Dick Francis: Even Money

“But you are sure it was a man?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” I said. “He had a man’s shape.”

“And what shape was that?”

“Thin, lithe and agile,” I said. “He ran at me and came straight up onto my equipment trolley and kicked me in the face.” I instinctively put my hand up to the now-stitched cut in my left eyebrow.

“Was he white or black?” he asked.

“White, I think,” I said slowly, going over again in my mind the whole episode. “Yes, he was white,” I said with some certainty. “He had white hands.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t wearing light-colored gloves?” the detective sergeant asked.

I hadn’t thought about gloves. “No,” I said. “I’m not sure, but I still think he was white. His eyes were those of a white man.” I remembered that I’d thought at the time that they were shifty-looking eyes, rather too close together for the shape of his face.

“Can you describe what he was wearing?” he asked.

“Blue denim jeans and a charcoal-gray hoodie, with a black scarf over the lower part of his face,” I said. “And black boots, like army boots with deep-cut soles. I saw one of those rather too close up.” The detective constable wrote it all down in his notebook.

“Tall or short?” the detective sergeant asked.

“Neither, really,” I said. “About the same as my father.”

“Tell us about your father,” he said, changing direction. “Can you think why anyone would want him dead?”

“Want my father dead?” I repeated. “But surely this was just a robbery that went wrong?”

“Why do you think that?” he asked.

“I just assumed it was,” I said. “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a bookmaker has been robbed in a racetrack parking lot. Not even the first time for me.”

Both policemen raised their eyebrows a notch in unison. “About five years ago,” I said. “At Newbury. I was walking back to my car in the dark after racing in late November. There was a gang of them on that occasion, not just one like today.”

I could still recall the pain of the ribs they had broken with their boots when I refused to hand over my heavy load of cash after a particularly bad day for the punters. I could also remember the indifference of the Newbury police to the robbing of a bookmaker. One of them had even gone as far as to say that it was my own fault for carrying so much money in my pocket. As far as I could tell, no serious attempt had been made by them to catch the perpetrators.

“Bookies get robbed all the time,” I said. “Some people will try anything to get their money back.”

“But you say you weren’t robbed on this occasion,” said the detective sergeant.

“No,” I admitted, feeling for the envelope of cash that was still safely in my trouser pocket. “But I simply imagined the thief was disturbed to find he had an audience, so he took off.”

“Now, about your father,” he said. “What was his full name?”

“Peter James Talbot,” I said. The detective constable wrote it down.

“And his address?” he asked.

“I’m not sure of his full address,” I said, “but I believe he lived in Melbourne, Australia.”

“Then can you tell us, Mr. Talbot,” the detective sergeant said, “why the man, who you claim was your father, had a credit card and a driver’s license in his jacket both in the name of Alan Charles Grady?”

Are you telling us that you didn’t know your father existed?” the detective chief inspector asked.

“Well,” I said slowly, “yes and no.”

“Which?” he demanded. “Yes, obviously I knew that he existed thirty-seven years ago, but, no, I didn’t know until today that he still existed.” It was confusing. After all, he didn’t now exist, not as a living being anyway.

I was again with Detective Sergeant Murray and DC Walton, but we had transferred as a group from Wexham Park Hospital to Windsor Police Station, swapping the grieving families’ room for a stark police interview room with no windows. The chairs at each place, I noticed, could have come from the same manufacturer’s batch.

We had been joined by Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn, who did not extend the nicety of expressing sympathy for my dead father. I decided I didn’t like him very much, and he clearly had no good feelings towards me either.

“A bookmaker, eh?” he’d said by way of introduction, curling his lip. He, like many, clearly believed that all bookmakers were villains unless proved otherwise, and even then there’d be some doubt remaining.

“Are you absolutely certain that this man was your father?” He stabbed his finger at the driver’s license that sat on the table in front of me, its black-and-white photograph clearly being that of the man I had left lying dead under a sheet at the hospital.

“No,” I said, looking up at the detective chief inspector, “I can’t say I am absolutely certain. But I still think he was. It was not so much what he looked like or what he said but his mannerisms and demeanor that convinced me. He picked at his fingers in the same way I watched my grandfather do a million times, and there was something about his lolloping walk that is somehow reminiscent of my own.”

“Then why is this license in the name of someone called Alan Grady?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “Is it genuine?”

“We’re checking,” he said.

“Well, I still believe the man in that photograph is my father.” The detective chief inspector clearly didn’t share my confidence. “The DNA will tell us for sure one way or another,” he said. I had been asked for, and had given, a sample of my DNA at the hospital. “And you say he’s lived in Australia for the past thirty years or so?”

“That’s what he told me, yes,” I replied.

“And you believed him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” I said. “Why would he lie to me?”

“Mr. Talbot,” he said, “in my experience, people lie all the time.” He leaned forward and looked at me closely. “And I think you might be lying to me right now.”

“Think away,” I said. “But I’m not.”

“We’ll see,” said the detective chief inspector, standing up abruptly and walking out of the room.

“Chief Inspector Llewellyn has left the room,” said the detective sergeant for the benefit of the audio-recording machine that sat on the table to my left.

“Can I go now?” I asked.

“Mr. Talbot,” said the detective sergeant, “you can leave anytime you like. You are not under arrest.”

Maybe not, I thought, but I had been questioned “under caution.”

“Then I would like to go home,” I said. “I have to be back at Ascot racetrack at ten-thirty in the morning.”

“Interview terminated,” said the detective sergeant, glancing up at the clock on the wall, “at twenty-two forty-five.” He pushed the STOP button on the front of the recording machine.

“Have you spoken to any of the other people who were there in the parking lot?” I asked him as we walked along the corridor.

“We continue to make inquiries,” he answered unhelpfully.

“Please can I have a photocopy of that driver’s license?” I asked him.

“What for?” he said.

“The photograph. The only one I have of my father was taken before I was born. I would like to have another.”

“Er,” said the detective sergeant, looking around at Detective Constable Walton, “I’m not sure that I can.”

“Please,” I said in my most charming manner.

Constable Walton shrugged his shoulders.

“OK,” said the sergeant. “But don’t tell the chief inspector.”

I wouldn’t, I assured him. I wouldn’t have told the chief inspector if his fly had been undone.