by Dick Francis
“My brother always said it was intensely exciting to have a very bright boy in the class.”
“Like Ted, generous. There you are, fire away. I’ll be in and out, don’t let me disturb you. I’m working on a sort-listing of string arrays. They said it was taking them eighteen minutes, I ask you. I’ve got it down to five seconds, but only one dimension. I need two dimensions if I’m not to scramble the data. I’m poking a machine-language program into memory from BASIC, then converting the machine code into assembly-language mnemonics. Am I boring you?”
“No,” I said. “I just don’t understand a word of it.”
“Sorry. Forgot you weren’t like Ted. Well, carry on.”
I had brought in a large briefcase the tapes, the racing form books, all sorts of record books and all the recent copies of a good racing paper, and with a feeling that by Ruth Quigley’s standards it was going to take me a very long time, I set about working out which horses were likely to have won according to Liam O’Rorke, and checking them against those which had actually reached the post first. I still needed a list of the horses which Angelo had backed, but I thought I might get that from Taff and from Lancer on the following day: and then I might be able to figure out where Angelo had messed everything up.
FILE NAME?
CLOAD “DONCA,” I typed. Pressed the “ENTER” key, and watched the asterisks; waited for “READY?” Pressed “ENTER” again and got my reward.
WHICH RACE AT DONCASTER?
ST. LEGER, I typed.
DONCASTER: ST. LEGER. TYPE NAME OF HORSE AND PRESS “ENTER.”
GENOTTI, I typed. Pressed “ENTER.”
DONCASTER: ST. LEGER.
GENOTTI.
ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS YES OR NO OR WITH A NUMBER AND PRESS “ENTER.”
HAS HORSE WON AS A TWO YEAR OLD?
YES, I typed. The screen flashed a new question leaving the headings intact.
HAS HORSE WON AS A THREE YEAR OLD?
YES, I typed.
HOW MANY DAYS SINCE HORSE LAST RAN?
I consulted the daily newspaper which always gave that precise information, and typed in the number which had appeared there on St. Leger day: 23.
HAS HORSE WON OVER DISTANCE: ONE MILE SIX FURLONGS ?
NO. I typed.
HAS HORSE RUN OVER DISTANCE: ONE MILE SIX FURLONGS ?
NO.
TYPE LONGEST DISTANCE IN FURLONGS OVER WHICH HORSE HAS WON.
12.
HAS HORSE RUN ON COURSE?
NO.
TYPE IN PRIZE MONEY WON IN CURRENT SEASON.
I consulted the form books and typed Genotti’s winnings, which had been fairly good but not stupendous.
HAS HORSE’S SIRE SIRED WINNERS AT THE DISTANCE?
I looked it up in the breeding records, which took much longer, but the answer was YES.
DAM DITTO?
YES.
IS HORSE QUOTED ANTE-POST AT TWELVE TO ONE OR LESS?
YES.
HAS JOCKEY PREVIOUSLY WON A CLASSIC?
YES.
HAS TRAINER PREVIOUSLY WON A CLASSIC?
YES.
ANY MORE HORSES?
YES.
I found myself back at the beginning and repeated the program for every horse which had run in the race. The questions weren’t always precisely the same, because different answers produced alternative queries, and for some horses there were far more questions than for others. It took me a good hour to look everything up, and I thought that if I ever did begin to do it all seriously I would make myself a whole host of more easily accessible tables than those available in the record books. When I at last answered NO to the final question ANY MORE HORSES? I got the clear reply that left no doubt about Liam O’Rorke’s genius.
Genotti headed the win factor list. An outsider turned up on it in second place, with the horse that had started favorite in third: and the St. Leger result had been those three horses in that order exactly.
I could hardly believe it.
Ruth Quigley said suddenly, “Got the wrong result? You look flummoxed.”
“No . . . the right one.”
“Disturbing.” She grinned swiftly. “If I get the results I expect I check and check and check. Doesn’t do to be complacent. Like some coffee?”
I accepted and she made it as fast as she did everything else.
“How old are you?” I said.
“Twenty-one. Why?”
“I’d have thought you’d have been at the university.”
“Degree at twenty plus one month. Nothing unusual. Cheated my way in, of course. Everything’s so slow nowadays. Forty years ago, degrees at nineteen or less were possible. Now they insist on calendar age. Why? Why hold people back? Life’s terribly short as it is. Master’s degree at twenty plus six months. Did the two courses simultaneously. No one knew. Don’t spread it around. Doing my doctorate now. Are you interested?”
“Yes,” I said truthfully.
She smiled like a summer’s day, come and gone. “My father says I’m a bore.”
“He doesn’t mean it.”
“He’s a surgeon,” she said, as if that explained much. “So’s my mother. Guilt complexes, both of them. Give to mankind more than you take. That sort of thing. They can’t help it.”
“And you?”
“I don’t know yet. I can’t give much. I can’t get jobs I can do. They look at the years I’ve been alive and make judgments. Quite deadly. Time has practically nothing to do with anything. They’ll give me the jobs when I’m thirty that I could do better now. Poets and mathematicians are best before twenty-five. What chance have they got?”
“To work alone,” I said.
“My God. Do you understand? You’re wasting time, get on with your programs. Don’t show me what I should do. I’ve got a research fellowship. What do I seek for? What is there to seek? Where is the unknown, what is not known, what’s the question?”
I shook my head helplessly. “Wait for the apple to fall on your head.”
“It’s true. I can’t contemplate. Sitting under apple trees. Metaphorical apple trees. I’ve tried. Get on with your nags.”
Philosophically I loaded YORK and worked through the three races for which there were programs, and found that in two of them the highest scoring horse had won. Three winners from the four races I’d worked through. Incredible.
With a feeling of unreality I loaded EPSOM and went painstakingly through the four races for which there were programs; and this time came up with no winners at all. Frowning slightly I loaded NEWBU for Newbury and from a good deal of hard accurate work came up with the win factors of the race in which Angelo had backed the absolute no-hoper Pocket Handbook.
Pocket Handbook, who had finished exhausted and tailed-off by at least thirty lengths, was at the top of the win-factor list by a clear margin.
I stared distrustfully at the rest of the scores, which put the race’s actual winner second from the bottom with negligible points.
“What’s the matter?” Ruth Quigley said, busy at her own machine and not even glancing my way.
“Parts of the system are haywire.”
“Really?”
I loaded GOOD and sorted through five races. All the top scorers were horses which in the events had finished no nearer than second.
“Are you hungry?” Ruth said. “Three-thirty. Sandwich?”
I thanked her and went into her small kitchen where I was interested to see that her speed stopped short of dexterity with slicing tomatoes. She quite slowly for her made fat juicy affairs of cheese, chutney, tomatoes and corned beef which toppled precariously on the plate and had to be held in both hands for eating.
“Logical explanations exist,” she said, looking at my abstracted expression. “Human logic’s imperfect. Absolute logic isn’t.”
“Mm” I said. “Ted showed me how easy it is to add and delete passwords.”
“So?”
“It would be pretty easy, wouldn’t it, to change other things bes
ides?”
“Unless it’s in ROM. Then it’s difficult.”
“ROM?” ”
“Read Only Memory. Sorry.”
“He showed me how to LIST things.”
“You’ve got RAM, then. Random Access Memory. Change what you like. Kids’ stuff.”
We finished the sandwiches and returned to the keyboards. I loaded the Newbury file, chose the Pocket Handbook race and listed the program piece by piece.
LIST 1200-1240, I typed, and in front of the resulting screenful of letters, numbers and symbols sat figuring out the roots of trouble.
1200 PRINT “TYPE IN PRIZE MONEY IN CURRENT SEASON”
1210 INPUT W: IF W < 1000 THEN T = T + 20.
1220 IF W > 1000 THEN T = T: IF W > 5000 THEN T = T
1230 IF W > 10000 THEN T = T: IF W > 15000 THEN T = T
1240 GOSUB 6000
Even to my ignorant and untutored eyes it was nonsense. Liam O’Rorke wouldn’t have meant it, Peter Keithly wouldn’t have written it, Ted Pitts would never have used it. In plain language what it was saying was that if the season’s winning of a horse were less than one thousand pounds, the win factor score should be increased by 20, and if they were more than one thousand, and however much more, the win factor score would not increase at all. The least successful horses would therefore score most highly on that particular point. The weighting was topsy-turvy and the answers would come out wrong.
With the hollow certainty of what had happened staring me in the face I loaded the Epsom file and searched the LISTS of the programs for the four races on which Angelo had lost. In two cases the weightings for prize money were upside down.
Tried Goodwood. In three of the five listed races, the same thing.
Depressed beyond measure I loaded the files for Leicester and Ascot, where races were to be held during the week ahead. Typed in the names of all the races to be run there and found there were programs for eight of them: one at Leicester, seven at Ascot. LISTed each of the eight programs in sections and found that in four of them the score for amassing much prize money was zero, and the score for prize money of under one thousand pounds was anything up to 20.
There were programs for some races at all the tracks which I knew for a certainty were not fourteen years old. Modern races, introduced since Liam O’Rorke had died.
The programs were no longer pure O’Rorke, but O’Rorke according to Pitts. O’Rorke updated, expanded, renewed. O’Rorke, on these particular tapes, interfered with, falsified, mangled. Ted Pitts . . . one had to face it . . . had wrecked the system before he’d handed it to me. And had delivered me defenseless to the wrath of Angelo Gilbert.
I thanked the frustrated and brilliant Miss Quigley for her day-long patience and drove home to Cassie.
“What’s the matter?” she said immediately.
I said wearily, “The ess aitch i tee has hit the fan.”
“What do you mean?”
“Angelo thinks I’ve tricked him. That the betting system I gave him is wrong. That it produces too many losers. Well, so it does. Normally it must be all right but on these tapes it’s been altered. Ted Pitts has rigged so many of the programs that anyone using them will fall flat on his greedy face.” And I explained about the reversed scores for winning, which produced scatty results. “He may also have changed some of the other weightings to get the same effect. I’ve no way of knowing.”
She looked as stunned as I felt. “Do you mean Ted Pitts did it on purpose?”
“He sure did.” I thought back to the time he’d taken to make my “copies”; to the hour I’d spent sitting by his pool talking to Jane, leaving him, at his own request, to work alone.
“But why?” Cassie said.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t tell him, did you, what you wanted the tapes for?”
“No, I didn’t.”
She said doubtfully, “Perhaps it might have been better if you’d said how vital they were.”
“And perhaps he wouldn’t have given them to me at all if he’d known I had Angelo locked in the cellar. I mean, I thought he might not want to be involved. Most people wouldn’t, with something like that. And then, if he was like Jonathan, he might have changed the weightings anyway, just to prevent Angelo from profiting. You never know. Jonathan himself would somehow have tricked Angelo again. I’m sure of it.”
“You don’t think Ted Pitts asked Jonathan what he should do, do you?”
I thought back and shook my head. “It was before nine in the morning when I went to the Pitts’ house. That would make it about one A.M. in California. Even if he had his number, which I doubt, I don’t think he would have telephoned Jonathan in the middle of the night. And Jonathan anyway sounded truly disappointed when I told him I’d given Angelo the tapes. No, Ted must have done it for his own reasons, and by himself.”
“Which doesn’t help much.”
I shook my head.
I thought of the certainty with which I’d gone to Harry Gilbert’s house on the previous day. Hell’s teeth—how wrong could one be, how naive could one get?
If I warned Angelo not to use the tapes in the week ahead, he would be sure I had tricked him and was now scared to death of his revenge.
If I didn’t warn him not to use the tapes he would most likely lose again and be more sure than ever that I’d tricked him . . .
If I wrung the right answers out of Ted Pitts and told them to Angelo, he would still think I had deliberately given him useless tapes . . . on which he had already lost.
Ted Pitts was in Switzerland walking up mountains.
“Would you care,” I said to Cassie, “for a long slow cruise to Australia?”
19
Jane Pitts on the telephone said, “No, terribly sorry, he moves about and stops in different places each night. Quite often he sleeps in his tent. Is it important?”
“Horribly,” I said.
“Oh, dear. Could I help?”
“There’s something wrong with those tapes he made for me. Could you by any chance lend me his own?”
“No, I simply can’t. I’m frightfully sorry but I don’t know where he keeps anything in that room and he positively hates his things being touched.” She thought for a few minutes, puzzled but not unwilling, friendly, anxious to help. “Look . . . he’s sure to call me one day soon to say when he’ll be home. Would you like me to ask him to call you?”
“Yes, please,” I said fervently. “Or ask him where I can reach him, and I’ll call him. Do tell him it’s really urgent. Beg him for me, would you? Say it’s for Jonathan’s sake more than mine.”
“I’ll tell him,” she promised, “as soon as he calls.”
“You’re unscrupulous,” Cassie said as I put down the receiver. “It’s for your sake, not Jonathan’s.”
“He wouldn’t want to weep on his brother’s grave.”
“William.”
“A joke,” I said hastily. “A joke.”
Cassie shivered, however. “What are you going to do?”
“Think,” I said.
The basic thought was that the more Angelo lost the angrier he would get, and that the first objective was therefore to stop him betting. Taff and the others could hardly be persuaded not to accept such easy pickings, which left the source of the cash, Harry Gilbert himself. Precisely what, I wondered, could I say to Harry Gilbert which would cut off the stake money without sending Angelo straight around to vent his rage?
I could tell him that Liam O’Rorke’s system no longer existed: that I’d got the tapes in good faith but been tricked myself. I could tell him a lot of half-truths . . . but whether he would believe me, and whether he could restrain Angelo even if he himself were convinced, of those imponderables there was no forecast.
Realistically, there was nothing else to do.
I didn’t particularly want to try to trap Angelo into being sent back to jail: fourteen years was enough for any man. I only wanted, as I had all along, for him to leave me alo
ne. I wanted him deflated, defused . . . docile. What a hope.
A night spent with my mind on pleasanter things produced no cleverer plan. A paragraph in the Sporting Life, read over a quick breakfast after an hour with the horses on the Heath, made me wish that Angelo would solve my problems himself by bashing someone else on the head: about as unlikely as him having a good week on the system. Lancer, the bookmaker, said the paper, had been mugged on his own doorstep on returning from Newbury races on Friday evening. His wallet, containing approximately fifty-three pounds, had been stolen. Lancer was OK; police had no leads. Poor old Lancer, too bad.
I sighed. Whom, I wondered, could I get Angelo to bash?
Besides, of course, myself.
On account of the knee-groper I was driving Cassie to work whenever possible, and on that morning after I’d dropped her I went straight on to Welwyn Garden City, not relishing my prospects but with not much alternative. I hoped to persuade both Harry Gilbert and Angelo that the havoc the years had caused to the O’Rorke system couldn’t be undone, that it was blown, no longer existed, couldn’t be recovered. I was going to tell them again that any violence from Angelo would put him back in a cell, to try to make them believe it . . . to fear it.
I was taller than Angelo and towered over a man in a wheelchair. I intended slightly to crowd them, faintly to intimidate, certainly to leave a physical impression that it was time for them to back off. Even on Angelo, who must have known how to frighten from childhood, it might have some effect.
Eddy opened the front doors and tried at once to close them again when he saw who had called. I pushed him with force out of the way.
“Harry isn’t dressed,” he said fearfully, though whether the fear was of me or of Harry wasn’t clear.
“He’ll see me,” I said.
“No. You can’t.” He tried to bar my way to one of the wide doors at the side of the entrance hall, thereby showing me which way to go: and I walked over there with Eddy trying to edge me out of my path by leaning on me.
I thrust him again aside and opened the door, and found myself in a short passage which led into a large bedroom which was equipped most noticeably with another vast window looking out to the golf course.
