Dick Francis's Damage

by Felix Francis

  Enough, I thought. Probably more than enough.

  It was time to return to my own troubles in London.

  8

  By nine o’clock on Monday morning, all hell had broken loose in the BHA office.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Nigel Green, my co-watcher from Cheltenham, who was standing guard at the main door as I arrived.

  “I’ve no idea,” he said. “All I’ve been told is that there’s been a communications embargo put in place. All the phone lines are down and the Internet’s been disconnected, internal and external. No one is allowed to use cells or leave the building.”

  He put out his hand for my phone.

  “Is that legal?” I asked. “What about false imprisonment?”

  “No one’s making you come in,” Nigel said rather formally. “But if you do, you have to stay until you’re told you can go.”

  “Who by?” I asked.

  “The BHA Board will make the decision. Paul told me they’re having an emergency meeting. They’ve apparently all been here since seven o’clock.”

  Emergency Board meetings of the BHA were unheard of, especially not at seven on a Monday morning.

  “What’s it all about?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. But I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough. Poor Crispin’s running round like a headless chicken.”

  It must be bad, I thought, if our ultra-calm chief intelligence analyst was in a panic.

  Nigel was still holding his hand out for my phone. I handed it over and he placed it in a box that already contained many others.

  I’d never heard of anything like it—not outside the military anyway.

  But it was similar to what had happened in Afghanistan whenever a soldier was killed in action. All personal communications with the outside world were shut down so that the details of the incident could not be inadvertently released to the public before the Ministry of Defence had informed the dead soldier’s family.

  Had anyone died here? Surely not. There would be paramedics and police all over the place.

  So what was it?

  I walked to my office, trying to imagine a credible scenario that could cause such alarm in the organization.

  As Nigel had said, we would find out soon enough, but that didn’t stop the gossip. With no access to e-mail and no phone calls, either in or out, the morning was not very productive at BHA headquarters, with most of the staff eventually gathering together to whisper in the corridors or in the office kitchen, where we normally made tea and coffee.

  “If you ask me, the boss has had a brainstorm,” said one junior assistant. “Thinks he’s back in the army.”

  “Perhaps he’s been murdered,” said another with relish.

  It all sounded so improbable, but nothing else we came up with sounded any less so.

  The staff banter was interrupted by Paul Maldini, head of operations, who put his head through the kitchen doorway at half past eleven.

  “Jeff,” he said, pointing at me. “They want you in the boardroom. Straightaway.”

  Everyone looked in my direction.

  “Me?” I said, surprised. “Do I need to take anything?”

  “Just yourself,” he said. “And pronto.” He jerked his thumb for me to follow.

  I just had time to tidy my hair with my fingers before opening the boardroom door and walking in.

  There were seven nonexecutive directors of the British Horseracing Authority and they were all present, a further indication that something massive was occurring. I knew them all by name and reputation but had actually met only two of them previously. In addition, there was Howard Lever, the BHA chief executive, and Stephen Kohli, director of Integrity, Legal and Risk.

  “Ah, Mr. Hinkley,” said Roger Vincent, the chairman. “Please, come and sit down.” He pointed to an empty chair on his right. “Gentlemen, this is Jeff Hinkley. He’s the investigator in our Integrity Service that we’ve been talking about.”

  “He’s very young,” declared a man sitting at the far end of the table. It wasn’t said as a compliment.

  “He’s also very good,” said Neil Wallinger. He was the director responsible for integrity matters and also one of the two I had met before. I looked across at him and smiled. “Jeff Hinkley has a remarkable photographic memory and probably knows more about racing, and racing people, than anyone else alive.”

  “I’m not so sure.” The man at the far end spoke loudly and rather dismissively, drawing supportive signals from a few of his colleagues. “Are you sure he’s up to it? I’ve never even heard of him.”

  “Maybe not,” replied Neil Wallinger, “but I bet he’s heard of you.”

  All the faces swung back to me.

  Neil Wallinger nodded at me in encouragement.

  “Your name is Ian Tulloch,” I said, looking straight at the man. “You are fifty-four years old and have been a director on this Board for the past two years. You are nominated to the position by the Racegoers Association. You were educated at Harrow, where you were Head of House of West Acre. You gained a First Class degree in mathematics from Balliol College, Oxford, before qualifying as a chartered accountant with the firm Tweedale and Vaughan, where you are now the chief operating officer. You are a trustee of two small charities, the Peter Walsh Cancer Fund, named after the son of a friend who died of lymphoma four years ago at age sixteen, and the Surrey Pony Club Trust, based in Dorking, near where you live with your wife, Rebecca, and two teenage daughters, Siân and Valerie. Your interest in racing was initially encouraged by your uncle, Albert Tulloch, who took you as a child to Fontwell Park, where he later became managing director. You currently own five horses in training, three with Duncan Johnson in Lambourn and two with Richard Young in Nether Wallop. Their names are Highlighter, Cruise Reception, Paperclip, Nobis and Annual Return. You have had two winners this year, one at Newbury, where Nobis won a novice hurdle in January, and again last week at Warwick, where Highlighter cruised home by ten lengths in the two-mile novice chase at a price of twelve-to-one.”

  I stopped.

  The nine pairs of eyes stared at me as if I was an alien.

  I decided against telling them that I also knew Mr. Tulloch was occasionally unfaithful to his wife with a certain lady of the night with whom he sporadically did business while staying in London during the week.

  “Does he know as much about all of us?” asked Roger Vincent with a nervous laugh.

  “Oh, I expect so,” said Howard Lever. “Maybe more. Some of which we probably wouldn’t want revealed here.”

  Some of them mumbled to one another and shifted uneasily in their chairs. And well they might, I thought. Few of us were entirely without a skeleton in a closet somewhere, and that was certainly true of this bunch. I’d been unofficially tasked with carrying out background checks on some of them before they were appointed, including Ian Tulloch.

  “Gentlemen,” said Roger Vincent, bringing the meeting back to order, “are we in agreement?”

  There were determined nods from all around the table, even from Ian Tulloch.

  “Right.” The chairman turned to me. “Jeff, what we are about to discuss is highly confidential. You may not speak of it to anyone. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “The future of racing could depend on it,” Howard Lever said. It all sounded rather melodramatic, but he was deadly serious. “Someone is attempting to undermine the authority of the BHA and they are also trying to extort money from us.”

  “Have you called in the police?” I asked.

  “No police,” Roger Vincent said sharply. “We have been instructed not to inform the police.”

  “But surely we must,” I said. “Extortion is a serious crime.”

  “Mr. Hinkley,” said the director sitting on Ian Tulloch’s left, “it is the Board that makes the dec
isions on such matters. You are here merely to carry them out.”

  Bill Ripley was in his early forties and supposedly an independent member of the BHA Board, although it was universally acknowledged that he unofficially represented the Jockey Club.

  His grandfather had been a Scottish Earl and also senior steward of the Jockey Club, as his father had been before him. Indeed, Bill Ripley came from a long line of eminent Jockey Club members and he could trace his ancestry back to its very founding by the “Noblemen and Gentlemen” of 1750.

  His Who’s Who biography claimed he was an insurance broker, but, in the family tradition, he appeared to have done little actual work, spending the majority of his time, and his inheritance, being the owner of a substantial string of racehorses, mostly running on the flat.

  I looked along the table at him and he stared back at me through his tortoiseshell glasses.

  “Not if it involves breaking the law,” I said.

  “The BHA exercises control over racing by consensus rather than by legal statute,” Howard Lever said quickly, trying to defuse the situation. “If the racing public loses confidence in our ability, then the whole fabric of racing will begin to unravel.”

  “So what is it that’s happened that has caused all this furor?” I asked.

  Roger Vincent sighed. “Every horse dope-tested during the Cheltenham Festival has returned a positive result for a banned substance.”

  “What!” I said. “All of them?”

  He nodded. “Almost all of them. Forty-nine horses were tested over the four days and forty-six of them have returned a positive result for something called methylphenidate, a banned stimulant, including the first two home in the Gold Cup.”

  No wonder Crispin Larson had been running around all morning like a headless chicken.

  “There must be something wrong with the testing,” I said.

  “There isn’t,” replied Stephen Kohli. “I’ve been at the testing laboratory over the weekend, ever since they called us in on Friday with their initial findings. We all thought it must be a mistake, but it isn’t. All the samples were properly collected, properly handled and free from contamination. Every B sample analysis matched the A sample result. There was nothing wrong with the testing. The only conclusion we can draw is that the forty-six horses were all doped.”

  “But that’s incredible,” I said.

  “Yes, it is, but that’s not all,” Roger Vincent said. “We have also received a letter.”

  He handed over a piece of paper.

  To Roger Vincent, Chairman of the BHA:

  By now you should have found out about my little game at Cheltenham. Be assured that I can do it whenever I like—perhaps I’ll play it again at Ascot this coming weekend. I could play it whenever I want and destroy your attempts to keep British racing clear of drugs.

  I will stop playing my game and will disappear forever, but only for a fee. Five million pounds would be enough. Not much, really. Racing can afford it. According to your own figures, the racing industry is worth three and a half billion a year.

  You will not contact the police or I will destroy all confidence in racing. The betting public will desert you in droves and British Racing will go out of business. So remember, NO POLICE.

  Send your acceptance via the personal column in The Times. Place the following announcement in the paper and you will then be sent further details: Van Gogh accepts Leonardo’s generous offer of marriage.

  “Don’t tell me this is the original letter,” I said with a degree of exasperation.

  He looked at me guiltily.

  “And you’ve passed it round this table?”

  He nodded

  “You’re mad,” I said. “You will have destroyed any chance of getting any useful fingerprints from it. Where’s the envelope? Can we test that?”

  “We are not involving the police.” Roger Vincent was adamant. “We can’t take the risk.”

  “They may have to be involved eventually,” I said. And as far as I was concerned, the sooner the better.

  “As may be, but we want you to carry out an investigation first, quietly and effectively, to ascertain who wrote this letter and how he doped so many horses at Cheltenham. In the meantime, we will place the announcement in The Times.”

  “But surely you’re not going to pay this man.” I looked around the table at the glum faces. Most of the eyes avoided meeting mine. “There’s no guarantee that he won’t ask for more money next year, next month or even next week. What will you do then?”

  “We feel we have no alternative,” Howard Lever said with a sigh.

  “Of course you have,” I said forcibly. “Ignore him or tell him to take a jump. You must call in the police so they can find out who it is and throw him in jail.”

  “But what about racing?” Howard Lever said. “Things are financially precarious enough with all the Internet gambling sites now basing themselves offshore to avoid the betting levy. The Board feels that a scandal of this magnitude could bring us down permanently like a house of cards in a wind.”

  Everyone knew that things weren’t great money-wise in racing, but I had no idea they were that bad.

  “So you’re going to try and keep this all hush-hush?”

  “That’s the plan,” said Ian Tulloch from the far end.

  “Well, I think you’re all crazy,” I said, taking a liberty way beyond my station. “For a start, shutting down all communications and removing every cell phone at the office front door was as good as broadcasting long and loud that something was seriously wrong. Out there in the office it’s like speculation city. What are you going to tell the staff?” I looked around at the other members of the Board. “Mr. Pottinger,” I went on. “You’re a public relations man. Surely this could all blow up in our faces.”

  Piers Pottinger was a PR heavyweight with a special connection with the media, gaming and horseracing industries. He was a past and present owner of racehorses and had the distinction of owning the oldest horse ever to win a race at Royal Ascot when Caracciola came home to win the Queen Alexandra Stakes at age twelve.

  “The PR position is very delicate,” he said. “Confidence is everything in this industry. As I see it, as long as the public has confidence in us, there is no problem. But when that confidence drains away . . . well, so would racing’s betting revenue. And pretty quickly too.” He paused for effect. “Either course of action clearly has some risk. If we say nothing to the police, and provided the matter is resolved without any media coverage, all remains fine in the eyes of the public. However, if the story leaks, then even if we resolve the matter successfully, confidence may have been eroded permanently.”

  Typical PR, I thought. Sitting on the fence.

  “What if we do not resolve the matter successfully?” I said. “If the whole thing goes horribly wrong and the public discovers that we did not inform the police, then surely that would be more of a PR disaster. Public confidence would be severely shaken.”

  There was a sea of worried faces in front of me.

  “And are we sure we can keep it out of the media anyway?” I asked. “What about the labs? Can you be sure no one there will call the papers or the TV stations?”

  “Security at the labs is fine,” Stephen Kohli said. “The samples are just coded with a number. The name of the horse and the race are not shown. All the lab knows is that there were a large number of positives, not where they came from.”

  “It won’t take rocket science for them to work it out, not with Cheltenham just over.”

  “Mr. Hinkley,” said Bill Ripley abruptly, pointing at me with the arm of his tortoiseshell glasses, “we have discussed this problem at great length throughout the morning and we have agreed to investigate the matter in house, without informing the police, at least for the time being. We have asked you to be present here because Mr. Lever and Mr. Wallinger b
oth insist that you are the best-placed individual in our organization to carry out such an investigation. Are they wrong?”

  All nine of them looked at me again.

  “No, sir,” I said. “They are not wrong.” I paused. “However, I can’t promise you any results. I may not be able to discover who is doing this or how it is done. But, yes, I believe I am the best person to try, especially if you want it done so that no one outside this room even knows that an investigation is under way.”

  “Good,” Roger Vincent said. “It’s settled, then. We will not involve the police at this stage. Jeff will investigate this matter and report back to us. We have a scheduled meeting of the Board a week from Wednesday.” He turned to me. “Is nine days long enough for you?”

  “More than enough,” I said. “If I don’t have the results in nine days, I don’t think I’ll ever get them.”

  “You don’t sound very confident,” said George Searle, a former racehorse trainer and the Thoroughbred Owners and Trainers representative on the Board.

  “I’m not particularly. Whoever is doing this will have made meticulous plans, probably over many months, if not years. He will probably be expecting us to call in the police, yet he must remain convinced he won’t get caught or he wouldn’t have started all this in the first place. The police would have had a team of men and all the resources of the forensic services. I am just a single investigator with little or no backup. Would you be confident?”

  There were some murmurings around the table. Clearly, the decision not to call in the police had not been a unanimous one and now there were some grumbles from the dissenters.

  “But I’ll have a go,” I said. “I should at least be able to find out how it was done and maybe that will allow us to stop it from happening again.”

  That seemed to cheer them up somewhat.

  “In the meantime,” I went on, “by all means place an announcement in The Times, but don’t agree to everything.”

  “In what way?” asked Roger Vincent.

  “Only agree to a bit at a time. Negotiate. I don’t imagine that he will expect to get five million pounds. I’d offer him twenty thousand. Or even less.”