Dick Francis's Bloodline (9781101600931)

by Francis, Felix

  More of the easy, I thought, and less of the dead.

  I always liked racing at Brighton. It is one of the more unusual of the British racetracks in that, like Epsom and Newmarket, it is not a complete loop but a long, curving mile-and-a-half horseshoe-shaped track that runs along the undulating ridge of Race Hill, part of the South Downs range of chalk hills, two miles to the east of the city center.

  The view from the top of the grandstand on that particular October Tuesday was magnificent. The Indian summer of the past weeks had been swept away by a series of Atlantic weather fronts that had finally cleared through overnight, leaving cool, crisp conditions with spectacular visibility.

  Away to my right, the bright sunlight reflected with a million flashes off the surface of the sea, and in the far distance I could see a line of freighters making their way eastward toward the Straits of Dover.

  To my left, I looked out across the roofs of houses in the valley below toward where the gate was being towed into position at the one-mile start, ready for the first race.

  It was a truly beautiful day, the light azure sky contrasting with the lush dark green of the turf and the deep blues of the English Channel.

  I sat on the chair in the commentary booth and badly missed Clare. She used to ride frequently at Brighton, often staying the night before or after with our parents at Oxted. She had last been here for the festival in August, and I could still remember her delight in riding three winners on opening day while I’d been commentating.

  I smiled at the memory.

  There had been nothing strange or unusual about her riding on that occasion, just magnificent judgment and timing, as she had swept up the hill to win the Brighton Mile Challenge Trophy, the big race of the day, by the shortest of short heads.

  Commentators were expected to be unbiased and objective, but there had been nothing impartial and balanced about my words that day as I had cheered with delight as she had pulled off the last-gasp victory.

  Now it seemed such a long time ago, and I grieved for the loss of any more such joyous days.

  —

  I WENT DOWN to the press room to find myself a bite to eat and a cup of coffee.

  Jim Metcalf was there ahead of me, and he’d already eaten all the ham-and-mustard sandwiches from the selection provided.

  “Did you see my piece today about you?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied. “But I’ve heard about it from my father. He says it’s a load of rubbish.”

  Jim tossed a copy of it to me across the room. “It’s only what was in that statement of yours.”

  “Yeah, but UK Today must be desperately short of news to have run that today when it happened last Friday,” I said. “And anyway, you’ve completely missed the real story.”

  “What real story?” he asked slightly concerned.

  “Whoever it was trying to kill me had another go on Sunday night, and they killed a friend of mine instead.”

  He stared at me. “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Which friend?”

  “Someone called Emily Lowther.”

  He was already typing her name into his laptop.

  “The Three Horseshoes, Madingley,” he said, reading from the screen.

  “Very impressive,” I said. “How do you do that?”

  “Coroners’ database of reports for the Department of Justice. It records every case referred to a coroner in England and Wales. If this Emily Lowther was killed in Madingley on Sunday night, then the coroner for the area would have been informed of her death, probably yesterday, or this morning at the very latest. Either way, it’s now been entered on the database.”

  “Is it legal for you to have access to it?”

  “Probably not,” he said, “so I don’t ask.” He read the details on his screen. “This entry doesn’t say anything about you.”

  “That’s probably because I didn’t die,” I said. “Not quite.”

  “So who was Emily Lowther?” he asked.

  “Just a friend.”

  “Was she that flash bird I saw you with at Newmarket last Saturday?”

  “Do you spy on me all the time?” I asked.

  “No, not always, but it was a bit difficult not to notice.” He laughed. “Not the way you were pawing each other all afternoon.”

  “Yeah, well.” I sighed deeply, trying hard not to lose my composure. “It was her who was killed, but I think it was really me who was the target.”

  “Why do you think that?” he said.

  “I just do.” Although I remembered what Angela had said about Emily’s husband having a motive to kill—to inherit her house.

  “How was she killed?” Jim asked.

  “Run down by a car with no lights on in the pub parking lot. I went over the top, she went under the wheels. I lived, she died.”

  “Do you want me to write about this as well?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Then why are you telling me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said with another heavy sigh, “I just needed to tell someone. I seem to be living a nightmare at the moment. First Clare and now Emily, and the police don’t seem to be getting anywhere. They’re even suggesting that it might have been a hit-and-run in the pub lot when I’m quite sure it was premeditated murder. And I’ve got the broken ribs to prove it.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  I deduced from Jim’s tone of voice that he also must believe that the car hitting us was probably an accident. The alternative just seemed too far-fetched.

  “Jim,” I said, “can I tell you something off the record?”

  “Not if it’s a news story,” he said.

  “It’s about Toby Woodley.”

  “What about him?”

  “You know you said he had an uncanny knack of sniffing out real stories amongst all the gossip. Well, I think I know how he did it.”

  “Tell all,” Jim said, his journalistic antennae starting to quiver madly.

  “I’m not certain but I think that if Toby Woodley had even the slightest inkling that someone had been up to no good, he would send them a blackmail note asking for a paltry sum like two hundred pounds or he would go to the authorities.”

  “So?” said Jim.

  “If they paid, then he knew he’d been right.”

  “Bloody hell!” Jim suddenly shouted. “The bastard did it to me.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No I’m not,” he said. “I got this note last year from someone saying that they knew I’d used phone hacking to get a certain story and that if I didn’t pay them two hundred quid they would go to the press-complaints people and report me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, as it happens I hadn’t used hacking to get that particular story, so I ignored it. But I remember being really worried. I had used some information obtained from hacking to get another story round the same time, so I very nearly paid just to shut him up.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No,” he said. “I was even told where and when to leave the money, but in the end I decided not to pay, and I never heard another thing. I’d all but forgotten about it.”

  “I think Woodley did it to everyone, and when someone took the bait he then demanded more, writing a story in his paper that was close to the truth but without mentioning anyone by name. I believe the stories were solely designed to give his victims the incentive to pay him the new, larger amounts.”

  “And do you think that’s what got him murdered?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I do.”

  “The little creep,” Jim said with feeling. “Got what he deserved, if you ask me.”

 
; “But there’s someone else,” I said.

  “Someone else what?” he asked.

  “Toby Woodley was murdered last Wednesday evening at Kempton, and I know of two people who have received blackmail demands that must have been mailed after he died.”

  “Who?” he asked eagerly.

  “Ah, no,” I said, “I’m not telling you that, on the record or off it. Suffice to say, they are both reliable sources.”

  “So who is this someone else?” Jim asked.

  “I don’t know, but I think it must be someone who was also being blackmailed because he seems to know Toby Woodley’s payment method, and I reckon it must be the same person who killed him.”

  “Why couldn’t it simply be an accomplice who’s taken over?”

  “Partly because I don’t think Toby was the sort of man to have an accomplice, and also because of the missing briefcase.”

  “The famous Woodley briefcase.”

  “Infamous, more like,” I said. “I’ll bet that far from containing just his sandwiches, that briefcase held his blackmail notes and the details of all his victims. That’s why he was always so protective of it. And now someone else is using what was found to go on with the blackmail.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?” Jim asked. “Go to the police?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But that would almost definitely involve breaking confidences.” I laughed. “Perhaps I’ll just catch the murdering bastard myself.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Jim sarcastically. “You and whose army?”

  23

  I hadn’t imagined there would be so many policemen. They stood in groups of two or three inside each of the racetrack entrances, with clipboards, asking everyone who came in if they had been there the previous Wednesday, the day of Toby Woodley’s murder.

  I had arrived at Kempton really early in order to help set up the equipment, but now I wasn’t at all sure if the whole thing hadn’t been a waste of time.

  With all these coppers around, surely only a fool would attempt to collect blackmail money. But the blackmailer had been the one to specify the time and place, and you couldn’t actually see the police from the parking lot.

  I’d telephoned Austin Reynolds earlier just to check that he wasn’t getting cold feet, and also to finalize when and where he was to park his car. I had to take a chance that the blackmailer wouldn’t be made suspicious by Austin’s parking close to where the RacingTV scanner would be.

  “Park close to the big blue television broadcast vehicles that are at the far side of the parking lot, near the fence behind the saddling stalls.”

  “How can I do that?” Austin had asked. “Don’t I have to go where I’m told by the parking lot attendants?”

  “There won’t be any attendants,” I’d said. “They don’t have them for the night meetings because parking is free and the crowds are small. People park where they like, mostly as close as they can to the enclosure entrances. There are always plenty of spaces. Arrive at precisely half past four and enter by the racetrack main gate on Staines Road. Drive round toward the television vehicles and try to choose a space with an unoccupied one alongside its right. I promise you the parking lot will not be busy, especially more than an hour before the first race.”

  “All right.” He hadn’t sounded very confident.

  “Austin,” I’d said. “This is all you have to do, so do it right.”

  I wasn’t at all sure that he would even turn up at Kempton, but he did, and at precisely the right time, turning his large blue BMW through the main gate at exactly four-thirty.

  I had been waiting for him out on Staines Road in the rented Honda Civic and I now pulled out into traffic and followed him into the racetrack parking lot and around to the TV trucks.

  Austin parked in a free space just three away from the scanner and I pulled the Honda into the immediately alongside him on his right. Perfect, I thought. I couldn’t have positioned the two cars better if I’d painted white crosses on the blacktop.

  I climbed out of the Honda and walked directly to the scanner without looking once at Austin or his car. One never knew who was watching.

  “Ideal,” said Gareth, one of the bright young RacingTV technicians who had been as keen as mustard to help out. “Anything for some bleedin’ excitement.”

  Gareth had spent the morning and afternoon setting up all the camera equipment around the racetrack, and he would take it all down again later after the racing had finished. He was only there in between times in case any part of the system broke down, then his job was to fix it. He always joked that he was the only member of the broadcast team who actively wanted something to go wrong in order to alleviate the mind-numbing boredom of the actual program.

  Gareth didn’t really like racing, but he absolutely loved television cameras.

  “Can it be done?” I’d asked him.

  “’Course it can, me old sugar,” he’d replied in his strong London accent. “I can do bloody anything when it comes to cameras. Mr. Bleedin’ Magic, I am.”

  And he was.

  He hadn’t even wanted to know why I needed a particular car to be kept under constant observation. To him, it was clearly just a game and the reasons for it didn’t matter. “Ask no bleedin’ questions,” he’d said, “and I’ll be told no bleedin’ lies.”

  He’d set up one of the small handheld cameras in the back of the Honda so that it pointed out the side window behind the rear door, and he’d shown me how to park the car for maximum coverage. We now sat together in the scanner looking at a monitor that showed the images received from the camera through a link Gareth had established between the roof of the Honda and the signal-relay vehicle.

  “Bleedin’ marvelous,” Gareth exclaimed, staring closely at the monitor. “Crackin’ good picture, too, considerin’ it only uses a normal Internet wireless link.”

  The wide-angle lens on the camera meant we could see all the way down the far side of Austin Reynolds’s car right down to the ground, with a particularly good shot of the offside rear wheel, behind which I could already see the corner of a brown envelope sticking out.

  “Can you run that back?” I asked Gareth.

  “Sure,” he said, and the image jerked slightly on the screen as he put the recording into reverse. Even when the tape was played backward, it was clear for us both to see Austin Reynolds as he’d climbed out of his car, opened the back door, removed his coat from the backseat, closed the door, put on the coat, and then leaned down to place a brown padded envelope behind the rear wheel before walking off toward the entrance to the enclosures.

  “What’s in the envelope?” Gareth asked, his inquisitiveness getting the better of him for a moment.

  “Just some stones,” I said.

  “Diamonds?” Gareth was suddenly quite interested.

  “No such luck,” I said, laughing. “Just a few pieces of ordinary gravel to stop it from blowing away.”

  Gareth didn’t ask me why Austin was placing a worthless envelope behind his rear offside wheel, which I was then going to such trouble to watch—Ask no bleedin’ questions and I’ll be told no bleedin’ lies.

  “How about the other camera?” I asked.

  “No problem,” he said, looking at another image on his monitor. “I’ll just go and make a small adjustment.”

  He disappeared outside, and I watched the monitor as the camera moved slightly to the left and Austin’s car came clearly into view, with the racetrack entrance beyond. This second camera was attached to the side of one of the receiving-dome frameworks on the roof of the signal-relay vehicle that was parked alongside the scanner.

  Gareth returned and seemed satisfied with his handiwork.

  “Right,” he said. “That should do it. Good thing we’ve got no girls tonight or we’d be needin’ that camera.”
r />   “Girls,” in this instance, did not refer necessarily to womankind. It was the nickname for any presenters, male or female, who sat in the glass-fronted booth overlooking the parade ring and described the horses before a race. Someone once stated that the presenters had chatted away with each other like a pair of schoolgirls, and the nickname had stuck.

  The use of such paddock booths was once routine, but now they are seen mostly at the big meetings only, where one of the small cameras is employed to briefly show the girls, mostly men, usually sitting side by side and wearing headphones.

  No girls tonight.

  Oh God! Don’t remind me.

  —

  THE BLACKMAILER took the envelope at seven thirty-five just as the seven runners for the fourth race were being mounted in the parade ring and at the precise moment when Austin Reynolds was giving his jockey a leg up into the saddle.

  By that time it was dark, and just like the CCTV camera at the Hilton Hotel Gareth’s two small ones had automatically switched to infrared, both assisted by an infrared lamp positioned on the signal-relay vehicle that bathed the area in radiation that was invisible to humans but clear as daylight to the cameras.

  I nearly fell off my stool in the commentary booth, from which I hadn’t moved since well before the first race. It was good that it didn’t happen during a race commentary, I thought, or I would have completely lost the plot.

  Jack Laver had worked his magic and installed not one but three monitors in the commentary booth, the extra two showing images from Gareth’s hidden cameras.

  And there was the blackmailer, bold as brass, walking over to Austin’s car, bending down, removing the envelope, and stuffing it in his coat without stopping to open it and count his money—not that he’d find any.

  And just for good measure, as he bent down he looked straight into the camera hidden in the Honda from a distance of just a couple of feet. His image may have been monochrome green and he may have had zombie-like eyes, but his features were clear and distinct.

  Almost before anyone would have had a chance to react, our man was up and gone, visible now only via the second camera, walking briskly back toward the racetrack entrance, once more to mingle with, and become anonymous amongst, the other racegoers and the attendant policemen.