Even Money

by Dick Francis

  With the horses in the parade ring, and with precisely six minutes to go before the scheduled start time, I nodded imperceptibly to Larry, who pushed his out-of-sight switch to turn on the phone jammer. At the same time, I nudged Luca, who activated his virus on the racetrack’s Internet server, effectively putting it out of action and isolating the track from the outside world.

  I thought of the thirty juvenile delinquents and hoped that they were all poised to place their bets.

  A man in a white shirt and fawn chinos suddenly appeared in front of me. Bill, I assumed.

  “Grand on number four,” he said, thrusting a wad of banknotes towards me.

  Number four was the second favorite.

  “Grand on number four at three-to-one,” I said loudly over my shoulder.

  “Offer at eleven-to-four,” Luca said equally loudly.

  “OK,” said the man. I gave him the TALBOT AND MANDINI-printed ticket, and the price changed on our board.

  “Give me a monkey on four at threes,” Luca bellowed at Larry Porter.

  “You can have it at five-to-two,” Larry shouted back.

  “OK,” said Luca, who then turned the other way towards Norman Joyner. “Give me a monkey on number four,” he shouted even louder.

  “Fine,” shouted Norman back. “At nine-to-four.”

  Within less than a minute, the price of horse number four was tumbling all over the betting ring and, as a result, the price of Pool House, the favorite, was tending to drift longer.

  The panic from the boys from the big outfits wasn’t as dramatic as it had been at Ascot, but it was fairly impressive nonetheless. They rushed around trying desperately to get their phones to work but without success. I saw one of them rush off to use the pay phone, but he was soon back with a frustrated look on his face.

  But they had all clearly been well briefed after the incident at Ascot. They clearly knew that the price of the hot favorite had, on that occasion, lengthened during the time when the Internet and phones were down. They would also know that when the favorite then won, they all got hit badly because all the bets in the High Street betting shops were paid out on the starting price, and that had been artificially made too high.

  Consequently, the big-firm boys, those with the cash in their pockets, now took it upon themselves, in the absence of orders from their head offices, to back the favorite heavily, to bring its price down again to six-to-four.

  There was almost panic to get their money on with the ring bookies before the start. I took a number of big bets, and, reluctantly, we brought the price of Pool House down from seven-to-four, first to thirteen-to-eight, then to six-to-four and finally to eleven-to-eight, before the off. The horse had actually started at shorter odds than it would have if we had done nothing.

  The race began, and Larry switched off his phone-jamming device while Luca cured the Internet server of his virus.

  “That didn’t bloody work, did it?” said Larry angrily. “Now, if the favorite goes on and wins, I stand to lose a packet.”

  But the favorite didn’t win.

  A complete rank outsider called Cricket Hero beat it by two lengths and was returned at the surprisingly long starting price of a hundred-to-one and without a single cheer from the watching crowd. We hadn’t taken a single bet on the horse, so, from the paying-out point of view, it was a very satisfactory result and went some way to make up for our lack of business in the previous races.

  “Hold the fort a minute,” I said to Luca.

  I went over to watch Cricket Hero being led into the winner’s unsaddling enclosure. There was a distinct lack of enthusiastic applause from those who had turned up to see the horses come in, but there would have been very few amongst them, if any, who would have backed it. The horse’s connections, however, were absolutely delighted and beaming from ear to ear as their horse circled around and around, steaming gently from under its blanket. I looked in the race card to see what they had down as the name of the trainer. Miles Carpenter, it said, from Ireland.

  I leaned on the rail close by to the person I assumed was Mr. Carpenter. He was smiling like the cat that got the cream.

  “Well done, Mr. Carpenter,” I called to him.

  He turned and took a stride towards me. “Thanks,” he said in a thick Irish accent.

  “Nice horse,” I said, nodding at the bay, but the truth was it didn’t look that good. Compared to the other horses, whose well-groomed rumps had shone in the summer sunshine, the winner’s coat had been allowed to grow rather long and, in places, was matted and dull. His tail was a jumble of knots and his hooves were not nicely blackened like most racehorses’ when they run. In fact, the horse looked like an old nag. That’s partly why his price had been so high. No one wants to bet on a horse that doesn’t look good in the parade ring. Generally speaking, horses that don’t look very well don’t run very well either.

  But appearances can be deceptive.

  “Yes,” he replied with a big smile, coming a step closer. “I think he’s going to be a champion.”

  I spoke directly to him, quietly but quite clearly. “Oriental Suite, I assume.”

  The smile instantly disappeared from his face.

  “And you,” I went on, “must be Paddy Murphy.”

  “And who the fuck are you?” he said explosively, coming right up to me and thrusting his face into mine.

  “Just a friend,” I said, backing away and smiling.

  “What do you want?” he snarled.

  “Nothing,” I said. I turned away, leaving him dumbstruck behind me.

  He had already given me what I wanted. Confirmation that Oriental Suite was indeed now called Cricket Hero. Not that I had really needed it.

  I assumed that the real Cricket Hero was dead. Switched with Oriental Suite using the Australian fake RFIDs and then killed for a large insurance payout.

  To be honest, Cricket Hero’s death had not been a great loss to racing. I had looked him up on the Racing Post website. He had run a total of eight times, always in bad company, and had finished last or second to last on every occasion. His official rating had been so low as to be almost off the bottom of the scale. But that would all change now.

  The horse now running as Cricket Hero was actually Oriental Suite, and one thing was absolutely certain. Oriental Suite should never have started any race at odds of a hundred-to-one, let alone a low-quality maiden hurdle at Bangor-on-Dee on a quiet Monday afternoon in July.

  I thought about the two photocopied horse passports I had found in the secret compartment of my father’s rucksack. One of them had been in the name of Oriental Suite. But the other had belonged to a horse called Cricket Hero, and I had been struck by the similarities in the markings and hair whorls of the two horses as recorded on the diagrams.

  And I had been looking out for the name Cricket Hero to appear in race entries ever since.

  You call that getting even?” Larry Porter said loudly to me as I made my way back to our pitch.

  “Keep your voice down, you fool,” I said to him.

  “But it didn’t bloody work, did it?” he said at only slightly lower volume.

  “I can’t make the favorite win every time, now can I?” I said.

  “Bloody good job it didn’t,” he said. “Norman and I took so much money on it in those last minutes we would have been well out of pocket, I can tell you.”

  Norman Joyner stood next to Larry, nodding vigorously.

  “But you aren’t,” I said, smiling. “So what are you worried about? You both ended up in profit on the race, didn’t you?”

  “No thanks to you,” Larry said, still grumbling.

  “I reckon we’d better not try it again,” said Norman.

  “Fine,” I said. That would suit me very well.

  “Those big firms must be laughing all the way to the bank,” he went on.

  “But they lost the money they piled on with us near the off,” I said.

  “Peanuts, mate, peanuts. They will still keep
all the money the mugs put on that favorite in their betting shops.”

  True, I thought. But I knew of one firm that wouldn’t be laughing.

  Tony Bateman (Turf Accountants) Ltd, the High Street betting shop subsidiary of HRF Holdings Ltd, employers of the two bullyboys, with their steel toe caps, would be far from laughing all the way to the bank.

  There were more than fi fty Tony Bateman betting shops in the chain, scattered throughout London and the southeast of England. I had looked up all their addresses on the Internet.

  If all had gone according to plan, at precisely five minutes before the due time of the race, and therefore exactly one minute after we had isolated the racetrack, thirty members of Duggie and Luca’s electronics club, the juvenile delinquents from High Wycombe, had each gone into a different Tony Bateman betting shop and placed a two-hundred-pound bet to win. The bets had not been placed on the hot favorite but on the outsider Cricket Hero, payable at the starting price.

  Even now, I hoped, each of the thirty would be collecting twenty thousand pounds in winnings, which was six hundred thousand pounds in total. And all the bets had been financed by the six thousand pounds’ worth of cash that shifty-eyed Kipper would have found he was short from the blue-plastic-wrapped packages hidden beneath the lining in my father’s black-and-red rucksack.

  The deal with the juvenile delinquents had been easy. Luca and Duggie had handed over two hundred pounds in cash to each of them together with an address of one of the Tony Bateman betting shops. They were given strict instructions. Go to the shop whose address they had been given and make the bet at exactly four twenty-five, two hundred pounds to win on Cricket Hero. If the horse lost, then they were simply to walk away, curse their luck and otherwise keep quiet. If it won, then they were to try to collect the winnings, and a quarter of it would be theirs to keep. Luca and Duggie would take the other three-quarters from them that night. I hoped that all thirty of them had kept to the bargain, even though I was pretty sure that a few might have simply pocketed the two hundred quid and hoped that the horse lost.

  But enough of them would have placed the bets and a single two-hundred-pound bet, even on a hundred-to-one long shot, should not have raised too many suspicions at each separate betting shop. If the head office had managed in time to notice that six thousand pounds had swiftly gone onto such a rank outsider, they would have been powerless to do anything about the starting price. Larry’s mobile phone jammer and Luca’s Internet server virus had seen to that, helped along by Duggie’s little expertise with the telephone landlines.

  “They may not pay out,” Luca said. Bookmakers, particularly the big chains, had a nasty habit of not paying out on bets if they thought someone had been up to a fiddle. Not that we had, of course. We had simply piggybacked on someone else’s fiddle.

  “Maybe not immediately,” I said. “But I think they will in the end. It really wouldn’t be sensible for them to upset so many of High Wycombe’s finest juvenile delinquents, now would it?”

  He laughed.

  And I knew something that he didn’t.

  The owner of Oriental Suite, the same owner who had been quoted in the Racing Post as being distraught over the death of his horse and the man who had pocketed the large insurance payout, was none other than a Mr. Henry Richard Feldman, director and shareholder of Tony Bateman (Turf Accountants) Ltd and sole shareholder of HRF Holdings Ltd. The very same man who had sent his bullyboys to give me a “message” at Kempton Park racetrack with their fists and steel toe caps.

  Getting even had, indeed, required considerable cunning.

  And almost the best part of the whole scheme was that Larry Porter and Norman Joyner firmly believed that it hadn’t worked. They went on grumbling about it for the rest of the day.

  I was certain that Mr. Feldman would eventually see sense and pay out on all the bets, just as I was sure that he would in the end decide not to pursue his plans to take over my business. Both would be the price for my silence. And he would know that a letter had been lodged with my solicitors to be handed to the British Horseracing Authority in the event of my sudden or suspicious death.

  Just to be on the safe side.

  23

  Luca, Duggie and I could hardly contain ourselves as we packed up the equipment after the last race. Larry had been so frightened by the prospect of his heavy losses that he gave the electronic phone jammer back to Luca and swore to me that he would never try anything like that again. I bit my lip hard so that I wouldn’t smile.

  We loaded the stuff in my Volvo, and I drove back south towards Warwickshire, Luca next to me as usual, Duggie behind him.

  “The look on Larry’s face when that race started was priceless,” said Luca, laughing. “He was in a complete panic.”

  “Norman didn’t look too happy either,” I said, joining in the hilarity.

  “I heard one of those suits saying that he knew something was up as he couldn’t get a line on the secretary’s phone,” said Duggie.

  “Thanks to you,” I said, looking at him in the rearview mirror. “Well done.” He beamed.

  I drove in silence for a while. We were all enjoying wallowing in the success of it all.

  “What are you going to do with all that money?” Duggie asked eventually.

  “Well,” I said, “I thought of donating it to charity. Perhaps the Injured Jockeys Fund.”

  “Good idea,” said Luca very seriously. “It’s a very good cause.”

  I went on driving.

  “But then I thought it would be more fun if we had it,” I said.

  We all burst into laughter.

  “Much better idea,” said Duggie, banging the back of the front seats in his excitement.

  We discussed the money for the next twenty minutes.

  Provided Tony Bateman paid it all out, and assuming that all the thirty bets had actually been placed and at the hundred-to-one starting price, then the total winnings would be six hundred thousand pounds. A quarter of that would go to the thirty delinquents at a rate of five thousand pounds each. Luca, Duggie and I decided that we would split half the total, three hundred thousand, jointly amongst us, with the other quarter going anonymously and jointly to two charities, the Injured Jockeys Fund and Racing Welfare, just to ease our consciences.

  “Can we do this every week?” asked Duggie. “Biggest paycheck I’ve ever had, I can tell you.”

  “Better than that,” I said. “Gambling winnings are tax free in the UK.”

  We all laughed again.

  I had decided that splitting the money equally amongst the three of us was the only way. Duggie’s help with the delinquents had been crucial, and his little intervention with the bullyboys at Leicester had made me grateful that he was on my side, not theirs. I wanted to keep it that way.

  We were still all in high spirits when I finally turned into the Hilton Hotel parking lot at Junction 15 on the M40, where Luca had left his car.

  “Do they let you park here for free?” I asked him.

  “I didn’t ask,” he said.

  “But how do you get out?” There was a barrier down at the parking lot exit.

  “Duggie and I will go in for a celebration drink,” he said. “I’ll get a token from the barman.”

  “Don’t get breathalyzed,” I said.

  “I won’t,” he said in farewell. He and Duggie gave me a wave as I turned the car out of the hotel parking lot and drove away. I thought it was fortunate you couldn’t lose your license for having euphoria-induced adrenaline in your bloodstream. I would be well over the limit.

  My telephone rang as I negotiated the turn out onto the main road.

  The phone was in its hands-free car cradle, and the number of the caller was shown across the green rectangular display at the top. It was Sophie’s mobile number.

  I pushed the button.“Hello, my darling,” I said cheerfully into the microphone that was situated next to the sun visor.“I’ve just dropped Luca and Duggie at the Hilton and I’ll be home in
about ten minutes.”

  But it wasn’t Sophie’s voice that came back at me out of the speaker.

  “Hello, Mr. Talbot,” said a man’s voice. A chill ran right down my spine, and I nearly drove straight into an oncoming truck. “You still have something of mine,” he said. “So now I have something of yours.”

  I became cold and clammy all over.

  “Let me speak to my wife,” I said.

  There was a slight pause, then Sophie came on the line. “Ned, Ned,” she screamed. She sounded very frightened, and there was a quiver in her voice. “Help me.”

  “It’s all right, Sophie,” I said, trying to calm her. “Everything will be all right.”

  But she wasn’t there anymore, and the man came back on the line. “Do as I say, Mr. Talbot, and she won’t get hurt.” The tone of his voice was really quite normal, but there was real menace in his meaning.

  Not only did I fear for Sophie’s safety, I feared more for her state of mind.

  “What do you want?” I asked him.

  “I want the rest of the items that were in that rucksack,” he said. “I want the chips, the chip writer and the rest of the money.”

  That confirmed to me that the man was shifty-eyed Kipper. I had feared that I’d not seen the last of him, or of his twelve-centimeter knife, and my fears had clearly been well founded.

  “I haven’t got the items,” I said.

  “Go and get them, then,” he said, just as if he was telling off a miscreant schoolboy who had forgotten his books.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Never you mind,” he said. “And don’t hang up. Keep on the line. If you hang up, I will hurt your wife. Do you understand?”