Even Money

by Dick Francis

  “What was a dreadful thing?”

  “What he did to her,” she said.

  “What did he do to her?” I asked, pulling gently on her hand to keep her attention. She turned back slightly towards me.

  “He killed her,” she said slowly. “He murdered her.”

  “Tricia?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. She looked back up at my face. “He murdered Tricia.”

  “But why?” I asked. “Why did he murder Tricia?”

  “Because of the baby,” she said.

  “What about the baby?” I pressed her. “Why did he murder her because of the baby?” I wondered if he had killed her because the baby wasn’t his.

  My grandmother stared into my eyes. “He killed the baby too,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Whose baby was it?”

  “Tricia’s baby,” she said

  “But was Peter the father?”

  “Peter ran away,” she said.

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “Peter ran away because he killed Tricia. But was Peter the father of her baby?”

  That quizzical look appeared again in her eyes.

  “It wasn’t Peter,” she said slowly. “It was Teddy who murdered Tricia.”

  I sat there staring at her, thinking that she must be confused.

  “No,” I said. “Surely it was Peter who murdered Tricia? That’s why he ran away.”

  “It was Teddy who murdered Tricia.” She said it again quite clearly. There was no confusion.

  I sat there stunned. So it was not my father but my grandfather who was the murderer.

  “But why?” I asked pitifully.

  “Because of the baby,” she said equally clearly. “Your grandfather was the baby’s father.”

  Oh my God, I thought. My mother’s unborn female child, who would have been my little sister, would also have been my aunt.

  I stayed with my grandmother for another hour trying to piece together the whole sorry story. Trying to pull accurate details out of her fuzzy memory was like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube while blindfolded. Not only could I not see the puzzle, I didn’t know when, or if, I’d solved it.

  But now that she had started to give up the secret that had burned within her for so long, she did so with a clarity of mind that I didn’t realize she still possessed. I knew it was true that some patients with even advanced dementia could recall events of long ago in spite of the total loss of their more recent memory and also their inability to function properly day by day. So it was with my grandmother that morning, as the awful knowledge poured from her, almost in relief, of at last being able to share her hitherto private horror. I learned more in that one hour about my parents and my early life than I had managed to extract from her at any time in the previous thirty-seven years. And I didn’t like it.

  I discovered that the five of us had lived together in my grandparents’ house in Surrey, my mother having moved in there on the day of her marriage. It wasn’t something that I had thought about before, but, clearly, my grandmother hadn’t considered the arrangement at all unusual.

  However, if what Nanna told me was right, and if I correctly read between the lines of what she said, severe tensions had existed between my mother and father throughout their short marriage. There had also been considerable friction between my parents and my grandparents. It had obviously not been a happy family home.

  I found out that it hadn’t only been my mother and father who were staying in Paignton at the time of Tricia’s death. Both my grandparents had been with them, and I had been there as well. It seemed that the holiday in Devon had been my father’s idea, an attempt to make things better amongst them all, but it had actually made them much worse.

  “Peter and Tricia argued all the time,” my grandmother said, placing her head to one side and closing her eyes. “On and on, they went. They physically fought more than once. Peter slapped her, and she scratched his face.”

  Hence the traces of my father’s skin and DNA under Tricia’s fingernails, I thought. The DNA the police had found and wrongly believed was her killer’s.

  “Then she told him that her baby wasn’t his,” Nanna said. “She told him that it was your grandfather’s baby. He went completely wild.”

  “Peter went wild?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “But Teddy went wild as well, because she threatened to tell everyone and to get it in the newspapers. She said he would lose his bookmaker’s license.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was actually true, but it would have been enough to frighten my grandfather.

  “But was the baby Tricia was carrying really Grandpa’s child?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she said, opening her eyes and looking at me again, “I believe it was.”

  “But are you certain?” I pressed her.

  “Yes,” she said. “I had suspected it even before she said anything. I’d been telling Teddy over and over for months that we would be better off without her round, but he wouldn’t have it. He thought he was in love with her. Then the morning after Tricia tells us that he’s the father of the baby, he walks into the hotel where we were staying and tells me it’s finished between them. Then he calmly tells me that he’s strangled the little bitch.”

  I stared at her almost in disbelief.

  “But why did my father run away if he hadn’t killed her?”

  “Because I told him to,” she said quite matter-of-factly, as if it was the most common of things to do.

  “But why?” I asked her.

  “So that Teddy wouldn’t get arrested for murder.”

  “But why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “Because then we would have been ruined,” she said, as if it was obvious. “What would I have lived on with your grandfather in jail?”

  The faithful, practical, scheming wife, I thought. She had not only seen no need to go to the police and repeat what her husband had said about strangling his daughter-in-law, she had even sent away her only son in the full knowledge that he would be blamed for the killing, simply to protect her income.

  Perhaps strangling the “little bitch” had been her idea too. Was that what she had meant Teddy to do by continually saying they would be better off without her around? Had my grandfather finally got the message?

  And my father had gone to the other side of the world, banished forever by his domineering mother in order to save her tyrannical husband from justice. No wonder he hadn’t asked after her when he had spoken to me at Ascot.

  “How about me?” I said with passion. “Why didn’t my father take me with him?”

  “He wanted to,” she said. “But I told him he couldn’t. I said that I would look after the child. He tried to say that he would come back for you, but I told him to go and start somewhere else and forget that you ever existed. It was for the best.”

  “Not for me,” I said with barely contained fury.

  “Oh yes. It was the best for all of us.” She said it with unshakable conviction. “And I decided that it was also the best for me.”

  It was like a knife to my heart. How could this woman have sent my father out of my life like that? He had done nothing to deserve it. And how could she have then kept silent about it for so long? Just because she thought it was the best for her.

  I had sat in the chapel of Slough Crematorium only the previous afternoon with my head bursting with anger. Now I felt totally bereft. I had been cheated of my right to grieve properly for my father, and I further believed that I had been cheated out of my rightful life.

  I stood up. I didn’t want to hear any more. I looked down at her, this frail demented eighty-year-old woman whose decisions had destroyed so much.

  She, and my grandfather, had together raised me from babyhood into adult life in a stable home, even if it had not been a particularly happy one for me. I had loved them, trusted them and believed what they had told me as being the truth, only for it now to emerge as a tangled web of lies and deception.

  I
walked to the door without turning back and I went away.

  I would never visit her again.

  21

  I went straight from the nursing home to Leicester racetrack, but, afterwards, I couldn’t recall a single moment of the journey. My mind had been too preoccupied trying to come to terms with what I’d been told.

  As I had so hoped, I was, after all, not the son of a murderer. But I was the grandson of one. I had stood alongside my grandfather on racetracks for all those years as his assistant, unaware of the dreadful secret he and my grandmother had concealed. Far from being the ones who had stepped in and cared for me in my time of need, they had been the very architects of my misery.

  Automatically, as if on autopilot, I parked the Volvo and began to unload the equipment. I pulled out our odds board with TRUST TEDDY TALBOT emblazoned across the top. I stopped unloading and looked at it. I would have laughed if I didn’t feel so much like crying. Trust Teddy Talbot to ruin your life.

  Luca and Duggie were waiting for me as I pulled the equipment trolley into the betting ring.

  “How did you get on yesterday?” I asked. “With the delinquents?”

  “Great,” said Luca. “We’re all set.”

  “Do you think they will do it right?” I asked.

  “Should do,” said Duggie. “And they’re not all delinquents.”

  I smiled at him. I suppose I was pleased that he was standing up for his friends.

  “And besides,” he said, “I told them you were a mean bastard and would come looking for them in the night if they spent your money on drugs.”

  I stared at him, and he simply smiled back at me. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.

  “Good,” I said finally.“Let’s hope the horses are not all withdrawn at the overnight declarations stage.”

  “How about you?” Luca asked as we set up our pitch. “Did you have a good day?”

  “No,” I said without clarification.

  “Not Sophie?” he asked with concern.

  “No,” I said. “Sophie’s doing well. I was just dealing with some other family business. Don’t worry about it.”

  He looked at me with questioning eyes, but I ignored him.

  “I’ve decided that we are going to change our name,” I announced. “From today, we shall be known as ‘Talbot and Mandini.’”

  I smiled at Luca, and he smiled back.

  “But we haven’t done the partnership papers yet,” he said.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “If you’re still up for it, then so am I.”

  “Sure,” he said with real pleasure showing on his face.

  “How about ‘Talbot, Mandini and Masters’?” said Duggie, joining in the fun.

  “Don’t push your luck, young Douglas,” I said. “You’re still on probation, remember?”

  “Only until Monday,” he said with a pained expression.

  “That will be up to me,” I said. “And Luca,” I added quickly, remembering my new position as partner rather than sole owner.

  “Can we just change our name without telling anyone?” Luca asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll find out. But the name Teddy Talbot is coming off our sign as of today.”

  I hadn’t realized the forcefulness with which I had spoken until I noticed Luca standing there stock-still just looking at me.

  “My,” he said, “that must have been some mighty emotive family business you were dealing with yesterday.”

  I glared at him. I was not in the mood for explanations, so the three of us continued to set up in silence.

  “I’d never been to the races before last Wednesday,” said Duggie when we had finished. “It’s wicked.”

  “I’m glad you enjoy it,” I said, assuming that was what he meant.

  “It all seems smaller than on the telly,” he said. “You know, the horses seem smaller and everything’s so much closer together.”

  “But you’ve only been to the smaller meetings,” Luca said. “It’s not like this at Ascot or Cheltenham.”

  “But the horses can’t be any bigger,” Duggie said.

  “No,” I said. “But there are lots and lots more people.”

  “When do we go there, then?” he said eagerly.

  “Soon,” I said. “But concentrate on today first.”

  Leicester was a long, thin, undulating track with the public enclosures squeezed together at one end. As with many racetracks, the space in the center doubled as a golf course. I had occasionally played a round of golf, and these holes would have suited me well, I thought, as there were no large trees to get stuck behind. Large trees would have spoiled the view of the racing.

  The betting ring was in front of the glass-fronted grandstand, and there were several other bookies also setting up before the first race.

  “Where’s Larry?” I asked Luca, noting his absence from the neighboring pitch.

  “Nottingham,” he said.

  “But he is all set for Monday?”

  “Sure is,” said Luca with a grin. “Norman Joyner’s coming too.”

  “Good,” I said. “Do they know?”

  “They think it’s the same as last time, at Ascot,” he said.

  “Good,” I said. “It will be as far as they are concerned.”

  The Saturday crowd was beginning to build, with cars queuing for the popular parking-and-picnic enclosure alongside the running rail. Even the weather had cooperated, with blue skies and only the occasional puffy white cloud. A glorious English-summer day at the races. What could be better than this?

  I suppose six losing short-priced favorites would be good.

  Just as I was starting to relax from my earlier anxiety and was actually beginning to enjoy the day, my two nonfriends from Kempton and Towcester turned up and stood in front of me. Once more, they were wearing their uniforms, short-sleeved white shirts and black trousers, plus the work boots. I was on my platform at the time, which gave me a height advantage for a change. It also gave me some courage.

  “I thought I told you boys to bugger off,” I said down to them.

  “Our boss wants to talk to you,” said the spokesman of the two.

  “Well, I don’t want to talk to him,” I said. “So go away.”

  I felt reasonably confident that they wouldn’t start a physical assault just here, not with hundreds of witnesses about.

  “He wants to make you an offer,” said the spokesman.

  “Which part of ‘go away’ didn’t you understand?” I said to him.

  They didn’t move an inch but stood full square in front of me. It wasn’t very good for my business.

  “He wants to buy you out.” It was like a stuck record.

  “Tell him to come and see me himself if he wants to talk,” I said, “rather than sending a pair of his goons.”

  Thoughts of poking hornet’s nests with sticks floated into my head. And I’d been the one to warn Larry against doing it.

  “You are to come with us,” the man said.

  “You must be joking,” I said, almost with a laugh. “I’m not going anywhere with you two. Now, move out of the bloody way. I’ve got a bookmaking business to run.”

  They didn’t move.

  Luca and Duggie came on the platform and stood on either side of me, and a staring match ensued, us three against them two. It was like a prelude to a gunfight at the O.K. Corral. But who was going to go for their guns first?

  “Sod off,” said Duggie suddenly, breaking the silence.“Why don’t you two arseholes go and play with your balls somewhere else?”

  They both turned their full attention to him, this young slip of a lad who I still thought looked only about fourteen years old.

  The talkative arsehole opened his mouth as if to say something.

  “Save it,” said Duggie, beating him to the draw. “Now, piss off.”

  There was something about the boy’s assured confidence in the face of physical threat that had even me a little scared. The two men in fro
nt of me definitely wavered.

  “We’ll be back,” the talkative one said.

  But Duggie wasn’t finished with them. “The man here told you he wasn’t coming with you to see your boss, so go away now and stay away.” He sounded so reasonable. “Go on, scram, and you can tell your boss it’s no deal.”

  The men looked at him like two big sheep under the gaze of a tiny Border collie puppy, and then, slowly, they moved to the side and walked away.

  Both Luca and I watched them go out of sight around the grandstand, and then we turned to Duggie in astonishment. He was smiling.

  “All brawn and no brain,” he said. “Guys like them need orders to follow. Can’t think for themselves.”

  If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.

  “My God, Duggie,” I said, “you were brilliant. Where on earth did you learn to do that?”

  “The streets of High Wycombe are not so friendly as some people would like to think,” he said. “Friday and Saturday nights can be rough, I can tell you, bloody rough.”

  “I think he just completed his probation,” Luca said.

  “Damn right, he did,” I said. “Welcome to the firm.”

  Duggie beamed. “Just so long as you don’t sell out to those guys.”

  “No chance.” Luca and I said it together.

  The rest of the day was tame by comparison to what had gone before. The six favorites didn’t all lose, but, nevertheless, our afternoon was both profitable and enjoyable, with Duggie warming to his newfound permanent status.

  He was a natural showman, with a quick wit, and as his confidence grew he became a great success with the punters. He hardly stopped talking and bantering with them all afternoon. There was no doubt in my mind that we did far more business because of it. Some of our neighboring bookies weren’t too pleased, however, especially when Duggie would shout across to their potential customers that they could get a better deal from us, even if they couldn’t.

  But our neighbors were not our friends, they were our competition. In a way, I was quite pleased that Larry Porter had been at Nottingham. I didn’t want to antagonize him before Monday. I needed his unwitting cooperation.