by Dick Francis
Juliet straightened. ‘Mmm. He obviously gave himself a bit of a knock on Friday,’ she said. ‘There’s a touch of heat there but nothing too bad. Thanks, Fred. We’ll give him light work for a day or two.’
‘OK, Miss,’ Fred replied. ‘Is the guv’nor not here? He asked me to find out about holiday dates for the lads.’
‘I’m afraid he’s a bit tied up this evening,’ said Juliet, only fractionally hesitating.
I hoped not and nearly laughed. Unlike in the United States where handcuffs were de rigueur, Bill had been driven away without restraint. I assumed that he would not have been shackled, dungeon-like, to some police cell wall.
‘I’ll be doing the round tonight,’ Juliet went on. ‘Measure out the feed as usual, Fred.’ He nodded and slipped away into the darkness.
She turned to me. ‘Would you like to come with me?’
‘Yes, indeed I would,’ I said.
So we went round the whole yard, all fifty-two horses, with Fred fussing over each one like a loving uncle. Candlestick was there and looking none the worse for his exertions of the previous week. He lifted his head, gave us a brief glance, then concentrated again on his evening meal of oats and bran deep in his manger.
Fred went off to reprimand one of the lads he’d caught smoking near the wooden stables.
‘Fire is one of the great nightmares for trainers,’ said Juliet. ‘Horses panic near flames and will often refuse to come out of their boxes even if some brave soul has opened the door. We have signs everywhere to remind the lads not to smoke in the yard and stacks of fire-fighting equipment just in case.’ She pointed at the bright red extinguishers and sand-filled fire buckets in each corner of the yard. ‘But there are always those who ignore the warnings and some silly buggers have even been known to court disaster by stealing a quick fag in the hay store. I ask you. Stupid or what?’
I was only half-listening. I was wondering if Bill Burton could have fixed races without the knowledge of his staff. In Fred’s absence, I asked Juliet casually whether it was a surprise to her that Bill had been arrested for race-fixing.
‘What do you think?’ she replied. ‘I’m astounded.’
She didn’t sound very astounded and I wondered if loyalty to Bill was such that she wouldn’t have told me if she’d seen him stick syringes in their bottoms, tie their legs up with hobbles, and give their jockeys wads of used twenties after losing.
‘Can you remember rather too many short-priced losers?’ I asked. It was the classic sign of malpractice.
‘No,’ she replied almost too quickly. ‘Lots of favourites don’t win, you know that. If they all did then the bookies would be out of business. Have you ever met a poor bookmaker?’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Not just short-priced losers but horses which occasionally didn’t run as well as expected and lost when they should have won.’
‘That happens all the time. Doesn’t mean the race was fixed. Horses aren’t machines, you know. They have off days, too.’ She was getting quite stirred up. ‘Look, what do you want me to say: “Bill and I worked out which horse would win and which would lose”? Don’t be bloody daft. Bill’s as straight as an arrow.’
I wondered if she believed it. I didn’t.
It was past six by the time I left Juliet still arguing with Chief Inspector Carlisle.
‘How am I to know which horse is running where tomorrow if you’ve taken the computers and the entries record?’ she had demanded at full volume.
‘That’s not my problem, miss,’ Carlisle had replied.
I left them to it. Carlisle looked likely to lose the battle and I thought he would find the situation easier to handle without me there. By then the police had removed so much material from Bill’s house and office that they were running out of space in their cars.
I drove up the M4 towards London against the rush-hour traffic, the never-ending stream of headlamps giving me a headache.
So what next?
Jonny Enstone had asked me to investigate the running of his horses. The obvious place to start was to interview his jockey and trainer. But now one of them had been murdered and the other had been locked up on suspicion of having done it, and all before I could ask them the relevant questions.
I decided to go and see Lord Enstone himself.
‘Delighted, Sid,’ he said, when I called him using my natty new voice recognition dialling system in the car. With only one hand, it was prudent to keep it firmly on the steering wheel. In an emergency I could steer quite well with my knee but it wasn’t to be recommended at high speeds on the motorway.
‘Come to lunch tomorrow,’ Enstone said. ‘Meet me at the Peers’ Entrance at one.’
‘The peers’ entrance?’ I asked.
‘At the House,’ he replied.
Ah, I realised, at the ‘House’ meant the House of Lords.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow, one o’clock.’ I disconnected, again by voice command.
Marina was busy in the kitchen when I got home and I was firmly told to ‘go away’ when I tried to nibble her ear.
‘I’m experimenting,’ she said, slapping my hand as I tried to steal a slice of avocado from her salad. ‘Go and get me a glass of wine.’
I chose a Châteauneuf-du-Pape and opened it with my favourite cork remover. It consisted of a sharp spike that one drove through the cork. Then a pump forced air down the spike and the increased pressure forced the cork out of the bottle. Easy.
I had been severely chastised by a wine-loving friend for using it.
‘You’re pressurising the wine!’ he had cried in horror. ‘I’ll buy you a Screwpull for Christmas.’
And so he had, and very fancy and expensive it was too, with multiple levers and cogs. I am sure it worked very well providing, of course, that one had two hands to operate it. I stuck to my tried and tested pump although I had to be careful to buy a bottle that had a ‘cork’ rather than a ‘plastic’. It was impossible to push the spike through a ‘plastic’.
I poured two generous glasses of my favourite Rhône red and handed one to Marina in the kitchen.
‘It’s not going well,’ she said. ‘Do you fancy beans on toast?’
‘I just want you,’ I said, kissing her on the neck.
‘Not now,’ she screamed. ‘Can’t you see that my soufflé needs folding. Go away. Dinner will be ready in about half an hour, if you’re lucky. Otherwise we’re going to the pub.’
‘I’ll be in my office,’ I said, pinching another slice of avocado.
The flat had three bedrooms but I had turned one end of the smallest into an office the previous year. I sat at my desk and switched on my computer. Over the years I had become quite good at typing one-handed. I used my left thumb simply to depress the ‘shift’ key by rotating the arm at the elbow. I would never have made a typing-pool typist but I could still churn out client reports at a reasonable pace.
The computer slowly came to life and I checked my e-mails. Most were the usual trash trying to sell me stuff I didn’t want or need. It never ceased to amaze me why anyone could think that this type of direct marketing sells anything. I deleted all of them without reading them. In amongst the masses of junk and spam, however, were three messages actually meant for me personally. Two were from clients thanking me for reports delivered and the third was from Chris Beecher.
It read: ‘Lovely photo, shame he missed the gun.’
Not as far as I was concerned.
I declined to reply and deleted it instead.
I one-handedly typed www.make-a-wager.com into the machine and entered an alien world.
I had witnessed, as a child, the daily struggle of my widowed mother to earn enough to buy something to eat. Often she herself would go hungry to keep me fed. To gamble away such meagre resources would have been unthinkable. As I became successful and financially buoyant, even well-off, I had never felt the need to wager my hard-earned cash on the horses or on anything else. The rules of racing were meant to prohibit professional
jockeys from having a bet but it wasn’t the rules that stopped me, it was the lack of desire.
However, in races, I had gambled every day, with my life as the stake. I had enjoyed a long winning streak and, when it ran out, I had paid a heavy price but at least I hadn’t broken my neck.
I entered the make-a-wager.com website like a child let loose in a toyshop. I was truly amazed at how many different ways there were to lose one’s money. Without moving from my seat I could back horses racing in South Africa or Hong Kong, in Australia or America; I could have a flutter on football matches in Argentina or Japan, and I could bet that a single snowflake, or more, would fall on the London Weather Centre on Christmas Day. I could wager that the Miami Dolphins would win the next Super Bowl or that the number of finishers in the Grand National would be greater than twenty or any other number I might choose. I could gamble that the London Stock Market index would go up, or down, and by how much. I could put my money on Tipperary to win the ‘All-Ireland’ hurling in the Gaelic Games, or on the Swedish team Vetlanda to win at bandy, whatever that might be.
The choice was almost overwhelming and that didn’t include the on-line bingo and poker that was readily available at just a further click of my mouse. I could bet to win or I could bet to lose. I could be both the punter and the bookmaker.
Was my computer the door to Aladdin’s Cave or to Pandora’s Box?
The website was an ‘exchange’. Rather than simply being a method of placing a bet with a bookmaker, as was the case with those sites run by the high-street betting shop companies, an exchange was a site that matched people who wanted to have a wager between themselves. Like a couple of mates in a pub discussing a football match where one might say, ‘I’ll bet you a fiver that United win.’ If the other thinks they won’t then they have a wager between them. The barman might hold the stake, a fiver from each, and give both fivers to the winner after the game.
The make-a-wager.com website was like a very big pub where you could usually find two people with opposite opinions to make a bet between them, provided the odds were right. And find them they did. The site showed the amount of money actually matched in wagers and it ran into millions. The company that ran the site, George Lochs’s company, acted like the barman and held the stakes until the event was over and the result known. George Lochs made his money by simply creaming off a 5 % commission from the winner of each wager. It made no difference to him if all the favourites won: in fact, it was to his advantage as there would be more winners so more commissions. He couldn’t lose, no matter what the result.
A nice little earner, I thought. No wonder such websites were, to use Archie’s words, ‘breaking out like a rash’.
Marina came in and cuddled my back. ‘It’s ready,’ she said. ‘I hope you like it. It doesn’t quite look like it does in my cook book.’
‘What is it?’ I replied.
‘Beef medallions with marsala and crème fraîche sauce, accompanied by a cheese soufflé and avocado salad. I think the soufflé was a mistake and it will be a complete disaster if you don’t come and eat it now!’
We ate it on trays on our knees and it was delicious. Marina had prepared the medallions so that they were single-mouthful size and they were tender and juicy. I rarely ordered beef in a restaurant due to the inconvenience and embarrassment of having to ask someone to cut it up for me, so this was a real treat.
She kept apologising about the soufflé which, in truth, was not quite cooked through and didn’t really go with the beef, but it didn’t matter. This was the first time she had cooked a ‘special’ meal here and it was, I hoped, a sort of ‘marking out of territory’. We finished the bottle of wine with a rich homemade chocolate mousse and coffee, and then went straight to bed.
Marina was poles apart from my ex-wife.
When I had first met Jenny, we had almost bounced around the room with happiness. Our courtship had been steamy and sensual with passion and laughter and fun. We had married quickly and without her father’s blessing. Charles had not attended the service. We hadn’t cared, we had each other and that was all we’d needed. We were so desperate to be together that I would travel halfway through the night to get back to her. I had once driven all the way home with a fractured ankle because I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone in hospital without her.
It was difficult to say exactly when things had begun to go wrong. She hadn’t liked what I did for a living and the demands it made on my body but it was more than that. A long time after we were divorced, she had finally said some of the things that she had bottled up for so long.
I could still recall the words she had used, ‘selfishness’ and ‘pigheadedness’ were merely two. She’d said, ‘Girls want men who’ll come to them for comfort. Men who’d say, I need you, help me, comfort me, kiss away my troubles. You can’t do that. You’re so hard. Hard on yourself. Ruthless to yourself. You’ll do anything to win. I want someone who’s not afraid of emotion, someone uninhibited, someone weaker. I want… an ordinary man.’
To me, I was an ordinary man. If you stick me with a needle, I bleed, I hurt. I may not wear my heart on my sleeve but raw emotion is there, slightly hidden from view, but there nevertheless.
Love for Jenny had come quickly, with huge energy and passion. It had then, inexorably, drained away to nothing, at least on her part. Worse still, where no love remained, bitterness and hatred had made a home. Joy and laughter were just a memory and an uncomfortable one at that. More recently, the loathing and disgust had lessened and those, in time, might also fade away to nothing. We might then again be able to meet as normal human beings without the urge to damage and to hurt.
Was I older and wiser now? I like to think that I had changed but I probably hadn’t.
For a long time after Jenny, I had been afraid of starting any relationship. I feared that pain and despair would quickly follow the love and excitement. I’d enjoyed a few fleeting encounters but I had always been looking for the way out, a simple pain-free exit, a return to the solitary male condition I imagined was my lot. Forever the failed husband, fearful of making the same mistake again.
With Marina, it was very different.
Sure, I had fancied her at our first meeting, a dinner party at a mutual friend’s house. Who wouldn’t? She was tall, fair and beautiful. But my first attempts to ask her out had fallen on stony ground. She had confided in the friend that she wasn’t sure about going out with a man so much shorter than she, and with only one hand to boot.
Fortunately for me, the friend had batted on my team and had convinced Marina that a single date wasn’t going to be the end of the world so, reluctantly, she had agreed. I decided against an extravagant and expensive evening at the Opera and The Ivy, and had plumped for live jazz downstairs at Pizza on the Park.
‘I hate jazz,’ she had said as we arrived. Not a great start.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘You choose.’
She had opted for a quiet pizza and a bottle of wine upstairs. We had sat in increasingly warm companionship for three hours and a second bottle before she took a taxi home, alone.
I remembered walking back to Ebury Street that night, not disappointed that I was alone but elated that I hadn’t asked her to join me. I wasn’t sure why.
She telephoned me in the morning (at least I had given her my number) to thank me for dinner and we had chatted for an hour. Eventually she had asked if I would like to meet for lunch, ‘a lovely place’ she knew, ‘super food’, ‘wonderful ambiance’. Sure, I had said, why not.
She had arrived before me and was waiting on a bench outside the café in Regent’s Park. We had sampled the ‘super food’: I had chosen an over-cooked hamburger whilst she had selected a hot dog with congealed onions and a line of bright yellow mustard. But I had had to agree that the ambiance was wonderful. We had strolled through the park to the lake and had fed the last bit of our lunches to the ducks that had had the good sense to decline. By the time we had walked back to my car, we were holding han
ds and making plans for the evening.
It had been more than a month later that she had first come willingly and eagerly to my bed. We had both been slightly wary and fearful of the encounter. Not to disappoint, not to repel; worse, not to disgust.
Our fears were unfounded. We had slipped delightedly into each other’s arms between the sheets. Such a release of emotion. Such an understanding of love. Such joy. It had been an adventure, an expedition, a voyage of discovery and it had been hugely satisfying to both of us. We had drifted contentedly to sleep still entwined.
I had woken early as I always did, trained by a life of rising before dawn to ride. I had lain in the dark thinking not how I was to escape this encounter but how to make it permanent. Very scary.
And here we were, some eighteen months later. I loved her more and more each day, a situation that was wonderfully reciprocated. To love someone is a delight, to be loved back as well is a joy beyond measure.
I snuggled up to her back.
‘I love you,’ I whispered into her ear.
‘You’re only saying that because you want a bit of nookie,’ she replied.
‘No, I mean it.’
But we had a bit of nookie nevertheless.
CHAPTER 7
With Jonny Enstone’s reputation for promptness in mind, I arrived at the Peers’ Entrance at one o’clock exactly. ‘Peer’ is a strange title really for a member of the House of Lords since the dictionary definition of ‘peer’ is ‘a person of equal rank’ and the Peers with a capital P were clearly not. Even amongst themselves there were five levels with Duke at the top and Baron at the bottom.
The tones of Big Ben were still ringing in my ears as I stepped into the revolving door, a time-warp portal rotating me from the hustle and bustle of 21st-century London on the outside to the sedate world of 19th-century quiet and formality on the inside.