Dick Francis's Gamble

by Felix Francis

  “Ebi se!” the man said explosively.

  I didn’t know what he meant, and it sadly didn’t stop him coming through the window.

  I raised the umbrella for another strike, but he was wise to me now and he grabbed it as it descended and tore it from my grasp, tossing it aside as he stepped right through the open window and crouched on the worktop.

  I rushed at him, but he was ready, pushing me aside with ease, so that I stumbled across the kitchen towards the sink.

  I turned quickly, but the man had already jumped down to the floor. I watched him as he looked around and then withdrew a large carving knife from the wooden block next to my mother’s stove. Now, why hadn’t I thought of that?

  I moved quickly to my right, putting the dining table between him and me. If he couldn’t reach me, he couldn’t stab me either.

  There followed a sort of ballet, with him moving one way or the other and me mirroring him, always keeping the table between us. Once we ran around and around the table three or four times, with me watching carefully for him to change direction. He pulled out chairs to try to slow me down, but I was quick. I may not be as fit as I was as a jockey but I was still no slouch in the running department. It had fared me well in Lichfield Grove and was doing so again here.

  But for how long?

  He only needed to get lucky once.

  He changed his tactics, using one of the chairs to climb up onto the table, and then he came straight at me across it.

  I turned and ran for the stairs, pulling open the latch door and bounding up the steps two or three at a time. I could hear him behind me, and he was gaining.

  Where could I go? I was running out of options.

  Panic began to rise in my throat. I didn’t want to die.

  I turned to face him. At least I would see it coming and I’d be able to make some effort to get away from the thrust of the knife.

  He stood at the top of the stairs with me just four feet away in front of him. He advanced a step, and I retreated a step, then we both repeated the drill, but my back was now up against the wall. I had no farther to go.

  He came a step closer to me, and I readied myself for his strike, although what I would do when it came I didn’t know.

  Die, probably.

  Claudia stepped out of the bathroom, just down the corridor to his right.

  “Fuck off, you bastard,” she shouted at him with full fortissimo. “Leave him alone.” She then slammed the bathroom door shut again and locked it.

  He turned momentarily towards the noise and I leapt at him, wrapping my right arm around his neck with my forearm across his throat while at the same time trying to gouge his eyes out with the fingers of my left hand.

  I squeezed his neck with all my strength.

  But it was not enough.

  The man was considerably taller and stronger than I, and in spite of my best grip he simply began to turn himself around to face me. And with both of my arms held up around his head, my abdomen would be totally defenseless to a thrust of the knife.

  What had that spinal specialist told me?

  “Whatever you do,” he’d said, “don’t get into a fight.”

  He’d said nothing about falling down stairs.

  I hung on to the man’s neck as if my life depended on it, which it probably did, and then I dived headfirst down the narrow boxed-in stairway, taking the man down with me. It was a crazy thing to do, especially for someone who had precious little holding his head to his body. But it was my only chance.

  I twisted as we fell so that I landed on top of the man, his head taking the full force of the heavy contact with the wall where the stairway turned ninety degrees halfway down. We slithered on to the bottom of the wooden stairs, coming to a halt still locked together by my right arm, which I was still pulling as tightly as I could around his neck. We were lying partially through the leverlatch doorway, our legs still on the stairs, our heads and torsos sticking out into the room beyond.

  Even for me on top, and using the man’s body to break my fall, the first impact with the wall had been enough to drive the air from my lungs, but at least my head hadn’t fallen off.

  I pulled my arm from under his neck and jumped to my feet, ready to continue the fight, but there was no need. The man lay limply, facedown, where he’d come to rest.

  I went quickly to fetch my mother’s collapsible walking stick and then I used it to retrieve the gun from beneath her fridge, hooking it out with the handle.

  If the man moved so much as an eyebrow, I thought, I’d shoot him.

  I stood over him for what felt like a very long time, pointing the gun at his head and watching for any movement.

  But the man didn’t move. Not even to breathe.

  Nevertheless, I still didn’t trust him not to jump up and kill me, so I kept the gun pointing at him all the time.

  “Claudia,” I shouted as loudly as I could. “Claudia, I need your help.”

  I heard the bathroom door being unlocked and then footsteps on the floorboards above my head.

  “Has he gone?” Claudia asked from the top of the stairs. It was so dark that she couldn’t even see the man lying right beneath her.

  “I think he might be dead,” I said. “But I’m taking no chances, and it’s getting so dark I can hardly see him.”

  “I’ve got a flashlight by my bed,” my mother said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  I heard her walk along the corridor to her room, then she came back, shining the flashlight brightly down the stairwell.

  “Oh my God!” Claudia said, looking down.

  In the light we could see that the man’s head was lying almost flat against his right shoulder in a most unnatural position. The man’s neck was clearly broken just as mine had once been.

  But, on this occasion, there were no friendly paramedics to apply an immobilizing collar, no one to save his life with prompt and gentle care as there had been for me at Cheltenham racetrack all those years ago.

  This man’s broken neck had bumped on down to the bottom of a wooden stairway, all the time being wrenched to one side by my arm.

  And it had killed him.

  15

  What the hell do we do now?” Claudia said from the top of the stairs.

  “Call the police,” I said from the bottom.

  “How?”

  “I’ll take the car and find somewhere with a signal,” I said.

  But there was no way Claudia and my mother were allowing me to go off in the car, leaving them alone in the house with the gunman. Dead or not, they were still very frightened of him, and I can’t say I blamed them.

  “Pack up our things,” I said to Claudia. “Mum, pack an overnight bag. No, take enough for a few days. We’re going somewhere else.”

  “But why?” my mother asked.

  “Because someone sent this man here to kill me and when he finds out that his gunman hasn’t succeeded, that someone might send another to try again.”

  Neither of them asked the obvious question: Why was the man trying to kill me? Instead they both quickly went together to pack, taking the flashlight with them and leaving me standing in the dark.

  In spite of being pretty certain the man was indeed dead, I didn’t stop listening, holding the gun ready in case he made a miraculous recovery.

  I found I was shaking.

  I took several deep breaths, but the shaking continued. Perhaps it was from fear, or relief, or maybe it was a reaction to the sudden realization that I had killed a man. Probably a bit of all three.

  The shaking continued for several minutes, and I became totally exhausted by it. I wanted to sit down, and I felt slightly sick.

  “We’re packed,” Claudia said from upstairs, the flashlight again shining down the stairway.

  “Good,” I said. “Pass the things down to me.”

  I stepped carefully onto the first few stairs, next to the man’s legs, and reached up as Claudia handed down our bags and my mother’s suitcase.

 
Next, I guided each of them down in turn, making sure they stepped only on the wood and not on the man.

  “Oh my God. Oh my God,” Claudia said, repeating it over and over again, as she came nervously down the stairs, pressing herself against the side while at the same time holding her hands up to ensure she wouldn’t touch the man by mistake.

  My mother was surprisingly much more stoical, waltzing down the stairs as if there was nothing there. In fact, I suspected that she would’ve liked to have given the corpse a sharp kick for ruining her roast dinner.

  The three of us went out to the car, loaded the stuff and drove away down the rutted lane, leaving the dead man alone in the dark house.

  I drove into Cheltenham and called the police, but I didn’t dial the emergency number. Instead, I called Chief Inspector Tomlinson on his mobile.

  “The man who killed Herb Kovak,” I said, “is lying dead at the bottom of my mother’s stairs.”

  There was the slightest of pauses.

  “How tiresome of him,” the chief inspector said. “Did he just lie down there and die?”

  “No,” I said. “He broke his neck falling down the stairs.”

  “Was he pushed?” he asked, once again demonstrating his suspicious mind.

  “Helped,” I said. “We fell down the stairs together. He came off worse. But he was trying to stab me with a carving knife at the time.”

  “What happened to his gun?” he asked.

  “He lost it under the fridge,” I said.

  “Hmm,” he said. “And have you told the local constabulary?”

  “No,” I said. “I thought you could do that. And you can also tell them he was a foreigner.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He said something I didn’t understand.”

  “And where are you now?” he asked.

  “In Cheltenham,” I said. “The gunman cut the power and the telephone wires. I’ve had to leave to make a call on my mobile. There’s no signal at the cottage.”

  “Is anyone still at the cottage?”

  “Only the dead man,” I said. “I have Claudia and my mother with me in the car.”

  “So are you going back there now?” he asked.

  “No,” I said firmly. “Whoever sent this man could send another.”

  “So where are you going?” he asked, not questioning my decision.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ll call you when I do.”

  “Who knew you were at your mother’s place?” he asked, always the detective.

  “Everyone in my office,” I said. And whomever else Mrs. McDowd had told, I thought.

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll call the Gloucestershire Police, but they’ll definitely want to talk to you, and to Claudia and your mother. They may even want you back at the cottage.”

  “Tell them I’ll call them there in two hours,” I said.

  “But you said the line had been cut.”

  “Then get it fixed,” I said. “And get the power back on. Tell them I think my mother has left the stove on. I don’t want the place burning down when the power’s reconnected. And also tell them I’ve left the back door unlocked so they won’t have to break the front door down to get in.”

  “OK,” he said. “I’ll tell them.” He paused. “Is the gun still under the fridge?”

  “No,” I said. “I retrieved it.”

  “So where is it now?”

  I had so wanted to bring it with me, to give myself the armed protection that I’d been denied by the police.

  “It’s outside the front door,” I said. “In a bush.”

  “Right,” he said, sounding slightly relieved. “I’ll tell the Gloucestershire force that too. Save them hunting for it, and you.”

  “Good,” I said.

  It had been the right decision to leave the gun behind. I could still claim the moral high ground.

  I hung up and switched off my phone. I would call the police on my terms, and I also didn’t want anyone being able to track my movements from the phone signal.

  “Do you really think we’re still in danger?” Claudia asked next to me.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I’m not taking any chances.”

  “Who knew we were there?” she asked.

  “Everyone at the office, I expect,” I said. “Mrs. McDowd definitely knew and she’d have told everyone else.”

  And Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson had known as well.

  I’d told him myself.

  It was my mother who finally asked the big question.

  “Why was that man trying to kill you?” she said calmly from the backseat.

  We were on the road between Cirencester and Swindon.

  I’d made one more stop in Cheltenham at one of the few remaining public phone boxes. I hadn’t wanted to use my mobile for fear that someone could trace who I was calling. We were going where no one would find us.

  “I’m not totally sure but it may be because I am a witness to him killing a man at Aintree races,” I said. “And it wasn’t the first time he’d tried.”

  Neither my mother nor Claudia said anything. They were waiting for me to go on.

  “He was waiting outside our house in Lichfield Grove when I got back there on Tuesday afternoon,” I said. “Luckily, I could run faster than him.”

  “Is that why we came to Woodmancote,” Claudia asked, “instead of going home?”

  “It sure is,” I said. “But I didn’t realize that Woodmancote wasn’t safe either. Not until it was too late. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  “But what about the police?” my mother asked. “Surely we must go to the police. They will look after us.”

  But how much did I trust the police? I didn’t know that either. They hadn’t given me any protection when I’d asked for it and that omission had almost cost us our lives. No, I thought, I’d trust my own instincts. The police seemed more interested in solving murders than preventing them.

  “I have been to the police,” I said, driving on through the darkness. “But it will be me who will look after you.”

  And I would also find out who was trying to have me killed, and the real reason why.

  Well, lover boy,” Jan Setter said, “when I asked you to come and stay, I didn’t exactly mean you to bring your girlfriend and your mother with you!”

  We laughed.

  We were sitting at her kitchen table in Lambourn, drinking coffee, the said girlfriend and mother having been safely tucked up in two of Jan’s many spare bedrooms.

  “I didn’t know where else to go,” I said to her.

  I had briefly thought about going to my father’s bungalow in Weymouth, but he had only two double bedrooms and, amusing as the thought had been, I could hardly expect my parents to share a bed together, not after seven years of divorce, and I certainly wasn’t sleeping with the old bugger.

  “So what’s all this about?” Jan asked finally.

  All I had said to her on the phone from Cheltenham had been that I was desperate and could she help by putting us up for a night or two.

  “How desperate?” she had asked calmly.

  “Life or death,” I’d said. “Complete secrecy.”

  She had asked nothing further but had simply said, “Come,” and she’d asked no questions when we’d arrived, not until after my traumatized mother and fiancée had been safely ushered up to bed. As it had with me, the shock and fear had manifested itself in them after the event.

  In all the years I had known Jan, both as her former jockey and more recently as her financial adviser, I had never known her to be flustered or panicked by anything. She was the steady head I needed in this crisis.

  But how much did I tell her?

  Would she even believe me?

  “I know this is going to sound rather overly dramatic,” I said. “But someone is trying to kill me.”

  “What’s her name?” Jan asked with a laugh.

  “I’m being serious, Jan,” I said. “Tonigh
t a man came to my mother’s cottage to murder me. He had a gun. I promise you, we are extremely fortunate to be alive. The same man has now tried to kill me twice.”

  “Let’s hope it isn’t third time lucky.”

  “He won’t get a third time.”

  “How can you be sure?” she asked.

  “Because he’s dead. The last time I saw him he was lying on the floor of my mother’s living room with his neck broken.”

  She stared at me. “You are being serious, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. “Very.”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I need to call them again.” I looked at my watch. It had been at least two hours since I’d spoken to Chief Inspector Tomlinson. But they could wait a little longer.

  “So why come here?” she asked. “Why not go straight to the police?”

  “I need somewhere to hide where no one can find me.”

  Not even the police, I thought.

  “But, if the man’s dead, why do you still need to hide?” she asked.

  “Because he was a hired killer, and I am worried that whoever hired him will simply hire another.”

  I could tell from the look on Jan’s face that her credulity had reached its limit.

  “It’s true, I assure you,” I said. “I’m not making it up, and I think it’s all to do with stealing a hundred million euros from the European Union. Now, that really is big money. And what’s the going rate for having someone killed these days? Twenty thousand? A hundred grand maybe? Or even half a million? That’s still only a half of one percent of the take. Cheap at twice the price.”

  “But what have you got to do with stealing a hundred million euros?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “But I may have asked the wrong questions to those that have. And I suspect that somebody believes I need to be permanently removed before I ask some more questions and bring the whole scheme tumbling down round their ears.”

  “So what are you going to do?” she said.

  “Ask the questions quickly,” I said, grinning at her. “And then keep my head down.”

  Someone answered after just one ring when I called my mother’s cottage. I was sitting in Jan’s office and using her mobile phone, and I had carefully withheld the number from caller ID. I hoped it was enough to keep it secret.