by Dick Francis
‘I told you… I don’t know.’
‘If you want to get out of here, you’re going to have to do better than that.’
He stared across the table. I saw his understanding of my offer deepen. He looked briefly round the bleak crowding walls of the little interview room and shivered. The last vestiges of the exalted murderous state evaporated. He looked smaller and colder and no danger to anybody.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I reckon I don’t owe Vic any more. I’ll not go to jail just to save his bloody skin. I’ll tell you what I can.’
It took three more cigarettes and a lot of pauses, but he did his best.
‘I reckon it started about six weeks ago. I mean, for some time before that Vic had said a few things about you being the biggest danger on the horizon, you were pretty good as an agent and dead honest, and he thought you might drain off some of the business which he’d otherwise corner.’
‘Room for us all,’ I murmured.
‘Not what Vic thought. Anyway, about six weeks ago he said it was time to bust you once and for all.’ He thought for a while, sucking deep on his cigarette. ‘See, Vic and I and some of the others had this thing going…’
‘The kick-backs systems,’ I said.
‘Ay. All right, so goody-goody sods like you can look down their noses and sniff, but it’s not illegal and it does a lot of people a lot of bloody good.’
‘Some people.’
‘All right, so the client pays over the odds, so what? Anyway, as Vic always says, the higher the prices the more commission the auctioneers get and the better they like it, so they’re just as bad, running things up as far as they bloody can.’
They also had a duty to the seller, I thought, but it wasn’t the time to argue.
‘Well, there we were, running this little ring and doing better and better out of it and then one day… I suppose it was just before the first yearling sales at Newmarket…’ He paused, looking back in his mind. His voice died away.
‘What happened?’ I prompted.
‘Vic was sort of… I don’t know… know and scared… both at once.’
‘Vic was scared?’ I said sceptically.
‘Ay, he was. Sort of. Sort of excited, though. Like someone had put him up to something he wanted to do but knew he shouldn’t.’
‘Like stealing apples?’
He brushed off the childish parallel. ‘These were no apples. Vic said we’d make so much money that what had gone before was only peanuts. He said there was a deal we could do with a breeder that had a colt by Transporter that was a perfect peach…’
‘Was it Vic’s own idea?’ I asked.
‘I thought so… I don’t know… Anyway, it worked a dream. He gave me five thousand quid just for bidding, and he made twenty out of it himself.’
‘By my reckoning he made thirty.’
‘Oh no…’ He stopped, surprised, then went on more slowly. ‘No… I remember him saying… ten thousand pounds went to the bloke who wrote the agreement that Vic got the breeder to sign. I said I thought it was a lot, but Vic says you have to pay for expert advice.’
‘Does he often pay for expert advice?’
He nodded. ‘All the time.’
‘Cheerfully?’
‘What? Of course.’
‘He isn’t being blackmailed?’
He looked scornful. ‘I’ll say not. You can’t see any piddling little blackmailer putting one over on Vic’
‘No… but what it amounts to is that Vic is collecting huge kick-backs from breeders and other vendors, and out of that he is paying his own kick-backs to someone else for expert advice.’
He frowned. ‘I suppose you could say so.’
‘But you don’t know who?’
‘No.’
‘How long would you say he had been receiving this advice?’
‘How the hell do I know? A year. Two. About that.’
‘So what was different about the last six weeks?’
‘You were. All of a sudden Vic says it’s time to get rid of you. Either that or make you back down and take your cut with the rest of us. We all thought you’d come in with us with a bit of pressure. Well, see, it didn’t make sense you holding out. Only do yourself a lot of harm. Jiminy Bell, he says now he told us you’d never agree, but he bloody didn’t. That little sod, he said then that you were pretty soft really. A soft touch, he always said. Always good for a sob-story. So now he says he told us you were a tough nut, the squirmy little liar.’
‘Does Vic see this friend of his every day?’
‘Couldn’t say.’
‘Well… think.’
He thought. ‘I’d say that most days he either sees him or talks on the phone. See, Vic always gets things done quickly, like pinching that horse you bought at Ascot…’
‘How was that done?’
He blinked. Shifted uneasily on his chair. I shoved the cigarettes across and tried to look as if the whole question was quite impersonal.
‘Er…’ he said. ‘Vic said you were buying a horse for Mrs Sanders and he couldn’t have that, she was marrying Conslantine Brevett and he was Vic’s exclusive territory.’
‘When did he say that?’
‘At the sales the day you bought Hearse Puller.’
‘Had he already fixed up with Fred Smith?’
He hesitated. ‘He knew Fred Smith was going to take away whatever horse you bought. Yes.’
‘Did Vic himself fix it with Fred Smith?’
‘See, I don’t really know. Vic said he didn’t, but I don’t know, he’d say his grandmother was a pigmy if it suited him.’
‘Ronnie North,’ I said slowly. ‘Did he know Fred Smith?’
Fynedale’s face twisted into the sardonic sneer. ‘Old mates, weren’t they?’
‘Were they?’
‘Well…. Ronnie, he came from Stepney way, same as Fred Smith. Ronnie started in the horse coping business in the old days when they sold horses on market days in all the big towns. He started as a boy, helping his dad. Bloody lot of gypsies if you ask me. Up to every damn trick in the book, is Ronnie. But bright, see? Got brains, Ronnie has.’
‘Ronnie sold me the next horse I bought for Kerry Sanders.’
‘Ay. Him and Vic, laughing themselves sick about it, they were. Then Ronnie afterwards said you needed a bloody lesson, busting Fred Smith’s arm.’
‘Did you yourself ever meet Fred Smith?’
‘I saw him, like. Saw him at Ascot, with Ronnie. Ronnie pointed you out to him. We all did, see?’
‘I see.’
‘Then, well, with River God it was dead easy, wasn’t it? Ronnie found which transport firm you’d engaged and got them to tell him their instructions, and he just sent Fred Smith to pick you off on the lay-by.’
‘Ronnie sent him?’
‘Ronnie… or Vic’ He shrugged. ‘One of them.’
‘Not Vic’s unknown friend?’
‘Might have been, I suppose.’ He didn’t think it made much difference. ‘We weren’t going to steal River God, see? Fred Smith had the money for it. He was going to make you take it, like at Ascot.’
‘And River God was going back to Ronnie North?’
‘Ay.’
‘Then why did he agree to sell it to me in the first place?’
He said with exaggerated patience as if telling to a dim child, ‘See, he wasn’t going to, first off. Then he rings Vic and says you’re looking for another horse instead of Hearse Puller. Then Vic rings back and says sell you River God and it’ll be a good opportunity of bashing you up a bit mone.’
‘Did you actually hear either of these calls?’
‘Eh?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t live in Vic’s pocket, do I? No, Vic told me.’
I thought for a while. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘Which of you thought of burning my yard?’
He shifted his chair abruptly so that he… was no longer facing me, but spoke to the bare walls.
‘See… Vic said… a real smash, and you�
��d cave in. See… he saw you talking to that Transporter breeder… and that trainer whose owner he’d swiped… in the bar, see?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ay. Well then, Vic says this time no messing, you’ve got to be put right out of action, because this expert friend of his has thought up a fiddle to make the Transporter colt look like hayseeds, only he wouldn’t tell Vic what it was while you were still around at the sales. Vic said this expert was afraid you would make a public fuss which would mean everyone would be a lot more careful about buying horses in future and that was the last thing they wanted. So Vic said you either had to join in or be got rid of and you’d made it crystal clear you wouldn’t join in, so it was your own bloody fault you got your yard burned.’
I grunted: ‘And what happened afterwards?’
‘Well, there you bloody were at the sales as if nothing had happened. The whole thing had been a flop and Fred Smith was in jail and Vic was furious because he couldn’t start the new fiddle. He said he’d just have to go on with the kick-backs and anyway we’d been doing pretty well out of those for two years so it didn’t seem too bad.’
He swung round again, his face full of renewed anger.
‘And then you had to bugger the whole thing up by ratting to Wilton Young.’
‘Calm down,’ I said flatly. ‘Did you expect me to go on meekly taking whatever you cared to dish out?’
He looked indecisive. ‘Don’t know.’
You know now, I thought.
‘Are Vic and his expert friend still planning this new big fiddle for some time in the future?’
‘Ay. They are. Today…. Today?’ He seemed suddenly astounded that it was only that morning that he had gone to Ascot Sales.
‘Today.… I could have killed Vic.… I told him I could kill him… and kill you too… and he said… why didn’t I just kill you, then he could get on with the fiddle… and he was bloody laughing… but I reckon now he meant to egg me on.’
‘I expect he did,’ I said.
‘Ay. He’d be rid of you and me too. He’d have the whole bloody field to himself.’
He leaned his elbows on the table and picked up my lighter and fidgeted with it.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you something. You can put Vic in the same boat as you did me.’
‘Do you mean… had up for fraud?’
‘Ay…. Makes shipping horses by sea instead of air look like kids’ stuff.’
‘Tell me, then.’
He looked up. ‘You meant it straight, didn’t you, about getting me out of here?’
‘I did.’
He sighed. ‘Reckon I can trust you. And that’s a bloody laugh, for a start.’
He threw down the lighter and leaned back.
‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘Vic swindled the High Power Insurance Company out of a hundred and fifteen thousand quid.’
14
‘Are you sure?’ I said.
‘Positive.’
‘Can you prove it?’
‘I reckon you could, if you wanted to.’
‘How did he do it?’
‘See… it was about three years ago… he shipped a four-year-old stallion out to Japan. Polyprint, it was called.’
I said, ‘I remember that. It died on the way.’
‘Ay. It did. And Vic had insured it for a hundred and fifteen thousand for the journey, with himself to collect if anything happened to the horse.’
‘Nothing especially unusual in that.’
‘No. And he insured it a week before it was due to go. That is what made the insurance firm pay up. Because a week before the horse set off, Vic couldn’t have known it was going to die, because a vet had been over it from nose to arse and given it the O.K., and it was the High Power Company’s own vet, which strung them up proper.’
‘I can’t remember what it died of…’
‘Tetanus,’ he said. ‘Three days by air to Japan. They took it out of Gatwick looking as right as rain… it walked up the ramp into the aircraft as quiet as you please. By the time they got to the Middle East it was sweating something chronic. Next stop, they got it out and walked it around, but it was staggering a bit. Next stop they had a local vet waiting. Tetanus, he said. So they cabled the insurance company and they wanted to send their own man out to take a look. See, there was a lot of brass involved. Anyway he never went because the horse died while he was still in England getting cholera jabs or something. So Vic claims the money, and the High Power has to pay up.’
‘Did Vic travel with the horse himself?’
‘No. He was right heTe in England.’
‘So… where was the fraud?’
‘Ah…. See, the horse that set off for Japan and died of tetanus, that horse wasn’t Polyprint.’
He lit a cigarette, absorbed in his story.
‘It was a horse called Nestegg.’
I stared at him. ‘Nestegg is standing at stud in Ireland.’
‘Ay,’ he said. ‘And that’s Polyprint.’
The gaunt face twisted into the ghost of a smile. ‘See, Vic bought Nestegg because he had a client who wanted it. Nestegg was six and had won a few long distance races, and this client had a small stud and wanted a stallion that wouldn’t cost too much. Well, Vic bought Nestegg for ten thousand and was going to pass him on for fifteen, and then this client just dropped down dead one afternoon and the widow said nothing doing she didn’t want to know. Vic wasn’t much worried because Nestegg wasn’t bad, really.’
He took a few deep puffs, sorting things out.
‘One evening I was at Vic’s place near Epsom and we looked round the yard, like one does. He shows me Polyprint, who’s due to set off to Japan the next day. Big bay horse. Full of himself. Then, three boxes along, there was Nestegg. Another bay, much the same. We went in and looked at him and he was standing there all hunched up and sweating. Vic looked him over and said he would go out and see him again later, and if he was no better he would get the vet in the morning. Then we went into Vic’s house for a drink, and then I went home.’
He looked at me broodingly.
‘So the next day off goes this horse to Japan and dies of tetanus two days later. Next time I saw Vic he sort of winks at me and gives me a thousand quid in readies, and I laughed and took it. Then later he sold this bay which he still had, which was supposed to be Nestegg but was really Polyprint, he sold him to a stud in Ireland for seventeen thousand. He wouldn’t have made a penny if he’d sent Polyprint off to Japan and got a vet to try to save Nestegg. Just by swapping those two horses when he had the chance, he made himself a proper packet.’
‘And it gave him a taste for more easy money in large amounts?’
‘Ay.… It was after that that he latched on to the kick-backs in a big way. He asked me to help…. Tell you the truth, I was glad to.’
‘And he found this expert,’ I said.
‘Ay….’ He hesitated. ‘It was maybe the other way round. Vic more or less said this chap had come to him and suggested more ways Vic could make money.’
‘He hadn’t done so badly on his own,’ I observed.
‘Well… Polyprint was a one-off, see. You couldn’t work that again. He only did it because he realised Nestegg had tetanus and would die pretty quickly if he wasn’t treated and even maybe if he was. See, tetanus isn’t that common. You couldn’t have two die of it on journeys when they were heavily insured, even if you could infect them on purpose, which you can’t. Vic walked that horse around all night to keep it moving and fed it a bucketful of tranquillisers so that it looked all right when it was loaded on to the plane at Gatwick. But to get another one to die on a journey you’d have to fix some sort of accident. The insurance people would be dead suspicious, and even if they paid up they might afterwards refuse to insure you altogether and you couldn’t risk that, see. But the thing about this expert chap was that nearly everything he suggested was legal. Vic said it was like property development and land speculation. You could make a great deal of money wi
thout breaking the law if you knew how to set about it.’
* * *
The police were understandably sour about my assertion that I had fallen on the pitchfork by accident and that Fynedale was as innocent of assault as a bunch of violets. They argued and I insisted, and half an hour later Fynedale stood outside on the pavement shivering in the wind.
‘Thanks,’ he said briefly. He looked shrunken and depressed.
He huddled inside his jacket, turned on his heel, and walked away up the street to the railway station. The carrot hair was a receding orange blob against the dead copper leaves of a beech hedge.
Sophie was waiting by the kerb, sitting in the driving seat of my car. I opened the passenger side door and slid in beside her.
‘Will you drive?’ I said.
‘If you like.’
I nodded.
‘You look bushed,’ she said. She started the engine, shifted the gears, and edged out into the road.
‘Couldn’t beat Muhammed AH right now.’
She smiled. ‘How did it go?’
‘Like a torrent, once he’d started.’
‘What did you learn?’
I thought, trying to put everything into its right order. Sophie drove carefully, flicking glances across, waiting for an answer.
I said, ‘Vic swindled an insurance company very neatly, about three years ago. Some time after that someone who Fynedale calls an expert sought Vic out and suggested a sort of alliance, in which Vic would extort money in various more or less legal ways and pay a proportion of it to the expert. I imagine this expert guessed Vic had swindled the insurance and was therefore a good prospect for a whole career of legal robbery.’
‘There’s no such thing as legal robbery.’
I smiled. ‘How about wealth taxes?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Taking by law is legal robbery.’
‘Ah well… go on about Vic’
‘Vic and the expert started redistributing wealth in no uncertain terms, chiefly into their own pockets but with enough pickings to entice six or seven other agents into the ring.’
‘Fynedale?’ Sophie said.