Banker

by Dick Francis

  ‘Yes. What for and for how much?’

  ‘Well, he says to put back into training. I suppose it’s possible. Sandcastle’s only five. I suppose he could be got fit to race by August or September, and he might still win next year at six.’

  ‘Good heavens.’

  ‘He’s offering twenty-five thousand pounds.’

  ‘Um,’ I said. ‘Is that good or bad?’

  ‘Realistically, it’s as much as he’s worth.’

  ‘I’ll consult with my seniors here,’ I said. ‘It’s too soon, this minute, to say yes or no.’

  ‘I did tell him that my bankers would have to agree, but he wants an answer fairly soon, because the longer the delay the less time there is for training and racing this season.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, understanding. ‘Where is he? Sandcastle, I mean.’

  ‘Still in Newmarket. But it’s pointless him staying there any longer. They haven’t found any answers. They say they just don’t know what’s wrong with him, and I think they want me to take him away.’

  ‘Well,’ I pondered briefly. ‘You may as well fetch him, I should think.’

  ‘I’ll arrange it,’ he said.

  ‘Before we go any further,’ I said. ‘Are you sure it’s a bona-fide offer and not just some crank?’

  ‘I had a letter from him and I’ve talked to him on the telephone, and to me he sounds genuine,’ Oliver answered. ‘Would you like to meet him?’

  ‘Perhaps, yes.’

  We fixed a provisional date for the following Saturday morning, and almost as an afterthought I asked the potential buyer’s name.

  ‘Smith,’ Oliver said. ‘A Mr Dissdale Smith.’

  I went to Hertfordshire on that Saturday with a whole host of question marks raising their eyebrows in my mind, but it was Dissdale, as it so happened, who had the deeper astonishment.

  He drove up while I was still outside Oliver’s house, still clasping hands in greeting and talking of Ginnie. Dissdale had come without Bettina, and the first thing he said, emerging from his car, was ‘Hello, Tim, what a surprise, didn’t know you knew Oliver Knowles.’

  He walked across, announced himself, shook hands with Oliver, and patted me chubbily on the shoulder. ‘How’s things, then? How are you doing, Tim?’

  Fine,’ I said mildly.

  Oliver looked from one of us to the other. ‘You know each other already?’

  Dissdale said, ‘How do you mean, already?’

  ‘Tim’s my banker,’ Oliver said in puzzlement. ‘It was his bank, Ekaterin’s, which put up the money for Sandcastle.’

  Dissdale stared at me in stunned amazement and looked bereft of speech.

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ Oliver said. ‘Didn’t I mention it?’

  Dissdale blankly shook his head and finally found his voice. ‘You just said your banker was coming.… I never for a moment thought…’

  ‘It doesn’t make much odds,’ Oliver said. ‘If you know each other it may simply save some time. Let’s go indoors. There’s some coffee ready.’ He led the way through his immaculate house to the sitting room-office, where a tray stood on the desk with coffee hot in a pot.

  Oliver himself had had four weeks by then in that house without Ginnie, but to me, on my first visit back, she seemed still most sharply alive. It was I, this time, who kept expecting her to walk into the room; to give me a hug, to say hello with her eyes crinkling with welcome. I felt her presence vividly, to an extent that to start with I listened to Dissdale with only surface attention.

  ‘It might be better to geld him,’ he was saying. ‘There are some good prizes, particularly overseas, for geldings.’

  Oliver’s instinctive response of horror subsided droopingly to defeat.

  ‘It’s too soon,’ I said, ‘to talk of that.’

  ‘Tim, face facts,’ Dissdale said expansively. ‘At this moment in time that horse is a walking bomb. I’m making an offer for him because I’m a bit of a gambler, you know that, and I’ve a soft spot for him, whatever his faults, because of him winning so much for me that day the year before last, when we were all in my box at Ascot. You remember that, don’t you?’

  ‘I do indeed.’

  ‘He saved my life, Sandcastle did.’

  ‘It was partly because of that day,’ I said, nodding, ‘That Ekaterin’s lent the money for him. When the request came in from Oliver, it was because Henry Shipton – our chairman, if you remember – and Gordon and I had all seen the horse in action that we seriously considered the proposition.’

  Dissdale nodded his comprehension. ‘A great surprise, though,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry it’s you and Gordon. Sorry it’s your bank, I mean, that’s been hit so hard. I read about the deformed foals in the papers, of course, and that’s what gave me the idea of buying Sandcastle in the first place, but it didn’t say which bank.…’

  I wondered fleetingly if Alec could claim that omission as a virtue along with everything else.

  Oliver offered Dissdale more coffee which he accepted with cream and sugar, drinking almost absentmindedly while he worked through the possible alterations he would need in approach now he’d found he was dealing with semi-friends.

  Having had time myself over several days to do it, I could guess at the speed he was needing for reassessment.

  ‘Dissdale,’ I said neutrally, deciding to disrupt him, ‘Did the idea of buying Sandcastle come from your profitable caper with Indian Silk?’

  His rounded features fell again into shock. ‘How… er… did you know about that?’

  I said vaguely, ‘Heard it on the racecourse, I suppose. But didn’t you buy Indian Silk for a pittance because he seemed to be dying, and then sent him to Calder?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘And didn’t Calder cure him? And then you sold him again, but well this time, no doubt needing the money, as don’t we all, since when Indian Silk’s won the Cheltenham Gold Cup? Isn’t that right?’

  Dissdale raised a plump hand palm upwards in a gesture of mock defeat. ‘Don’t know where you heard it, but yes, there’s no secret, that’s what happened.’

  ‘Mm.’ I smiled at him benignly. ‘Calder said on television, didn’t he, that buying Indian Silk was his idea originally, so I wondered… I’m wondering if this is his idea too. I mean, did he by any chance suggest a repeat of the gamble that came off so happily last time?’

  Dissdale looked at me doubtfully.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong in it,’ I said. ‘Is it Calder’s idea?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said, deciding to confide. ‘But it’s my money, of course.’

  ‘And, um, if you do buy Sandcastle, will you send him too along to Calder, like Indian Silk?’

  Dissdale seemed not to know whether to answer or not, but appearing to be reassured by my friendly interest said finally, ‘Calder said he could give him a quick pepping-up to get him fit quickly for racing, yes.’

  Oliver, having listened restlessly up to this point, said, ‘Calder Jackson can’t do anything for Sandcastle that I can’t.’

  Both Dissdale and I looked at Oliver in the same way, hearing the orthodox view ringing out with conviction and knowing that it was very likely untrue.

  ‘I’ve been thinking these past few days,’ I said to Dissdale, ‘First about Indian Silk. Didn’t you tell Fred Barnet, when you offered him a rock-bottom price, that all you were doing was providing a dying horse with a nice quiet end in some gentle field?’

  ‘Well, Tim,’ he said knowingly. ‘You know how it is. You buy for the best price you can. Fred Barnet, I know he goes round grousing that I cheated him, but I didn’t, he could have sent his horse to Calder the same as I did.’

  I nodded. ‘So now, be honest, Dissdale, are you planning again to buy for the best price you can? I mean, does twenty-five thousand pounds for Sandcastle represent the same sort of bargain?’

  ‘Tim,’ Dissdale said, half affronted, half in sorrow, ‘What a naughty suspicious mind. That’s not friendly, not at all.’


  I smiled. ‘I don’t think I’d be wise, though, do you, to recommend to my board of directors that we should accept your offer without thinking it over very carefully?’

  For the first time there was a shade of dismay in the chubby face. ‘Tim, it’s a fair offer, anyone will tell you.’

  ‘I think my board may invite other bids,’ I said. ‘If Sandcastle is to be sold, we must recoup the most we can.’

  The dismay faded: man-of-the-world returned. ‘That’s fair,’ he said. ‘As long as you’ll come back to me, if anyone tops me.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘An auction, by telephone. When we’re ready, I’ll let you know.’

  With a touch of anxiety he said, ‘Don’t wait too long. Time’s money, you know.’

  ‘I’ll put your offer to the board tomorrow.’

  He made a show of bluff contentment, but the anxiety was still there underneath. Oliver took the empty coffee cup which Dissdale still held and asked if he would like to see the horse he wanted to buy.

  ‘But isn’t he in Newmarket?’ Dissdale said, again looking disconcerted.

  ‘No, he’s here. Came back yesterday.’

  ‘Oh. Then yes, of course, yes, I’d like to see him.’

  He’s out of his depth, I thought abruptly: for some reason Dissdale is very very unsettled.

  We went on the old familiar walk through the yards, with Oliver explaining the lay-out to the new visitor. To me there was now a visible thinning out of numbers, and Oliver, with hardly a quiver in his voice, said that he was sending the mares home with their foals in an orderly progression as usual, with in consequence lower feed bills, fewer lads to pay wages to, smaller expenses all round: he would play fair with the bank, he said, matter-of-factly, making sure to charge what he could and also to conserve what he could towards his debt. Dissdale gave him a glance of amused incredulity as if such a sense of honour belonged to a bygone age, and we came in the end to the stallion yard, where the four heads appeared in curiosity.

  The stay in Newmarket hadn’t done Sandcastle much good, I thought. He looked tired and dull, barely arching his neck to lift his nose over the half-door, and it was he, of the four, who turned away first and retreated into the gloom of his box.

  ‘Is that Sandcastle?’ Dissdale said, sounding disappointed. ‘I expected something more, somehow.’

  ‘He’s had a taxing three weeks,’ Oliver said. ‘All he needs is some good food and fresh air.’

  ‘And Calder’s touch,’ Dissdale said with conviction. ‘That magic touch most of all.’

  When Dissdale had driven away Oliver asked me what I thought, and I said, ‘If Dissdale’s offering twenty-five thousand he’s certainly reckoning to make much more than that. He’s right, he is a gambler, and I’ll bet he has some scheme in mind. What we need to do is guess what the scheme is, and decide what we’ll do on that basis, such as doubling or trebling the ante.’

  Oliver was perplexed. ‘How can we possibly guess?’

  ‘Hm,’ I said. ‘Did you know about Indian Silk?’

  ‘Not before today.’

  ‘Well, suppose Dissdale acts to a pattern, which people so often do. He told Fred Barnet he was putting Indian Silk out to grass, which was diametrically untrue; he intended to send him to Calder and with luck put him back in training. He told you he was planning to put Sandcastle back into training, so suppose that’s just what he doesn’t plan to do. And he suggested gelding, didn’t he?’

  Oliver nodded.

  ‘Then I’d expect gelding to be furthest from his mind,’ I said. ‘He just wants us to believe that’s his intention.’ I reflected ‘Do you know what I might do if I wanted to have a real gamble with Sandcastle?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It sounds pretty crazy,’ I said. ‘But with Calder’s reputation it might just work.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Oliver said in some bewilderment. ‘What gamble?’

  ‘Suppose,’ I said, ‘that you could buy for a pittance a stallion whose perfect foals would be likely to win races.’

  ‘But no one would risk…’

  ‘Suppose,’ I interrupted. ‘There was nearly a fifty per cent chance, going on this year’s figures, that you’d get a perfect foal. Suppose Dissdale offered Sandcastle as a sire at say a thousand pounds, the fee only payable if the foal was born perfect and lived a month.’

  Oliver simply stared.

  ‘Say Sandcastle’s perfect progeny do win, as indeed they should. There are fourteen of them so far this year, don’t forget. Say that in the passage of time his good foals proved to be worth the fifty per cent risk. Say Sandcastle stands in Calder’s yard, with Calder’s skill on the line. Isn’t there a chance that over the years Dissdale’s twenty-five thousand pound investment would provide a nice steady return for them both?’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ he said weakly.

  ‘No, not impossible. A gamble.’ I paused. ‘You wouldn’t get people sending the top mares, of course, but you might get enough dreamers among the breeders who’d chance it.’

  ‘Tim…’

  ‘Just think of it,’ I said. ‘A perfect foal by Sandcastle for peanuts. And if you got a malformed foal, well, some years your mare might slip or be barren anyway.’

  He looked at his feet for a while, and then into the middle distance, and then he said, ‘Come with me. I’ve something to show you. Something you’d better know.’

  He set off towards the Watcherleys’, and would say nothing more on the way. I walked beside him down the familiar paths and thought about Ginnie because I couldn’t help it, and we arrived in the next-door yard that was now of a neatness to be compared with all the others.

  ‘Over here,’ Oliver said, going across to one of the boxes. ‘Look at that.’

  I looked where directed: at a mare with a colt foal suckling, not unexpected in that place.

  ‘He was born three days ago,’ Oliver said. ‘I do so wish Ginnie had seen him.’

  ‘Why that one, especially?’

  ‘The mare is one of my own,’ he said. ‘And that foal is Sandcastle’s.’

  It was my turn to stare. I looked from Oliver to the foal and back again. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him,’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But…’

  Oliver smiled twistedly. ‘I was going to breed her to Diarist. She was along here at the Watcherleys’ because the foal she had then was always ailing, but she herself was all right. I was along here looking at her one day when she’d been in season a while, and on impulse I led her along to the breeding pen and told Nigel to fetch Sandcastle, and we mated them there and then. That foal’s the result.’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘He’ll be sold, of course, with everything else. I wish I could have kept him, but there it is.’

  ‘He should be worth quite a bit,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Oliver said. ‘And that’s the flaw in your gamble. It’s not just the racing potential that raises prices at auction, it’s the chance of breeding. And no one could be sure, breeding from Sandcastle’s stock, that the genetic trouble wouldn’t crop up for eveimore. It’s not on, I’m afraid. No serious breeder would send him mares, however great the bargain.’

  We stood for a while in silence.

  ‘It was a good idea,’ I said, ‘while it lasted.’

  ‘My dear Tim… we’re clutching at straws.’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked at his calm strong face; the captain whose ship was sinking. ‘I’d try anything, you know, to save you,’ I said.

  ‘And to save the bank’s money?’

  ‘That too.’

  He smiled faintly. ‘I wish you could, but time’s running out.’

  The date for bringing in the receivers had been set, the insurance company had finally ducked, the lawyers were closing in and the respite I’d gained for him was trickling away with no tender plant of hope growing in the ruins.

  We walked back towards the house, Oliver patting the mares as usual as they came to the
fences.

  ‘I suppose this may all be here next year,’ he said, ‘looking much the same. Someone will buy it… it’s just I who’ll be gone.’

  He lifted his head, looking away over his white painted rails to the long line of the roofs of his yards. The enormity of the loss of his life’s work settled like a weight on his shoulders and there was a haggard set to his jaw.

  ‘I try not to mind,’ he said levelly. ‘But I don’t quite know how to bear it.’

  When I reached home that evening my telephone was ringing. I went across the sitting room expecting it to stop the moment I reached it, but the summons continued, and on the other end was Judith.

  ‘I just came in,’ I said.

  ‘We knew you were out. We’ve tried once or twice.’

  I went to see Oliver.’

  ‘The poor, poor man.’ Judith had been very distressed over Ginnie and still felt that Oliver needed more sympathy because of his daughter than because of his bankruptcy, which I wasn’t sure was any longer the case. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘Pen asked me to call you as she’s tied up in her shop all day and you were out when she tried… She says she’s had the reply from America about the shampoo and are you still interested?’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’

  ‘Then… if you’re not doinganything else… Gordon and I wondered if you’d care to come here for the day tomorrow, and Pen will bring the letter to show you.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said fervently, and she laughed.

  ‘Good, then. See you.’

  I was at Clapham with alacrity before noon, and Pen, over coffee, produced the letter from the drug company.

  ‘I sent them a sample of what you gave me in that little glass jar,’ she said. ‘And, as you asked, I had some of the rest of it analysed here, but honestly, Tim, don’t hope too much from it for finding out who killed Ginnie, it’s just shampoo, as it says.’

  I took the official-looking letter which was of two pages clipped together, with impressive headings.

  Dear Madam,

  We have received the enquiry from your pharmacy and also the sample you sent us, and we now reply with this report, which is a copy of that which we recently sent to the Hertfordshire police force on the same subject.