by Dick Francis
‘Double quick ones, I imagine,’ said Dane with a smile, taking the paper out of my hand and reading it. ‘What does it mean, Bolingbroke this week? Why are you so steamed up about it?’
Joe snatched the paper away and stuffed it back into his pocket. He seemed for the first time to be aware that Dane was listening.
‘It’s none of your business,’ he said rudely.
I felt a great impulse to assure him it was none of mine either. But he turned back to me and said, ‘What shall I do?’ in a voice full of whining self-pity.
‘Are you riding today?’ I asked.
‘I’m in the fourth and the last. Those bloody amateurs have got two races all to themselves today. A bit thick, isn’t it, leaving us only four races to earn our living in? Why don’t the fat-arsed gentlemen riders stick to the point-to-points where they belong? That’s all they’re —— well fit for,’ he added, alliteratively.
There was a small silence. Dane laughed. Joe was after all not too drunk to realise he was riding his hobby horse in front of the wrong man. He said weakly, in his smarmiest voice, ‘Well, Alan, of course I didn’t mean you personally…’
‘If you still want my advice, in view of your opinion of amateur jockeys,’ I said, keeping a straight face, ‘you should drink three cups of strong black coffee and stay out of sight as long as you can.’
‘I mean, what shall I do about this note?’ Joe had a thicker skin than a coach-hide cabin trunk.
‘Pay it no attention at all,’ I said. ‘I should think that whoever wrote it is playing with you. Perhaps he knows you like to drown your sorrows in whisky and is relying on you to destroy yourself without his having to do anything but send you frightening letters. A neat, bloodless, and effective revenge.’
The sullen pout on Joe’s babyish face slowly changed into a mulish determination which was only slightly less repellent.
‘No one’s going to do that to me,’ he said, with an aggressiveness which I guessed would diminish with the alcohol level in his blood. He weaved off out of the weighing room door, presumably in search of black coffee. Before Dane could ask me what was going on, he received a hearty slap on the back from Sandy Mason, who was staring after Joe with dislike.
‘What’s up with that stupid little clot?’ he asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He said, ‘Look, Dane, be a pal and gen me up on this horse of Gregory’s I’m riding in the first. I’ve never seen it before, as far as I know. It seems the owner likes my red hair or something.’ Sandy’s infectious laugh made several people look round with answering smiles.
‘Sure,’ said Dane. They launched into a technical discussion and I turned away from them. But Dane touched my arm.
He said, ‘Is it all right for me to tell people, say Sandy for instance, about the wire and Bill?’
‘Yes, do. You might strike oil with someone I wouldn’t have thought of asking about it. But be careful.’ I thought of telling him about the warning in the horse-box, but it was a long story and it seemed enough to say, ‘Remember that you’re stirring up people who can kill, even if by mistake.’
He looked startled. ‘Yes, you’re right. I’ll be careful.’
We turned back to Sandy together.
‘What are you two so solemn about? Has someone swiped that luscious brunette you’re both so keen on?’ he said.
‘It’s about Bill Davidson,’ said Dane, disregarding this.
‘What about him?’
‘The fall that killed him was caused by some wire being strung across the top of the fence. Alan saw it.’
Sandy looked aghast. ‘Alan saw it,’ he repeated, and then, as the full meaning of what Dane had said sank in, ‘but that’s murder.’
I pointed out the reasons for supposing that murder had not been intended. Sandy’s brown eyes stared at me unwinkingly until I had finished.
‘I guess you’re right,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘He’s trying to find out what is behind it all,’ said Dane. ‘We thought you might be able to help. Have you heard anything that might explain it? People tell you things, you know.’
Sandy ran his strong brown hands through his unruly red hair, and rubbed the nape of his neck. This brain massage produced no great thoughts, however. ‘Yes, but mostly they tell me about their girl friends or their bets or such like. Not Major Davidson though. We weren’t exactly on a bosom pals basis, because he thought I strangled a horse belonging to a friend of his. Well,’ said Sandy with an engaging grin, ‘maybe I did, at that. Anyway, we had words, as they say, a few months ago.’
‘See if your bookmaker friends have heard any whispers, then,’ said Dane. ‘They usually have their ears usefully to the ground.’
‘O.K.’ said Sandy. ‘I’ll pass the news along and see what happens. Now come on, we haven’t much time before the first and I want to know what this sod of a horse is going to do.’ And as Dane hesitated, he said, ‘Come on, you don’t have to wrap it up. Gregory only asks me to ride for him when it’s such a stinker that he daren’t ask any sensible man to get up on it.’
‘It’s a mare,’ said Dane, ‘with a beastly habit of galloping into the bottoms of fences as if they weren’t there. She usually ends up in the open ditch.’
‘Well thanks,’ said Sandy, apparently undaunted by this news. ‘I’ll tan her hide for her and she’ll soon change her ways. See you later, then.’ He went into the changing room.
Dane looked after him. ‘The horse isn’t foaled that could frighten that blighter Sandy,’ he said with admiration.
‘Nothing wrong with his nerve,’ I agreed. ‘But why ever is Pete running an animal like that here, of all places?’
‘The owner fancies having a runner at Cheltenham. You know how it is. Snob value, and so on,’ he said indulgently.
We were being jostled continually, as we talked, by the throng of trainers and owners. We went outside. Dane was immediately appropriated by a pair of racing journalists who wanted his views on his mount in the Gold Cup, two days distant.
The afternoon wore on. The racing began. With the fine sunny day and the holiday mood of the crowd, the excitement was almost crackling in the air.
Sandy got the mare over the first open ditch but disappeared into the next. He came back with a broad smile, cursing hard.
Joe reappeared after the second race, looking less drunk but more frightened. I avoided him shamelessly.
Dane, riding like a demon, won the Champion Hurdle by a head. Pete, patting his horse and sharing with the owner the congratulations of the great crowd round the unsaddling enclosure, was so delighted he could hardly speak. Large and red-faced, he stood there with his hat pushed back showing his baldness, trying to look as if this sort of thing happened every day, when it was in fact the most important winner he had trained.
He was so overcome that he forgot, as we stood some time later in the parade ring before the amateur’s race, to make his customary joke about Palindrome going backwards as well as forwards. And when I, following his advice to the letter, stuck like a shadow to the Irishman when he tried to slip the field, lay a scant length behind him all the way to the last fence, and passed him with a satisfying spurt fifty yards from the winning post, Pete said his day was complete.
I could have hugged him, I was so elated. Although I had won several races back in Rhodesia and about thirty since I had been in England, this was my first win at Cheltenham. I felt as high as if I had already drunk the champagne which waited unopened in the changing-room, the customary crateful of celebration for Champion Hurdle day. Palindrome was, in my eyes, the most beautiful, most intelligent, most perfect horse in the world. I walked on air to the scales to weigh in, and changed into my ordinary clothes, and had still not returned to earth when I went outside again. The gloom I had arrived in seemed a thousand years ago. I was so happy I could have turned cartwheels like a child. Such total, unqualified fulfilment comes rarely enough: and unexpectedly, I wished that my father were there to s
hare it.
The problem of Bill had receded like a dot in the distance, and it was only because I had earlier planned to do it that I directed my airy steps down to the horse-box parking ground.
It was packed. About twenty horses ran in each race that day, and almost every horse-box available must have been pressed into service to bring them. I sauntered along the rows, humming light-heartedly, looking at the number plates with half an eye and less attention.
And there it was.
APX 708.
My happiness burst like a bubble.
There was no doubt it was the same horse-box. Regulation wooden Jennings design. Elderly, with dull and battered varnish. No name of owner or trainer painted anywhere on the doors or bodywork.
There was no one in the driver’s cab. I walked round to the back, opened the door, and climbed in.
The horse-box was empty except for a bucket, a hay net and a rug, the normal travelling kit for racehorses. The floor was strewn with straw, whereas three days earlier it had been swept clean.
The rug, I thought, might give me a clue as to where the box had come from. Most trainers and some owners have their initials embroidered or sewn in tape in large letters on the corners of their horse rugs. If there were initials on this one, it would be easy.
I picked it up. It was pale fawn with a dark brown binding. I found the initials. I stood there as if turned to stone. Plainly in view, embroidered in dark brown silk, were the letters A.Y.
It was my own rug.
Pete, when I ran him to earth, looked in no mood to answer any questions needing much thought. He leaned back against the weighing-room wall with a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigar in the other, surrounded by a pack of friends similarly equipped. From their rosy smiling faces I gathered the celebration had already been going on for some time.
Dane thrust a glass into my hand.
‘Where have you been? Well done on Palindrome. Have some bubbly. The owner’s paying, God bless him.’ His eyes were alight with that fantastic, top-of-the-world elation that I had so lately felt myself. It began to creep back into me too. It was, after all, a great day. Mysteries could wait.
I drank a sip of champagne and said ‘Well done yourself, you old son-of-a-gun. And here’s to the Gold Cup.’
‘No such luck,’ said Dane, ‘I haven’t much chance in that.’ And from his laughing face I gathered he didn’t care, either. We emptied our glasses. ‘I’ll get another bottle,’ he said, diving into the noisy, crowded changing-room.
Looking around I saw Joe Nantwich backed up into a nearby corner by the enormous Mr Tudor. The big man was doing the talking, forcefully, his dark face almost merging with the shadows. Joe, still dressed in racing colours, listened very unhappily.
Dane came back with the bubbles fizzing out of a newly-opened bottle and filled our glasses. He followed my gaze.
‘I don’t know whether Joe was sober or not, but didn’t he make a hash of the last race?’ he said.
‘I didn’t see it.’
‘Brother, you sure missed something. He didn’t try a yard. His horse damned nearly stopped altogether at the hurdle over on the far side, and it was second favourite, too. What you see now,’ he gestured with the bottle, ‘is, I should think, our Joe getting the well deserved sack.’
‘That man owns Bolingbroke,’ I said.
‘Yes, that’s right. Same colours. What a fool Joe is. Owners with five or six goodish horses don’t grow on bushes any more.’
Clifford Tudor had nearly done. As he turned away from Joe in our direction we heard the tail end of his remarks.
‘…think you can make a fool of me and get away with it. The Stewards can warn you off altogether, as far as I’m concerned.’
He strode past us, giving me a nod of recognition, which surprised me, and went out.
Joe leaned against the wall for support. His face was pallid and sweating. He looked ill. He took a few unsteady steps towards us and spoke without caution, as if he had forgotten that Stewards and members of the National Hunt Committee might easily overhear.
‘I had a phone call this morning. The same voice as always. He just said, “Don’t win the sixth race” and rang off before I could say anything. And then that note saying “Bolingbroke, this week”… I don’t understand it… and I didn’t win the race and now that bloody wog says he’ll get another jockey… and the Stewards have started an enquiry about my riding… and I feel sick.’
‘Have some champagne,’ said Dane, encouragingly.
‘Don’t be so bloody helpful,’ said Joe, clutching his stomach and departing towards the changing-room.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ said Dane.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, perplexed and more interested in Joe’s troubles than I had been before. The phone call was inconsistent, I thought, with the notes. One ordered business as usual, the other promised revenge. ‘I wonder if Joe always tells the truth,’ I said.
‘Highly unlikely,’ said Dane, dismissing it.
One of the Stewards came and reminded us that even after the Champion Hurdle, drinking in the weighing-room itself was frowned on, and would we please drift along into the changing-room. Dane did that, but I finished my drink and went outside.
Pete, still attended by a posse of friends, had decided that it was time to go home. The friends were unwilling. The racecourse bars, they were saying, were still open.
I walked purposefully up to Pete, and he made me his excuse for breaking away. We went towards the gates.
‘Whew, what a day!’ said Pete, mopping his brow with a white handkerchief and throwing away the stub of his cigar.
‘A wonderful day,’ I agreed, looking at him carefully.
‘You can take that anxious look off your face, Alan, my lad. I’m as sober as a judge and I’m driving myself home.’
‘Good. In that case you’ll have no difficulty in answering one small question for me?’
‘Shoot.’
‘In what horse-box did Palindrome come to Cheltenham?’ I said.
‘Eh? I hired one. I had five runners here today. The hurdler, the mare and the black gelding came in my own box. I had to hire one for Palindrome and the novice Dane rode in the first.’
‘Where did you hire it from?’
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Pete. ‘I know it’s a bit old, and it had a puncture on the way, as I told you but it didn’t do him any harm. Can’t have done, or he wouldn’t have won.’
‘No, it’s nothing like that,’ I said. ‘I just want to know where that horse-box comes from.’
‘It’s not worth buying, if that’s what you’re after. Too old by half.’
‘Pete, I don’t want to buy it. Just tell me where it comes from.’
‘The firm I usually hire a box from, Littlepeths of Steyning.’ He frowned. ‘Wait a minute. At first they said all their boxes were booked up; then they said they could get me a box if I didn’t mind an old one.’
‘Who drove it here?’ I asked.
‘Oh, one of their usual drivers. He was swearing a bit at having to drive such an old hen coop. He said the firm had got two good horse-boxes out of action in Cheltenham week and he took a poor view of the administration.’
‘Do you know him well?’
‘Not exactly well. He often drives the hired boxes, that’s all. He’s always grousing about something. Now, what is all this in aid of?’
‘It may have something to do with Bill’s death,’ I said, ‘but I’m not sure what. Can you find out where the box really comes from? Ask the hire firm? And don’t mention me, if you don’t mind.’
‘Is it important?’ asked Pete.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I’ll ring ’em tomorrow morning, then,’ he said.
As soon as he saw me the next day, Pete said ‘I asked about that horse-box. It belongs to a farmer near Steyning. I’ve got his name and address here.’ He tucked two fingers into his breast pocket, brought out a slip of paper, and gave it
to me. ‘The farmer uses the box to take his hunters around, and his children’s show jumpers in the summer. He sometimes lets the hire firm use it, if he’s not needing it. Is that what you wanted?’
‘Yes, thank you very much,’ I said. I put the paper in my wallet.
By the end of the Festival meeting I had repeated the story of the wire to at least ten more people, in the hope that someone might know why it had been put there. The tale spread fast round the racecourse.
I told fat Lew Panake, the well-dressed bookmaker who took my occasional bets. He promised to ‘sound out the boys’ and let me know.
I told Calvin Bone, a professional punter, whose nose for the smell of dirty work was as unerring as a bloodhound’s.
I told a sly little tout who made his living passing on stray pieces of information to anyone who would pay for them.
I told the newspaper seller, who tugged his moustache and ignored a customer.
I told a racing journalist who could scent a doping scandal five furlongs away.
I told an army friend of Bill’s; I told Clem in the weighing-room; I told Pete Gregory’s head travelling lad.
From all this busy sowing of the wind I learned absolutely nothing. And I would still, I supposed, have to reap the whirlwind.
EIGHT
On Saturday morning as I sat with Scilla and the children and Joan round the large kitchen table having a solidly domestic breakfast, the telephone rang.
Scilla went to answer it, but came back saying, ‘It’s for you, Alan. He wouldn’t give his name.’
I went into the drawing-room and picked up the receiver. The March sun streamed through the windows on to a big bowl of red and yellow striped crocuses which stood on the telephone table. I said ‘Alan York speaking.’
‘Mr York, I gave you a warning a week ago today. You have chosen to ignore it.’
I felt the hairs rising on my neck. My scalp itched. It was a soft voice with a husky, whispering note to it, not savage or forceful, but almost mildly conversational.
I didn’t answer. The voice said ‘Mr York? Are you still there?’