by Dick Francis
They all nodded. They remembered.
‘And then,’ I said, ‘I found Peter Rammileese on my heels with two very large men who looked just the sort to kick people’s heads in and leave them blinded in Tunbridge Wells.’
No smiles.
‘I dodged them that time, and I spent the next week rolling around England in unpredictable directions so that no one could really have known where to find me, and during that time, when I was chiefly learning about Gleaner and heart valves and so on, I was also told that the two big men had been imported especially from Scotland for some particular job with Peter Rammileese’s syndicates. There was also some rumour of someone high up in the Security Service who would fix things for crooks, if properly paid.’
They were shocked again.
‘Who told you that, Sid?’ Sir Thomas asked.
‘Someone reliable,’ I said, thinking that maybe they wouldn’t think a suspended jockey like Jacksy as reliable as I did.
‘Go on.’
‘I wasn’t really making much progress with those syndicates, but Peter Rammileese apparently thought so, because he and his two men laid an ambush for Chico and me, the day before yesterday.’
Sir Thomas reflected. ‘I thought that was the day you were going to Newmarket with Lucas to see the Caspars. The day after you were here telling us about Trevor Deansgate.’
‘Yes, we did go to Newmarket. And I made the mistake of leaving my car in plain view near here all day. The two men were waiting beside it when we got back. And … er … Chico and I got abducted, and where we landed up was at Peter Rammileese’s place at Tunbridge Wells.’
Sir Thomas frowned. The others listened to the unemotional relating of what they must have realized had been a fairly violent occurrence with a calm understanding that such things could happen.
There had seldom been, I thought, a more silently attentive audience.
I said, ‘They gave Chico and me a pretty rough time, but we did get out of there, owing to Peter Rammileese’s little boy opening a door for us by chance, and we didn’t end up in Tunbridge Wells streets, we got to my father-in-law’s house near Oxford.’
They all looked at Charles, who nodded.
I took a deep breath. ‘At about that point,’ I said, ‘I … er … began to see things the other way round.’
‘How do you mean, Sid?’
‘Until then, I thought the two Scotsmen were supposed to be preventing us from finding what we were looking for, in those syndicates.’
They nodded. Of course.
‘But supposing it was exactly the reverse … Supposing I’d been pointed at those syndicates in order to be led to the ambush. Suppose the ambush itself was the whole aim of the exercise.’
Silence.
I had come to the hard bit, and needed the reserves I didn’t have, of staying power, of will. I was aware of Charles sitting steadfastly beside me, trying to give me his strength.
I could feel myself shaking. I kept my voice flat and cold, saying the things I didn’t like saying, that had to be said.
‘I was shown an enemy, who was Peter Rammileese. I was given a reason for being beaten up, which was the syndicates. I was fed the expectation of it, through the man Mason. I was being given a background to what was going to happen; a background I would accept.’
Total silence and blank, uncomprehending expressions.
I said, ‘If someone had savagely attacked me out of the blue, I wouldn’t have been satisfied until I had found out who and why. So I thought, supposing someone wanted to attack me, but it was imperative that I didn’t find out who or why. If I was given a false who, and a false why, I would believe in those, and not look any further.’
One or two very slight nods.
‘I did believe in that who and that why for a while,’ I said. ‘But the attack, when it came, seemed out of all proportion … and from something one of our attackers said I gathered it was not Peter Rammileese himself who was paying them, but someone else.’
Silence.
‘So, after we had reached the Admiral’s house, I began thinking, and I thought, if the attack itself was the point, and it was not Peter Rammileese who had arranged it, then who had? Once I saw it that way, there was only one possible who. The person who had laid the trail for me to follow.’
The faces began to go stiff.
I said, ‘It was Lucas himself who set us up.’
They broke up into loud, jumbled, collective protest, moving in their chairs with embarrassment, not meeting my eye, not wanting to look at someone who was so mistaken, so deluded, so pitiably ridiculous.
‘No, Sid, really,’ Sir Thomas said. ‘We’ve a great regard for you …’ The others looked as if the great regard was now definitely past tense, ‘… but you can’t say things like that.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said slowly, ‘I would much rather have stayed away and not said it. I won’t tell you any more, if you don’t want to hear it.’ I rubbed my fingers over my forehead from sheer lack of inner energy, and Charles half made, and then stopped himself making, a protective gesture of support.
Sir Thomas looked at Charles and then at me, and whatever he saw was enough to calm him from incredulity to puzzlement.
‘All right,’ he said soberly, ‘we’ll listen.’
The others all looked as if they didn’t want to, but if the Senior Steward was willing, it was enough.
I said, with deep weariness and no satisfaction, ‘To understand the why part, it’s necessary to look at what’s been happening during the past months. During the time Chico and I have been doing … what we have. As you yourself said, Sir Thomas, we’ve been successful. Lucky … tackling pretty easy problems … but mostly sorting them out To the extent that a few villains have tried to stop us dead as soon as we’ve appeared on the skyline.’
The disbelief still showed like snow in July, but at least they seemed to understand that too much success invited retaliation. The uncomfortable shiftings in the chairs grew gradually still.
‘We’ve been prepared for it, more or less,’ I said. ‘In some cases it’s even been useful, because it’s shown us we’re nearing the sensitive spot … But what we usually get is a couple of rent-a-thug bullies in or out of funny masks, giving us a warning bash or two and telling us to lay off. Which advice,’ I added wryly, ‘we have never taken.’
They had all begun looking at me again, even if sideways.
‘So then people begin to stop thinking of me as jockey, and gradually see that what Chico and I are doing isn’t really the joke it seemed at first And we get what you might call the Jockey Club Seal of Approval, and all of a sudden, to the really big crooks, we appear as a continuing, permanent menace.’
‘Do you have proof of that, Sid?’ Sir Thomas said.
Proof … Short of getting Trevor Deansgate in there to repeat his threat before witnesses, I had no proof. I said, ‘I’ve had threats … only threats, before this.’
A pause. No one said anything, so I went on.
‘I understand on good authority,’ I said, with faint amusement, ‘that there would be some reluctance to solve things by actually killing us, as people who had won money in the past on my winners would rise up in wrath and grass on the murderers.’
Some tentative half-smiles amid general dislike of such melodrama.
‘Anyway, such a murder would tend to bring in its trail precisely the investigation it was designed to prevent.’
They were happier with that.
‘So the next best thing is an ultimate deterrent. One that would so sicken Chico and me that we’d go and sell brushes instead. Something to stop us investigating anything else, ever again.’
It seemed all of a sudden as if they did understand what I was saying. The earlier, serious attention came right back. I thought it might be safe to mention Lucas again, and when I did there was none of the former vigorous reaction.
‘If you could just imagine for a moment that there is someone in the Security Se
rvice who can be bribed, and that it is the Director himself, would you, if you were Lucas, be entirely pleased to see an independent investigator making progress in what had been exclusively your territory? Would you, if you were such a man, be pleased to see Sid Halley right here in the Jockey Club being congratulated by the Senior Steward and being given carte blanche to operate wherever he liked throughout racing?’
They stared.
‘Would you, perhaps, be afraid that one of these days Sid Halley would stumble across something you couldn’t afford for him to find out? And might you not, at that point, decide to remove the danger of it once and for all? Like putting weedkiller on a nettle, before it stings you.’
Charles cleared his throat. ‘A pre-emptive strike,’ he said smoothly, ‘might appeal to a retired Commander.’
They remembered he had been an Admiral, and looked thoughtful.
‘Lucas is only a man,’ I said. The title of Director of Security sounds pretty grand, but the Security Service isn’t that big, is it? I mean, there are only about thirty people in it full time, aren’t there, over the whole country?’
They nodded.
‘I don’t suppose the pay is a fortune. One hears about bent policemen from time to time, who’ve taken bribes from crooks. Well … Lucas is constantly in contact with people who might say, for instance, how about a quiet thousand in readies, Commander, to smother my little bit of trouble?’
The faces were shocked.
‘It does happen, you know,’ I said mildly. ‘Backhanders are a flourishing industry. I agree that you wouldn’t want the head of racing security to be shutting his eyes to skulduggery, but it’s more a breach of trust than anything aggressively wicked.’
What he’d done to Chico and me was indeed aggressively wicked, but that wasn’t the point I wanted to make.
‘What I’m saying,’ I said, ‘is that in the wider context of the everyday immoral world, Lucas’s dishonesty is no great shakes.’
They looked doubtful, but that was better than negative shakes of the head. If they could be persuaded to think of Lucas as a smallish-scale sinner they would believe more easily that he’d done what he had.
‘If you start from the idea of a deterrent,’ I said. ‘You see everything from the other side.’ I stopped. The inner exhaustion didn’t. I’d like to sleep for a week, I thought.
‘Go on, Sid.’
‘Well …’ I sighed. ‘Lucas had to take the slight risk of pointing me at something he was involved in, because he needed a background he could control. He must have been badly shocked when Lord Friarly said he’d asked me to look into those syndicates, but if he had already toyed with the idea of getting rid of me, I’d guess he saw at that point how to do it.’
One or two of the heads nodded sharply in comprehension.
‘Lucas must have been sure that a little surface digging wouldn’t get me anywhere near him – which it didn’t – but he minimized the risk by specifically directing my attention to Eddy Keith. It was safe to set me investigating Eddy’s involvement with the shady side of the syndicates, because of course he wasn’t involved. I could look for ever, and find nothing.’ I paused. ‘I don’t think I was supposed to have much time to find out anything at all. I think that catching us took much longer than was intended in the original plan.’
Catching us … catching me. They’d have taken me alone, but both had been better for them … and far worse for me …
‘Took much longer? How do you mean?’ Sir Thomas said.
Concentrate, I thought. Get on with it.
‘From Lucas’s point of view, I was very slow,’ I said. ‘I was working on the Gleaner thing, and I didn’t do anything at all about the syndicates for a week after he asked me. Then directly I’d been told about Peter Rammileese and Mason, and could have been expected to go down to Tunbridge Wells, I went away somewhere else entirely, for another week; during which time Lucas rang Chico four times to ask him where I was.’
Silent attention, as before.
‘When I came back, I’d lost the notes, so I did them again in Lucas’s office, and I told him Chico and I would go down to Peter Rammileese’s place the following day, Saturday. I think it’s likely that if we had done so the … er … deterring … would have been done then, but in fact we went the same afternoon that I’d been talking to Lucas, on the Friday, and Peter Rammileese wasn’t there.’
Weren’t they all thirsty, I wondered? Where was the coffee? My mouth was dry and a good deal of me hurt.
‘It was on that Friday morning that I asked Lucas to write to Henry Thrace. I also asked him – entreated him, really – not to mention my name at all in connection with Gleaner, as it might get me killed.’
A lot of frowns awaited an explanation.
‘Well … Trevor Deansgate had warned me in those sort of terms to stop investigating those horses.’
Sir Thomas managed to raise his eyebrows and imply a frown at one and the same time.
‘Are those the threats you mentioned before?’ he said.
‘Yes, and he repeated them when you … er … introduced us, in your box at Chester.’
‘Good God.’
‘I wanted to get the investigation of Gleaner done by the Jockey Club so that Trevor Deansgate wouldn’t know it had anything to do with me.’
‘You did take those threats seriously,’ Sir Thomas said thoughtfully.
I swallowed. They were … seriously given.’
‘I see,’ said Sir Thomas, although he didn’t. ‘Go on.’
‘I didn’t actually tell Lucas about the threats themselves,’ I said. ‘I just begged him not to tie me in with Gleaner. And within days, he had told Henry Thrace that it was I, not the Jockey Club, who really wanted to know if Gleaner died. At the time I reckoned that he had just been careless or forgetful, but now I think he did it on purpose. Anything which might get me killed was to him a bonus, even if he didn’t see how it could do.’
They looked doubtful. Doubts were possible.
‘So then Peter Rammileese – or Lucas – traced me to my father-in-law’s house, and on the Monday Peter Rammileese and the two Scots followed me from there to a horse show, where they had a shot at abduction, which didn’t come off. After that I kept out of their way for eight more days, which must have frustrated them no end.’
The faces waited attentively.
‘During that time I learned that Peter Rammileese was manipulating not four, but nearer twenty syndicates, bribing trainers and jockeys wholesale. It was then also that I learned about the bribable top man in the Security Service who was turning a blind eye to the going on, and I regret to say I thought it must be Eddy Keith.’
‘I suppose,’ Sir Thomas said, ‘that that was understandable.’
‘So, anyway. on Tuesday Chico and I came here, and Lucas at last knew where I was. He asked to come to Newmarket with us on Wednesday, and he took us there in his own super four-litre air-conditioned highly expensive Mercedes, and although he’s usually so keen to get on with the next thing, he wasted hours doing nothing in Newmarket, during which time I now think he was in fact arranging and waiting for the ambush to be properly set up so that this time there should be no mistakes. Then he drove us to where the Scots were waiting for us, and we walked straight into it. The Scots did the special job they had been imported for which was deterring Chico and me. and I heard one of them tell Peter Rammileese that now that they had done what was ordered they were going north straight away, they’d been in the south too long.’
Sir Thomas was looking slightly strained.
‘Is that all, Sid?’
‘No. There’s the matter of Mason.’
Charles stirred beside me, uncrossing and recrossing his legs.
‘I asked my father-in-law to go to Tunbridge Wells yesterday, to ask about Mason.’
Charles said, in his most impressive drawl. ‘Sid asked me to see if Mason existed. I saw the police fellows in Tunbridge Wells. Very helpful, all of them. No one called
Mason, or anything else for that matter, has ever been found kicked near to death and blinded in their streets, ever.’
‘Lucas told me about Mason’s case in great detail.’ I said. ‘He was very convincing, and of course I believed him. But have any of you ever heard of anyone called Mason who was employed by the Security Service, that was so badly injured?’
They silently, bleakly, shook their heads. I didn’t tell them that I’d finally had doubts about Mason because there was no file for him in ‘Personnel’. Even in a good cause, our breaking and entering wouldn’t please them.
A certain amount of gloom had settled on their faces, but there were also questions they wanted to ask. Sir Thomas put their doubts into words.
‘There’s one obvious flaw in your reverse view of things, Sid, and that is that this deterrent … hasn’t deterred you.’
After a pause I said, ‘I don’t know that it hasn’t. Neither Chico nor I could go on, if it meant … if we thought … anything like that would happen again.’
‘Like exactly what, Sid?’
I didn’t reply. I could feel Charles glancing my way in his best noncommittal manner, and it was he, eventually, who got quietly to his feet, and walked across the room, and gave Sir Thomas the envelope which contained the pictures of Chico.
‘It was a chain,’ I said matter-of-factly.
They passed the photographs round in silence. I didn’t particularly look to see what they were thinking, I was just hoping they wouldn’t ask what I knew they would: and Sir Thomas said it baldly. ‘Was this done to you as well?’
I reluctantly nodded.
‘Will you take your shirt off, then, Sid?’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘What does it matter? I’m not laying any charges of assault or grievous bodily harm, or anything like that There’s going to be no police, no court case, nothing. I’ve been through all that once, as you know, and I’m not, absolutely not, doing it again. This time there’s to be no noise. All that’s necessary is to tell Lucas I know what’s been happening, and if you think it right, to get him to resign. There’s nothing to be gained by anything else. You don’t want any public scandal. It would be harmful to racing as a whole.’