by Dick Francis
I padded in bare feet along the hallway to the kitchen to get some water and noticed the flashing light on the answering machine through the open door of the bedroom that doubled as my office. I pushed the button and the mechanical voice answered: ‘You have six messages.’
The second was from Huw Walker.
‘Hi, Sid,’ he said in his usual jovial manner. ‘Bugger! I wish you were there. Anyway, I need to talk to you.’ The laughter had faded from his voice. ‘I’m in a bit of trouble and I…’ he paused, ‘I know this sounds daft but I’m frightened.’
There was another brief pause.
‘Actually, Sid, no kidding, I’m really frightened. Someone called me on the phone and threatened to kill me. I thought they were bloody joking so I told them to eff off and put the phone down. But they rang back and it’s given me the willies. I thought it was all a bit of a lark but now I find that it ain’t. I need your bloody help this time, mate, and no mistake. Call me back. Please call me back.’
There was another long pause as if he had waited in case I picked up at my end. Then there was a click and the next message played. It was from my financial adviser reminding me to buy an ISA before the end of the tax year.
There were, in fact, two messages from Huw, not one. Message four was also his.
‘Where are you when I need you, you bugger?’ His voice was slurred and he had obviously been drinking in the time between messages. ‘Come on, pick up the bloody phone, you bastard! Can’t you tell when a mate’s in trouble?’ There was a pause in which I could hear him swallow. ‘Just a few losers, they says, for a few hundred in readies, they says. OK, I says, but make it a few grand.’ He sighed loudly. ‘Do as we tell you, they says, or the only grand you’ll see is the drop from the top of the effing grandstand.’ He was now crying. ‘Should have bloody listened, shouldn’t I?’
The message ended abruptly.
I stood in the dark and thought of him as I had last seen him; three closely grouped deadly holes in his heart.
Yes, he should have bloody listened.
CHAPTER 4
Archie Kirk called me at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning as Marina and I were still sitting in bed in our robes, surrounded by the newspapers.
‘Thought you were meant to be a private detective.’ He emphasised the word private. ‘Not very private to be splashed across the front pages.’
The Sundays had taken up where the Saturdays had left off, with hundreds of column inches bemoaning the death of Oven Cleaner. One red-top rag even called for a national day of mourning and a memorial service in Westminster Abbey.
However, I assumed Archie was referring to the front-page banner headline in The Pump that read ‘Sid Halley in Cheltenham Murder Mystery’ above a three-column photograph of me looking extremely furtive. At first glance, anyone would have thought that it was me who had been murdered. The Pump and I had crossed swords in the past and maybe the headline was just wishful thinking by the editor.
Someone in their newsroom clearly had a source in the Cheltenham police who had reported that ‘Sid Halley, ex-champion steeplechase jockey, has been interviewed by senior officers and is helping the police with their enquiries into the murder of jockey Huw Walker at Cheltenham races on Friday. No arrest has been made at this time.’
Clearly The Pump expected me to be hung, drawn and quartered by lunchtime. The piece went on to imply that all of the world’s ills could be placed at my door. ‘Sid Halley, crippled ex-jockey, is now searching the gutters for rats as a minor private dick. He should feel nicely at home amongst the low-life…’
‘Ridiculous,’ I said. ‘They’re fishing.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Archie, ‘enough people will believe it.’
Archie was always concerned for my welfare and now, it appeared, he wanted to protect my reputation as well.
He was some sort of civil servant but he didn’t belong to any specific department. Nominally, he answered to the Cabinet Office, but he appeared to work in his own way with little contact or regard for his superiors. He was the chairman of a small group who were tasked with attempting to foretell the future. Their remit was to try and work out the consequences of proposed legislation, to try and ensure that it would actually do what it was intended without any unpleasant side effects that had been overlooked. Officially they were called the Standing Cabinet Sub-Committee on Legislative Outcomes but they were referred to by the few who knew of their existence as the Crystal Ball Club. Archie tended to label them the Cassandra Committee after the Greek mythological heroine who was both blessed and cursed by the god Apollo with the ability to correctly predict the future whilst no one believed her.
‘Any publicity is good publicity,’ I quipped.
‘Tell that to Gerald Ratner.’
I respected Archie and had grown to like him more and more as, over the past four years, I had become his very private ears and eyes.
Legislation in a democracy is, by its very nature, a compromise, a negotiated settlement somewhere in the middle ground. Whether it be a government-backed initiative or a private member’s bill, there is usually some horse-trading to be done. Some amendments may be accepted, others declined, paragraphs may be removed, word orders may be changed. Laws passed by Parliament are often substantially different from those drafted.
Archie and his Crystal Ball Club tried to look at legislation from the perspective of the end user, the members of the general public who would be affected. History is littered with examples where law makers had grossly misjudged the reaction that their well-intentioned deeds would produce.
After World War I, no less than forty-five of the then forty-eight states of the US voted to amend the American Constitution to prohibit the importation, manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the hope and expectation of reducing crime and corruption. Only the state of Rhode Island voted against. Fourteen murderous years later, during which time the federal prison inmate population increased by more than 350 %, the same state legislators voted another amendment to the Constitution repealing their blunder, again in the hope and expectation of reducing crime and corruption.
In 1990, the United Kingdom Government of the day decided that in order to make local taxes fairer they would introduce a single flat charge, equal for all. What could be fairer, they thought? The Community Charge, as they called it, was soon dubbed the Poll Tax and resulted in violent demonstrations across the country. The law was repealed in 1993 but the damage had been done. The Government’s reputation was terminally wounded. They lost the next election in a landslide.
Archie’s team was set up to try and foresee just such problems. They spent much of their time on private member’s bills, providing their political chiefs with a best guess at the effect that would be produced if a specific bill were to be passed into law. Many such proposed bills were the direct result of single-issue pressure groups that could be very persuasive without necessarily revealing the whole truth behind their argument. The chance of a private member’s bill reaching the statute book was largely dependent on whether the government of the day supported the measure and hence provided the parliamentary time. The grounds for such support were a combination of politics, practicality and expediency. Archie’s job was to advise as to the practicality and expediency. However, political considerations sometimes outweighed everything else.
Over the years, I had quietly and discreetly investigated many pressure groups and their individual members. I tended to look for links to big business or organised crime, or both.
Never mind statistics, there were lies, damn lies and the spouting forth from single-issue pressure groups. Blinkered, fanatical and blind to counter-argument and reason. Facts they didn’t like, they ignored or dismissed as lies. Sometimes they were just the foot soldiers in a bigger game, being used and manipulated by puppet masters working silently in the dark. Some were misguided and wrong. Others were plain crazy. A few had valid points but these were often lost in rhetoric and fury. Ask an animal righ
ts supporter if he would rather have a new cancer drug tested on him first and he will say ‘that’s not the point’. But it’s exactly the point. If his mother were diagnosed with cancer, he would demand treatment to cure her. He’d be the first to blame the government and the health services if it didn’t exist.
‘Are you still there?’ Archie asked.
‘Sorry,’ I replied, ‘miles away.’
‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’
‘About what?’
‘About The Pump.’
‘Oh.’ I paused to think. ‘Nothing. Their lawyers will have made sure they haven’t libelled me, it’s just absurd speculation.’
Laced with loathing, I assumed, but I didn’t like them much either.
‘Why don’t you rant and rave like any normal man?’ Archie asked.
‘You wouldn’t,’ I replied. Archie was one of the most even-tempered men I had ever met. ‘What good would it do? The Pump seem to have it in for me again and complaining will only make it worse.’
I had once shown The Pump to be completely wrong about someone who they claimed to be a saint but who turned out to be a bigger sinner than even I had realised. The Press doesn’t like to be shown to be foolish. Stoking the fire in their belly would do nothing to make it go out.
‘It’s so unfair.’ I rarely heard such anger in Archie’s voice.
‘Look, Archie,’ I said, ‘this is not worth getting upset about. Let it blow over.’ Let the police find the killer, I thought.
‘Can you come and see me tomorrow?’ Archie asked, abruptly changing the subject.
‘At home or in the office?’ I asked.
‘Whichever suits you.’
‘Office, then. Ten?’
‘Fine.’
I didn’t bother to ask him what it was about. Archie was naturally a secretive man and on the telephone he habitually gave an excellent impression of a Trappist monk. He didn’t trust telephones and, as an ex-member of MI5, he should know. Today he had been unusually effusive and was probably regretting it already.
Marina and I decided to walk down to the Goring Hotel for a glass of wine and a sandwich. As a jockey I had never been able to eat a large lunch, even on non-racing Sundays, and the routine of eating only an evening meal had survived the disaster.
We took the lift down and stepped out into the marble-floored lobby. I had chosen this apartment building partly due to the 24-hour manned desk facing the entrance with its bank of CCTV monitors. I had been attacked outside my previous home so I valued the peace of mind provided by the eclectic band of individuals who made up the team of porters/security men.
‘Morning, Derek,’ I said.
‘Afternoon, Mr Halley,’ he corrected.
Reassuring, reliable and discreet, no one set foot in the building without their knowledge and say-so.
Half an hour later, sustained by a shared smoked salmon sandwich and a glass of wine, we hurried back to the flat in watery March sunshine that did little to alleviate the biting northerly wind on our backs.
‘Ah, Mr Halley,’ said Derek as we walked in, ‘guest for you.’
My ‘guest’ was sitting in the lobby and he was having difficulty getting up from a deep armchair. He was in his mid-sixties and was wearing dirty brown corduroy trousers and an old green sweater with a hole in the front. A shock of grey hair protruded from under a well-worn cap.
In his right hand he held a copy of The Pump.
‘Sid Halley!’ His booming voice filled the air with sound and he took two quick steps towards me.
Oh no, not again.
I looked around for reinforcement from Derek but he had decided to stay in relative safety behind the desk.
But instead of trying to hit me, the man thrust the newspaper in my face. ‘Did you kill my son?’ he demanded at maximum decibels.
I nearly laughed but thought better of it.
‘No, I did not.’ Even to my ears it sounded very melodramatic.
‘No, I didn’t really think so.’ His shoulders slumped and he sat down heavily on the arm of the chair. ‘But The Pump seemed so… oh, I don’t know… so believable.’ He spoke with a strong Welsh accent and I quite expected him to add ‘Boyo’ to the end of each sentence.
‘I’ve driven all the way here from Brecon.’ He gulped and his eyes filled with tears. ‘I set out to kill you. In revenge. But… the more I drove, the more stupid that seemed. It wouldn’t bring Huw back and, by the time I’d gone half way, I realised that you wouldn’t have done it. Huw always says…’ he faltered, ‘… said… that you, look, are on the side of the bloody angels. God, what am I doing here?’
He began to cry, his shoulders jerking up and down with great sobs that he tried to suppress.
Marina squatted down next to him. ‘Mr Walker,’ her melodic tone brought his chin up a fraction, ‘let’s go upstairs and get you a cup of tea.’
She stood and pulled him to his feet and guided him towards the lift.
‘Thanks, Derek,’ I said.
Derek stood wide-eyed and uncharacteristically silent as the lift doors closed.
Marina fussed around Mr Walker like a mother hen and soon had him sitting on the sofa sipping strong sweet tea from a blue-and-white striped mug.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked while stroking his hand.
He smiled at her. ‘Evan,’ he said.
‘Well, Evan,’ she smiled back, ‘have you had anything to eat for lunch?’
‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘I haven’t had anything to eat since Friday night. Since when the police came to tell…’ He tailed off, the memory still too raw to describe. ‘I don’t feel like eating.’
Nevertheless, Marina disappeared into the kitchen.
‘How did you know where I lived?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘The man from The Pump told me.’
‘You just phoned them up and they gave you my address?’
‘No, I didn’t phone them.’ He looked slightly disturbed. ‘A man from The Pump phoned me at six o’clock this morning to ask whether I had seen their newspaper. Course I hadn’t. Not at six in the morning. I’d fed the cattle but there’s no delivery on Sundays and the shop doesn’t open until nine.’ He made it sound like a major failing.
He paused and looked at me. Was he thinking what I was thinking? Why did The Pump call him so specifically to ensure he read their paper?
‘So did you go and get a copy of The Pump?’ I asked, prompting him to continue.
‘Well, I did,’ he said, ‘but not from our local shop, see, it still wasn’t open when I left. I stopped to get one in Abergavenny.’
Marina reappeared with a mountain of scrambled eggs on toast that Evan Walker devoured like a starving dog, hardly stopping to draw breath.
‘Thank you,’ he smiled again. ‘Delicious. I didn’t realise how hungry I was.’
‘But why did you set off for London if you hadn’t read the piece in the paper?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t need to read it. The man from The Pump read the whole thing out to me over the phone. I was bloody mad, I can tell you. He kept saying what was in the paper was only the half of it. He good as told me you’d done it and no mistake. “Sid Halley murdered your son,” he said, and he said you’d probably get away with it because you’d done a deal with the police. Then he gave me your address and asked me what I was going to do about it.’
‘Did he give you his name?’ I asked. I already suspected who had called him.
‘No,’ he paused to think, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Was it a man called Chris Beecher?’ I asked
‘I don’t know, I didn’t ask his name.’ He paused again and shook his head. ‘Right bloody idiot I’ve been. See that now, but at the time I was so bloody angry.’ He dropped his eyes from mine. ‘I’m glad that bloody drive was long enough for me to come to my senses.’
So was I.
He sighed. ‘I suppose you’ll call the police now?’
&nb
sp; ‘How were you going to kill me?’ I asked, ignoring his question.
‘With my shotgun. It’s still in the car.’
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘Outside on the road.’
‘I’ll get it,’ I said. ‘What type of car and where are the keys?’
‘Old grey Ford.’ He patted his flat pockets. ‘Keys must be in it.’
I went down and it was still there with the keys in the ignition, unstolen. Good job it was a Sunday, I thought, or he would have had at least three parking tickets by now. Amazingly, the shotgun was still there, too, lying in plain view on the back seat.
I picked it up, locked the car and turned to go back upstairs.
I am not sure why I noticed the young man in a car on the far side of the road take aim at me, maybe it was his movement that caught my eye. I strode straight across to him and lifted the business end of the shotgun I was holding in his general direction.
He had aimed not a gun but a camera that he now lowered to his lap. Experienced paparazzi would have gone on snapping, I thought — Sid Halley threatening a photographer with a loaded shotgun, just what The Pump would have loved for the front page.
‘What are you after?’ I shouted at him through the closed car window. ‘Put the window down.’
He pushed a button and the window opened a couple of inches.
‘Who sent you?’ I asked through the crack.
He didn’t reply.
‘Tell Chris Beecher he shouldn’t tell tall stories to Welsh farmers,’ I said.
He just looked at me, then nodded slightly. It was enough.
I slowly lowered the shotgun. There were too many windows overlooking Ebury Street and I feared that net curtains would already be twitching.
The young man took one look at the lowered gun and decided that retreat was the best plan. He ground his gears and was gone.