Dick Francis's Refusal

by Felix Francis

  “So you were here last night?” he asked with accusation.

  “Yes,” I said, “I was. I followed three of McCusker’s men all the way from Manchester to Chipping Warden. And I watched them fill a can full of gas at one of the freeway services on the way. When I realized what they were going to do, I immediately called 999 and, yes, it was before the fire started, but not by more than five or ten minutes. And a good job too or you’d all be toast this morning.”

  “It was a ring of fire—a wall of flames,” Tony said, “but set back, away from the house. The fire officer said he’s seen nothing like it before. Meant to scare me, I suppose, rather than kill me. And it’s bloody worked too, I can tell you. Margaret is in a real state.”

  I could believe it. So would I have been.

  “Where in Manchester does Margaret’s sister live?” I asked.

  “Eh?”

  “Margaret told me that her sister lives in Manchester. Which part?”

  “Somewhere called Didsbury. South of the city center. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  I doubted that Margaret’s sister had given McCusker the information about the Molson twins on purpose. It was probably just a good story to tell at some local social gathering when she’d had a few too many glasses of wine. But Billy McCusker had known all too well how to exploit the knowledge for his own ends.

  “Are you going to the police about us?” Tony asked.

  “Do you want me to?”

  There was a lengthy pause.

  “No,” he said, sounding like he was almost in tears. “What I really want is for you all to go away and leave me in peace.”

  “Retire, then,” I said. “Quit as a jockey. Do it now. Today. Then McCusker will have no further use for you. And, even if the BHA did take away your jockey’s license, it wouldn’t matter because you’d not be race-riding anymore.”

  “But I don’t want to retire yet,” he said pitifully. “I reckon I’ve got a few more seasons left in me.”

  “Then McCusker isn’t going to go away. Not unless you help me do something about him.”

  “Like what?” he said dryly. “You’ve seen what the man’s like. I’m telling you, if he tells me to lose a race again, I’ll bloody lose it. Next time it won’t be just a scare, he’ll burn the house down with us inside it.”

  I couldn’t argue with him.

  I believed it too. In fact, I was quite surprised he hadn’t done it this time.

  • • •

  CHICO WAS already in the kitchen when I went through to make myself some coffee.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” I asked.

  “It’s nine o’clock. I should be at work.”

  “Won’t the juvenile delinquents miss you?”

  “Nah, they won’t even notice. Good old Scottish granny.” He grinned at me. “I’m off all week, thanks to her.”

  “Well, I hope you get to sleep more than you did last night. And keep your hands off me from now on, my hip’s really sore this morning.”

  I rubbed it.

  “You shouldn’t wander round the place in bare feet, then. You gave me quite a fright, driftin’ about the place like a bleedin’ ghost.”

  “Not as much of a fright as you gave me,” I assured him.

  He laughed. “I’m off for a run round the village. You don’t need me for a bit, do you?”

  “No, that’s fine,” I said. “We’ll decide what to do next when you get back.”

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll be about forty minutes.”

  He departed just as Marina returned from having taken Saskia to school.

  “Everything OK?” I asked her.

  “So-so,” she replied, screwing up her face. “Paula’s still not speaking to me.”

  “Give her time,” I said.

  Rosie came over and snuggled up to Marina’s leg, wagging her tail with enthusiasm. Marina tickled her behind her ears.

  “When can we all go home? Charles is lovely, but he nearly drove me nuts yesterday. And I want my own things, my own bath and my own kitchen.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I went back to the study and called D.C.I. Watkinson’s number without much expectation that he’d answer. But I was wrong.

  “Detective Chief Inspector Watkinson.”

  “Hello, Chief Inspector,” I said with levity. “This is Sid Halley.”

  “I shouldn’t be talking to you,” he replied.

  “As you’ve said before, but you are. Have you seen the report of a fire last night in Chipping Warden?”

  “Not our patch,” he said. “Chipping Warden is in Northamptonshire. We’re Thames Valley.”

  “Billy McCusker doesn’t take much notice of police force boundaries, and Chipping Warden is only just down the road.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but it’s over the county boundary.”

  “Well, ask your Northamptonshire colleagues for the report. It will make for interesting reading. Tell them that Billy McCusker’s heavies were the men with the gasoline.”

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “Because I followed them all the way from his house in Manchester, and I watched them fill the jerry can they used at the Hilton Park services on the M6. And I have the photos to prove it.”

  “My, you have been busy.”

  “What did you expect?” I asked. “Someone has to do it, and your lot don’t seem to be doing much other than arresting the innocent. And that reminds me, who was it that made a complaint against me?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” I said, echoing what Sir Richard Stewart had said to me all that time ago.

  “Can’t,” the chief inspector replied. “Even if I knew who it was, and I don’t, that sort of information is confidential to protect the identity of any children involved.”

  “How about protecting the identity of those incorrectly accused?” I said. “The law in this country seems stacked against me at the moment.”

  “You and me both,” he said. “Have you any idea how hard it is to get a conviction these days?”

  “Is that meant to make me feel better?” I said. “Because it doesn’t. When can I move back into my own house?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My bail conditions are that I cannot knowingly go within two miles of Annabel Gaucin, but my house is only a mile from hers. And it’s not as if there’s anything I could do to her at one-mile distance that I couldn’t do at two.”

  “So where are you now?”

  “At my ex-father-in-law’s place. It’s three miles from the Gaucin household.”

  “Didn’t you mention that when you were released?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but the custody sergeant, in his own inimitable way, said it was tough luck, and I’d have to find somewhere else to live. He didn’t seem to like me very much. Kept calling me scum.”

  “Custody sergeants can be like that,” he said. “I’ll have a word with Superintendent Ingram to see if we can amend the conditions.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Anything else?” he asked, clearly indicating that our conversation was over.

  “Yes,” I said. “Find out about that fire.”

  But what good would that do? If they could convict McCusker’s men of setting it, which I doubted, they’d hardly be sent down for a decent stretch, if at all. No one was killed or injured, and there was no substantial damage to property.

  And even if McCusker himself was convicted of conspiracy to commit arson, he’d get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. And stepping forward as a witness for the prosecution was hardly likely to endear me to him.

  I had to find a bigger battle to win, one that would end the war.

  • • •

  THE TELEPH
ONE RECORDS arrived in the mail from Terry Glenn at the Metropolitan Police.

  There was also a brief note from Terry, stating that the cell number I’d given him was registered to a pay-as-you-go SIM card, and even though he was able to send me the calls list, there was no official record linking any particular individual to the number.

  The records showed that someone, presumably McCusker, had used that cell phone quite extensively, with several dozen outgoing calls listed over the past six months. Sadly, they didn’t show details of his incoming ones.

  If he used this number for incoming calls as well, as he had done for the information tips from Robert Price, then the outgoing calls list might not give me the full roll of the jockeys he had corrupted as I had hoped.

  I scanned through the numbers, looking for any that I recognized, but none appeared familiar. Sadly, I didn’t have my own extensive contacts list close at hand to compare them with. I’d have to wait for the police to return my cell phone or computer in order to do that.

  I glanced through McCusker’s home-phone list. Again there were dozens of calls, but, as before, there was no number that shouted out to me in recognition. I thought it unlikely that he would carry on any suspicious business on his home number anyway because it would surely be far too easy to trace.

  Unfortunately, McCusker was no mug, and I was confident that he’d have used the untraceable pay-as-you-go phone for his nefarious goings-on, probably rerouting calls through various SIM cards just as he’d done when he’d called me.

  And that reminded me, I needed to get a new SIM card from the telephone shop in Banbury to replace the one cut up the previous night.

  I stuffed the number lists into my pocket and went looking for Chico.

  “Good run?” I asked, finding him in the kitchen.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Nice change to have fresh air to breathe rather than the usual diesel fumes of North London. So what’s on the agenda for today.”

  “Banbury for new SIM cards,” I said. “I’ll get a few, just in case.”

  “Then what?”

  “I wish I knew,” I said. “I feel so lost without my phone and computer.”

  “Have you picked up your voice mail messages using Charles’s landline?”

  “No,” I said slowly. “Good point.”

  I went back to the study and Chico followed.

  In all, there were fifteen, mostly old, messages on my voice mail, but, thankfully, not one from Queen Mary’s Hospital, demanding my presence on their operating table.

  Five of the messages were abusive, calling me a pervert or a pedophile. Charming, I thought, and wondered what sort of person takes the trouble to call someone’s phone to leave such a message.

  Six other calls were from so-called friends or acquaintances who said they didn’t believe a word of what was said in the papers or on the television, and they wanted to make sure that I knew that. But they also asked questions like Is it true? or Is Saskia all right? So maybe they did believe what they read or heard after all.

  But it was the other four messages that were the most interesting.

  The first was from our Irish friend, and I played it out on the speakerphone on Charles’s desk for Chico to hear.

  “Well, Mr. Halley, now you know what it feels like to be banged up in jail.” The sound of his voice, even in a recording, sent shivers down my back. “Remember that, and, in future, do as I tell you.”

  The message had been left at half past six on Thursday evening, the same day that I’d been released on bail. He’d probably been watching the six o’clock news on the television.

  “He sounds a bit like he looks,” Chico said, “all brawn and no brain.”

  “Don’t underestimate his intelligence,” I said. “He’s no fool or he would still be in jail for Darren Paisley’s murder.”

  “Who’s Darren Paisley?” Chico asked.

  “Someone McCusker murdered in Belfast in the nineties. Nailed him to a floor and left him to die of thirst.”

  “How delightful,” Chico said. “Remind me always to carry a pair of pliers.”

  One of the messages was from Peter Medicos, left on Sunday afternoon, again demanding that I tell him who I’d spoken to about Sir Richard Stewart’s suspicions. “Are they jockeys?” Peter said in a rather pompous tone that implied he didn’t think much of mere jockeys. “You must tell me for the good of racing so we can seek out the guilty parties and punish them.”

  I suppose I couldn’t blame him for trying; after all, it was his job. I just didn’t care much for his tone.

  For the good of racing.

  That’s what Sir Richard had said to me at least twice, and now Peter Medicos was saying the same. It seemed to be a mantra at the BHA.

  What actually would be for the good of racing?

  Would the revelation that a dozen or more top jockeys had conspired to fix races be the best thing? Or would it be better if the whole saga remained secret and life went on as before with the betting public in happy ignorance of any corruption?

  Only if it didn’t happen again.

  Only if there were no more races where the result was determined not by equine performance but by threats and fears, menaces and coercion, terror and intimidation.

  Only if Billy McCusker was stopped once and for all.

  One of the other two messages was also from him, left late the previous evening, and clearly after I had managed to evade his goons in the alley behind the Fortune Cookie restaurant.

  “Now, you listen to me, Mr. Halley,” he said furiously. “If you think that coming after me is wise, I suggest you think again. If I see or hear of you snooping round me ever again, your little girl will end up raped, murdered and fed to the pigs. Do you understand?” He was almost shouting with rage.

  “Maybe he was leaving that message when I was watching him in the study,” Chico said. “He was bloody angry then, I tell you.”

  Maybe he had been.

  Would I have still followed the Toyota down the M6 if I’d known the content of the message beforehand? Would I have told D.C.I. Watkinson that McCusker’s men had set the fire at the Molsons’ house? Was anything worth putting Saskia in such danger? Pigs eating her! It didn’t bear thinking about.

  I thought about getting the police superintendent to listen to the message. Maybe he’d then believe me about Billy McCusker being behind everything.

  But, there again, maybe he wouldn’t.

  The caller hadn’t given his name, and he’d withheld his number. Sure, the message was a clear threat against Saskia, but how could I actually prove that McCusker had made it? He would deny it. And even if it could be proved with voice-recognition software, a minor conviction for threatening behavior would hardly get rid of him for long.

  And the superintendent was probably still obsessed with that damn photograph of the girls in the bath.

  Perhaps it was best not to stir that particular pot again.

  But was doing nothing really a viable alternative? Never mind the good of racing, how about the good of my family? Could it survive intact if we lived continually in the shadow of an Irish terrorist? Was it not better to rid ourselves of this monster now? And permanently?

  Maybe so, but not at any price.

  I was not in the market for a Pyrrhic victory.

  The final message on my voice mail was short and to the point and had been left only at ten o’clock that morning.

  “Sid, it’s Angus,” said a male voice out of the speaker. “It’s on again. This Friday at Aintree, in the two-mile handicap hurdle, after the Topham Trophy. Don’t tell anyone I told you.”

  “Who’s Angus?” Chico asked.

  “Angus Drummond,” I said, “one of the jockeys who’s been intimidated into fixing races. McCusker burned down part of his parents’ farm and threatened to burn the rest if he didn’t play b
all.”

  “And what’s on again?”

  “I presume it’s another race in the series where McCusker has fixed the whole race, deciding the winner before the start, one on which he will bet heavily on the Tote. It would follow the pattern of the others. All of them have been late in the afternoon on a big-race day. The system needs a big betting crowd to make it worthwhile, and there are few bigger betting days than at Aintree on the day before the Grand National. The Liverpool locals put on their best clothes and flock to the course in their thousands, utilizing every available gaudy stretched limo in the northwest of England. They love to drink and gamble, in that order. It’s a sight to see.”

  “I’ll look forward to it,” Chico said. “But what do we do before then?”

  “Try and apply pressure,” I said.

  “To whom?”

  “The jockeys.”

  26

  I knew from experience that trying to speak with jockeys when they were at the races was not ideal. For a start, they were there working, and, often with multiple rides in the day, they didn’t have the time to stand around and chat. Also, there was nowhere particularly private on a racetrack to talk about race fixing without others seeing or even hearing the conversation.

  And I didn’t fancy discussing such matters on the telephone.

  Consequently, Chico and I decided to visit them at their homes in the evening, starting with Robert Price at seven p.m. on Monday.

  “I think you’d better stay in the car,” I said to Chico. “I’ll call you in if I need you, but he might talk more freely if I’m on my own.”

  “Right you are, squire,” Chico said. “I’ll catch up on some winks.” He reclined the seat and closed his eyes.

  As before, Judy Hammond opened the door of their farm cottage, just outside the village of Lambourn, but she wasn’t as welcoming as on my last visit.

  “Oh God,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “Is Robert here?” I asked.

  “He’s in the bath. He had a fall at Huntingdon this afternoon, and the horse kicked him.”

  I remembered such moments all too well. Fallen horses often kicked outwards as they tried to shift their bulk on the ground in order to regain their feet. If the jockey were unlucky enough to be within range, he’d get hit. It wasn’t as if the horses were kicking him on purpose, but that didn’t diminish the damage and the bruising.