Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Gamble

“Please speak to him soon.”

“I’m going home tonight for the weekend,” Ben said. “I’ll try to find the right moment to speak to him on Sunday afternoon. He’s always at his most relaxed after a good Sunday lunch.”

I hoped it would be soon enough.

When I returned to Jan’s place in Lambourn at four-thirty, I found her, Claudia and my mother sitting around the kitchen table, and they were already hard at the vino.

“Bit early, isn’t it?” I said, looking at my watch and declining the offered glass of Chardonnay.

“Early?” Claudia said with a giggle. “We started at lunchtime.”

The others giggled with her.

“Are you sure it’s wise to drink so soon after surgery?” I asked. “Especially on top of your painkillers.”

“Don’t be such a killjoy,” Jan said amid more sniggering.

What a fine state of affairs, I thought. I was trying to keep us alive, and my mother and fiancée were drunk.

“So what have you done today other than drink?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Jan said. “We’ve been talking, that’s all.”

“I thought you’d be at the races,” I said to her.

“No runners today,” she said. “But I’ve got to go now to evening stables.” She stood up with a slight wobble and giggled again. “Oops, I think I’ve had a bit too much.”

A lot too much, I thought. But, what the hell, it was Friday afternoon, and it had been quite a week.

I left them refilling their glasses and went upstairs to fetch my computer. I then used Jan’s broadband to connect to the Internet and checked my e-mails. As always, there were the usual collection from fund managers, but nestling amongst them, was one from Patrick Lyall. It was timed at three-fifty p.m. He had clearly become fed up waiting for me to return his call, telling him where to send the letter. I could almost feel the anger as I read it.

“Nicholas,” he had written, “As you have obviously decided not to reply to my telephone call asking for your whereabouts, I have no option but to deliver the attached letter to you by e-mail. I find the whole situation most unsatisfactory. I hope that you soon come to your senses and start giving the firm the priority it deserves. Patrick.”

I clicked on the attachment. It was a letter from the lawyer, Andrew Mellor, acting on behalf of Lyall & Black. There were no niceties, and the letter was very much to the point.

Mr. Foxton,

In accordance with the Employment Act 2008, I am writing to inform you that your employer, Lyall & Black and Co. Ltd, hereby give notice that they consider your recent behavior to be far below the standard expected from an employee in your position.

Consequently, Lyall & Black and Co. Ltd hereby issue you with a formal warning as to your future conduct. Furthermore, and in keeping with the statutory requirements as laid down in the Act, you are requested and required to attend a disciplinary meeting with Patrick Lyall and Gregory Black at the company offices in Lombard Street, London, at nine o’clock on the Monday morning following the date of this letter.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Mellor, LLB

It sounded to me that, this time, I really was about to be fired.

Strangely, I didn’t seem to care anymore. Perhaps that policeman at Aintree had been right all along-becoming a financial adviser had been a bit of a comedown from the thrill of being a jump jockey.

Maybe it was time for me to look for more excitement in my life?

Like being shot at? Or stabbed?

I think not. I’d had enough of that.

On Saturday morning I left the three women nursing their hangovers while I went to visit Billy Searle in the Great Western Hospital in Swindon.

“So who knocked you off your bike?” I asked him.

“Don’t you bloody start,” he said. “The fuzz have been asking me nothing else but that since I woke up.”

“So why don’t you tell them?” I said.

“Are you f-ing stupid or something?” he said. “I’d rather go on living, thank you very much.”

“So it wasn’t an accident?” I said.

“I didn’t say that. It might have been.”

“Now who’s being f-ing stupid?” I said.

He stuck a finger up at me and said nothing.

We were in a single room, hidden away at the far end of one of the wards. It had taken me three separate requests to find him as well as a security escort that had only departed after Billy had vouched for me as his friend, not foe.

“How much longer are you going to be here?” I asked him. He clearly wasn’t going anywhere soon as he was firmly attached to the bed by a weights contraption that was pulling on his right leg.

“About another week,” he said. “At least that’s what they tell me. They need to apply something called a fixator to my leg, but they can’t do that until the traction has pulled everything straight. Then I’ll be able to get up.”

“I thought they pinned and plated broken legs these days.”

“I did too,” he said. “But the doc here says that this is the best way, and who was I to argue?” He grinned. Both he and I knew that Billy Searle argued all the time. “Anyway, I was f-ing unconscious at the time.”

“They thought you were going to die,” I said.

“No bloody chance,” he replied, still grinning.

“And I was arrested for your attempted murder.”

“Yeah,” he said. “So I heard. Serves you right.”

“What for?” I said.

He laughed. “For being such a boring bastard.”

Was I really boring?

“I’m sorry.”

“You were much more fun as a jock,” Billy said. “Do you remember that time we all got thrown out of that f-ing hotel in Torquay after your big win at Newton Abbot?”

I smiled. I remembered it well. “It was all your fault,” I said. “You poured champagne into their grand piano.”

“Yeah, well, so maybe I did,” he said. “But it was a crap piano anyway. And it was you throwing those potted plants round that did for us in the end.”

It was true, I thought. The plants had come out of their pots, and the earth had spread all over the new carpet. The hotel manager had not been at all pleased. We had been politely asked to leave, and never to come back, or else he would call the police.

Billy and I laughed together at the memory.

“Those were the days,” he said. “Carefree and bloody stupid, we were.”

“But such fun,” I said, still laughing.

For both of us, it seemed, fun had been on the wane recently.

“So to whom do you owe a hundred grand?” I asked. The laughter died in Billy’s throat. But he didn’t answer. “Was it the same guy who tried to kill you?”

He still didn’t answer. He just looked at me.

“Or was he just trying to give you a gentle reminder to pay up, a reminder that went too far?”

“Did the bloody cops tell you to ask me that?” he said crossly.

“No, of course not,” I said. “They don’t even know I’m here.”

“So why are you so bloody interested in me all of a sudden?” The bonhomie of just a couple of minutes previously had disappeared completely.

“Billy. I’m just trying to help you,” I said.

“I don’t need your fucking help,” he said explosively, just as he’d done outside the Weighing Room at Cheltenham.

“That’s what you said to me once before and you ended up in here. Next time, it might be the morgue.”

He lay back against the hospital pillows and said nothing.

“All right,” I said. “If you won’t tell me who, at least tell me why you owe someone a hundred thousand. Then I can properly advise you about your financial dealings.”

“I can’t,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “Even if I didn’t end up dead, which I probably would, I’d have no bloody job left.”