Dick Francis's Gamble

20

What do you want?” I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.

“I want you dead,” Viscount Shenington said.

“So you can stop spreading your silly rumor that my brother was murdered.”

“But he was, wasn’t he?” I said.

“That is something you are not going to have to worry about anymore,” Shenington said.

“How could you have killed your own brother?” I asked. “And for what? Money?”

“My brother had no idea what it was like to be desperate for money. He was always so bloody self-righteous.”

“Honest, you mean.”

“Don’t give me all that claptrap,” he said. “Everyone’s on the make. I just want my share.”

“And is your share a hundred million euros?” I asked.

“Shut up,” he said loudly.

Why should I? Maybe I should shout as loudly as I could, to attract attention.

I took a deep breath, and the cry for help began in my throat. But that was as far as it got. The man with the gun punched me very hard in my lower abdomen, driving the air from my lungs and leaving me lying in a heap on the floor, gasping for breath. And then, just for good measure, the same man kicked me in the face, splitting my lip and sending my blood in a fine spray onto the carpet.

“Not in here, you fool,” Shenington said to him sharply.

That was slightly encouraging, I thought, through the haze in my brain. At least they weren’t going to kill me here. It might have been rather incriminating to leave a dead body in the corner of the box amongst the empty champagne bottles.

“It won’t do you any good,” I said through my bleeding mouth, my own voice sounding strange even to me. “The police know I’m here.”

“I somehow doubt that,” Shenington replied. “My information is that you’ve also been avoiding them over the past week.”

“My fiancée knows I’m here,” I said.

“Yes, so she does. When I’ve dealt with you, I’ll deal with her too.”

I thought about saying that Jan Setter also knew I was here, but that might have placed her in mortal danger as well.

I kept quiet. I’d opened my big mouth enough already.

I could hear the public-address system outside. The last race had started.

“Now,” said Shenington to the men. “Take him down now, while the race is running.”

The two men came over and hauled me to my feet.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked.

“To your death,” Shenington said with aplomb. “But not here, obviously. Somewhere dark and quiet.”

“Can’t we…”

It was as far as I got. The man on my right, the one without the gun who had been standing by the door, suddenly punched me again in my stomach. This time I didn’t fall to the floor, but only because the two men were holding me up by my arms. My guts felt like they were on fire, and I was worried that some major damage may have been done to my insides.

“No more speak,” said the man who had punched me. English was clearly not his strong point.

“No more speak” seemed a good plan, at least for the time being, so I kept quiet as the two men walked me past my coat, through the door, across the corridor and into one of the deserted catering stations. The three of us descended in one of the caterer’s lifts. There was no sign of Shenington. I wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. I suppose two against one was marginally better than three to one, but, on the downside, I’d have little or no chance of reasoning with these two heavies. Although I doubt if I’d have had any chance anyway, had Shenington been there with us.

The lift stopped, and I was marched out of it and then across the wet tarmac towards the north exit and the racetrack parking lots beyond. The facilities at Cheltenham were really designed for the Steeplechasing Festival in March, when more than sixty thousand would flock to the track every day. The parking lots were therefore huge, but on a night like this, with only a fraction of the crowd, most of them were deserted and, at this time of night, dark and quiet.

“Somewhere dark and quiet,” Shenington had said.

I came to the conclusion that my last brief journey would likely come to an abrupt end in a far corner of one of the track’s parking lots. I tried my best to slow down, but I was being frog-marched forward. I also tried to sit down, but they were having none of that. They gripped my arms even tighter and forced me on.

I’d have to shout for help, I thought, and chance another punch, but the commentator’s voice was booming out through the public-address, so would anyone hear me? There were only a very few people about, hurrying to go home with their heads bowed down and their collars turned up against the rain. Most of the remaining crowd were sensibly under cover, watching the race. Only a fool would stand about down here in the wet.

“Horse!” a voice called loudly off to my right in warning. “Loose horse!”

There is no doubt that horses have a homing instinct. Ask any trainer who has had a horse get loose and lost on the gallops. More often than not, the horse is found happily back at the stable, standing in its own box, home before the search party.

Horses that are reluctant to race or that get loose due to falling, often head back to where they first came out onto the track, as if they were trying to get home or at least back to the racetrack stables.

This particular loose horse came galloping down the horse walk and attempted to negotiate the ninety-degree turn to get back into the parade ring. A combination of too sharp a bend and too much momentum, coupled with the wet surface, meant that the horse’s legs slipped out from beneath it and it fell, crashing through the white plastic railings and sliding across the ground towards the three of us, its legs thrashing about wildly as it tried to regain its footing.

The men on either side of me instinctively took a step backwards away from the sharp flailing horseshoes, slightly relaxing their hold on my arms as they did so. But I stepped forward boldly, out of their clutches, and caught the horse by the reins. In one movement, as the animal managed to stand up, I swung myself onto its back and into the saddle.

I needed no second invitation. I kicked the astonished horse in the belly, and we galloped back the way it had come, down the horse walk towards the track.

“Hey, stop!” shouted an official who was standing in my way, waving his arms about. I glanced behind me. The two men were in pursuit, and one was reaching into his pocket. I had no doubt he was going for his gun.

The official realized at the very last second that I wasn’t going to stop, and he flung himself aside. I kicked the horse again, and crouched as low as I could to provide the smallest target for the gunman.

I looked ahead. Even though the last race of the day was still in progress, out on the racetrack was definitely the safest place for me to be. Another official saw the horse galloping back towards him and he tugged frantically at the movable rail, closing it across the end of the horse walk.

But I wasn’t stopping. Stopping meant dying, and I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do that.

A rider communicates with his mount in a variety of ways. Pulling on the reins, either together or separately, is an obvious one, and cajoling with the voice or kicking with the feet are others. But the most powerful messages between horse and jockey are transmitted by the shifting of weight. Sit back and the horse will slow and stop, but shift the weight forward over his shoulders and he will run like the wind.

I gathered my feet into the stirrup irons, stood up, shortened the reins and crouched forward over the horse’s withers. The animal beneath me fully understood the go message. Riding a horse was like riding a bike-once learned, never forgotten.

As we neared the end of the horse walk I made no move to slow down. In fact, I did quite the opposite. I kicked the horse hard in the belly once more. The animal received the new message loud and clear, and he knew what to do. I shifted my weight slightly again, asking him to lengthen his stride and to jump, and to jump high.

We sailed over the rail with ease, and over the official as well, who’d had the good sense to duck down.

The horse pecked slightly on landing, almost going down on its knees, and for a moment I feared he was going to fall, but I pulled his head up with the reins and he quickly recovered his balance.

Left or right?

Left, I decided, pulling that way on the reins, away from the grandstand and towards the safe, wide-open spaces of the racetrack.

The other horses were coming up the finishing straight towards me, but I was well to the side of them, on what would have been the hurdle course at any other meeting.

My mount tried to turn, to run with the others, but I steered him away and galloped down to the far end of the finishing straight before stopping and looking back.

What remained of the daylight was disappearing rapidly, and the grandstand lights appeared unnaturally bright. It was difficult to tell if the two heavies were giving chase, but I had to assume they were, joined possibly by Viscount Shenington himself. He must be keener now than ever to remove me permanently from the scene.

I turned the horse again and cantered up the hill, towards the farthest point on the track away from the stands and the enclosures.

What did I do now?

The nondescript blue rental car would be waiting for me in the parking lot, but the problem was that its keys, together with my mobile phone and my wallet, were in the pockets of my Barbour, which I presumed was still inconveniently hanging by the door in Shenington’s box.

I watched as a vehicle turned onto the track from close by where I had emerged from the horse walk. I could see the headlights bumping up and down slightly as it worked its way along the grass in the direction from which I had come.

Another vehicle followed it onto the grass but turned the other way.

Both vehicles then moved forward slowly, driving around the course. If I stayed where I was, then the two of them would close on me in a pincer movement.

But who was in the vehicles? Was it Shenington and his cronies or would it be the police or the racetrack security guards? I imagined that the trainer of the horse I was riding would be far from pleased to have discovered that his charge had been horse-napped and was currently running about the track in the dark.

But I couldn’t stay where I was, that was for sure. Not without being seen or captured. And I had absolutely no intention of allowing a vehicle to come up close to me unless, and until, I knew for certain that Shenington and his heavies were not in it.

At Cheltenham, the racetrack, unlike those in America, was not a simple oval track but was in fact two complete courses laid one on top of the other, and with an extra loop down one end. In addition, the center was used for cross-country races. There was no way that these two vehicles would be able to corner me on their own, not unless I was careless, and I had been quite careless enough for one day.

I waited to see which part of the track the car would choose to move along and then simply rode the horse down the other part. By this time, the last of the daylight had faded away completely, and there was no way the occupants of the vehicle would be able to see me unless I was actually in the arc of the headlights.

However, I watched with some dismay as three more vehicles turned out onto the track, two turning straight towards me and the third starting the long counterclockwise sweep around the course. And worse, in the glow of their lights I could see some figures walking, spreading out across the center of the track, in search of the horse or of me.

They couldn’t all be Shenington’s men. Some of them must be the good guys, the cavalry coming to my rescue. But which ones? I simply couldn’t afford to get it wrong.

I decided that my present position was hopeless, and it would be only a matter of time before I would be seen by either someone in the vehicles or someone on foot. I trotted the horse over to the very edge of the racetrack property, looking for an exit, but the need to keep out the ticket dodgers had resulted in a robust five-foot-high chain-link fence being erected along the whole length.

I supposed I could have tied the horse to the fence and climbed over, but the location of the deserted horse would then have given away the fact that I had gone, and where, and I feared I would have had Shenington and his mob still on my tail. And I somehow felt safer on the horse because I could outrun those on foot, gun or no gun.

“With that neck, I wouldn’t ride a bike, let alone a horse,” the spinal specialist had said to me all those years ago. Yet here I was on horseback, galloping around in the dark, but I felt completely safe and at home. I just had to make sure I didn’t fall off.

I cantered the horse right along the fence in the hope there might have been a gate. Five feet was too high for any horse to jump, let alone a tired-out hunter chaser that should have been warm in his stable by this time of night. Not that a gate would help much. It would probably be locked, and I couldn’t ask the horse to jump it in the dark.

The pincer arms of the search parties were moving closer together, and if I didn’t move away pretty soon I was in danger of being caught in their trap. I kicked the horse hard, and we galloped back along perimeter fence all the way down to the far northern end of the track and into the extra loop, taking my chances that the horse wouldn’t stumble or put his foot in a rabbit hole.

I was still looking unsuccessfully for an exit through the fence. And I was beginning to think that my only option might be to double right around and try to find a way out through the parking lots, but the searchers were getting closer, and the opportunities for doing that were being closed off by the minute.

The chain-link fence finally gave way to a hedge, but not a nice, low jumpable hedge but a high impenetrable jungle of hawthorn and blackberry. I trotted along its length and finally found a gap in the undergrowth. The horse and I went through the gap and into the field that was used as a helicopter landing pad during the Festival meeting.

I doubled back, putting the hedge between me and my pursuers. By this time, it was an almost completely black night and I didn’t now have the reflected light from the vehicle headlamps to help me. The horse and I moved steadily forward at the walk, the blind leading the blind. The animal beneath me must have been as confused as I was as to where we were going, but he had been trained well and responded easily to my every command.

“Come on, boy,” I said quietly into his ear. “Good boy.”

I could see the lights from the houses in Prestbury village. The hedge must be thinner straight ahead.

Suddenly, I thought I heard a man cough. I gently pulled the reins, and the horse stopped and stood silently. I listened intently in the darkness.

Had I been mistaken?

The man coughed again. Then he called out but in a language I didn’t recognize. He was on the other side of the hedge, but I couldn’t tell exactly how far away. A second man answered, again in a foreign tongue, and he was certainly farther away still.

The men had to be Shenington’s heavies.

I held my breath and prayed that the horse wouldn’t make a noise or jangle the bit in his mouth.

I strained to listen to their conversation and thought I might have heard the nearest man moving, but I was far from sure.

The rain came to my aid.

It had been easing somewhat, but now it returned with a vengeance, falling in heavy drops that ran down my neck. But I didn’t care. The noise of the rain may have prevented me from hearing anything further of the men’s conversation, but, more important, it would also mean that they would be unable to hear me moving on.

I made some fairly gentle clicking noises and gently nudged the horse in the ribs with my foot. “Walk on,” I said to him in his ear.

We eventually came upon a gate and it wasn’t locked.

I dismounted and led the horse through, closing the gate behind us.

A light suddenly came on, flooding the area with brightness and momentarily startling the horse, which whipped around, pulling the reins from my fingers.

Dammit!

“Here, boy,” I said in as calming a voice as I could muster. “Good boy. Come on.” I held out my hand towards the terrified animal, which tossed his head up and down and neighed loudly. “Good boy,” I repeated as I moved towards where he stood, quivering, by the gate. When I was close enough, I lunged forward and grabbed the reins once more, but not before the horse had neighed loudly a couple of times more.

Had the men heard? Or seen the light?

The light in question was attached to the gable end of a wooden barn and had a motion sensor below it-a security light.

I looked around. We were in a farmyard, with more buildings beyond the barn.

I heard a whizzing sound close to my right.

The sound instantly gave me goose bumps on my arms and made the hairs on my neck stand upright. I knew that noise. I knew it because I’d heard it before in Lichfield Grove. It was the sound of a bullet passing by, and much too close for comfort. A second whizzed past and embedded itself into the wooden planking just a few inches from my face. And I could hear shouting, foreign-language shouting. Time to move, I thought, and quickly.

I pulled the horse forward, and we ran around the corner of the barn and away from the shouting. Another bullet whizzed past me and disappeared into the night.

I had intended leaving the horse tied up somewhere while I made my way to safety on foot, but my plans had just changed. If the men were close enough to shoot at me, they would be close enough to catch me if I was on foot. I needed the speed of the horse to escape.

I put my left foot into the stirrup iron and pulled myself back up onto the saddle, gathered the reins, and set off again. More security lights came on as I cantered the horse through the farmyard, but the horse was happier now with someone on his back and he didn’t react once. We went right across the brightly lit farmyard and then down a long drive that curved away into the darkness. Soon I could see headlights moving quickly from right to left ahead of us, as a car moved along the Winchcombe Road at the end of the drive.

We had now left the security lights well behind, but I had to take a chance in the dark as I kicked the horse forward as fast as I dared.

I neared the road. Which way should I turn?

I knew that I ought to go to the right towards Prestbury village and Cheltenham. I knew it because I should be on my way to the Cheltenham Police Station. I’d be safe there, and DCI Flight would finally get his interview.

I even worked out the best route in my head.

I had grown up in Prestbury and I knew intimately all the shortcuts from there to Cheltenham town center. I had used them either on foot or on my bicycle for half my life. And I knew all the deserted back roads and the quiet way through Pittville Park, past the Pump Room that gave Cheltenham its spa status, across the Tommy Taylor recreation area and down past the allotments off Gardners Lane, where I had often played as a kid with my school friends. Wherever possible, I would keep the horse off the hard surfaces and on the grass, all the way to Swindon Road, not far from the old Cheltenham Maternity Hospital, where, nearly thirty years ago, I had been brought screaming into the world.

I could then trot the horse past the railway station and down the wide tree-lined avenues around Christ Church to my destination on Lansdown Road.

Yes, I thought, I really ought to turn right towards the police station.

Instead, I turned left towards Woodmancote and Claudia.

How could I have been so stupid as to have told Shenington that she had gone to my mother’s? If he had been the one who sent the broken-neck gunman there to kill me, and I had no doubt that it had been, he would know exactly where to find my mother’s cottage. It would only be a matter of time before he worked out that he could get to me by attacking Claudia.

I just hoped I would get there first.

Fortunately, at this time on a wet Wednesday, the road was quiet. Only on a couple of occasions did I have to pull off onto the wide grass verges as cars came sweeping past. Neither of them even slowed down. Other than that, I kept to the road. It was much too dangerous for the horse even to walk along the verges at night with the many hidden drainage ditches.

However, the noise of the metal horseshoes clickety-clacking on the tarmac as we cantered along suddenly sounded alarmingly loud in the night air. Which was safer, I wondered, speed or stealth? That same question had been taxing military strategists ever since armies had been invented.

I opted for speed, but I did slow to a walk as we reached the edge of Southam village and, as much as I could, I used the grass there to minimize the noise. Even though it was late, and still raining, the sound of a horse at such an hour, especially one moving at speed, might bring people out of their houses to investigate, and there was no way I wanted to have to stop and explain what I was doing, not yet.

The horse and I went right through the village of Southam without attracting any unwelcome attention, other than a curious look or two from a cat out on its nocturnal hunt for food.

Southam to Woodmancote was less than a mile, and I trotted the horse down the center of the road, using the dotted white line for guidance. At long last the rain was beginning to stop, not that it made much difference to me. I was completely soaked to the skin and cold because of it.

I skirted around the edge of the village towards the lane where my mother lived.

The lane was actually the fourth arm of a crossroads junction, and I was just approaching it from straight ahead when a car came along the other road and turned right into it. The car had to be going to my mother’s cottage, as it was the only one down there.

I kicked the horse forward and followed, keeping to the grass to deaden the noise of the hooves.

Halfway down the lane I slid off the horse’s back and tied him to a tree, moving forward silently but quickly on foot. I stayed close to the hedge as I came around the last turn.

I could now see the cottage, and Shenington was standing to one side of it by the front door, his face brightly lit by the outside light. I crept closer, across the grass, towards the gravel drive.

“Viscount Shenington,” he was saying loudly. “We met earlier at the races.”

“What do you want?” I could hear Claudia shouting back from inside.

“I’m returning Mr. Foxton’s coat,” Shenington said. “He must have left it in my box by mistake.” He was holding my coat out in front of him.

Don’t open the door, I willed Claudia. PLEASE-DON’T OPEN THE DOOR.

She did of course. I could hear her turning the lock.

Once Shenington was inside, I would have no chance. He could simply put a knife to Claudia’s neck, or a gun to her temple, and I would do exactly as he wanted. A lamb to the slaughter it would certainly be.

My only chance was to act decisively and to act now.

As the front door swung open I ran for him, crunching across the gravel. He turned slightly towards the noise, but I was on him before he had a chance to react.

At school, despite my moderate size, I’d been a regular member of the first XV rugby team and primarily for my tackling.

I caught Shenington just above the knees in a full-blown flying rugby tackle that literally lifted him off his feet.

The two of us crashed to the ground together, the whiplash causing his upper body and head to take most of the impact.

Shenington was in his mid- to late sixties and I was less than half his age, and I had the strength brought on by desperation and anger.

He really had no chance.

I jumped up quickly and sat on him, twisting my fingers in his hair and forcing his head down into a rain-filled puddle on the drive. How did he like it, I wondered, having his face held underwater?

Claudia stood, shocked and staring, in the doorway.

“Nick,” she wailed. “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. You’ll drown him.”

“This is the man who has been trying to kill me,” I said, not releasing my grip.

“That doesn’t mean you can kill him,” she said.

I reluctantly let go of his hair and rolled him over onto his back. His lips were blue, and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. I didn’t care. One thing was for sure. There was absolutely no way I was going to put my mouth over his to breathe air into his lungs. Even the thought of it made me feel sick.

“He’s got a gun,” Claudia said suddenly, the fear clearly apparent again in her voice.

He’d been lying on it.

I leaned down and picked it up by the barrel.

I left Shenington where he lay and went inside to call the Cheltenham Police Station.

“Can I please speak to DCI Flight?” I said to the officer who answered. “I want to give myself up.”

“What have you done?” he said.

“Ask DCI Flight,” I replied. “He’s the one who wants me.”

“He’s not here at the moment,” the officer said. “Some bloody lunatic has stolen a horse up at the racetrack and every spare man is out looking for him.”

“Ah, I might just be able to help you there,” I said. “The horse in question is tied up outside my mother’s house in Woodmancote.”

“What!” he said.

“The horse is right outside where I’m standing now,” I repeated.

“How the hell did it get there?”

“I rode him,” I said. “I think I’m the bloody lunatic that everyone is looking for.”