Dick Francis's Gamble

by Felix Francis

“Yeah, me too,” said Ben, holding up a glass of orange liquid. “But I’ll get a proper skinful later at the Boat Club dinner.”

  “Rowing?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. Tonight’s our home celebration for beating the hated enemy.”

  “The hated enemy?” said Claudia.

  “Cambridge,” Ben said, smiling broadly. “In the Boat Race. Beat them by half a length. Dead easy!”

  “Were you in the crew?” I asked.

  “Certainly was,” he said, pulling himself up to his full six feet plus plus. “Number 4—in the engine room.”

  “Well done,” I said, meaning it. “Are you trying for the Olympics next?”

  “No. Not for me. I was good, but not that good. It’s time to retire gracefully and get my life back. These last few weeks I’ve really enjoyed not having to be on the river every morning at dawn and in all weather. Now I’m just working hard for my finals.”

  “And then what?” I asked. “Politics?”

  “That’s the plan,” he said. “A special adviser and political researcher for the party, at least for a while. Then Parliament.”

  Then the world, I thought.

  “Commons or Lords?” I asked.

  “Commons,” he said with a laugh. “The power house. There’s no place left in the Lords for the likes of us, not anymore. And I wouldn’t want it even if there was.”

  Ben himself was a walking power house, and his enthusiasm was infectious. I was sure he’d go far.

  “Good luck,” I said to him. “I personally can’t think of anything worse than being a politician. Everyone I know seems to hate them.”

  “No, they don’t,” he said sharply. “All they hate is that it’s other people who are the politicians when they want the power for themselves.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with him and not least because I had a feeling I would lose and lose badly. If Ben told me the grass was blue and the sky was green, I’d probably believe him. Except that, this particular evening, the sky wasn’t green or blue, it was dark gray.

  Claudia and I took our drinks out onto the private balcony, and I briefly turned on my phone to check my voice mail. There was a new message from Chief Inspector Tomlinson.

  “The meeting is fixed for tomorrow morning, Thursday,” his voice said. “Eleven a.m., at the Paddington Green Police Station.”

  Not back in their holding cells, I hoped. I’d had my fill of those.

  From our vantage point on the box balcony, Claudia and I looked down at the few brave souls rushing around in the rain beneath us.

  “It’s such a shame,” Claudia said. “The weather makes or breaks an event like this. Everyone gets so wet.”

  “It’s worse for the jockeys,” I said. “They’ll not just get wet, they’ll get completely covered in mud kicked up from the horses ahead of them. On days like this, being a front-runner is the only sensible option. At least you can then see where you’re going and where the fences are. However, the downside is that if your horse falls, the rest trample over you as you lie on the ground.”

  “At least they’re getting paid,” she said.

  “Not tonight, they’re not. All the races are for amateur riders only.”

  “Then they’re mad,” she said.

  I laughed. “Not at all. For some of them, tonight is the best evening of their whole year. They’ve been working hard all winter to qualify their horses for this one meeting, and a bit of dampness isn’t going to spoil their party.”

  “Well,” said Claudia, “I’d definitely want a big fee to ride in this rain.”

  Not me, I thought. I’d happily do it for nothing. In fact, I’d pay to be able to join them, and handsomely.

  “Amateur jockeys do it just for the love of the sport,” I said. “Indeed, the very word amateur comes from the Latin word amator, meaning ‘lover.’”

  “You’re my amator,” she said quietly, turning towards me and cuddling up with her arms inside my coat.

  “Not now, darling,” I said. “And not here. I’m working, remember?”

  “Shame,” she said, letting me go. “Your job is so boring.”

  That seemed to be the unanimous conclusion.

  Claudia and I braved the damp conditions to go down to the Weighing Room and the parade ring after the second race. We went to support Jan, who had a runner in the third.

  “Not much chance, I’m afraid,” she said as we sheltered under the terrace roof and she emerged from the Weighing Room with a small saddle over her arm. “The horse is fine, but the owner insists his son should ride it and he’s only eighteen. He’s still just a boy, and this mare needs to be held up to the last. She gets lazy if she’s in front too soon.”

  “But I was only eighteen when I rode my first winner for you,” I reminded her.

  “Yes,” she replied. “But you were good, very good. This boy is barely average.” She rushed off towards the saddling boxes to prepare the horse.

  Claudia and I stayed under the cover in front of the Weighing Room and, presently, Jan’s mare came into the parade ring, closely followed by her and the horse’s owner.

  I scanned my soggy race program to see who it was and instead noticed that one of the other runners in the race was owned by our host, Viscount Shenington. I looked around the parade ring and spotted him and some of his other guests huddling under large golf umbrellas at the far end. They were talking to the horse’s trainer, the gossip Martin Gifford.

  The jockeys were called from the Changing Room, and the eager mob streamed out onto the grass, their brightly colored silks in stark contrast to the gathering gloom of the day.

  Claudia and I decided to stay down near the Weighing Room for the race rather than to go back up to the grandstand box. We could watch all the action on the big-screen television and we wouldn’t have to get wet coming down again if Jan’s horse won. And also, I thought, I didn’t really want to have to talk to Martin Gifford, who would surely go up to the box with his owner to watch their horse run.

  But, on that score, I was sadly wrong.

  Martin Gifford came to stand on the Weighing Room terrace right next to me to watch the race on the television.

  “Hi, Foxy,” he said. “Penny for your thoughts.” He seemed to have recovered from, or forgotten, our little spat at Sandown. “What a horrid day.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “I’m quite surprised you’re here for the hunter chasers,” he said. “I wouldn’t be if I didn’t have this damn runner. I tried to talk the owner out of running it, but he insisted. It should win, though.”

  Now what was I to make of that? Martin Gifford made a habit of saying his horses had no chance and then they went on to win. I knew that from the last meeting at Cheltenham, when both his horses had won after he’d told me they wouldn’t. But was the reverse also true? Was this horse, in fact, a useless no-hoper? Did I even care? I wasn’t going to back it either way.

  I looked again at my race program. A rating was printed alongside the details for each horse as a guide to punters. The higher the rating the better the horse was supposed to be, but of course it didn’t always work out that way. Martin’s horse certainly had a high rating for what was otherwise a moderate field of runners. Perhaps he really was telling the truth. I glanced up at an approximate-odds indicator, and the public clearly agreed with him. The horse was starting as a very short-priced favorite.

  We watched on the television as the horses jumped off very slowly from the start, which was at the far end of the finishing straight. With more than two complete circuits in the three-and-a-half-mile race, and in the heavy ground, no one was really prepared to make the running, and the fifteen horses had hardly broken into a gallop by the time they reached the first fence.

  “Come on, you bugger,” said Martin, next to me. “I could really do with this one winning. Perhaps then the bloody owner will pay me some of his training fees.”

  I turned my head towards him slightly. Maybe Martin could be useful after all.
r />   “Slow payer, is he?” I asked.

  “Bloody right,” said Martin without taking his eyes from the screen. “But not so much slow, more like dead stop. I’ve even threatened to apply to Weatherbys to have the ownership of his horses transferred to me. He owes me a bloody fortune.”

  Weatherbys was the company that administered all of British racing and through which all racehorse registrations were held.

  “How many horses does he have?” I asked.

  “Too many,” he said. “Twelve all together, I think, but only six are with me, thank God, including one he used to jointly own with his brother. He hasn’t paid me anything now for months. I tell you, I’m getting desperate.”

  “But you’ll get your money in the end, surely.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Shenington claims he hasn’t got it. Says he’s nearly bankrupt.”

  How interesting, I thought. The Roberts Family Trust, it seems, could happily lose five million pounds on an investment in Bulgaria, but the senior trustee couldn’t pay his training fees because he was broke.

  And how about hiring a private box for this meeting? It wasn’t the sort of behavior I would have expected from someone flirting with the bankruptcy courts. Not unless, of course, he had wanted to maintain a façade of affluence and respectability. Maybe the other guests were his creditors. Perhaps it was not so surprising that Martin hadn’t been invited up there to watch the race.

  “But Lord Shenington must have pots of money,” I said.

  “Apparently, that’s not so,” said Martin. “Seems his father, the old Earl, still keeps his fingers very tightly on the family purse strings. And what money Shenington did have of his own, he’s lost.”

  “Lost?” I said.

  “Gambling,” Martin said. “On the horses and at the casino tables. Addicted to it, evidently.”

  “And how do you know this?” I asked with a degree of skepticism.

  “Shenington told me so himself. Even used it as his excuse for not paying my bills.”

  “So why are you still running his horses?” I asked. “Did he pay the entry fee for this race?”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “I paid it.”

  “You’re mad,” I said.

  “He has promised me all the prize money if it wins.”

  We both watched on the screen as the horses swung past the grandstands for the first time. The daylight was now so dismal that, in spite of the different silks, it wasn’t easy to spot which horse was which, but they were all racing closely packed, and there was still a long way to go. All of them remained in with a chance at the prize money, but that wouldn’t be much, I thought, just a few thousand pounds at most. I looked at the race conditions in the race program. The prize to the winner was just over four thousand, and a month’s training fees for six horses would be at least double that. The win would hardly pay off much of what Martin was owed, even if Shenington kept his promise, which somehow I doubted.

  By the time the runners passed the grandstand for the second time, their number had been reduced by fallers from fifteen to twelve, and those twelve were no longer closely bunched together but spread out over more than a furlong. And if it had been difficult to tell them apart last time around, it was almost impossible to do so now as they raced towards the television camera, each with a uniform mud-splattered brown frontage. Only when the horses swung away onto their final circuit was it feasible to tell them apart by the colored patterns on the backs of the jockeys’ silks.

  Both Jan’s and Martin’s horses were still in the leading group, although even those appeared tired and leaden-footed as they reached the highest point of the course and then swung left-handed down the hill towards the finishing straight. Three and a half miles was a very, very long way in such heavy going.

  Just as Jan had feared, the young jockey on her horse took the lead too soon. Even on the screen, it was clear to see that the horse didn’t enjoy being on her own in front, and the mare started to falter and weave about, almost coming to a complete stop just before the last fence. She would have probably refused to jump altogether if another horse hadn’t galloped past and given her a lead to hop over the obstacle with almost zero forward motion, not that the other horse seemed that keen to win the race either.

  That horse too swung from side to side, as the jockey kept looking around as if he was wondering where all the other horses had gone. The answer was that most of them had pulled up on their way down the hill, figuring, quite rightly, that they didn’t have any chance of winning.

  Only three of the original fifteen starters actually crossed the finishing line, with Martin Gifford’s horse home first. Jan’s mare was second, finishing at a walk and some twenty lengths behind the winner, and then one of the others finally staggered up the hill to be third and a very long way last.

  The rain eased a little, and Claudia and I made our way over to the white plastic rails that ran across between the parade ring and the unsaddling enclosure to watch the exhausted horses come in.

  Jan wasn’t very pleased. “She could have won that,” she said, referring to her mare. “I told the stupid little arse not to hit the front too soon. Certainly not until after the last, I told him, and then what does he do? God help me.” Martin Gifford, meanwhile, was beaming from ear to ear, which was more than could be said for his horse’s owner.

  Viscount Shenington looked fit to explode with fury, and he gave the victorious rider such a look that I wondered if this young man, like Billy Searle before him, had also won a race which he’d previously agreed to lose, not that he’d had much choice in the matter. Short of pulling up during the run-in, or purposely falling off, he’d had no alternative but to win.

  And Lord Shenington was certainly a nob.

  Perhaps I would look at the records to see if Billy had ever ridden any of Shenington’s horses.

  “I’m freezing,” said Jan, coming over to us again after the horses had been led away. “Either of you two fancy a Whisky Mac to warm up? I’m buying.”

  As the rain began to fall heavily once again, the three of us scampered over to the Arkle Bar on the lower level of the grandstand.

  “How well do you know Viscount Shenington?” I asked Jan as we sipped our mixture of Scotch whisky and ginger wine.

  “I know of him, of course,” she said. “But not well enough to speak to.”

  “We’re guests in his box,” Claudia said.

  “Are you indeed?” Jan said. “He does seems to have quite a lot of clout in racing, and his father is a long-standing member of the Jockey Club.”

  “He’s a client of the firm’s,” I said. “But not one of mine.” She smiled at me. She was my client, she was saying but without using the words, and don’t forget it.

  “Do you know if he’s got any financial troubles?” I asked her.

  “How would I know anything about his finances?” she said. “You’re the specialist in that department.”

  True, I thought, but he wasn’t my client, and I could hardly ask Gregory.

  We watched the fourth race on a television in the bar, the winner again coming in exhausted and smothered in thick mud.

  “They ought to do something when the going’s as heavy as this,” Jan said.

  “Do what?” Claudia asked.

  “Make the races shorter or reduce the weights.”

  “You can’t realistically reduce the weights,” I said. “Half of them are carrying overweight already.” Most amateur jockeys were taller and heavier than the professionals.

  “The races should be made shorter, then. Most of these poor horses are finishing half dead. Three and a half miles is too far in this mud.”

  She was right, of course, but how could the clerk of the course predict the course conditions when planning the races several months in advance?

  “Right,” said Jan decisively, finishing her drink, “I’ve had enough of this misery. I’m going home.”

  “Can’t we go too?” Claudia asked, shivering.<
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  “Not yet,” I said. “I’ve still got to talk to Viscount Shenington.”

  Claudia looked far from happy.

  “I’m sure Jan would take you back to Mum’s place, if you’d like,” I said. “It’s only a mile or so down the road from here.”

  “No problem,” said Jan.

  “Here,” I said, taking my mother’s house key from my pocket. “I’ll be back by ten, and I’ll collect Mum from Joan’s on the way.”

  Claudia took the key but slowly, as if nervous.

  “Jan will see you into the cottage,” I said, trying to be reassuring. “Then lock yourself in, and open the door only for me.”

  Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure about going back to the cottage on her own, but I could see that she was very cold, and she was also not yet fully recovered from her operation. Truth be told, I would be much happier if she went with Jan as I could then concentrate on what I had to ask Shenington, and be quick about it.

  “OK,” she said. “But please don’t be long.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “I promise.”

  Shenington’s box was much emptier when I went back up there before the fifth race, and there was no sign of Ben.

  “He’s had to go back to Oxford,” explained his father as I removed my Barbour and hung it on a hook by the door, the rainwater running down the waxed material and dripping off the sleeves onto the carpet. “He said to say good-bye.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “He’s a very nice young man. You should be proud of him.”

  “Yes, thank you,” he replied. “But he can also be a bit idealistic at times.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing in the young?” I said.

  “Not always,” he replied, staring at the wall above my head. “We all have to live in the real world. To Ben, everything is either right or wrong, black or white. There’s no middle ground, no compromise, and little or no tolerance of other people’s failings.”

  It was quite a statement, I thought, and one clearly born out of a certain degree of conflict between father and son. Perhaps Ben didn’t easily tolerate his father’s addiction to gambling.