Dick Francis's Bloodline (9781101600931)

by Francis, Felix

  “Do you think he’ll win the Guineas?”

  “I doubt it. That Peter Williams colt, Reading Glass, he’ll take a lot of beating. But Scusi’s good, and it would be nice to be the first lady jockey to win a Classic.” She looked upward wistfully. “One year anyway.”

  “But you’ll ride him?”

  “Maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “That’ll be up to Geoff.” Scusami was trained by Geoffrey Grubb in Newmarket.

  The coffee arrived.

  “Shame about Bangkok Flyer,” I said.

  Clare sat in silence and looked down at her cup.

  “Don’t you think?” I prompted.

  “I’d forgotten you were commentating.”

  “You don’t deny it, then?” I asked.

  More silence.

  “Why, Clare?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “How can it be complicated?” I asked incredulously. “You fixed the bloody race.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, looking up quickly. “I didn’t fix it. I just didn’t win it.”

  “Don’t split hairs with me,” I said sharply.

  “Ooh! Look at you, getting on your high horse.”

  “Be serious.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because it’s a serious matter,” I said. “You could lose your license, and your livelihood.”

  “Only if I get caught.”

  “I caught you.”

  “Yeah, but what are you going to do about it?”

  I sat and watched her. I could tell that she already knew the answer.

  “Nothing. But someone else will be bound to notice if you do it again.”

  “No one has done so far.”

  I looked at her in disbelief.

  “Are you saying this wasn’t the first time you’ve done this?”

  She smiled at me. “Of course not.”

  “Clare!”

  The couple at a table nearby looked over at us. I lowered my voice but not my anger.

  “Are you telling me that you regularly don’t win races you should?”

  “I wouldn’t say regularly,” she said, “but I have.”

  “How often?”

  She pursed her lips.

  “Three or four times, maybe five.”

  “But why?”

  “I told you, it’s complicated.”

  I didn’t know what to say. She was so matter-of-fact about it all. If the British Horseracing Authority knew she had “stopped” horses three, four, or five times, they probably would have taken away her license for good and banned her from all racetracks for life.

  And she didn’t seem bothered.

  “Well, don’t ever do it again,” I said in my most domineering tone.

  “And what will you do about it if I do?” She was mocking me.

  “Clare, please. Don’t do this. Don’t you understand? I love you, and I don’t want to see you destroy all that you’ve built up.”

  I glanced around to make sure no one was listening.

  “Don’t be so patronizing,” Clare said.

  I sat there, stunned.

  “I’ve had to claw my way up in this business,” she said with feeling, leaning across the table. “No one gives you an inch. Lady jockey—ha! Don’t make me laugh. Half of those in racing think we’re no bloody good and should leave it all to the men, while the other half are a bunch of dirty old men who fantasize about us wearing tight breeches with whips in our hands. I’ve had to bow and scrape to them all, and sweat blood, to get where I am today, and now at last it’s me who’s in control of them.”

  “Is that it, then?” I asked. “Is this all about control?”

  “You bet. Control over the bloody trainers, and the owners.”

  Control, I thought, could be a powerful force. What was that old adage? Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Absolute power and unbridled control over others had led to the Nazis, and a world war was needed to wrest control from their fingers. Control over others was a dangerous concept.

  “I thought I knew you,” I said slowly, “but I don’t.”

  “I’ve changed,” she said, “and I’ve hardened. I’ve had to climb the slippery pole while others kicked me in the teeth. Success didn’t just fall into my lap by chance.”

  We both knew what she meant.

  I had been in the right place at the right time.

  It was now eight years since that day at the Fontwell Park races when the paddock presenter for RacingTV had been taken seriously ill with a heart attack just before he was due to go on the air. The backup presenter, the much respected wife of an up-and-coming young trainer, turned out to be the main presenter’s mistress, and she had insisted on going with him to the hospital in the ambulance.

  I was only there as a guest to watch because I’d carelessly put my hand up at a charity auction to spend a day with the RacingTV team. But I found myself putting up my hand again and volunteering to stand in.

  “Do you know the horses?” the agitated producer had demanded while pulling out clumps of his already thinning hair.

  “Yes,” I’d replied.

  And I had. As my sister had so correctly pointed out, I tended to drift rather a lot, and I hadn’t actually acquired a proper job since returning from my brief sojourn in Lambourn two years before. Rather, I’d decided to earn my living as a professional gambler and had consequently spent most of my time studying the form. I knew the horses very well.

  “Only for the first race, then,” the producer had said. “I’ve sent for a replacement, but he won’t be here until two o’clock.”

  I had talked easily to the camera about each horse in the first race and had even tipped the winner. When the replacement had arrived, he’d just sat and watched me all afternoon as I’d tipped the winner in three other races as well.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” the producer had asked as they were packing up.

  “Nothing,” I’d replied honestly.

  “We’re at Wincanton. Fancy a job?”

  Since that day, I had never looked back, spreading into commentating again by accident when the race caller at Windsor had been held up by a big car crash on the local highway and I had been asked to stand in.

  Nowadays I split my time three ways—commentating at the racetracks, paddock presenting for RacingTV, and also hosting the TV coverage on Channel 4, the terrestrial broadcaster of horseracing in Britain.

  But Clare firmly believed that I still didn’t have a “proper” job and that I would soon drift off into something else.

  Maybe she was right.

  “I much preferred the old you,” I said to her.

  “Oh God!” she said. “Don’t start all that again. I live in a competitive world. I have a competitive job. I have to compete. Otherwise I’d be trampled on.”

  “Do you have to compete on everything?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I just feel that whenever we have a conversation these days, it’s a points-scoring exercise.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with her. There was no sense in it. For whatever I might say, she would have a riposte. Losing was not an option for her, except, of course, when she clearly lost on purpose.

  I paid the bill, and we went out together to the parking lot.

  “Is there anything I can say that would stop you from doing it again?”

  She turned to me. “Probably not.”

  “I might report you to the authorities.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t bank on it,” I said.

  “Mark, don’t be such a prat. You know perfectly well that you won’t tel
l anyone. For a start, it would reflect badly on you. So just keep your eyes and mouth shut.”

  “I can hardly do that in my job.”

  “Then you’ll have to turn a blind eye instead.”

  “Clare, seriously, if you do that once more when I’m commentating, I’ll never speak to you again.”

  She opened the door of her silver Audi TT.

  “Your loss, not mine.”

  She climbed into the sports car and slammed the door shut.

  Again, I was stunned. Maybe it had been a careless thing to say, but I hadn’t expected such a brusque answer.

  What had happened to my lovely twin sister?

  She gunned the engine, and spun the rear wheels on the gravel, as she shot off without a wave, without even a glance.

  —

  AS I ARRIVED back at my apartment, the phone in the hallway was ringing, and the caller ID on the handset showed me that it was Clare calling from her cell.

  I wondered what else she had to say to hurt me some more. Maybe she had thought up another barbed comment to thrust into my heart.

  I let the phone go on ringing.

  Eventually the answering machine picked it up, and I stood there in the dark listening for any message. There wasn’t one. Clare had hung up.

  My own cell phone started vibrating in my pocket, but I also let that go to voice mail.

  I didn’t want to talk to her. I was hurting enough already. Even if she was ringing to apologize, which I doubted, she could wait. It wouldn’t do her any harm to feel guilty for a while.

  I flicked on the light and looked at my watch. It was still only nine-twenty. Far from enjoying a leisurely dinner with my loving twin sister to mull over our news and catch up on family gossip, I was back home less than an hour and a half after leaving.

  I felt wretched, and cheated.

  I walked into my sitting room–cum–kitchen–cum–dining room–cum–office.

  Perhaps Clare was right about my apartment. Maybe it was time to move on.

  We had initially found the place through a student accommodations company, and, looking at it now, I had to admit that it certainly still had a “student” feel about it.

  Once I had talked the landlord into redecorating, but that had been about eight years ago, and the cheap paint he had used had faded and cracked. I knew I should ask him to do it again, but I didn’t relish all the upheaval that would be produced moving my stuff. Better to live with a few marks on the walls and a slowly yellowing ceiling.

  I sat down at my table and opened my laptop computer. I logged on to the Racing Post website and looked through the cards for the following day’s racing at Newbury, where I would be presenting for Channel 4.

  As hard as I tried to concentrate on the horses, looking up their form and making notes, my mind kept drifting back to Clare and our conversation over dinner.

  How could she be so stupid? And for what? Did I really believe she was stopping horses from winning just to play some weird game of control over trainers and owners? There had to be more to it than that. Surely there had to be some financial implications.

  “It’s complicated,” she had said.

  It sure was.

  My phone rang again, and I went on ignoring it. I was sure it was Clare, but I was angry and upset and I wouldn’t speak to her. It stopped ringing, and, as before, there was no message.

  I forced myself back to the horses running at Newbury the following day and spent the next hour going through all eight races in detail. Only three of the eight were due to be shown live on Channel 4, but, as I still tried to supplement my income with some winnings, I was looking for horses that I believed showed especially good value in the prices currently offered on the Internet betting sites.

  One particular horse, Raised Heartbeat, running in the third race, was quoted at decimal odds of 7.5; in other words, if I placed a bet of one hundred pounds, I would get seven hundred fifty pounds back altogether, including my hundred-pound stake. That was equivalent to fractional odds of thirteen-to-two. I felt sure that the horse would actually start at maybe six-to-one or even five-to-one. If I placed a bet now at the longer price and then “layed” the horse at shorter odds tomorrow, I would effectively have a bet to nothing. If it won, I would win a little, but if it lost I wouldn’t lose anything.

  It was a technique I had employed for some time with considerable success. But the system wasn’t foolproof. The horse could drift in the market, making my bet seem rather undervalued. I could then still lay the horse to limit my exposure, but that would guarantee a financial loss whether the horse won the race or not.

  However, due to my job, I watched the same horses run day after day, week after week, even year after year, and I knew them as well as anyone. Experience had proven that I was more often right than not about the way the odds would change.

  I logged on to my account and placed my bet on Raised Heartbeat—a hundred-pound stake to make six-hundred-and-fifty profit.

  If I was right and the price shortened to, say, five-to-one, I would then lay it. That is, I’d take a hundred-pound bet from someone else for them to win five hundred. Now, if the horse won, I would win six hundred fifty on my bet and pay out the five hundred on the bet from someone else, giving me a profit of a hundred fifty pounds. If the horse lost, then I would lose my hundred-pound stake, but I’d also keep the hundred from someone else, leaving me even. Whereas it wasn’t quite win/win, at least it was win/not lose.

  The phone rang once more. I looked at my watch. It was ten past eleven. I was tempted to answer it, but I was still smarting from earlier and I didn’t want another row. I would speak to her in the morning when we had both cooled off a little.

  I closed the lid of my computer and went along the corridor to bed.

  The only significant change I had made when Clare had moved out to go to Newmarket was to transfer from the smaller bedroom into the larger one. Now I lay awake on the double bed in the darkness and thought back to those months we had spent here together.

  Undoubtedly it had been the happiest time of my life. We had escaped the nightmare of living in a house where our father had become so prescriptive about what we could and couldn’t do that he had refused permission for us to go out to a friend’s New Year’s Eve party in spite of the fact that we both were over eighteen. When we had defied him and gone anyway, we had found the house locked and bolted on our return. We had rung the bell and battered on the door, but he wouldn’t let us in, so we had spent the night shivering in Clare’s Mini and planned our getaway.

  This apartment had seemed like a palace—somewhere we could leave the lights on without being shouted at, and where we didn’t have to account for our every waking minute.

  How I longed for a return to those halcyon days.

  Perhaps I should call Clare after all.

  I turned on the bedside lamp and looked at the clock. It was a quarter to midnight. Was it too late to call? It was a good half hour since she had last tried me. Would she be asleep?

  I tried her anyway, figuring that she could always turn her cell phone off if she didn’t want to be disturbed.

  It went straight to voice mail.

  “Clare, it’s Mark,” I said. “I’m sorry this evening was such a disaster. Call me in the morning. Love you. Bye.”

  I hung up and then turned my phone off. I needed to sleep and didn’t want her calling me again tonight.

  —

  I WOKE to the sound of someone hammering on my front door.

  My bedside clock showed me that it was just past three o’clock in the morning.

  The hammering went on.

  I turned on the bedside light and collected my dressing gown from its hook on the back of my bedroom door.

  “OK, OK, I’m coming,” I shouted as I walked down the corr
idor.

  Bloody Clare, I thought. Go home.

  I opened the front door, but it wasn’t Clare. Someone shone a flashlight right into my face so I couldn’t see anything.

  “Mr. Shillingford?” said a voice in an official tone. “Mr. Mark Shillingford?”

  “Yes,” I said, holding my hand up and trying to see past the light. “What is it?”

  “Kent Police, sir,” said the voice. “Constable Davis.” He held out his warrant card.

  My skin went cold. Personal calls from the police at this time of night were never good news.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I have some very bad news for you,” the constable went on. “It’s your sister, Miss Clare Shillingford.” He paused. “She’s dead.”

  3

  Dead?” I said, my voice box seemingly detached from my body.

  “Yes, sir,” said PC Davis. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Where?” I asked in a croak.

  I felt weak and swayed somewhat.

  “Shall we come in, sir?” he said, stepping forward and supporting me by the elbow.

  There were two of them, the other a female officer, and they guided me into my sitting room and down onto the sofa.

  “Liz, get some sweet tea,” the policeman said to his colleague.

  I watched as she went over to the kitchenette and opened cupboards, looking for mugs.

  “Top right,” I said automatically.

  Time seemed to stand still as the kettle boiled and a cup of hot tea was pressed into my hand.

  “Drink it, sir,” said the constable. “It will do you good.”

  I took a sip and winced. “I don’t take sugar.”

  “You do tonight, sir. Drink it.”

  I drank some of the sweet liquid, but it didn’t make me feel noticeably better.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said, “what do you mean?”

  “Where is she?” I asked again. “I must go to her.”

  “All in good time, sir. We need to ask you some questions first.”

  I just looked at him.

  “Are you, in fact, Miss Shillingford’s next of kin?” the female officer asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Her parents—our parents—they’re still alive. Does that make them the next of kin?”