by Dick Francis
My visitor hadn’t known about it, and in the darkness he wouldn’t have spotted the underused carpet. But I knew that the step always creaked as weight was applied and also creaked again as weight was removed.
I stood absolutely stock-still beside my wardrobe, listening. I was holding my breath, and I could begin to hear the blood rushing in my ears. There had definitely been only one creak. The intruder had stopped on the stairs in midclimb and was, no doubt, listening for any movement from me as hard as I was from him.
I had to breathe.
I decided to snort through my nose like a pig. I snored loudly, and then exhaled in a long rasping wheeze. I snored once more, and, quite clearly, I heard the third step creak again as my nocturnal visitor removed his weight from it. I assumed he was still on the way up, not going back down. I snored a third time, then grunted as if turning over in bed.
The wardrobe was behind my bedroom door.
I flattened myself against the wall and stared at the door handle, which was a brass lever with a small scroll on the end. My heart was thumping so hard in my chest that I was sure it must be audible out on the landing.
The handle began to depress, and my heart almost went into palpitations. Slowly the door opened towards me.
Attack had to be the best form of defense.
When the door was about halfway open, I threw myself against it with all the force I could muster, attempting to slam it shut again. But the door didn’t fully close because my visitor’s right arm was preventing it. I could clearly see his gloved hand and his wrist protruding into my bedroom. There was a gratifying groan from its owner each time I pushed against the door, repeatedly throwing my weight against the wood.
“You’ve broken my bloody arm!” he shouted.
Good, I thought. Pity I hadn’t torn it off completely.
“What do you want?” I shouted back through the door, still refusing to ease up the pressure to release his arm.
“Sod off,” he shouted back. “I’m going to kill you, you bastard.”
Not if I had any say in the matter, he wasn’t.
I put my right foot down on the floor to stop the door from opening, leaned back and then threw my whole weight against it once more.
This time, he didn’t just groan, he screamed.
So I repeated it. He screamed again.
“What do you want?” I shouted again.
“I want to break your fucking neck,” he said back to me through the door, sounding very close indeed.
I pressed again, the door squeezing against his damaged arm.
“And what exactly are you looking for?” I said.
“The microcoder,” he said
“What’s that?”
“It’s a microcoder,” he repeated unhelpfully.
“What does it look like?” I asked.
“A flat black box with buttons on it,” he said. “Give me the microcoder and I’ll go away.”
“I don’t think you’re in a position to make demands,” I said, pushing hard on the door. “What does this microcoder do?”
Instead of answering, he threw his weight against his side of the door to try to open it, but my foot was still preventing that. However, the wood bent sufficiently enough for him to extract his arm. The door slammed shut.
My advantage, it seemed, was over, but I still couldn’t hear him going down the stairs.
“What does the microcoder do?” I repeated, shouting through the door.
“Never you mind,” he said, still sounding very close. “Just give it back.”
“I haven’t got it,” I said.
“I think you have.”
“Is it yours?” I asked.
“Your father stole it,” he said. “And I want it back.”
“Was that why you murdered him?” I asked.
“I didn’t murder anyone,” he said. “But I could murder you, you bastard. I’m in agony here.”
“Serves you right,” I said. “You shouldn’t come snooping round other people’s houses uninvited.”
“It doesn’t give you the right to break my arm,” he whined.
“I think you’ll find it does,” I said. “Now, get out of my house and stay out.”
“Not without the microcoder,” he said.
“I told you, I haven’t got it.”
“Yes, you bloody have,” he said with a degree of certainty. “You must have it. Where else would it be?”
We didn’t seem to be making any progress.
I hooked my left foot around Sophie’s dressing-table chair and pulled it towards me. I then placed the back of the chair tight under the door handle. I should have done that at first, I thought. There was absolutely no way I was going to open my bedroom door while he remained in my house, so there was equally no chance I was going to hand over what he had called the microcoder.
Stalemate ensued for the next fifteen minutes or so.
I was wondering what he was up to when he suddenly banged on the door, making me jump.
“Are you still awake in there?” he asked.
“What do you think?” I replied.
“Yeah, well, sorry and all that,” he said quite casually. “I’ll be off now, then.” He said it as if he’d just been around for a drink or something and it was time to go home.
“Who are you?” I said.
“Never you mind,” he said again. “But I didn’t kill your father.”
I heard him go down the stairs, and the third step, my new friend, creaked twice as he descended. Then I heard the front door being opened. Then it was slammed shut.
I went across to my bedroom window and looked down. The man had indeed left my house, and I watched the top of his head as he walked across the car-parking area and onto the road. He appeared to be cradling his right arm in his left, and, at one point, he turned briefly to look up at me, as if intentionally showing me his face. I recognized him immediately. It wasn’t the man with the close-set eyes who had stabbed my father in the Ascot parking lot—it was the elusive fourth stranger from his inquest.
I stood looking out my bedroom window for some time in case he came back. I neither saw nor heard any car drive away, and I was still very wary as I finally removed the chair from under the door handle and peeped out onto the landing.
I didn’t yet know how he’d made it into my house in the first place. I didn’t really relish going downstairs only to find him there once more, having simply gone around the block and back in through one of the rear windows that faced the garden.
The house was quiet, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.
I stood at the top of the stairs straining to hear any sound from below, maybe a breath or a shuffle of feet. But there was nothing.
I crept silently down, avoiding step three, listening carefully and ready to run back up to my bedroom bolt-hole at the slightest noise. There was no one there. He really had gone away, and he’d not come back again. I turned on all the lights and went around the house to close the stable door now that the horse had bolted.
In truth, I’d made it far too easy for him. As well as the fanlight in my bedroom being open, so had the one in the living room, and he had simply put his arm through it, opened the big window beneath and climbed in. He’d left some muddy footprints on the fawn carpet under the window. No doubt, I should now call the police, and they could take photos of the prints and try to match them to a specific shoe size and manufacturer.
Instead, I used my handheld vacuum cleaner to clear up the mess.
The phone handset in the kitchen was off the hook. I picked it up and listened. Nothing. I replaced it on the cradle, then lifted it again and pressed REDIAL. The LED readout just showed 0. A female computer-generated voice stated that “The number you have called has not been recognized, please check and try again,” and that phrase was repeated about six times, and then it shut off completely, leaving the line dead.
Apart from the mud on the living-room floor, my nocturnal visitor, the fourth stra
nger, had been meticulously tidy in his search. The kitchen cabinets were all open but hardly disturbed, as were the sideboard cupboards in the dining room. He had been trying to be quiet.
However, far from answering any of the questions surrounding my father, my intruder had simply created new ones, and, in particular, was he working together with Shifty-eyes or did they represent different interests?
After all, he had only asked for the microcoder. There had been no mention of the considerable cache of money that had been hidden with it.
But if the fourth stranger knew where I lived, as he clearly did, then surely so could anyone else. I had, perhaps carelessly, freely given out my home address at the inquest, where the fourth stranger would have heard it. It now also would be in the official record. It wasn’t much of a leap to realize that the information could be obtained by any member of the public who really wanted it. Perhaps I should be on the lookout for another unwelcome nighttime guest, one with shifty eyes, in search of bundles of blue-plastic-wrapped cash.
11
On Wednesday I went to Stratford Races. Whoever thought that jump racing in June was a good idea hadn’t envisaged racing at Stratford after a prolonged drought, when the river Avon was so low that the racetrack watering system hadn’t been able to keep up with the evaporation from the sunbaked earth. The ground for weeks had been as hard as concrete, and very few trainers were willing to run their steeplechasers in such conditions.
The overnight declared runners for Stratford had been so few that it was hardly worth the journey, even though Stratford was the second-nearest course to my home, Warwick being a few miles closer.
Add the fact that Mother Nature had decided that, on this day, the six-week drought would break with numerous thunderstorms moving north from France, and one could understand why the midweek race-day crowd was not really worthy of the name.
Only four bookmakers had bothered to turn up to try to wring a few pounds out of the miserable, rain-soaked gathering. Even Norman Joyner, who almost always came to Stratford, hadn’t bothered. And most of the public who had come had the good sense to stay dry in the tote-betting hall under the grandstand, leaving us four bookies to huddle under our large umbrellas with the raindrops bouncing back off the tarmac. Royal Ascot in the sunshine, it was not.
The first race was a two-mile novice hurdle. According to the morning papers, there were five declared runners, but one of them had been withdrawn. The reason given by the horse’s trainer was that the rain had affected the going, but that was a joke. The ground was so dry, it would have needed rain akin to the Noachian Deluge to make any noticeable difference.
The four remaining runners appeared on the course and went down to the two-mile start while a few hardy punters made a dash across the ring towards us to place bets, before hurrying back to the shelter of the grandstand.
“It’s not much fun today,” said Luca in my ear.
“It was your idea,” I said, turning to him. “I’d have been happy staying in bed on a day like this.”
After my disturbed night, staying in bed had sounded like an excellent plan, but Luca had called me twice during the morning to see if I was coming to Stratford that afternoon.
“You don’t have to come,” he’d said in the second call. “Betsy and I can cope on our own, if you want. We had a good night at Newbury without you.”
I had begun to feel I was being eased out of my own business, and that made me even more determined to be here. But now, as another rivulet of rainwater cascaded off the umbrella and down my neck, I wasn’t at all sure that it had been the right decision.
“We must be mad,” shouted Larry Porter, again our neighboring bookie.
“Bonkers,” I agreed.
I thought it was funny how we use certain words. Here were Larry and I, in full control of our mental capacities, using terms like “mad” and “bonkers” to describe each other, while the likes of Sophie, and worse, institutionalized in mental health facilities, were never any longer referred to in such terms even in private. And the terms “lunatic asylum” and “loony bin” were now as archaic and taboo as “spastic” and “cripple.”
The betting business was so slow that Betsy had complained about the rain and taken herself off to the drier conditions of the bar, and I was beginning to wish I could join her.
“Whose stupid idea was it to come to Stratford?” I said to Luca.
“Would you have preferred Carlisle?” he said.
Kenilworth to Carlisle was more than two hundred miles, while the distance from my house to Stratford-upon-Avon racetrack was less than twenty.
“No,” I said.
“Well, shut up, then,” said Luca with a grin. “You’ve got a waterproof skin, so what are you worrying about? As least it’s not cold.”
“It’s hardly hot,” I replied.
“No pleasing some people,” he said to the world in general.
“Why don’t you just go home and leave Betsy and me to make you a living.”
“But Betsy’s gone off in a strop,” I said.
“She’s only in a strop because she wants to do your job and she can’t because you’re doing it,” he said.
He said it with a smile, but he meant it nevertheless.
It seemed I really was being eased out of my own business. But I suppose it was better than losing Luca and Betsy to a new outfit.
“You mean it, don’t you?” I said seriously.
“Absolutely,” he replied. “We need to be more ambitious, more proactive, more ruthless.”
I wasn’t sure whether the “we” included me or not.
“In what way do you want to be more ruthless?” I asked him.
“All that stuff at Ascot last week has shown me that the big boys are not invincible,” he said. “Someone gave them a bloody nose, and good luck to them. Bookmaking should be all about what happens here.” He spread his arms wide. “Well, not exactly here today, but you know what I mean. Bookmaking is about standing at a pitch on the course, not being stuck in some anonymous betting shop watching a computer screen.”
I was amazed. I thought it was the computer gambling that made Luca tick.
“But you love the Internet,” I said.
“Yes, I do,” he said. “But only as a tool for what happens here. The on-course bookies need to set the prices, and they should not be driven by the exchanges. By rights, it should be the other way round. We should be prepared to alter our prices for our advantage, not for those of anyone else.”
“You sound like you’re at war,” I said with a laugh.
“We are,” he said seriously. “And if we don’t fight, we’ll go under.”
I remembered back to the time when I had been assisting my grandfather for a couple of years or so. I’d had the same sort of discussion with him then. Bookmaking was an evolving science, and new blood, like Luca, needed to be ever pushing the boundaries. As he had said, without it, we’d go under.
As is so often the case with small fields, the four horses in the race finished in extended line astern, the favorite winning it at a canter by at least ten lengths. There was hardly a cheer from the measly crowd, and the winner returned to an almost deserted unsaddling enclosure.
As Luca had said, it wasn’t much fun.
A man in a suit came striding across from beneath the grandstand just as the rain began to fall in a torrent. He was holding an umbrella, but it didn’t appear to be keeping him very dry. Too much water was bouncing back from the ground. His feet must have been soaked by the time he stopped in front of me.
“What the bloody hell’s going on?” he demanded.
“What do you mean?” I asked him in all innocence.
“With the bloody prices?” he said loudly.
“What about the prices?” I asked him.
“How come that winner was returned at two-to-one when everyone knows it should have been odds-on?”
“Nothing to do with me,” I said, spreading my hands out wide.
&nbs
p; “Don’t get bloody clever with us,” the man said with menace, pointing his finger at me.
“And who is us, exactly?” I demanded, trying to disregard the implied threat.
He ignored me and went over to remonstrate with Larry Porter, who told him to go away and procreate, or words to that effect.
The man was far from pleased. “I’m warning you two,” he said, pointing at both Larry and me. “We won’t stand for that.”
Larry shouted at him again to go away, using some pretty colorful language that made even me wince.
“What was all that about?” I said to Luca.
“Just trying to rustle up a bit more business,” he said.
“How?” I asked.
“I thought we might tempt a few more punters over here if we offered a better price on the favorite,” he said, grinning at me. “That’s all.”
I stood there looking at him.
“You silly bugger. We don’t play games with these guys,” I said seriously. “Their bite is far worse than their bark.”
“Don’t be so boring,” he said.
“I mean it. They are powerful people, and they stamp on irritations.”
Was this what he meant by “being at war”?
The starting price was not set by a single bookmaker’s prices. It was a sort of average, but was actually the mode of the offered prices rather than a true average. A mode is that value that occurs most frequently in a sample.
At Ascot the previous week the number of bookmakers was very high, so a representative sample of, say, twelve bookmakers’ prices was used. The twelve were chosen not quite randomly, as they always included those bookies at the highest-traffic end of the betting ring. If, in the sample of twelve, five of the bookmakers had the price of a certain horse as the race started at, say, three-to-one, then its starting price would be three-to-one, even if four of them had the price at seven-to-two and the other three at four-to-one. Three-to-one was the mode because it was the price that occurred most frequently.
If there were two modes because, say in the above example, five bookies had the price at three-to-one, and five of them had it at seven-to-two, then the starting price was always taken as the higher of the two odds. So in that case it would have been seven-to-two.