by Dick Francis
“With your friends?”
She nodded. “They’re my guardians.”
“And you’re happy?”
“Yes, of course. We do God’s work.”
“How old are you?”
Her doubts returned. “Eighteen . . . yesterday . . . but I’m not supposed to talk about myself . . . only about the stones.”
The childlike quality was very marked. She seemed not exactly to be mentally retarded, but in the old sense, simple. There was no life in her, no fun, no awakening of womanhood. Beside the average teenager she was like a sleepwalker.
“Have you any more stones then?” I asked.
She nodded and produced another one from her skirt. I admired it and agreed to buy it, and said while picking out another note, “What was your mother’s name, Mandy?”
She looked scared. “I don’t know. You mustn’t ask things like that.”
“When you were little did you have a pony?”
For an instant her blank eyes lit with an uncrushable memory, and then she glanced at someone over my left shoulder, and her simple pleasure turned to red-faced shame.
I half turned. A man stood there; not young, not smiling. A tough-looking man a few years older than myself, very clean, very neatly dressed and very annoyed.
“No conversations, Mandy,” he said to her severely. “Remember the rule. Your first day out collecting, and you break the rule. The girls will take you home now. You’ll be back on housework, after this. Go along, they’re waiting over there.” He nodded sharply to where a group of girls waited together, and watched as she walked leaden-footed to join them. Poor Mandy in disgrace. Poor Amanda. Poor little sister.
“What’s your game?” the man said to me. “The girls say you’ve bought stones from all of them. What are you after?”
“Nothing,” I said. “They’re pretty stones.”
He glared at me doubtfully, and he was joined by another similar man who walked across after talking to the now departing girls.
“This guy was asking the girls their names,” he said. “Looking for Amanda.”
“There’s no Amanda.”
“Mandy. He talked to her.”
They both looked at me with narrowed eyes, and I decided it was time to leave. They didn’t try to stop me when I headed off in the general direction of the parking lot. They didn’t try to stop me, but they followed along in my wake.
I didn’t think much about it, and turned into the short side road which led to the parking lot. Glancing back to see if they were still following I found not only that they were, but that there were now four of them. The two new ones were young, like the girls.
It seemed too public a place for much to happen; and I suppose by many standards nothing much did. There were three more of them loitering around the parking lot entrance, and all seven of them encircled me outside, before I got there. I pushed one of them to get him out of the way, and got shoved in return by a forest of hands. Shoved sideways along the road a few steps and against a brick wall. If any of the Great British Public saw what was happening, they passed by on the other side of the road.
I stood looking at the seven Colleagues. “What do you want?” I said.
The second of the two older men said, “Why were you asking for Mandy?”
“She’s my sister.”
It confounded the two elders. They looked at each other. Then the first one decisively shook his head. “She’s got no family. Her mother died years ago. You’re lying. How could you possibly think she’s your sister?”
“We don’t want you nosing around, making trouble,” the second one said. “If you ask me, he’s a reporter.”
The word stung them all into reconciling violence with their strange religion. They banged me against the wall a shade too often, and also pushed and kicked a shade too hard, but apart from trying to shove all seven away like a rugger scrum there wasn’t a great deal I could physically do to stop them. It was one of those stupid sorts of scuffles in which no one wanted to go too far. They could have half-killed me easily if they’d meant to, and I could have hurt them more than I did. Escalation seemed a crazy risk when all they were truly delivering was a warning, so I pushed against their close bodies and hacked at a couple of shins, and that was that.
I didn’t tell them the one thing which would have saved me the drubbing: that if they could prove that Mandy was indeed my sister she would inherit a fortune.
Harold watched my arrival outside the weighing room with a scowl of disfavor.
“You’re bloody late,” he said. “And why are you limping?”
“Twisted my ankle.”
“Are you fit to ride?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
“Is Victor Briggs here?” I said.
“No, he isn’t. You can stop worrying. Sharpener’s out to win, and you can ride him in your usual way. None of those crazy damn-fool heroics. Understood? You look after Sharpener or I’ll belt the hide off you. Bring him back whole.”
I nodded, smothering a smile, and he gave me another extensive scowl and walked off.
“Honestly, Philip,” said Steve Millace, wandering past. “He treats you like dirt.”
“No . . . just his way.”
“I wouldn’t stand for it.”
I looked at the easy belligerence in the overyoung face and realized that he didn’t really know about affection’s coming sometimes in a rough package.
“Good luck, today,” I said neutrally, and he said, “Thanks,” and went on into the weighing room. He would never be like his father, I thought. Never as bright, as ingenious, as perceptive, as ruthless or as wicked.
I followed Steve inside and changed into Victor Briggs’ colors, feeling the effects of the Colleagues’ attentions as an overall ache. Nothing much. A nuisance. Not enough, I hoped, to make any difference to my riding.
When I went outside I found Elgin Yaxley and Bart Underfield, who were slapping each other on the shoulder and looking the faintest bit drunk. Elgin Yaxley peeled off and rolled away, and Bart, turning with an extravagant lack of coordination, bumped into me.
“Hullo,” he said, giving a spirits-laden cough. “You’ll be the first to know. Elgin’s getting some more horses. They’re coming to me, of course. We’ll make Lambourn sit up. Make the whole of racing sit up.” He gave me a patronizing leer. “Elgin’s a man of ideas.”
“He is indeed,” I said dryly.
Bart remembered he didn’t much like me and took his good news off to other, more receptive ears. I stood watching him, thinking that Elgin Yaxley would never kill another horse for the insurance. No insurance company would stand for it twice. But Elgin Yaxley believed himself undetected . . . and people didn’t change. If their minds ran to fraud once, they would again. I didn’t like the sound of Elgin Yaxley’s having ideas.
The old dilemma still remained. If I gave the proof of Elgin Yaxley’s fraud to the police or the insurance company, I would have to say how I came by the photograph. From George Millace . . . who wrote threatening letters. George Millace, husband of Marie, who was climbing back with frail handholds from the wreck of her life. If justice depended on smashing her deeper into soul-wrecking misery, justice would have to wait.
Sharpener’s race came third on the card. Not the biggest event of the day, which was the fourth race, a brandy-sponsored Gold Cup, but a well-regarded two-mile ’chase. Sharpener had been made favorite because of his win at Kempton and with some of the same joie de vivre he sailed around most of Newbury’s long oval in fourth place. We lay third at the third-to-last fence, second at the second-to-last, and jumped to the front over the last. I sat down and rode him out with hands and heels, and my God, I thought, I could do with the muscle-power I lost in Horley.
Sharpener won and I was exhausted, which was ridiculous. Harold, beaming, watched me fumble feebly with the girth buckles in the winners’ enclosure. The horse, stamping around, almost knocked me over.
“You only went t
wo miles,” Harold said. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
I got the buckles undone and pulled off the saddle, and began in fact to feel a trickle of strength flow again through my arms. I grinned at Harold and said, “Nothing . . . It was a damn good race. Nice shape.”
“Nice shape be buggered. You won. Any race you win is a nice bloody shape.”
I went in to be weighed, leaving him surrounded by congratulations and sportswriters; and while I was sitting on the bench by my peg waiting to get my strength back I decided what to do about Elgin Yaxley.
I had grown a habit, over the past two weeks, of taking with me in the car not only my favorite two cameras but also the photographs I seemed to keep on needing. Lance Kinship’s reprints were there, although he himself hadn’t turned up, and so were the four concerning Yaxley. Straight after the big race I went out and fetched them.
The second horse I was due to ride for Harold was a novice hurdler in the last race, and because there had been so many entries in the novice hurdle that they’d split it into two divisions, the last race on that day was the seventh, not the sixth. It gave me just enough extra time for what I wanted.
Finding Elgin Yaxley wasn’t so difficult, it was detaching him from Bart Underfield that gave the trouble.
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” I said to Yaxley.
“You’re not having the rides on our horses,” Bart said bossily. “So don’t waste time asking.”
“You can keep them,” I said.
“What do you want, then?”
“I want to give Mr. Yaxley a message.” I turned to Yaxley. “It’s a private message, for your ears only.”
“Oh, very well.” He was impatient. “Wait for me in the bar, Bart.”
Bart grumbled and fussed, but finally went.
“Better come over here,” I said to Elgin Yaxley, nodding towards a patch of grass by the entrance gate, away from the huge big-race crowd with their stretched ears and curious eyes. “You won’t want anyone hearing.”
“What the devil is all this?” he said crossly.
“A message from George Millace,” I said.
His sharp features grew rigid. The small moustache he wore bristled. The complacency vanished into a furious concentration of fear.
“I have some photographs,” I said, “which you might like to see.”
I handed him the cardboard envelope. It seemed easier this second time, I thought, to deliver the chop. Maybe I was becoming hardened . . . or maybe I simply didn’t like Elgin Yaxley. I watched him open the envelope with no pity at all.
He first went pale, and then red, and great drops of sweat stood out like blisters on his forehead. He checked through the four pictures and found the whole story was there, the cafe meeting and George’s two letters, and the damning note from the farmer, David Parker. The eyes he raised to me were sick and incredulous, and he had difficulty finding his voice.
“Take your time,” I said. “I expect it’s a shock.”
His mouth moved as if practicing, but no words came out.
“Any number of copies,” I said, “could go off to the insurance company and the police and so on.”
He managed a strangled groan.
“There’s another way,” I said.
He got his throat and tongue to shape a single hoarse unedifying word. “Bastard.”
“Mm,” I said. “There’s George Millace’s way.”
I’d never seen anyone look at me with total hatred before, and I found it unnerving. But I wanted to find out just what George had extracted from at least one of his victims, and this was my best chance.
I said flatly, “I want the same as George Millace.”
“No.” It was more a wail than a shout. Full of horror; empty of hope.
“Yes, indeed,” I said.
“But I can’t afford it. I haven’t got it.”
The anxiety in his eyes was almost too much for me, but I spurred on my flagging resolution with the thought of five shot horses, and said again, “The same as George.”
“Not ten,” he said wildly. “I haven’t got it.”
I stared at him.
He mistook my silence and gabbled on, finding his voice in a flood of begging, beseeching, cajoling words.
“I’ve had expenses, you know. It hasn’t all been easy. Can’t you let me alone? Let me off, won’t you? George said once and for all . . . and now you . . . Five, then,” he said in the face of my continued silence. “Will five do? That’s enough. I haven’t got any more. I haven’t.”
I stared once more, and waited.
“All right, then. All right.” He was shaking with worry and fury. “Seven and a half. Will that do? It’s all I’ve got, you bloodsucking leech . . . you’re worse than George Millace . . . bastard blackmailers . . .”
While I watched he fumbled into his pockets and brought out a checkbook and a pen. Clumsily supporting the checkbook on the photograph envelope, he wrote the date and a sum of money, and signed his name. Then with shaking fingers he tore the slip of paper out of the book and stood holding it.
“Not Hong Kong,” he said.
I didn’t know at once what he meant, so I took refuge in more staring.
“Not Hong Kong. Not there again. I don’t like it.” He was beseeching again, begging for crumbs.
“Oh . . .” I hid my understanding in a cough. “Anywhere,” I said. “Anywhere out of Britain.”
It was the right answer, but gave him no comfort. I stretched out my hand for the check.
He gave it to me, his hand trembling.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Rot in hell.”
He turned and stumbled away, half running, half staggering, utterly in pieces. Serve him right, I thought callously. Let him suffer. It wouldn’t be for long.
I meant to tear up his check when I’d looked to see how much he thought my silence was worth: how much he’d paid George. I meant to, but I didn’t. When I looked at that check, something like a huge burst of sunlight happened in my head, a bright expanding delight of awe and comprehension.
I had used George’s own cruelty. I had demanded to be given what he himself had demanded. His alternative suggestion for Elgin Yaxley.
I had it. All of it.
Elgin Yaxley was going off into exile, and I held his check for seven thousand five hundred pounds.
It was made out not to me, or to Bearer, or even to the estate of George Millace, but to the Injured Jockeys’ Fund.
16
I walked around for a while trying to find the particular ex-jockey who had become one of the chief administrators of the fund, and at length tracked him down in the private entertainment box of one of the television companies. There was a crowd in there, but I winkled him out.
“Want a drink?” he said, holding up his glass.
I shook my head. I was wearing colors, breeches, boots and an anorak. “More than my life’s worth, boozing with you lot before racing.”
He said cheerfully, “What can I do for you?”
“Take a check,” I said, and gave it to him.
“Phew,” he said, looking at it. “And likewise wow.”
“Is it the first time Elgin Yaxley’s been so generous?”
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “He gave us ten thousand a few months ago, just before he went abroad. We took it of course, but some of the trustees wondered if it wasn’t conscience money. I mean . . . he’d just been paid a hundred thousand by the insurance company for those horses of his that were shot. The whole business looked horribly fishy, didn’t it?”
“Mm.” I nodded. “Well . . . Elgin Yaxley’s going abroad again, so he says, and he gave me this check for you. So will you take it?”
He smiled. “If his conscience is troubling him again, we might as well benefit.” He folded the check, tucked it away and patted the pocket which contained it.
“Have you had any other huge checks like that?” I enquired conversationally.
&nbs
p; “People leave big amounts in their wills, sometimes, but no . . . not many like Elgin Yaxley.”
“Would Ivor den Relgan be a generous supporter?” I asked.
“Well, yes, he gave us a thousand at the beginning of the season. Some time in September. Very generous.”
I pondered. “Do you keep lists of the people who donate?”
He laughed. “Not all of them. Thousands of people contribute over the years. Old-age pensioners. Children. Housewives. Anyone you can think of.” He sighed. “We never seem to have enough for what we need to do, but we’re always grateful for the smallest help . . . and you know all that.”
“Yes. Thanks anyway.”
“Any time.”
He went back to the convivial crowd and I returned to the weighing room and got myself and my saddle weighed out for the last race.
I was as bad as George, I thought. Identically as bad. I had extorted money by threats. It didn’t seem so wicked, now that I’d done it myself.
Harold in the parade ring said sharply, “You’re looking bloody pleased with yourself.”
“Just with life in general.”
I’d ridden a winner. I’d almost certainly found Amanda. I’d discovered a lot more about George. Sundry kicks and punches on the debit side, but who cared? Overall, not a bad day.
“This hurdler,” Harold said severely, “is the one who wrecked the schooling session last Saturday. I know you weren’t on him . . . it wasn’t your fault . . . but you just mind he gets a good clear view of what he’s got to jump. Understand? Go to the front and make the running, so he’s got a clear view. He won’t last the trip, but it’s a big field and I don’t want him being jostled and blinded in the pack early on. Got it?”
I nodded. There were twenty-three runners, almost the maximum allowed in this type of race. Harold’s hurdler, walking edgily around the parade ring, was already sweating with nervous excitement, and he was an animal, I knew from experience, who needed a soothing phlegmatic approach.
“Jockeys, please mount,” came the announcement, and I and the hurdler in a decently quiet way got ourselves together and down to the start.
