Dick Francis's Refusal (16 page)

I hadn't been entirely sure it had been him, but now I was.

“How did you tell him?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How did you tell McCusker that I was asking you questions? Did you phone him, or what?”

“Yeah, I phoned him.”

“So what's his number?”

He didn't want to tell me, but I wasn't completely against using threatening tactics myself.

“I'm sure Judy Hammond would love to hear that her father's stable jockey is stopping his horses from winning,” I said menacingly. “Or that the health of the star horse in his yard was placed in jeopardy by being deliberately stood too far off a fence.”

“She wouldn't believe you,” Robert said.

“Oh, I think she might,” I replied. “I rode for her father too, you know. And, anyway, are you prepared to take the risk?”

“Bastard,” he said with feeling.

“What's McCusker's number?” I asked again.

He told me.

It was a cell number beginning 07. I scribbled it down on the notepad on Charles's desk, hoping that McCusker hadn't changed it. It was the first piece in the jigsaw of me getting to him rather than the other way around.

“How often do you call him?”

“Never,” he said. “Well, almost never. Not now. But he gave me that number right at the beginning so I could phone him with any information. I still had the number in my contacts list, so I called it after you'd been at my cottage last week.”

“And McCusker himself answered?”

“He sure did. After only one ring.”

•   •   •

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY,
Invoice won the Victor Ludorum Chase at Sandown by four lengths without so much as breaking into a sweat, taking the lead coming up to the last fence and striding away to the winning post unchallenged.

I watched it on the television with Saskia in the living room.

“Did you ever win that race, Daddy?” she asked.

“No, darling,” I said. “But I won lots of other races at that racetrack.”

“Can I learn to ride?” Sassy asked.

“Of course, darling,” I said. “I'll talk to Mommy about it.”

But I knew that Mommy wasn't very keen on the idea. I'd suggested two or three times over the years that we might buy a pony for Saskia, but it had always come to nothing. Marina was desperately worried that Saskia would get hurt as I had.

Mommy had always been “risk-averse.” I supposed it was something to do with her work in researching cancers.

In contrast, Daddy had always been “risk-inclined,” kicking horses hard into fences when it would have been much safer to take a slight, steadying pull.

Who dares, wins—and all that stuff.

As true for jockeys as for the Special Air Service.

O
n Wednesday morning Saskia went back to school after the Easter break, and I took the train from Banbury to London for my two o'clock appointment with Harry the Hands at Queen Mary's Hospital, and also with the psychiatrist, one Dr. Tristram Spakeman, a bow-tied eccentric who seemed to me to have caught a touch of madness from his patients.

“Do you ever worry about dying?” he asked me by way of introduction.

“Yes,” I said, “all the time. But I'm not obsessive about it.”

He hummed and made some notes in a spiral-bound notebook. Perhaps he thought that he should be the one deciding if I was obsessed or not.

“Would you describe yourself as a normal person?” he asked.

What should I say? I didn't think I was that normal, but, then again, I was hardly abnormal either.

“Pretty normal,” I said. “I have two eyes and two ears, which is normal, but only one hand, which isn't.” And, thankfully, my black eye from the Towcester racetrack parking lot had almost completely faded away.

“Does it worry you that you only have one hand?”

“No,” I said. “
Worry
is too strong a word. I'd say it frustrates me.”

“Are you easily frustrated?”

I felt like saying that I was frustrated by his questions but decided against it.

“Quite easily, I suppose.”

“Do my questions frustrate you?”

Wow!

“A bit.”

“Yes,” he said, “I'd think they would frustrate me too. But they have to be asked.” He smiled at me in a slightly unnerving way. “Now, Sid . . . is it all right if I call you Sid?”

“You can call me what you like,” I said. I looked down at his business card in my hand. “Shall I call you Tristram?”

“I've been called worse,” he said, smiling again. “Now, Sid, tell me about your parents.”

“Now, Tristram,” I replied, mocking him slightly, “what have my parents got to do with me having a hand transplant?”

“I'm trying to get to know you better,” he said, “so I can make a reasoned analysis of your mental state.”

“My mental state is fine,” I said, “and my parents had little to do with it. My father was killed in an accident before I was born, and my mother died of cancer when I was sixteen.”

“Do you miss them?” he asked.

“I don't miss my father because I never knew him. But, yes, I suppose I do miss my mother. I wish she could have been alive to see my daughter.”

“Did you cry when she died?”

“Buckets,” I said. “But I got over it, like everyone who loses their mother.”

“Some people never get over it,” the doctor said. “A lot of depression is grief-related.”

“But I'm not depressed,” I said.

“No.” He made another note in his book.

He went on asking me questions for nearly an hour, and I began to like him more as the time progressed. He had me talking about all sorts of things I wouldn't have imagined: dreams, hopes for the future, fears, even what I thought about when I was driving the car.

Seemingly, the only topics we didn't discuss were race fixing and Billy McCusker.

“Right,” the doctor said at length. “That will do.”

“Have I passed?” I asked.

“It is not a matter of passing or failing,” he said. “But I presume you mean is there any reason why you should not have a transplant.”

“And is there?”

“No,” he said, “none at all. I think you are psychologically sound in your outlook, and I think you are a suitable candidate for a transplant.”

“Great,” I said.

“But be careful. I detect from our discussion that you can be rather impulsive at times, sometimes acting without thinking through all the consequences. But, to counter that, you do seem to know what you want.”

He was good, I thought. Very good.

•   •   •

H
ARRY
B
RYANT
was delighted and set about explaining to me all the various bits of paperwork we needed to complete.

“The final consent forms will have to be signed just before the operation,” he said, “when we have the donor hand available. But you need to confirm that you understand now what the limitations are and that we can give you no guarantees as to the future dexterity of the transplanted hand.”

He gave me a number of documents to read and then invited me to sign each of them in the space provided.

“Covering your back?” I said.

“Absolutely,” he said with a laugh. “I trained in America, don't forget. They'll sue you for anything. We had one patient who threatened legal action over the fact that his new fingernails grew at a different rate to the ones on his other hand.”

“Faster or slower?” I asked.

He laughed. “I've no idea.”

I filled in the last of the documents, the one that recorded all my contact details.

“Right,” he said, collecting all the papers together. “That's it. You're now officially on the transplant waiting list. If you are ever away from these telephone numbers, you must phone us with instructions of how to contact you. If you go abroad, you will come off the list while you're away.”

“Why?” I asked.

“We need you in the operating room within a maximum of six hours,” he said. “If a suitable hand became available and you were farther away than that, the transplant might not be viable.”

“What would happen to the hand?”

“If it was appropriate for someone else, either here or in Europe, then they might be offered it, but most likely it would stay with the donor.”

“And be buried?”

“Yes,” he said. “Or cremated.”

“I'd really hate that to happen,” I said. “I think I'd better stay within six hours of the hospital.”

And hope for rain.

•   •   •

I
WALKED OUT
through the hospital gates in a state of great anticipation and excitement, wondering if the next time I passed through them I would be on my way to having a new hand—to a new life as a complete human being.

The cell phone rang in my pocket. It was Marina.

“Hello, my darling,” I said happily as I answered it.

“Sid, Sid.” Marina was in a panic. I could hear her hyperventilating.

“What is it?” I shouted down the phone, all happiness instantly banished and with the adrenaline level in my blood shooting up to maximum.

“The police are here.”

“Where?”

“At Sassy's school. Together with two women from social services.”

“Why?” I asked helplessly.

“They say they've come to take Sassy into care.”

“What?” I suddenly couldn't feel my legs.

“They say they're taking Saskia into care,” Marina repeated. Then I could hear her screaming at someone, “Leave her alone!”

“But they surely can't take her into care just like that.”

“They can and they are,” Marina said in tears. “And they also say they're going to arrest you for sexually abusing her.”

•   •   •

I
WASN'T QUITE SURE
how I got myself from Roehampton to Marylebone station and onto a train to Banbury. Afterwards, I couldn't recall a single moment of the journey.

Everything was racing in my head.

How could I be accused of sexually abusing my own daughter. It didn't make any sense.

I sat on the train as it pulled out of Marylebone, wondering what I should do. Who should I call?

Once upon a time, I'd have phoned my tame Whitehall mandarin, Archie Kirk, but, sadly, not only had he retired from his job but also from his life.

A lawyer. That's what I needed.

The only lawyer I knew was a local solicitor in Banbury who had done all the legal work when Marina and I had bought our house, and I hardly knew him very well. But he would have to do, especially as I still had his direct phone number on my contacts list.

“Jeremy Duncombe,” he said, answering on the second ring.

“Hello, Jeremy,” I said, “this is Sid Halley. Do you remember me? You did the searches on my house some time ago.”

“Of course I remember,” he said. “Nice place in Nutwell.”

“That's right.” I paused. “Jeremy, I've got rather a problem and I need some advice.”

“OK,” he said. “Shoot.”

Suddenly, it didn't seem very easy to explain that I was about to be arrested by the police for child abuse even if the accusation was completely untrue. No smoke without fire, I could hear myself saying.

“It seems that, for some reason that I don't understand, the police want to question me.”

“What about?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “I know this sounds crazy, but they seem to think I've been molesting my daughter.”

I couldn't bring myself to use the term
child sex abuse
, but there was still a distinct silence from the other end, and the man opposite me on the train looked at me with contempt.

“And have you?” Jeremy said.

“No, of course not.”

“Are you with the police at the moment?” he asked.

“No, I'm on a train from London to Banbury. My wife called me and told me that the police were looking for me and why.”

“What are your intentions?”

“I'm going straight to Banbury police station to put an end to all this nonsense, but I thought I ought to contact a lawyer first, and you are the only one I know.”

“I'm not really the right person,” Jeremy said. “I usually deal only with house conveyance and the occasional will. You need a solicitor that specializes in crime.”

“So how do I find one in the next hour?”

“There are two in our practice, but I'm certain that they'll both be at the Banbury Magistrates' Court this afternoon.”

“It's next door to the police station,” I said. “Can you contact one of them and tell them to meet me there in an hour's time.”

“I'll try,” he said without much confidence. “But I wouldn't bank on them being there. They've each got a full caseload at the court and it sits late on Wednesdays.”

I hung up and smiled at the man opposite me. He didn't smile back.

Great, I thought. What next?

The phone rang in my hand. Number withheld.

“Hello, Mr. Halley,” said Billy McCusker. “Are you well?”

“What do you care?” I said.

“I thought I told you to stop asking questions of jockeys.”

Goose bumps rose up on my arm, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. How did he know I'd been asking more questions?

“I haven't been,” I said.

“Oh, I think you have, Mr. Halley,” he said. “And now you will pay for it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Such a sweet little girl,” he said. “I hope she doesn't fare too badly in a children's home.”

“You bastard,” I shouted, but he'd already gone. The phone was dead.

I looked up to see most of the people in the carriage were now looking in my direction. I smiled at them all, and some even turned away.

How could McCusker do it?

Not only was he able to determine which horse won a race or force a frightened couple into kidnapping a child, but now he was seemingly able to direct social services to take Saskia into care and also to have me arrested.

How far did his deadly tentacles reach?

I called Robert Price.

“I thought I told you not to contact McCusker,” I said forcibly into the phone while at the same time trying not to be too loud. My fellow travelers were paying me too much notice as it was.

“I didn't,” he said. “I swear to you, I didn't.”

Then how did McCusker know? Had Robert been right all along when he claimed his phone was being bugged? Was my phone tapped as well? Had McCusker just listened in on our little exchange?

I tried to remember what had been said between Robert and me on Friday evening and on which phones. How much of our conversation had McCusker listened to? And, in particular, was he aware that I had his phone number?

Next I tried to call Marina, but there was no reply from our house, and her cell went straight to voice mail.

Who else should I speak to? I might not have the chance for very much longer.

Whenever I'd been in trouble, or had been hurt, I'd always sought sanctuary at Aynsford with Charles, and now was no exception.

“But that's preposterous,” he said when I told him of my latest woe.

“I know that and you know that,” I said, “but other people will still believe it.”

“Of course they won't.”

“Oh yes they will,” I said. “Once upon a time, being labeled a prostitute was the worst one could be called. But, nowadays, a whore is positively respectable compared to a pedophile or a child abuser. Just the whiff of an association with someone of that type is enough to damn you in the eyes of the public.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” Charles asked.

“I'm on my way to Banbury police station, where I hope I can sort it all out. But I need a solicitor. And quickly.”

“I have a barrister friend, a QC. Member of my club. I'll give him a call. See if he can fix anything.”

I was grateful, but even Queen's Counsels tried to steer well clear of child abusers. It wasn't good for their image or their careers.

•   •   •

I
NEVER DID
get to Banbury police station.

Three police officers, two in uniform and one not, were waiting for me on the platform when I alighted from the train.

I had wondered about the man sitting opposite me who had taken his cell phone along to the train's lavatory as we'd passed through High Wycombe and I now saw him smiling smugly as the two uniformed officers took me firmly by the arms.