Dick Francis's Refusal

by Felix Francis

  “So you think he knows which horse will win on Friday?”

  “I’m sure he will by the time the race starts,” I said, “even if he doesn’t already.”

  “Then why don’t we pay this Guernsey fellow a little visit and ask him, all gentle-like, for the info?”

  “Just what I was thinking, but we need to be careful. I don’t want Guernsey bleating to McCusker that we’ve been to see him asking questions.”

  “How are we going to stop him doing that?” Chico asked.

  “By making him more frightened of us than he is of McCusker.”

  “And how, pray, are we going to do that?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  • • •

  ACCORDING TO the Directory of the Turf website, Jimmy Guernsey lived in the village of Blewbury in South Oxfordshire, but even with the Range Rover’s satnav it took Chico and me nearly half an hour to find his house, which was outside the village on Didcot Road some distance from where the destination was marked on the electronic map.

  We drove past a few times, having a good look at the large, white-painted bungalow with its red-tiled roof. It was set back from the road behind a hedge that had just a hint of green from the first new shoots of the year.

  There were two cars parked in the driveway, a silver Mercedes and a small red hatchback.

  “What do you think?” Chico asked.

  “I think there’s somebody in.”

  “Full-frontal approach or stealth?”

  “Full-frontal, I reckon, especially if there’s more than one person in the house.”

  “Agreed,” said Chico. “Although I might hang round outside while you go in and do business.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I said sarcastically. “Why is it always me who has to do the hard bit?”

  “Because you’re the boss,” he said with a grin.

  I drove halfway through the gate and stopped, blocking the two parked cars.

  “Nice call,” Chico said. “No one can get in neither.”

  We both climbed out, and I went and rang the front-door bell while Chico leaned nonchalantly on the Range Rover’s hood.

  Jimmy Guernsey opened the door and took in the scene.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded angrily. “And move that bloody vehicle. It’s blocking my gate.”

  “So it is,” I said calmly, but making no effort towards moving it. “May I come in?”

  “No.”

  “I think it would be best,” I said.

  “Oh, you do, do you? Well, I think it would be best if you get off my property. Right now, before I call the police.”

  “The police,” I echoed. “That could be interesting.”

  For the first time, he was unsure. “Why would it be interesting?”

  “You could explain to them why you fraudulently fix horse races.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said belligerently. But he was worried, I could hear it in his voice.

  “I think you do,” I said. “Now, do you want to let me in and talk about it or shall I go straight to the racing authorities and lay the evidence before them?”

  For a moment I thought he was going to bluff it out and tell me to get lost, but he hesitated, and then opened the door wide for me to go in.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, nodding towards Chico.

  “My assistant.” I resisted the temptation to say that he was also my hired muscle.

  I followed Jimmy into the house, through an open-plan living room to a study beyond, where he sat down on a chair behind his desk, offering me another to the side.

  “Now, what’s all this nonsense?” he asked more confidently.

  “Are we alone?” I asked.

  “Chrissie’s outside with the horses.” He waved a hand towards a couple of stables I could see through the study window.

  “Staplegun,” I said.

  “What about him?” The worried timbre was back in his voice.

  “Will he win on Friday at Aintree in the two-mile handicap hurdle?”

  He stared at me in a manner that I took to be total disbelief. His breathing had noticeably shallowed, and it had increased in frequency. He was scared.

  “Come on, Jimmy,” I said, “don’t be shy. Will Staplegun win on Friday?”

  He still said nothing.

  “You’re in trouble, young Mr. Guernsey, and make no mistake. I think they call it being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Billy McCusker on one side and the BHA and the law on the other. Grisly death or disqualification and ruin. Not a happy choice.”

  His shoulders drooped a little.

  “Nice house,” I said, looking around me. “A few stables and a couple of acres, is it? Or maybe more?”

  No answer.

  “Got a mortgage, have you? Not easy to keep up the payments without a job, I’m sure. And no jockey’s license would mean no job. Maybe a prison sentence too. Do you think you’d ever work in racing again?”

  Still nothing.

  “How about Chrissie? Does she know about all those races?”

  Jimmy put his hands up to his head, one on either side, and squeezed his temples as if he was stopping his head from exploding.

  I went on. “Not just Red Rosette at Sandown and Martian Man at Newbury, but Fallacy Boy at Ascot, and the others as well. I know about them all. I have statements from the other jockeys, and they all say the same thing—Jimmy knew, Jimmy is the enforcer, Jimmy is McCusker’s man in the changing room.”

  It wasn’t all true. I didn’t have the statements, and no one had mentioned Jimmy. But there was enough truth for him to believe it all.

  “And now Staplegun,” I said. “Will he win on Friday?”

  Jimmy slowly shook his head. “Probably not.”

  “So what will win?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I looked at him and wondered if he was telling me the truth.

  “When will you know?”

  “On Thursday, after the declarations close.”

  “How do you find out?”

  “I receive a call.”

  “From McCusker?”

  He nodded. “He just says the name of the horse that must win.”

  Now I knew for certain that Jimmy Guernsey was in on everything.

  “So what do I do?” he said forlornly, holding his head in his hands with his elbows resting on the desk. “I’m finished, one way or the other.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said.

  His head came up a fraction.

  “There might be a way out.”

  “How?” He sounded as if he didn’t believe it.

  “First, you tell me why.”

  He sighed—a great big sigh that had all the weight of his troubles behind it.

  “Money, I suppose,” he said. “It started about three years ago. I was riding one at Chepstow, and he calls me and offers me a grand in cash to lose. A grand! That was five times what I’d get if I won the damn thing. And no tax too.”

  “So did you agree?” I asked.

  “No, I didn’t. I told him to get lost. I rode in the race and finished second—never had a chance to win it, but I was trying. Next thing I know, a thousand in cash arrives in the mail just like that.”

  “No note?”

  “No, nothing. Just twenty nice, new, crisp fifties in a padded envelope, wrapped inside cooking foil.”

  “So what happens next?” I asked.

  “He calls me again and offers me another grand to lose at Newbury.”

  “And you agreed?”

  “What do you think?” he said, almost with a smile. “Money for old rope, especially when I didn’t think I had a chance anyway.”

  “And the money arrived?”

 
“Sure did, just as before. But then it got serious. He rang again and told me to lose on Wine Society in the Champion Hurdle. He was the favorite, and . . .” He tailed off.

  “So?” I said encouragingly.

  “I don’t often get rides as good as that. Winning the Champion Hurdle is what all jockeys dream of.”

  I knew. It was one of the few major races I’d never won and I still regretted it.

  “So what did you do?” I asked.

  “I told him that it was not possible for me to lose on Wine Society. He was the best horse in the race by a streak. But he said he’d recorded our conversation the last time and he’d give the recording to the racing authorities if I won.”

  “So you lost?”

  “Yes. Blundered through the downhill hurdle simply by not asking old Society to jump, then I took a pull, then we failed to make up the ground on the hill to the finish. Easy, really.”

  “And he paid you?”

  “Yeah. Two grand that time. But it cost me the ride on the best horse I’ve ever sat on. I was jocked off for the Aintree Hurdle the following month.”

  “So was it worth it?”

  “Not really,” he said. “I’d have loved to win the Champion Hurdle, but there’s still time.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. There would be no time if I took this to the BHA, and he knew it.

  “So how come you became McCusker’s man in the changing rooms?”

  “Because he went on paying me,” Jimmy said. “I went on stopping a few for him, one a month or so, but then he had the idea to fix the whole race. He laughed about it. Thought it was a great joke. I told him he was bloody crazy and that I didn’t want to go on, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Easy, he said it would be, and everyone has his price, either money or threats. And it was easy—bloody easy—with my help.”

  Jimmy smiled at me.

  I felt sure that he was actually proud of his achievement.

  “So you fix every other horse in the race except the one you want to win?”

  “Not quite every horse,” he said. “It’s not necessary. The top six or seven in the betting is usually enough.”

  “And that’s what you’re planning to do again on Friday?”

  He nodded. “Assuming the right horses run.”

  “Right,” I said. “If you want to get out of this mess with your jockey’s license intact, then you’ll have to do exactly as I tell you.”

  “How do I know you won’t go to the authorities anyway?”

  “You don’t, but what choice have you got? And if you let on to McCusker that I’ve been here or what I want you to do, then all bets are off. And, what’s more, I’ll tell him it was your idea in the first place. Do you understand? No contact with McCusker whatsoever. No calls, no texts, nothing other than his call to you on Thursday with the selected winner.”

  He nodded. “But what if he calls me otherwise?”

  “Tell him everything is fine.”

  He nodded again.

  Then I explained to him exactly what he was going to do.

  He didn’t like it.

  “You’re crazy,” he said. “He’ll bloody kill you, and me.”

  Not if I bloody kill him first, I thought.

  “So do we have a deal?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I suppose so. As you said, I haven’t got much choice. But why are you doing all this?”

  “Because I want to be rid of McCusker once and for all, and this is the only way I know of getting him out into the open, of provoking him into trying something stupid.”

  “You could get hurt. Or worse.”

  “I’m well aware of that.”

  “So why don’t you just take what you have to the BHA and let them deal with him?”

  It was a good question, but I believed that McCusker would then come after me anyway. And perhaps I wanted to be more in control of the timing.

  Or maybe it was because I had some mad idea of preventing the exposure of such widespread corruption within the Sport of Kings, something that would potentially damage, beyond repair, its reputation amongst the betting public.

  Maybe I was doing it for the good of racing.

  • • •

  “EVERYTHING OK?” Chico asked as I climbed back into the Range Rover.

  “I hope so,” I said and told him in outline what I’d arranged to happen.

  “You are bloody mad,” Chico said with enthusiasm. “But I love it.”

  28

  Chico and I left for Liverpool on Wednesday, late morning. This time, we did take overnight bags as I had found us a couple of rooms in the Park Hotel quite close to the track, thanks to a late cancellation and inflated prices.

  Tuesday evening at Charles’s house had not exactly been a barrel of laughs.

  Marina had spent the day at our home working, but she hadn’t felt very comfortable there on her own, not with a bunch of pyromaniacs still on the loose, to say nothing of McCusker himself.

  For some reason, Saskia had not had a good day at school, and she was grumpy too, especially when we all wouldn’t spend the whole evening playing sardines. There are only so many places to hide, even in a big house, and we had surely exhausted them all by now.

  Charles was also on edge, partly, I discovered, for having found Chico asleep in the kitchen the previous morning.

  “I can’t understand why he won’t sleep in the bed Mrs. Cross has made up for him in the old butler’s room,” he’d complained to me.

  “He’s standing watch,” I’d said. But far from that reassuring Charles, it had made him even more nervous and jumpy.

  We had clearly all outstayed our welcome, but there was little I could do.

  “We’ll be gone just as soon as I can get us out,” I’d said to him, but it had done little to improve his humor.

  Even Mrs. Cross was living up to her name. She’d been waiting for me as Chico and I had arrived back from seeing Jimmy Guernsey. “That wretched dog of yours stole my best beef. I left it on the kitchen table for only a second. And it was for the Admiral’s supper.”

  The wretched dog in question wagged her tail and seemed to be the only member of the household who was content. Who wouldn’t be, with filet steak in their tummy?

  “Only a few more days, I promise,” I’d said to Marina. “I have a plan that should bring everything to a conclusion this week.”

  “Is it dangerous?” she’d asked.

  “No more dangerous than riding a bad jumper in the Grand National.”

  It hadn’t cheered her much, and with good reason—both could get you killed.

  • • •

  CHICO DROVE while I used a replacement SIM card to make some calls. I removed McCusker’s cell telephone records from my pocket and starting working through the list of numbers, all of which were for other cell phones beginning with 07.

  I wasn’t sure what I should say to anyone who answered. It was a bit difficult to ask directly to whom I was speaking, so I decided simply to ask for Geoff. My plan was that when someone said that he wasn’t Geoff and I must have the wrong number, I would read out the correct number and then ask who he was.

  However, it didn’t quite work out like that.

  The first three numbers on the list clearly no longer existed, as I simply heard a computer-generated voice saying that the number was not recognized. Perhaps they were pay-as-you-go SIM cards that had since been thrown away or cut up, as Chico had done to mine.

  I put a pencil line through those.

  The next one was at least a current, active number, as dialing it produced a ringing tone. But then another computer-generated voice told me that the person I was trying to call was unavailable, please try later.

  The sixth number I called connected me to a real live person, but whoever it was hung up as soon as I asked fo
r Geoff. I didn’t even know if it had been a man or a woman as they had said nothing, not even when answering.

  The same occurred with numbers seven, eight and nine. Only one real voice answered in my first fifteen calls, and whoever it was refused to say who he was after my wrong-number trick.

  I got bored and put my phone down. I’d try again later.

  “Are you OK driving?” I asked Chico as we went around the north of Birmingham on the freeway.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Why?”

  “I thought you might be tired, that’s all, with all these sleepless nights you’ve been having.”

  “It worries me that there’ll be no one there keeping watch tonight.”

  Yes, I thought, that was worrying me a bit too. I’d even considered asking Marina if she and Saskia would like to come with us, but that might have been even more dangerous, to say nothing of missing three days of school. If things were different, they could have gone to stay with Tim and Paula Gaucin, but, under the present circumstances, that might be awkward.

  I’d had a quiet word with Charles about ensuring everything was locked up, and he’d given me a strange, sideways glance. The shotgun, I’d thought. There was no way I would stop him having it loaded and ready, short of taking it away from him altogether, and I had no intention of doing that. I just hoped he wouldn’t shoot someone by mistake.

  Marina also hadn’t been very happy when we’d left Aynsford. She had hugged me tightly and told me to be careful in much the same way that Jenny, my first wife, had done early on in our marriage whenever I went off to the races to ride.

  But if I’d been too careful when I was riding, I wouldn’t have been such a good jockey. Winning was the important thing, and sometimes risks had to be taken in order to win. Kicking hard and asking a horse to stand back and take off early at a fence could gain lengths in the air over a rival, whereas taking ahold and putting in an extra stride may have been safer but was much slower.

  Safety and winning didn’t often go together.

  Not that I was advocating taking undue risks.