Dick Francis - Enquiry

To have known about the pitfalls and jumped in regardless was a mite galling. It just showed how easily good sense lost out to anger. It also showed me that I wasn’t going to get results that way. A crash course in detection would have been handy. Failing that, I’d have to start taking stock of things coolly, instead of charging straight off again towards the easiest looking target, and making another mess of it.

Cool stock-taking...

Charlie West hadn’t wanted to see me because he had a guilty conscience. It followed that everyone else who had a guilty conscience wouldn’t want to see me. Even if they didn’t actually sprint off across the fields, they would all do their best to avoid my reaching them. I was going to have to become adept — and fast — at entering their lives when their backs were turned.

If Charlie West didn’t know who had paid him, and I believed that he didn’t, it followed that perhaps no one else who had lied knew who had persuaded them to. Perhaps it had all been done on the telephone. Long distance leverage. Impersonal and undiscoverable.

Perhaps I had set myself an impossible task and I should give up the whole idea and emigrate to Australia.

Except that they had racing in Australia, and I wouldn’t be able to go. The banishment covered the world. Warned off. Warned off.

Oh God .

All right, so maybe I did let the self pity catch up with me for a while. But I was privately alone in my bed in the dark, and I’d jeered myself out of it by morning.

Looking about as ragged as I felt, I got up at six and pointed the Lotus’s smooth nose towards London, N.W.7, Mill Hill.

Since I could see no one at the races I had to catch them at home, and in the case of George Newtonnards, bookmaker, home proved to be a sprawling pink-washed ranch-type bungalow in a prosperous suburban road. At eight thirty a.m. I hoped to find him at breakfast, but in fact he was opening his garage door when I arrived. I parked squarely across the entrance to his drive, which was hardly likely to make me popular, and he came striding down towards me to tell me to move.

I climbed out of the car. When he saw who it was, he stopped dead. I walked up the drive to meet him, shivering a little in the raw east wind and regretting I wasn’t snug inside a fur collared jacket like his.

‘What are you doing here?’ he said sharply.

‘I would be very grateful if you would just tell me one or two things...’

‘I haven’t time.’ He was easy, self assured, dealing with a small sized nuisance. ‘And nothing I can say will help you. Move your car, please.’

‘Certainly... Could you tell me how it was that you came to be asked to give evidence against Mr Cranfield?’

‘How it was...? He looked slightly surprised. ‘I received an official letter, requiring me to attend.’

‘Well, why? I mean, how did the Stewards know about Mr Cranfield’s bet on Cherry Pie? Did you write and tell them?’

He gave me a cool stare. ‘I hear,’ he said, ‘That you are maintaining you were framed.’

‘News travels.’

A faint smile. ‘News always travels — towards me. An accurate information service is the basis of good bookmaking.’

‘How did the Stewards know about Mr Cranfield’s bet?’

‘Mm. Well, yes, that I don’t know.’

‘Who, besides you, knew that you believed that Cranfield had backed Cherry Pie?’

‘He did back him.’

‘Well, who besides you knew that he had?’

‘I haven’t time for this.’

‘I’ll be happy to move my car... in a minute or two.’

His annoyed glare gradually softened round the edges into a half amused acceptance. A very smooth civilised man, George Newtonnards.

‘Very well. I told a few of the lads... other bookmakers, that is. I was angry about it, see? Letting myself be taken to the cleaners like that. Me, at my age, I should know better. So maybe one of them passed on the word to the Stewards, knowing the Enquiry was coming up. But no, I didn’t do it myself.’

‘Could you guess which one might have done? I mean, do you know of anyone who has a grudge against Cranfield?’

‘Can’t think of one.’ He shrugged. ‘No more than against any other trainer who tries it on.’

‘Tries it on?’ I echoed, surprised. ‘But he doesn’t.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘I ride them,’ I protested. ‘I should know.’

‘Yes,’ he said sarcastically. ‘You should. Don’t come the naive bit with me, chum. Your friend Chris Smith, him with the cracked skull, he’s a proper artist at strangulation, wouldn’t you say? Same as you are. A fine pair, the two of you.’

‘You believe I pulled Squelch, then?’

‘Stands to reason.’

‘All the same, I didn’t.’

‘Tell it to the Marines.’ A thought struck him. ‘I don’t know any bookmakers who have a grudge against Cranfield, but I sure know one who has a grudge against you. A whopping great life-sized grudge. One time, he was almost coming after you with a chopper. You got in his way proper, mate, you did indeed.’

‘How? And who?’

‘You and Chris Smith, you were riding two for Cranfield... about six months ago, it was... right at the beginning of the season anyway... in a novice ’chase at Fontwell. Remember? There was a big holiday crowd in from the south coast because it was a bit chilly that day for lying on the beach... anyway, there was a big crowd all primed with holiday money... and there were you and Chris Smith on these two horses, and the public fancying both of them, and Pelican Jobberson asked you which was off, and you said you hadn’t an earthly on yours, so he rakes in the cash on you and doesn’t bother to balance his book, and then you go and ride a hell of a finish and win by a neck, when you could have lost instead without the slightest trouble. Pelican went spare and swore he’d be even with you when he got the chance.’

‘I believed what I told him,’ I said. ‘It was that horse’s first attempt over fences. No one could have predicted he’d have been good enough to win.’

‘Then why did you?’

‘The owner wanted to, if possible.’

‘Did he bet on it?’

‘The owner? No. It was a woman. She never bets much. She just likes to see her horses win.’

‘Pelican swore you’d backed it yourself, and put him off so that you could get a better price.’

‘You bookmakers are too suspicious for your own good.’

‘Hard experience proves us right.’

‘Well, he’s wrong this time,’ I insisted. ‘This bird friend of yours. If he asked me... and I don’t remember him asking... then I told him the truth. And anyway, any bookmaker who asks jockeys questions like that is asking for trouble. Jockeys are the worst tipsters in the world.’

‘Some aren’t,’ he said flatly. ‘Some are good at it.’

I skipped that. ‘Is he still angry after all these months? And if so, would he be angry enough not just to tell the Stewards that Cranfield backed Cherry Pie, but to bribe other people to invent lies about us?’

His eyes narrowed while he thought about it. He pursed his mouth, undecided. ‘You’d better ask him yourself.’

‘Thanks.’ Hardly an easy question.

‘Move your car now?’ he suggested.

‘Yes.’ I walked two steps towards it, then stopped and turned back. ‘Mr Newtonnards, if you see the man who put the money on for Mr Cranfield, will you find out who he is... and let me know?’

‘Why don’t you ask Cranfield?’

‘He said he didn’t want to involve him.’

‘But you do?’

‘I suppose I’m grasping at anything,’ I said. ‘But yes, I think I do.’

‘Why don’t you just quieten down and take it?’ he said reasonably. ‘AH this thrashing about... you got copped. So, you got copped. Fair enough. Sit it out, then. You’ll get your licence back, eventually.’