Forfeit

by Dick Francis

  ‘You’ve met him?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Here … in England?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course.’

  ‘Ty … for God’s sake … keep away from him.’

  ‘I will,’ I said with feeling. ‘Thanks a lot, Mike. I’m truly grateful.’

  ‘I’d hate anyone I liked to tangle with Vjoersterod,’ he said, the genuine friendship standing out clear in his eyes, unexpectedly affecting. Then with a born newspaper man’s instinct for the main chance, a look of intense curiosity took over.

  ‘What did he want to talk about with you?’ he asked.

  ‘I really don’t know,’ I said, sounding puzzled.

  ‘Is he going to get in touch with you again?’

  ‘I don’t know that, either.’

  ‘Hm … give me a ring if he does, and I’ll tell you something else.’

  ‘Tell me now.’ I tried hard to make it casual.

  He considered, shrugged, and friendship won again over journalism. ‘All right. It’s nothing much. Just that I too saw him here in England; must have been nine or ten months ago, back in the Spring.’ He paused.

  ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘why ever were you so horrified when I said I’d met him?’

  ‘Because when I saw him he was in the buffet bar on a race train, talking to another press man. Bert Checkov.’

  With an enormous effort, I kept my mildly puzzled face intact.

  Mike went on without a blink. ‘I warned Bert about him later, just like I have you. In here, actually. Bert was pretty drunk. He was always pretty drunk after that.’

  ‘What did he say?’ I asked.

  ‘He said I was three months too late.’

  Mike didn’t know any more. Bert had clammed up after that one indiscretion and had refused to elaborate or explain. When he fell out of the window, Mike had wondered. Violent and often unexplained deaths among people who had had dealings with Vjoersterod were not unknown, he said. When I said I had met Vjoersterod, it had shocked him. He was afraid for me. Afraid I could follow Bert down on to the pavement.

  I put his mind at rest. After what he’d told me, I would be forewarned, I said.

  ‘I wonder why he got his hooks into Bert …’ Mike said, his eyes on the middle distance, all the cogs whirring.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, sighing, and distracted his attention on to another half-pint and a large ham sandwich. Luke-John’s thin freckled face loomed over his shoulder, and he turned to him with a typical bounce, as if all his body were made of springs.

  ‘So how’s the Gospel Maker? What’s cooking on the Blaze?’

  Luke-John gave him a thin smile. He didn’t care for his Fleet Street nickname; nor for puns in general. Nor, it seemed, for Mike de Jong’s puns in particular. Mike received the message clearly, sketched me a farewell, and drifted over to another group.

  ‘What did he want?’ Luke-John asked sharply.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said mildly. ‘Just saying hello.’

  Luke-John gave me a disillusioned look, but I knew very well that if I told him at that stage about Vjoersterod he would dig until he stumbled on the blackmail, dig again quite ruthlessly to find out how I could have been blackmailed, and then proceed to mastermind all subsequent enquiries with a stunning absence of discretion. Vjoersterod would hear his steam roller approach clean across the country. Luke-John was a brilliant Sports Editor. As a Field Marshal his casualty list would have been appalling.

  He and Derry drank around to closing time at three, by which time the crowd had reduced to Sunday writers only. I declined their invitation to go back with them to the doldrums of the office, and on reflection telephoned to the only member of the racing authorities I knew well enough for the purpose.

  Eric Youll at thirty-seven was the youngest and newest of the three stewards of the National Hunt Committee, the ruling body of Steeplechasing. In two years, by natural progression, he would be Senior Steward. After that, reduced to the ranks until re-elected for another three-year term. As a Steward he made sense because until recently he had himself ridden as an amateur, and knew at first hand all the problems and mechanics of racing. I had written him up in the Blaze a few times and we had been friendly acquaintances for years. Whether he either could or would help me now was nonetheless open to doubt.

  I had a good deal of trouble getting through to him, as he was a junior sprig in one of the grander merchant banks. Secretaries with bored voices urged me to make an appointment.

  ‘Right now,’ I said, ‘will do very well.’

  After the initial shock the last voice conceded that right now Mr Youll could just fit me in. When I got there, Mr Youll was busily engaged in drinking a cup of tea and reading the Sporting Life. He put them both down without haste, stood up, and shook hands.

  ‘This is unexpected,’ he said. ‘Come to borrow a million?’

  ‘Tomorrow, maybe.’

  He smiled, told his secretary on the intercom to bring me some tea, offered me a cigarette, and leaned back in his chair, his manner throughout one of indecision and uncertainty. He was wary of me and of the purpose of my visit. I saw that uneasy expression almost every day of my life: the screen my racing friends erected when they weren’t sure what I was after, the barrier that kept their secrets from publication. I didn’t mind that sort of withdrawal. Understood it. Sympathised. And never printed anything private, if I could help it. There was a very fine edge to be walked when ones friends were ones raw material.

  ‘Off the record,’ I assured him. ‘Take three deep breaths and relax.’

  He grinned and tension visibly left his body. ‘How can I help you, then?’

  I waited until the tea had come and been drunk, and the latest racing news chewed over. Then, without making much of it, I asked him if he’d ever heard of a bookmaker called Vjoersterod.

  His attention pin-pointed itself with a jerk.

  ‘Is that what you’ve come to ask?’

  ‘For openers.’

  He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘Someone showed me your column last week and the week before … Stay out of it, Ty.’

  ‘If you racing bigwigs know what’s going on and who is doing it, why don’t you stop him?’

  ‘How?’

  The single bald word hung in the air, cooling. It told me a lot about the extent of their knowledge. They should have known how.

  ‘Frankly,’ I said at last, ‘that’s your job, not mine. You could of course ban all ante-post betting, which would knock the fiddle stone dead.’

  ‘That would be highly unpopular with the Great British Public. Anyway your articles have hit the ante-post market badly enough as it is. One of the big firms was complaining to me bitterly about you a couple of hours ago. Their Lamplighter bets are down by more than twenty per cent.’

  ‘Then why don’t they do something about Charlie Boston?’

  He blinked. ‘Who?’

  I took a quiet breath. ‘Well, now … just what do the Stewards know about Vjoersterod?’

  ‘Who is Charlie Boston?’

  ‘You first,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’ He looked hurt.

  ‘No,’ I said flatly. ‘You first.’

  He sighed resignedly and told me that all the Stewards knew about Vjoersterod was hearsay, and scanty at that. None of them had ever actually seen him, and wouldn’t know him if they did. A member of the German horse racing authorities had sent them a private warning that Vjoersterod was suspected of stage managing a series of non-starting ante-post favourites in big races in Germany, and that they had heard rumours he was now beginning to operate in England. Pursuit had almost cornered him in Germany. He was now moving on. The British Stewards had noted the alarming proportion of non-starters in the past months and were sure the German authorities were right, but although they had tried to find out the facts from various owners and trainers, they had been met with only a brick wall of silence everywhere.

  ‘It’s a year since Vjoersterod
came here first,’ I remarked. ‘A year ago he bought out Charlie Boston’s string of betting shops round Birmingham and started raking in the dough. He also found a way to force Bert Checkov to write articles which persuaded ante-post punters to believe they were on to a good thing. Vjoersterod chose a horse, Checkov wrote it up, Vjoersterod stopped it running, and Bingo, the deed was done.’

  His face was a mixture of astonishment and satisfaction. ‘Ty, are you sure of your facts?’

  ‘Of course I am. If you ask me, both the bookmakers and the authorities have been dead slow on the trail.’

  ‘And how long exactly have you been on it?’

  I grinned, conceding the point. I said ‘I met Vjoersterod yesterday. I referred to Charlie Boston being his partner and he told me he owned Charlie Boston. Vjoersterod wanted to know where Tiddely Pom was.’

  He stared. ‘Would you … um … well, if necessary, testify to that?’

  ‘Certainly. But it would be only my word against his. No corroboration.’

  ‘Better than anything we’ve had before.’

  ‘There might be a quicker way to get results, though.’

  ‘How?’ he asked again.

  ‘Find a way to shut Charlie Boston’s shops, and you block off Vjoersterod’s intakes. Without which there is no point in him waiting around to stop any favourites. If you can’t get him convicted in the Courts, you might at least freeze him out, back to South Africa.’

  There was another long pause during which he thought complicated thoughts. I waited, guessing what was in his mind. Eventually, he said it.

  ‘How much do you want for your help?’

  ‘An exclusive for the Blaze.’

  ‘As if I couldn’t guess …’

  ‘It will do,’ I conceded, ‘if the Blaze can truthfully claim to have made the ante-post market safe for punters to play in. No details. Just a few hints that but for the libel laws, all would and could be revealed.’

  ‘Why ever do you waste your time with that dreadful rag?’ he exclaimed in exasperation.

  ‘Good pay,’ I said. It’s a good paper to work for. And it suits me.’

  ‘I’ll promise you one thing,’ he said, smiling. ‘If through you personally we get rid of Vjoersterod, I’ll take it regularly.’

  From Eric Youll’s bank, I went home. If the youngest Steward did his stuff, Vjoersterod’s goose was on its way to the oven and would soon be cooked. He might of course one day read the Blaze and send someone to carve up the chef. It didn’t trouble me much. I didn’t believe it would happen.

  Elizabeth had had Mrs Woodward put her favourite rose pink, white-embroidered sheets on the bed. I looked at her searchingly. Her hair had been done with particular care. Her makeup was flawless.

  ‘You look pretty,’ I said tentatively.

  Her expression was a mixture of relief and misery. I understood with a sudden rocking wince what had led her to such scenery painting: the increased fear that if she were bitchy I would leave her. No matter if I’d earned and deserved the rough side of her tongue; I had to be placated at all costs, to be held by the best she could do to appear attractive, to be obliquely invited, cajoled, entreated to stay.

  ‘Did you have a good day?’ Her voice sounded high and near to cracking point.

  ‘Quite good … how about a drink?’

  She shook her head, but I poured her one all the same, and fixed it in the clip.

  ‘I’ve asked Mrs Woodward to find someone to come and sit with me in the evenings,’ she said. ‘So that you can go out more.’

  ‘I don’t want to go out more,’ I protested.

  ‘You must do.’

  ‘Well, I don’t.’ I sat down in the armchair and took a hefty mouthful of nearly neat whisky. At best, I thought, in an unbearable situation alcohol offered postponement. At worst, aggravation. And anyway it was too damned expensive, nowadays, to get drunk.

  Elizabeth didn’t answer. When I looked at her, I saw she was quietly crying again. The tears rolled down past her ears and into her hair. I took a tissue out of the box and dried them. Had she but known it, they were harder for me to bear than any amount of fury.

  ‘I’m getting old,’ she said. ‘And you still look so young. You look … strong … and dark … and young.’

  ‘And you look pale and pretty and about fifteen. So stop fretting.’

  ‘How old is … that girl?’

  ‘You said you didn’t want to hear about her.’

  ‘I suppose I don’t, really.’

  ‘Forget her,’ I said. ‘She is of no importance. She means nothing to me. Nothing at all.’ I sounded convincing, even to myself. I wished it were true. In spite of the scope of her betrayal, in a weak inner recess I ached to be able to sleep with her again. I sat with the whisky glass in my hand and thought about her on the white rug and in her own bed and in the hotel, and suffered dismally from the prospect of the arid future.

  After a while I pushed myself wearily to my feet and went to fix the supper. Fish again. Mean little bits of frozen plaice. I cooked and ate them with aversion and fed Elizabeth when her wrist tired on the gadget. All evening she kept up the pathetic attempt to be nice to me, thanking me exaggeratedly for every tiny service, apologising for needing me to do things for her which we had both for years taken for granted, trying hard to keep the anxiety, the embarrassment and the unhappiness out of her eyes and voice, and nowhere near succeeding. She couldn’t have punished me more if she had tried.

  Late that evening Tiddely Pom developed violent colic.

  Norton Fox couldn’t get hold of Luke-John or Derry, who had both long gone home. The Blaze never divulged home addresses, however urgent the enquiry. Norton didn’t know my telephone number either; didn’t know anyone who did.

  In a state of strong anxiety, and on his vet’s advice, he rang up Victor Roncey and told him where his horse was, and what they were doing to save its life.

  12

  I heard about it in the morning. Roncey telephoned at ten-thirty, when I was sitting in the writing room looking vacantly at the walls and trying to drum up some preliminary gems for my column on Sunday. Mrs Woodward had gone out to the launderette, and Elizabeth called me to the telephone with two rings on the bell over my head: two rings for come at once but not an emergency. Three rings for 999. Four for panic.

  Roncey had calmed down from the four ring stage he had clearly been in the night before. He was calling, he said, from Norton Fox’s house, where he had driven at once after being given the news. I sorted out that he had arrived at 2 a.m. to find that the vet had got Tiddely Pom over the worst, with the stoppage in the horse’s gut untangling into normal function. Norton Fox had given Roncey a bed for the rest of the night, and he had just come in from seeing Tiddely Pom walk and trot out at morning exercise. The horse was showing surprisingly few ill effects from his rocky experience, and it was quite likely he would be fit enough to run in the Lamplighter on Saturday.

  I listened to his long, brisk detailed saga with uncomfortable alarm. There were still two whole days before the race. Now that Roncey knew where he was, Tiddely Pom’s safety was halved. When he had come to the end of the tale I asked him whether anyone had tried to find out from him at home where his horse had gone.

  ‘Of course they did,’ he said. ‘Exactly as you said. Several other newspapers wanted to know. Most of them telephoned. Three or four actually turned up at the farm, and I know they asked Peter and Pat as well as me. Some of their questions were decidedly tricky. I thought at the time you’d been quite right, we might have let it slip if we’d known ourselves.’

  ‘When did these people come to the farm? What did they look like?’

  ‘They didn’t look like anything special. Just nondescript. One of them was from the Evening Peal, I remember. All the enquiries were on Sunday and Monday, just after your article came out.’

  ‘No one turned up in a Rolls?’ I asked.

  He laughed shortly. ‘They did not.’

  ‘Were
any of your visitors tallish, thickish, blondish, with a faintly yellow skin and a slightly foreign accent?’

  ‘None that I saw were like that. One or two saw only the boys, because they called while I was in Chelmsford. You could ask them, if you like.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ I agreed. ‘No one tried any threats?’

  ‘No, I told your Sports Editor that. No one has tried any pressure of any sort. To my mind, all your elaborate precautions have been a waste of time. And now that I know where Tiddely Pom is, you may as well tell me where my family is too …’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘Would you ask Norton Fox if I could have a word with him?’

  He fetched Norton, who apologised for bursting open the secrecy, but said he didn’t like the responsibility of keeping quiet when the horse was so ill.

  ‘Of course not. It can’t be helped,’ I said. ‘As long as it goes no further than Roncey himself it may not be too bad, though I’d prefer …’

  ‘His sons knew, of course,’ Norton interrupted. ‘Though I don’t suppose that matters.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Roncey told one of his sons where he was. He telephoned to him just now. He explained to me that he couldn’t remember your telephone number, but he’d got it written down somewhere at home, from having rung you up before sometime. So he rang his son … Pat, I think he said … and his son found it for him. I think he, the son, asked Roncey where he was calling from, because Roncey said that as everyone had stopped enquiring about where the horse was, he didn’t see any harm in his son knowing, so he told him.’

  ‘Damn it,’ I said. ‘The man’s a fool.’

  ‘He might be right.’

  ‘And he might be wrong,’ I said bitterly. ‘Look, Norton, I suppose there was no question of Tiddely Pom’s colic being a misjudged case of poisoning?’

  ‘For God’s sake Ty … no. It was straightforward colic. How on earth could he have been poisoned? For a start, no one knew then who he was.’

  ‘And now?’ I asked. ‘How many of your lads know now that he is Tiddely Pom?’

  There was a brief, supercharged silence.