Even Money

by Dick Francis

  At Stratford on this particular wet Wednesday in June, there were only four ring bookmakers, so the sample included all of them, but it was still only four. Only two of them needed to offer higher prices than was “true” for the starting price to be recorded as “too high.”

  So Luca could not have affected the price on his own.

  “Was it Larry’s idea or yours?” I asked him.

  “What do you mean?” he said, all innocent.

  “It needed two of you,” I said.

  “You were there too,” he said with a degree of accusation in his voice.

  It was true. I was there, and it was my name on the board, or it was my surname at least. So I would carry the can, if a can indeed had to be carried. But I now realized how much I had subconsciously delegated to Luca and his computer.

  “So was it Larry’s idea?” I asked, knowing full well that Luca had brains far in excess of Larry Porter and that it really was bound to have been Luca’s idea. But I wanted him to give me the option of not disposing with his services, to give him the chance to lie to me so that I could try to fool myself that maybe he wouldn’t try it again the next time I wasn’t there.

  Was that why he had been so keen for me to stay at home and leave things to him and Betsy? Was that really why Betsy was in such a strop and had decided to absent herself from the scene of the crime?

  I could almost hear the cogs whirling in his brain. He knew exactly what I had asked him and why. It wasn’t that I truly wanted to know whose idea and plan it had been. What I was really asking him was whether he wanted to keep his job.

  If he started out in business on his own, he would have to purchase a number at a pitch auction in the future, which would require considerable outlay to obtain a decent spot in the ring. And he would most likely end up with a high number and hence a lowly choice of position. Those bookies with the best pitches took the most money, and, in a recession, it was no time to move further down the pack.

  From my own point of view, I had come to rely very heavily on Luca. His expertise with our computer and Internet gambling had been instrumental in keeping the name of Teddy Talbot in the higher echelons of bookmaking circles. We had been remarkably profitable over the last few years, and I was not naïve enough to think that it came solely down to me. It was all to do with the teamwork that Luca and I had perfected. Finding a new bookmaker’s assistant wouldn’t be easy, perhaps impossible to find one as good as Luca.

  The trouble was, he knew it.

  But, that said, I couldn’t keep him on if I didn’t trust him not to bring my business down, either in standing or in monetary terms. If my grandfather had taught me one thing, it was that reputation was important. Most bookmakers are not held in great respect by the majority on the racetrack. Punters tend to think they are being forever robbed blind by the bookies. But I considered that I had always acted fairly and honorably towards the betting public, and also towards my fellow bookmakers, something that had not gone unnoticed by my regular customers. I wasn’t about to see all that change, and Luca had to make his mind up if he could play by my rules. I might be sure that I needed him, but he, in turn, was now deciding if he needed me.

  “How about offering me a proper partnership?” he said with a smile.

  I took that as a positive sign.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Don’t take too long,” he said seriously, the smile having vanished.

  Was he threatening me, I wondered, or simply warning me that he’d had offers from elsewhere?

  Being a bookmaker’s assistant was, for some, a self-employed business in itself. In our case, Luca was my full-time employee, but he could do equally well, and maybe better, offering his expert services freelance on a daily basis to the highest bidder. Over the past seven years, since my grandfather had died and I had taken on Luca, I had often engaged a professional bookmaker’s assistant for various days here and there, either when one of us was ill or away on holiday or, in my case, tending to the needs of my sick wife. I tried to use the same man each time, but there were half a dozen or so who were all highly capable and in regular demand.

  Maybe Luca was considering joining their ranks, or perhaps he’d had an offer from another bookmaker to become a partner.

  I looked over at Larry Porter.

  Surely not him, I thought. I had always considered that I was a better businessman than Larry, but maybe he thought the same about me.

  “Hi, Larry,” I called across the deserted, rain-swept six feet between us. “What price will you give me on the favorite in the next?”

  “Piss off,” he shouted back, “you self-righteous git.”

  Charming, I thought. It might have been funny if it wasn’t for the fact that he and Luca had put us all in jeopardy by so blatantly changing the prices.

  Larry clearly wasn’t enjoying his afternoon at the races. And he wasn’t the only one.

  The day progressed with, if anything, a deterioration in the weather. The individual thunderstorms had coalesced into a single expanse of dark, menacing cloud stretching right across the sky, and the rain fell continuously straight downwards in the still air while the humidity rose to an oppressive hundred percent.

  No doubt the gardeners of middle England were delighted by the downpour, but the punters at Stratford plainly were not. We took just two bets on the big race of the day, if that was an appropriate way of describing it.

  The three-mile steeplechase on rock-hard going had attracted a paltry field of just three, in pursuit of a prize put up by a well-known Midlands building company. It was not the lovely summer’s day that the firm’s directors would have hoped for to entertain their clients when they had handed over their sponsorship check to the racetrack. Two small groups of their guests stood around under company-logo-printed umbrellas, watching the horses in the parade ring and trying unsuccessfully to look happy. Then they scuttled off back to their private box in the grandstand to dry off and to sip another glass of bubbly.

  In the betting ring there was noticeably more activity than for the first couple of races, though that was due not to an increase in the number of punters braving the conditions but to the fact that several “suits” from the big outfits had turned up. They stood around getting wet, scrutinizing the prices on our boards more closely than a stamp collector studying a Penny Black.

  Nothing untoward occurred, of course, but I caught a brief glimpse of Luca and Larry Porter having a secret smile at each other. Just how long, I thought, would it be before they couldn’t resist trying it again?

  The race itself could hardly be described as exciting. The short-priced favorite, the only decent horse of the three, jumped off in front at the start and led the other two around and around the course by an ever-increasing margin, winning by a distance, almost at the trot. One of the remaining two slipped over at the last fence to leave the other to finish second, but so far behind the winner that the stands had emptied long before.

  To add insult to injury, the stewards decided to abandon the rest of the day’s racing, citing the hazardous nature of the course. It seemed that the heavy rain, coming down as it had on the rock-hard ground, was causing the top surface of the grass to skid off the underlying dry, compacted soil, making the going treacherous.

  Personally, I thought the stewards had done everyone a favor, and we gratefully packed up our stuff and made our way to the parking lots.

  “Are you still OK for Leicester tomorrow evening without me?” I asked Luca.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Looking forward to it.” He smiled at me. I stopped pulling the trolley. “OK, OK,” he said. “I know. No funny business. I promise.”

  “Let’s talk at the weekend,” I said.

  “Fine,” he replied. “I want to talk things through with Betsy anyway.”

  Betsy had appeared from the bar and had helped us to pack away the last few things. I was never quite sure what was going on in her head, and that day she had been more obtuse than ever.
She had said hardly a word to me since a brief “Hello” when she and Luca arrived.

  We loaded the equipment in the trunk of his car while Betsy simply sat inside it in the passenger seat. She didn’t say good-bye to me.

  “Have a good day tomorrow,” said Luca. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I hope it all goes well.”

  Sophie was due to have an assessment with a consultant psychiatrist from a different hospital. It was the final hurdle for her pass in order to be able to come home. Just as there needed to be agreement between two psychiatrists for her to be sectioned in the first place, there was also a need for such agreement for her to be “released back into the community,” as they put it.

  The stress of an assessment was, paradoxically, bad for her condition, so I always tried to be on hand to provide her with reassurance and comfort between the sessions.

  I wasn’t at all sure whether it was a good idea to leave Luca and Betsy to go to Leicester together without me, and without the services of one of the freelance bookmaker’s assistants. It was an evening meeting with the first race at twenty to seven. I supposed I might have been able to get there after spending the day at the hospital. Hemel Hempstead to Leicester was just a quick trip up the M1 highway.

  “Betsy and I will be fine,” Luca said, clearly reading the dilemma in my face. “I promised, didn’t I?”

  I must have still looked doubtful.

  “Look,” he said. “We will be doing the best for the business in every respect. No point in fouling it all up if you’re thinking of offering me a partnership, is there?” He smiled at me.

  “OK,” I said. “But . . .”

  “Do you trust me or not?” he said, interrupting me.

  “Yes, of course,” I said, hoping it was true.

  “Then leave it,” he said seriously. “I’ll do tomorrow evening with Betsy, on our own. Like you said, we’ll talk at the weekend.”

  He then climbed into the car next to Betsy and drove away, with me standing there watching them and wondering if life could ever be the same again.

  The rain had thankfully eased a little as we had packed up the stuff, but now it began again in earnest, drumming noisily on the roofs of the cars around me.

  I threw my umbrella in the back of my car, jumped in the front and started the engine. I was about to drive away when the passenger door suddenly opened and a man in a blue gabardine mackintosh climbed in beside me.

  “Can you give me a lift?” he asked.

  I looked at him in amazement, but he just stared forwards through the windshield, ignoring me.

  “Where to?” I said finally. “The local police station?”

  “I’d really rather not, if you don’t mind,” said the man.“Couldn’t you just drive for a bit?”

  “And what makes you think I’d want to do that?” I asked him icily.

  He turned towards me. “I thought you might want to talk.”

  My audacious hitchhiker was the fourth stranger from the inquest, my unwanted nocturnal visitor of the previous night, complete with fresh plaster cast on his right arm.

  “OK,” I said. “You talk and I’ll listen.”

  I put the car into gear.

  12

  Well?” I said. “Talk to me.” I drove along the Stratford-to-Warwick road.

  “Why didn’t you call the police?” he said.

  “How do you know I didn’t?” I glanced across at him.

  “I stayed to watch. No one came.”

  “That doesn’t mean I didn’t call them.”

  “I watched you through the window,” he said. “You vacuumed up the mess I left, and no one does that if he’s called the police.”

  I felt uneasy at the thought of him being outside my home, watching me. “How long did you wait?” I asked him.

  “Not long,” he said. “My arm hurt too much.”

  “Serves you right.”

  “You broke my wrist.”

  “Good.”

  We sat in silence for a while.

  “Who the hell are you anyway?” I asked him.

  “Just call me John,” he said.

  “John who?”

  “Just John.”

  “And what do you want?” I asked him again.

  “The microcoder,” he said. “Like I told you last night.”

  “What makes you think that I’ve got it?”

  “Where else would it be?”

  “It could be anywhere,” I said.

  “You have it,” he said with finality.

  “Even if I did have it—and I don’t—what right do you think you have breaking into my house to look for it?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said. “And I didn’t break in. You left a window open. You were just asking to be burgled.”

  “So that’s what you are, is it?” I said. “A burglar.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said.

  I looked across at him. “I’m not the one with a broken wrist.”

  “OK,” he said, “I agree. That wasn’t so clever.”

  Again I drove in silence.

  “Where to, then?” I asked.

  “To wherever the microcoder is.”

  “I told you, I don’t have it.”

  “And I told you, I don’t believe you.” He turned in his seat and looked at me. “For a start, if you didn’t know what I was talking about, then you would surely have telephoned the police last night. And second, we know it was you that retrieved your father’s rucksack from the hotel in Paddington.”

  “What rucksack?” I said, trying to keep my voice as level and calm as possible and wondering, once more, if this John fellow and Shifty-eyes were working together. He had said “we.” Was I, after all, on my way to meet again the man with the twelve-centimeter knife?

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “We’d been looking for his luggage too, you know. And I’d been looking for your father as well, for weeks. Ever since he stole the microcoder.”

  “Who are ‘we’?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. He just turned back and looked out at the road.

  “Why did you murder my father?” I said slowly.

  “I didn’t,” he said, still looking ahead.

  “But you had it done,” I said.

  “No.” He turned again to face me. “That was not me.”

  “Then who was it?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “And you expect me to believe you?” I said. “Perhaps we should go to the police station and you can then explain to them exactly who you are and why you were in my house last night.”

  “I’ll deny it,” he said. “You vacuumed up the evidence, remember?”

  I pulled the Volvo into a rest area and stopped the engine. I turned to him.

  “And what is it you really want?” I asked.

  “The microcoder,” he said flatly. “That’s all.”

  “And what exactly is this bloody microcoder anyway?” I said.

  “An electronic device.”

  “Yes, but what does it do?” I asked.

  He sat silently for a moment or two clearly debating with himself as to how much he should tell me.

  “It writes coded information onto animal-identification tags,” he said.

  “RFIDs,” I said absentmindedly.

  “So you do know what it is,” he said, slapping his knee. “So where the hell is it?”

  Now it was my turn to sit silently debating with myself how much I was going to tell this Just call me John mysterious stranger.

  “Are you some sort of secret agent?” I asked.

  He laughed. “What makes you think that?”

  “You seem pretty secretive,” I said. “And you talk about ‘we’ and ‘us’ as if you were part of an organization.”

  He again stared for a moment through the windshield.

  “Indirectly,” he said. “I work for the Australian Racing Board.”

  “Do they know
you break into people’s houses?”

  “They would deny any knowledge of my existence.”

  “You don’t sound Australian.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “English to the core. Can’t stand the Aussies. Too bloody good at cricket, if you ask me.”

  “So this so-called microcoder is to do with Australian racing?”

  “It’s to do with all racing, everywhere.”

  “But is there much racing in Australia?” I asked. “I’ve heard of the Melbourne Cup, of course, but not much else.”

  “There’s a lot more racing in Australia than that,” he said. “There are six times as many racetracks in Australia than here in Great Britain, and twice as many horses in training. It’s big business.”

  “Do they have licensed bookmakers?” I asked.

  “Yes, plenty of them,” he said. “But all off-track betting is through the TAB, their equivalent of the tote.”

  “Well, you live and learn.”

  “And you must have heard of Phar Lap?” he said. “Most famous racehorse that ever lived.”

  “The name rings a bell.”

  “Well, he was an Australian horse,” John said. “Back in the thirties. He won fourteen group races in a row one year, including the Melbourne Cup.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Yeah, but he was poisoned with arsenic during a visit to the United States. Some said the horse was killed on the orders of the Chicago mob to prevent him winning again and costing them a packet in illegal bets.”

  “Why are bookies always cast as the villains?” I asked.

  “That’s because you are,” he said, smiling at me. “Now, where’s my microcoder?”

  “So it’s yours, is it?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How can I be so sure? And why is it so important?”

  “It just is,” he said. “And I know you have it.”

  “How?”

  “I had a description of the man who collected your father’s luggage from the hotel in Paddington, though I didn’t know it was you, not until I saw you at the inquest.”