Dick Francis: Enquiry

I couldn’t think of anything else to ask him, and I knew I had made no headway at all. It was infuriating. By our own choice we had thrust ourselves back into the bad old days when people accused at racing trials were not allowed a legal defendant. If they didn’t know how to defend themselves: if they didn’t know what sort of questions to ask or in what form to ask them, that was just too bad. Just their hard luck. But this wasn’t hard luck. This was our own stupid fault. A lawyer would have been able to rip Newtonnards’ testimony to bits, but neither Cranfield nor I knew how.

Cranfield tried. He was back on his feet.

‘Far from backing Cherry Pie, I backed Squelch. You can check up with my own bookmaker.’

Gowery simply didn’t reply. Cranfield repeated it.

Gowery said, ‘Yes, yes. No doubt you did. It is quite beside the point.’

Cranfield sat down again with his mouth hanging open. I knew exactly how he felt. Not so much banging the head against a brick wall as being actively attacked by a cliff.

They waved Newtonnards away and he ambled easily off to take his place beside Charlie West. What he had said stayed behind him, stuck fast in the officials’ minds. Not one of them had asked for corroboration. Not one had suggested that there might have been a loophole in identity. The belief was written plain on their faces: if someone had backed Cherry Pie to win nine hundred pounds, it must have been Cranfield.

Gowery hadn’t finished. With a calm satisfaction he picked up another paper and said, ‘Mr Cranfield, I have here an affidavit from a Mrs Joan Jones, who handled the five pound selling window on the Totalisator in the paddock on Lemonfizz Cup day, that she sold ten win-only tickets for horse number eight to a man in a fawn raincoat, middle aged, wearing a trilby. I also have here a similar testimony from a Mr Leonard Roberts, who was paying out at the five pound window in the same building, on the same occasion. Both of these Tote employees remember the client well, as these were almost the only five pound tickets sold on Cherry Pie, and certainly the only large block. The Tote paid out to this man more than eleven hundred pounds in cash. Mr Roberts advised him not to carry so much on his person, but the man declined to take his advice.’

There was another accusing silence. Cranfield looked totally nonplussed and came up with nothing to say. This time, I tried for him. ‘Sir, did this man back any other horses in the race, on the Tote? Did he back all, or two or three or four, and just hit the jackpot by accident?’

‘There was no accident about this, Hughes.’

‘But did he, in fact, back any other horses?’

Dead silence.

‘Surely you asked?’ I said reasonably.

Whether anyone had asked or not, Gowery didn’t know. All he knew was what was on the affidavit. He gave me a stony stare, and said, ‘No one puts fifty pounds on an outsider without good grounds for believing it will win.’

‘But sir...’

‘However,’ he said, ‘We will find out.’ He wrote a note on the bottom of one of the affidavits. ‘It seems to me extremely unlikely. But we will have the question asked.’

There was no suggestion that he would wait for the answer before giving his judgement. And in fact he did not.

I wandered aimlessly round the flat, lost and restless. Reheated the coffee. Drank it. Tried to write to my parents, and gave it up after half a page. Tried to make some sort of decision about my future, and couldn’t.

Felt too battered. Too pulped. Too crushed.

Yet I had done nothing.

Nothing .

Late afternoon. The lads were bustling round the yard setting the horses fair for the night, and whistling and calling to each other as usual. I kept away from the windows and eventually went back to the bedroom and lay down on the bed. The day began to fade. The dusk closed in.

After Newtonnards they had called Tommy Timpson, who had ridden Cherry Pie.

Tommy Timpson ‘did his two’ for Cranfield and rode such of the stable’s second strings as Cranfield cared to give him. Cranfield rang the changes on three jockeys: me, Chris Smith (at present taking his time over a fractured skull) and Tommy. Tommy got the crumbs and deserved better. Like many trainers, Cranfield couldn’t spot talent when it was under his nose, and it wasn’t until several small local trainers had asked for his services that Cranfield woke up to the fact that he had a useful emerging rider in his own yard.

Raw, nineteen years old, a stutterer, Tommy was at his worst at the Enquiry. He looked as scared as a two year old colt at his first starting gate, and although he couldn’t help being jittery it was worse than useless for Cranfield and me.

Lord Gowery made no attempt to put him at ease but simply asked questions and let him get on with the answers as best he could.

‘What orders did Mr Cranfield give you before the race? How did he tell you to ride Cherry Pie? Did he instruct you to ride to win?’

Tommy stuttered and stumbled and said Mr Cranfield had told him to keep just behind Squelch all the way round and try to pass him after the last fence.

Cranfield said indignantly: ‘That’s what he did . Not what I told him to do.’

Gowery listened, turned his head to Tommy, and said again, ‘Will you tell us what instructions Mr Cranfield gave you before the race? Please think carefully.’

Tommy swallowed, gave Cranfield an agonised glance, and tried again. ‘M.. M.. M.. Mr Cranfield s.. s.. said to take my p.. p.. pace from S.. S.. Squelch and s.. s.. stay with him as long as I c.. c.. could.’

‘And did he tell you to win?’

‘He s.. s.. said of course g.. g.. go on and w.. w.. win if you c.. c.. can, sir.’

These were impeccable instructions. Only the most suspicious or biased mind could have read any villainy into them. If these Stewards’ minds were not suspicious and biased, snow would fall in the Sahara.

‘Did you hear Mr Cranfield giving Hughes instructions as to how he should ride Squelch?’

‘N.. No, sir. M.. Mr Cranfield did.. didn’t g.. give Hughes any orders at all, sir.’

‘Why not?’

Tommy ducked it and said he didn’t know. Cranfield remarked furiously that Hughes had ridden the horse twenty times and knew what was needed.

‘Or you had discussed it with him privately, beforehand?’

Cranfield had no explosive answer to that because of course we had discussed it beforehand. In general terms. In an assessment of the opposition. As a matter of general strategy.

‘I discussed the race with him, yes. But I gave him no specific orders.’

‘So according to you,’ Lord Gowery said, ‘You intended both of your jockeys to try to win?’

‘Yes. I did. My horses are always doing their best.’

Gowery shook his head. ‘Your statement is not borne out by the facts.’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Cranfield demanded.

Gowery didn’t answer. But yes, he was.

They shooed a willing Tommy Timpson away and Cranfield went on simmering at boiling point beside me. For myself, I was growing cold, and no amount of central heating could stop it. I thought we must now have heard everything, but I was wrong. They had saved the worst until last, building up the pyramid of damning statements until they could put the final cap on it and stand back and admire their four square structure, their solid, unanswerable edifice of guilt.

The worst, at first, had looked so harmless. A quiet slender man in his early thirties, endowed with an utterly forgettable face. After twenty-four hours I couldn’t recall his features or remember his voice, and yet I couldn’t think about him without shaking with sick impotent fury.