Dick Francis - Whip Hand

They were shocked again.

'Who told you that, Sid?' Sir Thomas asked.

'Someone reliable,' I said, thinking that maybe they wouldn't think a suspended jockey like Jacksy as reliable as I did.

'Go on.'

'I wasn't really making much progress with those syndicates, but Peter Rammileese apparently thought so, because he and his two men laid an ambush for Chico and me, the day before yesterday.'

Sir Thomas reflected. 'I thought that was the day you were going to Newmarket with Lucas to see the Caspars. The day after you were here telling us about Trevor Deansgate.'

'Yes, we did go to Newmarket. And I made the mistake of leaving my car in plain view near here all day. The two men were waiting beside it when we got back. And… er… Chico and I got abducted, and where we landed up was at Peter Rammileese's place at Tunbridge Wells.'

Sir Thomas frowned. The others listened to the unemotional relating of what they must have realised had been a fairly violent occurrence with a calm understanding that such things could happen.

There had seldom been, I thought, a more silently attentive audience.

I said, 'They gave Chico and me a pretty rough time, but we did get out of there, owing to Peter Rammileese's little boy opening a door for us by chance, and we didn't end up in Tunbridge Wells streets, we got to my father-in-law's house near Oxford.'

They all looked at Charles, who nodded. I took a deep breath. 'At about that point,' I said, 'I… er… began to see things the other way round.'

'How do you mean, Sid?'

'Until then, I thought the two Scotsmen were supposed to be preventing us from finding what we were looking for, in those syndicates.'

They nodded. Of course.

'But supposing it was exactly the reverse… Supposing I'd been pointed at those syndicates in order to be led to the ambush. Suppose the ambush itself was the whole aim of the exercise.'

Silence. I had come to the hard bit, and needed the reserves I didn't have, of staying power, of will. I was aware of Charles sitting steadfastly beside me, trying to give me his strength.

I could feel myself shaking. I kept my voice flat and cold, saying the things I didn't like saying, that had to be said.

'I was shown an enemy, who was Peter Rammileese. I was given a reason for being beaten up, which was the syndicates. I was fed the expectation of it, through the man Mason. I was being given a background to what was going to happen; a background I would accept.'

Total silence and blank, uncomprehending expressions.

I said, 'If someone had savagely attacked me out of the blue, I wouldn't have been satisfied until I had found out who and why. So I thought, supposing someone wanted to attack me, but it was imperative that I didn't find out who or why. If I was given a false who, and a false why, I would believe in those, and not look any further.'

One or two very slight nods.

'I did believe in that who and that why for a while,' I said. 'But the attack, when it came, seemed out of all proportion… and from something one of our attackers said I gathered it was not Peter Rammileese himself who was paying them, but someone else.'

Silence.

'So, after we had reached the Admiral's house, I began thinking, and I thought, if the attack itself was the point, and it was not Peter Rammileese who had arranged it, then who had? Once I saw it that way, there was only one possible who. The person who had laid the trail for me to follow.' The faces began to go stiff. I said, 'It was Lucas himself who set us up.' They broke up into loud, jumbled, collective protest, moving in their chairs with embarrassment, not meeting my eye, not wanting to look at someone who was so mistaken, so deluded, so pitiably ridiculous.

'No, Sid, really,' Sir Thomas said. 'We've a great regard for you…' The others looked as if the great regard was now definitely past tense,'… but you can't say things like that.'

'As a matter of fact,' I said slowly, 'I would much rather have stayed away and not said it. I won't tell you any more, if you don't want to hear it.' I rubbed my fingers over my forehead from sheer lack of inner energy, and Charles half made, and then stopped himself making, a protective gesture of support.

Sir Thomas looked at Charles and then at me, and whatever he saw was enough to calm him from incredulity to puzzlement.

'All right,' he said soberly, 'we'll listen.'

The others all looked as if they didn't want to, but if the Senior Steward was willing, it was enough. I said, with deep weariness and no satisfaction, 'To understand the why part, it's necessary to look at what's been happening during the past months. During the time Chico and I have been doing… what we have. As you yourself said, Sir Thomas, we've been successful. Lucky… tackling pretty easy problems… but mostly sorting them out. To the extent that a few villains have tried to stop us dead as soon as we've appeared on the skyline.'

The disbelief still showed like snow in July, but at least they seemed to understand that too much success invited retaliation. The uncomfortable shiftings in the chairs grew gradually still.

'We've been prepared for it, more or less,' I said. 'In some cases it's even been useful, because it's shown us we're nearing the sensitive spot… But what we usually get is a couple of rent-a-thug bullies in or out of funny masks, giving us a warning bash or two and telling us to lay off. Which advice,' I added wryly, 'we have never taken.'

They had all begun looking at me again, even if sideways.

'So then people begin to stop thinking of me as jockey, and gradually see that what Chico and I are doing isn't really the joke it seemed at first. And we get what you might call the Jockey Club Seal of Approval, and all of a sudden, to the really big crooks, we appear as a continuing, permanent menace.'

'Do you have proof of that, Sid?' Sir Thomas said.

Proof… Short of getting Trevor Deansgate in there to repeat his threat before witnesses, I had no proof, I said, 'I've had threats… only threats, before this.'

A pause. No one said anything, so I went on. 'I understand on good authority,' I said, with faint amusement, 'that there would be some reluctance to solve things by actually killing us, as people who had won money in the past on my winners would rise up in wrath and grass on the murderers.'

Some tentative half-smiles amid general dislike of such melodrama.

'Anyway, such a murder would tend to bring in its trail precisely the investigation it was designed to prevent.'

They were happier with that.

'So the next best thing is an ultimate deterrent. One that would so sicken Chico and me that we'd go and sell brushes instead. Something to stop us investigating anything else, ever again.'

It seemed all of a sudden as if they did understand what I was saying. The earlier, serious attention came right back. I thought it might be safe to mention Lucas again, and when I did there was none of the former vigorous reaction.

'If you could just imagine for a moment that there is someone in the Security Service who can be bribed, and that it is the Director himself, would you, if you were Lucas, be entirely pleased to see an independent investigator making progress in what had been exclusively your territory? Would you, if you were such a man, be pleased to see Sid Halley right here in the Jockey Club being congratulated by the Senior Steward and being given carte blanche to operate wherever he liked throughout racing?'

They stared.

'Would you, perhaps, be afraid that one of these days Sid Halley would stumble across something you couldn't afford for him to find out? And might you not, at that point, decide to remove the danger of it once and for all? Like putting weedkiller on a nettle, before it stings you.'