Jan had been one of my clients now for three years, ever since she had acquired a substantial sum from her ex during a very public High Court divorce case.
I adored her, and not just for her patronage. Perhaps I should accept her invitation to a dirty weekend away, but that would then have changed everything.
“How’s my money?” she asked.
“Alive and kicking,” I replied.
“And growing, I hope.” She laughed.
So did I. “How was the preview?”
“Fabulous,” she said. “I took my daughter, Maria, and a college friend of hers. We had a really wonderful time. The show was terrific.”
At my suggestion, Jan had invested a considerable sum in a new West End musical based on the life of Florence Nightingale set during the Crimean War. The true opening night was a week or so away, but the previews had just started, and I’d read some of the newspaper reports and prereviews. They had been somewhat mixed but that didn’t always mean the show wouldn’t be a success. The Wizard of Oz spin-off musical, Wicked, had been panned by the New York Times after its opening night on Broadway, but it was still running there more than seven years and three thousand performances later, and it was breaking box-office records all around the world.
“Some of the prereviews are not great,” I said.
“I can’t think why,” Jan replied with surprise. “That girl that plays Florence is gorgeous, and what a voice! I think she’ll make me a fortune. I am sure the proper reviews after the first night will be fabulous.” She laughed. “But I’ll blame my financial adviser if they aren’t and I lose it all.”
“I hear he has broad shoulders,” I said, laughing back.
But it wasn’t necessarily a laughing matter. Investing in the theater had always been a high-risk strategy and fortunes had been lost far more often than they’d been won. Not that investing in anything was certain. It was always a gamble. I had known some seemingly cast-iron and gold-plated investments go belly-up almost without warning. Shares in big established companies were usually safe, with expected steady growth, but that was not always the case. Enron shares had fallen from a healthy ninety dollars each to just a few cents within ten weeks, while Health South Inc., once one of America’s largest health care providers, had lost ninety-eight percent of its value on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Both those collapses had been due to fraud or dodgy accounting practices, inflating their revenues and profits, but business catastrophes can have the same effect. BP shares fell in value by more than fifty percent in a month when an oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico even though the costs associated with the explosion, and the subsequent oil clearup, represented far less than half the company’s assets.
Could such a calamitous loss have resulted in Herb’s murder?
I couldn’t believe it was possible.
Patrick Lyall held regular meetings, usually on a Monday, when investment plans for our clients were discussed. All his assistants were present, and that included Herb and myself. We were expected to research the markets and put forward investment suggestions—for example, the new musical that I had recommended to Jan Setter—but the firm’s rule was clear and simple: none of our client money could be invested in any product without the prior approval of either Patrick or Gregory.
Our exposure to BP losses had been mostly through personal pension schemes, and, bad as it was, the risks had been well spread, with no individuals actually losing their shirts, or even as much as a tie. Certainly not enough, I thought, to murder their adviser.
“You should come and ride out for me,” said Jan, bringing my daydreaming back to the present. “First lot goes out at seven-thirty on Saturdays. Come down on a Friday and stay the night. You’d enjoy it.”
Now, was that an invitation to a dirty weekend or not?
And yes, I would enjoy it. The riding, that is. At least I think I would have. But I hadn’t sat on a horse in eight years.
I could remember so clearly the devastation I had felt when told I couldn’t be a jockey anymore. I had been sitting at an oak table in the offices of the British Horse Racing Authority in High Holborn, London. Opposite me were the three members of the medical board.
I could recall almost word for word the brief announcement made by the board chairman. “Sorry, Foxton,” he had said, almost before we were all comfortable in our chairs, “we have concluded that you are, and will permanently remain, unfit to ride in any form of racing. Consequently, your jockey’s license has been withdrawn indefinitely.” He had then started to rise, to leave the room.
I had sat there completely stunned. My skin had gone suddenly cold and the walls had seemed to press inwards towards me. I had expected the meeting with the board to be a formality, just another necessary inconvenience on the long road to recovery.
“Hold on a minute,” I’d said, turning in my chair towards the departing chairman. “I was told to come here to answer some questions. What questions?”
The chairman had stopped in the doorway. “We don’t need to ask you any questions. Your scan results have given us all the answers we need.”
“Well, I have some questions to ask you, so please sit down.”
I could recall the look of surprise on his face that a jockey, or an ex-jockey, would talk to him in such a manner. But he did come back and sit down again opposite me. I asked my questions and I argued myself hoarse, but to no avail. “Our decision is final.”
But, of course, I hadn’t been prepared to leave it at that.
I’d arranged to have a second opinion from a top specialist in neck and spinal injuries to help me win my case. But he only served to confirm the medical board’s findings, as well as frightening me half to death.
“The problem,” he told me, “is that the impact of your fall occurred with such force that your atlas vertebra was effectively crushed into the axis beneath. You are very lucky to be alive. Extraordinarily lucky, in fact. Quite apart from the main fracture right through the axis, many of the interlocking bone protrusions that helped hold the two vertebrae together have been broken away. Put in simple terms, your head is balanced precariously on your neck, and the slightest trauma might be enough to cause it to topple. With that neck, I wouldn’t ride a bike, let alone a horse.”
It hadn’t exactly been encouraging.
“Is there nothing that can be done?” I’d asked him. “An operation or something? How about a metal plate? I still have one in my ankle from a previous break.”
“This part of the neck is a difficult area,” he’d said. “Far more complicated than even an ankle. There are so many planes and degrees of movement involved. Then there is the attachment of the skull, not to mention the inconvenience of having the nerves for the rest of your body passing right through the middle of it all, indeed the brain stem itself stretches down to the axis vertebra. I don’t think a metal plate would help and it would certainly be another problem you could do without. In normal life, your muscles will hold everything together and your neck should be fine, just try not to have a car crash.” He’d smiled at me. “And, whatever you do, don’t get into a fight.”
For weeks afterwards I had hardly turned my head at all, and, for a while, I’d gone back to wearing a neck brace to sleep in. I remember being absolutely terrified to sneeze in case my head fell off, and I hadn’t even been near a horse, let alone on one’s back. So much for being a carefree risk taker. The Health and Safety Executive had nothing on me when it came to my neck.
“I’d love to come and watch your horses work,” I said to Jan, returning once again to the present. “But I’m afraid I can’t ride one.”
She looked disappointed. “I thought you’d love it.”
“I would have,” I said. “But it’s too much of a risk with my neck.”
“What a bloody shame,” she said.
Bloody shame was right. I longed to ride again. Coming racing every week was a pleasant change from spending all my time in a London office, but, in some wa
ys, it was a torment. Each day I chatted amicably to my clients as they wore their racing silks and I positively ached to be one of them again. Even after all this time, I would sometimes sit in my car at the end of a day and weep for what I had lost. Why? Why? Why had this happened to me?
I shook my head, albeit only slightly, and told myself to put such thoughts of self-pity out of my mind. I had much to be thankful for, and I should be happy to be twenty-nine years old, alive, employed and financially secure.
But oh how I wanted still to be a jockey.
I watched the first race from a vantage point on the grandstands, the vivid harlequin-colored jackets of the jockeys appearing bright in the sunshine as they cantered down to the two-mile-hurdle start.
As always, the undiminished longing to be out there with them weighed heavy in the pit of my stomach. I wondered if it would ever go away. Even though Cheltenham had been the scene of my last, ill-fated ride, I held no grudge towards the place. It hadn’t been the racetrack’s fault that I had been so badly injured. In fact, it was only due to their paramedics’ great care after the fall that I wasn’t paralyzed, or dead.
Cheltenham had been the first racetrack I had ever known and I still loved the place. I had grown up in Prestbury village, right alongside, and I’d ridden my bicycle past the backstretch every morning on my way to school. Each March, as the Steeplechasing Festival approached, the excitement surrounding not only the track but the whole town had been the inspiration for me first to ride a horse, then to pester a local racehorse trainer for holiday jobs and finally to give up a planned future of anodyne academia for the perilous existence of a professional jockey.
Cheltenham was the home of jump racing. Whereas the Grand National was the most famous steeplechase in the world, every racehorse owner would rather win the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
The Grand National was a handicap, so the better horses carried the greater weight. The handicapper’s dream was that all the horses would cross the finish line in a huge dead heat. But it would be a bit like making Usain Bolt run the Olympic 100 meters in Wellington boots to even up the chances of the others. However, in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, other than a slight reduction for female horses, all the participants carried the same weight, and the winner was the true champion.
I had only ridden in it once, on a rank outsider that’d had no chance, but I could still recall the tension that had existed in the jockeys’ Changing Room beforehand. The Gold Cup was not just another race, it was history in the making, and one’s performance mattered even if, as in my case, I had pulled up my horse long before the finish.
Away to my left, at the far end of the straight, the fifteen horses for the first race were called into line by the starter. “They’re off,” sounded the public-address, and they were running.
Two miles of fast-paced hurdle racing with the clatter-clatter from hooves striking the wooden obstacles clearly audible to those of us in the grandstands. The horses first swept up the straight towards us, then turned left-handed to start another complete circuit of the track, ever increasing in speed. Three horses jumped the final hurdle side by side, and a flurry of jockeys’ legs, arms and whips encouraged their mounts up the hill to the finish.
“First, number three, Fallen Leaf,” sounded the public-address system.
Mark Vickers, the other jockey in the race to be the champion, had just extended his lead over Billy Searle from one to two.
And Martin Gifford, the gossip, had trained the winner in spite of his expressed lack of faith in its ability. I wondered if he had simply been trying to keep his horse’s starting price high by recommending that other people should not bet on it. I looked down at my race program and decided to invest a small sum on Yellow Digger in the third race: the other runner Martin had told me would have no chance.
I turned to go back to the Weighing Room, looking down at my feet to negotiate the grandstand steps.
“Hello, Nicholas.”
I looked up. “Hello, Mr. Roberts,” I said in surprise. “I didn’t realize you were a racing man.”
“Oh yes,” he said. “Always have been. In fact, my brother and I have horses in training. And I often used to watch you ride. You were a good jockey. You could have been one of the greats.” He pursed his lips and shook his head.
“Thank you,” I said.
Mr. Roberts—or, to use his full title, Colonel The Honourable Jolyon Westrop Roberts, MC, OBE, younger son of the Earl of Balscott—was a client. To be precise, he was a client of Gregory Black’s, but I had met him fairly frequently in the offices at Lombard Street. Whereas many clients are happy to leave us to get on with looking after their money, Jolyon Roberts was one of those known to have a hands-on approach to his investments.
“Are you on your day off?” he asked.
“No,” I replied with a laugh. “I’m seeing one of my clients after racing, you know, the jockey Billy Searle.”
He nodded, then paused. “I don’t suppose . . .” He paused again. “. . . No, it doesn’t matter.”
“Can I help you in some way?” I asked.
“No, it’s all right,” he said. “I’ll leave it.”
“Leave what?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Nothing for you to worry about. It’s fine. I’m sure it’s fine.”
“What is fine?” I asked with persistence. “Is it something to do with the firm?”
“No, it’s nothing,” he said. “Forget I even mentioned it.”
“But you didn’t mention anything.”
“Oh, right,” he said with a laugh. “So I didn’t.”
“Are you sure there is nothing I can help you with?” I asked again.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “Thank you.”
I stood there on the grandstand steps for a few seconds, looking at him, but he made no further obscure reference to whatever was clearly troubling him.
“Right, then,” I said. “No doubt I’ll see you sometime in the office. Bye, now.”
“Yes,” he replied. “Right. Good-bye.”
I walked away leaving him there, standing ramrod straight and looking out across the track as if in deep thought.
I wondered what that had all been about.
Mark Vickers won twice more during the afternoon, including the big race on Yellow Digger at the relatively long odds of eight to one, giving Mark a four-winner lead over Billy Searle in the championship race, and me a tidy payout from the Tote.
Billy Searle was not in the least bit happy when he emerged from the Weighing Room after the last race for our meeting.
“Bloody Vickers,” he said to me. “Did you see the way he won the first? Beat the poor animal half to death with his whip. Stewards should have banned him for excessive use.”
I decided not to say that I actually thought that Mark Vickers had been rather gentle with his use of the whip in the first race, and had in fact ridden a textbook finish with his hands and heels to win by a head. Perhaps, in the circumstances, it wouldn’t have been very diplomatic. I also chose not to mention to Billy that Mark was a client of mine as well.
“But there’s still plenty of time left for you to catch him,” I said, although I knew there wasn’t, and Mark Vickers was bang in form while Billy was not.
“It’s my bloody turn,” he said vehemently. “I’ve been waiting all these years to get my chance, and now, with Frank injured, I’m going to bloody lose out to some young upstart.”
Life could be hard. Billy Searle was four years older than me and he’d been runner-up in the championship for each of the past eight years. Every time, he’d been beaten by the same man, the jump jockey recognized by all as the best in the business, Frank Miller. But Frank had broken his leg badly in a fall the previous December and had been out of action now for four months. This year, for the first time in a decade, it would be someone else’s turn to be champion jockey, but, after today’s triple for Mark Vickers, it seemed likely that it wouldn’t be Billy. And time was no longer on Bill
y’s side. Thirty-three is getting on for a jump jockey, and the new crop of youngsters were good, very good, and they were also hungry for success.
It was obvious to me that Billy was in no real mood to discuss his finances even though it had been he, not me, who had called the previous afternoon asking for this urgent meeting at Cheltenham. But I’d come all the way from London to talk to him and I didn’t want it to be a wasted journey.
“What was it that you wished to discuss?” I asked him.
“I want all my money back,” he said suddenly.
“What do you mean ‘back’?” I asked.
“I want all my money back from Lyall and Black.”
“But your money is not with Lyall and Black,” I said. “It’s in the investments that we bought for you. You still own them.”
“Well, I want it back anyway,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“I just do,” he said crossly. “And I don’t need to tell you why. It’s my money, and I want it back.” He was building himself into a full-blown fury. “Surely I can do what I like with my own money?”
“OK. OK, Billy,” I said, trying to calm him down. “Of course you can have the money back. But it’s not that simple. I will need to sell the shares and bonds you have. I can do that tomorrow.”
“Fine,” he said.
“But, Billy,” I said, “some of your investments were bought with long-term growth in mind. Just last week I acquired some thirty-year government bonds for you. If I have to sell them tomorrow, you are likely to sustain a loss.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I need the money now.”
“All right,” I said. “But as your financial adviser I have to ask you again why you need your money so quickly. If I had more time to sell, you might get a better return.”
“I haven’t got more time,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Billy,” I said seriously, “are you in some sort of trouble?”
“No, of course not,” he said, but his body language gave another answer.
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