by Dick Francis
‘You don’t have to,’ I replied. ‘But carry on if it makes you feel better. I won’t tell anyone.’ Especially not Chris Beecher.
‘I’ve heard that you can keep a secret,’ he said, looking at my false hand. Far too many people, I thought, had heard that story.
‘It all came to a head on Thursday night.’ He seemed relieved to be able to tell someone. ‘For some time now Kate has been coming to bed late, really late, one or two in the morning. Well, I have to be up at five thirty for the horses so I’m usually in bed by ten, ten thirty at the latest.’
He finished his coffee.
‘Well, that doesn’t do much for your love life, I can tell you. If I tried to wake up when she came to bed, she would shy away from me. It was as if she didn’t want me even to touch her. So about ten o’clock on Thursday I said to her that I wanted her to come to bed now. She said something about wanting to watch some programme on the telly. So I said to her, “Why are you so frigid these days? You used to love sex. Is there anything wrong?”’
He paused and looked out of the window. The memory obviously hurt.
‘I thought she might have a medical problem or something. I only wanted her to get back to the old ways. Then she said something I’ll never forget.’ He stopped and I sat and waited as his eyes filled with tears and he fought them back by swallowing hard a couple of times.
‘She said that Huw Walker didn’t think she was frigid.’
‘Oh.’
‘I thought she must be joking.’ he said, ‘but she started to goad me. Said that he was a much better lover than me and that he knew how to satisfy a woman. I still didn’t believe it so I went to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. She never did come to bed that night. She packed some things for her and the children and left while I was out with the first lot. I came back to find the house empty.’
He stood up and leant against the sink, looking out at the stables beyond.
‘It isn’t the first time she’s left,’ he went on. ‘Third time since Christmas but before it was only for one night each time. I wish she’d come home.’
He stopped and began to cry.
‘Is that why you were so angry with Huw on Friday?’ I asked, hoping he would continue talking.
He turned round and wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeve. ‘I tried to be as normal as possible, so I went to the races — it was Cheltenham, after all. I hoped Kate would come home while I was out. And I still didn’t really believe her about Huw Walker. I thought she had just said it to upset me.’
‘What changed your mind?’ I asked quietly.
‘I was about to give him a leg-up on to Candlestick in the first when he turned to me and said, “Kate called me. Sorry, mate.” I was stunned. I just stood there unable to feel my legs. Juliet, you know, Juliet Burns my assistant, she had to do everything. I stood in the paddock for the whole race.’ He laughed sardonically. ‘My first winner at the Festival and I never saw it.’ His laughter died. ‘I was still there when Candlestick returned to the winner’s enclosure. I hadn’t moved an inch. Juliet came and fetched me. Sort of woke me up. Then I lost it. God, I was so mad with that bastard! I could have killed him.’
The enormity of what he’d said hung in the silence.
He looked at me for several seconds that seemed much longer, then he looked down at his hands. ‘When I heard he was dead, I was glad. But now, well you know, I don’t really want that.’
But he is, I thought.
‘Who would want him dead?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know. I thought everyone loved him. Perhaps some jilted girl killed him.’
Unlikely, I thought. It was too clinical, too professional.
‘Did he win or lose to order?’ I asked.
Bill’s head came up fast. ‘My horses are always trying to win,’ he said, but he didn’t sound totally convincing.
‘Come on, Bill,’ I said. ‘Tell me the truth. Did Huw and you ever fix races?’
‘Candlestick was sent out to do his best and to win if he could.’
It wasn’t what I had asked.
‘The Stewards had me in after the race. They were furious that I had been shouting at Huw in the unsaddling enclosure.’ He laughed. ‘They were particularly annoyed that all my effing and blinding had gone out live on the television. Apparently there had been more replays of that than of the race. Bringing the sport into disrepute, they said. Stupid old farts. Anyway, they accused me of being angry with Huw for winning on Candlestick. I told them it wasn’t anything to do with that, it was a personal matter, but they insisted that I must not have wanted the horse to win. I told them that that wasn’t true and I’d had a big bet on him. Luckily I was able to prove it there and then.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘On their computer. I logged on to my on-line betting account and was able to show them the record of my big bet on Candlestick to win.’
‘How did they know that you hadn’t had another bet on him to lose?’
He grinned. ‘They didn’t.’
‘So had you?’
‘Only a small one to cover my stake.’
‘Explain,’ I said.
‘Well, I have an account with make-a-wager.com, the internet gambling site,’ he said.
I remembered my meeting with George Lochs at Cheltenham.
‘The site allows you to make bets or to lay, that is to take bets from other people. They’re known as the exchanges as they allow punters to exchange wagers.’ He was clearly excited. ‘So I can place a bet on a horse to win. Or I can stand a bet from someone else who wants to bet on the horse to win, which means I effectively bet on it to lose. The Triumph Hurdle — Candlestick’s race last Friday — is a race that you can gamble on ante-post, which means you can bet on the race for weeks or months ahead.’ I nodded; one didn’t need to be a gambler to know all about ante-post betting.
‘Because you lose your money if the horse doesn’t run, the odds are usually better. Prices are even better before the entries close because you’re also gambling that the connections will choose to enter the horse for the race in the first place. Then lots of the horses that are entered never actually run.’ He briefly drew breath. ‘The entries for the Triumph Hurdle close in January, but I put a monkey on Candlestick to win at 30 to 1 way back in November.’
‘So if he won, you’d win fifteen thousand,’ I said. A monkey is gambling slang for five hundred.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘but if he didn’t win I would have lost my five hundred. So on Thursday morning, I bet on him to lose to cover my stake.’
‘How exactly?’ I asked.
‘I took a bet of a monkey at sevens. So if the horse won I would win fifteen thousand minus the three and a half thousand I would have to pay on the other bet, and if he didn’t win I was even. I would have lost my win stake but made it back on the lay bet. Understand?’
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘You stood to win eleven and a half thousand against a zero stake.’ And win he had.
‘Piece of piss,’ he laughed. ‘Money for old rope. But you lose badly if the horse doesn’t run so I only tend to do it if I am pretty sure my horse will actually run and it has a reasonable chance, which means the starting price will be a lot shorter than the ante-post price. On Friday, Candlestick’s starting price was down to 6 to 1.’
‘Do you ever make money if the horse loses?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ he paused a moment as if deciding whether to continue. Discretion lost. ‘I suppose I do sometimes, when I know a horse isn’t too well or hasn’t been working very well. Occasionally I will run a horse I really shouldn’t. Say if it’s got a cold or a bit of a leg.’
I remembered an owner who was surprised to hear from his trainer that his horse had ‘a bit of a leg’ when he expected that it had four full ones. ‘A bit of a leg’ was a euphemism for heat in a tendon, a sure sign of a slight strain. To run a horse in such a condition was quite likely to cause the horse to ‘break down’, that is, to pull or tear the tendon completely,
requiring many months of treatment and, at worst, the end of a racing career.
Bill would know, as I did, that the powers-that-be in racing, while allowing trainers to bet on their horses to win, forbid them to bet on them to lose.
‘So the Stewards only saw the win bet on your account?’ I said.
‘Bloody right,’ he said.
‘So how did you take the lose bet on Thursday?’
‘There are ways,’ he grinned again.
I wondered how big a step it was from running an under-the-weather horse that was likely to lose, to running a horse that was fit and well that would also lose because the jockey wasn’t trying. I was getting round to asking such a pivotal question when we were interrupted by the arrival of vehicles in the driveway, the gravel scrunching under their tyres.
‘Who the hell can that be at this time?’ said Bill, moving to look out of the window.
It was the police.
In particular, it was Chief Inspector Carlisle of Gloucestershire CID, together with several other policemen, four of them in uniform.
Bill went to meet them at the back door.
‘William George Burton?’ asked the Chief Inspector.
‘That’s me,’ said Bill.
‘I arrest you on suspicion of the murder of Huw Walker.’
CHAPTER 6
‘You must be having a joke,’ said Bill. But they weren’t.
The Chief Inspector continued, ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
Bill didn’t say anything but just stood there with his mouth open.
They weren’t finished.
One of the other plain-clothes policemen came up and arrested him again, this time on suspicion of race fixing. Same rights. Bill wasn’t listening. He went very pale and looked as though he might topple over. He was stopped from doing so by two of the uniformed officers who stood each side and held him by the arms as they led him to one of the cars.
Bill looked back over his shoulder at me standing in the doorway. ‘Tell Juliet to feed the horses,’ he said. A policeman wrote it down.
‘I’ll stay here until she comes,’ I said.
‘She lives down the road. Look after things, will you?’
‘OK.’
He was bundled into the car and driven away. Seven policemen remained.
‘You again, Mr Halley.’ Chief Inspector Carlisle made it sound like an accusation.
‘You again, Chief Inspector,’ I replied in the same tone.
‘What brings you here?’ he asked.
I decided not to tell him that I, too, was looking for Huw Walker’s killer. ‘Visiting my friend,’ I replied.
The policemen started to come in through the door.
‘What do you think you are doing?’ I asked.
‘We’re going to search this house,’ said Carlisle. ‘As Mr Burton has been arrested, we have a right of search of his premises. We would be most grateful if you would vacate the property now, Mr Halley.’
I bet you would, I thought. ‘I believe that Mr Burton has the right to have a friend present during any such search and, as he told me to look after things, I intend to remain.’
‘As you wish,’ said Carlisle, not showing any obvious disappointment. ‘But please keep out of our way.’
Instead, I fetched my digital camera from my car and took mega-pixel shots of the policemen as they systematically worked their way through the house. My presence was clearly an irritation to Carlisle who stamped around me and tut-tutted every time my camera flashed.
‘Is that really necessary?’ he finally asked.
‘I thought you had to make a detailed record of the search,’ I replied. ‘I’m just helping out. I’ll e-mail you a complete set of the pictures.’
‘Do you know if Mr Burton owned a gun?’ he asked. ‘In particular, a.38 inch revolver.’
‘No, but I think it most unlikely.’
I knew Bill would never give his children toy guns for Christmas or birthdays as he thought it would teach them to be violent. I couldn’t imagine that he would own a real one.
By the time Juliet Burns and the other stable staff arrived at four thirty for evening stables, the police had removed all Bill’s computer equipment from his desk, sealed it in large clear plastic bags, and loaded it into one of their vehicles. I was photographing them as they were bagging up his business record books when Juliet walked into the office.
‘Hello, Sid — what the bloody hell’s going on?’ she demanded.
‘And who are you, madam?’ asked Chief Inspector Carlisle, coming into the office before I could answer.
‘Juliet Burns, assistant trainer, and who the hell are you, and what the hell are you up to?’ She directed the last question at the uniformed policeman who went on filling his bag with papers off Bill’s desk.
‘I’m Chief Inspector Carlisle, Gloucestershire CID. We are searching these premises in the course of our investigations.’
‘Investigations into what?’ she demanded loudly. ‘And where’s Mr Burton?’
‘He is helping us with our enquiries.’
I wondered if being taught ‘police speak’ was part of the training.
‘Into what?’ she asked again.
‘Into a suspicious death at Cheltenham last Friday.’
‘You mean Huw Walker?’
‘Indeed.’
‘And you think Bill did it? Ha!’ She laughed. ‘Bill wouldn’t hurt a fly. You’ve got the wrong man.’
‘We have every reason to believe that Mr Burton had a powerful motive for killing Mr Walker,’ said Carlisle.
‘What motive?’ I asked. Their heads turned towards me.
Carlisle seemed to realise that he had given away too much information. ‘Er, none of your business, sir.’
On the contrary, I thought, it was very much my business.
‘Have you been speaking to Mrs Burton?’ I asked him.
‘That’s none of your business, either,’ he replied. But I could see that he had. He had known that Kate and the children were not in the house when he had arrived. There had been no female police officers in his party. He had expected Bill to be here on his own.
So I assumed Carlisle’s ‘powerful motive’ was that Kate had told him that she was having an affair with Huw and that Bill had found out about it on Thursday evening. On Friday, Huw had turned up dead with his heart like a colander and Kate must have thought Bill was responsible. Not an unreasonable conclusion, I thought. No wonder she’d not come home. She believed her husband was a murderer.
Juliet stood with her hands on her hips. I hadn’t seen her since she was a child but I’d known her family for years. She may have been small in stature but inside her petite frame was a giant of a woman trying to get out. Her mother had died bringing her into the world and she had been raised by her blacksmith father and her four elder brothers, growing up as the youngest in a household dominated by men. Childhood had consisted of wrestling in front of the television on a Saturday afternoon and playing rugby or football in the garden on Sunday mornings. And, of course, there was riding, plenty of riding, hunting in the winter and Pony Club gymkhanas in the summer. School had simply been a time-filler between more important pursuits. Now aged about twenty-five, I believed this was Juliet’s first job as an assistant trainer after doing her time as a stable groom in and around Lambourn.
‘Hey, you can’t take that. It’s the entries record,’ she shouted at a policeman who was busy placing a large blue-bound ledger into a polythene bag.
‘We can take whatever we like,’ said Carlisle.
‘They’re also investigating race fixing,’ I said.
Juliet stared at me with her mouth open.
‘Bill was arrested on suspicion of race fixing,’ I said. ‘As well as for murder. I was here.’
‘Bloody hell!’ She turned to Carlisle. ‘You’d bette
r take all the bloody horses as well, then. They’ll be accessories.’
Carlisle was not amused and politely asked us both if we would leave his men to their task.
Juliet and I went out to the stable yard where the lads were busy with the horses. The daylight was fading fast and bright yellow rectangles from the stable lights extended out through the box doors. Steel buckets clanged as they were filled with water from the taps in the corners of the yard and figures carrying sacks of straw or hay scurried about in the shadows. Life in the yard, at least, was continuing as normal.
‘Evening, Miss Juliet,’ said one lad coming up to us, ‘I think old Leaded has a bit of heat in his near fore. Evening, Mr Halley. Nice to see you.’
I smiled and nodded at him. Fred Manley had been Bill Burton’s head lad since Bill had started training, taking over the licence from his father-in-law, and had done his time in various stables around Lambourn before that. He had a wizened face from a life spent mostly outdoors with far too many early cold mornings on the gallops. He was actually in his late forties but looked at least ten years older. One of the old school: hard working, respectful and all too rare these days.
‘OK, Fred,’ said Juliet, ‘I’ll take a look.’
Juliet and Fred walked to a box midway down the left-hand bank and went in; I followed. Leaded Light turned and looked at the three of us. I had last seen him giving his all up the hill at Cheltenham on Friday, beaten a short head in the two-mile chase. Now he stood calmly in his straw-covered bedroom with a heavy canvas rug hiding his bulk and keeping him warm against the March evening chill. He was also wearing a leather head-collar that was firmly attached to a ring in the wall to prevent him wandering out through the open door.
Juliet moved over to the left-hand side of the docile animal, faced away from its head, bent down and ran her hand slowly down the back of Leaded Light’s lower leg. I watched her make such a natural movement, a movement repeated thousands of times a day in Lambourn alone. Every trainer, every day, with almost every horse. The feel for heat in the tendon is as regular a part of looking after a racehorse as feeding it. Her left hand on the horse’s left front leg, feeling for the slightest variation in temperature. I looked at my own left hand. I could have plunged it into boiling water without it telling me a thing.