Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Gamble

We walked out into the night, hand in hand, and hailed a passing black cab.

“I didn’t think you’d be here,” I said to Claudia as we sat down.

“Why ever not?” she said. “I’ve been here ever since I found out where they’d taken you. It’s been bloody hours.”

“But how did you know I’d been arrested?” The police had allowed me only one call, and I’d made that to the company’s lawyer, Andrew Mellor.

“Rosemary called me,” Claudia said. “She was in floods of tears.”

“Rosemary?” I asked.

“You know,” she said. “Rosemary McDowd. She’s such a dear.”

I had worked at Lyall & Black for five years and for all that time I’d had no idea that Mrs. McDowd’s name was Rosemary. The receptionists were always referred to as Mrs. McDowd and Mrs. Johnson because that’s what they called each other. Only the other staff had first names, Mr. Patrick, Mr. Gregory, Miss Jessica, Mr. Nicholas and so on, and we were only addressed in that way because, again, that was how the Mesdames McDowd and Johnson did it.

“How did Mrs. McDowd have your number?” I asked.

“Oh, we speak quite often.”

“What about?”

Claudia didn’t reply.

“What about?” I repeated.

“You,” she said.

“What about me?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she said evasively.

“No. Come on,” I said. “Tell me. What about me?”

Claudia sighed. “I sometimes call her to find out what sort of mood you’re in when you leave the office.”

More likely, I thought suspiciously, to check that I was actually in the office or when I’d left it.

“So what did Mrs. McDowd tell you today?” I asked, purposely changing the conversation’s direction.

“Between sobs, she told me that you had been arrested by the police for attempted murder. I thought it must be to do with Herb Kovak, but she said it was about someone else.”

I nodded. “Billy Searle was attacked this morning. He was a top jump jockey, and also a client of mine.”

“What the hell’s going on?” Claudia said.

That’s what I wanted to know.

It had been nearly eleven o’clock by the time I’d been released, and I’d asked the taxi driver to go to the newspaper kiosk on the Edgware Road where I knew they received the early editions of the daily newspapers the night before.

Claudia stayed in the cab as I went to buy copies of all they had, including the Racing Post , which arrived in a van as I was paying for the rest.

If its previous day’s front-page headline had been vague and set as a question, this one pulled none of its punches:

BILLY SEARLE ATTACKED.

FOXTON ARRESTED FOR

ATTEMPTED MURDER

And the article beneath gave no comfort to me either.

Further to our exclusive report in yesterday’s Racing Post concerning a heated argument at Cheltenham Races on Wednesday between top jump jockey Billy Searle and ex-jock turned financial wizard Nicholas (Foxy) Foxton, we can exclusively reveal that Foxton was yesterday arrested for Searle’s attempted murder.

Billy Searle was taken to the Great Western Hospital in Swindon from the scene of a horrific incident in Baydon, near Lambourn, early yesterday morning when it appears he was deliberately knocked from his bicycle. Doctors at the hospital state that Searle’s condition is critical, with a broken leg and serious head injuries.

Foxton was arrested yesterday at 2:25 p.m. on suspicion of attempted murder at the Lombard Street offices of City financial services firm Lyall & Black, and he is currently being held for questioning at the Paddington Green Police Station.

Remarkably accurate, I thought, except for the bit about currently being held at the Paddington Green Police Station, and that had been right until about twenty minutes ago. Beside the article was another picture of Billy Searle, this time all smiles and wearing a business suit, and a photograph of the cordoned-off village of Baydon. Overlying the top right-hand corner of this photo was a smaller head-and-shoulders shot of me, positioned, to my eye, as if implying that I had been present in Baydon High Street.

Gregory was going to have a field day in the morning. It wouldn’t just be my head he would have on a stick, it would be my career as well. Who would trust a financial adviser who was on the front page of a national newspaper having been arrested for attempted murder?

Not me, for one.

I climbed back into the cab with the papers and showed the Racing Post to Claudia.

“It so bloody unfair,” she said, reading the headline. “How can they mention your name when you haven’t even been charged? You should sue.”

“Over what?” I asked. “They haven’t said anything that wasn’t true.”

“But why do the police give out names before they charge someone?”

I suspected that the information had not come from the police but from a source much closer to home. The time and place of the arrest were too precise and too accurate. The police would have only said something like “A twenty-nine-year-old man has been arrested and is helping with our inquiries.”

My money would be on Rory to be the office mole, although what he hoped to gain by it was anyone’s idea. He couldn’t have my job without passing his IFA exams first, and even I didn’t believe he would have murdered Herb for the cubicle close to the window. It would have been Diana’s anyway.

Ilooked at the newspapers before I went to bed and all of them had front- or back-page reports about the attack on Billy Searle. None of them had the full facts, but each still managed to mention me by name and imply my guilt.

Oh God, I thought, my mother would see them in the morning.

I switched on the television and watched the latest news on one of the twenty-four-hour news channels. They had a report live from Baydon.

“It appears,” said the reporter, “that the jockey Billy Searle was leaving his home to ride his bicycle to Lambourn, as he did every morning. He was due to ride horses at morning exercise. He was being waved away by his girlfriend when a car, which had seemingly been waiting in the street, suddenly accelerated into the bicycle, knocking Searle violently to the ground, before being driven away at speed. Billy Searle was taken to the hospital in Swindon, where he is in a critical but stable condition with head and leg injuries. Police are asking anyone who may have any information concerning the incident to come forward. A man who we believe to be the ex-jockey Nicholas Foxton was arrested in connection with the attack, but he has since been released without charge.”

“Well, at least they said you’d been released,” said Claudia.

“I’d rather they hadn’t mentioned my name at all,” I said. “You watch. Most people will think I’m guilty. They will already all have me tried and convicted in their minds. Being released will make no difference, not until after the police have caught the real attacker and he’s confessed.”

“It’s so unfair,” Claudia said again.

Indeed it was, but complaining about it wasn’t going to help. I just hoped that they arrested the real attacker soon.

Claudia and I went upstairs to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake in the darkness, going over and over everything in my head.

Last Saturday morning my life had been so settled and predictable and my career path mapped out to success and riches, even if it was a little boring. But the last five days had seen so much change. I had witnessed one murder at close range and been arrested for attempting another; I’d begun to doubt my relationship with Claudia, even suspecting that she might be having an affair with someone else; and I’d gone behind the back of my superior at work to access his personal e-mails to try to determine if he was complicit in a multimillion-pound fraud.