Silks

by Dick Francis

  ‘Beyond a reasonable doubt,’ he said as if quoting.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But there is always some doubt, isn’t there?’ he said. ‘Unless you have it on film.’

  ‘There’s some doubt even then,’ I said. ‘Gone are the days of a hard negative to work from. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that a digital camera never lies. They do, and often. No, my job is to persuade the jury that any doubt they may have is at least reasonable.’

  ‘How genteel.’ He laughed.

  Genteel is not how I would describe the Julian Trent baseballbat approach to persuasion.

  ‘Have you ever heard of anyone called Julian Trent?’ I asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Should I?’

  ‘I just wondered,’ I said. He hadn’t appeared to be lying. If he was, he was good at it.

  ‘Is he in racing?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I asked just on the off chance.’

  ‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘Our industry, racing that is, it’s very insular. Everyone in it knows everyone else but we really don’t know anyone not connected, anyone from outside.’

  I knew what he meant. The law could be like that too. It was one of the reasons I had chosen to continue taking my pleasure from a sport so far removed from the formality and deathly slow pace of the courts.

  The small dark-haired waitress popped her head out of the door and informed us that lunch was about to be served, so would we please take our seats.

  The remaining guests had arrived while I had been out on the balcony and I found myself sitting on the long side of the table between Francesca Dacey and Joanna, wife of Nicholas Osbourne, the trainer I had gone to in Lambourn all those years ago. Nicholas and I had nodded cordially to each other as we had sat down. Sadly, there had been no warmth in our greeting. Too many years of animosity, I thought, and I couldn’t even remember why.

  Joanna, meanwhile, couldn’t have been friendlier and even squeezed my knee beneath the table cloth as I sat down. She had always flirted with me. I suddenly wondered if that was why Nick had become so antagonistic towards me. I looked across the table at him. He was fuming, so I winked at him and laughed. He didn’t seem at all certain how to react.

  ‘Nick,’ I said loudly. ‘Will you please tell your wife to stop flirting with me, I’m a married man.’

  He seemed unsure how to reply.

  ‘But…’ he tailed off.

  ‘My wife might be dead,’ I said, with a smile that I didn’t feel. ‘But I’m still in love with her.’

  He seemed to relax a little. ‘Joanna, my darling,’ he said. ‘Leave the poor boy alone.’ And he smiled back at me with the first genuine sign of friendship for fifteen years.

  ‘Silly old fool,’ Joanna said quietly to me. ‘He gets so jealous. I’d have left him years ago if I was ever going to.’

  I squeezed her knee back. Nicholas would have had a fit.

  ‘So tell me what you’re up to,’ she said as we ate the starter of steamed asparagus with Hollandaise sauce.

  ‘I’m representing Steve Mitchell,’ I said.

  Francesca Dacey, on my other side, jumped a little in her seat. The chairs were so close together round the table that I felt it clearly.

  ‘How exciting,’ said Joanna with relish. ‘Is he guilty?’

  ‘That’s for the jury to decide,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be so boring,’ Joanna said, grabbing my knee again beneath the table. ‘Tell me. Did he do it?’

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked her. Francesca was trying not to show that she was listening.

  ‘He must have,’ she said. ‘Otherwise why have they kept him in prison for so long?’

  ‘But he hasn’t been tried yet,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, but it stands to reason,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t have arrested him if he didn’t do it. And everyone knows that Barlow and Mitchell hated each other’s guts.’

  ‘That doesn’t make him a murderer,’ I said. ‘In fact, if everyone knew that he hated Barlow so much then he was the obvious person to frame for his murder.’

  ‘That’s a bit far-fetched though, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Doesn’t everyone who’s guilty say they were framed?’

  ‘A few must be telling the truth,’ I said.

  Our empty starter plates were removed and were replaced with the main course of chicken breast in a mustard sauce. Francesca Dacey had the vegetarian option of penne pasta with pesto.

  Joanna Osbourne turned to talk to the man on her left, another Lambourn trainer whose reputation I knew rather better than the man himself. I, meanwhile, turned to Francesca on my right. She was giving a good impression of a health inspector, so keen was she to keep her eyes firmly fixed on her food.

  ‘So how long have you known Steve Mitchell?’ I asked her quietly.

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. But both of us knew she was lying.

  ‘Were you with him the day Scot Barlow died?’ I asked her, so quietly that no one else would have been able to hear.

  ‘No,’ she replied in the same manner. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ But we both did.

  ‘Were you really gone from Steve’s house by two thirty?’ I said, keeping my eyes firmly on my chicken.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said under her breath. I thought for a moment that she was going to get up and leave, but she took a couple of deep breaths and went on studying her pasta. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Absolutely. I had to be home by two thirty to meet the plumber. He came to fix the dishwasher.’

  So, just as Steve had told me, getting her involved wouldn’t actually give him an alibi for Barlow’s murder.

  ‘Steve didn’t tell me,’ I said to her, turning towards her ear so that others wouldn’t hear. ‘He refused to say who it was he was with.’

  I wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or not.

  ‘Please.’ She gulped. ‘Please don’t tell my husband,’ she pleaded in a whisper.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No need to.’

  She half coughed, half sobbed and then suddenly stood up.

  ‘Sorry,’ she croaked to our host. ‘Something went down the wrong way.’ She rushed out, holding a white linen napkin to her face. One of the other ladies followed her out. Simon Dacey watched in obvious embarrassment.

  Cheltenham during the Festival is like no other day at the races anywhere in the world. After lunch I wandered around absorbing the atmosphere. I walked down to the Guinness Village, now an institution at the track and the transient home to thousands of Irish whose annual pilgrimage to Gloucestershire does much to make this event so unique. Irish folk bands and English rock bands vied for favour in the huge marquee behind a scaffold-built temporary grandstand, entertaining the crowd prior to the main attraction of the afternoon, the racing itself.

  I leaned on the white plastic rail next to the horse walk to watch a quartet of happy punters from across the Irish Sea. They all wore outrageous green and black huge leprechaun hats and they had linked arms in a line like a scene from Zorba the Greek. They were trying to perform an Irish jig and I laughed out loud as they came a cropper and sat down heavily on a grassy bank. All were in good humour, aided and abetted by a continuous flow of the black stuff, the Guinness.

  ‘Hello, stranger,’ said a familiar voice behind me. I smiled broadly and turned round.

  ‘Hello, Eleanor,’ I said, and I gave her a kiss on the cheek. ‘How lovely to see you. Are you here for work or pleasure?

  ‘Both really,’ she said. ‘Busman’s holiday for me today. I am technically on call but that means I can do pretty much what I want. I just have to carry this bleep.’ She produced a small rectangular black item from her cavernous handbag.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, but not here,’ she said indicating the Guinness bar.

  ‘No,’ I agreed.

  We went in search of one of the bars under the grandstand but they were all packed with a scrum ten deep to get served.

  ‘Com
e on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go up to the boxes.’

  I was sure that Edward Cartwright, my host, wouldn’t mind me bringing Eleanor into his box and so it turned out. In fact, he rather monopolized her and left me wishing we had stayed in the crush downstairs.

  I had seen Eleanor twice since the previous November. The first time had been in London just a week later, when I had asked her to a black-tie dinner in the Hall at Gray’s Inn. It hadn’t been a particularly successful evening. I should have opted for a table for two in a candle-lit Italian restaurant rather than the long refectory tables and benches in Hall.

  The seating plan had us sitting opposite each other rather than side by side as I had hoped and conversation between us had been difficult, not only due to the noise of three hundred people eating and talking at once, but also because the centre of the table was full of flowers, silver candelabras, and a detritus of wine glasses, condiments and place-cards.

  We had hardly spoken a word to each other the whole evening and I think she had been bored by the speeches, which had contained too many ‘in’ jokes for the lawyers. At the end of the dinner she had jumped straight back into a cab and rushed off to Paddington for the last train home.

  Why I had asked her to that dinner, I could not imagine. If I had wanted a romantic evening à deux, I couldn’t have chosen anything less appropriate. Maybe, that was the trouble. Maybe I hadn’t actually wanted a romantic evening à deux in the first place. It was silly to admit, but perhaps I was scared to embark on a new amorous adventure. It also made me feel guilty. Guilty that I was somehow deserting Angela.

  The second time we had met had been even more of a disaster. We had both been guests at a Christmas ball thrown by a big racing sponsor in the grandstand at Newbury racecourse. I had been there in a party put together by Paul and Laura Newington, and Eleanor had been in another group, one of the many from Lambourn. I had been so delighted to see her again and had immediately asked her to dance. But she had been with someone else and he’d been determined that I wouldn’t get a look-in with ‘his’ girl. I had felt wretched all evening. It was not just that I had lost out to another, it was that, maybe, I had suddenly realized that the time was now right and I had missed my chance. The bus had come along willingly and had opened its doors to pick me up, but I had declined the offer and now it had driven off, leaving me standing alone at the bus-stop. I now worried that it might have been the last bus, and that I would remain waiting at the stop for ever.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Eleanor said, coming up behind me again. I had been leaning on the balcony rail aimlessly watching the massed crowds below and I hadn’t noticed her escape the clutches of Edward and come outside to join me.

  ‘You,’ I said, turning and looking into her blue eyes.

  She blushed, the crimson colouring spreading up from her neck and over her face.

  ‘Did you know,’ I said, ‘that if you are naked you blush all over your body.’

  ‘Bastard,’ she said. She turned away and laughed.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’m not coming to another of your awful dining-in nights, that’s for sure.’

  We laughed together.

  ‘I have to admit that it was a bit of a disaster,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m sure the next one will be better.’

  ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘I had always thought lawyers were boring, and now I know they are.’

  ‘You just haven’t met the right lawyers,’ I said.

  She paused and smiled at me. ‘Oh yes I have,’ she said.

  Wow, I thought. The bus had made a round trip. Now do I get on?

  CHAPTER 9

  Sadly, I didn’t spend the evening with Eleanor, nor the night.

  In fact, I spent very little time with her at all. Her bleep went off as we were still on the balcony and she rushed off to find a quiet spot to make a call, returning only briefly to tell me that she had to go back to Lambourn. There was an emergency at the hospital, something about a prize stallion and a twisted gut.

  ‘Will you be here tomorrow?’ I shouted after her rather forlornly as she rushed away.

  ‘Hope so,’ she called back. ‘Call me on the mobile in the morning.’

  Suddenly she was gone. I was surprised at how disappointed I felt. Was I really ready after seven and a half years? Don’t rush things, I told myself.

  I spent much of the rest of the afternoon drifting between the box upstairs and the parade ring. I had intended to use the time to familiarize myself with the surroundings, the sounds and the smells of the Festival in mental preparation for the race the following day. Instead, I spent most of the time thinking about Eleanor, and about Angela. They were quite different but in many ways they were the same. Eleanor was blonde with blue eyes whereas Angela had been dark with brown, but they both had a similar sense of humour, and a love for life and fun.

  ‘Which one do you fancy?’

  I looked at the man standing next to me who had spoken. I didn’t know him.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

  ‘Which one do you fancy?’ he said again, nodding at the horses. We were leaning up against the rail of the parade ring where the horses for the next race were walking round and round.

  ‘Oh,’ I said in sudden understanding. ‘Sorry, I don’t even know what’s running.’

  He lost interest in me instantly, and went on studying the horseflesh on parade in front of him prior, no doubt, to making an investment with the bookies.

  I went back upstairs to the box, telling myself to snap out of this daydreaming and pay attention to the racing.

  ‘How’s he doing?’ Francesca Dacey whispered in my ear as she stood behind me to watch the race on the balcony.

  ‘Fed up,’ I said, turning slightly. ‘But otherwise OK.’

  ‘Say hi to him for me if you get the chance,’ she whispered again before moving away to her left and talking to another of the guests.

  The World Hurdle, the big race of the day, was a three-mile hurdle race for horses with stamina for the long distance, especially the uphill finish in the March mud. And stamina they had. Four horses crossed the last obstacle in line abreast and each was driven hard for the line, the crowd cheering them on with fervour, the result to be determined only by the race judge and his photographs.

  There was a buzz in the crowd after the horses swept past the winning post, such had been the exhilarating effect of the closest of finishes; the adrenalin still rushed round our veins, our breathing was still just a tad faster than normal. Such moments were what brought the crowds back time and again to Cheltenham. The best horses, ridden by the best jockeys, stretching to reach the line first. Winning was everything.

  ‘First, number seven,’ said the announcer to a huge cheer from some and a groan of misery from others. Reno Clemens on horse number seven stood bolt upright in his stirrups and punched the air, saluting the crowd, who roared back their appreciation. How I longed for it to be me doing just that the following afternoon.

  Most of the guests rushed off to watch the winner come back to the unsaddling enclosure, where he would receive a fresh wave of cheering and applause. I, however, decided to stay put. I had done my share of aimlessly wandering the racecourse wishing that Eleanor had been with me to share it.

  The lunch table had been pushed up against one wall and was now heaving under large trays of sandwiches and cakes ready for tea. I looked longingly at a cream-filled chocolate éclair and opted instead for the smallest cucumber sandwich I could find.

  ‘I hear you are a lawyer,’ said a female voice on my right.

  I turned to find Deborah Radcliffe standing next to me. Why did I think she didn’t like lawyers? Maybe it was the way she looked down her nose at me. Lots of people didn’t like lawyers, that is until they got themselves into trouble. Then their lawyer became their best friend, maybe their only friend.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I’m a barrister.’

  ‘D
o you wear a wig?’ she asked.

  ‘Only in court,’ I said. ‘Lots of my work is not done in courts. I represent people at professional disciplinary hearings and the like.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, as if bored. ‘And do you represent jockeys at enquiries?’

  ‘I have done,’ I said. ‘But not very often.’

  She seemed to lose interest completely.

  ‘How is Peninsula?’ I asked her.

  ‘Fine, as far as I know,’ she said. ‘He’s now at Rushmore Stud in Ireland. In his first season.’

  Retired at age three to spend the rest of his life treated like royalty, passing his days eating, sleeping and covering mares. Horse paradise.

  ‘But he wasn’t born himself at Rushmore?’ I said.

  ‘Oh no,’ she replied. ‘We bred him at home.’

  ‘Where’s home?’ I asked her.

  ‘Near Uffington,’ she said. ‘In south Oxfordshire.’

  ‘Where the White Horse is,’ I said. The Uffington White Horse was a highly stylized Bronze Age horse figure carved into the chalk of the Downs a few miles north of Lambourn.

  ‘Exactly,’ she replied, suddenly showing more interest in me. ‘I can almost see White Horse Hill from my kitchen window.’

  ‘I’ve never actually seen the horse,’ I said. ‘Except in photos.’

  ‘It’s not that easy to see unless you get up in the air,’ she said. ‘We are forever getting tourists who ask us where it is. They seem disappointed when you show them the hill. The horse is almost on the top of it and you can’t even see it properly if you walk up to it. Goodness knows how they made it in the first place.’

  ‘Perhaps it was the fact that they couldn’t see it properly that made it such a weird-looking horse,’ I said.

  ‘Good point,’ she said.

  ‘Do you remember Millie Barlow being there when Peninsula was born?’ I asked.

  ‘Who?’ she said.

  ‘Millie Barlow,’ I repeated. ‘She was the vet who was present.’

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘We have foals being born all the time. We have a sort of maternity hospital for horses. They come to us to deliver, especially if they are to then be covered by a local stallion.’