclosure.
Enso, staring at me with the towering venom of the dispossessed.
I stared back. Nothing else to do. But for the first time, I feared I couldn't contain him.
For the first time, I was afraid.
I dare say it was asking for trouble to work at the desk in the oak room after I'd seen round the stables and poured myself a modest scotch. But this time it was a fine light evening on the last day in April, not midnight in a freezing February.
The door opened with an aggressive crash and Enso walked through it with his two men behind him, the stony faced familiar Carlo and another with a long nose, small mouth and no evidence of loving-kindness.
Enso was accompanied by his gun, and the gun was accompanied by its silencer.
'Stand up' he said.
I slowly stood.
He waved the gun towards the door.
'Come,' he said.
I didn't move.
The gun steadied on the central area of my chest. He handled the wicked looking thing as coolly, as familiarly, as a toothbrush.
'I am close to killing you,' he said in such a way that I saw no reason not to believe him. 'If you do not come at once, you will go nowhere.'
This time there were no little jokes about only killing people if they insisted. But I remembered; and I didn't insist. I moved out from behind the desk and walked woodenly towards the door.
Enso moved back to let me pass, too far away from me for me to jump him. But with the two now barefaced helpers at hand, I would have had no chance at all if I had tried.
Across the large central hall of Rowley Lodge the main front door stood open. Outside, through the lobby and the further doors, stood a Mercedes. Not Alessandro's. This one was maroon, and a size larger.
I was invited inside it. The American ex-rubber face drove. Enso sat on my right side in the back, and Carlo on the left. Enso held his gun in his right hand, balancing the silencer on his rounded knee, and his fingers never relaxed. I could feel the angry tension in all his muscles whenever the moving car swayed his weight against me.
The American drove the Mercedes northwards along the Norwich road, but only for a short distance. Just past the Limekilns and before the bridge over the railway line he swung off to the left into a small wood, and stopped as soon as the car was no longer in plain sight of the road.
He had stopped on one of the regular and often highly populated walking grounds. The only snag was that as all horses had to be off the Heath by four o'clock every afternoon, there was unlikely to be anyone at that hour along there to help.
'Out,' Enso said economically; and I did as he said.
There was a short pause while the American, who seemed to be known as Cal to his friends, walked around to the back of the car and opened the boot. From it he took first a canvas grip, which he handed to Carlo. Next he produced a long darkish grey gaberdine raincoat, which he put on although the weather was as good as the forecast. Finally he picked out with loving care a Lee Enfield 303.
Protruding from its underside was a magazine for ten bullets. He very deliberately worked the bolt to bring the first of them into the breach. Then he pulled back the short lever which locked the firing mechanism in the safety position.
I looked at the massive rifle which he handled so carefully yet with such accustomed precision. It was a gun to frighten with as much as to kill, though from what I knew of it, a bullet from it would blow a man to pieces at a hundred yards, would pierce the brick walls of an average house like butter, would penetrate fifteen feet into sand, and if unimpeded would carry accurately for five miles. Compared with a shotgun, which wasn't reliably lethal at a range of more than thirty yards, the Lee Enfield 303 was a dambuster to a peashooter. Compared with the silenced pistol, which couldn't be counted on even as far as a shotgun, it gave making a dash for it over the Heath as much chance of success as a tortoise in the Olympics.
I raised my eyes from the source of these unprofitable thoughts and met the unwinking gaze of its owner. He was obscurely amused, enjoying the effect his pet had had on me. I had never as far as I knew met an assassin before; but without any doubt, I knew then.
'Walk along there,' Enso said, pointing with his pistol up the walking ground. So I walked, thinking that a Lee Enfield made a lot of noise, and that someone would hear, if they shot me with it. The only thing was, the bullet travelled one and a half times as fast as sound, so that you'd be dead before you heard the bang.
Cal had calmly put the big gun under the long raincoat and was carrying it upright with his hand through what was clearly a slit, not a pocket. From even a very short distance away, one would not have known he had it with him.
Not that there was anyone to see. My gloomiest assessments were quite right: we emerged from the little wood on to the narrow end of the Railway Land, and there wasn't a horse or a rider in sight.
Across the field, alongside the railway, there was a fence made of wooden posts with a wooden top rail and plain wire strands below. There were a few bushes bursting green round about, and a calm peaceful late spring evening sunshine touching everything with red gold.
When we reached the fence, Enso said to stop.
I stopped.
'Fasten him up,' he said to Carlo and Cal; and he himself stayed quietly pointing his pistol at me while Cal laid his deadly treasure flat on the ground and Carlo unzipped the canvas hold-all.
From it he produced nothing more forbidding than two narrow leather belts, with buckles. He gave one of them to Cal, and without allowing me the slightest hope of escape, they turned my back towards the fence and each fastened one of my wrists to the top wooden rail.
It didn't seem much. It wasn't even uncomfortable, as the rail was barely more than waist high. It just seemed professional, as I couldn't even turn my hands inside the straps, let alone slide them out.
They stepped away, behind Enso, and the sunlight threw my shadow on the ground in front of me- Just a man leaning against a fence on an evening stroll.
Away in the distance on my left I could see the cars going over the railway bridge on the Norwich road, and further still, down towards Newmarket on my right, there were glimpses of the traffic in and out of the town.
The town, the whole area, was bursting with thousands of visitors to the Guineas meeting. They might as well have been at the South Pole. From where I stood, there wasn't a soul within screaming distance.
Just Enso and Carlo and Cal.
I had watched Cal in his efforts on my right wrist, but it seemed to me shortly after they had finished that it was Carlo who had been rougher.
I turned my head and understood why I thought so. He had somehow turned my arm over the top of the rail and strapped it so that my palm was half facing backwards. I could feel the strain taking shape right up through my shoulder and I thought at first he had done it by accident.
Then with unwelcome clarity I remembered what Dainsee had said: the easiest way to break a bone is to twist it, to put it under stress.
Oh, Christ, I thought: and my mind cringed.