Dick Francis's Refusal (28 page)

C
hico and I left for Liverpool on Wednesday, late morning. This time, we did take overnight bags as I had found us a couple of rooms in the Park Hotel quite close to the track, thanks to a late cancellation and inflated prices.

Tuesday evening at Charles's house had not exactly been a barrel of laughs.

Marina had spent the day at our home working, but she hadn't felt very comfortable there on her own, not with a bunch of pyromaniacs still on the loose, to say nothing of McCusker himself.

For some reason, Saskia had not had a good day at school, and she was grumpy too, especially when we all wouldn't spend the whole evening playing sardines. There are only so many places to hide, even in a big house, and we had surely exhausted them all by now.

Charles was also on edge, partly, I discovered, for having found Chico asleep in the kitchen the previous morning.

“I can't understand why he won't sleep in the bed Mrs. Cross has made up for him in the old butler's room,” he'd complained to me.

“He's standing watch,” I'd said. But far from that reassuring Charles, it had made him even more nervous and jumpy.

We had clearly all outstayed our welcome, but there was little I could do.

“We'll be gone just as soon as I can get us out,” I'd said to him, but it had done little to improve his humor.

Even Mrs. Cross was living up to her name. She'd been waiting for me as Chico and I had arrived back from seeing Jimmy Guernsey. “That wretched dog of yours stole my best beef. I left it on the kitchen table for only a second. And it was for the Admiral's supper.”

The wretched dog in question wagged her tail and seemed to be the only member of the household who was content. Who wouldn't be, with filet steak in their tummy?

“Only a few more days, I promise,” I'd said to Marina. “I have a plan that should bring everything to a conclusion this week.”

“Is it dangerous?” she'd asked.

“No more dangerous than riding a bad jumper in the Grand National.”

It hadn't cheered her much, and with good reason—both could get you killed.

•   •   •

C
HICO DROVE
while I used a replacement SIM card to make some calls. I removed McCusker's cell telephone records from my pocket and starting working through the list of numbers, all of which were for other cell phones beginning with 07.

I wasn't sure what I should say to anyone who answered. It was a bit difficult to ask directly to whom I was speaking, so I decided simply to ask for Geoff. My plan was that when someone said that he wasn't Geoff and I must have the wrong number, I would read out the correct number and then ask who he was.

However, it didn't quite work out like that.

The first three numbers on the list clearly no longer existed, as I simply heard a computer-generated voice saying that the number was not recognized. Perhaps they were pay-as-you-go SIM cards that had since been thrown away or cut up, as Chico had done to mine.

I put a pencil line through those.

The next one was at least a current, active number, as dialing it produced a ringing tone. But then another computer-generated voice told me that the person I was trying to call was unavailable, please
try
later.

The sixth number I called connected me to a real live person, but whoever it was hung up as soon as I asked for Geoff. I didn't even know if it had been a man or a woman as they had said nothing, not even when answering.

The same occurred with numbers seven, eight and nine. Only one real voice answered in my first fifteen calls, and whoever it was refused to say who he was after my wrong-number trick.

I got bored and put my phone down. I'd try again later.

“Are you OK driving?” I asked Chico as we went around the north of Birmingham on the freeway.

“I'm fine,” he said. “Why?”

“I thought you might be tired, that's all, with all these sleepless nights you've been having.”

“It worries me that there'll be no one there keeping watch tonight.”

Yes, I thought, that was worrying me a bit too. I'd even considered asking Marina if she and Saskia would like to come with us, but that might have been even more dangerous, to say nothing of missing three days of school. If things were different, they could have gone to stay with Tim and Paula Gaucin, but, under the present circumstances, that might be awkward.

I'd had a quiet word with Charles about ensuring everything was locked up, and he'd given me a strange, sideways glance. The shotgun, I'd thought. There was no way I would stop him having it loaded and ready, short of taking it away from him altogether, and I had no intention of doing that. I just hoped he wouldn't shoot someone by mistake.

Marina also hadn't been very happy when we'd left Aynsford. She had hugged me tightly and told me to be careful in much the same way that Jenny, my first wife, had done early on in our marriage whenever I went off to the races to ride.

But if I'd been too careful when I was riding, I wouldn't have been such a good jockey. Winning was the important thing, and sometimes risks had to be taken in order to win. Kicking hard and asking a horse to stand back and take off early at a fence could gain lengths in the air over a rival, whereas taking ahold and putting in an extra stride may have been safer but was much slower.

Safety and winning didn't often go together.

Not that I was advocating taking undue risks.

Reckless jockeys might occasionally win races that no one else would have, but they also spent long periods laid up with injuries that saner riders might avoid.

Now, in my battle with McCusker, I had to make an assessment of the risks and behave accordingly. If I was not prepared to get hurt, then I should have stayed in bed. I had to do just enough to provoke him into showing himself without driving him to completely irrational behavior that I'd be unable to predict.

I had no intention of being nailed to a floor to die of thirst.

•   •   •

C
HICO AND
I
checked into our rooms at the Park Hotel and then went in search of Barry Montagu, bookmaker of Liverpool, he who had been offering higher than prudent prices on Black Peppercorn at Uttoxeter the previous Sunday.

According to the Internet, Barry Montagu, as well as manning his pitch at various northern racetracks, also had a single betting shop in the Liverpool district of Bootle, close by the Liverpool docks.

As we drove along Stanley Road, past the Strand Shopping Centre, it seemed impossible to believe that this urban landscape was once a holiday bathing resort for the wealthy Liverpool merchants of the early nineteenth century, eager to immerse themselves into the healing waters of the River Mersey. That was before the coming of the trains, the building of the docks and the industrialization of the whole region.

Bootle had flourished until the opening of a new container terminal just to the north in Seaforth had rendered most of the Bootle docks redundant, pushing up local unemployment and forcing the neighborhood into decline.

However, Barry Montagu's wasn't the only betting shop on Stanley Road. There was a whole range, including independents and all the national chains. To my eye, there appeared to be more betting shops than any other type. Clearly, a worsening of the area's economic fortunes hadn't deterred Bootle residents from their gambling.

We found a parking space around the corner from the shop.

“We'd better not be too long,” Chico said, “or we'll find it up on bricks when we get back.” He laughed at his little joke, a joke that once had had more than a ring of truth about it. “What are we lookin' for, exactly?”

“I'd like to know if Barry Montagu is a front for McCusker or is part of the Honest Joe Bullen chain. The man you bet with at Uttoxeter clearly had insider knowledge that Black Peppercorn was due to lose the race, but, for all we know, that might have come from a different source.”

Gone were the days when, like pubs, the holder of the gambling license had to be written above the main door, but it still remained a requirement of the law that the license be displayed in a prominent position within the premises.

Business was surprisingly brisk for three o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, with seven hopeful punters standing around either watching the live video feeds from the horse and dog tracks or playing on the fixed-odds electronic casino machines in the corner.

Chico went unerringly to the counter and started to chat up the girl standing behind it while I drifted around the periphery looking at the racing pages of the newspapers that were pinned to the walls. Much was being made of the upcoming Aintree meeting just a couple of miles down the road, with posters offering a free ten-pound bet on the Grand National itself—provided, of course, you opened an account and made an initial bet of fifty pounds.

It was certainly a hard sell.

Perversely, there was one small, dog-eared poster from Gamblers Anonymous tucked away behind the entrance that gave advice and a telephone number to anyone who felt they were becoming addicted and needed help. It seemed to me to be like putting up a Vegetarian Society leaflet in an abattoir.

I was edging my way towards the framed license summary on the wall beneath the bank of television screens when Chico suddenly turned towards me and started for the door, nodding furiously for me to follow. I needed no second invitation.

Outside, we ran down the road and around the corner to the Range Rover that was, thankfully, still in possession of its full set of wheels and tires.

“What was all that about?” I asked as I drove away.

“I am chattin' to the bird, all happy-like—you know, tellin' her how nice her hair is and so on. Then I asks if she's lookin' forward to the Grand National meetin'. Yes, she says, very excited because she's goin' up to the track on Friday to help with the pitch as they're expectin' a bumper day.

“So I asks her why are they expectin' a bumper day, and she says she doesn't know, but that was what Mr. Wilson told her. So I asks her who is Mr. Wilson, and she says he's the boss, and she points towards the back office. I looks behind her at the mirror, but it's one of those mirrors with slots in it that you can only really see through one way. But the guy in the office must have been lookin' out 'cos he opens the door and tells her to stop talkin', and if I wants to make a bet, to make it and move away from the counter.”

He stopped to draw breath.

“But why did we have to leave so suddenly?”

“Because there's another man in the office, wearin' a black suit. I sees him when the door was open, and I'm sure he's one of the men I clocked in McCusker's study last Sunday night, one of the three who'd tried to beat you up behind the Chinese restaurant.”

“Did he recognize you?” I asked.

“No, I don't think so, he wasn't really lookin'. But he sure as hell would have recognized you, that's why I wanted you out of there, and pronto.”

“Good thinking,” I said. “We don't want to show our hand until Friday. But at least it's confirmed our suspicions that the name Barry Montagu is just another front for Billy McCusker and his cronies.”

We went back to the hotel, and while Chico chatted up the girl behind the bar, I spent a frustrating hour calling more of the numbers on McCusker's phone record. For most, either there was no ringing tone with the number not recognized or nobody answered. Of the handful of live people at the other end, not one was prepared to tell me who he was, being very wary right from the start.

I sat down with a pen and paper and made a list of those numbers that McCusker had called more than once. After a while, the numbers appeared to blur together, and I was beginning to make mistakes from tiredness. However, by then there was a pattern emerging, with the same numbers appearing regularly together, just a few days ahead of each of the fixed races.

They must be the jockeys, I thought. But why won't they answer?

I searched for Robert Price's cell number, which I knew, but I couldn't find it anywhere on the list. So I called him.

“Hi, Robert, it's Sid.”

“Oh.” He sounded far from enthusiastic. “What do you want?”

“Sorry to call so late, but when you said on Monday that McCusker had called you to tell you to lose on Maine Visit, what phone did he ring you on?”

“Why?”

“I'm just interested,” I said.

There was a pause, and I could tell that he didn't want to tell me.

“Come on, Robert,” I said, “which phone?”

He sighed. “He called me on his special phone. Same as always, these days.”

“What special phone?” I asked.

“A cheap, old-fashioned phone that he gave me about a year ago. It's only for his calls. No one else has the number.”

“What does he say when he calls you?”

“He just says the name of a horse that I've been engaged to ride.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, just the name. That's how I know I have to stop it. He says the name twice and then hangs up.”

No wonder I couldn't get anyone to talk to me.

“What's the phone's number?” I asked.

“I've got no idea.”

“Doesn't it tell you on the phone?” I asked.

“No. I can't even access the menu. It's all password-protected, and I don't have the password.”

There had to be some way of getting the number.

“Are you at home?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Use the phone to call your home number and then dial 1471. That should give you the number.”

There was a short pause until he came back on the line.

“No good,” he said. “It tells me I've no credit. Incoming calls only.”

Why had I imagined it would be so easy?

•   •   •