Дик Фрэнсис: High Stakes

‘Ten pounds.’

He laughed. ‘Rumour says you can’t think in anything less than three noughts.’

‘That was an engineering joke,’ I said, ‘which escaped.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I sometimes use a precision lathe. You can just about set it to an accuracy of three noughts... point nought nought nought one. One ten thousandth of an inch. That’s my limit. Can’t think in less than three noughts.’

‘He chuckled. ‘And you never have a thousand on a horse?’

‘Oh, I did that too, once or twice.’

He definitely did, that time, hear the arid undertone. I stood up casually and moved towards the glass door to the balcony.

‘They’re going down to the post,’ I said.

He came without comment, and we stood outside watching the two stars, Crepitas and Waterboy, bouncing past the stands with their jockeys fighting for control.

Charlie was a shade shorter than I, a good deal stouter, and approximately twenty years older. He wore top quality clothes as a matter of course and no one hearing his mellow voice would have guessed his father had been a lorry driver. Charlie had never hidden his origins. Indeed he was justly proud of them. It was simply that under the old educational system he’d been sent to Eton as a local boy on Council money, and had acquired the speech and social habits along with the book learning. His brains had taken him along all his life like a surf rider on the crest of a roller, and it was probably only a modest piece of extra luck that he’d happened to be born within sight of the big school.

His other guests drifted out on to the balcony and claimed his attention. I knew none of them well, most of them by sight, one or two by reputation. Enough for the occasion, not enough for involvement.

The lady in the green hat put a green glove on my arm. ‘Waterboy looks wonderful, don’t you think?’

‘Wonderful,’ I agreed.

She gave me a bright myopic smile from behind thick lensed glasses. ‘Could you just tell me what price they’re offering now in the ring?’

‘Of course.’

I raised my binoculars and scanned the boards of the bookmakers ranged in front of a sector of stands lying some way to our right. ‘It looks like evens Waterboy and five to four Grepitas, as far as I can see.’

‘So kind,’ said the green lady warmly.

I swung the binoculars round a little to search out Ganser Mays: and there he stood, halfway down the row of bookmakers lining the rails separating the Club Enclosure from Tattersall’s, a thin man of middle height with a large sharp nose, steel-rimmed spectacles and the manner of a high church clergyman. I had never liked him enough to do more than talk about the weather, but I had trusted him completely, and that had been foolish.

He was leaning over the rails, head bent, talking earnestly to someone in the Club Enclosure, someone hidden from me by a bunch of other people. Then the bunch shifted and moved away and the person behind them was Jody.

The anger in Jody’s body came over sharp and clear and his lower jaw moved vigorously in speech. Ganser Mays’ responses appeared more soothing than fierce and when Jody finally strode furiously away, Ganser Mays raised his head and looked after him with an expression more thoughtful than actively worried.

Ganser Mays had reached that point in a bookmaker’s career where outstanding personal success began to merge into the status of a large and respectable firm. In gamblers’ minds he was moving from an individual to an institution. A multiplying host of betting shops bore his name from Glasgow southwards, and recently he had announced that next Flat season he would sponsor a three-year-old sprint.

He still stood on the rails himself at big meetings to talk to his more affluent customers and keep them faithful. To open his big shark jaws and suck in all the new unwary little fish.

With a wince I swung my glasses away. I would never know exactly how much Jody and Ganser Mays had stolen from me in terms of cash, but in terms of dented self-respect they had stripped me of all but crumbs.

The race started, the super-hurdlers battled their hearts out, and Crepitas beat Waterboy by a length. The Tote would pay me a little because of him, and a great deal because of Energise, but two winning bets in one afternoon weren’t enough to dispel my depression. I dodged the tea-and-cakes, thanked Charlie for the lunch and said I’d see him later, and went down towards the weighing room again to see if inspiration would strike in the matter of a choice of trainers.

I heard hurrying footsteps behind me and a hand grabbed my arm.

‘Thank goodness I’ve found you.’

He was out of breath and looking worried. The young owner-driver I’d hired for Energise.

‘What is it? Box broken down?’

‘No... look, you did say your horse was black, didn’t you? I mean, I did get that right, didn’t I?’

Anxiety sharpened my voice. ‘Is there anything wrong with him?’

‘No... at least... not with him, no. But the horse which Mr Leeds has left for me to take is... well... a chestnut mare.’

I went with him to the stables. The gatekeeper still smiled with pleasure at things going wrong.

‘S’right,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Leeds went off a quarter of an hour ago in one of them hire boxes, one horse. Said his own box had had an accident and he was leaving Energise here, instructions of the owner.’

‘The horse he’s left is not Energise,’ I said.

‘Can’t help that, can I?’ he said virtuously.

I turned to the young man. ‘Chestnut mare with a big white blaze?’

He nodded.

‘That’s Asphodel. She ran in the first race today. Jody Leeds trains her. She isn’t mine.’

‘What will I do about her then?’

‘Leave her here,’ I said. ‘Sorry about this. Send me a bill for cancellation fees.’

He smiled and said he wouldn’t, which almost restored my faith in human nature. I thanked him for bothering to find me instead of keeping quiet, taking the wrong horse and then sending me a bill for work done. He looked shocked that anyone could be so cynical, and I reflected that until I learned from Jody, I wouldn’t have been.

Jody had taken Energise after all.

I burnt with slow anger, partly because of my own lack of foresight. If he had been prepared to urge Andy-Fred to risk running me down I should have known that he wouldn’t give up at the first setback. He had been determined to get the better of me and whisk Energise back to his own stable and I’d under-estimated both his bloody-mindedness and his nerve.

I could hardly wait to be free of Jody. I went back to my car and drove away from the racecourse with no thoughts but of which trainer I would ask to take my horses and how soon I could get them transferred from one to the other.

Charlie smiled across the golden polished wood of the table in Parkes and pushed away his empty coffee cup. His cigar was half smoked, his port half drunk, and his stomach, if mine were anything to go by, contentedly full of some of the best food in London.

I wondered what he had looked like as a young man, before the comfortable paunch and the beginning of jowls. Big businessmen were all the better for a little weight, I thought. Lean-and-hungry was for the starters, the hotheads in a hurry. Charlie exuded maturity and wisdom with every excess pound.

He had smooth greying hair, thin on top and brushed back at the sides. Eyes deep set, nose large, mouth firmly straight. Not conventionally a good-looking face, but easy to remember. People who had once met Charlie tended to know him next time.

He had come alone, and the restaurant he had chosen consisted of several smallish rooms with three or four tables in each; a quiet place where privacy was easy. He had talked about racing, food, the Prime Minister and the state of the Stock Market, and still had not come to the point.