Dick Francis: Under Orders

The Racing Post went even further, with an eight-page spread of Oven Cleaner’s career and an obituary to rival that of a prime minister.

‘It was only a bloody horse,’ declared Charles over his breakfast. ‘Like that memorial in London for the animals in war. Ridiculous sentimental rubbish.’

‘Come on, Charles,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen you almost in tears over your dogs when they die. Same thing.’

‘Poppycock!’ But he knew it was true. ‘When are you off?’ he asked, changing the subject.

‘After breakfast. I have some reports to write.’

‘Come again. Come as often as you like. I like having you here and I miss you when you’re gone.’

I was surprised, but pleased. He had initially detested his daughter marrying a jockey. Not a suitable match, he’d thought, for the daughter of an admiral. A game of chess, which I had won, had been the catalyst to an enduring friendship that had survived the break-up of my marriage, had survived the destruction of my racing career, and had been instrumental in the blossoming of my new life out of the saddle. Charles was not one to show his emotions openly; command in the services was lonely and one had to learn to be emotionally robust in the face of junior officers.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I enjoy being here and I will come again soon.’

We both knew that I tended to come to Aynsford only when I was in trouble or when I was depressed, or both. Aynsford had become my sanctuary and my therapy. It was my rock in the turbulent waters I had chosen as my home.

I left promptly after breakfast and drove home to London along a relatively empty M40. The rain beat relentlessly on the roof of my Audi as I made my way round Hyde Park Corner and into Belgravia. I lived in a fourth-floor flat in Ebury Street near Victoria Station and, after five years, it was beginning to feel like home. Not least because I did not live there on my own.

Who Sid Halley was presently ‘screwing’, the secret I kept from Chris Beecher, was Marina van der Meer, a Dutch beauty, a natural blonde with brains, and a member of a team of chemists at the Cancer Research UK laboratories in Lincoln’s Inn Fields searching for the Holy Grail — a simple blood test to find cancers long before any symptoms appear. Earlier detection, she said, leads to easier cure.

When I arrived at noon she was sitting in our large bed, wearing a fluffy pink towelling robe and reading the Saturday papers.

‘Well, well, quite the little Sherlock Holmes!’ She pointed to a picture of me in the Telegraph . It was the one they often used of me, smiling broadly as I received a racing trophy. That photo was now more than ten years old and pre the flecks of grey that were now appearing at my temples. I didn’t mind.

‘It says here that you discovered the body. I bet Colonel Mustard did it in the conservatory with the lead piping.’ Her English was perfect with a faint hint of accent, more a rising and lowering of inflection than a specific style of pronunciation. Music to my ears.

‘Well, he might have done, but he must have melted the lead piping into bullets first.’

‘It doesn’t say he was shot.’ She looked surprised and tapped the paper. ‘It even gives the impression it was natural causes or suicide.’

‘Difficult to shoot yourself three times in the heart. The police kept that gem to themselves and I didn’t tell the Press either.’

‘Wow!’

‘What are you still doing in bed, anyway?’ I asked, lying down beside her on the duvet. ‘It’s nearly lunchtime.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Fancy working up an appetite?’ I grinned.

‘I thought you’d never ask.’ She giggled and shrugged the robe off her slender shoulders.

Chris Beecher, eat your heart out.

We lay in bed for much of the afternoon, watching the racing on the television while I should have been writing up reports for clients. We decided against a walk to St James’s Park because of the incessant rain but, eventually, did huddle under an umbrella and make our way to dinner at Santini, the Italian restaurant on the corner. Marina had chicken while I chose Dover sole, off the bone.

We contentedly shared a bottle of Chablis and caught up on the week.

‘Tell me more about the jockey who was killed,’ Marina asked.

‘He was nice enough,’ I said. ‘In fact, I spoke with him earlier.’ I remembered Huw’s message still sitting unheard on my machine.

‘He won the first race,’ I said. But I wondered if he should have. Had he been told to lose? Was that why he’d died? Surely not. That killing was expertly carried out. It was an assassination. As I had told the police, someone had to have come to the races with the wherewithal to commit murder in his pocket. Metal detectors were not usual at the entrances to racecourses, although Aintree used them after the Grand National was postponed one year due to a bomb scare.

The rain had stopped by the time we walked back to the flat hand in hand — her left, my right — dodging the puddles and laughing out loud. This was why I never took Marina to the races. This was a different world, one in which I could relax and act like a teenager, one in which I was increasingly happy and near to the point where I would seek to make it permanent. We stopped and kissed at least four times during the short fifty-yard stroll and went straight back to bed.

I had always preferred lovemaking to be gentle and sensual and it was clearly Marina’s pleasure, too. After the violence of the previous day, I found solace in her tender embrace and we both seemed hugely satisfied by the experience. Afterwards we lay in the dark, touching occasionally, close to sleep.

As a rule, I removed my false arm prior to making love but we had been swept away with the passion of the moment so now I gently eased myself out of bed and went into the bathroom. The five or so inches remaining of my left forearm fitted snugly into the open end of a hard fibreglass cylinder built to be the same length as my healthy right. The plastic-covered steel myo-electric hand was attached to the bottom end of the cylinder. Chris Beecher had been correct, it was little more than a fancy hook. The fingers were permanently slightly bent and the hand was able to grip between forefinger and thumb by means of an electric motor that moved the thumb in and out. The motor was powered by a rechargeable battery that clipped into a recessed holder above the wrist.

Electrodes inside the arm-cylinder were held close to my skin near to where my real arm ceased. Initially I had had to learn how to open and close the hand using impulses I had previously used for bending my wrist. Try to move back the real hand that wasn’t there and the false hand opened. Move it forward and the hand closed. Easy. Unfortunately there was a slight delay between the impulse and the action and, consequently, I had broken the eggs and almost everything else I gripped. Nowadays, the thought processes were second nature but I still tended not to stop the impulses soon enough and breakages were common. Hence I had learnt to live a mostly one-handed life to match my one-handed body.

One could sleep with the arm in place but I almost never did as it was hard and very uncomfortable to lie on, its unfeeling fingers having a tendency to dig in to real flesh. Once I had almost knocked a beautiful bedfellow unconscious when turning over in my sleep. A couple of pounds of steel and plastic was definitely not an aid to romance.

The open end of the arm-cylinder fitted over my elbow, a plastic cuff gripping tightly around the ends of what was left of my ulna and radius bones, the bumps on each side of the elbow. I was impressed by the strength of the join between the genuine me and the fake. I had recently discovered that the fit was so good that, if I locked my elbow straight and stressed my biceps, I could hang my whole body weight by the arm. Not that I really fancied testing it with my life.