Dick Francis - Under Orders

I could feel the welling in my eyes, I could sense the tightening at the bridge of my nose and the pressure in my jaw. I cried the tears of relief, the tears of joy.

‘Provided we can bring her out of the unconsciousness safely tomorrow then she should make a complete recovery. But we’ll keep her sedated for the night just to be on the safe side.’

‘What time in the morning?’ I asked.

‘We’ll stop giving her the sedative in the drip around seven. We’ll remove the ventilator, and then we’ll see. Everyone is different but, if I was a betting man,’ he smiled again, ‘I’d say she should be awake by noon at the latest. That is, of course, if her brain wasn’t starved of oxygen, but I think that’s unlikely. There were no reports that she had stopped breathing at any time.’

‘Should I stay here the night?’ I asked.

‘You’re welcome to if you want,’ he said, ‘but it’s not necessary. She’s over the danger time. There shouldn’t be much change overnight and we can always call you if there is. The best thing you can do is to go home and get a good night’s sleep and be here for her tomorrow. She won’t be feeling too well, I’m afraid. The sedative tends to make patients feel rather sick.’

‘Thank you, doctor,’ I said.

‘Actually I’m a mister.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘Off the street?’ I smiled at him.

‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘It stems from the time when surgeons were all barbers. They were the only people with sharp enough blades. Can you imagine? “A quick shave, sir, and I’ll whip out your appendix on the side.” In those days, doctors saw it as a failure to have to cut open their patients, and most surgery proved fatal. It was the option of last hope. So surgeons weren’t doctors and they were called mister. And it’s stuck. Now you progress from being a mister to a doctor and then finally back to a mister.’

‘For jockeys, mister means an amateur.’

He laughed. ‘Well, I don’t think I’m an amateur.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I think not. You saved her life.’

He waved a hand. ‘All in a day’s work. Bye now.’

He moved on. There were probably others more needful of his skills.

I waved at the silent policeman as I went back out to Jenny. I thought it would be too soon for Charles and Rosie to be there but they appeared out of the lift at the same moment as I came through the door.

‘Great news,’ I said. ‘The official bulletin is now that Marina is no longer critical and she is expected to make a full recovery.’

‘Thank God,’ said Charles.

Rosie clasped her hands to her face but it did nothing to stem the rush of tears down her cheeks. Her shoulders shuddered with sobs at the same time as her mouth opened in laughter. The release of tension was tangible for us all.

‘That’s all right, then,’ said Jenny.

Yes, indeed, it was very much all right.

‘I only have three bedrooms,’ I said when Jenny said she wanted to come back to Ebury Street with the rest of us. ‘So who are you going to share with?’

I thought for a moment that she was going to say she’d share with me, but good sense prevailed.

‘I’ll go home later,’ she said, ‘and I’d better give Anthony a call. He may be wondering where I’ve got to.’

‘Haven’t you called him?’ Charles said.

‘No. I’m often out when he gets in from the office. And other times I wait in and he doesn’t come home for hours. He goes for drinks or dinner with a colleague. He doesn’t usually phone me. It’s the way we are.’

How sad, I thought.

We went straight down to the street and set off back to my flat in a black cab.

‘Well?’ I said to Rosie.

‘No match,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘We’re looking for two people then.’

‘Yes,’ said Rosie. ‘And this one’s a woman.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely.’ She sounded rather hurt that I’d questioned her. ‘I got a good profile off that piece of envelope and it didn’t match the first one at all. Men and women have different chromosomes and different DNA. It’s easy to tell from the two profiles that it was a man who punched Marina last week, and a woman who licked the envelope tonight.’

A wife, perhaps, or a girlfriend? Could anyone stick that envelope shut without knowing the contents? I doubted it. A man had attacked Marina outside my flat last week; Marina had his skin under her fingernails. And this week the message came with the saliva of a woman. Maybe I was searching for even more than two people.

‘So what are we going to do now?’ said Charles.

‘No idea,’ I said. ‘I thought I could at least discount the female half of the population from suspicion, but now…’

‘It can’t be that bad,’ said Charles.

‘Almost,’ I said. ‘And there is one thing that really bothers me. Is race fixing sufficient motive for murder?’

‘Money is always a motive for murder,’ said Jenny.

‘But we’re not talking big money here. Huw Walker was offered a few hundred a time to fix a race. He told me that himself.’ And Chief Inspector Carlisle has the tape, I thought.

‘If really big money was involved then you would be likely to offer the jockey a bit more than a few hundred. That’s not much more than his riding fee,’ I said.

‘It might seem a lot to a jockey from the valleys,’ said Charles.

‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but Huw had been around a long time and had been used to earning good money.’

We arrived back at my flat, piled out of the taxi and went inside.

‘I come back to the race fixing,’ I said when we were all safely settled and I had provided sustenance in the form of more ham sandwiches and a bottle of wine.

‘Who could gain sufficiently for it to be worth the risk of killing a jockey in broad daylight with sixty thousand members of the public close to hand? The era of an individual running a big betting coup is past. Drug dealing has killed the ability for the crooked gambler to pull off the big con.’

‘Why?’ said Jenny.

‘Because drug dealing produces such huge amounts of cash that banks and governments have introduced a whole raft of money-laundering checks. These days, it’s almost impossible to pay for anything in cash without six pieces of identification and a reference from the Pope. Gone is the time when you could sidle up to a bookie with a hundred thousand in readies to stick on number two at Cartmel in the three-thirty. He’ll likely tell you now to get lost or place the bet by credit card.’

‘And you’re not going to do that if you’re doing something dodgy,’ said Charles.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Far too easy to trace.’

‘So what could be the motive for the murder?’ said Rosie.

‘That’s the million dollar question,’ I said. ‘Kate Burton, that’s Bill’s wife, told Marina that Huw Walker had said to her that the whole race fixing thing was more about power than money.’

‘But money gives you power,’ said Jenny.

‘Indeed it does,’ I said, ‘but if you have enough money, there may be the urge to have power merely for its own sake.’

‘Sounds too complicated for me,’ said Charles. ‘Power to me means a broadside of twelve inchers.’

Charles could usually apply a naval sea battle analogy to most situations.

‘So what’s the order of the day tomorrow?’ asked Jenny. ‘Please say I’m needed again. Today, for all its trauma, has been the most exciting day in my life for years.’

She looked at me and smiled. I don’t think she truly realised what she had just said.

‘I’ll go to the hospital early,’ I said. ‘They’re taking Marina off the sedative at seven and I want to be there when she wakes. As far as I’m concerned, you can all come. In fact, I’d love it if you did — so long as you don’t mind more sitting around in the hospital corridor.’