Even Money

21

I went straight from the nursing home to Leicester racetrack, but, afterwards, I couldn’t recall a single moment of the journey. My mind had been too preoccupied trying to come to terms with what I’d been told.

As I had so hoped, I was, after all, not the son of a murderer. But I was the grandson of one. I had stood alongside my grandfather on racetracks for all those years as his assistant, unaware of the dreadful secret he and my grandmother had concealed. Far from being the ones who had stepped in and cared for me in my time of need, they had been the very architects of my misery.

Automatically, as if on autopilot, I parked the Volvo and began to unload the equipment. I pulled out our odds board with TRUST TEDDY TALBOT emblazoned across the top. I stopped unloading and looked at it. I would have laughed if I didn’t feel so much like crying. Trust Teddy Talbot to ruin your life.

Luca and Duggie were waiting for me as I pulled the equipment trolley into the betting ring.

“How did you get on yesterday?” I asked. “With the delinquents?”

“Great,” said Luca. “We’re all set.”

“Do you think they will do it right?” I asked.

“Should do,” said Duggie. “And they’re not all delinquents.”

I smiled at him. I suppose I was pleased that he was standing up for his friends.

“And besides,” he said, “I told them you were a mean bastard and would come looking for them in the night if they spent your money on drugs.”

I stared at him, and he simply smiled back at me. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.

“Good,” I said finally.“Let’s hope the horses are not all withdrawn at the overnight declarations stage.”

“How about you?” Luca asked as we set up our pitch. “Did you have a good day?”

“No,” I said without clarification.

“Not Sophie?” he asked with concern.

“No,” I said. “Sophie’s doing well. I was just dealing with some other family business. Don’t worry about it.”

He looked at me with questioning eyes, but I ignored him.

“I’ve decided that we are going to change our name,” I announced. “From today, we shall be known as ‘Talbot and Mandini.’”

I smiled at Luca, and he smiled back.

“But we haven’t done the partnership papers yet,” he said.

“I don’t care,” I said. “If you’re still up for it, then so am I.”

“Sure,” he said with real pleasure showing on his face.

“How about ‘Talbot, Mandini and Masters’?” said Duggie, joining in the fun.

“Don’t push your luck, young Douglas,” I said. “You’re still on probation, remember?”

“Only until Monday,” he said with a pained expression.

“That will be up to me,” I said. “And Luca,” I added quickly, remembering my new position as partner rather than sole owner.

“Can we just change our name without telling anyone?” Luca asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll find out. But the name Teddy Talbot is coming off our sign as of today.”

I hadn’t realized the forcefulness with which I had spoken until I noticed Luca standing there stock-still just looking at me.

“My,” he said, “that must have been some mighty emotive family business you were dealing with yesterday.”

I glared at him. I was not in the mood for explanations, so the three of us continued to set up in silence.

“I’d never been to the races before last Wednesday,” said Duggie when we had finished. “It’s wicked.”

“I’m glad you enjoy it,” I said, assuming that was what he meant.

“It all seems smaller than on the telly,” he said. “You know, the horses seem smaller and everything’s so much closer together.”

“But you’ve only been to the smaller meetings,” Luca said. “It’s not like this at Ascot or Cheltenham.”

“But the horses can’t be any bigger,” Duggie said.

“No,” I said. “But there are lots and lots more people.”

“When do we go there, then?” he said eagerly.

“Soon,” I said. “But concentrate on today first.”

Leicester was a long, thin, undulating track with the public enclosures squeezed together at one end. As with many racetracks, the space in the center doubled as a golf course. I had occasionally played a round of golf, and these holes would have suited me well, I thought, as there were no large trees to get stuck behind. Large trees would have spoiled the view of the racing.

The betting ring was in front of the glass-fronted grandstand, and there were several other bookies also setting up before the first race.

“Where’s Larry?” I asked Luca, noting his absence from the neighboring pitch.

“Nottingham,” he said.

“But he is all set for Monday?”

“Sure is,” said Luca with a grin. “Norman Joyner’s coming too.”

“Good,” I said. “Do they know?”

“They think it’s the same as last time, at Ascot,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “It will be as far as they are concerned.”

The Saturday crowd was beginning to build, with cars queuing for the popular parking-and-picnic enclosure alongside the running rail. Even the weather had cooperated, with blue skies and only the occasional puffy white cloud. A glorious English-summer day at the races. What could be better than this?

I suppose six losing short-priced favorites would be good.

Just as I was starting to relax from my earlier anxiety and was actually beginning to enjoy the day, my two nonfriends from Kempton and Towcester turned up and stood in front of me. Once more, they were wearing their uniforms, short-sleeved white shirts and black trousers, plus the work boots. I was on my platform at the time, which gave me a height advantage for a change. It also gave me some courage.

“I thought I told you boys to bugger off,” I said down to them.

“Our boss wants to talk to you,” said the spokesman of the two.

“Well, I don’t want to talk to him,” I said. “So go away.”

I felt reasonably confident that they wouldn’t start a physical assault just here, not with hundreds of witnesses about.

“He wants to make you an offer,” said the spokesman.

“Which part of ‘go away’ didn’t you understand?” I said to him.

They didn’t move an inch but stood full square in front of me. It wasn’t very good for my business.

“He wants to buy you out.” It was like a stuck record.

“Tell him to come and see me himself if he wants to talk,” I said, “rather than sending a pair of his goons.”

Thoughts of poking hornet’s nests with sticks floated into my head. And I’d been the one to warn Larry against doing it.

“You are to come with us,” the man said.

“You must be joking,” I said, almost with a laugh. “I’m not going anywhere with you two. Now, move out of the bloody way. I’ve got a bookmaking business to run.”

They didn’t move.

Luca and Duggie came on the platform and stood on either side of me, and a staring match ensued, us three against them two. It was like a prelude to a gunfight at the O.K. Corral. But who was going to go for their guns first?

“Sod off,” said Duggie suddenly, breaking the silence.“Why don’t you two arseholes go and play with your balls somewhere else?”

They both turned their full attention to him, this young slip of a lad who I still thought looked only about fourteen years old.

The talkative arsehole opened his mouth as if to say something.

“Save it,” said Duggie, beating him to the draw. “Now, piss off.”

There was something about the boy’s assured confidence in the face of physical threat that had even me a little scared. The two men in front of me definitely wavered.

“We’ll be back,” the talkative one said.

But Duggie wasn’t finished with them. “The man here told you he wasn’t coming with you to see your boss, so go away now and stay away.” He sounded so reasonable. “Go on, scram, and you can tell your boss it’s no deal.”

The men looked at him like two big sheep under the gaze of a tiny Border collie puppy, and then, slowly, they moved to the side and walked away.

Both Luca and I watched them go out of sight around the grandstand, and then we turned to Duggie in astonishment. He was smiling.

“All brawn and no brain,” he said. “Guys like them need orders to follow. Can’t think for themselves.”

If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.

“My God, Duggie,” I said, “you were brilliant. Where on earth did you learn to do that?”

“The streets of High Wycombe are not so friendly as some people would like to think,” he said. “Friday and Saturday nights can be rough, I can tell you, bloody rough.”

“I think he just completed his probation,” Luca said.

“Damn right, he did,” I said. “Welcome to the firm.”

Duggie beamed. “Just so long as you don’t sell out to those guys.”

“No chance.” Luca and I said it together.

The rest of the day was tame by comparison to what had gone before. The six favorites didn’t all lose, but, nevertheless, our afternoon was both profitable and enjoyable, with Duggie warming to his newfound permanent status.

He was a natural showman, with a quick wit, and as his confidence grew he became a great success with the punters. He hardly stopped talking and bantering with them all afternoon. There was no doubt in my mind that we did far more business because of it. Some of our neighboring bookies weren’t too pleased, however, especially when Duggie would shout across to their potential customers that they could get a better deal from us, even if they couldn’t.

But our neighbors were not our friends, they were our competition. In a way, I was quite pleased that Larry Porter had been at Nottingham. I didn’t want to antagonize him before Monday. I needed his unwitting cooperation.

The two goons didn’t reappear at our pitch, but I was worried they might be waiting for us outside the racetrack gates, or in the parking lot, where there would be fewer witnesses for them to worry about. I didn’t exactly relish another of their “messages” being applied to my solar plexus.

“Where are you parked?” I asked Luca as we packed the equipment onto our trolley.

“Across the road in the free parking lot,” he said.

“Good, so am I. Let’s keep together when we go just in case we find we have unwelcome company.”

“Too bloody right,” he said.

“Wait for me, then,” said Duggie. “I’m just going for a pee.”

He ran off towards the Gents’, leaving Luca and me standing beside the trolley.

“Any movement on the Sister Millie front?” I asked, unable to contain my curiosity any longer.

He smiled broadly. “Negotiations are continuing,” he said. “But, as yet, there has been no breakthrough. She wants to, but she thinks Betsy will murder her if she does. And she’s probably right. But it certainly makes life interesting.”

“Just don’t let her meet Duggie,” I said, “or you’ll have no chance.”

He pulled a face at me. “Yes, all right, Grandpa,” he said. It was only meant as a joke, but it brought back in a wave all that I had been trying to banish from my consciousness.

The tears welled in my eyes, and I turned away from him, embarrassed by such a show of emotion.

“God,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m fine,” I said, not feeling it, and also not turning back.

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“No,” I replied.

Duggie appeared from the Gents’ to save me from further inquisition.

“OK, then,” Duggie said cheerfully, “let’s go get ’em.”

I’m glad he’s so keen, I thought. I would much rather let “’em” go without us.

As it was, much to Duggie’s obvious disappointment, my fears were unfounded. There was no sign of the goons outside the racetrack entrance and none in the parking lot either. Perhaps they had received further instruction from their mystery boss. However, I would still keep a wary eye open for a black BMW 4× 4 on my way home.

I didn’t believe that I had seen the last of them.

On Sunday, Luca and I had planned to be at Market Rasen races in Lincolnshire, but we decided that with the two goons still on the prowl, and with our plans for Monday, it was prudent to lie low for a day. To say nothing of shifty-eyed Kipper, who might still be lurking in some other parking lot with his twelve-centimeter knife looking for his missing money.

Anyway, it suited me to spend a day with Sophie, especially as Alice was departing back to her home in Surrey. Sadly, she was not going permanently but just to do some washing and to gather some different clothes.

“How about your job?” I asked her over breakfast.

I knew that she had taken a week’s holiday from her position as a local radio producer in Guildford, but her week was up.

“A few days more won’t worry them,” she said.

I made no fuss, even though I didn’t consider that her continued presence was really necessary. Maybe I could stand it for a few days more. But I was beginning to yearn for the time when Sophie had been in the hospital, when I didn’t have to make the bed every morning or put my dirty coffee cup immediately in the dishwasher, when I could walk around the house in my underwear and lie down flat on the sofa to watch football on the television, and when I could leave the seat up in the lavatory and burp and fart whenever I wanted to. In five months, I had got quite used to living on my own.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want Sophie at home. Of course I did, and I loved it. I just wasn’t so sure about her sister being here too. Alice was becoming not so much a domestic goddess, more of a domestic nightmare.

“How long is she coming back for?” I asked Sophie as we waved Alice away.

“Just a little bit longer, I think,” she replied. “Alice likes to feel that she’s in charge, and she thinks I still need a little more of her care. To be honest, though, I would be quite happy if she didn’t come back tonight.”

So would I, I thought. But Alice’s presence had at least made me feel a little better as Sophie had not been alone in the house when I’d been at work. I think Sophie herself felt the same way, and she had not objected much when Alice had announced her intention to come back.

We closed the front door and went back into the kitchen.

“I can’t believe I’ve been home a week already,” she said. “It seems like only yesterday I left the hospital.”

I thought it felt like a month, but I didn’t say so.

I went up to my office while Sophie puttered around in the kitchen, relishing being able to do things without Alice constantly offering help and advice.

I logged on to the Racing Post website and checked the declarations for Bangor-on-Dee races for Monday. It was good news. The short-priced favorite in the two-mile hurdle race for maidens was still running. As were the others I wanted.

Sophie came into my office with a cup of coffee for me.

“Thank you, my darling,” I said.

She stood behind me, stroking my shoulders and playing with my hair.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just checking the runners for tomorrow,” I said.

“Can I come with you to the races?” she said.

“Of course,” I said, pleased. “We’re going to Bangor tomorrow. It’s quite a long way, but you can come if you like. We’re at Southwell for the evening meeting on Tuesday and then the July Festival at Newmarket on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.”

“Are you staying in Newmarket?” she asked with slight concern.

“No chance,” I said. “Not at the prices the hotels charge during July week. The bloodstock sales are on too, don’t forget. The town is bursting with people. I’ll come home each night.”

She was relieved.“Good,” she said.“Maybe I’ll come to Southwell on Tuesday if the weather’s nice. I find there are too many people at Newmarket.”

“That would be lovely,” I said, meaning it. I shut down my computer. “Why don’t we go out to lunch?”

“What, now?” she said.

“Yes. Right now.”

“Great idea.” She smiled.

We went to the pub in the village of Avon Dassett where their specialty was sixty-four different ways to have pie. Sophie and I, however, opted not to go for a pie but for the Sunday roast lamb, which was delicious.

After lunch I drove the few miles to the Burton Dassett Hills Country Park, where I stopped the car on a ridge with a view all the way to Coventry and beyond.

And there we sat in the car while I told Sophie about my father.

I had lain awake for much of the night going over and over in my mind the secrets I had gleaned from my grandmother and weighing up whether I should tell Sophie anything just yet. It was true that she had been very well during her first week home from the hospital and hadn’t once accused me of drinking or being drunk, which, I knew from experience, was always the first sign that things weren’t quite right.

I had watched her carefully every morning to check that she swallowed her medication, but I was also painfully aware of how easily in the past her behavior had begun to change for the worse at times of stress or anxiety, and I desperately didn’t want to cause her either unnecessarily.

However, there was a real need in me for her to know the truth. I realized that I was bottling up my pain and my anger. I feared they would overwhelm me and cause an explosion in my head, the outcome of which in the long run might be more damaging both to Sophie and to me. I needed, perhaps selfishly, to share the knowledge in order to talk it through and ease the burden. Maybe I should have sought out one of the hospital psychiatrists to give me some therapy and treatment, but Sophie was the one I really wanted to provide me with the help I needed.

I started by telling her about my father’s sudden appearance at Ascot and the shock of finding that he hadn’t died in a car crash all those years ago as we had thought.

“That’s great,” she said. “You always wanted a father.”

But then I told her about him being stabbed in the racetrack parking lot and about him dying at the hospital. She was upset and deeply saddened, mostly on my behalf.

“But why was he stabbed?” she asked.

“I think it was a robbery that went wrong,” I said.

I considered that it was still prudent not to mention anything about microcoders, false passports or blue-plastic-wrapped bundles of cash. Best also, I thought, not to refer to my father’s black-and-red rucksack discovered by me in a seedy hotel in Paddington and subsequently collected from our home by his murderer.

“But you could have been killed,” she said, clearly shocked.

“I would have given the thief the money,” I said. “But my father told him to go to hell and kicked him in the balls. I think that’s why he was stabbed.”

She was a little reassured, but not much.

“But why didn’t you tell me about it straightaway?” she implored.

“I didn’t want to upset you just before the assessment,” I said in my defense. And she could see the sense in that. “But that’s not all, my love. Far from it.”

I told her about my mother and the fact that she hadn’t died in a car accident either. As gently as I could, I told her about Paignton Pier and how my mother had been found murdered on the beach beneath it.

“Oh, Ned,” she said, choking back the tears.

“I was only a toddler,” I said, trying to comfort her. “I have no memory of any of it. In fact, I don’t remember a single thing about my mother.” And, of course, Sophie had never known her.

“How did you find out?” she asked.

“The police told me,” I said. “They did a DNA check on him. It seems that everyone at the time thought my father had been responsible and that’s why he ran away, and also why Nanna and Grandpa made up the story of the car crash.”

“How dreadful for them,” she said.

“Yes, but it wasn’t actually that simple,” I said.

I went on to tell her about my mother’s pregnancy, and, eventually and carefully, I told her the whole story about the baby being my grandfather’s child and how it had been he who had strangled my mother to prevent anyone from finding out.

She went very silent for some time, as I held her hand across the car handbrake.

“But why, then, did your father go away?” she asked finally.

“He was told to,” I said.

“Who by?”

Sophie had once loved my grandparents as if they had been her own. Now I laid bare the awful story that my grandmother, our darling Nanna, had orchestrated the whole affair. She certainly had been responsible for me having had no father to grow up with and quite likely had been instrumental in my mother’s demise as well.

Sophie just couldn’t believe it.

“Are you absolutely sure?” she asked.

I nodded. “I found out most of it yesterday,” I said. “When I went to see her.”

“Did she tell you all this?” Sophie asked with a degree of skepticism.

“Yes,” I said.

“But how? She’s losing her marbles. Most days, she can’t remember what she had for breakfast.”

“She was quite lucid when I spoke with her yesterday,” I said.

“Surprisingly so, in fact. She couldn’t really remember who you were, but there was nothing much wrong with her memory of the events of thirty-six years ago.”

“Was she sorry?” Sophie asked.

“No, not really,” I said. “I think that’s what I found the hardest to bear.”

We sat together silently in the car for some while.

All around us were happy families: mums and dads with their children, running up and down the hills, chasing their dogs and flying their kites in the wind. All the things that normal people do on a Sunday afternoon.

The horrors were only inside the car, and in our minds.