Dick Francis - Under Orders

‘How do you feel?’ I asked.

‘About as good as I look.’ She turned and gave me a lopsided smile.

That’s my girl, I thought and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek.

We both beat Charles to breakfast and found Mrs Cross busy in the kitchen.

‘Good morning, Mr Halley.’ I had never managed to get her to call me Sid.

‘Morning, Mrs Cross,’ I replied. ‘Can I introduce Marina van der Meer — Mrs Cross.’

‘Oh, my dear, your poor face!’

Marina smiled at her. ‘It’s fine, getting better every day. Car accident.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Cross again. ‘I’ll get you some tea.’

‘Thank you, that would be lovely.’

I had coffee and dear Mrs Cross provided me, as always, with ready buttered and marmaladed toast.

Charles came in wearing his dressing gown and slippers and sat down at the long kitchen table. He rubbed his forehead and his eyes.

‘When I was a midshipman I could drink all night and then be wide awake and full of energy for duty at six in the morning. What have the years done to me?’

‘Good morning, Charles,’ I said.

‘Good morning to you, too,’ he replied. ‘Why did I allow you to keep me up half the night boozing?’ He turned to Marina. ‘Good morning, my dear, and how do you feel today?’

‘Better than you two, I expect.’ She smiled at him, which seemed to cheer him up no end.

‘Morning, Mrs Cross,’ said Charles. ‘Black coffee and wholemeal toast for breakfast, please.’

‘With or without Alka-Seltzer?’ I asked.

‘Without, I can’t stand all that fizzing.’

We sat and ate our breakfast for a while in silence, Charles poring over the Saturday papers.

‘It says here,’ he said, pointing at the paper with a slice of toast, ‘that the English are turning into a race of gamblers. It claims that more than nine million people in this country regularly gamble on the internet. Unbelievable.’ He drank some coffee. ‘It also says that on-line poker is the fastest expanding form of gambling. What’s on-line poker when it’s at home?’

‘Playing poker on your computer,’ I said. ‘You join a poker table with others on their computers.’

‘On their computers? Can’t you see their faces?’

‘No, just their names and those are simply nicknames. You have no idea who you are playing against.’

‘That’s crazy,’ said Charles. ‘The whole point of poker is being able to see the eyes of the other players. How can you bluff if you can’t see who you are playing against?’

‘The numbers playing it proves it must be attractive,’ said Marina.

‘How do you know that the players aren’t cheating if you can’t actually see the cards being dealt?’ asked Charles.

‘The cards are “dealt” by a computer,’ I said, ‘so the players can’t be cheating,’

But what if the computer is cheating, I thought. What if the player only thinks he is playing against others who, like him, log on to the game from their own computers? What if the website has a seat or two at each table for itself to play against the visitors? What if the website is able to fix the ‘deal’? Just a little, mind, so that the players don’t really notice. Just enough to make the new players win. Just until they are hooked. It’s a tried and tested formula: give away the cocaine just long enough to turn the users into addicts, and then charge them through the nose, as it were.

I had read that there were thought to be more than a quarter of a million gambling addicts in Britain. The resources needed to feed any compulsive habit increase at the same rate as the time and dedication to realising those resources decrease. The result is an insatiable appetite fed by unattainable provision. Something has to give and usually it’s lifestyle, honesty and self-respect. All of these go out the window in the endless craving for the next fix. Gambling compulsion may be different from alcohol or drugs in the immediate damage it does to health, but, in the long run, as with all untreated addictions, it destroys sure enough.

‘Still sounds crazy to me,’ said Charles. ‘Half the fun of playing poker is the banter between the players.’

‘The difference is, Charles,’ I said, ‘you don’t play poker where the winning and losing are important. You enjoy being with friends and the poker is an excuse to get together. Online poker is a solitary experience and winning and losing is everything, whether it’s fun or not.’

‘Well, it’s not for me,’ he said and went back to reading his paper.

‘Is it OK with you if I go to Newbury races?’ I asked Marina.

‘Yes, fine,’ said Marina, ‘but be careful. I’ll stay here and rest. Is that all right with you, Charles?’

‘Oh, yes, fine by me. I’ll stay here, too, and we can watch the racing on the telly together.’

Marina pulled a face and I suspected that ‘watching the racing on the telly’ wasn’t in her plans, but she would be too polite to say so.

After breakfast I called the Cheltenham police and asked for Chief Inspector Carlisle. Sorry, they said, he’s unavailable at the moment, did I want to leave a message? When would he be available? I asked. They didn’t know. Was he on duty? Yes, he was, but he was still unavailable. Could they pass him a message that he would actually get? Yes, they would. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Ask him to call Sid Halley. He has the number,’ but I gave it to them again just in case.

He called me less than five minutes later. Good old Cheltenham police.

‘I meant to call you yesterday,’ he said, ‘but things are a bit hectic down here at the moment.’

‘Busy catching villains?’ I said rather flippantly.

‘Wish I were,’ he sounded grave. ‘Have you heard the news today?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that little girl that went missing from Gloucester in the week has turned up dead. At least, we’ve found a child’s body and it’s probably her. Still waiting for the official ID but there’s not much doubt. Poor little mite. Don’t know the cause of death yet but it has to be murder. How can anyone do such things to a 10-year-old? Makes me physically sick.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He had obviously had a lousy Saturday morning.

‘I hate this job when it’s kids. I’m glad they’re rare. Only my third in twenty-five years.’

‘What were you going to phone me about yesterday?’ I asked.

‘Forensics came back with the results. It was the same gun that killed Walker, and Burton definitely did fire it on the day he died. There was gunpowder residue all over his hands and on his sleeve.’

Oh, I thought. Oh, shit.

‘So you believe that it was suicide?’

‘That is the consensus of opinion in the Thames Valley force but it will be up to the coroner to decide.’

‘Don’t you think it was odd that he still had the gun in his hand? Surely it would fly out when he fired it?’

‘It is not that unusual for a suicide to grip so tightly to the gun that it stays there. Like a reflex. The hand closes tightly at death and stays that way. Inspector Johnson said it was really quite difficult to prise the gun out of Burton’s hand. Rigor mortis and all that.’

It was more information than I needed.

‘Are you still investigating Huw Walker’s death?’ I asked.

‘We are waiting for the inquest now.’

I took that to mean ‘no’.

‘How about if Bill Burton was already dead when he fired the gun?’ I asked.

‘What do you mean? How could he fire the gun if he was already dead?’

‘Suppose you wanted to make murder look like suicide. First you shoot Bill through the mouth. Then you put the gun in his dead hand and pull the trigger again with his finger. Bingo, residue all over his hand and suicide it is.’