by Dick Francis
I was just giving Joe up when he came out of the gate and hailed me with no apology for his lateness. But I was not the only person to notice his arrival.
The tall dark Mr Tudor strode towards us.
‘Nantwich, be so good as to give me a lift into Brighton, will you?’ he said, authoritatively. ‘As you can see, the taxis are out of action, and I have an important appointment in Brighton in twenty minutes.’
Joe looked at the taxi-drivers with vague eyes.
‘What’s happened?’ he said.
‘Never mind that now,’ said Tudor impatiently. ‘Where is your car?’
Joe looked at him blankly. His brain seemed to be working at half speed. He said, ‘Oh—er—it isn’t here, sir. I’ve got a lift.’
‘With you?’ said Tudor to me. I nodded. Joe, typically, had not introduced us.
‘I’ll be obliged if you will take me into Brighton,’ said Tudor, briskly. ‘I’ll pay you the regular taxi fare.’
He was forceful and in a hurry. It would have been difficult to refuse to do him a favour so small to me, so clearly important for him.
‘I’ll take you for nothing,’ I said, ‘but you’ll find it a bit of a squeeze. I have a two-seater sports car.’
‘If it’s too small for all of us, Nantwich can stay here and you can come back for him,’ said Tudor in a firm voice. Joe showed no surprise, but I thought that the dark Mr Tudor was too practised at consulting no one’s convenience but his own.
We skirted the groups of battered taxi-drivers, and threaded our way to my car. Tudor got in. He was so large that it was hopeless to try to wedge Joe in as well.
‘I’ll come back for you, Joe,’ I said, stifling my irritation. ‘Wait for me up on the main road.’
I climbed into the car, nosed slowly out of the car park, up the racecourse road, and turned out towards Brighton. There was too much traffic for the Lotus to show off the power of the purring Climax engine, and going along at a steady forty gave me time to concentrate on my puzzling passenger.
Glancing down as I changed gear, I saw his hand resting on his knee, the fingers spread and tense. And suddenly I knew where I had seen him before. It was his hand, darkly tanned, with the faint blueish tint under the finger-nails, that I knew.
He had been standing in the bar at Sandown with his back towards me and his hand resting flat on the counter beside him, next to his glass. He had been talking to Bill; and I had waited there, behind him, not wanting to interrupt their conversation. Then Tudor finished his drink and left, and I had talked with Bill.
Now I glanced at his face.
‘It’s a great shame about Bill Davidson,’ I said.
The brown hand jumped slightly on his knee. He turned his head and looked at me while I drove.
‘Yes, indeed it is.’ He spoke slowly. ‘I had been hoping he would ride a horse for me at Cheltenham.’
‘A great horseman,’ I said.
‘Yes indeed.’
‘I was just behind him when he fell,’ I said, and on an impulse added, ‘There are a great many questions to be asked about it.’
I felt Tudor’s huge body shift beside me. I knew he was still looking at me, and I found his presence overpowering. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. He hesitated, but added nothing more. He looked at his watch.
‘Take me to the Pavilion Plaza Hotel, if you please. I have to attend a business meeting there,’ he said.
‘Is it near the Pavilion?’ I asked.
‘Fairly. I will direct you when we get there.’ His tone relegated me to the status of chauffeur.
We drove for some miles in silence. My passenger sat apparently deep in thought. When we reached Brighton he told me the way to the hotel.
‘Thank you,’ he said, without warmth, as he lifted his bulk clumsily out of the low-slung car. He had an air of accepting considerable favours as merely his due, even when done him by complete strangers. He took two steps away from the car, then turned back and said, ‘What is your name?’
‘Alan York’ I said. ‘Good afternoon.’ I drove off without waiting for an answer. I could be brusque too. Glancing in the mirror I saw him standing on the pavement looking after me.
I went back to the racecourse.
Joe was waiting for me, sitting on the bank at the side of the road. He had some difficulty opening the car door, and he stumbled into his seat, muttering. He lurched over against me, and I discovered that Joe Nantwich was drunk.
The daylight was almost gone. I turned on the lights. I could think of pleasanter things to do than drive the twisty roads to Dorking with Joe breathing alcohol all over me. I sighed, and let in the clutch.
Joe was nursing a grievance. He would be. Everything which went wrong for Joe was someone else’s fault, according to him. Barely twenty, he was a chronic grumbler. It was hard to know which was worse to put up with, his grousing or his bragging, and that he was treated with tolerance by the other jockeys said much for their good nature. Joe’s saving grace was his undoubted ability as a jockey, but he had put that to bad use already by his ‘stopping’ activities, and now he was threatening it altogether by getting drunk in the middle of the afternoon.
‘I would have won that race,’ he whined.
‘You’re a fool, Joe,’ I said.
‘No, honestly, Alan, I would have won that race. I had him placed just right. I had the others beat, I had ’em stone cold. Just right.’ He made sawing motions with his hands.
‘You’re a fool to drink so much at the races,’ I said.
‘Eh?’ He couldn’t focus.
‘Drink,’ I said. ‘You’ve had too much to drink.’
‘No, no, no, no…’ The words came dribbling out, as if once he had started to speak it was too much effort to stop.
‘Owners won’t put you on their horses if they see you getting drunk,’ I said, feeling it was no business of mine, after all.
‘I can win any race, drunk or not,’ said Joe.
‘Not many owners would believe it.’
‘They know I’m good.’
‘So you are, but you won’t be if you go on like this,’ I said.
‘I can drink and I can ride and I can ride and I can drink. If I want to.’ He belched.
I let it pass. What Joe needed was a firm hand applied ten years ago. He looked all set now on the road to ruin and he wasn’t going to thank anyone for directions off it.
He was whining again. ‘That bloody Mason…’
I didn’t say anything. He tried again.
‘That bloody Sandy, he tipped me off. He bloody well tipped me off over the bloody rails. I’d have won that race as easy as kiss your hand and he knew it and tipped me off over the bloody rails.’
‘Don’t be silly, Joe.’
‘You can’t say I wouldn’t have won the race,’ said Joe argumentatively.
‘And I can’t say you would have won it,’ I said. ‘You fell at least a mile from home.’
‘I didn’t fall. I’m telling you, aren’t I? Sandy bloody Mason tipped me off over the rails.’
‘How?’ I asked idly, concentrating on the road.
‘He squeezed me against the rails. I shouted to him to give me more room. And do you know what he did? Do you know? He laughed. He bloody well laughed. Then he tipped me over. He stuck his knee into me and gave a heave and off I went over the bloody rails.’ His whining voice finished on a definite sob.
I looked at him. Two tears were rolling down his round cheeks. They glistened in the light from the dashboard, and fell with a tiny flash on to the furry collar of his sheepskin coat.
‘Sandy wouldn’t do a thing like that,’ I said mildly.
‘Oh yes he would. He told me he’d get even with me. He said I’d be sorry. But I couldn’t help it, Alan, I really couldn’t.’ Two more tears rolled down.
I was out of my depth. I had no idea what he was talking about; but it began to look as though Sandy, if he had unseated him, had had his reasons.
Joe went on talking.
‘You’re always decent to me, Alan, you’re not like the others. You’re my friend…’ He put his hand heavily on my arm, pawing, leaning over towards me and giving me the benefit of the full force of his alcoholic breath. The delicate steering of the Lotus reacted to his sudden weight on my arm with a violent swerve towards the curb.
I shook him off. ‘For God’s sake sit up, Joe, or you’ll have us in the ditch,’ I said.
But he was too immersed in his own troubles to hear me. He pulled my arm again. There was a lay-by just ahead. I slowed, turned into it, and stopped the car.
‘It you won’t sit up and leave me alone you can get out and walk.’ I said, trying to get through to him with a rough tone.
But he was still on his own track, and weeping noisily now.
‘You don’t know what it’s like to be in trouble,’ he sobbed. I resigned myself to listen. The quicker he got his resentments off his chest, I thought, the quicker he would relax and go to sleep.
‘What trouble?’ I said. I was not in the least interested.
‘Alan, I’ll tell you because you’re a pal, a decent pal.’ He put his hand on my knee. I pushed it off.
Amid a fresh burst of tears Joe blurted, ‘I was supposed to stop a horse and I didn’t, and Sandy lost a lot of money and said he’d get even with me and he’s been following me around saying that for days and days and I knew he’d do something awful and he has.’ He paused for breath. ‘Lucky for me I hit a soft patch or I might have broken my neck. It wasn’t funny. And that bloody Sandy,’ he choked on the name, ‘was laughing. I’ll make him laugh on the other side of his bloody face.’
This last sentence made me smile. Joe with his baby face, strong of body perhaps, but weak of character, was no match for the tough, forceful Sandy, more than ten years older and incalculably more self-assured. Joe’s bragging, like his whining, sprang from feelings of insecurity. But the beginning of his outburst was something different.
‘What horse did you not stop?’ I asked, ‘and how did Sandy know you were supposed to be going to stop one?’
For a second I thought caution would silence him, but after the smallest hesitation he babbled on. The drink was still at the flood. So were the tears.
From the self-pitying, hiccuping, half incoherent voice I learned a sorry enough story. Shorn of blasphemy and reduced to essentials, it was this. Joe had been paid well for stopping horses on several occasions, two of which I had seen myself. But when David Stampe had told his father the Senior Steward about the last one, and Joe had nearly lost his licence, it gave him a steadying shock. The next time he was asked to stop a horse he said he would, but in the event, from understandable nerves, he had not done it thoroughly enough early in the race, and at the finish was faced with the plain knowledge that if he lost the race he would lose his licence as well. He won. This had happened ten days ago.
I was puzzled. ‘Is Sandy the only person who has harmed you?’
‘He tipped me over the rails…’ He was ready to start all over again.
I interrupted. ‘It wasn’t Sandy, surely, who was paying you not to win?’
‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t know,’ he snivelled.
‘Do you mean you don’t know who was paying you? Ever?’
‘A man rang up and told me when he wanted me to stop one, and afterwards I got a packet full of money through the post.’
‘How many times have you done it?’ I asked.
‘Ten,’ said Joe, ‘all in the last six months.’ I stared at him.
‘Often it was easy,’ said Joe defensively. ‘The – ——s wouldn’t have won anyway, even if I’d helped them.’
‘How much did you get for it?’
‘A hundred. Twice it was two-fifty.’ Joe’s tongue was still running away with him, and I believed him. It was big money, and anyone prepared to pay on that scale would surely want considerable revenge when Joe won against orders. But Sandy? I couldn’t believe it.
‘What did Sandy say to you after you won?’ I asked.
Joe was still crying. ‘He said he’d backed the horse I beat and that he’d get even with me,’ said Joe. And it seemed that Sandy had done that.
‘You didn’t get your parcel of money, I suppose?’
‘No,’ said Joe, sniffing.
‘Haven’t you any idea where they come from?’ I asked.
‘Some had London postmarks,’ said Joe. ‘I didn’t take much notice.’ Too eager to count the contents to look closely at the wrappings, no doubt.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘Surely now that Sandy has had his little revenge, you are in the clear? Can’t you possibly stop crying about it? It’s all over. What are you in such a state about?’
For answer Joe took a paper from his jacket pocket and gave it to me.
‘You might as well know it all. I don’t know what to do. Help me, Alan. I’m frightened.’
In the light from the dashboard I could see that this was true. And Joe was beginning to sober up.
I unfolded the paper and switched on the lights inside the car. It was a single sheet of thin, ordinary typing paper. In simple capital letters, written with a ball-point pen, were five words: BOLINGBROKE. YOU WILL BE PUNISHED.
‘Bolingbroke is the horse you were supposed to stop and didn’t?’
‘Yes.’ The tears no longer welled in his eyes.
‘When did you get this?’ I asked.
‘I found it in my pocket, today, when I put my jacket on after I’d changed. Just before the fifth race. It wasn’t there when I took it off.’
‘And you spent the rest of the afternoon in the bar, in a blue funk, I suppose,’ I said.
‘Yes… and I went back there while you took Mr Tudor to Brighton. I didn’t think anything was going to happen to me because of Bolingbroke, and I’ve been frightened ever since he won. And just as I was thinking it was all right Sandy pushed me over the rails and then I found this letter in my pocket. It isn’t fair.’ The self-pity still whined in his voice.
I gave him back the paper.
‘What am I to do?’ said Joe.
I couldn’t tell him, because I didn’t know. He had got himself into a thorough mess, and he had good reason to be afraid. People who manipulated horses and jockeys to that extent were certain to play rough. The time lag of ten days between Bolingbroke’s win and the arrival of the note could mean, I thought, that there was a cat-and-mouse, rather than a straightforward mentality at work. Which was little comfort to offer Joe.
Apart from some convulsive hiccups and sniffs, Joe seemed to have recovered from his tears, and the worst of the drunkenness was over. I switched off the inside lights, started the car up, and pulled back on to the road. As I had hoped, Joe soon went to sleep. He snored loudly.
Approaching Dorking, I woke him up. I had some questions to ask.
‘Joe, who is that Mr Tudor I took to Brighton? He knows you.’
‘He owns Bolingbroke,’ said Joe. ‘I often ride for him.’
I was surprised. ‘Was he pleased when Bolingbroke won?’ I asked.
‘I suppose so. He wasn’t there. He sent me ten-per-cent afterwards, though, and a letter thanking me. The usual thing.’
‘He hasn’t been in racing long, has he?’ I asked.
‘Popped up about the same time you did,’ said Joe, with a distinct return to his old brash manner. ‘Both of you arrived with dark sun-tans in the middle of winter.’
I had come by air from the burning African summer to the icy reception of October in England: but after eighteen months my skin was as pale as an Englishman’s. Tudor’s, on the other hand, remained dark.
Joe was sniggering. ‘You know why Mr Clifford bloody Tudor lives at Brighton? It gives him an excuse to be sunburnt all the year round. Touch of the old tar, really.’
After that I had no compunction in turning Joe out at the bus stop for Epsom. Unloading his troubles on to me seemed, for the present at least, to have restored his ego.
I drove back to the Cotswolds. At firs
t I thought about Sandy Mason and wondered how he had got wind of Joe’s intention to stop Bolingbroke.
But for the last hour of the journey I thought about Kate.
SIX
Scilla was lying asleep on the sofa with a rug over her legs and a half-full glass on a low table beside her. I picked up the glass and sniffed. Brandy. She usually drank gin and Campari. Brandy was for bad days only.
She opened her eyes. ‘Alan! I’m so glad you’re back. What time is it?’
‘Half past nine,’ I said.
‘You must be starving,’ she said, pushing off the rug. ‘Why ever didn’t you wake me? Dinner was ready hours ago.’
‘I’ve only just got here, and Joan is cooking now, so relax,’ I said.
We went in to eat. I sat in my usual place. Bill’s chair, opposite Scilla, was empty. I made a mental note to move it back against the wall.
Half way through the steaks, Scilla said, breaking a long silence, ‘Two policemen came to see me today.’
‘Did they? About the inquest tomorrow?’
‘No, it was about Bill.’ She pushed her plate away. ‘They asked me if he was in any trouble, like you did. They asked me the same questions in different ways for over half an hour. One of them suggested that if I was as fond of my husband as I said I was and on excellent terms with him, I ought to know if something was wrong in his life. They were rather nasty, really.’
She was not looking at me. She kept her eyes down, regarding her half-eaten, congealing steak, and there was a slight embarrassment in her manner, which was unusual.
‘I can imagine,’ I said, realising what was the matter. ‘They asked you, I suppose, to explain your relationship with me, and why I was still living in your house?’
She glanced up in surprise and evident relief. ‘Yes, they did. I didn’t know how to tell you. It seems so ordinary to me that you should be here, yet I couldn’t seem to make them understand that.’
‘I’ll go tomorrow, Scilla,’ I said. ‘I’m not letting you in for any more gossip. If the police can think that you were cheating Bill with me, so can the village and the county. I’ve been exceedingly thoughtless, and I’m very very sorry.’ For I, too, had found it quite natural to stay on in Bill’s house after his death.