Dick Francis's Bloodline (9781101600931)

by Francis, Felix

  I removed from my pocket the sheet of paper that I’d found in Clare’s freezer and laid it out flat on the desk in front of him.

  “Were they like this?” I asked.

  He looked at it briefly and nodded. “Pretty much, except mine accused me of laying horses to lose.”

  “Did they arrive with DVDs?”

  “The first one did.”

  “How many have you received?” I asked.

  “Three.”

  “And what did you do about them?”

  “Paid up,” he said. “At least I did for the first two. Whoever it was didn’t ask for very much, so I paid.”

  I was amazed.

  “Except now,” he said, “I’ve been asked for more and I don’t like it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked at his watch and stood up. “I’ve got to go and get changed.”

  “Not yet,” I said forcefully, pointing a finger at him. “Answer my questions first.” He sat down again heavily. “What did you mean by being asked for more?”

  “It was that bloody race at Wolverhampton,” he said angrily. “I wish I’d never run the damn horse.”

  “Brain of Brixham?”

  “Yes.”

  “But surely that was a genuine error on Clare’s part?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “So why are you being blackmailed over it? Why didn’t you just go to the police?”

  “Clare wanted to,” he said.

  “So why didn’t you?” I asked. He said nothing but just sat looking down at his desk. “Was it because you had indeed layed the horse to lose?”

  He looked up at me. “Not a lot,” he said. “I’d thought old Brainy would run really well, so I had a big bet on him to win. Too big, really. Then I started to have cold feet, especially when he seemed a bit off-color on the morning of the race.”

  “So you layed him on the Internet?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Though not using my own name, of course. And just to limit my losses if he didn’t win.”

  Austin and I both knew that trainers laying their own horses was strictly against the Rules of Racing and would be punished by a lengthy ban from the sport.

  “I didn’t lay the full amount. I still stood to lose a lot if Brainy didn’t win.”

  That probably wouldn’t have made much difference to an inquiry.

  “It was very stupid,” he said. “I know that.”

  “But not as stupid as arranging with Clare to stop Tortola Beach at Doncaster.”

  “That was all her idea,” he said. “When she found out I’d layed Brainy at Wolverhampton, she said there was a much better way of stopping a horse winning, one that nobody would ever discover.”

  Except me, that is.

  “So did Clare pay the two hundred pounds?” I said, pointing at the note.

  “I paid it for her to stop her going to the police,” Austin said miserably, “along with two hundred from me. That bloody mistake of Clare’s has cost me a fortune, what with the loss of prize money and my big bet, not to mention the blackmail.”

  “How about the second note? When did that come?”

  “About six weeks ago.”

  “Asking for the same amount?” I asked.

  “No, it was a thousand that time.”

  “Did Clare get another one too?”

  “Yes,” Austin said. “Also for a thousand.”

  “And did you pay that for her as well?”

  “No,” he said. “I told her to pay it out of the money I’d given her for losing on Tortola Beach.”

  She obviously hadn’t done that, not if the two thousand I’d found in her desk had been the same money. I wondered if she’d paid it at all.

  “But you paid?”

  “Yes,” he said gloomily.

  “And you still didn’t go to the police?”

  “I couldn’t, could I? Not when I’d paid up once before.”

  “And not when you’d also layed Tortola Beach to lose.”

  “That was only a bit,” he said. “I couldn’t do too much or it would have been suspicious.”

  “But why on earth would you stop a horse if you weren’t making much from it?”

  He looked the picture of abject misery, a stark contrast to when he had led his victorious horse into the winner’s enclosure earlier that afternoon.

  “Clare was adamant that we should do it. She seemed to act like it was a game. I told her not to be so bloody silly, but she said that she would give it a go anyway whether I wanted her to or not.”

  “So you agreed?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why then did you pay her two thousand pounds if you didn’t make much out of it?”

  “It was like a bet between us. I told her she could have half what I made if she pulled it off without there even being a stewards’ inquiry. She claimed it was easy and that she’d done it before, but I didn’t believe her. I really didn’t think she could do it, but, boy, did she prove me wrong. It was brilliant. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

  My stupid, brilliant sister, I thought, competitive to the end. It hadn’t been the money that had been important, it had been winning her bet with Austin.

  “You said you’ve now been asked for more.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I had another note yesterday morning demanding ten thousand.” He again looked close to tears. “I can’t afford that sort of money.”

  “Show me the note,” I said.

  He opened the top left-hand drawer of the desk and removed a single sheet of paper, placing it down in front of me.

  TIME TO PAY A LITTLE MORE.

  A PAYMENT OF JUST £10000 IS NEEDED FOR ME TO REMAIN SILENT.

  GET THE CASH READY. PAYMENT INSTRUCTIONS WILL FOLLOW.

  It did look remarkably like the one I’d found in Clare’s freezer, but it had one very significant difference. The amount of ten thousand pounds had had the last zero added by hand. When it had been printed, it had read just one thousand. The blackmailer had obviously decided at the last minute to seriously up the stakes.

  “If it had been for just a thousand like last time,” Austin said, “I’d probably pay it. But ten grand is completely out of order.”

  I thought that even one thousand was out of order.

  “When did you say this arrived?”

  “Yesterday morning,” he said, “in the mail.”

  “Where’s the envelope it came in?”

  He took an envelope out of the drawer and placed it on the desk. It had been addressed in the same printed small capital letters as the note, and the postmark showed that it had been mailed on Thursday even though I couldn’t read from where.

  “Have you had the payment instructions?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “How did you hand the money over before?”

  “I was told I had to place used twenties in a brown envelope and then leave it under my car in the owners and trainers parking lot at Doncaster races, against the inside of the offside rear wheel.”

  “Didn’t you watch to see who collected it?”

  “No,” he said, “I was told not to. Anyway, I had a runner in the first and had to go and saddle it.”

  “You could have got someone else to watch.”

  He stared at me in disbelief. “Oh yeah! Tell me, who was I going to get to watch the package without telling him exactly why?”

  “How did you get the instructions?”

  “They also came in the mail,” he said. “They arrived the day before I had to leave the cash.”

  “Did Clare get the same instructions?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The first time, I just put a note in wi
th my payment to say that I was including hers.”

  Crazy, I thought.

  “And was it the same drop method both times?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Except the second time was at York, not Doncaster.”

  “And you’ve heard nothing else?” I asked.

  “Not until yesterday morning, although there were those bloody pieces in the Gazette this week. I nearly shit myself when I saw that headline on Tuesday.”

  “Why? Did you think it was written about you?”

  “What would you think?” he said.

  “But it didn’t say anything about the horse’s trainer being involved.”

  “It did last May when there was that piece about a trainer laying his horses on the Internet.”

  “Was that you?” I asked.

  “I’ve no idea,” he said. “But it was still much too close for comfort.”

  “Was the article printed in the paper before or after you paid the first two hundred?”

  “After,” he said definitely. “I remember clearly that the first note arrived on my birthday, the twenty-fifth of April. It wasn’t much of a birthday present, I can tell you.”

  At that point a neat little woman opened the office door and put her head through the gap.

  “Austin,” she said in a cross tone, “will you please come and look after our guests.”

  “Just coming, dear,” Austin said, standing up.

  The neat little woman removed her head and closed the door.

  “Please go now,” he was almost pleading with me.

  “OK,” I said. “But let me know when you receive the payment instructions.” I smiled at him. “Then we can try and catch the bastard, and without involving the police or the racing authorities.”

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “What have you got to gain?”

  “I’m trying to find out why my sister died. Your secrets are safe with me as long as Clare Shillingford’s good reputation remains intact.”

  —

  EMILY WAS still waiting for me in her car.

  “I was about to send in the cavalry,” she said as I climbed in beside her. “You’ve been ages.”

  I looked at my watch. I’d actually been in Austin’s office for only half an hour. Somehow it had seemed longer.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It was important.”

  “How important?” she asked. “Is that man the blackmailer?”

  “No,” I said, “he isn’t.”

  “Then who is?”

  I sighed. “I wish I knew.”

  Dammit, I thought. I’d been so busy asking Austin about the blackmail notes that I’d forgotten to ask him about the running of Bangkok Flyer at Lingfield on the day Clare had died.

  That race had been the start of all of this. Would Clare have died, I wondered, if I hadn’t witnessed that race and confronted her at Haxted Mill?

  Why oh why hadn’t I answered my telephone that night?

  Emily started the car engine. “Where to now?” she said.

  “I like you being my driver,” I said with a forced laugh, trying to put my guilt and self-pity back in their boxes.

  “I can think of better things I’d rather be of yours.”

  “Good,” I said, smiling genuinely. “Let’s go back to Clare’s cottage.”

  “Great idea,” she said. “That champagne will be nice and cold by now.”

  —

  “TELL ME ALL ABOUT IT,” Emily said as we snuggled down together on Clare’s sofa with the bottle of chilled champagne.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “About why your sister was being blackmailed and why finding that note suddenly meant we had to go and see that man.”

  “Austin Reynolds,” I said.

  “That’s the one.”

  How much did I want to tell her? How much could I trust her? I hadn’t even known her yet for twenty-four hours. But she had seen Clare’s blackmail note. Was it not better to tell her something rather than have her ask other people?

  “It’s all nonsense, really,” I said. “Clare was being blackmailed for something she hadn’t even done.”

  “In that race?”

  “Yes,” I said. “All Clare did was confuse the position of the winning post. It was a genuine mistake, but someone thinks she did it on purpose.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Emily said. “‘Publish and be damned.’ If she did nothing wrong, I can’t understand how she was being blackmailed.”

  Nor could I, but things weren’t that simple.

  “And anyway,” Emily said, “it surely can’t matter anymore now that she’s dead.”

  “The man I went to see is also being blackmailed and he’s very much alive.”

  Her eyes opened wider in delight. “It’s just like something on the television.”

  Yes, I thought, but who’s writing the script.

  “So what has the man done?” Emily asked eagerly. “He can’t be being blackmailed for the same mistake that Clare made.”

  “No, he’s not. But he did do something that was wrong,” I said. “He’s the trainer of the horse and he placed a bet that it wouldn’t win that race.”

  “So? What’s wrong with that? I thought that betting on horses was not only legal, it was almost compulsory.”

  “Racehorse trainers are allowed to bet that their horses will win a race but not that they will lose it. It would be too easy for them to make sure a horse didn’t win by simply not training it properly or giving it too hard a gallop too close to the race.”

  “But surely that’s not serious enough to be blackmailed over.”

  “The maximum penalty for a trainer betting on his own horse to lose is a ban from all racing for ten years. It is a very serious offense.”

  “Well, then the man’s an idiot,” Emily said. “And perhaps he deserves it.”

  There was a lot of sense in what she said, but the whole story would come out, and Clare was bound to be implicated. And, after the Daily Gazette articles on Tuesday and Wednesday, her memory would be tainted forever.

  “Are you going to inform the racing authorities?”

  “No,” I said, “not if I can help it.”

  “Why not?”

  I refilled our glasses while I thought through my answer.

  “My sole aim is to discover why Clare died. Everything else is irrelevant. I couldn’t care less whether Austin Reynolds loses his training license, his reputation, and his big house. He’s been a fool, but I don’t think he’s a real crook.”

  I paused and sipped my champagne.

  “But I really do care that Clare was driven to kill herself, and, quite possibly, the blackmailer might have been doing the driving. So I want to know who is demanding money from Austin Reynolds, and me going to the racing authorities and telling them what a naughty boy Austin’s been will not help. The blackmailer would simply walk away.”

  “He can’t be much of a blackmailer anyway,” Emily said.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “What blackmailer worthy of the name asks someone for two hundred pounds?” She laughed. “That’s a joke amount. Two thousand at least, or maybe five. Not so much that you drive the victim to the police but enough to make it worth your while.”

  “I didn’t know you were such an expert on blackmail,” I said.

  “There’s lots of things you don’t know about me,” she said, cuddling up and putting her hand down between my legs.

  “No, hold on,” I said, pushing her hand away and sitting up straight. “How come you know so much about blackmail?”

  “Mark,” she said, “don’t be so serious. I know because I read Agatha Christie books and watch murder mysteries on the television, that’s all.”<
br />
  I leaned back next to her.

  “Blackmailers in those stories always ask for a lot. But, I suppose, that’s why they usually get murdered. If they only asked for a little bit, no one would bother to murder them, they’d just pay.”

  Exactly as Austin Reynolds had done, I thought. Was that why the amounts had been so small?

  “I saw a film once,” Emily went on, “about an American high school where one of the students sends blackmail notes to every one of his graduating class demanding a single dollar or he would inform the school principal that he or she had cheated in the exams.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Nearly all of them hadn’t cheated and they just threw the notes away, but four members of the class actually had and those four each gave him the dollar.”

  “So?”

  “The blackmailer then knew which of his classmates had cheated and he demanded more from them. Pretty clever, eh?”

  18

  On Sunday, Emily drove me along the A14 from Newmarket to Huntingdon racetrack, where I was due to commentate on the six-race card.

  Racing on Sundays in England was first introduced at Doncaster on July 26, 1992, although, at the start, it still was against the law to charge entry for a sporting event on a Sunday. All sorts of tricks were used, like on that first day when people were charged for listening to the Band of the Irish Guards and then given a free afternoon’s racing. And the situation was further confused by the fact that cash betting was also illegal on Sundays then, but using a bookmaker’s account or even a credit or a debit card was not.

  Since those days, the rules have been relaxed somewhat, and Sunday is now just like any other day of the week, with at least two race meetings held on every Sunday of the year. Indeed, there are now only four days in the whole calendar when there is no racing on British racetracks: Good Friday, Christmas Day, and the two days before Christmas.

  The public love the Sunday meetings, and Huntingdon racetrack was already filling nicely by the time we arrived at about one o’clock, over an hour before the first race.

  Emily pulled her red Mercedes into the racetrack lot and followed the directions of the attendant to the next space at the end of the parked cars. Only when we had stopped did I notice with dismay and alarm that we had drawn up alongside Mitchell Stacey’s car and that he was still sitting in it.