by Dick Francis
The betting levy provided more than half the country’s total race prize money, as well as contributing to the cost of the dope testing, the patrol cameras and the photo-finish systems. Plenty of the trainers hated all bookmakers with a passion, but they still bet with them, and they couldn’t seem to see that the future of racing, and consequently their own futures, relied totally on the public continuing to gamble on the horses.
“Larry,” I said, “did your Internet go down just before the last race on Tuesday?”
“I believe it did,” he said. “But it happens all the time. You know that.”
“Yes,” I said. “But did you know that all the mobile phones went off at the same time?”
“Did they indeed,” he said. “Anyone hit?”
“Not that I know of,” I replied.
“I’ll bet there was quite a queue at the pay phone on the High Street,” he said with a laugh. There was a public telephone just outside the racetrack, one of the few remaining now that everyone seemed to have a mobile.
“Yeah,” I said, joining in with his amusement, “I bet you’re right.”
Business was brisk in the run-up to the first race. As always when there was a really big crowd, many punters liked to place all their bets for the whole day before the first so that they didn’t have to relinquish their viewing spots between races. Acquiring seats in the Royal Enclosure viewing area on the fourth floor of the grandstand was as difficult as obtaining a straight answer from a politician. Once secured, they were not given up lightly.
Consequently, we were taking bets for all races, able to quote our odds thanks to the prices offered on the Internet gambling sites, where bets would have been made all morning. Again, it was the computer running the show, with us humans at its beck and call.
“What did that copper want yesterday afternoon?” Betsy asked me.
“Just a few more questions about getting mugged on Tuesday,” I replied matter-of-factly. Even though I had initially asked Betsy to take over for just a few minutes, I had actually left her and Luca for the whole of the last race. They had also had to pack up all our equipment on their own while I had spoken with Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn for well over an hour. But it was not often that a man discovers that his mother was murdered by his father.
I thought back to what the detective chief inspector had told me.
“Your mother was strangled,” he’d said. It had turned me icy cold on one of the hottest days of the year.
“But how do you know that my father was responsible?” I’d asked him.
“Well,” he’d said, “it seems it was suspected when he suddenly disappeared at the same time. According to the records, some people thought he must have killed himself as well, though no body was ever found, of course. But the DNA match has proved it.”
“How?” I asked, although I was dreading the answer.
“Your mother apparently scratched her attacker, and his skin was found under her fingernails. At the time of the murder, DNA testing wasn’t available but the evidence samples were kept. During a cold-case review about five years ago, a DNA profile of the killer was produced and added to the national DNA database. As we have now discovered, it matches your father exactly.” He had said it in a very deadpan manner, unaware of the torment such knowledge was creating in my head.
In less than a single twenty-four-hour period, I had first met my father and realized that I was not the orphan I thought I had been for the past thirty-seven years, watched helplessly while my newfound parent was fatally stabbed, and, finally, discovered that he had been nothing more than a callous murderer, the killer of my mother. It wasn’t my father’s life that was the soap opera, it was mine.
“Do they have any idea who did it?” asked Betsy, suddenly bringing me back from my daydreaming.
“Did what?” I asked.
“The mugging, stupid.”
“Oh,” I said. “No, I don’t think so. They didn’t say so anyway.”
“Probably some kids,” she said. She was little more than a kid herself. “Larking about.”
I didn’t think that murder was exactly larking about, but I decided not to say so. Family secrets were best kept that way—secret.
The afternoon seemed to slip by without me really noticing. Luca had to keep reminding me to pay attention to our customers.
“For God’s sake, Ned,” he shouted in my ear, “get the bloody things right.” He exchanged yet another inaccurate ticket. “What’s wrong with you today?”
“Nothing,” I replied. But I felt lousy, and my mind was elsewhere.
“Could have fooled me,” he said. “You never normally make mistakes.”
I did, but I was usually more expert at covering them up. “Sophie’s not good,” I said. It was the easy excuse. Luca knew all about Sophie’s condition. I may have wanted to keep it a secret, even from him, but that had been impossible over the years. Too often I had been forced to take days off work in order to be with her. Luca Mandini was a licensed bookmaker in his own right, and he’d often covered for me, first with a friend and, more recently, with Betsy, who could hardly conceal her excitement when she knew I would be away.
“Sorry,” Luca said. He never asked for details. He seemed almost embarrassed. “Bloody hell,” he suddenly shouted.
“What is it?” I asked, alarmed.
“Internet’s gone down again,” he said, stabbing his keyboard with his finger.
I looked at my watch. A little less than five minutes to go before the Gold Cup was due to start.
“How about the phones?” I asked him, turning around.
He was already pushing the buttons on his mobile.
“Nothing,” he said, looking up at me. “No signal. Same as before.”
I turned and looked around the betting ring at the other bookmakers, especially those to my right along the Royal Enclosure rail. Outwardly, there appeared to be no sense of alarm. Business was being carried on as usual. I could see a few of the boys from the big outfits pushing buttons on their phones with no success. One or two of them dashed away to seek other forms of communication with their head offices, and the man from the Press Association who was responsible for setting the starting prices had come down from his place in the stands to look at the bookies’ boards. No Internet connection also meant he didn’t get the necessary information directly to his computer screen.
“Two monkeys, six horse,” said a punter in front of me.
A “monkey” was betting slang for five hundred pounds, two monkeys was a thousand, or a grand. It was a fair-sized bet, and bigger than most, but, over the year, we took lots of bets of a thousand pounds or more, so it was not that unusual. However, I took a careful look at my customer. Was it a coincidence, I wondered, that our biggest bet of the day was laid just seconds after the Internet and the phones went off ?
There was nothing about the man that made me think that he was up to no good. He was a regular racegoer, with a white shirt open at the neck and fawn chinos. I didn’t recognize him as one of the regular boys from the big outfits, but I would know him again, I made sure of that.
I glanced up at our board as I relieved him of the bundle of fifty-pound notes he held out to me. Horse number six, Lifejacket, was quoted at four-to-one.
“Four thousand-to-one thousand on horse six,” I said over my shoulder. “OK with you, Luca?”
There was a pause while Luca consulted with his digital mate.
“We’ll take it at seven-to-two,” he said slowly.
“Seven-to-two,” I said to the man in the white shirt and chinos.
“OK,” he said. He didn’t seem to mind the change in odds.
“A grand at seven-to-two, horse number six,” I said.
Luca pushed the computer keys, and the ticket popped out of the printer. I gave it to the man, who moved on to Larry Porter and appeared to make another bet there.
“A grand on six at fours,” shouted Luca. He was laying the bet with Norman Joyner, another
bookmaker whose pitch was in the line behind us, and he was trying to do so at a better price than we had just offered to the man. But Norman was wise to his attempt.
“Hundred-to-thirty,” Norman called back. The price offered on horse number six was rapidly on its way down.
“OK,” said Luca. “I’ll take it.”
There was no money passed, no ticket issued. Norman Joyner was a regular on the Midlands tracks where we did most of our business, and while none of us may have actually been friends, one bookmaker’s word to another was still his bond.
“Internet still down?” I asked over my shoulder.
“Yup,” said Luca.
There was beginning to be a touch of panic in the ring. Technicians from the company that provided the Internet links were running around in circles, seemingly not knowing where to look for a solution. Frowns on the faces of those from the betting office chains reflected their concern that something was “afoot.”
“Fifty pounds on Brent Crude,” said a voice in front of me.
I looked down. “Hi, A.J.,” I said, noticing the fancy blue-and-yellow-striped vest he was wearing. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“Fifty on Brent Crude,” A.J. repeated.
“Fifty pounds to win number one,” I said over my shoulder, glancing at our prices board, “at fifteen-to-eight.” There was considerable surprise in the tone of my voice.
The ticket appeared and I passed it over.
“They’re off,” said the race commentator over the public-address system, announcing the start of the race.
“It’s back,” said Luca. “Now, is that a coincidence or what?”
“Phones too?” I asked.
“Yup.” He repeatedly pushed the buttons.
No coincidence, surely.
Lifejacket, horse number six, finished third in a close race with the second horse, both of them ten lengths behind the winner, number one, Brent Crude, the favorite, who was returned at the surprisingly long odds of fifteen-to-eight, or nearly two-to-one. Brent Crude had been the real class horse in the race, with every newspaper and TV pundit singing his praises. He had been expected to start at evens at best, and quite likely at odds-on.
“I reckon there’s been a bit of manipulating of the starting price going on here,” said Luca with a huge grin. “Serves them right.”
“Who?” said Betsy.
“The big-chain bastards,” I said to her.
Luca nodded laughing. “I think someone has been playing them at their own game.”
“What do you mean?” asked Betsy.
“Someone has managed to stop the big companies from contacting their staff on the racetrack to make bets with us.”
“So?” she said, clearly none the wiser.
“So someone has been placing largish bets on several horses,” I said, “to shorten their odds, which would, in turn, lengthen the price on the favorite.”
“I still don’t get it,” said Betsy.
“Suppose,” I said, “that really large bets were being placed in the betting shops on Brent Crude, all of them at the official starting price, then the shops wouldn’t have been able to contact their staff to get them to bet on him on the course and shorten his price.”
“It must have driven them bonkers in the shops to see the starting price lengthen,” said Luca, “just when they wanted it to shorten. All their big bets would have been at the starting price whether they were part of the scam or not.”
“Isn’t that illegal?” asked Betsy.
“Probably,” I said. “But the big companies are forever controlling the starting prices. I think they just got a taste of their own medicine.”
“It’s almost certainly illegal to interrupt communications,” said Luca. “But I think it’s brilliant.”
“But how can they do that?” asked Betsy.
“What?” I said.
“Disrupt all the phones.”
“I know it can be done,” Luca said. “I saw it on a television program. They used an electronic jammer. The police can do it too. I know that. When there was a bomb scare at Aintree one year, they shut down all the phone systems, left everyone completely stranded. Perhaps this was the same thing, but I doubt it. We would be evacuating the racetrack by now.”
“How did the prices change in the last few minutes before the off ?” I asked him.
He consulted his microprocessing friend.
“Lifejacket came right in from four-to-one to two-to-one,” he said. “Five other horses tightened as the race approached, but Brent Crude drifted all the way from even money to fifteen-to-eight. He was very nearly not even the favorite.”
“That’s a lot,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Luca, “but there was a whisper in the ring that he was sweating badly in the paddock. Colic was even mentioned.”
I knew, I’d heard the talk. “Was it true?” I said.
“Dunno,” he said, grinning again. “I doubt it.”
5
There was an unusual feeling of bonhomie amongst the bookies in the ring as we waited to see who had been taken to the cleaners. Except, that is, for the on-course teams from the big outfits, who had been as much in the dark as the rest of us and who would, no doubt, carry the blame for something over which they had had no control.
Rumors abounded, most of which were false, but by the end of the day there was pretty strong evidence that all the big boys had been hit to some extent. That was, if they ever paid out. Bookmakers in general, and the betting shop chains in particular, didn’t like losing and were quick to refuse to honor bets. They seemed to believe that fixing the starting prices was their right and privilege, and theirs alone.
From our own point of view, it hadn’t made a whole lot of difference. I had taken two large bets of a thousand pounds each, with quite a few smaller ones following as punters chased the big money. Three-quarters of that had been laid by Luca with other bookies as their prices had tumbled, and he had laid a little more on the Internet during the actual running of the race. Both the horses that had been heavily backed with us had lost, of course, whilst we had taken only a very few last-minute wagers on the favorite on which we’d had to pay out, including that fifty pounds to win from A.J. Most of the bets with us on Brent Crude had been taken earlier in the day when his price had been even money, not fifteen-to-eight. Unlike the betting shops, we always paid out at the price offered at the time of the bet and not on the starting price. A satisfactory result all around, I thought. And a bloody nose to the bullies to boot. Now, that was a real bonus.
Luca, Betsy and I were still in good spirits as we packed up for the day after the last. There had been no repeat of the earlier excitement, but the betting ring was still buzzing.
“A great day for the little man,” said Larry Porter.
“They’ll cry foul, you know,” said Norman Joyner from behind me.
“Probably,” Larry agreed. “But it’ll make them uncomfortable, and it’s fun while it lasts.”
“They might want to change the system,” I said.
“Not a chance,” Norman said. “The current system lets them do whatever they like with the odds. Except today, of course. They will probably now demand more security for their communications.”
“Give them carrier pigeons,” I said, laughing.
“Then the fixers will have shotguns to shoot them down,” said Larry. “Where there’s a will, they’ll find a way.”
In the First World War, British soldiers were mentioned in dispatches for shooting down the enemy’s carrier pigeons. Reliable communications had always been the key to success, one way or the other.
Luca and I hauled the trolley up the slope to the grandstand and then on through to the High Street outside. Betsy carried our master, the computer, in its black bag.
“No drinks at the bandstand bar tonight?” I said to them.
“No,” said Luca. “We’re going straight from here to a birthday party.”
“Not either of yours?” I said
in alarm, thinking I had missed it.
“No,” he said, smiling. “Betsy’s in March and mine was last week.”
So I had missed it. “Sorry,” I said.
“No problem,” he said. “Wouldn’t know when yours was either.”
No, I thought. It wasn’t something I advertised. Not for any good reason, but because my private life was just that—private.
“Millie, my kid sister, she’s twenty-one today,” said Betsy. “Big family party tonight.”
“I hope you have fun,” I said. “Wish Millie a happy twenty-first from me.”
“Thanks,” she said warmly. “I will.”
I thought about my own kid sisters in Australia and wondered if anyone had told them yet that their father was dead.
Luca, Betsy and I made it to the parking lot, on this occasion unmolested, and we loaded our gear into the capacious Volvo station wagon. Then they both started to move away.
“Don’t you need a lift?” I said to them.
“No thanks,” said Luca. “Not tonight. We’ll take the train from here to Richmond. That’s where the party is.”
“Look,” I said to him, “I fancy giving it a miss tomorrow. I could do with a day off. What do you think? You’re welcome to work with Betsy if you want.”
Even though I paid Luca and Betsy a salary as my assistants, they made easily as much again from sharing the profits, assuming there were some profits. Over the last couple of days we had far more than recouped our losses from Tuesday, and the days at Royal Ascot were some of our busiest of the year.
“What about the stuff ?” he said, nodding towards my car. “We planned to stay at Millie’s place tonight. In Wimbledon.”
Luca and Betsy lived somewhere between High Wycombe and Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. I had collected them that morning, as I had often done, from a rest area just off Junction 3 on the M40.
“Isn’t your car in the rest area?” I asked. I had sometimes transferred the gear into his car there.