by Dick Francis
‘Suppose,’ he said after a few minutes, ‘that you had a free hand, what would you do?’
‘One would never get a free hand. That’s half the trouble. Someone makes a good suggestion, and someone else squashes it. They end up, often as not, by doing nothing.’
‘No, Sid, I mean you personally. What would you do?’
‘I?’ I grinned. ‘What I’d do would have the National Hunt Committee swooning like Victorian maidens.’
‘I’d like to know.’
‘Seriously?’
He nodded. As if he could ever be anything else but serious.
I sighed. ‘Very well then. I’d pinch every good crowd-pulling idea that any other course has thought of, and put them all into operation on the same day.’
‘What, for instance?’
‘I’d take the whole of the reserve fund and offer it as a prize for a big race. I’d make sure the race was framed to attract the really top chasers. Then I’d go round to their trainers personally and explain the situation, and beg for their support. I’d go to some of the people who sponsor Gold Cup races and cajole them into giving five hundred pound prizes for all the other races on that day. I’d make the whole thing into a campaign. I’d get Save Seabury discussed on television, and in the sports columns of newspapers. I’d get people interested and involved. I’d make helping Seabury the smart thing to do. I’d get someone like the Beatles to come and present the trophies. I’d advertise free car-parking and free race cards, and on the day I’d have the whole place bright with flags and bunting and tubs of flowers to hide the lack of paint. I’d make sure everyone on the staff understood that a friendly welcome must be given to the customers. And I’d insist that the catering firm used its imagination. I’d fix the meeting for the beginning of April, and pray for a sunny Spring day. That,’ I said, running down, ‘would do for a start.’
‘And afterwards?’ He was non-committal.
‘A loan, I suppose. Either from a bank or from private individuals. But the executive would have to show first that Seabury could be a success again, like it used to be. No one falls over himself to lend to a dying business. The revival has to come before the money, if you see what I mean.’
‘I do see,’ he agreed slowly, ‘but…’
‘Yes. But. It always comes to But. But no one at Seabury is going to bother.’
We were silent for a long way.
Finally I said, ‘This meeting on Friday and Saturday… it would be a pity to risk another last-minute disaster. Hunt Radnor Associates could arrange for some sort of guard on the course. Security patrols, that kind of thing.’
‘Too expensive,’ he said promptly. ‘And you’ve not yet proved that it is really needed. Seabury’s troubles still look like plain bad luck to me.’
‘Well… a security patrol might prevent any more of it.’
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to see.’ He changed the subject then, and talked firmly about other races on other courses all the way back to London.
TEN
Dolly lent me her telephone with resignation on Tuesday morning, and I buzzed the switchboard for an internal call to Missing Persons.
‘Sammy?’ I said. ‘Sid Halley, down in Racing. Are you busy?’
‘The last teenager has just been retrieved from Gretna. Fire away. Who’s lost?’
‘A man called Smith.’
Some mild blasphemy sped three storeys down the wire.
I laughed. ‘I think his name really is Smith. He’s a driver by trade. He’s been driving a tanker for Intersouth Chemicals for the last year. He left his job and his digs last Wednesday; no forwarding address.’ I told him about the crash, the suspect concussion and the revelry by night.
‘You don’t think he was planted on purpose on the job a year ago? His name likely wouldn’t be Smith in that case… make it harder.’
‘I don’t know. But I think it’s more likely he was a bona fide Intersouth driver who was offered a cash payment for exceptional services rendered.’
‘O.K., I’ll try that first. He might give Intersouth as a reference, in which case they’ll know if he applies for another job somewhere, or I might trace him through his union. The wife might have worked, too. I’ll let you know.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t forget, when the old man buys you a gold-plated executive desk I want my table back.’
‘You’ll want for ever,’ I said, smiling. It had been Sammy’s lunch.
On the table in question lay the slim file on the Andrews case that Jones-boy had unearthed from the basement. I looked round the room.
‘Where’s Chico?’ I asked.
Dolly answered. ‘Helping a bookmaker to move house.’
‘He’s doing what?’ I goggled.
‘That’s right. Long-standing date. The bookmaker is taking his safe with him and wants Chico to sit on it in the furniture van. It had to be Chico, he said. No one else would do. The paying customer is always right, so Chico’s gone.’
‘Damn.’
She reached into a drawer. ‘He left you a tape,’ she said.
‘Undamn, then.’
She grinned and handed it to me, and I took it over to the recorder, fed it through on to the spare reel, and listened to it in the routine office way, through the earphones.
‘After wearing my plates down to the ankles,’ said Chico’s cheerful voice, ‘I found out that the worst things your Clerk of the Course did at Dunstable were to frame a lot of races that did the opposite of attract any decent runners, and be stinking rude to all and sundry. He was quite well liked up to the year before he killed himself. Then everyone says he gradually got more and more crazy. He was so rude to people who worked at the course that half of them wouldn’t put up with it and left. And the local tradesmen practically spat when I mentioned his name. I’ll fill you in when I see you, but there wasn’t anything like Seabury – no accidents or damage or anything like that.’
Sighing, I wiped the tape clean and gave it back to Dolly. Then I opened the file on my table and studied its contents.
A Mr Mervyn Brinton of Reading, Berks., had applied to the agency for personal protection, having had reason to believe that he was in danger of being attacked. He had been unwilling to say why he might be attacked, and refused to have the agency make enquiries. All he wanted was a bodyguard. There was a strong possibility, said the report, that Brinton had tried a little amateurish blackmail, which had backfired. He had at length revealed that he possessed a certain letter, and was afraid of being attacked and having it stolen. After much persuasion by Chico Barnes, who pointed out that Brinton could hardly be guarded for the rest of his life, Brinton had agreed to inform a certain party that the letter in question was lodged in a particular desk drawer in the Racing Section of Hunt Radnor Associates. In fact it was not; and had not at any time been seen by anyone working for the agency. However, Thomas Andrews came, or was sent, to remove the letter, was interrupted by J. S. Halley (whom he wounded by shooting), and subsequently made his escape. Two days later Brinton telephoned to say he no longer required a bodyguard, and as far as the agency was concerned the case was then closed.
The foregoing information had been made available to the police in their investigation into the shooting of Halley.
I shut the file. A drab little story, I thought, of a pathetic little man playing out of his league.
Brinton.
The Clerk of the Course at Dunstable had also been called Brinton.
I sat gazing at the short file. Brinton wasn’t an uncommon name. There was probably no connection at all. Brinton of Dunstable had died a good two years before Brinton of Reading had asked for protection. The only visible connection was that at different ends of the scale both the Dunstable Brinton and Thomas Andrews had earned their living on the racecourse. It wasn’t much. Probably nothing. But it niggled.
I went home, collected the car, and drove to Reading.
A nervous grey haired elderly man opened the front doo
r on a safety chain, and peered through the gap.
‘Yes?’
‘Mr Brinton?’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m from Hunt Radnor Associates. I’d be most grateful for a word with you.’
He hesitated, chewing an upper lip adorned with an untidy pepper and salt moustache. Anxious brown eyes looked me up and down and went past me to the white car parked by the kerb.
‘I sent a cheque,’ he said finally.
‘It was quite in order,’ I assured him.
‘I don’t want any trouble… it wasn’t my fault that that man was shot.’ He didn’t sound convinced.
‘Oh, no one blames you for that,’ I said. ‘He’s perfectly all right now. Back at work, in fact.’
His relief showed, even through the crack. ‘Very well,’ he said, and pushed the door shut to take off the chain.
I followed him into the front room of his tall terrace house. The air smelt stale and felt still, as if it had been hanging in the same spot for days. The furniture was of the hard-stuffed and brown shellacked substantial type that in my plywood childhood I had thought the peak of living, unobtainable; and there were cases of tropical butterflies on the walls, and carved ornaments from somewhere like Java or Borneo on several small tables. A life abroad, retirement at home, I thought. From colour and heat to suburban respectability in Reading.
‘My wife has gone out shopping,’ he said, still nervously. ‘She’ll be back soon.’ He looked hopefully out of the lace curtained window, but Mrs Brinton didn’t oblige him by coming to his support.
I said, ‘I just wanted to ask you, Mr Brinton, if you were by any chance related to a Mr William Brinton, one-time Clerk of Dunstable racecourse.’
He gave me a long agonised stare, and to my consternation sat down on his sofa and began to cry, his shaking hands covering his eyes and the tears splashing down on to his tweed-clad knees.
‘Please… Mr Brinton… I’m so sorry,’ I said awkwardly.
He snuffled and coughed, and dragged a handkerchief out to wipe his eyes. Gradually the paroxysm passed, and he said indistinctly, ‘How did you find out? I told you I didn’t want anyone asking questions…’
‘It was quite accidental. Nobody asked any questions, I promise you. Would you like to tell me about it? Then I don’t think any questions will need to be asked at all, from anyone else.’
‘The police…’ he said doubtfully, on a sob. ‘They came before. I refused to say anything, and they went away.’
‘Whatever you tell me will be in confidence.’
‘I’ve been such a fool… I’d like to tell someone, really.’
I pictured the strung up, guilt-ridden weeks he’d endured, and the crying fit became not only understandable but inevitable.
‘It was the letter, you see,’ he said sniffing softly. ‘The letter William began to write to me, though he never sent it… I found it in a whole trunk of stuff that was left when he… killed himself. I was in Sarawak then, you know, and they sent me a cable. It was a shock… one’s only brother doing such a… a terrible thing. He was younger than me. Seven years. We weren’t very close, except when we were children. I wish… but it’s too late now. Anyway, when I came home I fetched all his stuff round from where it had been stored and put it up in the attic here, all his racing books and things. I didn’t know what to do with them, you see. I wasn’t interested in them, but it seemed… I don’t know… I couldn’t just burn them. It was months before I bothered to sort them out, and then I found the letter…’ His voice faltered and he looked at me appealingly, wanting to be forgiven.
‘Kitty and I had found my pension didn’t go anywhere near as far as we’d expected. Everything is so terribly expensive. The rates… we decided we’d have to sell the house again though we’d only just bought it, and Kitty’s family are all close. And then… I thought… perhaps I could sell the letter instead.’
‘And you got threats instead of money,’ I said.
‘Yes. It was the letter itself which gave me the idea…’ He chewed his moustache.
‘And now you no longer have it,’ I said matter of factly, as if I knew for certain and wasn’t guessing. ‘When you were first threatened you thought you could still sell the letter if Hunt Radnor kept you safe, and then you got more frightened and gave up the letter, and then cancelled the protection because the threats had stopped.’
He nodded unhappily. ‘I gave them the letter because that man was shot… I didn’t realise anything like that would happen. I was horrified. It was terrible. I hadn’t thought it could be so dangerous, just selling a letter… I wish I’d never found it. I wish William had never written it.’
So did I, as it happened.
‘What did the letter say?’ I asked.
He hesitated, his fear showing. ‘It might cause more trouble. They might come back.’
‘They won’t know you’ve told me,’ I pointed out. ‘How could they?’
‘I suppose not.’ He looked at me, making up his mind. There’s one thing about being small: no one is ever afraid of you. If I’d been big and commanding I don’t think he’d have risked it. As it was, his face softened and relaxed and he threw off the last threads of reticence.
‘I know it by heart,’ he said. ‘I’ll write it down for you, if you like. It’s easier than saying it.’
I sat and waited while he fetched a ball point pen and a pad of large writing paper and got on with his task. The sight of the letter materialising again in front of his eyes affected him visibly, but whether to fear or remorse or sorrow, I couldn’t tell. He covered one side of the page, then tore it off the pad and shakily handed it over.
I read what he had written. I read it twice. Because of these short desperate sentences, I reflected unemotionally, I had come within spitting distance of St Peter.
‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much.’
‘I wish I’d never found it,’ he said again. ‘Poor William.’
‘Did you go to see this man?’ I asked, indicating the letter as I put it away in my wallet.
‘No, I wrote to him… he wasn’t hard to find.’
‘And how much did you ask for?’
Shame-faced, he muttered, ‘Five thousand pounds.’
Five thousand pounds had been wrong, I thought. If he’d asked fifty thousand, he might have had a chance. But five thousand didn’t put him among the big-power boys, it just revealed his mediocrity. No wonder he had been stamped on, fast.
‘What happened next?’ I asked.
‘A big man came for the letter, about four o’clock one afternoon. It was awful. I asked him for the money and he just laughed in my face and pushed me into a chair. No money, he said, but if I didn’t hand over the letter at once he’d… he’d teach me a thing or two. That’s what he said, teach me a thing or two. I explained that I had put the letter in my box at the bank and that the bank was closed and that I couldn’t get it until the next morning. He said that he would come to the bank with me the next day, and then he went away…’
‘And you rang up the agency almost at once? Yes. What made you choose Hunt Radnor?’
He looked surprised. ‘It was the only one I knew about. Are there any others? I mean, most people have heard of Hunt Radnor, I should think.’
‘I see. So Hunt Radnor sent you a bodyguard, but the big man wouldn’t give up.’
‘He kept telephoning… then your man suggested setting a trap in his office, and in the end I agreed. Oh, I shouldn’t have let him, I was such a fool. I knew all the time, you see, who was threatening me, but I couldn’t tell your agency because I would have had to admit I’d tried to get money… illegally.’
‘Yes. Well, there’s only one more thing. What was he like, the man who came and threatened you?’
Brinton didn’t like even the memory of him. ‘He was very strong. Hard. When he pushed me it was like a wall. I’m not… I mean, I’ve never been good with my fists, or anything like that. If he’d started hitt
ing me I couldn’t have stopped him…’
‘I’m not blaming you for not standing up to him,’ I pointed out. ‘I just want to know what he looked like.’
‘Very big,’ he said vaguely. ‘Huge.’
‘I know it’s several weeks ago now, but can’t you possibly remember more than that? How about his hair? Anything odd about his face? How old? What class?’
He smiled for the first time, the sad wrinkles folding for a moment into some semblance of faded charm. If he’d never taken his first useless step into crime, I thought, he might still have been a nice gentle innocuous man, fading without rancour towards old age, troubled only by how to make a little pension go a long way. No tearing, destructive guilt.
‘It’s certainly easier when you ask questions like that. He was beginning to go bald, I remember now. And he had big blotchy freckles on the backs of his hands. It’s difficult to know about his age. Not a youth, though; more than thirty, I think. What else did you ask? Oh yes, class. Working class, then.’
‘English?’
‘Oh yes, not foreign. Sort of cockney, I suppose.’
I stood up, thanked him, and began to take my leave. He said, begging me still for reassurance, ‘There won’t be any more trouble?’
‘Not from me or the agency.’
‘And the man who was shot?’
‘Not from him either.’
‘I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my fault… but I haven’t been able to sleep. How could I have been such a fool? I shouldn’t have let that young man set any trap… I shouldn’t have called in your agency… and it cost another chunk of our savings… I ought never to have tried to get money for that letter…’
‘That’s true, Mr Brinton, you shouldn’t. But what’s done is done, and I don’t suppose you’ll start anything like that again.’
‘No, no,’ he said with pain. ‘I wouldn’t. Ever. These last few weeks have been…’ His voice died. Then he said more strongly, ‘We’ll have to sell the house now. Kitty likes it here, of course. But what I’ve always wanted myself is a little bungalow by the sea.’