Дик Фрэнсис - Banker

I thought back to all those days when Alec had bounded out for the six copies and spent his next hour chuckling. Alec, the gatherer of news, who knew all the gossip.

‘They get masses of information in,’ Alec said, ‘but they need someone to evaluate it all properly, and there aren’t so many merchant bankers looking for that sort of job.’

‘No,’ I said dryly. ‘I can imagine. For a start, won’t your salary be much less?’

‘A bit,’ he admitted, cheerfully. ‘But my iconoclastic spirit will survive.’

I moved restlessly, wishing things had been different.

‘I’ll resign from here,’ he said. ‘Make it easier.’

Rather gloomily I nodded. ‘And will you say why?’

He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘If you really want me to, yes,’ he said finally. ‘Otherwise not. You can tell them yourself, though, after I’ve gone, if you want to.’

‘You’re a damned fool,’ I said explosively, feeling the loss of him acutely. ‘The office will be bloody dull without you.’

He grinned, my long-time colleague, and pointed to the piece of memo paper. ‘I’ll send you pin-pricks now and then. You won’t forget me. Not a chance.’

Gordon, three days later, said to me in surprise, ‘Alec’s leaving, did you know?’

‘I knew he was thinking of it.’

‘But why? He’s good at his job, and he always seemed happy here.’

I explained that Alec had been unsettled for some time and felt he needed to change direction.

‘Amazing,’ Gordon said. ‘I tried to dissuade him, but he’s adamant. He’s going in four weeks.’

Alec, indeed, addressed his normal work with the bounce and zealousness of one about to be liberated, and for the rest of his stay in the office was better company than ever. Chains visibly dropped from his spirits, and I caught him several times scribbling speculatively on his memo pad with an anything but angelic grin.

Oliver had sent me at my request a list of all the breeders who had sent their mares to Sandcastle the previous year, and I spent two or three evenings on the telephone asking after those foals we didn’t know about. Oliver himself, when I’d asked him, said he frankly couldn’t face the task, and I didn’t in the least blame him: my enquiries brought forth an ear-burning amount of blasphemy.

The final count came to:

Five foals born outwardly perfect but dead within two weeks because of internal abnormalities.

One foal born with one eye. (Put down.)

Five foals born with deformed legs, deformation varying from a malformed hoof to the absent half-leg of Plus Factor’s colt. (All put down.)

Three foals born with part of one or both ears missing. (All still living.)

One foal born with no tail. (Still living.)

Two foals born with malformed mouths, the equivalent of human hare lip. (Both put down.)

One foal born with a grossly deformed head. (Foaled with heart-beat but couldn’t breathe; died at once.)

Apart from this horrifying tally, four mares who had been sent home as in foal had subsequently ‘slipped’ and were barren: one mare had failed to conceive at all; three mares had not yet foaled (breeders’ comments incendiary); and fourteen mares had produced live healthy foals with no defects of any sort.

I showed the list to Gordon and Henry, who went shockedly silent for a while as if in mourning for the superb racer they had so admired.’

‘There may be more to come,’ I said, not liking it. ‘Oliver says thirty mares covered by Sandcastle this year are definitely in foal. Some of those will be all right... and some may not.’

‘Isn’t there a test you can do to see if a baby is abnormal?’ Henry said. ‘Can’t they do that with the mares, and abort the deformed foals now, before they grow?’

I shook my head, ‘I asked Oliver that. He says amniocentesis — that’s what that process is called — isn’t possible with mares. Something to do with not being able to reach the target with a sterile needle because of all the intestines in the way.’

Henry listened with the distaste of the non-medical to these clinical realities. ‘What it means, I suppose,’ he said, ‘is that the owners of all of those thirty-one mares will have the foals aborted and demand their money back.’

‘I’d think so, yes.’

He shook his head regretfully. ‘So sad, isn’t it. Such a shame. Quite apart from the financial loss, a tragedy in racing terms.’

Oliver said on the telephone one morning, ‘Tim, I need to talk to you. Something’s happened.’

‘What?’ I said, with misgivings.

‘Someone has offered to buy Sandcastle.’

I sat in a mild state of shock, looking at Alec across the room sucking his pencil while he wrote his future.

‘Are you there?’ Oliver said.

‘Yes. What for and for how much?’

‘Well, he says to put back into training. I suppose it’s possible. Sandcastle’s only five. I suppose he could be got fit to race by August or September, and he might still win next year at six.’

‘Good heavens.’

‘He’s offering twenty-five thousand pounds.’

‘Um,’ I said. ‘Is that good or bad?’

‘Realistically, it’s as much as he’s worth.’

‘I’ll consult with my seniors here,’ I said. ‘It’s too soon, this minute, to say yes or no.’

‘I did tell him that my bankers would have to agree, but he wants an answer fairly soon, because the longer the delay the less time there is for training and racing this season.’

‘Yes,’ I said, understanding. ‘Where is he? Sandcastle, I mean.’

‘Still in Newmarket. But it’s pointless him staying there any longer. They haven’t found any answers. They say they just don’t know what’s wrong with him, and I think they want me to take him away.’

‘Well,’ I pondered briefly. ‘You may as well fetch him, I should think.’

‘I’ll arrange it,’ he said.

‘Before we go any further,’ I said. ‘Are you sure it’s a bona-fide offer and not just some crank?’

‘I had a letter from him and I’ve talked to him on the telephone, and to me he sounds genuine,’ Oliver answered. ‘Would you like to meet him?’

‘Perhaps, yes.’

We fixed a provisional date for the following Saturday morning, and almost as an afterthought I asked the potential buyer’s name.

‘Smith,’ Oliver said. ‘A Mr Dissdale Smith.’

I went to Hertfordshire on that Saturday with a whole host of question marks raising their eyebrows in my mind, but it was Dissdale, as it so happened, who had the deeper astonishment.

He drove up while I was still outside Oliver’s house, still clasping hands in greeting and talking of Ginnie. Dissdale had come without Bettina, and the first thing he said, emerging from his car, was ‘Hello, Tim, what a surprise, didn’t know you knew Oliver Knowles.’

He walked across, announced himself, shook hands with Oliver, and patted me chubbily on the shoulder. ‘How’s things, then? How are you doing, Tim?’

Fine,’ I said mildly.

Oliver looked from one of us to the other. ‘You know each other already?’

Dissdale said, ‘How do you mean, already?’

‘Tim’s my banker,’ Oliver said in puzzlement. ‘It was his bank, Ekaterin’s, which put up the money for Sandcastle.’

Dissdale stared at me in stunned amazement and looked bereft of speech.

‘Didn’t you know?’ Oliver said. ‘Didn’t I mention it?’

Dissdale blankly shook his head and finally found his voice. ‘You just said your banker was coming... I never for a moment thought...’

‘It doesn’t make much odds,’ Oliver said. ‘If you know each other it may simply save some time. Let’s go indoors. There’s some coffee ready.’ He led the way through his immaculate house to the sitting room-office, where a tray stood on the desk with coffee hot in a pot.