Banker

by Dick Francis

  A small boy was out there with his father, flying a kite, and I stopped to watch.

  ‘That’s fun,’ I said.

  The boy took no notice but the father said, ‘There’s no satisfying the little bleeder. I give him this and he says he wants roller skates.’

  The kite was a brilliant phosphorescent Chinese dragon with butterfly wings and a big frilly tail, soaring and circling like a joyful tethered spirit in the Christmas sky.

  ‘Will you sell it to me?’ I asked. ‘Buy the roller skates instead?’ I explained the problem, the need for an instant present.

  Parent and child consulted and the deal was done. I wound up the string carefully and bore the trophy home, wondering what on earth the sober pharmacist would think of such a thing: but when she unwrapped it from gold paper (cadged from Judith for the purpose) she pronounced herself enchanted, and back we all went onto the common to watch her fly it.

  The whole day was happy. I hadn’t had so good a Christmas since I was a child. I told them so, and kissed Judith un-inhibitedly under some mistletoe, which Gordon didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘You were born sunny,’ Judith said, briefly stroking my cheek, and Gordon, nodding, said, ‘A man without sorrows, unacquainted with grief.’

  ‘Grief and sorrow come with time,’ Pen said, but not as if she meant it imminently. ‘They come to us all.’

  On the morning after Christmas Day I drove Judith across London to Hampstead to put flowers on her mother’s grave.

  ‘I know you’ll think me silly, but I always go. She died on Boxing Day when I was twelve. It’s the only way I have of remembering her… of feeling I had a mother at all. I usually go by myself. Gordon thinks I’m sentimental and doesn’t like coming.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with sentiment,’ I said.

  Hampstead was where I lived in the upstairs half of a friend’s house. I wasn’t sure whether or not Judith knew it, and said nothing until she’d delivered the pink chrysanthemums to the square marble tablet let in flush with the grass and communed for a while with the memories floating there.

  It was as we walked slowly back toward the iron gates that I neutrally said, ‘My flat’s only half a mile from here. This part of London is home ground.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Mm.’

  After a few steps she said, ‘I knew you lived somewhere here. If you remember, you wouldn’t let us drive you all the way home from Ascot. You said Hampstead was too far.’

  ‘So it was.’

  ‘Not for Sir Galahad that starry night.’

  We reached the gates and paused for her to look back. I was infinitely conscious of her nearness and of my own stifled desire; and she looked abruptly into my eyes and said, ‘Gordon knows you live here, also.’

  ‘And does he know how I feel?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. He hasn’t said.’

  I wanted very much to go that last half mile: that short distance on wheels, that far journey in commitment. My body tingled… rippled… from hunger, and I found myself physically clenching my back teeth.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she said.

  ‘For God’s sake… you know damn well what I’m thinking… and we’re going back to Clapham right this minute.’

  She sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose we must.’

  ‘What do you mean… you suppose?’

  ‘Well, I…’ she paused. ‘I mean, yes we must. I’m sorry… it was just that… for a moment… I was tempted.’

  ‘As at Ascot?’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘As at Ascot.’

  ‘Only here and now,’ I said, ‘we have the place and the time and the opportunity to do something about it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what we’re going to do… is… nothing.’ It came out as half a question, half a statement: wholly an impossibility.

  ‘Why do we care?’ she said explosively. ‘Why don’t we just get into your bed and have a happy time? Why is the whole thing so tangled up with bloody concepts like honour?’

  We walked down the road to where I’d parked the car and I drove southwards with careful observance at every red light; stop signals making round eyes at me all the way to Clapham.

  ‘I’d have liked it,’ Judith said as we pulled up outside her house.

  ‘So would I.’

  We went indoors in a sort of deprived companionship, and I realised only when I saw Gordon’s smiling unsuspicious face that I couldn’t have returned there if it had been in any other way.

  It was at lunch that day, when Pen had again resurfaced from her stint among the pills that I told them about my visit to Calder. Pen, predictably, was acutely interested and said she’d dearly like to know what was in the decoction in the refrigerator.

  ‘What’s a decoction?’ Judith asked.

  ‘A preparation boiled with water. If you dissolve things in alcohol, that’s a tincture.’

  ‘One lives and bloody well learns!’

  Pen laughed. ‘How about carminative, anodyne and vermifuge… effects of drugs. They simply roll off the tongue with grandeur.’

  ‘And what do they mean?’ Gordon asked.

  ‘Getting rid of gas, getting rid of pain, getting rid of worms.’

  Gordon too was laughing. ‘Have some anodyne tincture of grape.’ He poured wine into our glasses. ‘Do you honestly believe, Tim, that Calder cures horses by touch?’

  ‘I’m sure he believes it.’ I reflected. ‘I don’t know if he will let anyone watch. And if he did, what would one see? I don’t suppose with a horse it’s a case of “take up your bed and walk.”’

  Judith said in surprise, ‘You sound as if you’d like it to be true. You, that Gordon and Harry have trained to doubt!’

  ‘Calder’s impressive,’ I admitted. ‘So is his place. So are the fees he charges. He wouldn’t be able to set his prices so high if he didn’t get real results.’

  ‘Do the herbs come extra?’ Pen said.

  ‘I didn’t ask.’

  ‘Would you expect them to?’ Gordon said.

  ‘Well…’ Pen considered. ‘Some of those that Tim mentioned are fairly exotic. Golden seal – that’s hydrastis – said in the past to cure practically anything you can mention, but mostly used nowadays in tiny amounts in eye-drops. Has to be imported from America. And fo-ti-tieng – which is Hydrocotyle asiatica minor, also called the source of the elixir of long life – that only grows as far as I know in the tropical jungles of the far east. I mean, I would have thought that giving things like that to horses would be wildly expensive.’

  If I’d been impressed with Calder I was probably more so with Pen. ‘I didn’t know pharmacists were so clued up on herbs,’ I said.

  ‘I was just interested so I learned their properties,’ she exclaimed. ‘The age-old remedies are hardly even hinted at on the official pharmacy courses, though considering digitalis and penicillin one can’t exactly see why. A lot of chemists shops don’t sell non-prescription herbal remedies, but I do, and honestly for a stack of people they seem to work.’

  ‘And do you advocate garlic poultices for the feet of babies with whooping-cough?’ Gordon asked.

  Pen didn’t. There was more laughter. If one believed in Calder, Judith said firmly, one believed in him, garlic poultices and all.

  The four of us spent a comfortable afternoon and evening together, and when Judith and Gordon went to bed I walked along with Pen to her house, where she’d been staying each night, filling my lungs with the fresh air off the common.

  ‘You’re going home tomorrow, aren’t you?’ she said, fishing out her keys.

  I nodded. ‘In the morning.’

  ‘It’s been great fun.’ She found the keys and fitted one in the lock. ‘Would you like to come in?’

  ‘No… I’ll just walk for a bit.’

  She opened the door and paused there. ‘Thank you for the kite… it was brilliant. And goodbye for this time, though I guess if Judith can stand it I’ll be seeing you again.’

 
‘Stand what?’ I asked.

  She kissed me on the cheek. ‘Goodnight,’ she said. ‘And believe it or not, the herb known as passion flower is good for insomnia.’

  Her grin shone out like the Cheshire Cat’s as she stepped inside her, house and closed the door, and I stood hopelessly on her pathway wanting to call her back.

  The Second Year

  FEBRUARY

  Ian Pargetter was murdered at about one in the morning on February 1st.

  I learned about his death from Calder when I telephoned that evening on impulse to thank him belatedly for the lunch party, invite him for a reciprocal dinner in London and hear whether or not he had enjoyed his American tour.

  ‘Who?’ he said vaguely when I announced myself. ‘Who? Oh… Tim… Look, I can’t talk now, I’m simply distracted, a friend of mine’s been killed and I can’t think of anything else.’

  I’m so sorry,’ I said inadequately.

  ‘Yes… Ian Pargetter… but I don’t suppose you know…’

  This time I remembered at once. The vet; big, reliable, sandy moustache.

  ‘I met him,’ I said, ‘in your house.’

  ‘Did you? Oh yes. I’m so upset I can’t concentrate. Look, Tim, ring some other time, will you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘It’s not just that he’s been a friend for years,’ he said, ‘But I don’t know… I really don’t know how my business will fare without him. He sent so many horses my way… such a good friend.… I’m totally distraught.… Look, ring me another time.… Tim, so sorry.’ He put his receiver down with the rattle of a shaking hand.

  I thought at the time that he meant Ian Pargetter had been killed in some sort of accident, and it was only the next day when my eye was caught by a paragraph in a newspaper that I realised the difference.

  Ian Pargetter, well known, much respected Newmarket veterinary surgeon, was yesterday morning found dead in his home. Police suspect foul play. They state that Pargetter suffered head injuries and that certain supplies of drugs appear to be missing. Pargetter’s body was discovered by Mrs Jane Halson, a daily cleaner. The vet is survived by his wife and three young daughters, all of whom were away from home at the time of the attack. Mrs Pargetter was reported last night to be very distressed and under sedation.

  A lot of succinct bad news, I thought, for a lot of sad bereft people. He was the first person I’d known who’d been murdered, and in spite of our very brief meeting I found his death most disturbing: and if I felt so unsettled about a near-stranger, how, I wondered, did anyone ever recover from the murder of someone one knew well and loved. How did one deal with the anger? Come to terms with the urge to revenge?

  I’d of course read reports of husbands and wives who pronounced themselves ‘not bitter’ over the slaughter of a spouse, and I’d never understood it. I felt furious on Ian Pargetter’s behalf that anyone should have had the arrogance to wipe him out.

  Because of Ascot and Sandcastle my long-dormant interest in racecourses seemed thoroughly to have reawakened, and on three or four Saturday afternoons that winter I’d trecked to Kempton or Sandown or Newbury to watch the jumpers. Ursula Young had become a familiar face, and it was from this brisk well-informed lady bloodstock agent that I learnt most about Ian Pargetter and his death.

  ‘Drink?’ I suggested at Kempton, pulling up my coat collar against a bitter wind.

  She looked at her watch (I’d never seen her do anything without checking the time) and agreed on a quick one. Whisky-mac for her, coffee for me, as at Doncaster.

  ‘Now tell me,’ she said, hugging her glass and yelling in my ear over the general din of a bar packed with other cold customers seeking inner warmth, ‘when you asked all those questions about stallion shares, was it for Sandcastle?’

  I smiled without actually answering, shielding my coffee inadequately from adjacent nudging elbows.

  ‘Thought so,’ she said. ‘Look – there’s a table. Grab it.’

  We sat down in a corner with the racket going on over our heads and the closed-circuit television playing re-runs of the last race fortissimo. Ursula bent her head towards mine. ‘A wow-sized coup for Oliver Knowles.’

  ‘You approve?’ I asked.

  She nodded. ‘He’ll be among the greats in one throw. Smart move. Clever man.’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Yes. Meet him often at the sales. He had a snooty wife who left him for some Canadian millionaire or other, and maybe that’s why he’s aiming for the big-time; just to show her.’ She smiled fiendishly. ‘She was a real pain and I hope he makes it.’

  She drank half her whisky and I said it was a shame about Ian Pargetter, and that I’d met him once at Calder’s house.

  She grimaced with a stronger echo of the anger I had myself felt. ‘He’d been out all evening saving the life of a classic-class colt with colic. It’s so beastly. He went home well after midnight, and they reckon whoever killed him was already in the house stealing whatever he could lay his hands on. Ian’s wife and family were away visiting her mother, you see, and the police think the killer thought the house would be empty for the night.’ She swallowed. ‘He was hit on the back of the head with a brass lamp off one of the tables in the sitting room. Just casual. Unpremeditated. Just… stupid.’She looked moved, as I guessed everyone must have been who had known him. ‘Such a waste. He was a really nice man, a good vet, everyone liked him. And all for practically nothing.… The police found a lot of silver and jewellery lying on a blanket ready to be carried away, but they think the thief just panicked and left it when Ian came home… all that anyone can think of that’s missing is his case of instruments and a few drugs that he’d had with him that evening… nothing worth killing for… not even for an addict. Nothing in it like that.’ She fell silent and looked down into her nearly empty glass, and I offered her a refill.

  ‘No, thanks all the same, one’s enough. I feel pretty maudlin as it is. I liked Ian. He was a good sort. I’d like to throttle the little beast who killed him.’

  ‘I think Calder Jackson feels much as you do,’ I said.

  She glanced up, her good-looking fifty-ish face full of genuine concern. ‘Calder will miss Ian terribly. There aren’t that number of vets around who’d not only put up with a faith-healer on their doorstep but actually treat him as a colleague. Ian had no professional jealousy. Very rare. Very good man. Makes it all the worse.’

  We went out again into the raw air and I lost five pounds on the afternoon, which would have sent Lorna Shipton swooning to Uncle Freddie, if she’d known.

  Two weeks later with Oliver Knowles’ warm approval I paid another visit to his farm in Hertfordshire, and although it was again a Sunday and still winter, the atmosphere of the place had fundamentally changed. Where there had been quiet sleepy near-hibernation there was now a wakeful bustle and eagerness, where a scattering of dams and foals across the paddocks, now a crowd of mares moving alone and slowly with big bellies.

  The crop had come to the harvest. Life was ripening into the daylight, and into the darkness the new seed would be sown.

  I had not been truly a country child (ten acres of wooded hill in Surrey) and to me the birth of animals still seemed a wonder and joy: to Oliver Knowles, he said, it meant constant worry and profit and loss. His grasp of essentials still rang out strong and clear, but there were lines on his forehead from the details.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said frankly, walking me into the first of the big yards, ‘that the one thing I hadn’t mentally prepared myself for was the value of the foals now being born here. I mean…’ he gestured around at the patient heads looking over the rows of half-doors, ‘… these mares have been to the top stallions. They’re carrying fabulous blood-lines. They’re history.’ His awe could be felt. ‘I didn’t realise, you know, what anxiety they would bring me. We’ve always done our best for the foals, of course we have, but if one died it wasn’t a tragedy, but with this lot….’ He smiled ruefully. ‘It’s not enough just owni
ng Sandcastle. I have to make sure that our reputation for handling top broodmares is good and sound.’

  We walked along beside one row of boxes with him telling me in detail the breeding of each mare we came to and of the foal she carried, and even to my ignorant ears it sounded as if every Derby and Oaks winner for the past half century had had a hand in the coming generation.

  ‘I had no trouble selling Sandcastle’s nominations,’ he said. ‘Not even at forty thousand pounds a throw. I could even choose, to some extent, which mares to accept. It’s been utterly amazing to be able to turn away mares that I considered wouldn’t do him justice.’

  ‘Is there a temptation,’ I asked mildly, ‘to sell more than forty places? To… er… accept an extra fee… in untaxed cash… on the quiet?’

  He was more amused than offended. ‘I wouldn’t say it hasn’t been done on every farm that ever existed. But I wouldn’t do it with Sandcastle… or at any rate not this year. He’s still young. And untested, of course. Some stallions won’t look at as many as forty mares… though shy breeders do tend to run in families, and there’s nothing in his pedigree to suggest he’ll be anything but energetic and fertile. I wouldn’t have embarked on all this if there had been any doubts.’

  It seemed that he was trying to reassure himself as much as me; as if the size and responsibility of his undertaking had only just penetrated, and in penetrating, frightened.

  I felt a faint tremor of dismay but stifled it with the reassurance that come hell or high water Sandcastle was worth his buying price and could be sold again even at this late date for not much less. The bank’s money was safe on his hoof.

  It was earlier in the day than my last visit – eleven in the morning – and more lads than before were to be seen mucking out the boxes and carrying feed and water.

  ‘I’ve had to take on extra hands,’ Oliver Knowles said matter-of-factly. ‘Temporarily, for the season.’