Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Gamble

My mother was surprisingly much more stoical, waltzing down the stairs as if there was nothing there. In fact, I suspected that she would’ve liked to have given the corpse a sharp kick for ruining her roast dinner.

The three of us went out to the car, loaded the stuff and drove away down the rutted lane, leaving the dead man alone in the dark house.

Idrove into Cheltenham and called the police, but I didn’t dial the emergency number. Instead, I called Chief Inspector Tomlinson on his mobile.

“The man who killed Herb Kovak,” I said, “is lying dead at the bottom of my mother’s stairs.”

There was the slightest of pauses.

“How tiresome of him,” the chief inspector said. “Did he just lie down there and die?”

“No,” I said. “He broke his neck falling down the stairs.”

“Was he pushed?” he asked, once again demonstrating his suspicious mind.

“Helped,” I said. “We fell down the stairs together. He came off worse. But he was trying to stab me with a carving knife at the time.”

“What happened to his gun?” he asked.

“He lost it under the fridge,” I said.

“Hmm,” he said. “And have you told the local constabulary?”

“No,” I said. “I thought you could do that. And you can also tell them he was a foreigner.”

“How do you know?”

“He said something I didn’t understand.”

“And where are you now?” he asked.

“In Cheltenham,” I said. “The gunman cut the power and the telephone wires. I’ve had to leave to make a call on my mobile. There’s no signal at the cottage.”

“Is anyone still at the cottage?”

“Only the dead man,” I said. “I have Claudia and my mother with me in the car.”

“So are you going back there now?” he asked.

“No,” I said firmly. “Whoever sent this man could send another.”

“So where are you going?” he asked, not questioning my decision.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ll call you when I do.”

“Who knew you were at your mother’s place?” he asked, always the detective.

“Everyone in my office,” I said. And whomever else Mrs. McDowd had told, I thought.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll call the Gloucestershire Police, but they’ll definitely want to talk to you, and to Claudia and your mother. They may even want you back at the cottage.”

“Tell them I’ll call them there in two hours,” I said.

“But you said the line had been cut.”

“Then get it fixed,” I said. “And get the power back on. Tell them I think my mother has left the stove on. I don’t want the place burning down when the power’s reconnected. And also tell them I’ve left the back door unlocked so they won’t have to break the front door down to get in.”

“OK,” he said. “I’ll tell them.” He paused. “Is the gun still under the fridge?”

“No,” I said. “I retrieved it.”

“So where is it now?”

I had so wanted to bring it with me, to give myself the armed protection that I’d been denied by the police.

“It’s outside the front door,” I said. “In a bush.”

“Right,” he said, sounding slightly relieved. “I’ll tell the Gloucestershire force that too. Save them hunting for it, and you.”

“Good,” I said.

It had been the right decision to leave the gun behind. I could still claim the moral high ground.

I hung up and switched off my phone. I would call the police on my terms, and I also didn’t want anyone being able to track my movements from the phone signal.

“Do you really think we’re still in danger?” Claudia asked next to me.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I’m not taking any chances.”

“Who knew we were there?” she asked.

“Everyone at the office, I expect,” I said. “Mrs. McDowd definitely knew and she’d have told everyone else.”

And Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson had known as well.

I’d told him myself.

It was my mother who finally asked the big question.

“Why was that man trying to kill you?” she said calmly from the backseat.

We were on the road between Cirencester and Swindon.

I’d made one more stop in Cheltenham at one of the few remaining public phone boxes. I hadn’t wanted to use my mobile for fear that someone could trace who I was calling. We were going where no one would find us.

“I’m not totally sure but it may be because I am a witness to him killing a man at Aintree races,” I said. “And it wasn’t the first time he’d tried.”

Neither my mother nor Claudia said anything. They were waiting for me to go on.

“He was waiting outside our house in Lichfield Grove when I got back there on Tuesday afternoon,” I said. “Luckily, I could run faster than him.”

“Is that why we came to Woodmancote,” Claudia asked, “instead of going home?”

“It sure is,” I said. “But I didn’t realize that Woodmancote wasn’t safe either. Not until it was too late. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“But what about the police?” my mother asked. “Surely we must go to the police. They will look after us.”

But how much did I trust the police? I didn’t know that either. They hadn’t given me any protection when I’d asked for it and that omission had almost cost us our lives. No, I thought, I’d trust my own instincts. The police seemed more interested in solving murders than preventing them.

“I have been to the police,” I said, driving on through the darkness. “But it will be me who will look after you.”

And I would also find out who was trying to have me killed, and the real reason why.

Well, lover boy,” Jan Setter said, “when I asked you to come and stay, I didn’t exactly mean you to bring your girlfriend and your mother with you!”

We laughed.

We were sitting at her kitchen table in Lambourn, drinking coffee, the said girlfriend and mother having been safely tucked up in two of Jan’s many spare bedrooms.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” I said to her.

I had briefly thought about going to my father’s bungalow in Weymouth, but he had only two double bedrooms and, amusing as the thought had been, I could hardly expect my parents to share a bed together, not after seven years of divorce, and I certainly wasn’t sleeping with the old bugger.

“So what’s all this about?” Jan asked finally.

All I had said to her on the phone from Cheltenham had been that I was desperate and could she help by putting us up for a night or two.

“How desperate?” she had asked calmly.

“Life or death,” I’d said. “Complete secrecy.”

She had asked nothing further but had simply said, “Come,” and she’d asked no questions when we’d arrived, not until after my traumatized mother and fiancée had been safely ushered up to bed. As it had with me, the shock and fear had manifested itself in them after the event.

In all the years I had known Jan, both as her former jockey and more recently as her financial adviser, I had never known her to be flustered or panicked by anything. She was the steady head I needed in this crisis.

But how much did I tell her?

Would she even believe me?

“I know this is going to sound rather overly dramatic,” I said. “But someone is trying to kill me.”

“What’s her name?” Jan asked with a laugh.

“I’m being serious, Jan,” I said. “Tonight a man came to my mother’s cottage to murder me. He had a gun. I promise you, we are extremely fortunate to be alive. The same man has now tried to kill me twice.”

“Let’s hope it isn’t third time lucky.”

“He won’t get a third time.”