Дик Фрэнсис - Banker

I was gradually aware that Gordon, and behind him Henry, were not going to help, their thought being that I was a big boy now and should be able to resolve it myself. It was a freedom which brought responsibility, as all freedoms do, and I had to consider that for the bank’s sake John needed to be a sensible member of the team.

I thought he should see a psychiatrist. I got Alec to say it to him lightly as a joke, out of my hearing (‘what you need, old pal, is a friendly shrink’), but to John his own anger appeared rational, not a matter for treatment.

I tried saying to him straight, ‘Look, John, I know how you feel. I know you think my promotion isn’t fair. Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but either way I can’t help it. You’ll be a lot better off if you just face things and forget it. You’re good at your job, we all know it, but you’re doing yourself no favours with all this bellyaching. So shut up, accept that life’s bloody, and let’s lend some money.’

It was a homily that fell on a closed mind, and in the end it was some redecorating which came to the rescue. For a week while painters re-whitened our walls the five of us in the fountain-facing office squeezed into the other one, desks jammed together in every corner,’ phone calls made with palms pressed to ears against the noise and even normally placid tempers itching to snap. Overcrowd the human race, I thought, and you always got a fight. In distance lay peace.

Anyway, I used the time to do some surreptitious persuasion and shuffling, so that when we returned to our own patch both John and Rupert stayed behind. The two oldest men from the St Paul’s office came with Gordon, Alec and myself, and Gordon’s almost-equal obligingly told John that it was great to be working again with a younger team of bright energetic brains.

Val Fisher said at lunch one day, ‘I’ve received a fairly odd request.’ (It was a Friday: grilled fish.)

‘Something new?’ Henry asked.

‘Yes. Chap wants to borrow five million pounds to buy a racehorse.’

Everyone at the table laughed except Val himself.

‘I thought I’d toss it at you,’ he said. ‘Kick it around some. See what you think.’

‘What horse?’ Henry said.

‘Something called Sandcastle.’

Henry, Gordon and I all looked at Val with sharpened attention; almost perhaps with eagerness.

‘Mean something to you three, does it?’ he said, turning his head from one to the other of us.

Henry nodded. ‘That day we all went to Ascot. Sandcastle ran there, and won. A stunning performance. Beautiful.’

Gordon said reminiscently, ‘The man whose box we were in saved his whole business on that race. Do you remember Dissdale, Tim?’

‘Certainly do.’

‘I saw him a few weeks ago. On top of the world. God knows how much he won.’

‘Or how much he staked,’ I said.

‘Yes, well,’ Val said. ‘Sandcastle. He won the 2,000 Guineas, as I understand, and the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot. Also the “Diamond” Stakes in July, and the Champion Stakes at Newmarket last month. This is, I believe, a record second only to winning the Derby or the Arc de Triomphe. He finished fourth, incidentally, in the Derby. He could race next year as a four-year-old, but if he flopped his value would be less than it is at the moment. Our prospective client wants to buy him now and put him to stud.’

The rest of the directors got on with their fillets of sole while listening interestedly with eyes and ears. A stallion made a change, I suppose, from chemicals, electronics and oil.

‘Who is our client?’ Gordon asked. Gordon liked fish. He could eat it right handed with his fork, in no danger of shaking it off between plate and mouth.

‘A man called Oliver Knowles,’ Val said. ‘He owns a stud farm. He got passed along to me by the horse’s trainer, whom I know slightly because of our wives being distantly related. Oliver Knowles wants to buy, the present owner is willing to sell. All they need is the cash.’ He smiled. ‘Same old story.’

‘What’s your view?’ Henry said.

Val shrugged his well-tailored shoulders. ‘Too soon to have one of any consequence. But I thought, if it interested you at all, we could ask Tim to do a preliminary look-see. He has a background, after all, a lengthy acquaintance, shall we say, with racing.’

There was a murmur of dry amusement round the table.

‘What do you think?’ Henry asked me.

‘I’ll certainly do it if you like.’

Someone down the far end complained that it would be a waste of time and that merchant banks of our stature should not be associated with the Turf.

‘Our own dear Queen,’ someone said ironically, ‘is associated with the Turf. And knows the Stud Book backwards, so they say.’

Henry smiled. ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t at least look into it.’ He nodded in my direction. ‘Go ahead, Tim. Let us know.’

I spent the next few working days alternately chewing pencils with the computer programmer and joining us to a syndicate with three other banks to lend twelve point four million pounds short term at high interest to an international construction company with a gap in its cash-flow. In between those I telephoned around for information and opinions about Oliver Knowles, in the normal investigative preliminaries to any loan for anything, not only for a hair-raising price for a stallion.

Establishing a covenant, it was called. Only if the covenant was sound would any loan be further considered.

Oliver Knowles, I was told, was a sane, sober man of forty-one with a stud farm in Hertfordshire. There were three stallions standing there with ample provision for visiting mares, and he owned the one hundred and fifty acres outright, having inherited them on his father’s death.

When talking to local bank managers one listened attentively for what they left out, but Oliver Knowles’ bank manager left out not much. Without in the least discussing his client’s affairs in detail he said that occasional fair-sized loans had so far been paid off as scheduled and that Mr Knowles’ business sense could be commended. A rave notice from such a source.

‘Oliver Knowles?’ a racing acquaintance from the long past said. ‘Don’t know him myself. I’ll ask around,’ and an hour later called back with the news. ‘He seems to be a good guy but his wife’s just buggered off with a Canadian. He might be a secret wife-beater, who can tell? Otherwise the gen is that he’s as honest as any horse-breeder, which you can take as you find it, and how’s your mother?’

‘She’s fine, thanks. She remarried last year. Lives in Jersey.’

‘Good. Lovely lady. Always buying us icecreams. I adored her.’

I put the receiver down with a smile and tried a credit rating agency. No black marks, they said: the Knowles credit was good.

I told Gordon across the room that I seemed to be getting nothing but green lights, and at lunch that day repeated the news to Henry. He looked around the table, collecting a few nods, a few frowns and a great deal of indecision.

‘We couldn’t carry it all ourselves, of course,’ Val said. ‘And it isn’t exactly something we could go to our regular sources with. They’d think us crackers.’

Henry nodded. ‘We’d have to canvas friends for private money. I know a few people here or there who might come in. Two million, I think, is all we should consider ourselves. Two and a half at the outside.’

‘I don’t approve,’ a dissenting director said. ‘It’s madness. Suppose the damn thing broke its leg?’

‘Insurance,’ Henry said mildly.

Into a small silence I said, ‘If you felt like going into it further I could get some expert views on Sandcastle’s breeding, and then arrange blood and fertility tests. And I know it’s not usual with loans, but I do think someone like Val should go and personally meet Oliver Knowles and look at his place. It’s too much of a risk to lend such a sum for a horse without going into it extremely carefully.’