Even Money

by Дик Фрэнсис

I did some quick thinking.

  “So you switch a bad horse for a good one,” I said, “kill the bad one and claim the insurance money on the good one?”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  It was a much safer bet than selling the bad one and taking the chance that someone does a DNA check on his new purchase.

  “What happens to the good horse?” I asked.

  Now that he had started to tell me, it came easier. He was almost bragging at the cleverness of the scheme.

  “It goes into training under the name of the nag, the bad one,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we can also make a killing backing it when it first runs in poor company, and wins easily at long odds.”

  It was clever, I thought. But risky too. Making a horse’s death appear accidental wasn’t easy, and surely the insurance company would be suspicious.

  “How about the insurers?” I said. “Don’t they check?”

  “To be sure, they do,” he said. “They even have a special investigator who researches all horse deaths on which someone has made a claim in order to determine that they are genuine accidents.”

  “So how come you can get away with it?” I asked.

  “The insurer’s special investigator has his eyes set rather too close together.”

  Much to my surprise, and his, Betsy was with Luca when they turned up at my house at ten to eleven.

  “She just turned up at my place this morning as if nothing had happened,” Luca said to me while she was in the bathroom. “I can’t believe it. She hasn’t said a word about it.”

  Perhaps she wasn’t so dumb after all. Luca was surely a catch worth pursuing. He, meanwhile, seemed quietly laid back about it. But I also thought he was secretly rather pleased.

  The three of us set off for Uttoxeter just after eleven in my old Volvo, with Luca sitting up front as usual and Betsy in the back. As always, she was soon listening to her iPod through her white headphones, resting her head against the window and dozing.

  “I’ve thought about what you asked,” I said to Luca.

  “And?” he said, unable to disguise his eagerness.

  “I’m prepared to offer you a full partnership in the business under certain conditions.”

  “What conditions?” he said warily.

  “Nothing too onerous,” I said. “The same conditions would apply to both partners.”

  “What sort of conditions?” he asked again, using a tone of voice full of suspicion and disagreement.

  “Hold on a minute,” I said. “There’s no need to get on your high horse. Look at it from my point of view. I’d be giving up half my business-and half the profits, remember-and for what? I need assurances on a number of things. You need to show your commitment to the business in the long term, for a start. That means we need a contract that would tie both of us to the business for at least five years, with penalties on either side for early departure. After five years, you would have fully earned your partnership with no financial input needed from you. But we do need to agree that within that five-year period, I have a deciding vote when there is no agreement between us.”

  “Agreement about what?” he asked.

  “The way in which the business develops,” I said. “I can see that you are eager to push the boundaries.” And go beyond them, I thought, but decided not to say so.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Well, that has to be done by agreement. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not totally against change, and I will look at any suggestion you make, but, for the next five years, I will have the final say about how we change if we do.”

  “How about after that?” he said.

  “Well, after five years, as full partners, we would have an equal say in how the business was run. If we couldn’t agree, then the partnership would have to end, but I can’t see that happening. We would have to both give and take a little.”

  “But for the next five years, it would be me that does the giving and you the taking?” he said.

  “Well, if you put it like that, then, yes, I suppose so.”

  “That doesn’t seem much different from now,” he said with resignation in his voice.

  I was losing him.

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “You are asking for quite a lot here, Luca, and I’m prepared to hand over half of a highly profitable business to you at no direct cost to yourself. You would stop being an employee on a salary and become entitled to half the profits instead. But you would also be liable for half the losses if things went wrong, and I am trying to ensure they don’t. I believe in you, Luca, but I also believe you need guidance until you’ve had a little more experience. I could be asking you to buy a fifty percent share in the business from me but I’m not. I’m giving it to you for free but over five years.”

  He sat in silence, thinking.

  “I honestly think it’s a great deal,” I said. “And you don’t have to make a decision right now. Think about it. Talk it over with Betsy and with your parents, if you like. We can go on just as we are for as long as you want. Forever, if that’s what suits you.”

  He remained sitting silently beside me, studying the road in front, for quite a long way.

  “Can we call it ‘Talbot and Mandini’?” he said finally.

  I wasn’t sure that I would go that far.

  Larry Porter was at Uttoxeter, feeling very sorry for himself, and while he was not literally spitting blood from his damaged ribs he was still spreading hate and venom all around.

  “Bloody bastards,” he said to me and anyone else who would listen. “Who do they think they bloody are, beating up innocent people in racetrack parking lots?”

  I was the innocent one, I thought, not him.

  “Calm down, Larry,” I said. “You’ll give yourself a stroke.”

  “But aren’t you angry as well?” he said.

  “Of course I am. But I’m not going to just get mad-I’m going to get even.”

  “Now you’re talking,” he said.

  “Who were they anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Some bullyboys or other.”

  Not too easy to get even, I thought, if we didn’t actually know who had been responsible.

  I have a message from my boss, one of the bullyboys had said. Don’t mess again with the starting prices.

  It was a fair bet, therefore, that the message had come from one of the big bookmaking firms. They were the only ones who would have suffered from Luca and Larry’s little game at Stratford races. But which big firm? There were half a dozen or so who might be in the frame, but I would have been surprised if one or two of those had resorted to beating people up in racetrack parking lots. Conversely, it was exactly the behavior I would have expected from a couple of the others.

  “I hear you’ve been talking to Luca,” Larry said. “About our amusements.”

  “Yes, I have,” I said sharply. “Larry, you really should know better.”

  “Yes,” he said, “perhaps I should. But I’m that fed up with being treated like an irritation by these big corporations. I refuse to be swatted like a fly and muscled out of my job. They are all now having their own pitches at the races as well, so they can manipulate the odds even further. It’s not just us who should be angry. The betting public shouldn’t stand for it either.”

  “Oh come on,” I said.“You must be living in cloud-cuckoo-land if you think the betting public are ever going to feel sorry for us.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, “I suppose you’re right.”

  Damn right, I was. My grandfather always used to say that bookmakers could expect about as much sympathy as house-breakers: both were trying to rob other people’s belongings, only the bookmakers were doing it legally.

  I didn’t actually agree with my grandfather, as gambling surely involved free choice, but it was an opinion that I knew was held by many of those with whom we did daily business.

  “So what are you going to do about it?” Larry demanded.

  “About what?” I asked.
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  “Getting even.”

  “I’m not sure yet. But first, I’m going to find out whose orders those thugs were following. And, Larry,” I said, looking him straight in the eye, “no more little games. Understand?”

  “Why are you being so bloody self-righteous all of a sudden?” he said.

  “Because I recognize when not to poke a hornet’s nest with a stick. Let us wait and bide our time, and let’s not get stung again in the meantime.”

  “OK,” he said with resignation, “I suppose so.”

  Larry wasn’t happy. He wanted to lash out at those who had hurt both his body and his pride. But lashing out at a great big grizzly bear would simply result in another claw swipe to the head.

  Getting even required far more cunning than that.

  16

  Mr. John Smith, or whoever, was waiting for me next to my car in the Uttoxeter racetrack parking lot at the end of the day.

  “Haven’t you got anything better to do than hang round in racetrack parking lots?” I asked him sarcastically.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he said, ignoring me.

  “How very observant of you,” I replied.

  “Don’t you be funny with me,” he said. “Your friend is back from holiday tomorrow, and I want the microcoder.”

  “I don’t know what time she lands,” I said. “I’ll call you when I’ve heard from her.”

  “Make sure you do,” he said threateningly.

  “You should be nice to me,” I said, “or you won’t get it back at all.”

  “Watch it,” he said with real menace.

  “Are you threatening me?” I asked.

  “You’d better believe it,” he said.

  “Well, I must warn you, I don’t respond well to threats.”

  “Take my advice, Mr. Talbot,” he said, “respond to this one.”

  Gone was the patient good humor of last Wednesday afternoon. Mr. John Smith, I imagined, was under pressure to get results.

  He suddenly turned and walked away across the parking lot. I tried to see where he went, but I lost sight of him amongst the departing crowd, and I couldn’t tell if it was the dark blue Ford from the rest area that he climbed into.

  “What was all that about?” asked Luca, who had been silently watching the exchange. Betsy had been standing next to him throughout, and her eyes were now wide with surprise and inquisition.

  “Nothing,” I said, and started to load the equipment into the car.

  “It didn’t look like nothing to us,” Luca said.

  I looked him in the eye, and then shot a quick glance at Betsy, hoping Luca would get the message that I didn’t want to discuss the matter within her hearing.

  “Just who was that man?” said Betsy. “He didn’t seem very nice.”

  “It was nothing,” I said again. “He wants something I have, and we have been negotiating about the price. That’s all.”

  Luca looked at me with disbelief showing all over his face, but he too glanced briefly at Betsy, telling me that he did indeed understand not to discuss the matter further with her there. Betsy, meanwhile, had not got the same message.

  “What?” she said.

  “What ‘what’?” I asked.

  “What have you got that he wants?” she persisted.

  “Nothing much,” I said. “A type of television remote. Forget it.”

  She looked like she was about to ask me another question when Luca interrupted her thought process. “Where do you want to go for dinner tonight, Betsy?” he said.

  “What?” she said angrily, turning towards him.

  “Where shall we go for dinner tonight?” he repeated.

  “We’re going to my mother’s,” she said sharply.

  “Oh yes,” said Luca. “I forgot.”

  He winked at me as we climbed into the car. Luca was nobody’s fool, he forgot nothing.

  Within ten minutes I could see in the rearview mirror that Betsy was again listening to her iPod and dozing with her head against the window.

  “Betsy, please, could you pass me a tissue?” I asked fairly quietly.

  She didn’t move.

  Luca began to turn around.

  “Leave her,” I said to him.

  “So was this TV remote thing that the man wanted that RFID writer you showed me?” Luca asked me quietly.

  “Yes,” I said. “He calls himself John Smith, but I very much doubt that’s his real name. He also says he’s working for the Australian Racing Board.”

  “Why don’t you just give it to him, then?” Luca said.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “For some reason I don’t altogether trust him, so I made up a story about giving it to a friend who had then gone on holiday.”

  “Nice one,” said Luca sarcastically. “Where to?”

  “Greece, I think,” I said. “I can’t really remember. I told him she was back on Sunday, that’s tomorrow.”

  “She?” he said, almost laughing. “So where did the RFID writer come from in the first place?”

  “I was given it,” I said.

  “Who by?” he asked.

  “A man from Australia.”

  “Not John Smith?” he said.

  “No. Another man from Australia.”

  “Hence the Australian Racing Board’s interest in it?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So who was this other man from Australia?” Luca asked persistently. I began to wish we had never started this.

  “Just a man,” I said evasively.

  “So a mystery man from Australia just gave you a device for writing RFIDs and now the Australian Racing Board wants it back?”

  It sounded implausible even to me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But is it theirs?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you ask the mystery man who gave it to you?”

  “I can’t,” I said. “He’s gone away.”

  “Back to Australia?”

  “Not exactly,” I replied. Farther than that, I thought.

  “So are you going to give it to the man in the parking lot, this John Smith?” Luca asked.

  “I might,” I said. “What do you think I should do?”

  “Well, it’s not yours, is it? So why not give it to him? And I tend to think that next time he comes asking, you might just get another dose of fists and steel toe caps if you refuse. He seemed quite determined.”

  “Yes, you’re probably right,” I said. “But there’s still something about him I don’t like. And I feel that giving up the microcoder is like giving up my trump card.”

  “ ‘Microcoder’?” Luca said.

  “That’s what the man calls it. But I know my father called it a ‘chip writer.’”

  “Your father?” Luca said surprised. “I thought your father was dead.”

  “He is,” I said without further elaboration. I’d forgotten that I hadn’t told Luca that the man murdered at Ascot had been my father. As far as Luca was concerned, my father had always been dead, and he knew I had been raised from babyhood by my grandparents.

  “So how come your father knew about this microcoder thing?” he asked.

  “It’s a long story,” I said, trying to close the discussion.

  “It’s a long journey,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, not long enough.”

  “So what’s next?” said Luca.

  “Days off tomorrow and Monday, then Towcester on Tuesday evening,” I said.

  “No,” he said, irritated.“I meant what’s next with this microcoder thing?”

  “How difficult would it be to make another one exactly the same?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “As far as I remember, it’s just a radio transmitter that concentrates the radio signal at a point where you would put the RFID. It didn’t appear that sophisticated.”

  “Could you make another one?” I asked.

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” he said slowly.r />
  “I don’t want you to,” I added quickly. “I just wondered if you could.”

  “Yeah, I reckon I might,” he said. “Or if I couldn’t, one of the little hooligans from the electronics club would probably be able to do it in no time. They are like bloody magic when it comes to electronics. One of them even made a device that fooled the authorities into thinking he was at home wearing his court-ordered ankle tag when he was really out all night breaking into people’s cars. He said it gave him the best alibi anyone could ever want. Even the coppers were impressed.”

  “How did they find out?” I asked.

  “Oh, these lads may be damn clever when it comes to electronics,” he said. “But they can be pretty dense otherwise. The bloody idiot broke into an unmarked police car that was parked right outside the police station, and everything he did was recorded on an in-car video camera.”

  I laughed.“Almost as bad as that bank robber recently who wrote his demand note on the back of a check from his own checkbook. It had his name printed on it.”

  “It’s a good thing villains are stupid or we’d all be victims,” Luca said with a laugh.

  “But they are not all stupid,” I said, becoming serious. “Remember, we never hear about the clever ones because they don’t get caught.”

  “Good point,” he said.

  Talking about not getting caught reminded me of the stash of banknotes still hidden in the cupboard under my stairs. Who did they belong to? Were they meant to be payment for Shifty-eyes for killing horses? Or maybe they were his cut for approving the insurance claims after the horses were dead. Either way, I was pretty sure they weren’t actually mine, even if I did have a sort of claim to inherit them after my father’s death, for they had been in his luggage.

  “So do you want a copy of this microcoder?” Luca said, bringing me back from my daydreams.

  “No, not really,” I said. “I just wondered why it was so important to get this particular one back if any half-witted juvenile delinquent could simply make another.”

  “But they would have to have something to copy,” he said. “And they would have to know the right frequency to set it at.”

  “Is that difficult?” I asked.

  “Not if you have the original,” he said.“But much more difficult, maybe impossible, without it.”