up.
Enso wouldn't find them. He might find the car. Alessandro's Mercedes. But he wouldn't find Carlo and Cal until the thunderous noise gave away their position- and no one but Enso would find them even then, before they reached the car and drove away. Everyone would be concentrating on Alessandro with a hole torn in his chest, Alessandro in his camel jersey and blue shirt which were just like Tommy Hoylake's.
Carlo and Cal knew Alessandro- they knew him well- but they thought he had obeyed his father and stayed in the hotel- and one jockey looked very like another, from a distance, on a galloping horse-
I couldn't go any faster. Lancat couldn't go any faster. Didn't know about the horse's breath, but mine was coming out in great gulps. Nearer to sobs, I dare say. I really should have stayed at home.
Shifted another notch to the right and kicked Lancat. Feeble kick. Didn't increase the speed.
We were closing. The angle came sharper suddenly as the Line gallop began its sweep round to the right. Lucky Lindsay came round the corner to the most vulnerable stretch- Carlo and Cal would be there- they would be ahead of him, because Cal would be sure of hitting a man coming straight towards him- there weren't the same problems as in trying to hit a crossing target-
They must be able to see me too, I thought. But if Cal was looking down his sights, levelling the blade in the ring over Alessandro's brown sweater and black bent head, he wouldn't notice me- wouldn't anyway see any significance in just another horse galloping across the Heath.
Lancat swerved of his own volition towards Lucky Lindsay and took up the race- a born and bred competitor bent even in exhaustion on getting his head in front.
Ten yards, ten feet- and closing.
Alessandro was several lengths ahead of the two horses he had started out with. Several lengths ahead, all on his own.
Lancat reached Lucky Lindsay at an angle and threw up his head to avoid a collision- and Alessandro turned his face to me in wide astonishment- and although I had meant to tell him to jump off and lie flat on the ground until his father succeeded in finding Carlo and Gal, it didn't happen quite like that.
Lancat half rose up into the air and threw me, twisting, on to Lucky Lindsay, and I put my right arm out round Alessandro and scooped him off, and we fell like that down on to the grass. And Lancat fell too, and lay across our feet, because brave, fast, determined Lancat wasn't going anywhere any more.
Half of Lancat's neck was torn away, and his blood and his life ran out on to the bright green turf.
Alessandro tried to twist out of my grasp and stand up.
'Lie still,' I said fiercely. 'Just do as I say, and lie still.'
I'm hurt,' he said.
'Don't make me laugh.'
'I have hurt my leg,' he protested.
'You'll have a hole in your heart if you stand up.'
'You are mad,' he said.
'Look at Lancat- What do you think is wrong with him? Do you think he is lying there for fun?' I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice, and I didn't try. 'Cal did that. Cal and his big bloody rifle. They came out here to shoot Tommy Hoylake, and you rode Lucky Lindsay instead, and they couldn't tell the difference, which should please you- and if you stand up now they'll have another go.'
He lay still. Speechless. And quite, quite still.
I rolled away from him and stuffed my fist against my teeth, for if the truth were told I was hurting far more than I would have believed possible. Him and his damn bloody father- the free sharp ends of collar-bone were carving new and unplanned routes for themselves through several protesting sets of tissue.
A fair amount of fuss was developing around us. When the ring of shocked spectators had grown solid and thick enough I let him get up, but he only got as far as his knees beside Lancat, and there were smears of the horse's blood on his jodhpurs and jersey.
'Lancat-' he said hopelessly, with a sort of death in his voice. He looked across at me as a couple of helpful onlookers hauled me to my feet, and the despair on his face was bottomless and total.
'Why?' he said. 'Why did he do it?'
I didn't answer. Didn't need to. He already knew.
'I hate him,' he said.
The people around us began to ask questions but neither Alessandro nor I answered them.
From somewhere away to our right there was another loud unmistakable crack. I and half the gathering crowd involuntarily ducked, but the bullet would already have reached us if it had been coming our way.
One crack, then silence. The echoes died quickly over Waterhall, but they shivered for ever through Alessandro's life.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Enso had found Carlo and Cal hidden in a clump of bushes near the Boy's Grave cross roads.
We found them there too, when we walked along to the end of the Line gallop to flag down a passing motorist to take Etty quickly into Newmarket. Etty, who had arrived frantic up the gallop, had at first like all the other onlookers taken it for granted that the shooting had been an accident. A stray bullet loosed off by someone being criminally careless with a gun.
I watched the doubt appear on her face when she realised that my transport had been Lancat and not the Land-Rover, but I just asked her matter-of-factly to buzz down to Newmarket and ring up the dead horse removers, then to drive herself back. She sent Andy off with instructions to the rest of the string, and the first car that came along stopped to pick her up.
Alessandro walked off the training ground into the road with a stunned, stony face, and came towards me. He was leading Lucky Lindsay, which someone had caught, but as automatically as if unaware he was there. Three or four paces away, he stopped.
'What am I to do?' he said. His voice was without hope or anxiety. Lifeless. I didn't answer immediately, and it was then that we heard the noise.
A low distressed voice calling unintelligibly.
Startled, I walked along the road a little and through a thin belt of bushes, and there I found them.
Three of them. Enso and Carlo and Cal.
It was Cal who had called out. He was the only one capable of it. Carlo lay sprawled on his back with his eyes open to the sun and a splash of drying scarlet trickling from a hole in his forehead.
Cal had a wider, wetter, spreading stain over the front of his shirt. His breath was shallow and quick, and calling out loud enough to be found had used up most of his energy.
The Lee Enfield lay across his legs. His hand moved convulsively towards the butt, but he no longer had the strength to pick it up.
And Enso- Cal had shot Enso with the Lee Enfield at a range of about six feet. It wasn't so much the bullet itself, but the shock wave of its velocity: at that sort distance it had dug an entrance as large as a plate.
The force of it had flung Enso backwards, against a tree. He sat there now at the foot of it with the silenced pistol still in his hand and his head sunk forward on his chest. There was a soul-sickening mess where his paunch had been, and his back was indissoluble from the bark.
I would have stopped Alessandro seeing, but I didn't hear him come. I heard only the moan beside me, and I turned abruptly to see the nausea spring out in sweat on his face.
For Cal his appearance there was macabre.
'You-' he said. 'You- are dead.'
Alessandro merely stared at him, too shocked to understand, too shocked to speak.
Cal's eyes opened wide and his voice grew stronger with a burst of futile anger.
'He said- I had killed you. Killed his son. He was- out of his senses. He said- I should have known it was you-' He coughed, and frothy blood slid over his lower lip.
'You did shoot at Alessandro,' I said. 'But you hit a horse.'
