Even Money

4

Sophie was still cross when I went to see her, but at least she was speaking to me, albeit with thinly disguised anger.

It was after eight by the time I made it to the hospital near Hemel Hempstead.

“I thought you weren’t coming again,” she said with a degree of accusation.

“I said I would come,” I said, smiling at her and trying to lighten the atmosphere. “And here I am, my darling.”

“What have you done to your eye?” she demanded.

“Silly, really,” I said. “I caught it on the corner of the kitchen cupboard, you know, the one by the fridge.” We had both done it before, often, though neither of us had actually cut ourselves in the process.

“Were you drunk?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “I was not. I was making tea. To be precise, I was getting the milk out.”

I leaned down to give her a kiss, and she made a point of smelling my breath. Finding no trace of the demon drink, she relaxed somewhat and even smiled at me.

“You should be more careful,” she said.

“I’ll try,” I replied, smiling back at her.

“Have you had a good day?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Particularly good. All six favorites lost, and we recouped the entire amount of yesterday’s losses and then some.” I decided against mentioning anything about my visit from a detective chief inspector of police or the discovery that my father had murdered my mother.

“Good,” she said, sounding genuinely pleased.

We sat together in armchairs in front of the television in what might have been a normal domestic situation if not for the multiadjustable hospital bed in the corner of the room and the white-smock-uniformed male nurse who brought us in a tray of coffee, together with Sophie’s medication.

“Good evening, Mr. Talbot,” the nurse said to me. “Glad you could make it tonight.” He smiled. “Your wife was so disappointed yesterday, as were we all.”

He gave the impression that I was being officially told off, which I probably was. Sophie’s treatment relied heavily on having a steady routine with no surprises.

“Good evening, Jason,” I said to the nurse, smiling back and resisting the temptation to make excuses. Now was neither the time nor the place.

“My, what have you done to yourself?” he said, looking at my face.

“Head-butted our kitchen cabinet,” I said.

Jason raised his eyebrows in a questioning Oh yes, pull the other one fashion.

“We do it all the time,” said Sophie, coming to my aid. “We ought to get that cupboard moved.”

Jason relaxed and seemed satisfied that my black eye was accidental.

“The guest suite is available if you want to stay,” he said with a smile, his admonishment for yesterday’s absence clearly over.

“Thank you,” I said, “but I can’t. I need to go home and change.” I also decided against explaining that I had worn exactly the same clothes for two days running and why. “But I can stay for a while longer.”

Sophie and I watched the television news together before I departed into the night and the road to Kenilworth, and home.

Our house was a 1950s-built, three-bedroom semidetached in what was still called Station Road, although the railway station to which it referred had closed down in the 1960s. The previous owners had transformed the postage-stamp-sized front garden into an off-road parking space, and I gratefully pulled my Volvo into it at ten minutes to midnight.

As usual, the house was cold and lonely. Even on a midsummer’s day it rarely could be described as warm or cozy. It was as if, somehow, the very bricks and mortar were aware of the daily sadness and despair experienced by the occupants within.

Sophie and I had moved here from a rented one-bedroom over-shop flat soon after our wedding. Her parents hadn’t approved of the union. They were God-fearing Methodists who believed that bookmakers were agents of the Devil. So it felt as if we were both orphans, but we didn’t care. We were in love and we only needed each other.

The house in Station Road was the first home we had owned and we knew it would be a struggle. The mortgage company loan had been to their utmost limit, and, at first, Sophie had worked in the evenings behind the bar at the local pub in order to help meet the repayments. I had toiled six days a week on the Midlands racetracks, and, quite quickly, we were able to pay down the mortgage to a more manageable level where we could spend more time together at home.

I had always wanted children, and I soon made mental plans to turn the smallest bedroom into a nursery. Perhaps it was the pain of having endured a largely abandoned and unhappy childhood that had made me so keen to nurture the next generation. Not that my grandparents hadn’t been loving and caring. They had. But they had also been somewhat distant and secretive. Now I knew why.

“How could God have taken Mummy and Daddy to heaven?” I had constantly asked my grandmother, who, of course, had no answer to give me. Now I discovered that it had been my father, not God, who had been responsible for my mother’s death, and he, far from going to heaven, had gone to Australia. The car crash story had been as convenient as it was untrue.

In spite of her longing for a child, Sophie’s illness had soon put our family plans on hold.

All had seemed fine until, one night, I woke to find her side of our bed empty. It was half past three in the morning, and I could hear her somewhere downstairs, singing loudly, so I went to investigate.

She was in the kitchen and had clearly been there for quite a while. Every shelf and cupboard had been emptied, their contents stacked both on the kitchen table and on the floor, and she had been cleaning.

She had seen me come into the room but had carried on singing even louder than before. She simply couldn’t stop. And so it had gone on all night and into the following day. I couldn’t reason with her. Eventually, in desperation and fear, I had called the doctor.

This manic state had lasted for nearly a week, with her spending much of the time in bed asleep and heavily sedated. When awake, she had hardly stopped talking or singing, and she was greatly irritated when interrupted.

And then, almost as quickly, she had dived into a deep depression, refusing to eat and blaming herself for all the ills of the world. It was irrational and obsessive behavior, but she believed it absolutely. Sedatives were exchanged for antidepressants, and for a while we didn’t seem to know whether she was going up or down.

Mental illness can be very frightening, and I was utterly terrified. Physical disease usually manifests itself with visible symptoms-a rash, a fever or a swelling. And there is nearly always some pain or discomfort to which the patient can point and describe.

However, a sickness of the mind, and its function, has no such easy-to-understand physical indicators. Sufferers appear just as they did before the disorder hit, and often, as in Sophie’s case, have no comprehension that they are ill. To them, their behavior appears quite normal and logical. It is everyone else who’s mad for even suggesting they need psychiatric help in the first place.

The plans for a family that I had initially placed on hold had, by now, been well and truly switched off. The little bedroom, which had long ago become my office and storeroom, would, it seemed, never contain a cot and teddy bears, at least not while Sophie and I owned the house.

It was not just that Sophie was too often ill to look after a child, it was also the risk that a pregnancy would cause an upset to her hormones that could tip her over entirely into a void from which she would never recover. Postnatal depression can severely debilitate even the sanest of mothers, so what might it do to Sophie? And even though a professor of psychiatry had told us it wasn’t likely, there was some evidence to suggest that manic depression could be a hereditary condition. I was wary of creating a manic-depressive child. For ten years I had witnessed the destruction from within of a bubbly, lively and fun-loving young woman. I didn’t relish the thought of the same thing happening to my children.

I supposed I still loved Sophie, although after five months of medically enforced separation I was sometimes unsure. It was true that, during those months, there had occasionally been some good moments, but they had been rare, and mostly we existed in limbo, our lives on pause, waiting for someone to push the PLAY button if things improved.

We had definitely been dealt a bum hand in life. Sophie’s parents, typically and loudly, had blamed me for their daughter’s illness, while I silently blamed them back for rejecting her over her choice of husband. The doctors wouldn’t say for sure if that had been a factor in her illness, but it certainly hadn’t helped.

Alice, Sophie’s younger sister, constantly said I was a saint to stick by her all these years. But what else could I do? It wasn’t her fault she was ill. What sort of husband would desert his wife in her time of need? “In sickness and in health,” we had vowed, “until death us do part.” Perhaps, I thought, death would indeed be the only way out of this nightmare.

I shook myself out of these morbid thoughts, let myself into the house and went straight to bed.

Thursday at Royal Ascot is Gold Cup Day. It is also known as “Ladies Day,” when the female of the species preens herself in her best couture under an extravagant hat she wouldn’t be seen dead in at any other time or place.

This particular Thursday the sun had decided to play the game, and it was shining brightly out of a clear blue sky. The champagne flowed and seafood lunches were being consumed by the trawlerload. All was set for a spectacular day of racing. Even I, a cynical bookie, was looking forward to it all with hope and expectation for another bunch of long-priced winners.

“Didn’t walk into another door, then?” asked Larry Porter as he set up his pitch next to ours.

“No,” I replied. “No doors in the parking lot last night.”

He grinned at me. “And all that cash yesterday.” He rubbed his hands. “Fancy trying to rob you on Tuesday when you’re broke, then let you off yesterday with bulging pockets. Bloody mad.”

“Yes,” I said quietly, wondering once again if it really had been an attempted robbery in the first place.

“Let’s hope we have bulging pockets again today,” Larry said, still smiling.

“Yes,” I said again, my mind still elsewhere.

Larry Porter and I could not be properly described as friends. In truth, I didn’t have any friends amongst my fellow bookmakers. We were competitors. Many punters believed that there was an ongoing war between them and the bookies, but, in fact, the really nasty war was between the bookmakers themselves. Not only did we fight for the custom of the general public, we fought hardest and dirtiest amongst ourselves, betting and laying horses, doing our utmost to get one over on our neighbors. There was very little love lost between us and, whereas Larry had been genuinely concerned that I had been mugged in the parking lot, it was more because he saw a danger to himself than out of compassion for any injury or loss that I had sustained.

Many in the racing industry, both privately and publicly, called all bookmakers “the enemy.” They accused us of taking money out of racing. But we were only making a living, just like them. They too bought their fancy cars and enjoyed their foreign holidays, and what was that if it wasn’t “taking money out of racing”? The big firms, although no friends of mine, spent millions of their profits on race sponsorship, and we all paid extra tax on gambling profits on top of the “levy,” a sum that was also taken from bookmakers’ profits and put back into racing via the Horserace Betting Levy Board.

The betting levy provided more than half the country’s total race prize money, as well as contributing to the cost of the dope testing, the patrol cameras and the photo-finish systems. Plenty of the trainers hated all bookmakers with a passion, but they still bet with them, and they couldn’t seem to see that the future of racing, and consequently their own futures, relied totally on the public continuing to gamble on the horses.

“Larry,” I said, “did your Internet go down just before the last race on Tuesday?”

“I believe it did,” he said. “But it happens all the time. You know that.”

“Yes,” I said. “But did you know that all the mobile phones went off at the same time?”

“Did they indeed,” he said. “Anyone hit?”

“Not that I know of,” I replied.

“I’ll bet there was quite a queue at the pay phone on the High Street,” he said with a laugh. There was a public telephone just outside the racetrack, one of the few remaining now that everyone seemed to have a mobile.

“Yeah,” I said, joining in with his amusement, “I bet you’re right.”

Business was brisk in the run-up to the first race. As always when there was a really big crowd, many punters liked to place all their bets for the whole day before the first so that they didn’t have to relinquish their viewing spots between races. Acquiring seats in the Royal Enclosure viewing area on the fourth floor of the grandstand was as difficult as obtaining a straight answer from a politician. Once secured, they were not given up lightly.

Consequently, we were taking bets for all races, able to quote our odds thanks to the prices offered on the Internet gambling sites, where bets would have been made all morning. Again, it was the computer running the show, with us humans at its beck and call.

“What did that copper want yesterday afternoon?” Betsy asked me.

“Just a few more questions about getting mugged on Tuesday,” I replied matter-of-factly. Even though I had initially asked Betsy to take over for just a few minutes, I had actually left her and Luca for the whole of the last race. They had also had to pack up all our equipment on their own while I had spoken with Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn for well over an hour. But it was not often that a man discovers that his mother was murdered by his father.

I thought back to what the detective chief inspector had told me.

“Your mother was strangled,” he’d said. It had turned me icy cold on one of the hottest days of the year.

“But how do you know that my father was responsible?” I’d asked him.

“Well,” he’d said, “it seems it was suspected when he suddenly disappeared at the same time. According to the records, some people thought he must have killed himself as well, though no body was ever found, of course. But the DNA match has proved it.”

“How?” I asked, although I was dreading the answer.

“Your mother apparently scratched her attacker, and his skin was found under her fingernails. At the time of the murder, DNA testing wasn’t available but the evidence samples were kept. During a cold-case review about five years ago, a DNA profile of the killer was produced and added to the national DNA database. As we have now discovered, it matches your father exactly.” He had said it in a very deadpan manner, unaware of the torment such knowledge was creating in my head.

In less than a single twenty-four-hour period, I had first met my father and realized that I was not the orphan I thought I had been for the past thirty-seven years, watched helplessly while my newfound parent was fatally stabbed, and, finally, discovered that he had been nothing more than a callous murderer, the killer of my mother. It wasn’t my father’s life that was the soap opera, it was mine.

“Do they have any idea who did it?” asked Betsy, suddenly bringing me back from my daydreaming.

“Did what?” I asked.

“The mugging, stupid.”

“Oh,” I said. “No, I don’t think so. They didn’t say so anyway.”

“Probably some kids,” she said. She was little more than a kid herself. “Larking about.”

I didn’t think that murder was exactly larking about, but I decided not to say so. Family secrets were best kept that way-secret.

The afternoon seemed to slip by without me really noticing. Luca had to keep reminding me to pay attention to our customers.

“For God’s sake, Ned,” he shouted in my ear, “get the bloody things right.” He exchanged yet another inaccurate ticket. “What’s wrong with you today?”

“Nothing,” I replied. But I felt lousy, and my mind was elsewhere.

“Could have fooled me,” he said. “You never normally make mistakes.”

I did, but I was usually more expert at covering them up. “Sophie’s not good,” I said. It was the easy excuse. Luca knew all about Sophie’s condition. I may have wanted to keep it a secret, even from him, but that had been impossible over the years. Too often I had been forced to take days off work in order to be with her. Luca Mandini was a licensed bookmaker in his own right, and he’d often covered for me, first with a friend and, more recently, with Betsy, who could hardly conceal her excitement when she knew I would be away.

“Sorry,” Luca said. He never asked for details. He seemed almost embarrassed. “Bloody hell,” he suddenly shouted.

“What is it?” I asked, alarmed.

“Internet’s gone down again,” he said, stabbing his keyboard with his finger.

I looked at my watch. A little less than five minutes to go before the Gold Cup was due to start.

“How about the phones?” I asked him, turning around.

He was already pushing the buttons on his mobile.

“Nothing,” he said, looking up at me. “No signal. Same as before.”

I turned and looked around the betting ring at the other bookmakers, especially those to my right along the Royal Enclosure rail. Outwardly, there appeared to be no sense of alarm. Business was being carried on as usual. I could see a few of the boys from the big outfits pushing buttons on their phones with no success. One or two of them dashed away to seek other forms of communication with their head offices, and the man from the Press Association who was responsible for setting the starting prices had come down from his place in the stands to look at the bookies’ boards. No Internet connection also meant he didn’t get the necessary information directly to his computer screen.

“Two monkeys, six horse,” said a punter in front of me.

A “monkey” was betting slang for five hundred pounds, two monkeys was a thousand, or a grand. It was a fair-sized bet, and bigger than most, but, over the year, we took lots of bets of a thousand pounds or more, so it was not that unusual. However, I took a careful look at my customer. Was it a coincidence, I wondered, that our biggest bet of the day was laid just seconds after the Internet and the phones went off?

There was nothing about the man that made me think that he was up to no good. He was a regular racegoer, with a white shirt open at the neck and fawn chinos. I didn’t recognize him as one of the regular boys from the big outfits, but I would know him again, I made sure of that.

I glanced up at our board as I relieved him of the bundle of fifty-pound notes he held out to me. Horse number six, Lifejacket, was quoted at four-to-one.

“Four thousand-to-one thousand on horse six,” I said over my shoulder. “OK with you, Luca?”

There was a pause while Luca consulted with his digital mate.

“We’ll take it at seven-to-two,” he said slowly.

“Seven-to-two,” I said to the man in the white shirt and chinos.

“OK,” he said. He didn’t seem to mind the change in odds.

“A grand at seven-to-two, horse number six,” I said.

Luca pushed the computer keys, and the ticket popped out of the printer. I gave it to the man, who moved on to Larry Porter and appeared to make another bet there.

“A grand on six at fours,” shouted Luca. He was laying the bet with Norman Joyner, another bookmaker whose pitch was in the line behind us, and he was trying to do so at a better price than we had just offered to the man. But Norman was wise to his attempt.

“Hundred-to-thirty,” Norman called back. The price offered on horse number six was rapidly on its way down.

“OK,” said Luca. “I’ll take it.”

There was no money passed, no ticket issued. Norman Joyner was a regular on the Midlands tracks where we did most of our business, and while none of us may have actually been friends, one bookmaker’s word to another was still his bond.

“Internet still down?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Yup,” said Luca.

There was beginning to be a touch of panic in the ring. Technicians from the company that provided the Internet links were running around in circles, seemingly not knowing where to look for a solution. Frowns on the faces of those from the betting office chains reflected their concern that something was “afoot.”

“Fifty pounds on Brent Crude,” said a voice in front of me.

I looked down. “Hi, A.J.,” I said, noticing the fancy blue-and-yellow-striped vest he was wearing. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“Fifty on Brent Crude,” A.J. repeated.

“Fifty pounds to win number one,” I said over my shoulder, glancing at our prices board, “at fifteen-to-eight.” There was considerable surprise in the tone of my voice.

The ticket appeared and I passed it over.

“They’re off,” said the race commentator over the public-address system, announcing the start of the race.

“It’s back,” said Luca. “Now, is that a coincidence or what?”

“Phones too?” I asked.

“Yup.” He repeatedly pushed the buttons.

No coincidence, surely.

Lifejacket, horse number six, finished third in a close race with the second horse, both of them ten lengths behind the winner, number one, Brent Crude, the favorite, who was returned at the surprisingly long odds of fifteen-to-eight, or nearly two-to-one. Brent Crude had been the real class horse in the race, with every newspaper and TV pundit singing his praises. He had been expected to start at evens at best, and quite likely at odds-on.

“I reckon there’s been a bit of manipulating of the starting price going on here,” said Luca with a huge grin. “Serves them right.”

“Who?” said Betsy.

“The big-chain bastards,” I said to her.

Luca nodded laughing. “I think someone has been playing them at their own game.”

“What do you mean?” asked Betsy.

“Someone has managed to stop the big companies from contacting their staff on the racetrack to make bets with us.”

“So?” she said, clearly none the wiser.

“So someone has been placing largish bets on several horses,” I said, “to shorten their odds, which would, in turn, lengthen the price on the favorite.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Betsy.

“Suppose,” I said, “that really large bets were being placed in the betting shops on Brent Crude, all of them at the official starting price, then the shops wouldn’t have been able to contact their staff to get them to bet on him on the course and shorten his price.”

“It must have driven them bonkers in the shops to see the starting price lengthen,” said Luca, “just when they wanted it to shorten. All their big bets would have been at the starting price whether they were part of the scam or not.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” asked Betsy.

“Probably,” I said. “But the big companies are forever controlling the starting prices. I think they just got a taste of their own medicine.”

“It’s almost certainly illegal to interrupt communications,” said Luca. “But I think it’s brilliant.”

“But how can they do that?” asked Betsy.

“What?” I said.

“Disrupt all the phones.”

“I know it can be done,” Luca said. “I saw it on a television program. They used an electronic jammer. The police can do it too. I know that. When there was a bomb scare at Aintree one year, they shut down all the phone systems, left everyone completely stranded. Perhaps this was the same thing, but I doubt it. We would be evacuating the racetrack by now.”

“How did the prices change in the last few minutes before the off?” I asked him.

He consulted his microprocessing friend.

“Lifejacket came right in from four-to-one to two-to-one,” he said. “Five other horses tightened as the race approached, but Brent Crude drifted all the way from even money to fifteen-to-eight. He was very nearly not even the favorite.”

“That’s a lot,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Luca, “but there was a whisper in the ring that he was sweating badly in the paddock. Colic was even mentioned.”

I knew, I’d heard the talk. “Was it true?” I said.

“Dunno,” he said, grinning again. “I doubt it.”