Dick Francis's Refusal (9 page)

A
lmost five hours after starting to search, I tried to tell Marina that we were wasting our time, but without much success. She was determined to stay as long as it took to find our Rosie.

We had left home in the dark, just before five o'clock, with Saskia wrapped in a blanket on the backseat. I'd been asleep for barely four hours, but I was wide awake and eager as we approached junction 14 on the M6 just as the sun began peeping up over the eastern horizon.

Where did we begin?

The previous evening, the police had told me that Mandy had been found about half a mile short of the junction on the northbound carriageway, so there seemed as good a place as any. But stopping on the hard shoulder was surely for emergencies only.

I decided this was an emergency and pulled over.

The freeway was already busy with a continuous stream of early-rising truck drivers tearing along the inside lane at breakneck speed. One didn't realize how fast the traffic moved on a freeway until you were standing only a couple of feet away from it, much as one didn't appreciate the pace of a steeplechase until you stood right next to a fence as the horses jumped by.

It had sounded so easy when Marina and I had discussed it on the way here. We would both shout Rosie's name in turn, and out she would appear from the undergrowth.

Sadly, it wasn't quite like that.

The incessant noise of the trucks as they thundered by meant that we could hardly hear what we were shouting at each other as we stood side by side behind the car.

“This is hopeless,” I bellowed in Marina's ear. She nodded. “Let's get off the freeway.”

We climbed back into the Range Rover and made an exit at junction 14.

At that point, the M6 freeway was built through land that had been used extensively for mineral extraction. There were several large disused gravel pits now filled with water, and cutting through the whole area were the West Coast Main Line railway tracks between Birmingham and Crewe.

It began to dawn on me what a Herculean task it was to search for our missing dog in such a large space even if we could assume that she had been released at the same spot as Mandy.

But Marina was not to be deterred, and I found myself driving time and again up tracks into the old gravel works until barred by chain-link fencing or padlocked gates. Marina then took to standing on the passenger seat with her head up through the sunroof as I drove, shouting for Rosie at the top of her voice, with Saskia and me adding more decibels through the open side windows. But our voices wouldn't carry far. The continuous roar of the traffic on the nearby freeway was all encompassing, drowning out any other sound. We wouldn't have heard a dog barking in response to our calls if she had been more than a stone's throw away.

I took the Range Rover back under the freeway and approached it from the other side and into a country park created around some of the water-filled gravel pits.

Again Marina and Saskia shouted for Rosie and again there was no response, save from a couple of locals out walking their own dogs.

“Haven't seen a loose Irish setter anywhere?” I asked, going up to one of them.

“Sorry, mate,” he replied, holding his own golden retriever tightly by its collar. “When was it lost?”

“Yesterday afternoon,” I said.

He shook his head. “Crazy dogs, red setters. Always running off. Not as bad, mind you, as Afghan hounds. They'll never come back.”

I made a mental note never to get an Afghan hound.

“Come on,” I said to Marina. “We're wasting our time.”

“Just a bit longer,” she said imploringly. “We must try for a bit longer.”

•   •   •

W
E FOUND
R
OSIE
on what I had decided would be our very last excursion up a dirt track. One moment, I was working out how I would tell Marina and Sassy that we had to go home now and, the next, our dear little Rosie came bounding up to the car, her tail wagging intensely, as if it was nothing out of the ordinary to meet us eighty miles away from home.

Marina and Saskia wept buckets, and I shed more than a tear or two myself, as we each gave her the biggest hugs.

Just dogs? Ha! What nonsense.

Marina danced around and around with joy beside the car as Saskia and I poured water and dog biscuits into bowls for Rosie to gobble down. Her normal feed time was five o'clock in the afternoon, and she hadn't been given anything yesterday.

“Now we have to find Mandy,” Sassy said chirpily.

Marina and I looked at each other.

“Sassy, darling,” Marina said, “I'm afraid Mandy won't be coming home.” Marina did her best to tell Saskia everything in as kind a way as possible, but our little girl was confused and completely distraught.

“But why, Mommy?” she kept howling. “Why did someone take her? Why is Mandy not coming home? Why? Why? Why?” Even Rosie licking Sassy's face could not console her in her grief.

I asked myself if this nightmare was somehow my fault. Had it been me who had caused all this hurt by not agreeing sooner to do what McCusker wanted?

I felt wretched.

But it wasn't me who had kidnapped the dogs. It wasn't me who had let them loose to run and be hit on the freeway. I had been happy in my life of stocks and shares, bonds and gilts. It had been McCusker who had been the unwelcome visitor. I hadn't been searching for him. He had turned up unannounced and unwanted.

No. The fault lay firmly at his door, not at mine.

But how could I make him pay?

•   •   •

W
E WENT
to Philip York's veterinary practice just after midday.

Marina and I had discussed what was best—in particular, what was best for Saskia. My first instinct had been to bring Mandy's body home for burial, but, on reflection, I wasn't sure that was the best course. We needed to move on, perhaps with the help of a new puppy, and dwelling on the past with a grave in the garden as a continuous reminder would be counterproductive.

Philip York understood entirely.

“I can dispose of the remains,” he said quietly and only to me. “No problem.”

“How, exactly?” I asked. I didn't want Mandy lying on some garbage dump being picked at by the crows.

“Cremation,” he said. “There's a service that will collect. They're very good.”

“Fine,” I said.

None of us even saw Mandy.

Philip York gave Rosie a quick check over and declared her fit and well, and we departed, with him refusing my offer of payment. “I receive an annual retainer for doing police work,” he said, “and I'll charge them for the disposal since they brought her in.”

“How about Rosie?” I asked.

“There's no fee for telling you that your dog is fine,” he said, smiling. We shook hands warmly. “I remember watching you ride. Shame about your accident.” He glanced down fleetingly at my left hand, as everyone did. “When I was younger, I used to be one of the veterinary surgeons at Haydock. I still love my racing, especially over the jumps, but this practice is now so demanding that I hardly ever have the time.”

“Never complain that you're busy,” I said.

“No,” he agreed.

•   •   •

W
E TOOK
R
OSIE
home to Oxfordshire, where she seemed confused and lost without her elder sister, alternately lying in her bed and then pacing around the house and garden as if searching. How I wished she could talk and tell us what had happened.

Marina had earlier called Mrs. Squire, the head teacher, to say that Saskia wouldn't be in today, but at end-of-school time she took our sad little girl over to the Gaucin household to play with Annabel. I wasn't sure whether it was mostly for Saskia's benefit or for Marina's. She too was also desperately down over the loss of Mandy and was in need of some cheering up by Paula.

One of the disadvantages of marrying a foreign national was that family members were usually so far away. Marina could have done with a good cry on her mother's shoulder, but Mr. and Mrs. van der Meer, Marina's parents, were in Fryslân, a northern province of the Netherlands, and even though they visited us fairly often, they were hardly down the road when needed for a good weep.

After Marina and Saskia had gone, I sat alone in my office, staring at the signed report that still sat on my desk. Without enthusiasm, I took an envelope from a drawer and wrote out the address: Peter Medicos, Head of Racing Security, The British Horseracing Authority, 75 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6LS.

I folded the paper and sealed it in the envelope, but not without first making a photocopy. I then stuck a first-class stamp on the top right-hand corner.

I sat looking at it.

Was I doing the right thing?

No, was the simple answer, I was not doing the right thing. But did I have any choice in the matter? McCusker had threatened to disfigure Marina's face, and I believed that threat to be genuine. If there was one thing I had learned about Billy McCusker, it was that he had no conscience whatsoever over inflicting pain and injury on other people. He seemed devoid of morals, and that made him a very dangerous enemy, indeed.

The mail was collected from the box on the village green at four o'clock.

At five minutes to four, I carried the envelope out of the house and put it in the bright red mailbox, hesitating only for a moment before popping it through the slot.

What was done was done, I told myself and went back inside.

Rosie came up to me and looked up with her doleful eyes as if to say
Where's Mandy?
I stroked her head, and then she wandered back to her bed in the hallway.

We would both have to learn to live in a new environment.

•   •   •

O
N
T
HURSDAY MORNING,
having checked the
Racing Post
to see which jockeys were riding that day at Wetherby, I left home early and drove south towards the village of Lambourn to visit some of those who weren't.

I had debated with myself all the previous evening over what to do.

Maybe I should just return to my stocks and shares, to financing bright but broke entrepreneurs, and leave Billy McCusker free to terrorize some other poor soul. But would he leave me alone as well?

Now he had forced me into signing such nonsense once, would he not do so again?

Surely it wouldn't do any harm to go talk to a few of the other jockeys who had ridden in the suspect races.

Marina hadn't been happy about it, but she wasn't happy about much at the moment.

“I think I'll go and visit my parents for a few days,” she'd said over supper. “I'll take Saskia with me. Her school breaks up for Easter on Friday. We'll go on Saturday morning and be back for Annabel's birthday party on Wednesday afternoon. I feel I need some time away from here.”

Away from me? I'd wondered.

“Great idea,” I'd said, trying to sound positive.

“I'll book the flights to Groningen. Papa can pick us up from there.”

•   •   •

M
Y FIRST VISIT
was to Robert Price. He was one of the top ten or so of steeplechase jockeys and had been for at least the past eight years.

According to the
Directory of the Turf
, he lived in a farm cottage outside Lambourn village on Hungerford Road.

“Hello?” said a young woman in her mid-twenties who answered the door. “Can I help you?”

“I'm looking for Robert Price,” I said. “I thought he lived here.”

“He does,” said the woman. “I'm his girlfriend.”

“Sid Halley,” I said, extending my right hand. “I also used to be a jockey.”

“I know exactly who you are,” she said, glancing down at my left arm. “I'm Judy. Judy Hammond.” She shook my hand. “You used to ride for my father.”

“Brian Hammond?”

“Yes,” she said. “You sometimes used to come to Dad's yard to ride out. It was very exciting for us to have the champion jockey riding at our place.”

“You're kidding me,” I said.

“No, it's true. I even bunked off school one day so I could watch you ride. Magic, it was.” She blushed.

I also was embarrassed but pleased as well. It had been so long now since my riding had been anything like magic that it was nice to be remembered as I had been, when I'd been complete with two hands, when I'd had a full set of fingers that could feel the reins.

“Is Robert about?” I asked, changing the subject.

“He's been schooling the novices at Dad's place, but he should be back soon. You can come in and wait, if you like.”

“Thanks,” I said, stepping into the cottage. “Does he ride much for your father?”

“All the time. Bob's been the stable jockey for years.”

I wondered how that went down in the Hammond household. Stable jockey cohabiting with the trainer's much younger daughter had, in my experience, never been very popular with the trainer's wife—something about family sleeping with the servants.

“Do you fancy a coffee?” Judy asked over her shoulder. “I'm making one for myself.”

“Lovely,” I said, following her into the kitchen. “Nice place.”

“We're working on it,” she said, smiling. “I've lived here with Bob for two years now.” She poured boiling water from a kettle into two mugs. “Milk?”

“Yes, thanks. No sugar.”

She passed over the steaming mug, and we sat opposite each other at the kitchen table.

I was to the point of regretting not having gone somewhere else first and then come back later when I heard the front door being opened.

“Hiya, babe,” called a male voice from the hallway. “Whose car is . . .” He tailed off as he walked into the kitchen. “Sid Halley. Blow me down. Good to see you, Sid. Must be ages.” His body language was not as welcoming as his words.