Dick Francis's Refusal (20 page)

Sassy came home from school and helped lift me out of my depression, as she danced around Charles's study, showing me a little doll she'd made in a craft class.

“She's lovely, darling,” I said. “Does she have a name?”

“Mandy,” Sassy said poignantly. Then she rushed out of the study to take the doll to see Grandpa.

“How was it at the school today?” I asked Marina.

“Pretty awful,” she said. “One of the mothers, of a girl in the year ahead, shouted to her daughter to stay away from Saskia in case she caught something nasty. I ask you, what sort of a person does that?”

“Ignore them,” I said.

“I try, but it's difficult.”

I gave her a reassuring hug.

“How about you?” Marina said. “Had any luck with the McCusker hunt?”

“Not much, but I've put out a few feelers for information. Are you sure you're happy about this?”

“Absolutely,” she said with passion. “I hate him, hate him, hate him. He kidnapped Saskia, he took and killed Mandy and then he made me question my own husband's involvement with pornographic photos of children.” She paused. “I want rid of this man. All I ask is that we keep safe. Don't do anything if it puts us in danger.”

“I won't,” I said. “I promise.”

But did I really mean it? Could I keep that promise even if I wanted to? Had I not put us in potential danger already simply by asking for the information from Norman Whitby?

I remembered the talk about a mole in the detective ranks of the Greater Manchester Police. What if Norman inadvertently informed McCusker of my inquiries by mentioning them to the wrong person? I thought that it was unlikely, but could I be totally sure?

And what if Norman Whitby was himself McCusker's mole?

It didn't bear thinking about.

The telephone interrupted my dismal thoughts and, coincidentally, it was Norman Whitby on the line, calling back.

“I've got some stuff for you,” he said, barely audibly. “Do you have an e-mail address?”

“Your Thames Valley colleagues have confiscated my computer. Can't you read it to me?”

“No,” he said, again almost in a whisper. “I'm in the office.”

“Mail it, then,” I said, and I gave him Charles's address. “It's safer than e-mailing. There's no record.”

“I'll have to print it out.” He clearly wasn't very happy.

“And, Norman,” I said, “send it first class. I need it tomorrow.”

“I'll try,” he said quickly and hung up.

If he was the mole, he was a very good actor.

•   •   •

“
S
O WHAT'S THE PLAN?”
Chico asked, calling back around five o'clock.

“Do you fancy a trip to Manchester?”

“Manchester?”

“I want to see what my enemy looks like.”

“When?”

“When are you free?” I asked.

“Anytime you like. Exams start here on Monday, and they run on for weeks, and there's no PE 'cos they all take place in the gym.”

“Don't you have any playing fields?”

“We used to, but the bloody council sold them for housing. And we aren't allowed to use the playground for PE even though they all kick soccer balls around it during the lunch hour. Health and Safety rules, apparently, because the playground's made of concrete. It's effin' crazy.”

Their loss, I thought, was my gain.

“But don't you have to look after the kids anyway?”

“I'll get out of that, all right. I'll tell them my granny's dying up in the north of Scotland and I've got to go and see her. It's no problem. I've done it before.”

“How many Scottish grannies have you got?” I asked, laughing.

“As many as I need.”

I hoped he wouldn't use up too many of them.

I
n for a penny, in for a pound.

Late on Friday afternoon I used Charles's ancient computer to send an e-mail to Peter Medicos at the BHA, stating that I wished now to disassociate myself from the report I had sent to him previously regarding Sir Richard Stewart's concerns about race fixing. That I had been wrong, and that further investigation had shown me Sir Richard had indeed been correct in his assertion that someone was manipulating the results of races. And that I recommended that the BHA Security Service should investigate the matter further with reference to the bookmakers trading as Honest Joe Bullen of Manchester.

“Are you sure that's wise?” Charles asked when I told him.

“I don't know,” I said, “but it surely must be better for us if Billy McCusker is being distracted by a BHA inquiry into his bookmaking operation.”

I purposely hadn't gone quite as far as to mention McCusker by name or to detail the jockeys I had spoken to. Peter Medicos would find out about them all in good time. And the last thing I wanted was for the likes of Jimmy Guernsey to tell McCusker that the Security Service had come directly to him as a result of a tip-off from me.

•   •   •

T
HE PACKAGE
of information from Norman Whitby arrived Saturday midmorning in the mail.

There wasn't as much as I had hoped for, but it would do. The most important thing included in it was McCusker's home address and home phone number—Norman having scribbled alongside:
This is very ex-directory so don't let on how you got it.

I knew from the Belfast Crown Court report that Billy McCusker was now forty-two years old, but the information from Norman showed that his birthday was, appropriately, the last day of October—Halloween.

From Norman's brief details of McCusker's suspected dealings in a thriving Manchester extortion racket, I suspected that our Billy was one person who didn't need to dress up in a creepy costume on his birthday to scare others. He did it on a daily basis throughout the rest of the year, probably while wearing a business suit and tie.

There had been six arrests of McCusker in the preceding five years. Five times had been on suspicion of obtaining money by menacing and once of inflicting grievous bodily harm with a baseball bat, but only one of those arrests had resulted in subsequent charges. And even on that occasion, any chance of court proceedings had quickly evaporated due to the prospective witnesses for the prosecution suddenly failing to remember what they'd previously reported to the police.

Convenient collective amnesia had set in, no doubt assisted by threats of violence from the defendant or his mates. Getting McCusker convicted of anything was going to be a struggle, let alone something that would send him away for a lengthy stretch.

Perhaps his murder was, indeed, the only viable solution, but Norman Whitby's package also contained information about three of Billy McCusker's close associates—his muscle—two of whom I was pretty sure I'd met in the parking lot at Towcester races. To murder the boss, one might have to dispose of the hired help first, and, somehow, I wasn't too enamored with the odds.

Next I called Terry Glenn again at the Metropolitan Police.

“Hello, Terry,” I said when he answered his cell. “Any luck?”

He wasn't pleased to hear from me. “No, Sid. No luck as yet.”

“Have you even tried?” I asked, knowing full well that he hadn't.

“Telephone records are highly confidential,” he said. “Have you any idea how much shit I'd be in if I was caught giving you that information? Especially since the phone-hacking scandal and all that trouble over selling information by police to the media.”

“Have you any idea how much shit you'd have been in if I hadn't bailed you out by getting rid of that handgun from your house before it was searched by Internal Affairs? You'd have gone down for that, Terry, and you know it. Loss of career, loss of liberty, maybe even a loss of life. You know what happens to coppers when they go inside, don't you?”

“But that was all years ago.”

“Maybe it was,” I said, “but you still owe me. And I have another number for you.”

I gave him McCusker's home number from Norman Whitby's package to add to the cell one I'd given him the previous day. “All calls for the past six months will do. Plus any texts on the cell.”

He sighed. “OK, I'll do it for you, but then we're even. No more requests.”

“OK,” I said, “it's a deal. Print them out and send them.” I gave him Charles's address.

“I'll do it on Monday,” he said with resignation.

“No, Terry, do it now. You've still got time to catch the Saturday mail.”

•   •   •

A
ROUND NOON,
Chico arrived by taxi from Banbury railway station to lift my mood.

It was well over ten years since we had last seen each other, and, as he'd said, he'd put on the odd pound here and there, as had I. There were a few flecks of gray in his tight curly hair. but, overall, he looked exactly the same as I remembered him. And his mind was as sharp and rough-edged as it had always been.

“You've aged well,” I said, standing in the hallway to greet him.

“I'll be forty this year,” he said, “or maybe next.”

“You don't look it.”

“Shut up, will you. What is this? I haven't come all this way fishing for bleedin' compliments.” But his smile showed me that he was still pretty proud of his youthful appearance. “Got to keep my looks, though, haven't I, me old china, now I'm back in the bird-chasing stakes.”

“Yes,” I said. “I'm sorry to hear about your marriage.”

“Don't be,” he said. “Better off out of it for both of us, I reckon. How about yours? Right posh bird, by all accounts. Dutch, isn't she?”

“Ja, maar niet zo posh,”
Marina said with a laugh, coming into the hall from the kitchen. “You must be Chico?”

“Blimey, Sid,” Chico said with his eyes firmly on Marina's bosom, “you done well.”

Marina blushed.

“Yes,” I agreed, “but she has a mean right hook if crossed, so watch it.”

Marina pulled a face at me, but we both knew it was true.

“So when do we set off north?” Chico said. “I've not come here to make bleedin' chitchat.”

“All in good time,” I heard myself say, echoing the policespeak for
Not yet
. “We have to make plans first.”

Mrs. Cross made sandwiches for our lunch while Charles, Marina, Chico and I convened in the drawing room as a Council of War.

Even though I'd told them all bits of the story, I went through things again from the beginning, from the arrival at our house of Sir Richard Stewart right up until my release on bail from Oxford police station.

I explained to them about Sir Richard's suspicions and how he had tried so hard to get me to look into them and how I had refused to do so and the fear and anger that that decision had caused him.

I then told them about the circumstances of Sir Richard's sudden death the following morning and why Charles didn't believe the police view that it was suicide. And also about my telephone calls from the man with a Northern Irish accent, demanding that I should investigate the very concerns that Sir Richard had raised and to make sure I found that nothing was wrong.

I relived the horror of discovering that Saskia had been kidnapped from school, followed by the relief that she had been released unharmed. And the anger that remained that someone could do such a thing.

I described my day at Newbury races and the Guinness-assisted discussion with Paddy O'Fitch, who gave me not only the name of Billy McCusker but also the news of the Shankill Road Volunteers' mass exodus to Manchester. I also recalled for them my less-than-friendly encounter with the jockey Jimmy Guernsey that had confirmed for me both his and McCusker's involvement in Sir Richard's race fixing.

I told them about how our two dogs had been taken and then let loose a hundred miles away on the M6 freeway, only for Mandy to be killed by the passing traffic. And I revealed my discovery that several top jockeys had been terrorized into stopping horses because of threats or actions against their families.

I raised a few eyebrows, not least Marina's, when I divulged the fact that I knew it had been a jockey, Tony Molson, and his wife, Margaret, who had kidnapped Saskia from her school, but that they had done so under great duress from McCusker.

I explained how I had been to Towcester races to watch Tony Molson stop the horse Ackerman in the two-and-a-half-mile chase and how I had been beaten up for my troubles in the racetrack parking lot by a pair of McCusker's heavies.

And, in conclusion, I described the ignominy and humiliation of being arrested on suspicion of child abuse and of still being treated by the police as if I was a sexual deviant, all thanks, I was sure, to a McCusker-generated complaint.

All in all, it had been an eventful three weeks, and that was without even mentioning anything about my prospective hand transplant.

“Wow,” said Chico when I'd finished my monologue. He'd been sitting quietly, listening, occasionally opening and closing his Swiss Army penknife as if it had been an aid to concentration on my story.

All put together, even I'd been amazed how quickly Billy McCusker had infected our lives like a hybrid flu virus, one for which there appeared to be no simple cure.

“So what's the plan?” Charles said.

“Under normal circumstances, I would make a complaint of my own to the police, but, in this case, I believe that would have about as much effect as peeing on a bonfire. I have a contact in the Greater Manchester force, and he believes they have a mole in their midst. And McCusker is well versed in using the system to stay out of its clutches. This one, I fear, is down to us.”

“I don't fancy a full-frontal attack,” Chico said, “not with those bleedin' Volunteers running all over the place. I bet they haven't decommissioned their arms. We're going to need to be real sneaky.”

I laughed. “We're going to have to be more than sneaky. This man has no conscience and no qualms. He's a killer who knows nothing but violence.”

I decided against telling them about Darren Paisley's grisly end, nailed to a floor and dying of thirst.

“Please, please be careful,” Marina said, looking at me. “Nothing is worth us losing you.”

Were there things worth dying for?

Plenty of people in history had died for causes they believed in. They still did. During the world wars, there had never been a shortage of volunteers for missions from which no one was expected to return, to say nothing of the men and women of the military intelligence units who willingly parachuted into Nazi-occupied France and whose life expectancy was measured in weeks rather than months.

There were loads of examples of people who had freely forfeited their own lives to save those of people they loved.

But had it been worth it?

I remember what my dying mother had told me when I'd been sixteen:
Fleeting and fragile, life is your most cherished possession. Make of it what you can, but protect it with all your might.

It had been the most awful of times, and I would then have happily given up my own life to make her well again from the cancer that was destroying her body from within.

But even if it had been possible, what good would that have done? She had lived solely to look after me. I was her pride and joy. If I had died instead of her, then her life would have had no purpose.

“I have no intention of dying anytime soon,” I said to Marina, and hoped I wasn't tempting fate in the process.

“Me neither,” said Chico with a laugh. “I've met a nice little blonde number who needs my body totally intact and full of vim and vigor.”

A body totally intact, I mused.

Was it raining?

•   •   •

T
HE
C
OUNCIL OF
W
AR
came up with no great master plan for success but rather a whole raft of further questions that needed answering first.

It was decided that Chico and I would go to Manchester to carry out a reconnaissance on McCusker, his home and local area, to get the feel for the enemy and the battleground, while Marina, Saskia and Rosie would remain at Charles's place in Aynsford under his protection. As he said, he may be eighty-three, but he still knew how to load and fire the shotgun he had used for nearly fifty years to kill vermin on his land.

I would contact D.C.I. Watkinson again to try to determine who had made a complaint against me, and I'd also try to start lining up the miscreant jockeys in a solid coalition to face the BHA and the police. Not that I thought there was any realistic chance of that.

The meeting broke up at a quarter to three, as Charles had an appointment to see the chairman of the Aynsford Parish Council and Chico wanted to call his little blonde number to explain away his absence for the next few days.

“Why didn't you tell me that you knew who'd kidnapped Saskia?” Marina asked rather irritably when we were left alone. “And, more to the point, why haven't you told the police?”

I explained to her the circumstances.

“How could I tell the police?” I said.

“They should have thought of that before they took her.” She was clearly not moved by the possible fate of the Molsons' own boys. “Do you remember how frightened we were? I think we should report them. Otherwise, they might do it again to some other little girl.”

“I think the chances of that are zero.”

“How about if this awful man McCusker tells them to?”

“I'll just have to make sure he doesn't.”

•   •   •

M
ARINA WENT
to collect Saskia from a lunchtime birthday party at McDonald's in Stratford. She hadn't wanted her to go in the first place, but our little daughter was proving to be a highly proficient negotiator in getting her own way.