Dick Francis's Damage

by Felix Francis

  “Which way did the man go?” I asked when she’d finished the call.

  She pointed at the small metal gate that I’d climbed over last time, when I’d collected the rugby ball. “Over there.”

  Towards the path up the slope to the tracks. I reckoned he would be trying to get back to his car by going up and over the railway lines rather than past me through the bridge.

  “Look after Crispin,” I said to Lydia, but I was afraid that he might be beyond help. The blood from his mouth had increased from a trickle to a flood and his eyes had started to roll back into his head. I’d seen that look before in Afghanistan. In fact, I’d seen it all too often.

  It’s not a game, you know, dear boy, Crispin had said to me only that morning.

  No, it wasn’t.

  Oh, Crispin, my colleague and my friend, why hadn’t you remained in the car?

  The anger rose in my throat—the anger that I had vowed to remember on the day of the void Grand National.

  I leaped over the metal gate and ran up the slope to the tracks.

  —

  THE TARGET was standing there at the top of the slope facing me, a bloodied knife in his right hand and the bag of cash in his left, as if somehow waiting for me to appear.

  I stood slightly below, facing him.

  I reached up and took off my balaclava, then I peeled away the stuck-on facial hair and removed the cotton balls from inside my mouth.

  If he was surprised to see me, he didn’t look it. But, then, it was difficult to tell as I could only see his eyes and mouth.

  “Hello, Bill,” I said.

  That focused his attention, but still he said nothing.

  “I know it’s you,” I said.

  He switched the knife into his left hand, together with the bag, and lifted his hand to his head and pulled off his balaclava. Then he took the familiar tortoiseshell spectacles from his pant pocket and put them on his face.

  Bill Ripley. Member of the BHA Board. Grandson of a Scottish Earl.

  Leonardo. Our friend. One and the same.

  “How did you know it was me?” he said.

  “I just did,” I replied. “I followed you here from Weybridge.”

  “Unwin,” he said, nodding. “Bloody Matthew Unwin. I knew that if you visited him it would be a problem. I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

  “You nearly did,” I said, instinctively rubbing my shoulder.

  “How’s your colleague?” He waved the knife.

  “I think he’s dead.”

  It didn’t seem to surprise him or particularly to worry him. He just pursed his lips and nodded once as if accepting that it was all over.

  “Just for a couple of hundred thousand quid,” I said. “Was it worth it?”

  “It wasn’t really about the money,” he said, “although the first lot was useful.”

  “To pay off some of the debt with your bookmaker?”

  He was clearly shocked that I knew, but he slowly nodded.

  “Was it also about the press briefing documents you sent to the newspapers?”

  He nodded again.

  Just the one man—extortionist and whistle-blower.

  “Why?”

  “They took away my birthright.” He said it almost casually.

  “Who did?”

  “The bloody BHA.” He lifted his chin. “Ripleys have been senior stewards of the Jockey Club for over two hundred years. We should be in charge of British racing, not some bloody insurance salesman who doesn’t know his withers from his fetlocks. It is my right. And it should be my son’s right.”

  “Your hyperactive son?”

  He stared at me with contempt in his eyes.

  In the distance I could hear the sirens of approaching authority. Bill Ripley clearly heard them too.

  I took a step towards him and he retreated. I took a second step and he backed away some more.

  There was a high-pitched ringing sound in my ears.

  Bill turned his head slightly to the left.

  I couldn’t tell if he saw it coming or not.

  Either way, he turned his head back to look directly at me and didn’t move a muscle.

  The evening express from Plymouth to London struck Bill Ripley full on at over a hundred miles per hour.

  One moment, he was standing there just a few feet away from me, and, the next, the train was thundering by in his place.

  As suddenly as it arrived, the train was gone and so was Bill, with nothing to show that he had ever been standing there other than a shower of fifty-pound notes fluttering down around me like confetti.

  I reached into my pocket, removed my phone and called Gordon Tuttle at the London Telegraph.

  “Gordon?” I said. “I’ve got you a story.”

  —

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