Dick Francis's Gamble

by Felix Francis

  “OK,” I said. “You’re on.”

  “Marry me first?” she asked.

  “You bet,” I said.

  It was an unusual proposal, but we were in an unusual situation.

  At nine-fifteen an operating room orderly arrived, wearing blue scrubs and a cloth hat.

  “Please be careful with my fiancée,” I said to him as he wheeled her bed out of the room and into the corridor. “She’s very precious to me.”

  I went with her to the lift. However, the orderly said that he was sorry but I couldn’t come any farther. I looked at Claudia’s frightened face until the closing lift doors cut off our line of sight, and all too quickly she was gone.

  I went back into her room and sat down on the chair.

  Never before had I felt so desperate, so helpless, and alone.

  In truth, it was not a great start to an engagement.

  Claudia didn’t come back for nearly three hours, by which time I was almost crawling up the walls of her room with worry.

  Sitting alone in that hospital room had been far worse than spending three times as long in a cell at the Paddington Green Police Station.

  I spent some time going over in my mind what must be happening downstairs in the operating room, mentally carving up the clock face into segments. First I tried to imagine how long it would take for Claudia to be put to sleep, then how long to make the incision in her body, then how long to remove the ovary, and so on. I had no idea if I was right or not, or even if I was close, but it seemed to help.

  My mental calculations, however, had her coming back to the room in two hours, and, when she didn’t, my imagination went into overdrive, envisaging all sorts of horrors. While the clock on the wall went on ticking, as if mocking me. And still Claudia didn’t return.

  By the time I finally heard her being wheeled back along the corridor, I had convinced myself that the whole thing had gone horribly wrong and Claudia had died on the operating table.

  But she wasn’t dead, she was just cold and shivering uncontrollably.

  I was so pleased to see her but she was not a happy bunny, not at all. She was sore from the surgery and feeling nauseated from the anesthetic. And she couldn’t stop the shivering.

  “It’s quite normal,” said a nurse curtly when I asked about it. “She’ll be fine soon.”

  “Can she please have another blanket?” I asked.

  Reluctantly, she agreed. And, in time, the shivering did abate, and Claudia relaxed and eventually went to sleep.

  Dr. Tomic came to see us at about two o’clock while Claudia was still sleeping.

  “I have some good news and not quite such good news,” he said to me quietly. “First, the good news is that I removed only one ovary and the other one looked perfectly fine, although I took a piece for a biopsy and it’s currently being assessed in the path lab.”

  “And the not-so-good news?” I asked.

  “The tumor was not quite fully contained in the ovary, as we had thought, and it had erupted on the surface. It’s often difficult to tell precisely from the scans.”

  “And what, exactly, does that mean?” I said.

  “It means there is every likelihood that there will be some ovarian cancer cells present in the fluid within the abdominal cavity. We will know for sure when the lab tests are complete.”

  “And?” I said.

  “In order to be sure we’ve killed off the cancer completely, I think a course or two of chemo will probably be needed.”

  “Chemotherapy?” I said.

  “I’m afraid so,” he replied. “Just to be sure.”

  “Does that mean I’ll lose my hair?” Claudia asked. Her eyes were closed, and I hadn’t realized she’d been awake and listening.

  “It might,” he said, “although the drugs are much better than they used to be.” I took that to mean yes, she would lose her hair. “But even so, it will grow back.”

  Claudia’s long, flowing jet-black hair was her pride and joy.

  “Does the chemo start straightaway?” I asked.

  “Within a few weeks,” he said. “We’ll give Claudia time to recover from the surgery first.”

  “Will it affect the other ovary?” I asked. “I read on the Internet that some cancer drugs made women infertile.”

  “The drugs used are very powerful,” he said. “They work by attacking cells that divide rapidly, like cancer cells, but they do tend to affect everything in the body to some degree. Am I to assume that preserving fertility is a priority?”

  “Yes,” said Claudia unequivocally, still not opening her eyes.

  “Then we will just have to be very careful,” he said. “Won’t we?”

  At three-thirty in the afternoon I left Claudia resting in the hospital while I went home to change and have a shower, taking a Northern Line Tube train from Warren Street to Finchley Central.

  “I won’t be long,” I told her. “About an hour and a half. Is there anything I can get you?”

  “A new body,” she said miserably.

  “I love the one you have,” I said, and she forced a smile.

  The doctor had told us that she would have to stay in the hospital for another night but she should be able to go home the following day, or on Thursday at the latest.

  The sun was shining as the Tube train rose from the dark tunnels into the daylight just before East Finchley Station. It was always a welcome sign. It meant I was nearly home.

  As I walked down Lichfield Grove I could see that there was a man standing outside my house with his finger on the doorbell. I was about to call out to him when he turned his head slightly as if looking over his shoulder.

  In spite of telling the police that I hadn’t seen Herb’s killer, I knew him instantly. And here he was, standing outside my front door in Finchley. And I didn’t think he was visiting to inquire after my health.

  My heartbeat jumped instantly to stratospheric proportions, and I stifled the shout that was already rising in my throat. I started to turn away from him but not before our eyes had made contact and I had glimpsed the long black shape in his right hand: his trusty gun, complete with silencer.

  Bugger, I thought.

  I turned and ran as fast as I could back up Lichfield Grove towards Regent’s Park Road.

  Lichfield Grove may have been used as a busy shortcut during the rush hour, but it was sleepy and deserted at four o’clock in the afternoon, with not even any schoolchildren on their way home.

  Safety, I thought, would be where there were lots of people. Surely he wouldn’t kill me with witnesses. But he had killed Herb with over sixty thousand of them.

  I chanced a glance back, having to turn my upper body due to the restricted movement in my neck. It was a mistake.

  The gunman was still behind me, only about thirty yards away, running hard and lifting his right arm to aim.

  I heard a bullet whizz past me on my left.

  I ran harder, and also I started shouting.

  “Help! Help!” I shouted as loudly as my heaving lungs would allow. “Call the police!”

  No one shouted back, and I needed the air for my aching leg muscles. Oh, to be as fit as I once was as a jockey.

  I thought I heard another bullet fly past me and zing off the pavement ahead as a ricochet, but I wasn’t stopping to check.

  I made it unharmed to Regent’s Park Road and went left around the corner. Without breaking stride, I went straight into Mr. Patel’s newsagent’s shop, pushed past the startled owner and crouched down under his counter, gasping for air.

  “Mr. Patel,” I said, “I am being chased. Please call the police.”

  I didn’t know why, perhaps it was because of his Indian subcontinent cultural background, but he didn’t become angry or question why I had invaded his space. He simply stood quietly and looked down at me, as if in slight surprise at the strange behavior of the English.

  “Mr. Patel,” I said again with urgency, still breathing hard, “I am being chased by a very dangerous ma
n. Please do not look down at me or he will know that I am here. Please call the police.”

  “What man?” he said, still looking down at me.

  “The man outside the window,” I said. Mr. Patel looked up.

  Suddenly, I remembered that I had my mobile in my pocket. As I dialed 999 for emergency I heard the shop door being opened, the little bell ringing once.

  I held my breath. I could feel my heart going thump, thump in my chest.

  “Emergency, which service?” said a voice from my phone.

  I stuffed the phone into my armpit, hoping that the newcomer into the shop hadn’t heard it.

  “Yes?” said Mr. Patel. “Can I help you, sir?”

  The newcomer made no reply, and I went on holding my breath, my chest feeling like it was going to burst.

  “Can I help you, sir?” Mr. Patel said again but more loudly.

  Again there was no reply. All I could hear were faint footsteps.

  I just had to breathe, so I let the air out through my mouth as quietly as I could and took another deep breath in.

  I wished I could see what was happening in the shop. After a few seconds I heard the door close, ringing the bell once again, but was the gunman on the inside or the outside?

  Mr. Patel stood stock-still above me, giving me no indication either way.

  “He has gone outside,” he said finally without changing his position.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  “He is standing and looking round,” Mr. Patel said. “Who is he and why is he chasing you? Are you a criminal?”

  “No,” I said, “I am not.”

  I remembered the phone under my arm. The operator had obviously got fed up waiting and had hung up. I dialed 999 again.

  “Emergency, which service?” said a voice again.

  “Police,” I said.

  “Police Incident Room, go ahead,” said another voice.

  “There’s an armed gunman in the street on Regent’s Park Road in Finchley,” I said quickly.

  Mr. Patel looked down at me.

  “Mr. Patel,” I said urgently, “please do not look down. The man might see you and come back into the shop.”

  “What number Regent’s Park Road?” said the voice on the phone.

  “Near the corner of Lichfield Grove,” I said. “Please hurry.”

  “Your name, sir?” said the voice.

  “Foxton,” I said into the phone. “Mr. Patel, what is the man doing now?”

  “He is walking away. No. He has stopped. He is looking back. Oh, goodness gracious, he is coming back this way.”

  Mr. Patel leaned down, grabbed some keys from a hook under the counter and walked out of my sight.

  “What are you doing?” I called after him urgently.

  “Locking the door,” he said.

  I didn’t have time to think whether it was a good idea or not before I heard Mr. Patel turn the key in the lock. Now the gunman would be sure where I was. And I could hear the door being shaken.

  “Mr. Patel,” I shouted, “get away from the door. The man has a gun.”

  “It is all right, Mr. Foxton,” he said with a laugh. “It is not him shaking the door, it is me. The man has gone past. I cannot see him anymore.”

  It didn’t mean he wasn’t there so I stayed exactly where I was. My heart rate may have come down a few notches, but, as far as I was concerned, it was still no laughing matter.

  “Now, Mr. Foxton, why is a man with a gun chasing you? It is like a film, no?”

  “No,” I said. “This was very real life. He was trying to kill me.”

  “But why?” he said.

  It was a good question. A very good question.

  I remained sitting on the floor behind Mr. Patel’s counter until the police arrived. It took them nearly forty minutes, and I had telephoned 999 again twice more, before two heavily armed and body-armored officers finally made an appearance at the shop door. Mr. Patel let them in.

  “About time too,” I said, standing up from my hiding place.

  “Mr. Foxton?” one of the officers asked, his machine pistol held at the ready position with his finger over the trigger.

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s me.”

  “Are you armed, sir?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Please put your hands on your head,” he said, pointing his gun towards me.

  “It’s not me who’s the gunman,” I said, slightly irritated. “It was the man who was chasing me.”

  “Put your hands on your head,” the policeman repeated with a degree of menace. “And you, sir,” he said, pointing his gun briefly towards Mr. Patel.

  We both put our hands on our heads. Mr. Patel smiled broadly as if he thought the whole thing was a huge joke.

  The second officer came forward and searched me, making sure he didn’t get between my chest and the muzzle of his colleague’s weapon. He then did likewise to Mr. Patel. Then he went through the shop and out of sight through a plastic curtain into the room behind. He soon reappeared, shaking his head. Only then did they relax a little.

  “Sorry about that, sir,” said the first officer, securing his gun across his chest with a strap. “We can’t be too careful.”

  I put my arms down. “What took you so long to get here?”

  “We had to seal off the whole area,” he said. “Standard practice when there’s a report of a gunman.” He put his finger to his ear, clearly listening to someone on his radio earpiece. “Now, sir,” he said to me, “my superintendent wants to know if you have a description of this gunman.” His tone suggested that he didn’t altogether believe that a gunman had been stalking the streets of Finchley on a sleepy Tuesday afternoon in late April.

  “I think I may have better than that,” I said. “Mr. Patel, does your closed-circuit TV system have a recorder?” I had passed some of my time waiting for the police by looking up at the small white video camera situated above the racks of cigarettes.

  “Of course,” Mr. Patel replied. “I need to have it to catch the young scoundrels who steal my stock.”

  “Then, officer,” I said. “please would you kindly inform Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson of the Merseyside Police that we have the murderer of Herb Kovak caught on video.”

  But how had he known where to find me? And why?

  12

  In the end, it was I who rang Chief Inspector Tomlinson, but not before the Armed Response Team had completed a full debriefing of the events in Finchley.

  “So you say you saw a man standing outside your front door?” asked the response team superintendent as we stood in Mr. Patel’s shop.

  “Yes,” I said. “He was ringing the doorbell.”

  “And he had a gun?”

  “Yes,” I said again, “with a silencer.”

  There was something about his demeanor that said that he too didn’t really believe me. Mr. Patel hadn’t seen any gun nor, it seemed, had anyone else.

  “He shot at me,” I said. “As I ran up Lichfield Grove. He shot at least twice. I heard the bullets whizz past my head.”

  A team was dispatched to search and in due course one of them returned with two brass empty cases in a plastic bag.

  Suddenly, everything became more serious. They believed me now.

  “You will have to come to the police station,” said the superintendent. “To give a statement.”

  “Can’t I do it here?” I asked.

  “I need to reopen my shop,” said Mr. Patel anxiously.

  “At my house, then?” I asked. “I need to get back to University College Hospital. My girlfriend had an operation this morning and she’s expecting me.”

  Reluctantly the superintendent agreed to do it at my house, and we walked down Lichfield Grove together. The road had been closed to traffic, and about a dozen police officers in dark blue coveralls were moving up the road in line abreast, crawling on all fours.

  “Looking for the bullets,” the superintendent informed me before I asked. “Do
n’t touch the door,” he said as we arrived at my house, “or the doorbell.”

  I carefully opened the door with my key, and we went into the kitchen.

  “Now, Mr. Foxton,” the superintendent said formally, “tell me why a gunman would come calling at your front door.”

  It was the question I’d been asking myself for the past hour.

  “I’m sure he was here to kill me,” I said.

  “That’s very dramatic. Why?”

  Why, indeed, when he could have done it so easily at Aintree at the same time as he killed Herb. What, I wondered, had changed in the intervening ten days that meant that I needed to be killed now but hadn’t needed to be then?

  I told the superintendent all about the murder at the Grand National, and it was then that I again suggested calling DCI Tomlinson.

  “My goodness, Mr. Foxton,” the chief inspector said with a laugh. “You seem to be making a habit of being interviewed by the police.”

  “I can assure you it’s a habit I intend to give up at the earliest opportunity,” I replied.

  The two senior policemen then spoke together for some time, and it was frustrating for me listening to only half of the conversation. Mostly they spoke about the videotape that the superintendent had removed from Mr. Patel’s recorder. The superintendent and I had watched it on the small black-and-white screen in the storeroom behind the shop. Just seeing the grainy image of the man as he had come through the shop door made the hairs on the back of my neck stand upright. He had advanced a couple of paces in and stood there, looking around. Then he had walked down the length of the store, putting his head through the plastic curtain into the storeroom behind. He then retraced his steps and went out the door, closing it behind him. Unfortunately the angle of the CCTV camera didn’t show what he did next. And none of the images showed his gun, which he must have been holding in his anorak’s pocket.

  I shivered. How close had I come to hiding in the back room? Very close.

  “Chief Inspector Tomlinson would like another word,” the superintendent said to me finally, handing over the phone.

  “Yes,” I said.