Even Money

by Дик Фрэнсис

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want Sophie at home. Of course I did, and I loved it. I just wasn’t so sure about her sister being here too. Alice was becoming not so much a domestic goddess, more of a domestic nightmare.

  “How long is she coming back for?” I asked Sophie as we waved Alice away.

  “Just a little bit longer, I think,” she replied. “Alice likes to feel that she’s in charge, and she thinks I still need a little more of her care. To be honest, though, I would be quite happy if she didn’t come back tonight.”

  So would I, I thought. But Alice’s presence had at least made me feel a little better as Sophie had not been alone in the house when I’d been at work. I think Sophie herself felt the same way, and she had not objected much when Alice had announced her intention to come back.

  We closed the front door and went back into the kitchen.

  “I can’t believe I’ve been home a week already,” she said. “It seems like only yesterday I left the hospital.”

  I thought it felt like a month, but I didn’t say so.

  I went up to my office while Sophie puttered around in the kitchen, relishing being able to do things without Alice constantly offering help and advice.

  I logged on to the Racing Post website and checked the declarations for Bangor-on-Dee races for Monday. It was good news. The short-priced favorite in the two-mile hurdle race for maidens was still running. As were the others I wanted.

  Sophie came into my office with a cup of coffee for me.

  “Thank you, my darling,” I said.

  She stood behind me, stroking my shoulders and playing with my hair.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Just checking the runners for tomorrow,” I said.

  “Can I come with you to the races?” she said.

  “Of course,” I said, pleased. “We’re going to Bangor tomorrow. It’s quite a long way, but you can come if you like. We’re at Southwell for the evening meeting on Tuesday and then the July Festival at Newmarket on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.”

  “Are you staying in Newmarket?” she asked with slight concern.

  “No chance,” I said. “Not at the prices the hotels charge during July week. The bloodstock sales are on too, don’t forget. The town is bursting with people. I’ll come home each night.”

  She was relieved.“Good,” she said.“Maybe I’ll come to Southwell on Tuesday if the weather’s nice. I find there are too many people at Newmarket.”

  “That would be lovely,” I said, meaning it. I shut down my computer. “Why don’t we go out to lunch?”

  “What, now?” she said.

  “Yes. Right now.”

  “Great idea.” She smiled.

  We went to the pub in the village of Avon Dassett where their specialty was sixty-four different ways to have pie. Sophie and I, however, opted not to go for a pie but for the Sunday roast lamb, which was delicious.

  After lunch I drove the few miles to the Burton Dassett Hills Country Park, where I stopped the car on a ridge with a view all the way to Coventry and beyond.

  And there we sat in the car while I told Sophie about my father.

  I had lain awake for much of the night going over and over in my mind the secrets I had gleaned from my grandmother and weighing up whether I should tell Sophie anything just yet. It was true that she had been very well during her first week home from the hospital and hadn’t once accused me of drinking or being drunk, which, I knew from experience, was always the first sign that things weren’t quite right.

  I had watched her carefully every morning to check that she swallowed her medication, but I was also painfully aware of how easily in the past her behavior had begun to change for the worse at times of stress or anxiety, and I desperately didn’t want to cause her either unnecessarily.

  However, there was a real need in me for her to know the truth. I realized that I was bottling up my pain and my anger. I feared they would overwhelm me and cause an explosion in my head, the outcome of which in the long run might be more damaging both to Sophie and to me. I needed, perhaps selfishly, to share the knowledge in order to talk it through and ease the burden. Maybe I should have sought out one of the hospital psychiatrists to give me some therapy and treatment, but Sophie was the one I really wanted to provide me with the help I needed.

  I started by telling her about my father’s sudden appearance at Ascot and the shock of finding that he hadn’t died in a car crash all those years ago as we had thought.

  “That’s great,” she said. “You always wanted a father.”

  But then I told her about him being stabbed in the racetrack parking lot and about him dying at the hospital. She was upset and deeply saddened, mostly on my behalf.

  “But why was he stabbed?” she asked.

  “I think it was a robbery that went wrong,” I said.

  I considered that it was still prudent not to mention anything about microcoders, false passports or blue-plastic-wrapped bundles of cash. Best also, I thought, not to refer to my father’s black-and-red rucksack discovered by me in a seedy hotel in Paddington and subsequently collected from our home by his murderer.

  “But you could have been killed,” she said, clearly shocked.

  “I would have given the thief the money,” I said. “But my father told him to go to hell and kicked him in the balls. I think that’s why he was stabbed.”

  She was a little reassured, but not much.

  “But why didn’t you tell me about it straightaway?” she implored.

  “I didn’t want to upset you just before the assessment,” I said in my defense. And she could see the sense in that. “But that’s not all, my love. Far from it.”

  I told her about my mother and the fact that she hadn’t died in a car accident either. As gently as I could, I told her about Paignton Pier and how my mother had been found murdered on the beach beneath it.

  “Oh, Ned,” she said, choking back the tears.

  “I was only a toddler,” I said, trying to comfort her. “I have no memory of any of it. In fact, I don’t remember a single thing about my mother.” And, of course, Sophie had never known her.

  “How did you find out?” she asked.

  “The police told me,” I said. “They did a DNA check on him. It seems that everyone at the time thought my father had been responsible and that’s why he ran away, and also why Nanna and Grandpa made up the story of the car crash.”

  “How dreadful for them,” she said.

  “Yes, but it wasn’t actually that simple,” I said.

  I went on to tell her about my mother’s pregnancy, and, eventually and carefully, I told her the whole story about the baby being my grandfather’s child and how it had been he who had strangled my mother to prevent anyone from finding out.

  She went very silent for some time, as I held her hand across the car handbrake.

  “But why, then, did your father go away?” she asked finally.

  “He was told to,” I said.

  “Who by?”

  Sophie had once loved my grandparents as if they had been her own. Now I laid bare the awful story that my grandmother, our darling Nanna, had orchestrated the whole affair. She certainly had been responsible for me having had no father to grow up with and quite likely had been instrumental in my mother’s demise as well.

  Sophie just couldn’t believe it.

  “Are you absolutely sure?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I found out most of it yesterday,” I said. “When I went to see her.”

  “Did she tell you all this?” Sophie asked with a degree of skepticism.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But how? She’s losing her marbles. Most days, she can’t remember what she had for breakfast.”

  “She was quite lucid when I spoke with her yesterday,” I said.

  “Surprisingly so, in fact. She couldn’t really remember who you were, but there was nothing much wrong with her memory of the events of thirty-six years ago.”
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  “Was she sorry?” Sophie asked.

  “No, not really,” I said. “I think that’s what I found the hardest to bear.”

  We sat together silently in the car for some while.

  All around us were happy families: mums and dads with their children, running up and down the hills, chasing their dogs and flying their kites in the wind. All the things that normal people do on a Sunday afternoon.

  The horrors were only inside the car, and in our minds.

  22

  On Monday morning, I picked up Luca and Duggie early from the Hilton Hotel parking lot at Junction 15 on the M40 motorway, and the three of us set off for the Bangor-on-Dee races with happy hearts but with mischief in mind.

  The bruises on my abdomen, inflicted by fists and steel toe caps at the Kempton Park races, had finally begun to fade, but the fire of revenge still burned bright in my belly. I had told Larry Porter that I would get even with the bastard who had ordered the beatings, and today was going to be my day.

  “Did you check with Larry?” I said to Luca. “Has he got the stuff?”

  “Relax,” Luca said to me. “Don’t worry. Larry will be there in good time.”

  “Did you speak to any of your friends?” I asked Duggie. “To remind them?”

  “All OK,” he replied. “As Luca said, relax, everything is fine.”

  I hoped he was right.

  We arrived at the racetrack early, and I parked in one of the free parking lots. I went to pay the fee at the bookmakers’ badge entrance while Luca and Duggie unloaded the equipment and pulled it through to the betting ring.

  “Where’s the bloody grandstand?” said Duggie, looking around.

  I laughed. “There isn’t one.”

  “You’re putting me on,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “There really aren’t any grandstands at Bangor.”

  “How do the punters see the racing, then?” he asked.

  “It’s a natural grandstand,” I said. “The people stand on the hill to watch the racing.” The ground fell away down towards the track, giving ample room for a good view of the horses.

  “I’ve seen it all now,” he said.

  “No, you haven’t,” I said. “In southern Spain, they race along a beach, with the crowd wearing swimming trunks and sitting under sun umbrellas. It’s proper racing with starting stalls, betting, the lot. It even gets TV coverage.”

  “And in St. Moritz, in Switzerland,” Luca said, “every year they race on a frozen lake. I’ve seen it. It’s amazing. But there are no swimming trunks, though, more like fur coats: it’s midwinter.”

  “They race on snow in Russia too,” I said. “And back in the eighteen hundreds, they used to have racing right along the frozen Moscow River-actually on the ice.”

  “Then why do they cancel racing here whenever it snows?” Duggie asked.

  “Good question,” I said. “Obviously, the wrong kind of snow.”

  We giggled. But it was nervous laughter.

  We set up our pitch, and Luca commented favorably on the new name on our board. I had spent the previous evening painting over the TRUST TEDDY TALBOT slogan and had replaced it with, it had to be said, some pretty poorly painted white letters saying simply TALBOT AND MANDINI.

  “I’ll have to change the wording on our tickets as well,” Luca said. “I’ll do it now.”

  He set to work while I went to the Gents’. The nerves were clearly beginning to get to me.

  “There’s a public pay phone on the wall round there,” I said when I came back. I pointed down the side of the building between the seafood bar and the Gents’.

  “I’ll have to be making a call to my granny, then, at the appropriate time,” said Luca, smiling.

  “No way,” I said. “I’ll need you here, on the pitch.”

  “What’s the problem?” Duggie said.

  “I don’t want anyone being able to use the public pay phone when the mobiles stop working,” I said.

  “That’s easy,” said Duggie. “I’ll go and fix it.” And off he went before I had a chance to stop him.

  He was back in a couple of minutes.

  “All done,” he said. “No one’s going to use that phone today.”

  Luca and I looked at each other.

  “What did you do?” I asked Duggie.

  “What do you think?” he said. “I broke it. Then I went into the office and complained that the phone wouldn’t work. They’ve put an OUT OF ORDER sign on it now.”

  I laughed. “Well done.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But they offered me the use of the secretary’s phone instead if it were urgent like.”

  “Ah,” I said. I didn’t want anyone using the secretary’s phone either.

  “It’s simple,” said Duggie. “I got the secretary’s phone number, so I get a mate to call it at the right time and then not hang up. It will tie up the line so no one can call in or out on it. In fact, I’ll get a few of my mates to all call just in case they have more than one line on that number. That’ll tie them all up.”

  “But won’t your mates’ numbers show up on caller ID?” I said. “I don’t want them traced.”

  “So I’ll get my mates to withhold their numbers, or they can call from the pay phones in Wycombe,” he said. “It’s dead easy.”

  “OK,” I said. “Fix it.”

  Larry Porter arrived and began to set up his pitch alongside ours.

  “Have you got the equipment?” I asked him.

  “Yes. All set,” Larry said. “Bill’s coming separately, later.”

  Bill, I assumed, was the man I had seen at Ascot in the white shirt and fawn chinos who had placed the “two monkeys” bet with me when the Internet and phones had gone down just before the Gold Cup.

  The maiden hurdle was the fifth race of the afternoon, and I became more and more nervous as the clock ticked around to four-thirty, race time. Monday-afternoon racing anywhere was always quiet, and today was no exception. But the lack of activity in the betting ring did nothing to help settle the butterflies in my stomach.

  In all, the bookmaker turnout was reasonable. I counted sixteen of us in the main betting ring, and there were a few others over near the course, all of us chasing the meager pickings from the sparse Monday crowd. But other than Larry and Norman, I didn’t recognize any of the other bookies, as we were at the northern extent of our usual patch and wouldn’t normally be standing at Bangor.

  At long last, it was nearing the maiden hurdle race time. The horses were in the saddling boxes and the punters were beginning to make their selections. There were nineteen runners, with Pool House the fairly short-priced favorite at six-to-four. The horse had raced three times previously and finished second on the last two occasions. And today it was being ridden by the many-times-champion jockey who had made the journey from Lambourn especially to ride this one horse, so he, for one, expected it to win. And all the newspapers agreed with him.

  With the horses in the parade ring, and with precisely six minutes to go before the scheduled start time, I nodded imperceptibly to Larry, who pushed his out-of-sight switch to turn on the phone jammer. At the same time, I nudged Luca, who activated his virus on the racetrack’s Internet server, effectively putting it out of action and isolating the track from the outside world.

  I thought of the thirty juvenile delinquents and hoped that they were all poised to place their bets.

  A man in a white shirt and fawn chinos suddenly appeared in front of me. Bill, I assumed.

  “Grand on number four,” he said, thrusting a wad of banknotes towards me.

  Number four was the second favorite.

  “Grand on number four at three-to-one,” I said loudly over my shoulder.

  “Offer at eleven-to-four,” Luca said equally loudly.

  “OK,” said the man. I gave him the TALBOT AND MANDINI-printed ticket, and the price changed on our board.

  “Give me a monkey on four at threes,” Luca bellowed at Larry Porter.

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p; “You can have it at five-to-two,” Larry shouted back.

  “OK,” said Luca, who then turned the other way towards Norman Joyner. “Give me a monkey on number four,” he shouted even louder.

  “Fine,” shouted Norman back. “At nine-to-four.”

  Within less than a minute, the price of horse number four was tumbling all over the betting ring and, as a result, the price of Pool House, the favorite, was tending to drift longer.

  The panic from the boys from the big outfits wasn’t as dramatic as it had been at Ascot, but it was fairly impressive nonetheless. They rushed around trying desperately to get their phones to work but without success. I saw one of them rush off to use the pay phone, but he was soon back with a frustrated look on his face.

  But they had all clearly been well briefed after the incident at Ascot. They clearly knew that the price of the hot favorite had, on that occasion, lengthened during the time when the Internet and phones were down. They would also know that when the favorite then won, they all got hit badly because all the bets in the High Street betting shops were paid out on the starting price, and that had been artificially made too high.

  Consequently, the big-firm boys, those with the cash in their pockets, now took it upon themselves, in the absence of orders from their head offices, to back the favorite heavily, to bring its price down again to six-to-four.

  There was almost panic to get their money on with the ring bookies before the start. I took a number of big bets, and, reluctantly, we brought the price of Pool House down from seven-to-four, first to thirteen-to-eight, then to six-to-four and finally to eleven-to-eight, before the off. The horse had actually started at shorter odds than it would have if we had done nothing.

  The race began, and Larry switched off his phone-jamming device while Luca cured the Internet server of his virus.

  “That didn’t bloody work, did it?” said Larry angrily. “Now, if the favorite goes on and wins, I stand to lose a packet.”

  But the favorite didn’t win.

  A complete rank outsider called Cricket Hero beat it by two lengths and was returned at the surprisingly long starting price of a hundred-to-one and without a single cheer from the watching crowd. We hadn’t taken a single bet on the horse, so, from the paying-out point of view, it was a very satisfactory result and went some way to make up for our lack of business in the previous races.