Dick Francis's Refusal (11 page)

“Have I? I'm not really sure I want them.” He sighed. “I used to love going to London to stay in my club for a few days, you know, to have lunch and dinner with chums, to relax over a glass of port, chew the cud, solve the world's problems, that sort of thing. It was like old times in the wardroom. But this last time there were only a few people in the club that I even recognized. Even Jack, the old barman, has retired. These days, the place is full of young city types with their cell phones always going off in the dining room.” He sounded disgusted by such behavior. “With Richard Stewart now gone as well, I don't think I'll be staying there anymore.”

“I didn't realize you knew Sir Richard so well,” I said.

“I didn't, really. I only ever saw him in the club, but, over the years, we grew to become friends. I will certainly miss him.” He sighed again.

“Come on, Charles,” I said. “You're meant to be cheering me up, remember, not depressing me.”

“More wine,” he said with a smile. “That's what we need.” And he went to fetch another bottle of Chablis from the fridge.

•   •   •

W
E WATCHED
the World Cup race live on the television from Dubai, where the victorious American-bred colt, owned by an Irish millionaire and ridden by a French jockey, was hailed as a great English success because he was trained in Newmarket by an Italian immigrant. Such was the global nature of Thoroughbred horseracing.

“What do you think about me having a new hand?” I asked Charles.

“Why? Has that one stopped working?” He looked down at my prosthesis.

“No,” I said. “I meant a new real hand. One that feels. A transplant.”

“I don't understand.”

“I've been offered the chance of having a hand and wrist transplant,” I said. “Apparently, they've been quite successful in the United States.”

“But where does the hand come from?”

“From a donor. As with any transplant, there has to be a donor.”

“You mean from a dead person?”

“Of course,” I said with a laugh. “They're hardly likely to chop the hand off someone still alive just so I can have it.”

Charles pulled a face. “I'm not sure I like the sound of that.”

“Where do you think hearts come from for heart transplants or kidneys?”

“Yes,” he said. “But they come from . . . inside. No one could look at a heart and say, ‘That looks like old Fred's heart,' but they could with a hand. You'd even have someone else's fingerprints.” He shivered.

“I wish I hadn't told you now.”

“Are you seriously going to agree to this?”

“Charles,” I said firmly, “have you the slightest idea what it's like to have only one hand? I can't do up buttons without a desperate struggle. I can't hold open a newspaper or tie a knot or do any of the millions of other things that you need two hands to achieve, like tearing a sheet of bathroom tissue off the roll. Do you, in fact, notice that dear Mrs. Cross cuts all my food into bite-sized portions because I can't use both a knife and a fork at the same time? I can't even clap.”

“And would a hand transplant allow you to do all those things?”

“Yes,” I said, “it would.”

“Well,” he said, “perhaps you'd better have one, then.”

Yes, I thought, perhaps I better had.

O
n Sunday I went to the races at Uttoxeter, and I took the Admiral with me.

I hadn't spent Saturday night at his house, as he'd wanted, because I'd had to get home to feed Rosie.

“You could always bring her here with you,” Charles had said. “It's been quite a few years now since I've had a dog in this house.”

“Maybe that's what you need to stop you being lonely,” I'd replied, but he had shaken his head.

“I'm now too old to go for long walks, and that's what a dog needs.”

Indeed, it was.

In the last light of the day, I'd taken Rosie up to the fields behind our house after I returned from Aynsford.

It had only been a few days, but she seemed to be adjusting well to the absence of Mandy, although she followed me around the house rather than lying in her bed in the hallway as she had always done before.

She had bounded excitedly through the fields of winter wheat that the recent fine weather had encouraged to grow as tall as she, and it had made me smile to watch her as she jumped up with each stride to check that I was still there, only her head showing above the stalks. It had looked like she was swimming in a sea of green.

My mind, however, had kept returning to the one big question that had been circling around my consciousness for the past week: Should I try to do something about Billy McCusker?

The moral answer was yes. But what was an acceptable cost?

I'd been battered many times in my life, mostly by racing falls, but there had also been a fair share of occasions when beatings had been inflicted by my fellow human beings.

Steeplechase jockeys get hurt, and often. It is a fact of racing life. If you can't deal with it, then it's simple, don't become a steeplechase jockey. But I'd also been beaten up, shot, stabbed and half flayed alive.

Some might say I was mad, but all those other injuries were a price worth paying for doing what I believed to be right, and I hadn't exactly foreseen that I'd get shot or stabbed. But now, with Billy McCusker, I knew only too well what the consequences would be—he'd told me.

In a race, no jockey expects his mount to fall, flinging him to the turf from a height of over six feet while traveling forward at thirty miles an hour. Falls invariably hurt, and sometimes they hurt really badly, with broken bones and dislocated shoulders. Nevertheless, jockeys go out to race day after day, knowing that the probability is such that they will, on average, go crashing down to the grass at half a mile a minute every twelve to fourteen rides.

But they can never be sure that a given ride will end in a fall. Every jockey assumes that he'll always get around safely in spite of the odds stacked up against him.

Taking on Billy McCusker would be like knowing that my horse would definitely have a crashing, bone-breaking fall at the very first fence.

Would I then be so keen to line up at the start?

•   •   •

U
TTOXETER RACETRACK
on that sunny Easter Sunday was full to overflowing, with the local populace being reinforced by folk from the cities of Stoke, Derby and Lichfield, all eager for a day out at the races.

“Are we here for anything in particular?” Charles asked as we walked from the car to the enclosures.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I just wondered if you had plans to talk to any more jockeys.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Charles smiled. “You can't change, you know, Sid. Not inside. Once a detective, always a detective. You might tell me you're not going to do anything about this man, but I know you better than that.”

Was he right?

“I do want to have another word with Angus Drummond,” I said. “He's got three rides here this afternoon, and it's so much easier than driving all the way down to Tiverton to see him at home.”

I had also decided that it would be a good time to talk to Angus because Jimmy Guernsey was a hundred and fifty miles away, riding four horses on the card at Fontwell Park.

It was a calculated move but one potentially fraught with danger.

I was pretty sure that Jimmy Guernsey must be on the McCusker team as he had obviously known which horse was due to win at Sandown in the fourth race that David Potter had described. And possibly Robert Price too. But maybe, like David, Angus Drummond was more of a victim than a villain.

If I were wrong, he would be sure to report back to McCusker that I was still asking questions, with all the consequences that that would bring. But if I were right, I'd have another potential ally in the war.

Perhaps what I had in mind was to convince a large enough number of the jockeys to agree that if I did a deal with the BHA so that they would receive immunity from prosecution and every other sanction, they would then give evidence against McCusker and Guernsey, and that would be enough to get the two warned off from racing for life.

It wasn't going to be easy. David Potter had made that abundantly clear. He had been even more frightened of Billy McCusker than he was of the BHA Security Service and he was absolutely terrified of them.

As if on cue, Charles and I found ourselves walking through the entrance at the same time as Peter Medicos.

“Hello, Sid,” he said.

“Hi, Peter,” I replied. “Do you know my father-in-law?”

“Admiral,” Peter said by way of greeting, raising his trilby slightly. “How are things at Aynsford?”

“Fine, thank you,” said Charles.

There weren't many regulars on British racetracks that Peter Medicos didn't know. It was said he had a fantastic memory for faces, and clearly for much more.

“I didn't realize you lot worked on Sundays,” I said. “Are you here chasing anyone in particular?”

“I work seven days a week, Sid,” Peter said with a smile. “No respite for the righteous. I was at Kempton yesterday, and I'm always on the lookout for wrongdoing and mischief making. But I also have a weekend cottage near here, so I've a soft spot for Uttoxeter.”

“Have there been any developments regarding Sir Richard Stewart's death?” I asked.

“The police seem pretty sure it was suicide.”

I could sense that Charles was about to interject, so I looked at him and fractionally shook my head. He quickly got the message. In my opinion, Peter Medicos knew too much about us already, and I saw no reason why he should also know that my father-in-law had been a friend of Sir Richard's for more than twenty years.

“And thank you for that sheet of paper you sent me last week about his bizarre suspicions. It confirmed what I'd been thinking. Not that I was expecting it, mind you, so don't go thinking you can apply to us for a fee.”

“I won't,” I said.

I wanted so much to tell him to ignore the paper, to state that it was all lies and that Sir Richard had been right all along, but doing so would have resulted in too many other questions, most of which I didn't want to have to answer.

Not yet anyway.

•   •   •

T
ALKING TO
Angus Drummond was going to be more difficult than I had imagined because he took elaborate steps to avoid me, hiding for most of the afternoon in the jockeys' changing room. When he did come out to ride, he sprinted across from the Weighing Room to the paddock without giving me any chance to snag him.

I could see this wasn't going to work. He would, no doubt, sprint to his car at the end of the day and then he'd be gone. He was a thirty-one-year-old, race-fit jockey while I was now pushing forty-seven and rather more portly around the waist than I had been in my riding days. In a simple Le Mans–style run to the cars and drive away, Angus would win with ease.

So I decided to cheat.

His last ride of the day was in the sixth race, the second last on the card, and, sure enough, he sprinted out of the Weighing Room to the paddock before it and sprinted back in afterwards, not giving me a chance for a single word.

I then hung around outside the door for him to reappear after changing.

As he emerged he saw me and made a dash for the exit, rushing past me without glancing at my face. Little did he realize he was wasting his breath. He was going nowhere fast, not in his car anyway.

I hurried out to the parking lot in his wake to find him standing, frustrated, next to his BMW.

“It's not punctured,” I said. “Just flat.”

“Did you do this?” he shouted at me, pointing at his offside front tire.

“Yes,” I said. “But I have a pump that will reinflate it.”

“Are you bloody crazy? What sort of idiot lets the air out of other people's tires?”

“What sort of idiot,” I countered, “stops horses?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he said, but his body language gave me another answer. He was scared.

“Oh yes, Angus,” I said, “I think you do.”

“Jimmy says I shouldn't talk to you. He says you'll cause trouble.”

“Then Jimmy is a fool. I might just be the only friend you've got.”

That surprised him. “Friend?”

“Yes,” I said. “A friend. And all you need to do is tell me why.”

He looked around him as if trying to find a way to escape. “You wouldn't understand,” he said.

“Try me,” I replied. “I've been threatened too, you know.”

Angus Drummond looked at me afresh. “I didn't have any choice,” he said. “He said he'd burn down my parents' farm.”

“The Irishman?”

Now he looked at me in total surprise, but then he nodded. “He torched a barn full of hay and threatened to burn down the rest of the farm if I didn't play ball. What else could I do?”

The last race was over, and the crowd surged out to the parking lots, everyone intent on beating the rush but being part of it.

“I'll fetch the pump,” I said. “You stay here.”

He nodded at me in a resigned manner.

I went over to the Range Rover, opened the trunk and lifted the floor tray to retrieve the battery-operated air pump from the compartment beneath.

“What's going on?” asked Charles, walking up to the car.

“I'm helping Angus Drummond with a flat tire,” I said.

“Puncture?”

“No. Someone let the air out.”

Charles raised a questioning eyebrow in my direction, and I laughed.

“I'll wait for you here, then,” he said, climbing into the front seat of the Range Rover.

The pump made light work of reinflating the tire, and, while it did, Angus told me more of his disagreeable encounters with Billy McCusker, not that he'd known him by name.

“At first, I told him to get stuffed,” Angus said. “He wasn't the first cold caller to try and get me to stop a horse, and I gave him short shrift, just like the others. But he said I'd regret it if I didn't cooperate. I asked him what he meant, but he said to wait and see. The following night the Dutch barn full of our whole year's hay crop went up in flames. It burned for three days and lit up the night sky for miles. Broke my mother's heart after all the work we'd done cutting and baling the stuff.

“At first, we thought it must have been an accident—you have to be so careful with hay to make sure it's properly dry as it can naturally create a lot of heat deep down in a bale and spontaneously combust. We thought that was what must have happened, but then the Irishman rings me and says that he set it alight, and the rest of the farm would go the same way if I didn't do as he wanted.”

“Do your parents know about the calls from the Irishman?”

“No, of course not. He said he'd surely burn the farm if I told anyone, even them.” He suddenly looked rather worried that he'd told me.

“How about the police?” I asked.

“They came and looked at the remains of the barn, all twisted metal from the heat, but I didn't tell them about the calls. I was too scared. They didn't say it was arson, or anything, and Dad made a claim on the insurance.”

“And you stopped the horse?”

“Yeah,” he said slowly, “I did. But then he rings again and says he wants another one stopped. And another. And so on.” He looked miserable.

I disconnected the pump from his car's lighter socket and wrapped the cable around it. “Good as new,” I said with a smile, giving the tire a kick.

“What are you going to do about it?” Angus asked. “Are you going to the Security Service?”

“No,” I said, “not yet. I'll tell no one for now, and don't you tell anyone that you've told me.”

“Are you mad? Of course I won't.”

“And, specifically, don't tell Jimmy Guernsey.”

“Jimmy?” he said, surprised again. “Why would I tell Jimmy?”

“Doesn't he tell you which horse to stop?”

“No. I get my instructions direct from the Irishman.”

“So why did Jimmy tell you not to speak to me?”

“I'm not sure,” Angus said. “When we saw you at Newbury last week, he just said to me that Sid Halley was always trouble and that I should stay away and keep my mouth shut.”

“Do you know if Jimmy was stopping horses as well?” I asked.

“I reckoned he might be. He rode in all of the races when I stopped one, and he didn't win any of them either, which, according to the form, he should have. But I didn't dare ask him.”

It was incredible, I thought.

McCusker had terrorized so many jockeys that he'd been dictating the running of whole races and none of them had dared talk to one another about it for fear of retribution, either from the racing authorities or from having a family farm burned down or having an elderly widowed mother sent bonkers by nighttime attacks on her house or any number of other horrific consequences.

It was wicked. But how could I stop it? More to the point, how could I stop it without bringing down the wrath of McCusker on myself and my family—or on anyone else, for that matter?