Dick Francis's Refusal (10 page)

“Hi, Robert,” I replied, staring him directly in the eyes. He quickly looked away. Too quickly, I thought.

“What brings you to our humble abode?” he said with a laugh, sitting down at the end of the table. He was doing his best to make light of everything, but I knew differently. Something was troubling him greatly, and my presence was fanning the flames.

“Is Maine Visit one of Judy's father's horses?” I asked. Robert said nothing. “And how about Tender Whisper and Lobsterpot?” They were the three horses he had ridden in the suspect races.

Maine Visit had been second in a handicap hurdle at Newbury on Hennessy Gold Cup day and, in my opinion, should have finished much closer to the winner than the seven lengths it stated in the official result.

“Yup,” he said eventually, all laughter now having faded. “All three.”

“Do you know an Irishman called Billy McCusker?”

The color drained out of his face as if a light had been switched off.

“What is it?” Judy shouted, clearly distressed by the reaction. “Bob, darling, are you all right?” She stood up and fetched him a glass of water. “Here, drink this.”

He drank down the liquid, and a little color returned to his face.

“I'm fine,” he said, not sounding it. “I'm fine, really.”

“What happened there?” Judy demanded loudly. “And who the hell is Billy McCusker?”

I thought for a moment that Robert was going to have another turn, but he drank more of the water and steadied himself.

“Someone that both Robert and I know,” I said. “Don't we, Bob?”

He nodded slightly, his head hanging down in his hands with his elbows on the table.

“I think you'd better leave,” Judy said to me, all schoolgirl hero worship having clearly evaporated. She stood next to me with her hands on her hips.

“OK,” I said, getting up and walking into the hallway. “But tell Robert to call me. We may be on the same side.”

“And what side is that?” she asked belligerently.

“The side of the angels,” I said.

I just didn't fancy meeting with them anytime soon.

I
managed to see only one other jockey on my list before it was time to go home to collect Saskia from school.

I caught David Potter at his home in Upper Lambourn as he was preparing to go play golf. I pulled my Range Rover into the driveway right behind his Jaguar.

David had been a journeyman jockey for most of the previous twenty years, riding steadily here and there without ever being directly connected to any one stable. He was good, though, and he'd had more than his share of winners, but somehow had never broken into the really big time. We'd ridden against each other fairly often when he'd been a fresh-faced youngster, but we'd never been friends. Nowadays, according to the data on the
Racing Post
website, David was riding less and less frequently, sometimes only two or three times a week. Not enough, I thought, to be making a decent living but, obviously enough, to run a Jaguar.

“Bloody hell, Sid,” he shouted at me, coming out of the house with his golf bag over his shoulder. “Move your sodding car, can't you? I'm going to be late for my tee time.”

“Sure,” I said, “just as soon as you've answered some questions.”

“What questions?”

“What do you know of a man called Billy McCusker?”

“Never heard of him,” David said confidently as he loaded the clubs into the trunk of his car.

“He's Irish,” I said, “from West Belfast.” That struck a chord. Now I had David's full attention. “And he has a telling way with threats and violence.”

David stood for a few seconds, looking at me, as if deciding what to do.

“You'd better come inside,” he said.

•   •   •

D
AVID NEVER DID
make it to his game of golf.

His elderly widowed mother had been the lever in his case. First, the threats. Then someone had broken all her downstairs windows in the middle of the night. The poor woman had apparently been so traumatized by the experience that she'd spent the following week in a psychiatric hospital.

“What else could I do?” David said. “It was only one race, and I didn't think I had any chance of winning it anyway. But then there was a second race, then a third and a fourth. Now I live in dread of the phone ringing.”

“Four races?” I said. “I've only got you down for three.”

We sat at his kitchen table and compared notes while Joyce, David's wife, fussed around us, continuously cleaning and polishing.

The fourth race was not on Sir Richard Stewart's list. It had been a three-and-a-half-mile stayers' hurdle at Sandown the previous January.

“It was really strange,” David said. “None of the jockeys seemed to want to win. I remember, as we were coming round the bottom bend towards the second last, Jimmy Guernsey was in front, and he kept looking round to see if anything else was coming. It was actually quite funny.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Jimmy won it. When he couldn't see anything coming to take over, he sat down and rode out a strong finish all on his own. Won by ten lengths or more.”

“Can we look it up on the Internet?” I asked.

David fetched a laptop computer, and we logged on to the
Racing Post
website and checked the official result.

There had been twelve runners, and Jimmy Guernsey had indeed won, by fifteen lengths, on a horse called Le Champagne, at a starting price of five-to-one.

“That distance was flattering,” David said. “Believe me, no one else was trying.”

I did believe him.

According to the website, the win Tote return for Le Champagne was ten pounds and twenty pence, equivalent to a price of over nine-to-one. No wonder the race wasn't on Sir Richard's list. He'd been looking for races with a Tote return well below the starting price, not well above it.

I looked at the detailed notes on the race. Three of the twelve runners hadn't made it to the finish line. One of them had fallen at the last flight of hurdles in the back straight on the second circuit and had brought down the other two.

Being “brought down” was the absolute worst way to lose a race, jumping soundly, then tripping over another horse that was already lying on the floor. It was always unexpected and occurred without warning. I could remember all too well some of the crashing falls I'd had due to being brought down.

“Perhaps the designated winner was one of those three,” David said. “When Jimmy saw that it was no longer in the race, he decided to go on and win it.”

“But, hold on,” I said, “that would mean that Jimmy knew beforehand which horse was meant to win.”

“So it would,” David said slowly, taking in the implications. “All I was told was to make sure I didn't.”

“Who told you?”

“The Irishman. On the phone, the night before.”

He pushed his chair back noisily on the stone-tiled kitchen floor, leaned back and put his hands on his head.

“So what are you going to do now?” he asked.

“In what way?”

“Are you going to the Security Service?”

“Should I?”

“I'll deny everything,” he said.

“Then why tell me?”

“I don't know.” He sat forward. “Perhaps you just caught me unawares.”

“There's no possibility, then, that you'll complete a signed statement for me?”

“You must be bloody joking,” he said with a laugh.

“But surely you'd like to be rid of this man?”

“I certainly would,” David replied. “But not at the cost of my jockey's license, which I'd be bound to lose if I admitted I'd stopped horses in four races, even if there were extenuating circumstances. You know what they're like at the BHA. Two-year ban, minimum. And they never forgive or forget.”

He was right. We both knew it.

“Sid, I'm getting on now. I've probably only got a couple of seasons left in me, if that. And I want to go into training after I retire from riding, and I'll need a license for that too. I have no intention of throwing it all away.”

Then he shouldn't have stopped the horses, I thought, but he wasn't the only one who had done things he didn't want to as a result of threats from Billy McCusker. I was a member of that club as well.

•   •   •

M
ARINA AND
S
ASKIA
left early on Saturday morning, booking a taxi to take them to Birmingham Airport.

“But I'll take you,” I'd said when Marina told me.

“Sid, leave it. Sassy is still very upset about Mandy, and it would be better if we just leave quietly in a taxi.”

Better for whom?

I wandered around the house after they'd gone, missing them already and feeling miserable. I knew Marina blamed me for the dogs being taken in the first place. She hadn't exactly said so, but I knew. She believed that if I'd agreed straightaway to McCusker's demands, none of it would have happened and Mandy would still be alive.

She might be right. But surely that didn't make it my fault?

I rang the Admiral.

“Do you fancy a visitor to watch the racing on the television?” I asked.

“Just one?”

“Yes. I'm on my own for the day. I need cheering up.”

“Then come for lunch first,” he said.

“I don't want to be any trouble.”

“It's no trouble. Mrs. Cross will conjure up something, I'm sure.”

Mrs. Cross had been Charles's housekeeper for as long as I'd known him, which was close to thirty years, ever since his daughter, Jenny, had fallen irrationally in love with a young up-and-coming jockey—me.

“That will be lovely,” I said. “I'll see you at one o'clock.”

I spent the rest of the morning catching up on paperwork—paying bills and answering e-mails.

A letter from Queen Mary's Hospital arrived in the mail around eleven, and I spent some time sitting at my desk looking at it unopened. It would be the results of the tests they had done on Tuesday.

What did I want it to say?

Would I be pleased or would I be disappointed if I had, or hadn't, been considered suitable for a transplant?

Come on, I said to myself, stop being such a coward. Open the damn thing.

I slit open the envelope and extracted the single sheet of paper inside. It was a letter from Harry the Hands.

Dear Mr. Halley,

It was very good to see you on Tuesday.

My team and I have looked at your medical test results and we have evaluated your psychological questionnaire in great detail.

I am very happy to inform you that we consider you an excellent candidate for a total hand and wrist transplant.

I would be most grateful if you could make another appointment to come and see me at the hospital as soon as possible to make all the necessary preoperative arrangements.

Yours sincerely,

Harold Bryant, FRCS, Head of the Transplant Team

Wow, I thought. This might actually happen, and soon.

•   •   •

“
W
HERE'S
M
ARINA?”
Charles asked over lunch.

“Gone home to her mother,” I said flippantly. “And she's taken Saskia with her.”

Charles looked up at me from his smoked salmon. “Permanently?”

“No,” I said. “At least I hope not.”

“Trouble?” Charles asked, never being one to beat about the bush.

“Some,” I said.

“Anything to do with Richard Stewart?”

I nodded. “Bloody man. Why didn't he keep his suspicions to himself?” That was a good point, I thought. How had Billy McCusker known that Sir Richard had suspicions in the first place? Was it through someone at his club? Surely not. Then how?

“So you now believe him?” Charles asked somewhat smugly.

“Yes,” I said. “Absolutely.”

I told Charles everything—the calls, the threats, Saskia being collected from school by strangers, our trip to Newbury races to see Jimmy Guernsey and Angus Drummond, the taking of the dogs, Mandy's death, my trip to Lambourn to see the other jockeys, the lot. I even told him about the ridiculous report I'd been sent and me having signed it.

“That is trouble, indeed,” he said. “What do the police say?”

“They're investigating the abduction of Sassy from school, but I don't think it has a very high priority. This McCusker fellow knew what he was doing by returning her home before we even knew she had gone. I think the police believe she was offered a lift home by a friend as a favor. Someone who is now too scared to say so.”

“How about the dogs?” Charles asked.

“Ha,” I said. “Don't make me laugh. They have as much interest in the taking of the dogs as in the theft of a bicycle. In fact, probably less. They told me so themselves.”

“But that's ridiculous.” The Admiral was angry on my behalf.

“In the eyes of the police, dogs are just belongings.”

“What nonsense,” he said.

We ate our salmon in silence for a while.

“So what are you going to do about this McCusker man?” Charles asked, taking a sip of an excellent Chablis.

“I don't know,” I said. “I take his threats very seriously. I've done what he wanted. Now perhaps he'll go away and leave me to live my life in peace.”

“And are you going to just sit back and let him get away with it?”

“What else do you suggest I do?” I asked. “I've been trying to think of a way of defeating him, but can I really risk Marina's beauty or Saskia's life to gain revenge over the death of a dog?”

“Then why did you go and see Robert Price and David Potter even though you'd already signed and mailed the report?”

It was a good question.

“Perhaps I have an insatiable appetite for the truth.”

•   •   •

W
E WATCHED
the televised racing from the all-weather track at Kempton Park, and also from Meydan Racecourse in Dubai, but without much enthusiasm.

“Flat racing never excites me as much as jumping,” Charles said. “I think it's because the horses seem to race for only a year or two. You don't have time to get to know them like the jumpers.”

On the screen I could see Peter Medicos, the BHA head of racing security. He was standing in the parade ring at Kempton in his trademark tweed suit and battered trilby, watching the horses. I wondered what he made of the single-sheet, signed report that would have arrived on his desk on Thursday morning.

Many years ago, whenever I'd submitted an inquiry report to the racing authorities, it had come with a covering letter, reasoned arguments, detailed analysis and rational conclusions, as well as a full breakdown of where I'd been and what I'd done, together with appendices of interview transcripts and any further evidence on which I had based my conclusions.

So he must have been surprised by my most recent offering. Part of me wanted him to realize it was a fake. Perhaps I should tell him so.

“So when are Marina and Saskia back?” Charles asked.

“Wednesday,” I said. “They land at noon. Saskia's going straight to a birthday party for one of her classmates.”

“So what are you going to do for the next four days?”

“You make it sound as if I can't look after myself.”

“You could always stay here with me,” Charles said. “I'd enjoy the company.” He sounded rather dejected.

“Charles, are you lonely?”

“I suppose I am a bit,” he said. “What with Jill and Jenny now both living abroad, and you and Marina having such busy lives . . . Oh, I don't know. So many of my friends are dropping off the perch that I seem to spend all my time at bloody funerals. I suppose it'll be my turn soon.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “You've got years in you yet.”