by Dick Francis
He glanced at me pityingly. “Everyone in this day and age should be able to write a simple program. Computer language is the universal tongue of the new world, as Latin was of the old.”
“Do you tell your students that?”
“Er . . . yes.”
The small screen suddenly announced READY? Ted pressed some keys on the keyboard and the screen asked WHICH RACE AT EPSOM? Ted typed DERBY, and the screen in a flash presented:TYPE NAME OF HORSE AND PRESS “ENTER”.
He put in his own name and randomly answered the ensuing questions, ending with:
“Simple,” I said.
He nodded. “The secret is in knowing which questions to ask, and in the weighting given to the answers. There’s nothing mysterious about it. Anyone could evolve such a system, given the time.”
“Jonathan says there are several of them in the United States.”
Ted nodded. “I’ve got one of them here.” He opened a drawer and brought out what looked like a pocket calculator. “It’s a baby computer with quite elegant programs,” he said. “I bought it out of curiosity. It only works on American racing, of course, because one of its bases is that all tracks are identical in shape, left-handed ovals. It is geared chiefly to prize money. I understand that if you stick to its instruction book religiously you can certainly win, but of course like Liam O’Rorke’s system, you have to work at it to get results.”
“And never back a hunch?”
“Absolutely not,” he said seriously. “Hunches are hopelessly unscientific.”
I looked at him curiously. “How often do you go to the races?”
“To the races themselves? Practically never. I watch them, of course, on television, sometimes. But you don’t need to, to win. All you need are the form books and objectivity.”
It seemed to me a dry view of the world where I spent my life. Those beautiful creatures, their speed, their guts, their determination, all reduced to statistical probabilities and soulless microchips.
“These copies of yours,” he said, “do you want them open, so that anyone can use them?”
“How do you mean?”
“If you like you can have them with passwords, so that they wouldn’t work if anyone stole them from you.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course,” he said, as if he were never anything else. “I’ve always put passwords on all my stuff.”
“Er . . . how do you do it?”
“Easiest thing in the world. I’ll show you.” He flicked a few switches and the screen suddenly announced READY?
“You see that question mark,” Ted said. “A question mark always means that the computer operator must answer it by typing something. In this case, if you don’t type in the correct sequence of letters the program will stop right there. Try it. See what happens.”
I obediently typed EPSOM. Ted pressed the key marked ENTER. The screen gave a sort of flick and went straight back to READY?
Ted smiled. “The password on this tape is QUITE. Or it is at the moment. One can change the password easily.” He typed QUITE and pressed ENTER and the screen flashed into WHICH RACE AT EPSOM?
“See the question mark?” Ted said. “It always needs an answer.”
I thought about question marks and said I’d better not have passwords, if he didn’t mind.
“Whatever you say.”
He typed BREAK and LIST 10-80, and the screen suddenly produced a totally different-looking format.
“This is the program itself,” Ted said. “See line 10?”
Line 10 read INPUT A$: IF A$ = “QUITE” THEN 20 ELSE PRINT “READY?”
Line 20 read PRINT “WHICH RACE AT EPSOM?”
“If you don’t type QUITE,” Ted said, “you never get to line 20.”
“Neat,” I agreed. “But what’s to prevent you looking at the program, like we are now, and seeing that you need to type QUITE?”
“It’s quite easy to make it impossible for anyone to LIST the program. If you buy other people’s programs, you can practically never LIST them. Because if you can’t LIST them you can’t make copies, and no one wants their work pinched in that way.”
“Um,” I said. “I’d like tapes you can LIST, and without passwords.”
“OK.”
“How do you get rid of the password?”
He smiled faintly, typed 10 and then pressed ENTER. Then he typed LIST 10-80 again, but this time when the program appeared on the screen there was no line 10 at all. Line 20 was the first.
“Elementary, you see,” he said.
“So it is.”
“It will take me quite a while to get rid of the passwords and make the copies,” he said. “So why don’t you go and sit upstairs by the pool. To be honest, I’d get on faster on my own.”
Pleased enough to agree, I returned to the lazy bamboo loungers and listened to Jane talking about her daughters. An hour crawled by before Ted reappeared bearing the cassettes, and even then I couldn’t leave without an instructional lecture.
“To run those tapes you’ll need either an old Grantley personal computer, and there aren’t many of them about nowadays—they’re obsolete—or any type of company computer, as long as it will load from a cassette recorder.”
He watched my incomprehension and repeated what he’d said.
“Right,” I said.
He told me how to load Grantley BASIC, which was the first item on side 1 of the tapes, into a company computer, which had no language of its own built in. He again told me twice.
“Right.”
“Good luck with them,” he said.
I thanked him wholeheartedly, and Jane also, and as quickly as decently possible set off on the drive home.
Half a mile down the road, compelled by a feeling of dread, I stopped by a telephone booth and called Cassie. She answered at the very first ring and sounded uncharacteristically shaky.
“I’m so glad it’s you,” she said. “How long will you be?”
“About an hour.”
“Do hurry.”
“Is Angelo—?”
“He’s been banging ever since you left and wrenching at the door. I’ve been in the kitchen. He’s shaking those planks. He’ll have the door off its hinges if he goes on and on. I can’t strengthen the barricade. I’ve tried, but with one arm—”
“Cassie,” I said, “go up to the pub.”
“But—”
“Darling, go. Please go.”
“What if he gets out?”
“If he gets out I want you safe up the road with Bananas.”
“All right.”
“I’ll see you,” I said, and disconnected. Drove like the furies toward home, taking a chance here and there and getting away with it. Across Royston Heath like a streak, weaving through pottering Sunday-outing traffic. Through the town itself; snarling down the last stretch, crossing the M11 motorway, and finally branching off the main road into Six Mile Bottom village.
Wondering all the way what Angelo would do if he did get free. Smash up the cottage? Set fire to it? Lie in wait somewhere for me to return.
The one thing he would not do was to go meekly away.
16
I walked carefully up the path to the lockless front door, which we no longer guarded with the chest because Cassie found climbing through the window too difficult.
The birds were singing in the garden. Would they sing if Angelo were among them, hidden in the bushes? No they wouldn’t. I reached the door and pushed it open.
The cottage lay silent as if long deserted, and with spirits sinking I went through to the kitchen.
Angelo had ripped away one of the main timbers of the door and had dislodged two of the extra planks which had been wedging it shut. The door in fact was still closed, but the knife had gone from the latch.
The hole in the door was large enough to shove an arm through, but not to allow the passage of a grown man. The table and chairs and the two lowest planks hadn’t shifted, but with the progress he�
�d made their stopping power was temporary. I had come home not a minute too soon.
“Angelo,” I said.
He appeared almost instantly at the hole in the door, scowling furiously at my return. He put both hands into the gap and violently tried to wrench away the wood from each side, and I saw that he had already been bleeding from his exertions.
“I’m going to let you out,” I said. “You can save your strength.”
“I’ll get you.” The deep growl again. The statement of intent.
“Yeah,” I said. “I dare say. Now listen, because you’ll want to hear.”
He waited, eyes black with ferocity in the shadows.
I said, “You believe that my brother cheated you out of some computer tapes. They weren’t yours to start with, but we’ll not argue about that. At this moment I have those tapes. They’re here in the cottage. It’s taken me a good while to get them, which is why you’ve stayed here this long in the cellar. I’ll give you those tapes. Are you listening?”
He wouldn’t say so, but his attention was riveted.
“You spent fourteen years brooding over the fortune you lost. I’ll give it to you. Fourteen years swearing to kill my brother. He’s dead. You came here to do violent damage, and for that you could lose your parole. I’m prepared not to report you. In return for the computer tapes and for your continued freedom, you can clear out of here and henceforth leave me strictly alone.”
He stared through the door with little change of expression, certainly without joy.
I said, “You may have been brooding over your revenge for so many years that you can’t face not having the prospect of it there any longer to keep you going. You may fall apart from lack of purpose.” I shrugged. “But if I give you liberty and the treasure you want, I’ll expect the slate to be wiped clean between you and me.” I paused. “Do you understand?”
He still said absolutely nothing.
“If you agree that what I’m offering is OK,” I said, “you can throw out that knife you took from the door latch, and I will give you the three tapes and the keys to your car, which is still where you left it.”
Silence.
“If you choose not to accept that offer,” I said, “I’ll telephone to the police to come and fetch you, and they’ll hear all about you breaking my friend’s arm.”
“They’ll have you for keeping me in here.”
“Maybe. But if they do you’ll never get those tapes. And I mean it. Never. I’ll destroy them immediately.”
He went away from behind the door but after a long minute he reappeared.
“You’ll trick me,” he said. “Like your brother.”
I shook my head. “It’s not worth it. I want you out of my life altogether and permanently.”
He made a fierce thrusting movement with his unshaven chin, a gesture which could be taken as assent.
“All right, then,” he said. “Hand them over.”
I nodded. Turned away from him. Went into the sitting room and sorted out one copy of each tape, shutting the three spares into a chest drawer. When I returned Angelo was still standing by the door—still suspicious, still wary.
“Tapes.” I showed him. “Car keys.” I held them up. “Where’s the knife?”
He raised his hand and let me see it: a dinner knife, not oversharp, but destructive enough to be counted.
I laid the three cassettes on a small tray and held it out to him, and he put his arm through the hole to snatch them up.
“Now the knife,” I said.
He dropped it out onto the tray. I slid it into my hand and replaced it with the keys.
“All right,” I said. “Go down the steps. I’ll undo the barricade. Then you can come up and go out. And if you’ve any thoughts of rushing me, just remember your parole.”
He nodded sullenly.
“Have you still got that computer you bought fourteen years ago?”
“Dad smashed it. When I got sent up. Out of rage.”
Like son, like father . . . “The tapes are still in the same computer language,” I said. “Grantley BASIC. The language itself is there, on side 1. You’ll need to know that.”
He scowled. Beyond him entirely to be placated, let alone pleased.
“Go on,” I said. “I’ll unbar the door.”
He disappeared from the impromptu window, and I tugged away the effective planks and pulled the table and chairs from their stations, and stood finally out of his arms’ reach behind them.
“Come up,” I called. “Undo the latch and be on your way.”
He came out fast, clutching the cassettes in one blood-stained hand and the keys in the other, gave me a brief hard stare which nonetheless held little of the former menace, and disappeared through the sitting room toward the front door. I followed and watched him go down the path, first quickening his step and almost running as he turned into the lane and then fairly sprinting out of sight toward where he’d left his car. In a short time he came blasting back again, driving as if he feared I would still somehow stop him; but in truth all I did want was to be rid of him once and for all.
The empty cellar stank like the lair of an animal.
I looked into it briefly and decided it was a job for a shovel, a hose, a broom and some strong disinfectant; and while I was collecting those things Bananas and Cassie walked anxiously along from the pub.
“We saw you come,” she said, “and we saw him go. I wanted to be here but Bananas said it might snarl things up.”
“He was right.” I kissed her soundly, both from love and tension release. “Angelo hates to lose face.”
“You gave him the tapes?” Bananas asked.
“Yeah.”
“And may they choke him,” Cassie said.
I smiled. “They may not. I’d guess Ted Pitts is worth a million.”
“Really?” Her eyebrows shot up. “Then why don’t we—”
“It takes time and work. Ted Pitts lives right at the London end of the M1, half a mile off the country’s biggest artery. I’ll bet he spends countless days beating up that road to towns in the North, traipsing around betting shops, sucking his honey. It’s what I guess he does, anyway. He was near Manchester yesterday, his wife said. A different town every day, so that no one gets to know him.”
“What difference would that make?” Bananas said.
I explained what happened to constant winners. “I’ll bet there isn’t a single bookie who knows Ted Pitts by sight.”
“If you did it,” Bananas said thoughtfully, “I suppose they’d know you at once.”
I shook my head. “Only on the racecourse. Round the backstreet betting shops in any big town I’d be just another mug.”
They both looked at me expectantly.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can just see me spending my life that way.”
“Think of the loot,” Bananas said.
“And no tax,” said Cassie.
I thought of Ted Pitts’s splendid house and of my own lack of amassed goods. Thought of him walking the upper slopes of Swiss mountains, restoring his spirit, wandering but coming home. Thought of my lack of a settled life-pattern and my hatred of being tied down. Thought of the way I’d enjoyed the past months, making decisions, running a business, knowing all the time it was just for a year, not a lifetime, and being reassured by such impermanency. Thought of spending hot summer days and wet winter afternoons in betting shops, playing the percentages, joylessly, methodically making a million.
“Well?” Bananas said.
“Maybe one day, when I’m hungry.”
“You’ve no sense.”
“You do it then,” I said. “Give up the pub. Give up the cooking. Take to the road.”
He stared at me while he thought of it, then he grimaced and said, “There’s more to life than making money. Not a lot, but some.”
“One of these days,” said Cassie with sweet certainty, “you’ll both do it. Not even a saint could sit on a gold mine and be too lazy to pick up the
nuggets.”
“You think it’s just lazy?”
“I sure do. Where’s your buccaneering heart? Where’s the glint of piracy? What about the battle cry of those old north-country industrialists—‘where there’s muck there’s brass’?” She looked alight with enthusiasm, a glow I guessed derived as much from Angelo’s absence as from the thought of an available fortune.
“If you feel the same when I’ve finished for Luke Houston,” I said, “I’ll give it a trial. Just for a while.”
“Picky,” she said. “That’s what you are.”
All the same it was in better spirits that I set about cleaning the cellar and making it fit for fishing gear to live in; and in the late afternoon all three of us sat in the sun on the cottage grass while Cassie and Bananas discussed how they would spend the loot they thought I would inevitably chase.
They already felt as I did that Angelo’s revengeful lust had been at last dissipated, and they said he had even done us a favor as without his violent attack I would never have sought out Ted Pitts.
“Good can come out of bad,” Cassie said with satisfaction.
And bad of good, I thought. Jonathan’s conjuring tricks had trapped Angelo thoroughly and made it certain that he would be convicted empty-handed. Had ensured that for fourteen years Angelo would be unable to kill anyone else. But that particular good sequence of actions which had seemed so final at the time had proved to be only a plug for a simmering volcano. The psychopathic young man had at length erupted as a full-blown coarsened thug, no longer as Jonathan had described him, occasionally high on the drug of recklessness, but more plainly, comprehensively, violent.
Time changes perspectives. From disasters could come successes, and from successes, disasters. A pity, I thought, that one could never perceive whether to weep or cheer at the actual event.
Our lives gradually quietened to sensible proportions. Cassie went back to work in a sling, and Bananas invented a new delight involving liquid spiced beef; and I began a series of forays to stud farms to take preliminary peeks at the yearlings soon to be offered at the sales, all too aware that the climax of my year was approaching, the test by which Luke would judge me, looking back. To buy young stock that would win would be satisfactory; to buy a colt to sire a dynasty would be luck. Somewhere between the two there lay an area in which judgment would turn out to have been good, indifferent or absent, and it was there that I hoped to make as few mistakes as possible.