Dick Francis's Refusal (14 page)

“I'll be fine now,” I repeated, hoping he would get into his car and go.

“Didn't you lose your arm?” he asked, looking down at my hands.

“Please,” I said, “could you just go now?”

“I'm only trying to help,” he replied, somewhat affronted.

“Yes, I know,” I said, “and thank you. But I'll be fine now.”

“Was it two men,” he asked, “in black anoraks and leather gloves?”

“Yes,” I said, looking up at him again with more interest.

“Thought so,” he said. “I knew they were up to no good when I saw them running.”

But surely everyone had been running. It was raining.

“Where?” I asked.

“They were running back in as everyone else was leaving. They barged past me. And they were laughing.”

“Could you describe them?” I asked. “Or identify them again?”

All of a sudden, he looked unsure. He could see the blood still oozing from my face. “I don't want to get involved.”

He was suddenly very eager to depart. He opened his car door and started to get in.

“Did you see which way they went after passing you?” I asked him, holding the door open against his pull.

“No,” he said, pulling harder.

“Were they talking to each other?”

He stopped pulling the door and looked up at me. “Yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact, they were. Joking around.”

“Did they have Irish accents?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes, they did.”

I'd thought so, but I hadn't been sure, not from just four words.

Now it was confirmed.

Neither of the two men had had the high cheekbones and low brow of McCusker's police mug shot, so it hadn't been their boss. But I was pretty sure that the two men were other members of the Shankill Road Volunteers, now relocated to Manchester.

I
sat in my Range Rover in the Towcester racetrack parking lot for over half an hour, leaning on the steering wheel without moving, waiting patiently for the pain in my guts and genitals to subside to the point that I could operate properly once more.

I was well used to this feeling, but it was not one I relished.

Regularly during my riding career, after a heavy fall, I had sat on a bench in a jockeys' changing room while the pain in my battered body had gradually subsided to a level where I could begin to change out of my racing silks and go home to nurse my bruises in a hot bath.

Eventually, I sat up straight and looked at myself in the rearview mirror, but I wasn't particularly enchanted by the sight. I had an inch-long cut beneath my left eye with blood smears all over the rest of my face and down my shirt, which was still wet from the rain.

But at least I had stopped bleeding. It wasn't a deep wound, more of a superficial scratch, and I dabbed at it carefully with a tissue before deciding that it didn't need any stitches. I didn't fancy spending the next four hours in the emergency room, and the medics would have asked too many questions. I also needed to get home. Rosie was in the kennel, and she would be wondering when her dinner was coming.

I started the Range Rover and drove to the exit.

Most people had gone, but there was still a lone traffic policeman directing the last few cars through the arched parking lot gateway. I wondered briefly if I should stop to report the attack to him, but the perpetrators would be long gone by now, and it would simply mean a long and tedious explanation to the Northamptonshire Police of all that had occurred.

I decided that I'd tell D.C.I. Watkinson or D.S. Lynch when I next spoke to them, so I accepted the traffic cop's invitation to pull out onto the main road and drove home.

•   •   •

I
COLLECTED
Marina and Saskia from Birmingham Airport at eleven o'clock on Wednesday morning with a real shiner.

I hadn't enjoyed a particularly restful night, and, once or twice, I had even begun to wonder if not going to a hospital had been a wise decision.

It was my guts that were the main problem. Once upon a time, my stomach had been used as a target by a petty villain who, much to both his surprise and mine, had actually pulled the trigger of his .38 caliber revolver.

The resulting damage had left me with an alimentary canal that didn't cope very well with any disruption to normality, and a direct punch from a burly Northern Irish ex-terrorist was certainly not normal.

Consequently, I spent much of the nocturnal hours sitting on the toilet.

I used the time to think.

Stop asking jockeys questions,
one of the men had said.

How had McCusker known that I was asking questions?

Because someone must have told him.

But who?

I thought back to my encounter with Robert Price after the third race and the way he had looked around as if searching for help. Had he been looking for the two men in the black anoraks? If so, he must have known they were there. Could he have been the one to inform McCusker that I wasn't simply getting on with my life of stocks and shares?

Marina was quite shocked by the damage to my face, which looked much worse the morning after than it had at the time. The cut had turned an ugly burgundy color with a background of bruising that was darkening to black by the minute. In addition, my eyeball was bloodshot, with streaks of red running across the white on both sides of the iris.

“What happened?” she asked calmly, trying not to alarm Saskia, who was just glad to see her daddy again, black eye or not.

“I walked into a door,” I said. I didn't expect her to believe me.

“How about the other guy?” she asked.

“Two of them,” I said. “And, sadly, they're still standing.”

“What are you talking about?” Saskia asked, looking up at us.

“Nothing, darling,” I said. “Daddy's had a little accident with his eye.”

I picked her up and winced with pain from my bruised abdomen. Marina watched and tightened her lips in annoyance. “I thought you weren't going to do this anymore.”

“I'm not,” I said.

She looked as if she wished she'd stayed in Fryslân with her parents.

“What time is Annabel's party?” I asked, trying to defuse the situation.

“Three-thirty.”

“Come on, then. Let's get you home.”

•   •   •

M
C
C
USKER CALLED
again at a quarter to midnight on the house phone just as Marina and I were going to sleep.

“Did you get my message, Mr. Halley?” he asked.

“Sod off,” I replied sleepily and put the phone down.

It rang again almost immediately, but I ignored it.

“Answer it, for God's sake,” Marina shouted at me on the sixth ring. “It'll wake Saskia.”

I picked it up.

“Mr. Halley, you should learn some manners,” said the now familiar Irish brogue.

“So should you,” I replied. “Beating people up in racetrack parking lots is hardly polite.”

“Come now, Mr. Halley,” he said. “From what I gather, those boys hardly touched you. If they'd given you a proper beating, you'd not be able to walk. Kneecaps are notoriously difficult things to fix.”

He talked about it in such a casual manner, as if violence was an everyday occurrence. As it probably was in his world.

But I knew that it was also a thinly veiled threat.

“I've done what you asked,” I said. “Now leave me alone.”

“I will, to be sure,” he said. “For now.”

“Forever,” I said firmly.

“Mr. Halley, you are in no position to call the shots, d'you hear me?” There was distinct menace in his voice, exacerbated by his continuing use of my name and his peculiar pronunciation of it. “It'll be me, not you, who decides when you might be of use to me again.”

I said nothing.

“In the meantime,” he went on, all menace having suddenly disappeared from his tone, “take note of the message.”

“And if I don't?”

“That would be very unwise, Mr. Halley.”

“Are you threatening me?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But let's just say that I'm advising you.” He hung up, leaving me sitting on the edge of the bed with the dead receiver still in my hand.

“Will he leave us alone now?” Marina asked.

“I hope so,” I said.

But I doubted it.

•   •   •

I
LAY AWAKE
in the dark, trying to decide what I should do next.

A twinge from my kneecaps told me to do absolutely nothing, and that was probably the most sensible course. But it went against everything I stood for in my life.

I hated the thought that McCusker could do so much damage to my beloved racing, but I hated even more the fact that I knew exactly what he was doing and I still couldn't prevent it.

Or could I?

Questioning the jockeys and trying to produce a united front that could go to the racing authorities clearly wasn't going to work because I had no idea which of them was likely to tell McCusker that I'd been asking. I certainly had no intention of reapproaching Robert Price or Jimmy Guernsey, both of whom I now had to assume were McCusker's men.

So was there anything else I could do?

I thought about sending an anonymous note to Peter Medicos, rubbishing the bogus report that I had sent him the previous week. But would he take any notice? Had he not told me at Uttoxeter on Sunday that my single sheet had confirmed what he himself had been thinking all along? Surely he would go on believing it.

Sir Richard Stewart had been the last of the “old guard,” those who had moved the policing and security of racing away from the self-electing Jockey Club, first to the Horseracing Regulatory Authority, and then finally to the more accountable British Horseracing Authority.

A new breed of racing supremo had developed within the new structure. Gone were the titled, wealthy, landowning elite of the old Jockey Club, replaced by career sports administrators and businessmen.

The change had been quite dramatic over the previous six or seven years, and it had left me without an ear to the top table. Now, with Sir Richard gone, I knew none of the current board of directors personally. There was no one I could approach to pass on a warning in strict confidence, and Sid Halley's standing in the sport was not as it had been only a decade before.

Maybe I should just sit back and hope that someone else spotted what was going on. Then Billy McCusker would be
their
problem and not mine. Not unless he then came back to me to write another whitewashed report. But what damage would he have done to racing in the meantime? Would the betting public's confidence have been shattered forever?

And what should I do about the Molsons? There was no doubt they had been the couple that had collected Saskia from school. They had admitted it all to me. And the police were still looking for their dark blue Volkswagen Golf with its dent in the side. But did I actually want them to be found? Did I want to bring their world tumbling down around their ears by having their twins returned to France after thirteen years? But how could I stop the police searching for the car without telling them that I'd found out who'd been responsible?

So many questions and so few answers.

In the end, I drifted off into a restless sleep, only to be awakened seemingly immediately by my alarm clock.

•   •   •

O
N
T
HURSDAY,
Marina, Saskia and I did everything together as a family.

It was a beautiful day, and, as the schools were still on their Easter break, the three of us, plus Rosie, went for a long walk over the hill to Aynsford for lunch with Charles.

Both Saskia and Rosie were slowly coming to terms with the fact that Mandy wasn't coming back, and Sassy had even stopped asking me where she was buried.

The Admiral came out to meet us as we walked down his extensive driveway.

“I could see you coming down the path on the hill,” he said, holding his arms open wide in welcome. “What a wonderful day for March. We're even lunching in the garden.” He smiled and took Saskia by the hand as we went through to the patio out the back.

Neither Marina nor I had said anything about my black eye, and Charles knew better than to ask, while Mrs. Cross just looked concerned but said nothing.

Mrs. Cross had conjured up a feast in spite of the short notice I had given that we were coming. Cold meats and salad for the adults, fish fingers and fries for Saskia and a dog bowl of meaty chunks with gravy for Rosie.

“I hope it's all right,” she said to me. “I've no idea how long that tin of dog food has been in the pantry. We haven't had a dog in this house for years, but I've never liked to throw it away.”

“I'm sure it'll be fine,” I said. “Rosie won't eat it if it's off.”

Rosie scarfed it all down in twenty seconds flat as Mrs. Cross and I watched. She laughed. “Nothing wrong with that, then.”

The rest of us enjoyed a more sedate lunch, sitting around the garden table under a sunshade.

“This weather will surely help Invoice in the Ludorum at Sandown,” Charles said as he served himself some ham from the platter. “He loves firm going.”

Invoice was the favorite for the Victor Ludorum Steeplechase on Saturday, having won two previous races in the series for novice chasers.

“That rain on Tuesday night won't have helped,” I said, remembering back to the drenching I'd had in the parking lot at Towcester races.

“Not enough,” Charles said, shaking his head. “They've been watering the course at Sandown for weeks, but it's still rock hard. The water drains away so fast.”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” I said.

Marina looked at me sharply as if to tell me not to be so rude.

“John Chesterfield, he's a director at Sandown, he told me on the telephone last evening.”

“I didn't realize you were so well connected,” I said sarcastically, and received another disapproving stare from Marina.

“He's a member of my club,” Charles said rather pretentiously. “In fact, he's the chairman of the membership committee. We were discussing something else, and he mentioned to me the state of the course.”

“My mother sent her love to you, Charles,” Marina said, changing the subject.

“Thank you, my dear,” Charles replied. “Please send mine to her when you next speak.”

“Thank you, Charles, I will,” Marina said, giving him a lovely, bright smile. I was watching her. It was the first time I'd seen her smile in quite a while. It was like the sun coming out.

After lunch, Marina and Saskia went off with Mrs. Cross to see the chickens that she kept in what had once been a walled vegetable garden.

“Any news?” Charles asked me.

“What sort of news?”

“About this Irish terrorist man?”

“I got beaten up by a couple of his thugs on Tuesday,” I said. “And warned off from asking any more questions of jockeys.”

Charles wasn't shocked; he wasn't even particularly surprised. He just nodded his head in acceptance.

I could remember once, many years ago, when Charles had been complicit in furthering violence towards me from some of his houseguests. At the time he'd had some good reasons, and Charles was a military man. Appropriately directed violence in the military was not only permitted, it was encouraged and trained for.

“And are you?” he said.

“Am I what?”

“Warned off from asking questions of jockeys?”

We both watched as Marina and Saskia walked up the garden towards us hand in hand, laughing in the sunshine. They were my life now and nothing was more important to me than their well-being.