Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Gamble

“The meeting is fixed for tomorrow morning, Thursday,” his voice said. “Eleven a.m., at the Paddington Green Police Station.”

Not back in their holding cells, I hoped. I’d had my fill of those.

From our vantage point on the box balcony, Claudia and I looked down at the few brave souls rushing around in the rain beneath us.

“It’s such a shame,” Claudia said. “The weather makes or breaks an event like this. Everyone gets so wet.”

“It’s worse for the jockeys,” I said. “They’ll not just get wet, they’ll get completely covered in mud kicked up from the horses ahead of them. On days like this, being a front-runner is the only sensible option. At least you can then see where you’re going and where the fences are. However, the downside is that if your horse falls, the rest trample over you as you lie on the ground.”

“At least they’re getting paid,” she said.

“Not tonight, they’re not. All the races are for amateur riders only.”

“Then they’re mad,” she said.

I laughed. “Not at all. For some of them, tonight is the best evening of their whole year. They’ve been working hard all winter to qualify their horses for this one meeting, and a bit of dampness isn’t going to spoil their party.”

“Well,” said Claudia, “I’d definitely want a big fee to ride in this rain.”

Not me, I thought. I’d happily do it for nothing. In fact, I’d pay to be able to join them, and handsomely.

“Amateur jockeys do it just for the love of the sport,” I said. “Indeed, the very word amateur comes from the Latin word amator , meaning ‘lover.’”

“You’re my amator ,” she said quietly, turning towards me and cuddling up with her arms inside my coat.

“Not now, darling,” I said. “And not here. I’m working, remember?”

“Shame,” she said, letting me go. “Your job is so boring.”

That seemed to be the unanimous conclusion.

Claudia and I braved the damp conditions to go down to the Weighing Room and the parade ring after the second race. We went to support Jan, who had a runner in the third.

“Not much chance, I’m afraid,” she said as we sheltered under the terrace roof and she emerged from the Weighing Room with a small saddle over her arm. “The horse is fine, but the owner insists his son should ride it and he’s only eighteen. He’s still just a boy, and this mare needs to be held up to the last. She gets lazy if she’s in front too soon.”

“But I was only eighteen when I rode my first winner for you,” I reminded her.

“Yes,” she replied. “But you were good, very good. This boy is barely average.” She rushed off towards the saddling boxes to prepare the horse.

Claudia and I stayed under the cover in front of the Weighing Room and, presently, Jan’s mare came into the parade ring, closely followed by her and the horse’s owner.

I scanned my soggy race program to see who it was and instead noticed that one of the other runners in the race was owned by our host, Viscount Shenington. I looked around the parade ring and spotted him and some of his other guests huddling under large golf umbrellas at the far end. They were talking to the horse’s trainer, the gossip Martin Gifford.

The jockeys were called from the Changing Room, and the eager mob streamed out onto the grass, their brightly colored silks in stark contrast to the gathering gloom of the day.

Claudia and I decided to stay down near the Weighing Room for the race rather than to go back up to the grandstand box. We could watch all the action on the big-screen television and we wouldn’t have to get wet coming down again if Jan’s horse won. And also, I thought, I didn’t really want to have to talk to Martin Gifford, who would surely go up to the box with his owner to watch their horse run.

But, on that score, I was sadly wrong.

Martin Gifford came to stand on the Weighing Room terrace right next to me to watch the race on the television.

“Hi, Foxy,” he said. “Penny for your thoughts.” He seemed to have recovered from, or forgotten, our little spat at Sandown. “What a horrid day.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“I’m quite surprised you’re here for the hunter chasers,” he said. “I wouldn’t be if I didn’t have this damn runner. I tried to talk the owner out of running it, but he insisted. It should win, though.”

Now what was I to make of that? Martin Gifford made a habit of saying his horses had no chance and then they went on to win. I knew that from the last meeting at Cheltenham, when both his horses had won after he’d told me they wouldn’t. But was the reverse also true? Was this horse, in fact, a useless no-hoper? Did I even care? I wasn’t going to back it either way.

I looked again at my race program. A rating was printed alongside the details for each horse as a guide to punters. The higher the rating the better the horse was supposed to be, but of course it didn’t always work out that way. Martin’s horse certainly had a high rating for what was otherwise a moderate field of runners. Perhaps he really was telling the truth. I glanced up at an approximate-odds indicator, and the public clearly agreed with him. The horse was starting as a very short-priced favorite.

We watched on the television as the horses jumped off very slowly from the start, which was at the far end of the finishing straight. With more than two complete circuits in the three-and-a-half-mile race, and in the heavy ground, no one was really prepared to make the running, and the fifteen horses had hardly broken into a gallop by the time they reached the first fence.

“Come on, you bugger,” said Martin, next to me. “I could really do with this one winning. Perhaps then the bloody owner will pay me some of his training fees.”

I turned my head towards him slightly. Maybe Martin could be useful after all.

“Slow payer, is he?” I asked.

“Bloody right,” said Martin without taking his eyes from the screen. “But not so much slow, more like dead stop. I’ve even threatened to apply to Weatherbys to have the ownership of his horses transferred to me. He owes me a bloody fortune.”

Weatherbys was the company that administered all of British racing and through which all racehorse registrations were held.

“How many horses does he have?” I asked.

“Too many,” he said. “Twelve all together, I think, but only six are with me, thank God, including one he used to jointly own with his brother. He hasn’t paid me anything now for months. I tell you, I’m getting desperate.”

“But you’ll get your money in the end, surely.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Shenington claims he hasn’t got it. Says he’s nearly bankrupt.”

How interesting, I thought. The Roberts Family Trust, it seems, could happily lose five million pounds on an investment in Bulgaria, but the senior trustee couldn’t pay his training fees because he was broke.

And how about hiring a private box for this meeting? It wasn’t the sort of behavior I would have expected from someone flirting with the bankruptcy courts. Not unless, of course, he had wanted to maintain a façade of affluence and respectability. Maybe the other guests were his creditors. Perhaps it was not so surprising that Martin hadn’t been invited up there to watch the race.

“But Lord Shenington must have pots of money,” I said.

“Apparently, that’s not so,” said Martin. “Seems his father, the old Earl, still keeps his fingers very tightly on the family purse strings. And what money Shenington did have of his own, he’s lost.”

“Lost?” I said.

“Gambling,” Martin said. “On the horses and at the casino tables. Addicted to it, evidently.”