Dick Francis's Refusal (12 page)

•   •   •

I
DROVE
the Admiral back to Aynsford mostly in silence while I was thinking, but, eventually, his inquisitive nature got the better of him.

“So what did he say?”

“He told me that McCusker burned down a barn at his parents' farm and threatened to do the same to the rest of it unless he stopped the horses.”

“My God,” said Charles. “You must go to the police.”

“Must I?” I said. “What good will that do?”

“They'd be able to arrest McCusker.”

“Would they?” I asked. “On what evidence? Angus didn't know his name until I told him just now. For him it was simply a telephone call from some Irishman. And even if they did arrest him, then what? They're hardly going to send him to prison for very long for burning a few tons of hay. He'd be straight out on bail anyway, and then how would I protect the Drummond farm, to say nothing of Marina and Saskia? This man needs to be stopped for good, not just for a few hours of police questioning.”

“So how are you going to do that?” Charles asked.

“I'm working on it.”

I went on working on it for the last few miles to Aynsford but came up with precious few sensible ideas.

Murdering Billy McCusker seemed to be the only satisfactory long-term solution. There would then be no chance of him ever carrying out his threats, not unless he came back to haunt us. However, there was one major drawback to this strategy—I didn't intend spending the next twenty years or so of my life in one of Her Majesty's prisons. I had other plans.

Perhaps, I thought next, I could convince someone else to kill him, but conspiracy to murder carries the same jail sentence as actually committing it. And I didn't even know where to find the potential victim, let alone a hired assassin.

“Do you want to come in?” Charles asked as I pulled into his driveway.

“Thanks, Charles, but I'd better be getting home. Rosie's been on her own in the kennel all afternoon and she needs feeding.”

“I hope you've put a lock on it,” he said.

“I sure have. A nice big, shiny padlock. And a man came on Friday morning to weld a top onto the sides so that it's now a complete cage.”

Charles thankfully resisted the temptation to quote the proverb about stable doors and bolting horses.

•   •   •

O
N
M
ONDAY MORNING
I went to see Tony Molson, the jockey who'd been ill on the day of the Newbury races.

Tony was about thirty and moderately successful, riding mainly at the Midlands tracks for a number of small-time local trainers who didn't have enough horses to warrant having a stable jockey of their own. He'd started out as a flat apprentice in Newmarket but had switched to steeplechasing early on after he'd grown too heavy. I'd retired long before he started, but I'd seen quite a bit of him over the years, and he had ridden in four of Sir Richard Stewart's suspect races.

He lived north of Banbury, in Chipping Warden, and it took me some time to find his house. It was tucked away on one of the lanes behind the church, and I had been expecting Rose Cottage to be old and quaint, maybe with a thatched roof, and certainly with some roses growing in the front garden.

However, that was not the case.

Rose Cottage was, in fact, a modern, boxlike property that had been built in the grounds of a much larger home that abutted the churchyard, and its front garden was given over entirely to a concrete parking area.

There was one car parked in the space: a dark blue, four-door VW Golf with a big dent in its side.

Now, was that just a coincidence, or what?

I
rang Tony Molson's doorbell, and I also banged on his front door for good measure.

A dog started barking loudly somewhere in the house, and, presently, Tony opened the door a fraction. He tried to close it again as soon as he saw who it was, but I was too quick for him, promptly putting one of my size-eights between the door and the jamb.

“Go away,” Tony shouted, pushing hard on the door but to no effect.

“Did you know that the maximum penalty for kidnap is life in prison?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he shouted.

“Oh yes, Tony, I think you do,” I said calmly. “And the headmistress at Saskia's school says she would recognize you.”

“Go away,” he shouted again, this time with rising panic in his voice.

“Tony, if I go away now, I'll come back with the police. They've been looking for your car for ten days.” He went on pushing the door, bending the wood. “Or else we could talk, just you and me.”

“I don't want to talk to you,” he said.

“Then you're a fool,” I replied. “The police will break down this door, and you won't be back here to fix it for years. Is that what you want?” I paused. “Or would you rather help me stop the Irishman who dumped you in this mess in the first place?”

I was guessing, but it was a reasonable guess.

“Did he send you?” Tony asked.

“No, of course he didn't. He doesn't know I'm here.”

“Are you sure about that? He seems to know everything about us.”

“What
does
he know about you?” I asked.

Tony didn't reply, but he gradually eased the pressure on the door and then opened it wide. He looked terrible, as if he hadn't slept for a week.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“No,” he said, dejected. “But you'd better come in.”

A young woman in her mid-thirties was sitting on the sofa in the living room and, if anything, she looked worse than Tony, with huge black circles under her eyes. She was wearing blue jeans and red-and-white sneakers just as Saskia had described, and she looked frightened. Tony invited me to sit down in one of the empty armchairs facing her.

“Margaret, my love,” he said, “this is Sid Halley, Saskia's father.”

If anything, she suddenly looked even more frightened.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “We didn't hurt her, I promise. We both love children.” Tears streamed down her face. “We took her home as soon as we could. We really are sorry, aren't we, Tony?” She was pleading with me, and she looked up at her husband for support.

“Yes,” he said, moving to put an arm around his wife's shoulders. “We're both very sorry, but we had no choice.”

They were both tragic and pathetic.

“Of course you had a choice,” I said angrily. “And you chose to abduct a six-year-old little girl.” I could remember all too clearly the blind panic I'd felt when Saskia had been missing from school that afternoon. “And how about my dogs?” I went on. “Did you take them too?”

“Dogs?” Tony said with what seemed to be genuine surprise. “We've done nothing with any dogs.”

I was inclined to believe him.

“Are you going to call the police?” Margaret asked.

“I should,” I said. “But, first, tell me why you feel you had no choice.”

“The Irishman,” Tony said.

“What about him?”

“He threatened us.”

“How?”

“He somehow found out that I was married before Tony,” Margaret said quietly.

“So?” I said. “I've also been married twice. Millions of us have.”

“But Margaret was never divorced,” Tony said.

Bigamy.

“Is that all?” I said with incredulity. “Surely a bit of bigamy is not enough to turn you into kidnappers.”

“No,” Tony said pitifully, shaking his head, “it's worse than that. Much worse.” He looked unhappily at his wife. “Margaret, we'll have to tell him.” She said nothing but gently rocked her body back and forth. Then she nodded slightly in agreement.

“We have two sons,” Tony said. “Lovely boys. Jason and Simon. They're twins. They'll be thirteen next month.” He paused for a moment and wiped a tear from his cheek. “Only they're not actually my boys.” Margaret began sobbing. “Although I'm the only father they've ever known, they aren't biologically mine. They belong to Margaret's first husband.”

I still couldn't see the problem.

“I helped Margaret run away with them after a French court gave custody to their father.”

So Saskia wasn't the first child they'd kidnapped.

“Why a French court?” I asked.

“Margaret married a Frenchman,” Tony said.

Gradually, with my continuous encouragement, the whole story came out. Margaret had been an impressionable art student of eighteen who'd gone to study in Paris, where she'd become infatuated with Pierre Beaudin, the thirty-five-year-old son of a rich Parisian businessman. She'd become pregnant with the twins and, for some reason, had married Beaudin. It seems that he'd been sleeping with a whole raft of teenage girls, of whom Margaret had simply been the next in line. Why he'd married her, was anyone's guess. Perhaps he'd done it for the children. However, he'd soon reverted to his former ways, bedding a string of new young women, and by the time Margaret had been due to deliver the babies she had filed for divorce and also for the custody of the twins.

But within a day of the birth in a Paris suburb, a French judge had announced that since they had been born in France and were therefore undeniably French, the twins had to remain in France with their French father while the courts considered the divorce.

“Pierre's father fixed it,” Margaret said quietly. “I knew all he wanted was the twins, they were his only grandchildren, and he had friends in high places. I also knew I'd never see my lovely boys ever again if I came home and left them in France, but how could I stay—Pierre had thrown me out on the street.”

“So that night,” Tony said, “I took Margaret and the children from the clinic in Montparnasse and drove them to Ostend in Belgium. From there we took the ferry to Dover. We hid the babies on the floor of the car, behind the front seats, when we drove through passport control.”

“But then what?” I said.

“Margaret and I were married the next day, even though she wasn't yet divorced, and then we registered the births of the boys as ours, in England.”

“But how did you know each other?” I asked. “And well enough to get married so quickly?”

“We were childhood sweethearts,” Tony said. “All the way through school. I'd been devastated when Margaret went to Paris. But she turned back to me when she needed help.” He smiled warmly at her.

He must love her very much, I thought, to have forgiven her for going away and marrying almost the first Frenchman she came across and then to take her back with two of his children.

“Tony helped me disappear,” Margaret said, holding his hand. “New husband. New name. New life.”

“So how did the Irishman find out?”

“We've no idea. We thought only four people other than us had ever known the truth,” Tony said. “Margaret's mum and dad, her sister and the nurse at the Montparnasse clinic who helped us remove the twins from the secure nursery.”

“Are they all still alive?” I asked.

“The family are,” Tony said. “I don't know about the nurse.”

“Was there any contact with the nurse after you took the babies?”

“We wrote to each other a few times,” Margaret said. “She told me about the almighty scene that occurred when Monsieur Beaudin Senior arrived at the clinic to find the children had already gone. He threatened to sue everyone until they were found.”

“So the nurse knew your new married name?” I said. “And your address?”

“I suppose she must have to send the letters.”

“How about your parents and sister?” I asked.

“Mum and Dad would never tell anyone,” Margaret said with certainty. “We never ever talk about it in case the boys might overhear. They have no idea.”

“How about your sister?”

“I'm sure she wouldn't say.” She sounded as if she was trying to convince herself more than me. “Although she can be rather indiscreet, especially if she's been drinking.”

“Where does your sister live?” I asked.

“Manchester.”

Could that be just another coincidence?

“When did the Irishman first call?”

“About two and a half years ago,” Tony said. “Right out of the blue.”

Two and a half years ago was well before any of the races that Sir Richard Stewart had believed were suspicious.

“What did he say, exactly?” I asked.

“He said that he knew our secret and he would inform the French authorities unless I did as he wanted. I couldn't believe it. We thought we'd been so careful.”

“So how many times have you stopped a horse for him?”

Tony looked at me in some surprise. “How do you know about that?”

“That's why I came here,” I said. “I wanted to talk to you about stopping horses, and you didn't turn up at Newbury last week when you were meant to.”

“I cried off sick.”

“I know, but were you actually sick?” I asked.

“No,” he admitted. “I was too frightened to go. It was too soon after . . .” He tailed off. Too soon after kidnapping my daughter, I thought. “I was afraid the police might be looking for me.”

If Tony had been at Newbury that day, I would have spoken to him outside the Weighing Room about the horses and I would never have seen his blue car or the dent in its side.

“So,” I repeated, “how many have you stopped?”

“Dozens,” Tony said gloomily. “Most didn't have a chance anyway, but maybe five or six could have won if I'd let them try.”

Even I was shocked.

“How many dozens?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Lots. I haven't kept count. I get a call giving me the name of a horse that mustn't win. Sometimes one a week, sometimes two. There were four at this year's Cheltenham Festival alone, not that any of them would have probably won even if I'd wanted them to.

“Two of them fell, and I can assure you I didn't do that on purpose, especially not when one was at the first hurdle in the Supreme Novices' when I was out in front with twenty horses all behind me. Kicked to hell and back, I was, and I've still got the bruises. I may be bad, but I'm not crazy with it.”

He smiled wryly.

“Is this still going on?” I asked.

“Sure is,” he said. “I'm due to ride a horse called Ackerman at Towcester tomorrow in the two-and-a-half-mile chase. I can tell you now he won't win, not unless all the others fall over, and then I'll be in trouble.”

“When did you get the call?”

“This morning. Just before you came.”

•   •   •

I
PASSED
much of Monday afternoon with Tony, going through race results for the past two and a half years, trying to make some sort of list of those horses on which he had been told to lose, trying to spot a pattern.

The four races on Sir Richard Stewart's list were all there, but Tony didn't remember them as being anything out of the ordinary, if stopping horses could ever be described as not being out of the ordinary.

I looked particularly at the win Tote returns, on the lookout for more races where the return was appreciably lower than the winner's starting price might suggest.

There were a couple of strong possibilities, but they didn't follow the previous pattern of being at the southern racetracks nearer to London. One had been at Haydock Park and the other at Aintree, both of them the second-to-last race of the afternoon on a big race Saturday the previous autumn—and both Haydock Park and Aintree were deep in the Honest Joe Bullen bookmaking territory around Manchester and Liverpool.

But there were masses of other races where the Tote returns were as one would expect. Clearly Tony had not only ridden in “super-fixed” races where McCusker had intimidated all but one of the jockeys into stopping their horses, he'd ridden in others where it may have been only Tony's mount that wasn't trying.

But that information, by itself, would have been incredibly valuable to a bookmaker. If he knew for sure that a given horse wouldn't win, he could offer higher odds on that horse in the certain knowledge that he'd never have to pay out. And higher odds would encourage more punters to bet.

It almost seemed to me that McCusker had used his information about the Molson children to control Tony's riding over a two-and-a-half-year period but had moved up a gear to the super-fixed races only last October. Perhaps he had found it so easy to get Tony to ride as he wanted that he'd simply expanded his franchise until he controlled every rider in the race.

Then, far from being satisfied by only taking bets, he had then started placing them using cash on the Tote so there would be no damning record of unusual betting practices likely to alert the authorities, as there would have been on the Internet exchanges.

It was a win-win situation.

No wonder Sir Richard Stewart had been so frightened. He'd had good reason to be. If what I suspected were true, it would indeed undermine the whole integrity of British racing.