Dick Francis's Bloodline (9781101600931)
Page 1
BY FELIX FRANCIS
Gamble
BY DICK FRANCIS AND FELIX FRANCIS
Crossfire
Even Money
Silks
Dead Heat
BY DICK FRANCIS
Under Orders
Shattered
Second Wind
Field of Thirteen
10 Lb. Penalty
To the Hilt
Come to Grief
Wild Horses
Decider
Driving Force
Comeback
Longshot
Straight
The Edge
Hot Money
Bolt
A Jockey’s Life
Break In
Proof
The Danger
Banker
Twice Shy
Reflex
Whip Hand
Trial Run
Risk
In the Frame
High Stakes
Knockdown
Slay Ride
Smokescreen
Bonecrack
Rat Race
Enquiry
Forfeit
Blood Sport
Flying Finish
Odds Against
For Kicks
Nerve
Dead Cert
The Sport of Queens
(Autobiography)
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2012 by Felix Francis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Francis, Felix.
Dick Francis’s bloodline / Felix Francis.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-101-60093-1
1. Sportscasters—Fiction. 2. Brother and sister—Fiction. 3. Women jockeys—Crimes against—Fiction. 4. Horse racing—England—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Bloodline.
PR6056.R273D525 2012 2012025458
823'.914—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
With my special thanks to
Mike Cattermole,
race caller and TV presenter,
to all my friends at
Channel 4 Racing
and
BBC Radio 5 Live
for their help and encouragement,
and, as always, to Debbie
CONTENTS
Also by Felix Francis
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
1
They’re off!”
I looked down at the image of the horses on my TV monitor and shielded my eyes from the bright September sunshine. An unremarkable straight, mile-long sprint for maiden two-year-olds at Lingfield Park with twelve runners—just another horse race, one of more than fifteen hundred such races I would watch live this year.
But this particular race was to change my life forever.
—
THE HORSES broke from the starting gate in a fairly even line, and I glanced down at my handwritten sheet that showed the runners in their draw positions as they faced me almost a mile away.
The mile start at Lingfield was slightly obscured from the grandstand by some overhanging trees, so I leaned closer to the monitor to get a better view.
“They’re running in the Herald Sunshine Limited Maiden Stakes, and Spitfire Boy is the early leader,” I said, “with Steeplejack also showing early pace. Sudoku is next on the rail, tracked by Radioactive, with Troubleatmill running wide. Postal Vote is next, then High Definition and Low Calorie, with Bangkok Flyer on the far outside in the green jacket, followed by Tailplane with the white cap and Routemaster in the orange hoops. The backmarker at this stage is Pink Pashmina, who is struggling and getting a reminder as they pass the three-quarter-mile marker.”
I lifted my eyes from the monitor and looked down toward the horses using my high-powered binoculars. At three-quarters of a mile I could now see them all clearly as they raced directly toward me, the foreshortening effect of the binoculars making the horses’ heads seem to bob up and down unnaturally.
Races like this, with the horses running headlong down the straight track, nearly always made life difficult for race callers, and this one was no exception. The twelve runners had split into two groups, with eight horses running close to the nearside rail and the four others making their way right down the middle.
The punters in the grandstands understandably wanted to know which horse was leading, but the angle from which I was looking did not make it an easy task to decide.
“The red jacket of Spitfire Boy leads the larger group on the nearside, with Radioactive making a challenge. Troubleatmill and Bangkok Flyer are running neck and neck in the middle of the course with half a mile to go.”
I looked intensely at the field as they galloped toward me. It may have stated in the race program that Bangkok Flyer’s colors were dark green, but, silhouetted in the sunshine, they looked very black to me, and I didn’t want to confuse them with the navy jacket of Postal Vote.
No, I was sure. It was Bangkok Flyer, with his sheepskin noseband, and he was living up to his name.
“Bangkok Flyer, with the sheepskin noseband, now stretching away on the far side. He has opened up a two-length margin over Troubleatmill, who seems not to be
staying the distance. And on the nearside, Spitfire Boy has been caught by Radioactive. But here comes Sudoku between horses under Paul James in the white jacket, who has yet to move a muscle.”
I lowered my binoculars and watched the horses unaided.
“Sudoku now sweeps to the front on the nearside as they pass the eighth-of-a-mile pole, but he still has the short-priced favorite, Bangkok Flyer, to beat. Sudoku and Bangkok Flyer come together as they move into the closing stages. Sudoku in white and Bangkok Flyer in dark green, it’s a two-horse race.” The tone of my voice rose higher and higher as the equine nostrils stretched for the finishing line beneath me. “Bangkok Flyer and Sudoku stride for stride. Sudoku and Bangkok Flyer.” My pitch reached its crescendo. “Sudoku wins from Bangkok Flyer, Low Calorie runs on gamely to be third, Radioactive is fourth, followed by the longtime leader Spitfire Boy, then Routemaster, High Definition, Troubleatmill, Steeplejack, then Tailplane and Postal Vote together, and finally the filly, Pink Pashmina, who has finished a long way last.”
I pushed the button that switched off my microphone.
“First, number ten, Sudoku,” said the judge over the PA. “Second, number one. Third, number four. The fourth horse was number eight. The distances were a neck, and two and a half lengths.”
The PA fell silent.
The race was over. The excitement had come and gone, and the crowd would already be looking forward to the next contest in thirty minutes.
I looked out across the track and felt uneasy.
Something there hadn’t been quite right.
It wasn’t my commentary. I hadn’t confused the horses or called the wrong horse home as the winner—something that every race caller had done at some time in his life. It was the race itself that hadn’t been quite right.
“Thanks, Mark. Great job,” said a voice in my headphones. “And well done mentioning every horse, and thanks for the finish order.”
“No problem, Derek,” I said.
Derek was a producer for RacingTV, the satellite broadcaster that was showing the racing live. He would be sitting in the scanner, a large blacked-out truck somewhere behind the racetrack stables, with a bank of television images in front of him, one for each of the half a dozen or so cameras, and it was he who decided what pictures the people at home or in the betting shops would see. The TV company didn’t have their own race caller, so they took the course commentary—namely, me. But they liked it if all the horses were mentioned at least once, and they were pretty insistent on the full finishing order being given. That was fine with twelve runners, but not so easy when there were thirty or more, especially in a sprint like this when the whole thing was over in less than a minute and a half.
“Derek?” I said, pushing a button on the control box.
“Go ahead,” he replied into my ears.
“Could you make me a DVD of that race? To take home. Every angle.”
“But she didn’t win.”
“I still want it,” I said.
“OK,” he said. “It’ll be ready.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll collect it after the last.”
“We’ll still be here.”
There was a click and my headphones went silent once more.
“But she didn’t win,” Derek had said.
“She” was my sister—my twin sister, to be precise, Clare Shillingford—a top jockey with more than six hundred winners to her name.
But that race had not been one of them. She’d just come second by a neck on Bangkok Flyer, and I thought it was her riding that hadn’t been right.
—
I LOOKED AT MY WATCH. There were twenty minutes before I needed to be back here in the commentary booth for the next race, so I skipped down the five flights of stairs to ground level and made my way around behind the grandstand to the weighing room.
I put my head through the open doorway of the racetrack broadcast center, a small room just off the main weighing room that was half filled with a bank of electronic equipment all down one wall.
“Afternoon, Jack,” I said to the back of a man standing there.
“Hi, Mark,” said the man, turning around and rubbing his hands on a green sweater that appeared to have more holes in it than wool. “Everything all right?”
“Fine,” I replied.
Jack Laver was the technician for the on-course broadcasting service that relayed the closed-circuit pictures to the many television sets throughout the racetrack, including the monitor in the commentary booth. His dress sense might have been suspect, but he was an absolute wizard with electronics.
“Fancy a cuppa?” he asked.
“Love one,” I said, and he disappeared into an alcove, reemerging with two white plastic mugs of steaming brown liquid.
“Sugar?”
“No thanks,” I said, taking one of the beakers.
Weighing-room tea would never have won any prizes for its taste, but it was hot and wet, and both were good for my voice. A race caller with a sore throat, or—worse—laryngitis, was no good for anything. Peter Bromley, the legendary BBC race caller, always carried with him a bottle of his special balm—a secret homemade concoction containing honey and whisky. He would take a small swig before every race to lubricate the throat.
I was never as organized as that, but I did like to have a bottle of water always close at hand. And tea was a bonus.
“Jack, can you show me a replay of that last race? Just the last quarter mile will do.”
“Sure,” he said, moving toward the electronics. “Did you get something wrong?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at me with a huge grin.
“Get stuffed,” I said. “And, no, I didn’t.”
“You’d never admit it anyway. You bloody commentators, you’re all the same.”
“Perfect, you mean.”
“Ha! Don’t make me laugh.”
He fiddled with some of the controls and the previous race appeared on one of the tiny screens on the front of his equipment.
“Just the last quarter mile, you say?”
“Yes, please.”
He used a large ball-type mouse to fast-forward the race, the horses moving comically along the track at breakneck speed.
“There you are,” said Jack, slowing the runners to a normal pace.
I leaned forward to get a closer look.
I hoped I was wrong. In fact, I wanted desperately to be wrong.
“Can you show me that again?” I asked Jack.
He used the ball to rewind the recording to the quarter-mile pole.
I watched it once more, and there was no mistake.
I had absolutely no doubt that Clare Shillingford, my twin sister, had just been in contravention of rules (B)58, (B)59, and (D)45 of the Rules of Racing, rules that state, amongst other things, that a rider must ride a horse throughout the race in such a way that he or she can be seen to have made a genuine attempt to obtain from the horse timely, real, and substantial efforts to achieve the best possible placing.
Put more simply, Clare had not won the race when she could have done. And, furthermore, I believed she had not won it on purpose.
—
THE NEXT HOUR passed in somewhat of a blur. Good commentating requires solid concentration to the extent that all other thoughts need to be excluded. No one actually complained about my race calling in the next two races, but I knew that I hadn’t been at my best, and Derek made no further appreciative comments into my ears.
I made another trip down to the weighing room between the third and fourth races. Clare had a ride in the fourth, and I wanted to have a quick word with her, but it was nothing to do with my unease over her riding Bangkok Flyer. We had a long-standing arrangement to have dinner together that night, and I wanted to confirm the plans.
; “Hi, Clare,” I called out to her as she exited the weighing room in a set of bright yellow silks with blue stars across her front and back. “Are you still on for tonight? I’ve booked a table at Haxted Mill for eight o’clock.”
“Great,” she said, smiling up at me as I walked alongside her. “But I’m going to see Mom and Dad first, so I’ll meet you there.”
“Fine,” I said.
I slowed to a halt and watched her walk away from me and through the small crowd into the parade ring.
I wondered whether I really knew her anymore.
We had arrived into this world by cesarean section just thirty seconds apart, she being born first, as she never failed to remind me.
Our childhoods had been totally intertwined, with us sharing first cots, then bedrooms, schools, and finally a rented apartment on the outskirts of Edenbridge in Kent when, aged nineteen, we had together summoned the courage to tell our overbearing father that we no longer wanted to live under his roof.
That had been twelve years ago, but our sharing of an apartment had lasted barely six months before she had moved out and gone north to Newmarket.
We had both wanted to be jockeys for as long as we could remember and had ridden imaginary races and stirring finishes, first on rocking horses and then on ponies in the paddocks behind our parents’ home in Surrey.
Twins we might be, but we didn’t have all the same genes.
While Clare remained short and slight, I became tall and broad.
She ate heartily and stayed annoyingly thin, while I had starved myself half to death but still grew heavier by the day. While we both became jockeys, we never rode against each other as we had done so often on our ponies. Hers became the life of a featherweight flat jock at racing’s “Headquarters” in Newmarket, while I rode precisely five times as an amateur over the jumps before my battle with my ever-increasing body mass put paid to that career path.
So, instead, I had rather pretentiously announced my desire to be a racehorse trainer and had moved briefly to Lambourn as an assistant to the assistant at one of the top steeplechase training stables. By this time I was twenty years old but, somehow, my body had still been growing at an age when everyone else’s had stopped. When it decided that enough was enough, I stood at six feet two inches in my socks, with shoulders to match, and, in spite of severe undernourishment, I was too heavy even to ride out with the string.