Dick Francis's Damage

by Dick Francis

  “When by?”

  “There is a requirement for prompt results. If it is true, then we must be seen to react. Say, next week?”

  “OK. I’ll have a look and ask the questions.”

  “Quietly, now, dear boy. Quietly. We don’t need the proverbial scrambled on our faces, now do we? Aye, aye.”

  I wondered why Crispin couldn’t speak normally like everyone else. Particularly as he had a brain that was so sharp.

  Even though he always jokingly referred to me as the BHA resident genius, and I was pretty good at understanding complicated situations, Crispin outdid me with ease. He would recognize issues that everyone else would miss. All intelligence is information, he would often say, but not all information is intelligence. The real trick was distinguishing which was and which wasn’t, and Crispin was the real genius at doing that.

  He had been the chief intelligence officer for the BHA since its creation, having been a secret agent in either MI5 or MI6 before that. No one really knew which, as he wouldn’t say. Since his arrival, many a disgruntled racing miscreant had received his just desserts because Crispin Larson could decode the intelligence.

  If he said that quiet questions should be asked first rather than a full-frontal approach with the testing team, then I was not the one to argue. He must have good reasons, and maybe I’d find out what they were or maybe I wouldn’t. Crispin could be so secretive that I wondered if his wife knew what he did for a living, if indeed he even had a wife. That was something else he was secretive about.

  Once, as we had been leaving the offices together at the end of the day, I’d casually asked him, by way of conversation, where he lived and how he got home. He’d looked at me keenly and asked, dear boy, why I needed to know. Clearly, such information was issued only on a need-to-know basis and, as I obviously hadn’t needed to know, he didn’t tell me.

  —

  BACK AT MY DESK, the hands on the clock had crept around to twelve twenty-three.

  Surely by now the top-guy surgeon would be hard at work in Faye’s innards. I tried to visualize what he might be doing but decided not to linger too long on the image. I was always a bit squeamish about abdominal operations when they were shown on the television, thankful that the patient was fast asleep and unaware of all the pushing and pulling, the cutting and the burning, that was going on inside them.

  God, I hoped she would be all right.

  Health issues, especially those of a life-threatening nature, put everything else into perspective. There was little point in worrying about how the nation’s economy might perform over the next few years if simply being alive after six months was going to be a toss-up.

  And did it really matter, in the big picture, if Graham Perry was or was not dosing his horses with amphetamines when Faye’s very existence lay literally in the hands of a jet-lagged surgeon on some operating table in southwest London?

  Well, of course it did.

  As they say, life has to go on.

  Using the internal computer network, I looked up Graham Perry’s BHA file.

  He was forty-one and he had held a trainer’s license for the past seven years, having previously been the assistant trainer to Matthew Unwin.

  That alone made me sit up straight and pay attention.

  5

  According to the nurse I spoke to on the telephone, Faye was brought back to her room at three o’clock, having spent the preceding hour gradually waking from the anesthetic in the recovery ward. All I was told was that she was back and that the operation had been a success, whatever that might mean. Probably that she was still alive.

  I was also informed that there would be no word on what had actually been done to my sister’s insides until the following day. It seemed that the top-guy surgeon was currently busy poking his fingers into someone else’s guts.

  But thankfully Faye was awake and comfortable, although that must be a relative term after having had bits of her removed.

  “No visitors today,” said the nurse with authority, “other than immediate family.”

  I thought brothers were pretty immediate, but, in this case, it apparently meant spouses only or, failing that, the parents or children of the patient.

  Quentin, as expected, did not call to tell me how things had gone. Maybe he didn’t know either, but a call to confirm that the operation was over and successful would have been nice.

  I went back to studying the Perry file.

  Graham James Perry had come into racing as an eighteen-year-old conditional jockey, a trainee, under the stewardship of a young Duncan Johnson. According to the records, he’d had fifteen rides under rules in his first season, twenty-seven in his second, and just twelve in his third, at which point he had given up his jockey’s license.

  He won only two of the fifty-four races in which he rode, so jockeyship was clearly not his strong suit. However, he had remained on the staff at the Johnson stable for the next six years before disappearing off the BHA radar. Perhaps he had gone to work abroad for a while because, five years later, he resurfaced as Matthew Unwin’s assistant, before taking on a trainer’s license himself, at age thirty-four, when he took over a yard near the village of Tilston in Cheshire.

  His progress since then had been steady rather than spectacular. He had built his string from just ten horses in his first season up to a recent figure of twenty-eight, and he’d had some moderate success in races at the smaller tracks, in particular at his local track, Bangor-on-Dee, where he was the second leading trainer in the current season.

  It was ages since I’d been racing at Bangor-on-Dee.

  I consulted the fixture list and discovered there was a meeting the coming weekend. I decided to go north by train on Friday morning, spend the evening at the local pub in Tilston, before attending the racing on Saturday afternoon.

  I used my computer to look up the train times from Euston. Then I fixed a room at the Queen Hotel in Chester, opposite the railway station, and arranged for a rental car—something fairly small and inconspicuous.

  —

  I TOOK the Central Line from Holborn to Bethnal Green and followed Kenneth’s directions to his front door. I pushed the bell button marked K. Calderfield and was rewarded by a metallic-sounding voice emanating from the grille alongside.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Jeff Hinkley,” I said, leaning forward.

  “Third floor,” came the reply, accompanied by a buzzing as he released the door lock.

  I went in and climbed the stairs. Ken was waiting for me on the third-floor landing.

  “Come in,” he said, leading me into his sitting room. “Do you want some tea?”

  “I’d rather have a beer. It’s been a long day at the office.”

  He disappeared and returned with two green bottles, tops removed.

  “Thanks,” I said as he gave me one and I took a welcome mouthful.

  I walked over to the picture window and looked out at the view over Bethnal Green Gardens and on towards the high-rises of the City of London, visible in the distance against the brightness of the western sky.

  “Nice flat,” I said. “Do you own it?”

  “Dad does,” he said. “I couldn’t afford this on my pay. Pupilage is like legalized slavery. Dad pays the mortgage. He says it’s cheap compared to paying rent.”

  Cheap was a word that no one could associate with this flat.

  “How many bedrooms?” I asked.

  “Two,” he said. “But I use one of them as my study. I’m very lucky.”

  I thought back to when I was Ken’s age. I’d been living in an army barracks block in Bedfordshire with just four toilets and three showers for fifty soldiers. Either that or I’d been away on operations overseas, snatching sleep whenever I could either in some dusty army tent or, more likely, out in the open in the middle of some godforsaken Middle Eastern dese
rt, baking hot by day and freezing cold by night.

  Ken had indeed been very lucky in the accommodation stakes. Going to prison from this would be more than just a mere wake-up call.

  “Where were the drugs found?” I asked.

  Ken seemed slightly taken aback by my sudden change of tack.

  “In my bedroom.”

  “Show me.”

  He led me down the corridor past the kitchen and study.

  “In my bedside cabinet,” he said, pointing.

  “How much?”

  “A couple of grams.”

  “Of crystal meth?” He nodded. “A couple of grams is not much.”

  “It was ground up to a powder in eight individual wraps of two hundred and fifty milligrams each.”

  “And you claim they were planted?”

  “Yes,” he said, getting rather agitated. “I had a party here and someone must have put them in the drawer. I’d never seen them before.”

  I took two quick strides forward and pulled open the drawer in question. I could tell that Ken didn’t like it. He stood on the balls of his feet, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  The drawer was full of the usual accumulation one might expect in a bedside drawer: batteries, bubble packs of painkillers, scraps of paper, some dog-eared business cards, a couple of pens, some assorted creams and lotions, a half-eaten tube of mints, a cigarette lighter, and a packet of condoms.

  I closed the drawer again and turned around.

  “I’m scared stiff,” Kenneth said.

  “Of going to jail?”

  “Yeah, I suppose,” he said. “But more of what my dad will say.”

  “I know he’s not pleased,” I said.

  “So he keeps telling me,” Kenneth said with a sigh. “But he knows only the half of it.”

  “Half of what?”

  “Oh, nothing.” He waved a hand dismissively.

  “Kenneth,” I said firmly. “If you want my help, you need to be completely honest and open. What does your father only know the half of?”

  “The details of the party.”

  “What details?”

  “If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell my father?” he asked with a glimmer of desperation in his eyes.

  “That depends on what it is,” I said.

  He looked at me for a long while without saying anything as if deciding.

  “I’m gay,” he said eventually.

  “So?” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  “My dad doesn’t know and I’m absolutely terrified that he’ll find out at the trial.”

  “Then tell him yourself before the trial starts. It’s nothing to be worried about.”

  “You don’t understand,” Kenneth said miserably. “Dad absolutely hates gays. He’s always saying they should all be castrated.”

  That was another reason, I thought, why Quentin should never be a judge.

  “Let’s have that cup of tea, shall we?” I said.

  —

  WE SAT at his small kitchen table, drinking tea, while he told me his sorry tale.

  He lived constantly in awe of his father, trying his best to please him and afraid that he couldn’t.

  Kenneth’s whole life had been mapped out almost from birth with the parental expectation that he would take his rightful place at the Bar and progress from there up the ladder of justice. His father even called him Kenneth in the sure belief that in due course Quentin Calderfield, Queen’s Counsel—QC,QC—would be followed logically by Kenneth Calderfield, King’s Counsel—KC,KC.

  “It’s not that I don’t enjoy the law,” he said, “just that any question of me doing anything else for a career had been stifled and dismissed out of hand. I feel I’m living my life in a straitjacket.” He swallowed noisily. “I suppose I should be grateful that Dad has helped me so much, like with this flat and fixing my pupilage and such, and he’s always been interested in everything I do, but I feel trapped.”

  I knew a little of how he was feeling, yet I’d had no parent directing my route in life, only my big sister.

  We drank our tea in silence for a bit, with Kenneth keenly studying the tabletop.

  “Please don’t tell my dad about me being gay,” Kenneth said finally.

  “I won’t,” I said. “I promise. But you must.”

  Ken looked horrified. “I can’t.”

  “Yes you can, and you’ll have to. It’s much better that you tell him than he finds out in court, as he surely will. Even if the prosecution doesn’t know for sure, they are bound to ask you during cross-examination. What will you do then? Lie because your dad might hear? I think not. It would instantly destroy any credibility you might still have with the jury.”

  “Oh God!” he said. “It’s all such a bloody disaster.”

  It certainly was.

  “This Daniel Jubowski, was he your boyfriend?”

  “No,” he said sharply. Rather too sharply.

  “Who was he, then?”

  “Someone I met at a gym.”

  “Which gym?”

  He hesitated, again looking down at the table.

  “Come on, Ken,” I said, “I need the full truth if I’m to help you.”

  “The Fit Man gym in Soho. It has a huge sauna.”

  “Did you end up back here?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “Not that time. I went with him to his place.”

  “Near King’s Cross?”

  “Yes. In Tiber Gardens.”

  “But he came here on other occasions?”

  “Yes,” Ken replied sheepishly. “He came a couple of times.”

  “So he was your boyfriend.”

  “No, not really. He was just someone I met. A short fling, that’s all. Nothing serious. In fact, I went off him.”

  “Was that before or after your party?” I asked.

  “Before,” he said. “I’d met a couple of other guys at the gym. The three of us . . . Well, it was rather fun.” He smiled for the first time since I’d arrived.

  Quentin, I thought, was in for rather a shock.

  “But Daniel was at your party?”

  “Yes,” he said. “He helped to organize it.”

  “Do you think it was him who planted the drugs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How did the police find them? Why did they come here in the first place?”

  “We were raided.”

  He made it sound like something out of CSI: Miami.

  “But the police don’t just raid people’s houses without any reason.”

  “The party was rather noisy and it disturbed the neighbors. The police turned up to shut us down and found most of the guests were stoned. That’s when they searched the flat.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Just before Christmas.”

  “Who else was at the party?”

  “Friends. You know, people I’d met at the gym. About ten of us altogether.”

  “All men?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” His tone indicated that of course they were all men.

  “So when was it, exactly?”

  “December twentieth,” he said. “But, to be accurate, the raid was on the twenty-first at about three in the morning.” He smiled. “It was a great party. At least it was until the police arrived.” He laughed. “In fact, they seemed rather shocked. We were mostly down to our boxers, and some had even discarded those. It was that sort of party.” He blushed slightly. “But we were all consenting adults.”

  Maybe so, I thought, but it was no surprise the police had raided the place. How Ken had hoped to keep his sexuality a secret from his father was beyond me. It was bound to get out and it would probably not be to his advantage. I couldn’t imagine a jury being particularly sympat
hetic towards the host of a drug-fueled orgy that had disturbed the neighbors at three o’clock in the morning.

  Quentin had been right. If it went to trial, Ken was almost sure to be convicted of possession, and I wasn’t at all certain that finding Daniel Jubowski would make any difference even if I could prove he was lying about the dealing.

  “Did the police arrest anyone else?” I asked.

  “They arrested us all, but the others were never charged. Only me, because they found the drugs in my drawer. Even then, the case probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere as I claimed I had no knowledge and the cops took the view that any one of us could have placed them there and they wouldn’t be able to prove which one. It was only when that bastard Daniel told them it was definitely mine and I’d agreed to sell him some that they decided to proceed.”

  “And had you agreed to sell him some?” I asked.

  “No. I swear to you, I didn’t.”

  “So why did he say that?” I asked.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Perhaps Daniel’s statement would give me some clue.

  “Where’s your copy of the Crown case bundle?” I asked. “I’ll need to go through everything.”

  He stood up and collected a stapled stack of papers that had been lying on the kitchen counter and tossed it onto the table in front of me.

  “It’s all in there,” he said. “But half of it’s a load of rubbish.”

  I skimmed through the pages. There were certified copies of statements from the arresting officers, the search team, the custody sergeant, and the drug-testing laboratories, together with the damning one from Daniel Jubowski. There were also typed transcripts of two police interviews with Ken but no statements or interview records for any of the other men arrested at the same time.

  “Do you have the names of all the men who were here that night?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Ken said. “Other than Daniel, there were a couple of Johns and a Mike among them, but I’ve no idea of their surnames. They didn’t sign a visitors’ book or wear badges. And they were all so high on Tina that half of them didn’t know who they were anyway.”

  “Did you also do some?” I asked, but I reckoned his use of the slang name Tina for crystal meth had already given me the answer.