by Dick Francis
‘I wish the racing fraternity would use only whole numbers and halves,’ said Lodge plaintively.
‘Haven’t you heard,’ I asked, ‘about the keen gambler who taught his baby son to count? One, six-to-four, two…’
Lodge laughed, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘I’ll have to write down these figures on the Perth tickets alongside the form book information, and get it straightened out in my mind,’ he said, unscrewing his pen and settling to the task.
My father sat down beside him and watched the tell-tale list grow. I went back to the window seat and waited.
Presently Lodge said, ‘I can see why your father misses you as a fraud spotter.’ He put his pen back in his pocket.
I smiled and said, ‘If you want to read a really blatant fraud, you should look up the Irish racing in that form book. It’s fantastic.’
‘Not today. This is quite enough to be going on with,’ said Lodge, rubbing his hand over his face and pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger.
‘All that remains, as far as I’m concerned, is for you to tell us who is organising the whole thing,’ said my father with a touch of mockery, which from long understanding I interpreted as approval.
‘That, dear Pa, I fear I cannot do,’ I said.
But Lodge said seriously, ‘Could it be anyone you know on the racecourse? It must be someone connected with racing. How about Perth, the bookmaker?’
‘It could be. I don’t know him. His name won’t actually be Perth of course. That name was sold with the business. I’ll have a bet on with him next time I go racing and see what happens,’ I said.
‘You will do no such thing,’ said my father emphatically, and I felt too listless to argue.
‘How about a jockey, or a trainer, or an owner?’ asked Lodge.
‘You’d better include the Stewards and the National Hunt Committee,’ I said, ironically. ‘They were almost the first to know I had discovered the wire and was looking into it. The man we are after knew very early on that I was inquisitive. I didn’t tell many people I suspected more than an accident, or ask many pointed questions, before that affair in the horse-box.’
‘People you know…’ said Lodge, musingly. ‘How about Gregory?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Why not? He lives near Brighton, near enough for the Marconicar morning telephone call.’
‘He wouldn’t risk hurting Bill or Admiral,’ I said.
‘How can you be sure?’ asked Lodge. ‘People aren’t always what they seem, and murderers are often fond of animals, until they get in the way. One chap I saw at the assizes lately killed a nightwatchman and showed no remorse at all. But when evidence was given that the nightwatchman’s dog had had his head bashed in too, the accused burst into tears and said he was sorry.’
‘Pathetic,’ I said. ‘But no dice. It isn’t Pete.’
‘Faith or evidence?’ persisted Lodge.
‘Faith,’ I said grudgingly, because I was quite sure.
‘Jockeys?’ suggested Lodge, leaving it.
‘None of them strikes me as being the type we’re looking for,’ I said, ‘and I think you’re overlooking the fact that racing came second on the programme and may even have been adopted solely because a shaky bookmaking business existed on the floor above the Marconicars. I mean, that in itself may have turned the boss of Marconicars towards racing.’
‘You may be right,’ admitted Lodge.
My father said, ‘It’s just possible that the man who originally owned Marconicars decided to launch out into crime, and faked a sale to cover his tracks.’
‘Clifford Tudor, nee Thasos, do you mean?’ asked Lodge with interest. My father nodded, and Lodge said to me, ‘How about it?’
‘Tudor pops up all over the place,’ I said. ‘He knew Bill, and Bill had his address noted down on a scrap of paper.’ I put my hand into my jacket pocket. The old envelope was still there. I drew it out and looked at it again. ‘Tudor told me he had asked Bill to ride a horse for him.’
‘When did he tell you that?’ asked Lodge.
‘I gave him a lift from Plumpton races into Brighton, four days after Bill died. We talked about him on the way.’
‘Anything else?’ asked Lodge.
‘Well… Tudor’s horses have been ridden—up until lately—by our corrupted friend Joe Nantwich. It was on Tudor’s horse Bolingbroke that Joe won once when he had been instructed to lose… but at Cheltenham he threw away a race on a horse of Tudor’s, and Tudor was very angry about it.’
‘Camouflage,’ suggested my father.
But I rested my aching head against the window, and said, ‘I don’t think Tudor can possibly be the crook we’re looking for.’
‘Why not?’ asked Lodge. ‘He has the organising ability, he lives in Brighton, he owned the taxis, he employs Joe Nantwich, and he knew Major Davidson. He seems the best proposition so far.’
‘No,’ I said tiredly. ‘The best lead we’ve had is the taxis. If I hadn’t recognised that the men who stopped me in the horse-box were also taxi-drivers, I’d never have found out anything at all. Whoever put them on to me can’t possibly have imagined I would know them, or he wouldn’t have done it. But if there’s one person who knew I would recognise him, it’s Clifford Tudor. He was standing near me while the taxi-drivers fought, and he knew I’d had time to look at them after the police had herded them into two groups.’
‘I don’t rule him out altogether, even so,’ said Lodge, gathering his papers together and putting them back into his briefcase. ‘Criminals often make the stupidest mistakes.’
I said, ‘If we ever do find your Claud Thiveridge, I think he will turn out to be someone I’ve never met and never heard of. A complete stranger. It’s far more likely.’
I wanted to believe it.
I did not want to have to face another possibility, one that I shied away from so uncomfortably that I could not bring myself even to lay it open for Lodge’s inspection.
Who, besides Tudor, knew before the horse-box incident that I wanted Bill’s death avenged? Kate. And to whom had she passed this on? To Uncle George. Uncle George, who, I suspected, housed a lean and hungry soul in his fat body, behind his fatuous expression.
Uncle George, out of the blue, had bought a horse for his niece. Why? To widen her interests, he had said. But through her, I thought, he would learn much of what went on at the races.
And Uncle George had sent Heavens Above to be trained in the stable which housed Bill’s horse. Was it a coincidence… or the beginning of a scheme which Bill’s unexpected death had cut short?
It was nebulous, unconvincing. It was based only on supposition, not on facts, and bolstered only by memory of the shock on Uncle George’s face when Kate told him we had been to the Blue Duck—shock which he had called indigestion. And perhaps it had been indigestion, after all.
And all those primitive weapons in his study, the ritual objects and the scalp… were they the playthings of a man who relished violence? Or who loathed it? Or did both at the same time?
Scilla came into the drawing-room, carrying a copper bowl filled with forsythia and daffodils. She put it on the low table near me, and the spring sun suddenly shone on the golden flowers, so that they seemed like a burst of light, reflecting their colour upwards on to her face as she bent over them, tweaking them into order.
She gave me a sharp glance, and turned round to the others.
‘Alan looks very tired,’ she said. ‘What have you been doing?’
‘Talking,’ I said, smiling at her.
‘You’ll find yourself back in hospital if you’re not careful,’ she scolded mildly, and without pausing offered mid-morning coffee to Lodge and my father.
I was glad for the interruption, because I had not wished to discuss with them what was to be done next in pursuit of Mr Claud Thiveridge. Every small advance I had made in his direction had brought its retribution, it was true; yet in each of his parries I had found a clue. My faulty memory wa
s still cheating me of the information I had paid for with the drubbing at Bristol, but it did not deter me from wanting to see the business through.
I would get closer to Thiveridge. He would hit out again, and in doing it show me the next step towards him, like the flash of a gunshot in the dark revealing the hiding place of a sniper.
FOURTEEN
Joe Nantwich found the sniper first.
Eight days after Lodge’s visit I drove down to West Sussex races, having put in a short morning at the office. My bruises had faded and gone; the ribs and collar bone were mended and in perfect working order, and even my stubborn headache was losing its grip. I whistled my way into the changing-room and presented to Clem my brand new crash-helmet, bought that morning from Bates of Jermyn Street for three guineas.
The weighing-room was empty, and distant oohs and ahs proclaimed that the first race was in progress. Clem, who was tidying up the changing-room after the tornado of getting a large number of jockeys out of their ordinary clothes, into racing colours, past the scales and out to the parade ring, greeted me warmly and shook hands.
‘Glad to see you back, sir,’ he said, taking the helmet. With a ball-point pen he wrote my name on a piece of adhesive tape and stuck it on to the shiny shell. ‘Let’s hope you won’t be needing another new one of these in a hurry.’ He pressed his thumb firmly on to the adhesive tape.
‘I’m starting again tomorrow, Clem,’ I said. ‘Can you bring my gear? Big saddle. There’s no weight problem, I’m riding Admiral.’
‘Top flipping weight,’ said Clem, resignedly. ‘And a lot of lead, which Admiral isn’t used to. Major Davidson hardly ever needed any.’ Clem gave me an assessing sideways look and added, ‘You’ve lost three or four pounds, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘All the better,’ I said cheerfully, turning to the door.
‘Oh, just a minute, sir,’ said Clem. ‘Joe Nantwich asked me to let you know, if you came, that he has something to tell you.’
‘Oh, yes?’ I said.
‘He was asking for you on Saturday at Liverpool, but I told him you’d probably be coming here, as Mr Gregory mentioned last week that you’d be riding Admiral tomorrow,’ said Clem, absent-mindedly picking up a saddle and smoothing his hand over the leather.
‘Did Joe say what it was he wanted to tell me?’ I asked.
‘Yes, he wants to show you a bit of brown wrapping paper with something written on it. He said you’d be interested to see it, though I can’t think why—the word I saw looked like something to do with chickens. He had the paper out in the changing-room at Liverpool, and folded it up flat on the bench into a neat shape, and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Giggling over it, he was. He’d had a drink or two I reckon, but then most people had, it was after the National. He said what was written on the paper was double dutch to him, but it might be a clue, you never knew. I asked him a clue to what? But he wouldn’t say, and anyway, I was too busy to bother with him much.’
‘I’ll see him, and find out what it’s all about,’ I said. ‘Has he still got the paper with him, do you know?’
‘Yes, he has. He patted his pocket just now when he asked me if you were here, and I heard the paper crackle.’
‘Thanks, Clem,’ I said.
I went outside. The race was over, the winner was being led towards the unsaddling enclosure in front of the weighing-room, and down from the stands streamed the hundreds of chattering racegoers. I stood near the weighing-room door, waiting for Joe and catching up with the latest gossip. Liverpool, I learned, had been disappointing, fabulous, bloody, a dead loss and the tops, according to who told it. I had not been there. I had been too busy getting intensive treatment on my shoulder muscles to help my strength back.
Sandy clapped me soundly on the back as he passed, remarking that it was ‘Bloody good to see your old physog on the horizon again, even if you do look like an understudy for Scarface.’ He went on, ‘Have you seen Joe? The little drip’s been squealing for you.’
‘So I hear,’ I said. ‘I’m waiting for him now.’
A couple of press men asked me my riding plans, and made notes about Admiral for their morning edition. Sir Creswell Stampe noticed my existence with a nod of his distinguished head and the characteristic puffing up of his top lip which passed with him for a smile.
My content at being back in my favourite environment was somewhat marred by the sight of Dane strolling across the grass, talking intently to a slender, heart-catchingly beautiful girl at his side. Her face was turned intimately towards his, and she was laughing. It was Kate.
When they saw me they quickened their steps and approached me smiling, a striking pair evenly matched in grace and dark good looks.
Kate, who had got used to my battered face over lunch some days earlier, greeted me with a brisk ‘Hi, there,’ from which all undertones of love and longing were regrettably absent. She put her hand on my arm and asked me to walk down the course with her and Dane to watch the next race from beside the water jump.
I glanced at Dane. His smile was faint, and his dark eyes looked at me inscrutably, without welcome. My own muscles had tensed uncontrollably when I saw him and Kate together; so now I knew exactly how he felt about me.
It was as much unease over the low ebb of our friendship as desire to chase Claud Thiveridge which made me say, ‘I can’t come at this instant. I must find Joe Nantwich first. How about later on… if you’d like to walk down again?’
‘All right, Alan,’ she said. ‘Or maybe we could have tea together?’ She turned away with Dane and said, ‘See you later,’ over her shoulder with a mischievous grin, in which I read her mockery of the jealousy she could arouse in me.
Watching them go, I forgot to look out for Joe, and went in to search for him through the weighing- and changing-rooms again. He wasn’t there.
Pete towered over me as I returned to my post outside the door and greeted me like a long lost friend. His hat tipped back on his big head, his broad shoulders spreading apart the lapels of his coat, he gazed with good humour at my face, and said, ‘They’ve made a good job of sewing you up, you know. You were a very gory sight indeed last time I saw you. I suppose you still can’t remember what happened?’
‘No,’ I said, regretfully. ‘Sometimes I think… but I can’t get hold of it…’
‘Perhaps it’s just as well,’ he said comfortingly, hitching the strap of his race glasses higher on to his shoulder and preparing to go into the weighing-room.
‘Pete,’ I said, ‘Have you seen Joe anywhere? I think he’s been asking for me.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He was looking for you at Liverpool, too. He was very keen to show you something, an address I think, written on some brown paper.’
‘Did you see it?’ I asked.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did, but he annoys me and I didn’t pay much attention. Chichester, I think the place was.’
‘Do you know where Joe is now?’ I asked. ‘I’ve been waiting for him for some time, but there isn’t a sign of him.’
Pete’s thin lips showed contempt. ‘Yes, I saw the little brute going into the bar, about ten minutes ago.’
‘Already!’ I exclaimed.
‘Drunken little sod,’ he said dispassionately. ‘I wouldn’t put him up on one of my horses if he was the last jockey on earth.’
‘Which bar?’ I pressed.
‘Eh? Oh, the one at the back of Tattersall’s, next to the Tote. He and another man went in with that dark fellow he rides for… Tudor, isn’t that his name?’
I gaped at him. ‘But Tudor finished with Joe at Cheltenham… and very emphatically, too.’
Pete shrugged. ‘Tudor went into the bar with Joe and the other chap a few steps behind him. Maybe it was only coincidence.’
‘Thanks, anyway,’ I said.
It was only a hundred yards round one corner to the bar where Joe had gone. It was a long wooden hut backing on to the high fence which divided the racecourse from the road. I was
ted no time, but nonetheless when I stepped into the building and threaded my way through the overcoated, beer-drinking customers, I found that Joe was no longer there. Nor was Clifford Tudor.
I went outside again. The time for the second race was drawing near, and long impatient queues waited at the Tote next door to the bar, eyes flickering between racecards and wrist watches, money clutched ready in hopeful hands. The customers from the bar poured out, hurrying past me. Men were running across the grass towards the stands, coat-tails flapping. Bells rang loudly in the Tote building, and the queues squirmed with the compulsion to push their money through the little windows before the shutters came down.
I hovered indecisively. There was no sign of Joe in all this activity, and I decided to go up to the jockeys’ box in the stands and look for him there. I put my head into the bar for a final check, but it was now empty except for three ageing young ladies mopping up the beer-slopped counter.
It was only because I was moving so slowly that I found Joe at all.
Owing to the curve of the road behind them, the Tote and bar buildings did not stand in a perfectly straight line. The gap between the two was narrow at the front, barely eighteen inches across; but it widened farther back until, by the high fence itself, the Tote and bar walls were four or five feet apart.
I glanced into this narrow area as I passed. And there was Joe. Only I did not know it was Joe until I got close to him.
At first I saw only a man lying on the ground in the corner made by the boundary fence and the end wall of the Tote, and thinking he might be ill, or faint, or even plain drunk, went in to see if he needed help.
He lay in shadow, but something about his shape and rag-doll relaxedness struck me with shocking recognition as I took the five or six strides across to him.
He was alive, but only just. Bright red frothy blood trickled from his nose and the corner of his mouth, and a pool of it lay under his cheek on the weedy gravel. His round young face still wore, incredibly, a look of sulky petulance, as if he did not realise that what had happened to him was more than a temporary inconvenience.
