by Dick Francis
“What?” he said, busy with his keyboard.
“Yesterday. For the last,” I said. “Was it just us or everyone?”
“Oh,” he said. “It seems the whole system was down for nearly five minutes. And you know what else was funny?”
“What?” I asked.
“The phones were off too.”
“Which phones?” I asked.
“Mobiles,” he said. “All of them. Every network. Nothing.”
“But that’s impossible,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “But it happened. Everyone I spoke to said their phones wouldn’t work for about five minutes. No signal, they said. The boys from the big outfits were going nuts.”
By “the big outfits,” Luca meant the four or five large companies that ran strings of betting shops across the country. Each company had a man or two at the races who would bet for them with the on-course bookmakers to affect the starting prices.
The odds offered by the racetrack bookmakers often change before the race starts. If a horse is heavily backed, they will shorten its odds and offer better prices on the other horses to compensate. The official “Starting Price” was an approximate average of the prices offered on the bookmakers’ boards on the racetrack just as the race starts.
Big winning bets in High Street betting shops are nearly always paid on the official starting price, so, if someone loads money on a horse in their local betting shop, the company arranges for money to be bet on that horse with the racetrack bookmakers so that the odds on their boards drop and consequently the official starting price will be shorter.
For example, if a betting shop has taken a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of bets on a horse priced at ten-to-one, they stand to lose a million pounds if it wins. So the company will simply have its staff at the racetrack bet cash on that horse with the bookmakers, who will then shorten its odds. If the starting price drops to, say, five-to-one and it wins, the betting shop will only have to pay out half what it would otherwise have done.
If both the Internet and the telephones were not working for the five minutes before the race, then the betting shop companies would have had no way of getting the message to their staff to make the bets and change the starting prices.
“Any word on anyone being caught out?” I asked Luca.
“No, nothing,” he said. “Quiet as a whisper.”
A customer thrust a twenty-pound note at me, and I gratefully relieved him of it in exchange for a slip from the printer.
“Either someone doesn’t want to admit it,” I said, “or it was just a simple, accidental glitch in the systems.”
Word usually went around pretty quickly if a big company believed they had been “done.” They typically moaned about it ad nauseam and refused to pay out. Gambling wins, as well as losses, were notoriously difficult to pursue through the courts. The big boys believed that it was their God-given right to control the starting prices, and if someone managed to get one over on them, it was unfair. Most others believed that what was really unfair was how the major bookmaking chains could change the on-course prices so easily, often with only a very few of the many thousands of pounds that were bet across the counters in their High Street shops.
I shrugged my shoulders and took a bet off another customer. Luca pushed the keys on his computer, and out popped the ticket from the printer.
“At least our computer and printer didn’t go off as well,” I said to him over my shoulder.
“Well, they wouldn’t,” he said confidently. “Unless the battery went flat.”
Our system, like every other bookmaker’s, was powered by a twelve-volt car battery hidden away under the platforms we stood on. The batteries were provided freshly charged each day by the racetrack’s technology company, which also provided the Internet access—for a fee, of course. The same battery also powered the red-light-emitting diodes that showed the horses’ names and prices on our board. If the battery went flat, we would soon know about it. Our lights would go out first.
The lights stayed on, and we recouped most of our losses from the previous day as favorites were beaten in each of the first five races. I was beginning even to enjoy the day when Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn pitched up in front of me with DC Walton in tow.
“Making a bet, Chief Inspector?” I asked with a smile, looking down at him from my lofty position.
He didn’t appear amused. “We need to talk,” he said. “Now.”
“Can’t it wait?” I said. “I’m busy.”
“No,” he said crossly. “I need to ask you some more questions, now.” He emphasized the final word so sharply that Betsy looked questioningly at me.
I smiled at her. “Can you hold the fort for five minutes?”
“Sure, no problem,” she said.
I stepped down and moved away with the policemen to a quieter spot on the grass.
“Now, what’s so bloody urgent?” I said, deciding not to go on the defensive. “I’ve got a business to manage.”
“And I’ve got a murder investigation to run,” he replied unapologetically. “May I remind you, Mr. Talbot, that you remain under caution and that anything you say will be recorded.”
“Where’s your machine, then?” I asked.
“DC Walton will write down what is said.”
DC Walton was already writing.
“If you prefer,” he said, knowing I wouldn’t,“you can accompany us to the police station and be formally interviewed there.”
“Here is fine,” I said.
“I thought so,” he said almost smugly. “Now, Mr. Talbot, have you anything to add to your account of the incident in the parking lot last evening that resulted in the death of a man?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t.”
“And you still believe that the man killed was your father?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “I do.”
“It seems you may be right,” he said slowly. “The DNA analysis appears to suggest that you and the deceased were closely related. It’s by no means a hundred percent certain, but it would be more than enough to settle a paternity case.”
So at least my father had been truthful about that.
“However,” he said,“the DNA results have thrown up something else.” He paused for effect. “Your father was still wanted for murder, from thirty-six years ago.”
“What?” I said, unable to properly take it in. “Are you sure?”
“Completely sure,” he said. “The DNA match is one hundred percent.”
“But who did he murder?” I asked, almost as if in a trance.
“Patricia Jane Talbot. His wife.”
My mother.
4
Sophie was still cross when I went to see her, but at least she was speaking to me, albeit with thinly disguised anger.
It was after eight by the time I made it to the hospital near Hemel Hempstead.
“I thought you weren’t coming again,” she said with a degree of accusation.
“I said I would come,” I said, smiling at her and trying to lighten the atmosphere. “And here I am, my darling.”
“What have you done to your eye?” she demanded.
“Silly, really,” I said. “I caught it on the corner of the kitchen cupboard, you know, the one by the fridge.” We had both done it before, often, though neither of us had actually cut ourselves in the process.
“Were you drunk?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “I was not. I was making tea. To be precise, I was getting the milk out.”
I leaned down to give her a kiss, and she made a point of smelling my breath. Finding no trace of the demon drink, she relaxed somewhat and even smiled at me.
“You should be more careful,” she said.
“I’ll try,” I replied, smiling back at her.
“Have you had a good day?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Particularly good. All six favorites lost, and we recouped the entire amount of yesterday’s losses and
then some.” I decided against mentioning anything about my visit from a detective chief inspector of police or the discovery that my father had murdered my mother.
“Good,” she said, sounding genuinely pleased.
We sat together in armchairs in front of the television in what might have been a normal domestic situation if not for the multiadjustable hospital bed in the corner of the room and the white-smock-uniformed male nurse who brought us in a tray of coffee, together with Sophie’s medication.
“Good evening, Mr. Talbot,” the nurse said to me. “Glad you could make it tonight.” He smiled. “Your wife was so disappointed yesterday, as were we all.”
He gave the impression that I was being officially told off, which I probably was. Sophie’s treatment relied heavily on having a steady routine with no surprises.
“Good evening, Jason,” I said to the nurse, smiling back and resisting the temptation to make excuses. Now was neither the time nor the place.
“My, what have you done to yourself ?” he said, looking at my face.
“Head-butted our kitchen cabinet,” I said.
Jason raised his eyebrows in a questioning Oh yes, pull the other one fashion.
“We do it all the time,” said Sophie, coming to my aid. “We ought to get that cupboard moved.”
Jason relaxed and seemed satisfied that my black eye was accidental.
“The guest suite is available if you want to stay,” he said with a smile, his admonishment for yesterday’s absence clearly over.
“Thank you,” I said, “but I can’t. I need to go home and change.” I also decided against explaining that I had worn exactly the same clothes for two days running and why. “But I can stay for a while longer.”
Sophie and I watched the television news together before I departed into the night and the road to Kenilworth, and home.
Our house was a 1950s-built, three-bedroom semidetached in what was still called Station Road, although the railway station to which it referred had closed down in the 1960s. The previous owners had transformed the postage-stamp-sized front garden into an off-road parking space, and I gratefully pulled my Volvo into it at ten minutes to midnight.
As usual, the house was cold and lonely. Even on a midsummer’s day it rarely could be described as warm or cozy. It was as if, somehow, the very bricks and mortar were aware of the daily sadness and despair experienced by the occupants within.
Sophie and I had moved here from a rented one-bedroom over-shop flat soon after our wedding. Her parents hadn’t approved of the union. They were God-fearing Methodists who believed that bookmakers were agents of the Devil. So it felt as if we were both orphans, but we didn’t care. We were in love and we only needed each other.
The house in Station Road was the first home we had owned and we knew it would be a struggle. The mortgage company loan had been to their utmost limit, and, at first, Sophie had worked in the evenings behind the bar at the local pub in order to help meet the repayments. I had toiled six days a week on the Midlands racetracks, and, quite quickly, we were able to pay down the mortgage to a more manageable level where we could spend more time together at home.
I had always wanted children, and I soon made mental plans to turn the smallest bedroom into a nursery. Perhaps it was the pain of having endured a largely abandoned and unhappy childhood that had made me so keen to nurture the next generation. Not that my grandparents hadn’t been loving and caring. They had. But they had also been somewhat distant and secretive. Now I knew why.
“How could God have taken Mummy and Daddy to heaven?” I had constantly asked my grandmother, who, of course, had no answer to give me. Now I discovered that it had been my father, not God, who had been responsible for my mother’s death, and he, far from going to heaven, had gone to Australia. The car crash story had been as convenient as it was untrue.
In spite of her longing for a child, Sophie’s illness had soon put our family plans on hold.
All had seemed fine until, one night, I woke to find her side of our bed empty. It was half past three in the morning, and I could hear her somewhere downstairs, singing loudly, so I went to investigate.
She was in the kitchen and had clearly been there for quite a while. Every shelf and cupboard had been emptied, their contents stacked both on the kitchen table and on the floor, and she had been cleaning.
She had seen me come into the room but had carried on singing even louder than before. She simply couldn’t stop. And so it had gone on all night and into the following day. I couldn’t reason with her. Eventually, in desperation and fear, I had called the doctor.
This manic state had lasted for nearly a week, with her spending much of the time in bed asleep and heavily sedated. When awake, she had hardly stopped talking or singing, and she was greatly irritated when interrupted.
And then, almost as quickly, she had dived into a deep depression, refusing to eat and blaming herself for all the ills of the world. It was irrational and obsessive behavior, but she believed it absolutely. Sedatives were exchanged for antidepressants, and for a while we didn’t seem to know whether she was going up or down.
Mental illness can be very frightening, and I was utterly terrified. Physical disease usually manifests itself with visible symptoms—a rash, a fever or a swelling. And there is nearly always some pain or discomfort to which the patient can point and describe.
However, a sickness of the mind, and its function, has no such easy-to-understand physical indicators. Sufferers appear just as they did before the disorder hit, and often, as in Sophie’s case, have no comprehension that they are ill. To them, their behavior appears quite normal and logical. It is everyone else who’s mad for even suggesting they need psychiatric help in the first place.
The plans for a family that I had initially placed on hold had, by now, been well and truly switched off. The little bedroom, which had long ago become my office and storeroom, would, it seemed, never contain a cot and teddy bears, at least not while Sophie and I owned the house.
It was not just that Sophie was too often ill to look after a child, it was also the risk that a pregnancy would cause an upset to her hormones that could tip her over entirely into a void from which she would never recover. Postnatal depression can severely debilitate even the sanest of mothers, so what might it do to Sophie? And even though a professor of psychiatry had told us it wasn’t likely, there was some evidence to suggest that manic depression could be a hereditary condition. I was wary of creating a manic-depressive child. For ten years I had witnessed the destruction from within of a bubbly, lively and fun-loving young woman. I didn’t relish the thought of the same thing happening to my children.
I supposed I still loved Sophie, although after five months of medically enforced separation I was sometimes unsure. It was true that, during those months, there had occasionally been some good moments, but they had been rare, and mostly we existed in limbo, our lives on pause, waiting for someone to push the PLAY button if things improved.
We had definitely been dealt a bum hand in life. Sophie’s parents, typically and loudly, had blamed me for their daughter’s illness, while I silently blamed them back for rejecting her over her choice of husband. The doctors wouldn’t say for sure if that had been a factor in her illness, but it certainly hadn’t helped.
Alice, Sophie’s younger sister, constantly said I was a saint to stick by her all these years. But what else could I do? It wasn’t her fault she was ill. What sort of husband would desert his wife in her time of need? “In sickness and in health,” we had vowed, “until death us do part.” Perhaps, I thought, death would indeed be the only way out of this nightmare.
I shook myself out of these morbid thoughts, let myself into the house and went straight to bed.
Thursday at Royal Ascot is Gold Cup Day. It is also known as “Ladies Day,” when the female of the species preens herself in her best couture under an extravagant hat she wouldn’t be seen dead in at any other time or place.
This partic
ular Thursday the sun had decided to play the game, and it was shining brightly out of a clear blue sky. The champagne flowed and seafood lunches were being consumed by the trawlerload. All was set for a spectacular day of racing. Even I, a cynical bookie, was looking forward to it all with hope and expectation for another bunch of long-priced winners.
“Didn’t walk into another door, then?” asked Larry Porter as he set up his pitch next to ours.
“No,” I replied. “No doors in the parking lot last night.”
He grinned at me. “And all that cash yesterday.” He rubbed his hands. “Fancy trying to rob you on Tuesday when you’re broke, then let you off yesterday with bulging pockets. Bloody mad.”
“Yes,” I said quietly, wondering once again if it really had been an attempted robbery in the first place.
“Let’s hope we have bulging pockets again today,” Larry said, still smiling.
“Yes,” I said again, my mind still elsewhere.
Larry Porter and I could not be properly described as friends. In truth, I didn’t have any friends amongst my fellow bookmakers. We were competitors. Many punters believed that there was an ongoing war between them and the bookies, but, in fact, the really nasty war was between the bookmakers themselves. Not only did we fight for the custom of the general public, we fought hardest and dirtiest amongst ourselves, betting and laying horses, doing our utmost to get one over on our neighbors. There was very little love lost between us and, whereas Larry had been genuinely concerned that I had been mugged in the parking lot, it was more because he saw a danger to himself than out of compassion for any injury or loss that I had sustained.
Many in the racing industry, both privately and publicly, called all bookmakers “the enemy.” They accused us of taking money out of racing. But we were only making a living, just like them. They too bought their fancy cars and enjoyed their foreign holidays, and what was that if it wasn’t “taking money out of racing”? The big firms, although no friends of mine, spent millions of their profits on race sponsorship, and we all paid extra tax on gambling profits on top of the “levy,” a sum that was also taken from bookmakers’ profits and put back into racing via the Horserace Betting Levy Board.