Field of Thirteen

by Dick Francis

  As he grew older, Jamie was increasingly aware that he had drawn lucky in the maternal stakes and he had become in his teens protective rather than rebellious, which sometimes touched his hard-pressed mother to tears. It was for her sake that he had welcomed the television-fixer, knowing that, for her, sound without pictures was almost as bad as pictures without sound were for himself.

  Despite a lot of trying, he could pick up little from the screen through his ultra-sensitive fingertips. Electronically-produced colours gave him none of the vibrations of natural light.

  He sat hunched with tension at his table, the telephone beside his right hand and one of his radios at his left. There was no telling, he thought, whether the bizarre thing would happen again; but if it did, he would be ready.

  ‘One furlong out, nothing to choose…’ said the television commentator, his voice rising in excitement-inducing crescendo. ‘In the last hundred yards, Jetset, Darling Boy, Pickup and Gumshoe… At the post, all in a line… perhaps Pickup got there in the last stride but we’ll have to wait for the photograph. Meanwhile, let’s see the closing stages of the race again…’

  The television went back on its tracks, and Jamie waited intently with his fingers over the quick easy numbers of the push-button telephone.

  Down the road at the racecourse the crowds buzzed like agitated bees round the bookmakers, who were transacting deals as fast as they could. Photo-finishes were always popular with serious gamblers, who bet with fervour on the outcome.

  Some punters really believed in the evidence of their own quick eyes; others found it a chance to hedge their main bet or even recoup a positive loss. A photo was the second chance, the lifebelt to the drowning, the temporary reprieve from torn-up tickets and anti-climax.

  ‘Six-to-four on Pickup,’ shouted young Billy Hitchins hoarsely, from his prime bookmaking pitch in the front row facing the stands. ‘Six-to-four on Pickup.’ A rush of customers descending from the crowded steps enveloped him.

  ‘A tenner, Pickup, right, sir. Five on Gumshoe, right, sir. Twenty, Pickup, you’re on, sir. A hundred? Yeah, if you like. A hundred at evens, Jetset, why not…’ Billy Hitchins, in whose opinion Darling Boy had taken the race by a nostril, was happy to t ike the money.

  Greg Simpson accepted Billy Hitchins’ ticket for an even hundred on Jetset and hurried to repeat his bet with as many bookmakers as he could reach. There was never much time between the arrival of the knowledge and the announcement of the winner. Never much, but always enough. Two minutes at least. Sometimes as much as five. A determined punter could strike five or six bets in that time, given a thick skin and a ruthless use of the elbows.

  Greg reckoned he could burrow to the front of the closest throng after all those years of rush-hour commuting on the Underground, and he managed, that day at Ascot, to lay out all the cash he had brought with him; all at evens, all on Jetset.

  Neither Billy Hitchins, nor any of his colleagues, felt the slightest twinge of suspicion. Sure, there was a lot of support for Jetset; but so there was for the three other horses, and in a multiple finish like this one a good deal of money always changed hands. Billy Hitchins welcomed it himself, because it gave him, too, a chance of making a second profit on the race.

  Greg noticed one or two others scurrying with wads to Jetset and wondered, not for the first time, if they, too, were working for Mr Smith. He was sure he’d seen them often at other meetings, but he felt no inclination at all to accost one of them and ask. Safety lay in anonymity – for him, for them and, of course, for Bob Smith himself.

  The judge in his box pored earnestly over the black-and-white print, sorting out which nose belonged to Darling Boy, and which to Pickup. He could discern the winner easily enough, and had murmured its number aloud as he wrote it on the pad lying beside him.

  The microphone linked to the public announcement system waited mutely at his elbow for him to make his decision on second and third places, a task seemingly increasingly difficult. Number two, or number eight. But which was which? The seconds ticked by.

  It was quiet in his box, the scurrying and shouting among the bookmakers’ stands below hardly reaching him through the thick window-glass.

  At his shoulder a racecourse official waited patiently, his job only to make the actual announcement, once the decision was made. With a bright light and a magnifying glass the judge studied the noses. If he got them wrong, a thousand knowledgeable photo-readers would let him know it.

  He wondered if he should see about a new prescription for his glasses. Photographs never seemed so sharp in outline to him these days.

  Greg Simpson thought regretfully that the judge was overdoing the delay. If he had known he would have had so much time, he would have brought with him more cash. Still, the clear profit he would shortly make was a fine afternoon’s work, and he would send Mr Smith his meagre share with a grateful heart.

  Greg Simpson smiled contentedly, and briefly, as if touching a lucky talisman, he fingered the tiny transistorised hearing aid he wore unobtrusively under hair and trilby behind his left ear.

  Jamie Finland listened intently, head bent, his curling dark hair falling onto the radio with which he eavesdropped on aircraft. The faint hiss of the carrier wave reached him unchanged, but he waited with quickening pulse and a fluttering feeling of excitement. If it didn’t happen, he thought briefly, it would be very boring indeed.

  Although he was nerve-strainingly prepared, he almost missed it. The radio spoke one single word, distantly, faintly, without emphasis: ‘Eleven.’ The carrier wave hissed on, as if never disturbed, and it took Jamie’s brain two whole seconds to light up with a laugh of joy.

  He pressed the telephone buttons and connected himself to the local bookmaking firm. ‘Hello? This is Jamie Finland. I have some credit arranged with you for this afternoon. Well, please will you put it all on the photo-finish of this race they’ve just run at Ascot? On number eleven, please.’

  ‘Eleven?’ echoed a matter-of-fact voice at the other end.’ Jetset?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jamie said patiently.

  ‘Eleven. Jetset. All at evens, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Jamie said. ‘I was watching it on the box.’

  ‘Don’t we all, chum,’ said the voice in farewell, clicking off.

  Jamie sat back with a tingling feeling of mischief. If eleven really had won, he was surely plain robbing the bookie. But who could know? How could anyone ever know? He wouldn’t tell his mother, because she would disapprove and might make him give the winnings back.

  He imagined her voice if she came home and found he had doubled her money. He also imagined it if she found he had lost it all on the first race, betting on the result of a photo-finish that he couldn’t even see.

  He hadn’t told her that it was because of the numbers on the radio he had wanted to bet at all. He’d said that he knew people often bet from home while they were watching racing on television. He’d said it would give him a marvellous new interest, if he could do that while she was at work.

  He had persuaded her without much trouble to lend him a stake and arrange things with the bookmaker’s, and he wouldn’t have done it at all if the certainty factor had been missing.

  When he’d first been given the radio which received aircraft frequencies, he had spent hours and days listening to the calls of the jetliners overhead on their way in and out of Heathrow; but the fascination had worn off, and gradually he tuned in less and less.

  By accident one day, having twiddled the tuning knob aimlessly without finding an interesting channel, he forgot to switch the set off. In the afternoon, while he was listening to the Ascot televised races, the radio suddenly emitted a number: ‘Twenty-three.’

  Jamie switched the set off but took little real notice until the television commentator, announcing the result of the photo-finish, spoke almost as if in echo. ‘Twenty-three… Swan Lake, number twenty-three, is the winner.’

  ‘How odd,’ Jamie thought. He left the tuning kn
ob undisturbed, and switched the aircraft radio on again the following Saturday, along with Kempton Park races on television. There were two photo-finishes, but no voice-of-God on the ether. Ditto nil results from Doncaster, Chepstow and Epsom persuaded him, shrugging, to put it down to coincidence but, two weeks later with the re-arrival of a meeting at Ascot, he decided to give it one more try.

  Five’, said the radio quietly; and later ‘Ten’. And, duly, numbers five and ten were given the verdict by the judge.

  The judge, now shaking his head over Darling Boy and Pickup and deciding he could put off the moment no longer, handed his written-down result to the waiting official, who leaned forward and drew the microphone to his mouth.

  ‘First, number eleven,’ he said. ‘A dead heat for second place between numbers two and eight. First Jetset. Dead heat for second, Darling Boy and Pickup. The distance between first and second a short head. The fourth horse was number twelve.’

  The judge leaned back in his chair and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Another photo-finish safely past… but there was no doubt they were testing to his nerves.

  Arnold Roper picked up his binoculars the better to see the winning punters collect from the bookmakers. His twenty-one trusty men had certainly had time today for a thorough killing. Greg Simpson, in particular, was sucking honey all along the line; but then Greg Simpson, with his outstanding managerial skills, was always, in Arnold’s view, the one most likely to do best. Greg’s success was as pleasing to Arnold as his own.

  Billy Hitchins handed Greg his winnings without a second glance, and paid out, too, to five others whose transistor hearing aids were safely hidden by hair. He reckoned he had lost, altogether, on the photo betting; but his book for the race itself had been robustly healthy. Billy Hitchins, not displeased, switched his mind to the next event.

  Jamie Finland laughed aloud and banged his table with an ecstatic fist. Someone, somewhere, was talking through an open microphone, and if Jamie had had the luck to pick up the transmission, why shouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t he? He thought of the information as an accident, not a fraud, and he waited with uncomplicated pleasure for another bunch of horses to finish nose to nose.

  Betting on certainties, he decided, quietening his voice of conscience, was not a crime if you came by the information innocently.

  After the fourth race he telephoned to bet on number fifteen, increasing his winnings geometrically.

  Greg Simpson went home at the end of the afternoon with a personal storage problem almost as pressing as Arnold’s. There was a limit, he discovered, to the amount of ready cash one could stow away in an ordinary suit, and he finally had to wrap the stuff in a newspaper and carry it home under his arm, like fish and chips.

  ‘Two in one day,’ he thought warmly. ‘A real clean-up. A day to remember.’ And there was always tomorrow, back here at Ascot, and Saturday at Sandown, and next week, according to the list which had arrived anonymously on the usual postcard, Newbury and Windsor. With a bit of luck he could soon afford a new car, and Joan could book up for the skiing holiday with the children.

  Billy Hitchins packed away his stand and equipment, and with the help of his clerk carried them the half-mile along the road to his betting shop in Ascot High Street. Billy at eighteen had horrified his teachers by ducking university and apprenticing his bright mathematical brain to his local bookie. Billy at twenty-four had taken over the business, and now, three years later, was poised for expansion.

  He had had a good day on the whole and, after totting up the total and locking the safe, he took his betting-shop manager along to the pub.

  ‘Funny thing,’ said the manager over the second beer. ‘That new account – you know, the one you fixed up yesterday, with that nurse.’

  ‘Oh yes… the nurse. Gave me money in advance. They don’t often do that.’ He drank his scotch and water.

  ‘Yeah… Well, this Finland, while he was watching the telly, he phoned in two bets, both on the results of the photos, and he got it right both times.’

  ‘Can’t have that,’ said Billy, with mock severity.

  ‘He didn’t place other bets, see? Unusual, that.’

  ‘What did you say his name was?’ Billy asked

  ‘Jamie Finland.’

  The barmaid leaned towards them over the bar, her friendly face smiling and the pink sweater leaving little to the imagination. ‘Jamie Finland?’ she said. ‘Ever such a nice boy, isn’t he? Shame about him being blind.’

  ‘What?’ said Billy.

  The barmaid nodded. ‘Him and his mother, they live just down the road in those new flats, next door to my sister. He stays home most of the time, studying and listening to his radios. And you’d never believe it, but he can tell colours; he can really. My sister says it’s really weird, but he told her she was wearing a green coat and she was.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s true as God’s my judge,’ said the barmaid, offended.

  ‘No,’ Billy said. ‘I don’t believe that even if he can tell a green coat from a red that he could distinguish colours on a television screen with three or four horses crossing the line abreast. You can’t do it often even if you can see.’ He sat and thought. ‘On the other hand, I lost a lot today on those photos.’

  He thought longer. ‘We all took a caning over those photos. I heard several of the other bookies complaining about the run on Jetset.’ He frowned. ‘I don’t see how it could be rigged, though.’

  Billy put down his glass with a crash which startled the whole bar. ‘Did you say Jamie Finland listens to radios? What radios?’

  ‘How should I know?’ said the barmaid, bridling.

  ‘He lives near the course,’ Billy said, thinking feverishly. ‘So just suppose he somehow overheard the photo result before it was given on the loudspeakers. But that doesn’t explain the delay… how there was time for him, and probably quite a lot of others who heard the same thing, to get their money on.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ said the barmaid.

  ‘I think I’ll pop along and see Jamie Finland,’ said Billy Hitchins. ‘And ask who or what he heard… if he heard anything at all.’

  ‘Bit far-fetched,’ said the manager judiciously. ‘The only person who could delay things long enough would be the judge.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Billy, awe-struck by the thought. ‘What about the judge?’

  Arnold Roper did not know about the long fuse being lit in the pub. To Arnold, Billy Hitchins was a name on a bookmaker’s stand. He could not suppose that brainy Billy Hitchins would drink in a pub where the barmaid had a sister who lived next door to a blind boy who had picked up his discreet transmission on a carelessly left-on radio which was capable of receiving one-ten to one-forty megahertz on VHF.

  Arnold Roper travelled serenely homeward with his walkie-talkie type transmitter hidden as usual inside his inner jacket pocket, its short aerial retracted now safely out of sight.

  The line-of-sight low-powered frequency he used was in his opinion completely safe, as only a passing aircraft was likely to receive it, and no pilot on earth would connect a simple number spoken on the air with the winner of the photo-finish down at Ascot, or Epsom, or Newmarket, or York.

  Back on the racecourse Arnold had carefully packed away and securely locked up the extremely delicate and expensive apparatus which belonged to the firm which employed him. Arnold Roper was not the judge. Arnold Roper’s job lay in operating the photo-finish camera. It was he who watched the print develop; he who could take his time delivering it to the judge; he who always knew the winner first.

  CORKSCREW

  The road to justice is winding, long, expensive and slow, and sometimes never arrives. Corkscrew gets there, more or less, scattering lessons on the way.

  First lesson: if you aim to be kind, be careful.

  Sandy Nutbridge leaned on the white-painted rails of a private training circuit in the American state of South Carolina and tried to size
up the undemonstrative man beside him.

  Both were English. Sandy Nutbridge was trying to sell to the other (Jules Reginald Harlow) the two-year-old South Carolina-bred filly presently being fast-cantered round the track by the top-ranking exercise groom employed by Sandy Nutbridge whenever he wanted to make a multi-nought sale.

  His spiel and patter about the filly’s breeding and early showing of speed were for once truthful. The fervour he put into his admiration of the fine-boned skull, the kindly-slanted eye and the deep-capacity chest was in fact justified. The filly at that moment was earning every compliment paid her – it was only the future, as in all of life, that couldn’t be foretold.

  Jules Reginald Harlow watched the filly’s smooth action and listened to the genuine enthusiasm in the salesman’s voice. He thought Sandy Nutbridge good at his job, but beyond that paid more attention to the scudding two-year-old that seemed to be all he needed.

  The exercise groom finished two circuits – one walking and trotting, one a fast canter – and, pulling up, trotted to the two watchers on the rails.

  ‘Thanks, Pete,’ Nutbridge nodded.

  ‘And thanks,’ Jules Harlow added. He turned to the salesman. ‘Subject to a vet passing the filly sound, I’ll have her at the price we agreed.’

  The two men shook hands on the deal and Jules Harlow without excitement climbed into the dark green Lincoln Town Car waiting near by and drove away.

  Sandy Nutbridge telephoned the bloodstock agency for whom he acted and reported the successful sale. His principal, Ray Wichelsea, who owned the agency, greatly esteemed Sandy Nutbridge, chiefly as a salesman but partly as a man. Ray Wichelsea saw Sandy’s thickset body, wiry greying hair and sensible English voice as reassuring assets encouraging customers to put their faith in the agency and their money on the line.

  ‘Our Mr Harlow,’ Sandy Nutbridge reported, ‘is one of your silent types. I wouldn’t say he knows a whole lot about horses. He shook hands on the deal for the filly but, like you told me not to, I didn’t ask him for an up-front deposit.’