by Dick Francis
He nodded. He had seen the damage first hand.
‘Well, that was done to stop me investigating. At least they thought I would stop. They thought that I would have had enough, that surely I would get the message and run away. What they didn’t understand was that I was going after them all the more, simply because of what they’d done to try and stop me. I really believe that nothing, short of actually killing me, would stop me if I thought it was right.’
‘Didn’t a man once threaten to cut off your right hand if you didn’t stop trying to nail him for something?’
‘Yes.’ I paused.
I remembered the paralysing fear, the absolute dread of losing a second hand. I remembered the utter collapse it had caused in me. I remembered the struggle it had taken to rebuild my life, the willpower required to face another day. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I remembered it all too well.
‘That didn’t stop you, either.’
No, I thought, not in the end, although it had for a while.
‘Nearly,’ I croaked. My tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of my mouth.
‘You are surely not going to be stopped by a couple of punches to the face.’
‘But it’s not my face that’s being punched. It’s not me that’s being hurt. I make the decision and someone else takes the pain, someone I love. I can’t do that.’
‘Shooting hostages never stopped the French Resistance killing Germans,’ he said profoundly.
‘It would have done if it had been their families.’
We finally went up to bed past two o’clock. By then, we had polished off the bottle and I had more than made up for the lack of calories in my missed dinner.
I slipped in next to Marina and kissed her sleeping head. How could I knowingly put this precious human being into danger? But how could I not? Suddenly, for the first time since I had started this caper, I was vulnerable to the ‘we’ll not get you, we’ll get your girl’ syndrome. What was the future? How could I continue? How could I operate if I were forever fearful of what ‘they’ might do to Marina?
I tossed this dilemma round in my whisky-fuzzed brain, found no acceptable solution, and finally drifted into an uneasy sleep.
Sure enough, I woke with a headache. My own fault.
Marina had a headache too, not hers. As I had expected, her face looked worse than it had last night. And it was nothing to do with the daylight.
A giant panda has white eyes in a black face, Marina had the reverse. But the skin around her eyes was not only going black, it was going yellow and purple too. Her left eye was heavily bloodshot and the sticking plaster over her eyebrow gave her a sinister appearance. She looked like a refugee from a horror film. But these injuries were real and not the handiwork of a make-up artist.
She sat up in bed and looked at herself in the mirror on the wardrobe door that was cruelly at just the right angle.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked.
‘About as good as I look.’ She turned and gave me a lopsided smile.
That’s my girl, I thought and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek.
We both beat Charles to breakfast and found Mrs Cross busy in the kitchen.
‘Good morning, Mr Halley.’ I had never managed to get her to call me Sid.
‘Morning, Mrs Cross,’ I replied. ‘Can I introduce Marina van der Meer — Mrs Cross.’
‘Oh, my dear, your poor face!’
Marina smiled at her. ‘It’s fine, getting better every day. Car accident.’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Cross again. ‘I’ll get you some tea.’
‘Thank you, that would be lovely.’
I had coffee and dear Mrs Cross provided me, as always, with ready buttered and marmaladed toast.
Charles came in wearing his dressing gown and slippers and sat down at the long kitchen table. He rubbed his forehead and his eyes.
‘When I was a midshipman I could drink all night and then be wide awake and full of energy for duty at six in the morning. What have the years done to me?’
‘Good morning, Charles,’ I said.
‘Good morning to you, too,’ he replied. ‘Why did I allow you to keep me up half the night boozing?’ He turned to Marina. ‘Good morning, my dear, and how do you feel today?’
‘Better than you two, I expect.’ She smiled at him, which seemed to cheer him up no end.
‘Morning, Mrs Cross,’ said Charles. ‘Black coffee and wholemeal toast for breakfast, please.’
‘With or without Alka-Seltzer?’ I asked.
‘Without, I can’t stand all that fizzing.’
We sat and ate our breakfast for a while in silence, Charles poring over the Saturday papers.
‘It says here,’ he said, pointing at the paper with a slice of toast, ‘that the English are turning into a race of gamblers. It claims that more than nine million people in this country regularly gamble on the internet. Unbelievable.’ He drank some coffee. ‘It also says that on-line poker is the fastest expanding form of gambling. What’s on-line poker when it’s at home?’
‘Playing poker on your computer,’ I said. ‘You join a poker table with others on their computers.’
‘On their computers? Can’t you see their faces?’
‘No, just their names and those are simply nicknames. You have no idea who you are playing against.’
‘That’s crazy,’ said Charles. ‘The whole point of poker is being able to see the eyes of the other players. How can you bluff if you can’t see who you are playing against?’
‘The numbers playing it proves it must be attractive,’ said Marina.
‘How do you know that the players aren’t cheating if you can’t actually see the cards being dealt?’ asked Charles.
‘The cards are “dealt” by a computer,’ I said, ‘so the players can’t be cheating,’
But what if the computer is cheating, I thought. What if the player only thinks he is playing against others who, like him, log on to the game from their own computers? What if the website has a seat or two at each table for itself to play against the visitors? What if the website is able to fix the ‘deal’? Just a little, mind, so that the players don’t really notice. Just enough to make the new players win. Just until they are hooked. It’s a tried and tested formula: give away the cocaine just long enough to turn the users into addicts, and then charge them through the nose, as it were.
I had read that there were thought to be more than a quarter of a million gambling addicts in Britain. The resources needed to feed any compulsive habit increase at the same rate as the time and dedication to realising those resources decrease. The result is an insatiable appetite fed by unattainable provision. Something has to give and usually it’s lifestyle, honesty and self-respect. All of these go out the window in the endless craving for the next fix. Gambling compulsion may be different from alcohol or drugs in the immediate damage it does to health, but, in the long run, as with all untreated addictions, it destroys sure enough.
‘Still sounds crazy to me,’ said Charles. ‘Half the fun of playing poker is the banter between the players.’
‘The difference is, Charles,’ I said, ‘you don’t play poker where the winning and losing are important. You enjoy being with friends and the poker is an excuse to get together. Online poker is a solitary experience and winning and losing is everything, whether it’s fun or not.’
‘Well, it’s not for me,’ he said and went back to reading his paper.
‘Is it OK with you if I go to Newbury races?’ I asked Marina.
‘Yes, fine,’ said Marina, ‘but be careful. I’ll stay here and rest. Is that all right with you, Charles?’
‘Oh, yes, fine by me. I’ll stay here, too, and we can watch the racing on the telly together.’
Marina pulled a face and I suspected that ‘watching the racing on the telly’ wasn’t in her plans, but she would be too polite to say so.
After breakfast I called the Cheltenham police and asked for Chief Inspector Carlisle. Sorry, they said
, he’s unavailable at the moment, did I want to leave a message? When would he be available? I asked. They didn’t know. Was he on duty? Yes, he was, but he was still unavailable. Could they pass him a message that he would actually get? Yes, they would. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Ask him to call Sid Halley. He has the number,’ but I gave it to them again just in case.
He called me less than five minutes later. Good old Cheltenham police.
‘I meant to call you yesterday,’ he said, ‘but things are a bit hectic down here at the moment.’
‘Busy catching villains?’ I said rather flippantly.
‘Wish I were,’ he sounded grave. ‘Have you heard the news today?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that little girl that went missing from Gloucester in the week has turned up dead. At least, we’ve found a child’s body and it’s probably her. Still waiting for the official ID but there’s not much doubt. Poor little mite. Don’t know the cause of death yet but it has to be murder. How can anyone do such things to a 10-year-old? Makes me physically sick.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He had obviously had a lousy Saturday morning.
‘I hate this job when it’s kids. I’m glad they’re rare. Only my third in twenty-five years.’
‘What were you going to phone me about yesterday?’ I asked.
‘Forensics came back with the results. It was the same gun that killed Walker, and Burton definitely did fire it on the day he died. There was gunpowder residue all over his hands and on his sleeve.’
Oh, I thought. Oh, shit.
‘So you believe that it was suicide?’
‘That is the consensus of opinion in the Thames Valley force but it will be up to the coroner to decide.’
‘Don’t you think it was odd that he still had the gun in his hand? Surely it would fly out when he fired it?’
‘It is not that unusual for a suicide to grip so tightly to the gun that it stays there. Like a reflex. The hand closes tightly at death and stays that way. Inspector Johnson said it was really quite difficult to prise the gun out of Burton’s hand. Rigor mortis and all that.’
It was more information than I needed.
‘Are you still investigating Huw Walker’s death?’ I asked.
‘We are waiting for the inquest now.’
I took that to mean ‘no’.
‘How about if Bill Burton was already dead when he fired the gun?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean? How could he fire the gun if he was already dead?’
‘Suppose you wanted to make murder look like suicide. First you shoot Bill through the mouth. Then you put the gun in his dead hand and pull the trigger again with his finger. Bingo, residue all over his hand and suicide it is.’
‘But there was only one shot fired from the revolver?’
‘How do you know?’ I asked him.
‘According to Johnson, there was only one spent cartridge in the cylinder.’
‘But the murderer could have replaced one of the empty cartridges with a new one.’
‘Then why wasn’t a second bullet found?’ Carlisle asked.
‘Perhaps Inspector Johnson wasn’t really looking for one.’
CHAPTER 11
I went to Newbury races still turning over and over in my head whether I should, or would, ask around about Huw Walker and Bill Burton again. It was one thing to discuss the matter with Carlisle but somehow to continue to sow seeds of doubt over the guilt-driven suicide theory here at the races might be considered reckless and ill-advised after the previous evening’s little message to Marina.
I waved my plastic hand at the man at the gate who waved back and beckoned me in like a long-lost friend. I parked in the trainers’ and jockeys’ car park, as usual.
A large Jaguar pulled up alongside my car and Andrew Woodward climbed out.
‘Hello, Sid,’ he said. ‘How are things?’
‘Fine, thank you, Mr Woodward.’ I’d never called him Andrew.
‘Good.’ He didn’t really sound as if he meant it. ‘I’m told that I should consult you.’
‘What about?’ I asked.
‘A reference. I’m appointing a second assistant at my yard. I’ve too many horses for just one now.’
I remembered that Jonny Enstone had transferred his allegiance and there were probably others too.
‘What can I do for you?’
‘Everyone tells me that I should get the applicants checked out by Halley.’ His tone implied that he didn’t agree. ‘I reckon I’m a good judge of character and I think I’ve made up my mind but, as you’re here, will you?’
‘Will I what?’
‘Will you give me an opinion of my chosen candidate?’
‘I’ll give you one for free if I know anything about him.’
‘Her, actually. Girl called Juliet Burns. Used to work for Burton.’
‘I know her,’ I said.
Hasn’t taken her long to look for a new job, I thought.
‘Well, what do you think?’
‘I don’t know her very well, but I was a friend of her father and I knew her as a child. I’ve met her at Burton’s place a couple of times recently.’ I didn’t tell him that one of them was immediately after she had found her boss with half his head blown away.
I recalled the evening she did the stable round. ‘She seems to get on with the horses all right. I could do a more detailed check on her references, if you’d like.’
‘I knew it would be a waste of time to ask you. Anyone could have told me that,’ he sneered. ‘I don’t know what people see in you — you’re just an ex-jockey.’
He turned to walk away.
‘I know that two of your lady owners pay you no training fees and that you only use their names to market your yard.’
He turned back slowly. ‘That’s rubbish,’ he said.
‘You own the horses yourself.’
There was nothing illegal in it but it was a minor deceit of the betting public that was not approved of by the Jockey Club. I decided it would be prudent not to mention to him that I also knew he was having an affair with one of the ladies in question.
‘You’re only guessing,’ he said.
‘As you like.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just know.’ I didn’t tell him that the lady owner he was not having the affair with had supplied me with both bits of information because she was jealous of the other.
‘Who else knows this?’ he demanded.
‘No one,’ I said, ‘not yet.’
‘Keep your bloody mouth shut, do you hear, or you’ll regret it.’ He turned and strode away towards the racecourse entrance.
Damn, I thought. Why did I rise to that little insult? Why did I feel the need to show him that I was not just an ex-jockey? Why had I made an enemy of him when friends are what I needed to do my job? That was stupid, very stupid.
I spent a depressing afternoon avoiding Andrew Woodward and not mentioning Huw Walker or Bill Burton to anyone. Even the weather conspired to deepen my depression by turning from a bright crisp morning into a cold damp dull afternoon and I had no coat. I’d left it in London due to our hasty departure the previous evening.
Andrew Woodward won the big race and stood beaming in the rain as he received the trophy on behalf of one of his non-paying owners who had had the good sense not to be present.
Beaming, that is, until he saw me watching him. I had carelessly allowed myself to be in view and his expression of thunder showed that his antipathy towards me had deepened.
I’d actually been daydreaming about how I might pluck out one of his unsuspecting hairs to check on his DNA. He had very few remaining on the top of his head and kept those firmly out of sight beneath a brown trilby. It wasn’t going to be as easy as Marina had suggested to acquire the necessary follicles, not from him anyway.
I retreated out of his eye-line and found myself standing on the weighing room steps next to Peter Enstone who was dressed in breeches and boots.
‘Hello, Peter,’ I said. ‘What are you riding?’
‘Hi, Sid. I’m on a no-hoper in the last. A waste of space called Roadtrain.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Thanks.’ He turned to go inside, into the warm.
‘Oh, Peter,’ I called after him, ‘do you know how long your father has been a director of Make A Wager Ltd?’
I already knew the answer to my question from the Companies House website but I wanted to see if Peter knew of the connection.
‘Oh, for years,’ he said. ‘Dad helped George set up the company. He’s been a director right from the start. Non-executive.’
‘Did he know George before the company was formed?’
‘Absolutely. We’ve known George for ever. Sorry, Sid, must dash.’
He disappeared into the changing room, the holy of holies that I was no longer able to enter.
So Jonny Enstone and George Lochs/Clarence Lochstein go back a long way. How did they meet? I wondered.
I sought out Paddy O’Fitch. If anyone here knew the answer it would be him.
‘Hi, Paddy.’ I found him in the bar under the Berkshire Stand.
‘Hello, Sid, me old mucker. D’ya fancy a Guinness?’
‘No, Paddy, but I expect you do.’
I ordered a pint of the black stuff for him and a diet Coke for me. It was an unwritten rule that if I were seeking information it would cost me a drink, at least.
He took a long draught, finally appearing for breath with a creamy-white moustache that he wiped away on his left sleeve.
‘Now, Sid,’ he grinned, ‘what is it ya’d be after?’
‘Jonny Enstone.’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the good lord. What’s he done to ya?’
‘Nothing. In fact, I recently had lunch with him.’
‘Did ya indeed,’ he said. ‘Did he pay?’
‘Absolutely. We were discussing business.’
‘What business?’
‘His, not yours,’ I said with a smile.
‘Come on, Sid,’ he said, ‘I’m the very model of discretion.’
Indiscretion is more like it, I thought. Paddy knew everything there was to know about racing and racing people but he liked others to know he did, so he was forever telling little secrets to anyone who would listen. He didn’t do it with any malice, he just did it.
