Field of Thirteen

by Dick Francis

  ‘They’ll believe him!’ Jules Harlow exclaimed, depressed.

  David T. Vynn looked from him to Mrs Nutbridge. ‘It’s up to you two to convince them there’s probable cause.’

  Jules Harlow asked again, ‘What is probable cause?’

  ‘Basically if the committee finds there is probable cause, they may try a colleague among themselves at a later date and disbar him or her from practising as a lawyer if he or she has, say, disgraced his or her profession.’

  ‘Like doctors?’ Mrs Nutbridge asked.

  David Vynn nodded. ‘Like that.’

  *

  The committee called Mrs Nutbridge first, alone. Jules Harlow’s summons came half an hour later. Each of them in turn walked into a big brightly-lit room where the fourteen unsmiling lawyers sat round a long boardroom-like table. The committee chairman, at one end of the table, invited Mrs Nutbridge and later Jules Harlow to sit on one of the few empty chairs and answer questions.

  Mrs Nutbridge was seated halfway down the table, but the chairman waved Jules Harlow to the only remaining empty seat at the far end which, to his alarm, was next to Patrick Green. Beyond Green sat Carl Corunna. Worse and worse. Expressionlessly, Jules Harlow took his allotted place and, rather woodenly, because of Green’s physical nearness, began to answer the chairman’s questions, most of which assumed Green’s lies to be the faces.

  Jules Harlow knew he was doing badly. The assembled lawyers looked disbelieving at his answers and Green, beside him, relaxed. Carl Corunna sniffed.

  Jules Harlow, in his memory, heard David Vynn’s voice. ‘It’s not always the truth that’s believed.’ If I’m not believed, he thought, it’s my own fault.

  The chairman, consulting notes spread on the table in front of him, asked Jules Harlow on which day he had promised Patrick Green, on the telephone, that he could keep the ten thousand dollars on its return from the court.

  The chairman, overweight and suffering from chronic indigestion, was finding the proceedings tedious. Half of the rest of the committee were fighting cat-naps. Patrick Green was smiling.

  Jules Harlow took a deep breath and said loudly, ‘I would never have agreed to pay any fees whatsoever for Sandy Nutbridge.’

  One of the dozing lawyers opened his eyes wide and said, ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I didn’t know him.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘When I advanced the money for his bail, I had met him only once. That was on the day I bought a horse from him. Quite a good horse, as it turned out. A mare. You might like a bet on her tomorrow in the fourth race.’

  A ripple of amusement finished off the cat-naps.

  ‘If you didn’t know Nutbridge…’ the chairman frowned ‘… why did you put up money for his bail?’

  ‘Because of his mother’s distress. I did it for her.’ Jules gestured towards her. ‘I did it because she was crying. I did it because she’s English, and so am I. You yourselves might have come to the aid of a fellow American if one begged you for help in a foreign country. I did it simply because I wanted to.’

  There was a short moment of open-mouthed silence, then a lady among the committee cleared her throat and said with humour, ‘If you don’t mind me asking you, Mr Harlow, is ten thousand dollars a great deal of money to you?’

  Jules Harlow smiled. ‘Not really. It is not because I need the money that I ask you to make Patrick Green give back what he owes me. It’s because of the principle involved. It’s because he is letting you all down.’

  Harlow took another deep breath and into a continuing silence said, ‘If I hadn’t been able to afford to lose ten thousand dollars, I wouldn’t have gone to Mrs Nutbridge’s aid. But I would absolutely never have agreed to pay her son’s legal fees. Why should I? I did not at any time discuss fees with anyone, not Patrick Green nor Carl Corunna nor Sandy Nutbridge. I trusted Sandy Nutbridge to surrender to his bail, which he did. I trusted a lawyer to return the money he knew I’d put up in good faith for a bail bond, and he has kept it. I trusted a horse salesman and I trusted a lawyer. Which would you have put your money on, out of those two?’

  The grievance committee debated among themselves and the following day announced that they found no ‘probable cause’ and that the subject was closed.

  ‘I blew it,’ Jules Harlow said gloomily at breakfast later in the week.

  ‘You certainly did not,’ David Vynn assured him. ‘I’ve been told the committee nearly all believed you, not Patrick Green.’

  ‘But… then why?’

  ‘They almost never disbar a fellow lawyer. They may know Green is as guilty as hell, but if there’s the slightest possibility of inserting any doubt into their deliberations, they’ll let him off. All doubt is reasonable, didn’t you know?’

  Jules Harlow watched David T. Vynn begin to demolish a pile of buckwheat pancakes with bananas.

  ‘All the same,’ Jules Harlow said, ‘Patrick Green has got away with it.’

  David Vynn spooned whipped butter onto his pancakes and, enjoying a dramatic moment, extravagantly flourished his fork. ‘Patrick Green,’ he said, ‘has done nothing of the sort.’

  ‘He still has my money.’

  ‘I did warn you at the beginning that you were unlikely to get it back.’

  ‘Then how can you say he hasn’t got away with it?’

  David Vynn attended thoughtfully to his pancakes. ‘I have incredibly knowledgeable sources. I’m told things, you know. I’m told you stunned the grievance committee. They say you are I transparently honest witness.’ He paused. ‘They all know it is you who will be believed if Patrick Green is tried in court.’

  ‘If!’

  ‘That’s what I want to talk to you about. The path to court leads from accusation to deposition, and after that point there’s an offer of mediation to settle out of court. Only if that fails does the case come to trial. Well, Patrick Green has agreed to mediation.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re so upbeat,’ Harlow said.

  ‘You will.’

  *

  The tortoise wheels rotated slowly along the road to mediation but eventually David Vynn took his client to a meeting with a mediator who proved to be a sophisticated version of grandmotherly Mrs Nutbridge.

  ‘Our aim,’ she said, ‘is to agree the terms of settlement between Mr Green and Mr Harlow without the time or expense of a trial in court.’ She paused. ‘I’ve spoken to Mr Green.’

  Silence.

  ‘He is willing to negotiate,’ she said.

  David Vynn with irony commented, ‘I suppose that means he’s willing to avoid the loss of his house and car and his office equipment and all that he owns. He’s willing to avoid triple penalties, in fines. He’s willing not to have to pay punitive damages. How generous of him!’

  ‘What can he offer that you will accept?’

  Dear Heaven, Jules Harlow thought in a burst of understanding, Patrick Green is admitting his guilt.

  Patrick Green, indeed, brought face to face with a stark choice between a sentence for conversion, civil theft and breach of constructive trust, followed by the automatic revocation of his licence to practise law – between that and the repaying of some at least of what he’d embezzled from Jules Harlow and Mrs Nutbridge, had discovered all of a sudden that there were dollars to be earned in the outside world, even if it meant stocking supermarket shelves.

  The mediator said, ‘Mr Green offers you five thousand dollars: half of the sum you put up for the bail bond.’

  ‘Mr Green,’ David Vynn said pleasantly, ‘can multiply that by two. If my client was vengeful, he could multiply by four.’

  ‘Mr Green spent the bond money paying off debtors who would otherwise have beaten him up.’

  ‘Let’s all weep,’ David Vynn told her. ‘Mr Green stole Mrs Nutbridge’s pension fund.’

  Jules Harlow listened in fascination.

  ‘Sandy Nutbridge,’ the mediator riposted, ‘is paying to her what she advanced to free him. Mrs Nutbridge’s
debts are her son’s affair.’

  ‘Patrick Green twice betrayed Sandy Nutbridge to the IRS,’ David Vynn drily pointed out. ‘His purpose from the beginning was to steal a fortune in unnecessary legal fees from his so-called friend. Mr Harlow’s ten thousand dollars bond money came along as an unplanned bonus.’

  ‘Mr Green will repay half of Mr Harlow’s involvement.’

  ‘No,’ David Vynn said calmly. ‘All of it.’

  ‘He has no money.’

  ‘Mr Harlow will wait.’

  From old experienced eyes she looked with amusement at bright David T. Vynn; young enough to be her son, too young to feel pity for a crook. She set a future date for a final settlement.

  Jules Harlow’s devoted wife decided that as Jules was offering her a new horse for their third wedding anniversary she would go to Ray Wichelsea himself, to the head of the agency, for advice.

  Ray Wichelsea, valuing her custom above all others, found her a two-year-old of starry promise for the following year’s Triple Crown.

  Mrs Harlow asked if there were any news of Mrs Nutbridge, whom she had immediately liked at the grievance committee meeting. Sandy Nutbridge had eventually saved enough to ask advice from David Vynn, Ray Wichelsea told her, and now Patrick Green had furiously agreed to mediation in her case, too.

  Mrs Harlow said to Jules at bedtime, ‘Even if she gets most of her money back, I don’t suppose Mrs Nutbridge will put up bail for anyone ever again.’

  Her husband thought of what he’d learned, and of the thousands he had quite gladly paid in attorneys’ fees to defeat Patrick Green. ‘I’m told,’ he said, ‘that there’s a way to bail people out by merely pledging the bail money and paying up in full only if the accused absconds, but it’s expensive. It might be better, might be worse. I’ll have to ask our young marvel, David Vynn.’

  They met quietly across yet another boardroom table, paired as before: Patrick Green and Carl Corunna opposite Jules Reginald Harlow and David T. Vynn.

  The grandmotherly mediator, dressed in a grey business suit as formal as Jules Harlow’s, as anonymous as the lawyers’, shook hands briefly all round and, sitting at the table’s head, distributed simple documents, asking them all to sign.

  Jules Harlow, despite his losses, felt himself strongly filled by a sense of justice. Here they all were, he thought as he signed, fighting a battle to the death with pens, not guns. Patrick Green might rob people, but he didn’t shoot.

  Glumly Patrick Green admitted to himself that he’d underestimated both Jules Harlow’s persistence and David Vynn’s skill with the law. The chairman of the grievance committee, furthermore, had uttered fearsome threats: the slightest whisper of misdoing would find the Green licence in the bin. But in time, Patrick Green thought, in time he would rake up another sting; would find another mug…

  He irritably signed the paper that committed him to re-paying his debt to Jules Harlow in four chunks of twenty-five hundred bucks each.

  The paper was in effect a full confession.

  The law turned its back on Patrick Green and put no more work his way.

  For a year he laboured in low-paid jobs, resentfully repaying Jules Harlow on time rather than finding himself in court.

  For four more years, he sweated to repay Mrs Nutbridge.

  Punitive damages though, he knew, would have been much worse.

  Freed at last from debt, but still dishonest at heart, he moved to another state and sold small-print insurance.

  A man he swindled there took a more direct route to justice than Jules Reginald Harlow, and in a dark alley beat Patrick Green to pulp.

  THE DAY OF THE LOSERS

  People go to the Grand National to win: jockeys, gamblers and, in this case, the police.

  In any day of good luck for the losers, those who believe they have lost may have won, and those who win may have lost.

  It depends on the stake.

  Austin Dartmouth Glenn set off to the Grand National with a thick packet of new bank notes in his pocket and a mixture of guilt and bravado in his mind.

  Austin Dartmouth Glenn knew he had promised not to put this particular clutch of bank notes into premature circulation. Not for five years, he had been sternly warned. Five years would see the heat off and the multi-million robbery would be ancient history. The police would be chasing more recent villains and the hot serial numbers would have faded into fly-blown obscurity on out-of-date lists. In five years it would be safe to spend the small fortune he had been paid for his part in springing the bank-robbery boss out of unwelcome jail.

  That was all very well, Austin told himself aggrievedly, looking out of the train window. What about inflation? In five years’ time the small fortune might not be worth the paper it was printed on. Or the colour and size of the bank notes might be changed. He’d heard of a frantic safe-blower long ago who’d done twelve years and gone home to a cache full of the old thin white stuff. All that time served for a load of out-of-date, uncashable rubbish. Austin Glenn’s mouth twisted in sympathy at the thought. It wasn’t going to happen to him, not ruddy well likely.

  Austin had paid for his train ticket with ordinary currency, and ditto for the cans of beer, packages of Cellophaned sandwiches, and copy of a racing newspaper. The hot new money was stowed safely in an inner pocket, not to be risked before he reached the bustling anonymity of the huge crowd converging on Aintree racecourse. He was no fool, of course, he thought complacently. A neat pack of bank notes, crisp, new and consecutive, might catch the most incurious eye. But no one would look twice now that he had shuffled them and crinkled them with hands dirtied for the purpose.

  He wiped beer off his mouth with the back of his hand: a scrawny, fortyish man with neat, thin, grey-black hair, restless eyes and an overall air of self-importance. A life spent on the fringes of crime had given him hundreds of dubious acquaintances, an intricate memory-bank of information and a sound knowledge of how to solicit bribes without actually cupping the palm. No one liked him very much, but Austin was not sensitive enough to notice.

  Nearer the front of the same train Jerry Springwood sat and sweated on three counts. For one thing, he was an outdoor man and found the heat excessive, and for another, owing to alcohol and sex, he had no time to spare and would very likely lose his job if he arrived late; but, above all, he sweated from fear.

  Jerry Springwood at thirty-two had lost his nerve and was trying to carry on the trade of steeplechase jockey without anyone finding out. The old days when he used to ride with a cool brain and discount intermittent bangs as merely a nuisance were long gone. For months now he had travelled with dread to the meetings, imagining sharp ends of bone protruding from his skin, imagining a smashed face or a severed spine… imagining pain. For months he had been unable to take risks he would once not have seen as risks at all. For months he had been unable to urge his mounts forward into gaps, when only such urging would win; and unable to stop himself steadying his mounts to jump, when only kicking them on would do.

  The skill which had taken him to the top was now used to cover the cracks, and the soundness of his longtime reputation bolstered the explanations for defeats which he gave to owners and trainers. Only the most discerning saw the disguised signs of disintegration, and fewer still had put private doubts into private words. The great British public, searching the list of Grand National runners for inspiration, held good old Jerry Springwood to be a plus factor in favour of the third favourite, Haunted House.

  A year ago, he reflected drearily, as he stared out at the passing fields, he would have known better than to go to a party in London on the night before the big race. A year ago he had stayed near the course, swallowed maybe a couple of beers, gone to bed early, slept alone. He wouldn’t have dreamt of making a four-hour dash south after Friday’s racing, or getting drunk, or going to bed at two with a girl he’d known three hours.

  He hadn’t needed to blot out the thought of Saturday afternoon’s marathon, but had looked forward to it with zest, exc
itement and unquenchable hope. Oh, God, he thought despairingly, what has happened to me? He was small and strong with soft mid-brown hair, deep-set eyes and a nose flattened by too much fast contact with the ground. A farmer’s son, natural with animals, and with social manners sophisticated by success. People usually liked Jerry Springwood but he was too unassuming to notice.

  *

  The crowd poured cheerfully into Aintree racecourse primed with hope, faith and cash. Austin peeled off the first of the hot notes at the turnstiles, and contentedly watched it being sucked into the anonymity of the gate receipt. He safely got change for another in a crowded bar and for a third from a stall selling form sheets. Money for old rope, he thought sardonically. It didn’t make sense, holding on to the stuff for five years.

  The Tote, as usual, had opened its windows early to take bets on the Grand National because there was not time just before the race to sell tickets to all who wanted to buy. There were long queues already when Austin went along to back his fancy, for like him they knew from experience that it was best to bet early if one wanted a good vantage point in the stands.

  He waited in the queue for the Tote window, writing his proposal on his racecard. When his turn came, he said, ‘A hundred to win, number twelve – in the National,’ and counted off the shuffled notes without a qualm. The busy woman behind the window gave him his ticket with a fast but sharp glance. ‘Next?’ she said, looking over his shoulder to the man behind. Dead easy, thought Austin smugly, stuffing his ticket into his jacket pocket. One hundred on number twelve to win. No point in messing about with place money, he always said. Mind you, he was a pretty good judge of form. He always prided himself on that. Nothing in the race had a better chance than the third favourite, Haunted House, and you couldn’t want a better jockey than Springwood, now could you? He strolled with satisfaction back to the bar and bought another beer.

  In the changing-room, Jerry Springwood had no difficulty in disguising either his hangover or his fear. The other jockeys were gripped with the usual pre-National tension, finding their mouths a little dry, their thoughts a little abstracted, their flow of ribald jokes silenced to a trickle.