Дик Фрэнсис - Break In

‘And then?’

‘Then he said we’d better make it all legal, so we signed papers transferring ownership of Metavane to him. He changed the amount we owed him from a hundred and forty to a hundred and thirty thousand, and we signed a banker’s order to pay him regularly month by month. We were all unhappy, but it seemed the best that could be done.’

‘You let him have Metavane without contingencies?’ I asked. ‘You didn’t ask for extra relief on your debt if the horse turned out well?’

Lucy shook her head wearily. ‘We didn’t think about contingencies. Who thinks about contingencies for a lame horse?’

‘Maynard said he would have to put our interest payments up to ten per cent,’ the Major said. ‘He kept apologising, said he felt embarrassed.’

‘Perhaps he was,’ I said.

Lucy nodded. ‘Embarrassed at his own wickedness. He went away leaving us utterly miserable, but it was nothing to what we felt two weeks later. Metavane ran in a two-year-old race at Newmarket and won by three lengths. We couldn’t believe it. We saw the result in the paper. We telephoned Allardeck at once. And I suppose you’ll have guessed what he said?’

I half nodded.

‘He said he couldn’t think why we thought Metavane was lame. He wasn’t. He never had been. He had been working brilliantly of late on the Heath.’

‘You hadn’t thought, I suppose,’ I said gently, ‘to ask to see the vet’s report? Or even to check with Allardeck?’

Lucy shook her head. ‘We took Maynard’s word.’

The Major nodded heavily. ‘Trusted him. Allardeck’s son, do you see.’

Lucy said, ‘We protested vigorously, of course, that Maynard had told us a deliberate lie, and Maynard said he hadn’t. He just denied he’d ever told us Metavane wouldn’t run before spring. Took our breath away. Clement complained to the Jockey Club, and got nowhere. Maynard charmed them too. Told them we had misunderstood. The Stewards were very cool to Clement. And do you know what I think? I think Maynard told them we were trying to screw yet more money out of him, when he’d been so generous as to help us out of a dreadful hole.’

They were both beginning to look distressed and I had a few twinges of conscience of my own. But I said, ‘Please tell me the state of your debt now, and how much Maynard shared with you out of his winnings and the syndication of Metavane as a stallion.’

They both stared.

The Major said as if surprised, ‘Nothing.’

‘How do you mean, nothing?’

‘He didn’t give us a farthing.’

‘He syndicated the horse for several millions,’ I said.

The Major nodded. ‘We read about it.’

‘I wrote to him,’ Lucy said, her cheeks slightly pink. ‘I asked him to at least release us from what we owed him.’

‘And?’

‘He didn’t answer.’

‘Lucy wrote twice,’ the Major said uncomfortably. ‘The second time, she sent it special delivery, to be handed to him personally, so we know he must have received it.’

‘He didn’t reply,’ Lucy said.

‘We borrowed the money and that’s that,’ the Major said with resignation. ‘Repayments and interest take most of our income, and I don’t think we will ever finish.’

Lucy stroked his hand openly. ‘We are both eighty-two, you see,’ she said.

‘And no children?’ I asked.

‘No children,’ Lucy said regretfully, it wasn’t to be.’

I packed away the camera, thanking them and giving them the cash I’d collected for paying Bobby’s lads, proceeds of cashing one of Bobby’s cheques with my valet at Newbury. My valet, a walking bank, had found the service routine and had agreed to bring cash for the other cheques to Towcester.

The Major and Lucy accepted the money with some embarrassment but more relief, and I wondered if they had feared I might not actually pay them once I’d got what I wanted. They’d learned in a hard school.

I looked at my watch and asked if I could make a quick credit card call on their telephone. They nodded in unison, and I got through to the manager where I banked.

‘John,’ I said.

‘Kit.’

‘Look, I’m in a hurry, on my way to ride at Towcester, but I’ve been thinking... It’s true, isn’t it, that money can be paid into my account without my knowing?’

‘Yes, by direct transfer from another bank, like your riding fees. But you’d see it on your next statement.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘except for my riding fees, could you see to it that nothing gets paid in? If anything else arrives, can you refuse to put it into my account?’

‘Yes, I can,’ he said doubtfully, ‘but why?’

‘Someone offered me a bribe last night,’ I said, it felt too much like a set-up. I don’t want to find I’ve been sneakily paid by a back door for something I don’t intend to do. I don’t want to find myself trying to tell the Stewards I didn’t take the money.’

He said after a short pause, is this one of your intuitions?’

‘I just thought I’d take precautions.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘All right. If anything comes, I’ll check with you before crediting your account.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Until further notice.’

‘And perhaps you would drop me a line putting your instructions in writing? Then you would be wholly safe, if it came to the Stewards.’

‘I do not know,’ I said, ‘what I would do without you.’

I said goodbye to the Perrysides and drove away, reflecting that it was their own total lack of sensible precautions which had crystallised in me the thought that I should prudently take my own.

They should have insured in the first place against a catastrophic loss at Lloyd’s and they should have brought in an independent vet to examine Metavane. It was easy to see these things after the event. The trick for survival was to imagine them before.

Towcester was a deep-country course, all rolling green hills sixty miles to the north-west of London. I drove there with my mind on anything except the horses ahead.

Mostly I thought about precautions.

With me in the car, besides my overnight bag, I had the tapes of Maynard, the tape of the Perrysides, the video camera and a small hold-all of Holly’s containing the jackets and other belongings of Jay Erskine and Owen Watts. Without all those things I would not be able to get any sort of compensation or future for Bobby and Holly, and it occurred to me that I should make sure that no one stole them.

Sam Leggatt or anyone else at the Flag would see that repossessing the journalists’ belongings would be a lot cheaper and less painful than coughing up cash and printing and distributing humble apologies.

Owen Watts and Jay Erskine were bound to be revengeful after the damage they had suffered, and they could be literally anywhere, plotting heaven knew what.

I was driving to a time and place printed in more than half the daily newspapers: my name plain to see on the racing pages, declared overnight for the one-thirty, two o’clock, three o’clock and three-thirty races.

If I were Jay Erskine, I thought, I would be jemmying open Kit Fielding’s Mercedes at one-thirty, two o’clock, three o’clock or three-thirty.

If I were Owen Watts, perhaps at those times, I would be breaking into Kit Fielding’s cottage in Lambourn.

They might.

They might not.

I didn’t think a little active breaking and entering would disturb their consciences in the least, especially as the current penalties for a conviction for wire-tapping ran to a two thousand pound fine or up to two years in prison, or both.

I didn’t know that I would recognise them from the mêlée in the dark. They could however make it their business to know me. To watch for my arrival in the jockeys’ car park. To note my car.