Дик Фрэнсис - Field of 13

Nothing bad would happen, Jasper told himself. Lilyglit would stay in front all the way. He watched the close-up of his favourite crossing the winning line first time round, and saw him set off round the top bend, only his rump-end clearly showing.

The television camera operator, focusing on Lilyglit, missed Vernon Arkwright’s swerve towards Storm Cone but, with a wild swing of his lens caught the moment when Moggie Reilly, unbalanced, flew out of his saddle. Mostly hidden though he was by white rails, by Storm Cone himself, and by other horses, Moggie Reilly, in his scarlet and orange silks, could be glimpsed struggling, and finally with help, winning his fight against gravity. The banks of screens showed him jumping the next flight of hurdles without control of reins or stirrups and then, immediate story over, swung back to the leader, to Lilyglit, now far and by many lengths established in the lead.

Jasper’s whole body went cold with sweat. His mind refused to accept what his eyes had seen. He couldn’t... he couldn’t have offered to pay to have Moggie Reilly put in danger of hideous injury... it was impossible.

And Moggie Reilly was still there, on his horse, without his feet in the stirrups, but still trying to make up lost ground, still trying to catch the five or six runners ahead, but with no hope of winning.

Vernon Arkwright had dropped back out of television sight, his task accomplished. The screens all switched to Lilyglit galloping alone, uncatchable now and stretching with long sweeping strides towards the last hurdle.

I’ve won, Jasper thought, and felt little joy in it.

Lilyglit fell.

Lilyglit lay inert on the green turf.

The television picture switched to the finish. Storm Cone’s violent colours flashed there inconclusively, and after a moment the focus was back on Lilyglit, still unmoving, looking dead.

Jasper Billington Innes all but fainted in the shop

Somewhere in the depth of the store a control button, pressed, changed the racing programme to a children’s tea-time frolic. Three walls full of identical cartoon characters wobbled about simultaneously, uttering unheard squeaks and platitudes. They drew in a laughing audience (which the racing had not) but the thump-thump deafening background music drummed on and on.

Jasper walked dizzily out of the store and on jerky uncoordinated legs made his way back towards the multi-storey park where he’d left his car when he’d decided where to go to watch the Cloister.

He unlocked the car door and in mental agony sat in the driver’s seat listing again his dreadful woes.

Lilyglit — he couldn’t bear it — was dead. Dead, uninsured, worth nothing: and he was now heavily in debt to Percy Driffield for his last desperate bet.

Vernon Arkwright, hauled before the stewards, would testify that Jasper had bribed him to put Moggie Reilly’s life in danger.

Jasper realised that he might himself be warned-off. Might suffer that ultimate disgrace. He was drowning in unpayable debt, and he had lost his wife’s fortune. But it was his inner awareness of dishonour that had most shattered his self-respect.

Not for the first time, he thought of killing himself.

Wendy Billington Innes had dried her tears and stiffened her backbone at the sight of Lilyglit walking safely back unhurt, and a short time later she listened half in relief and half in horror to a trainer-to-owner telephone call from Percy Driffield.

‘You do understand, don’t you?’ he asked, as she fell silent.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

‘Tell Jasper that everything about that race is void. Everything . Including his bet.’

‘All right.’

‘A void race shouldn’t detract very much from Lilyglit’s value... and tell Jasper I’ve a buyer for him in my own yard. I frankly don’t want to lose that horse.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Wendy said, disconnecting, and started again for the third time trying everywhere she could think of to find her husband.

No one had seen him since breakfast. The fear she’d been smothering all day rose sharply and prodded her towards panic.

She knew that Jasper had unbending pride. Below the sweet-natured exterior lived a man of serious honour, and it was this uprightness that had attracted her years ago.

Stemmer Peabody had smashed Jasper’s pride. He would hate ruin as if it were despicable. He might find it too much to bear.

She had twice phoned Jasper’s car, but he hadn’t answered. The car phone service was rigged to speak messages aloud when the ignition was switched on, but her pleas to Jasper to phone her back had gone unanswered. That didn’t mean he hadn’t heard them. She feared he’d ignored them and wiped them off.

With nowhere else offering the slightest hope she tried his car again.

‘Leave a message...’

She cursed the disembodied voice and spoke from her heart.

‘Jasper, if you can hear me, listen... Listen . Lilyglit is alive, he fell, but he was only winded. He’s unharmed... listen... and Percy Driffield has a buyer. And that whole race was declared void because the judge died before the finish. Nothing that happened in the race counts. Nothing , do you understand? Percy Driffield told me to tell you particularly. All bets are void. So Jasper... my dear, my dear, come home... We’ll get by... I quite like cooking and looking after the children... but we all need you... Come home... please come home...’ She stopped abruptly, feeling that she’d been talking to the empty air, pointlessly.

Jasper, indeed, didn’t hear her. With the car’s ignition still turned off, the message machine remained silent.

Jasper in black humour couldn’t decide how to kill himself. He had no piece of tubing for carbon monoxide. He knew of no cliffs to jump over. He had no knife for his wrists. Dying didn’t seem easy. Never a handyman, he sat uselessly trying to work it out. Meanwhile, he found an old envelope in a door pocket and in total despair but no haste wrote a farewell note.

I am ashamed .

Forgive me .

After that he decided to find a good solid tree somewhere and accelerate head-on into a killing crash.

He slotted the car key into the ignition to start the engine...and the car phone message service spoke Wendy’s words aloud, as if she were there by his side.

Utterly stunned, Jasper Billington Innes played his wife’s message three times.

Gradually he understood that Lilyglit lived, that his bet with Percy Driffield was void, and that neither he nor Vernon Arkwright would be charged with breaking racing law.

He trembled for long unwinding minutes.

He realised he was undeservedly being given a second chance and would never get a third.

He tore up the envelope, and drove slowly home.

Officially, nothing that had happened in the Cloister Handicap Hurdle was deemed to have happened.

Nothing... except the death of Christopher Haig.