Even Money

7

It emits a radio signal,” said Luca in the car on the way to Ascot on Saturday morning. He was holding the black remote-type thing with the buttons. “You were bloody lucky this wasn’t stolen,” he added.

“Why would it be stolen?” I asked him.

“Because the teenagers at the electronics club are a bunch of hooligans,” he said.“Most of them are only there because the courts make them go. To keep them off the streets on Friday nights. Supposed to be part of their rehabilitation. I ask you… Most of them wouldn’t be rehabilitated by a stretch in the army.”

“But what about this?” I said, pointing at the device.

“One of the little horrors had it in his bag,” he said. “God knows what he thought he would do with it. Just liked the look of it so he lifted it. They are like bloody magpies. If it shines, they’ll steal it.”

“You said it emits a radio signal,” I said. “What sort of signal?”

“Fairly low frequency,” he said. “But quite powerful. One of the staff at the club was able to set up an oscilloscope to see it.”

“What’s an oscilloscope?” I asked.

“Like one of those things in a hospital that shows the heart rate of patients,” he said. “It displays a trace on a screen.”

“But what’s the thing for?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think it might be for writing information onto the RFIDs.”

“The glass grains?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “The end slides off.” He showed me. “And you can fit one of the grains into this hollow.” He pointed at it as I drove. “When you push the ENTER button, it sends out a signal. I think that must program the RFID with the numbers you punch into it before pushing the ENTER button.”

“Is that really possible?” I said. “There aren’t any connectors.”

“It’s easy,” he said. “Writing to RFIDs occurs all the time. When someone puts their Oyster card near one of those round yellow pads on the tube gates, the card is first scanned to determine the available credit, then the system automatically deducts the fare and rewrites the card with a new balance. Same thing on all the buses. It’s done by radio waves. It doesn’t need connectors.”

I was slightly disappointed. I had somehow hoped that the device was going to be more exciting than something that was fitted to every bus in London. But why, then, I wondered, did my father think it was necessary to hide it in his rucksack?

I yawned. Sleep had not come easily to me after my visit to my grandmother. I had lain awake for hours thinking about what she had said to me, and also how that secret must have burned ferociously in her for so long. What did you do when you found out that your son was a murderer? More to the point for me, what did you do when you found out that your father was one?

I thought back to when I had sat by my father’s body in the hospital after he had died. Was it really just four days previously? It felt like half a lifetime.

I had mourned for what might have been, for the lost years of opportunity. Somehow, even in spite of the knowledge I had gained since, I felt some form of affinity with the man who now lay silently in some mortuary’s cold storage. But what had he done? Had he really deprived me not only of himself but also of my mother, and a brother or sister as well?

I had tried to telephone Detective Sergeant Murray at Windsor Police Station, but I was told he was either elsewhere or off duty. I had left a message for him to call me, but, so far, there had been nothing.

“It’s the Wokingham today,” said Luca, rubbing his hands and bringing me back from my daydreaming.

“Sure is,” I said.

The Wokingham Stakes was the fourth race of the day on Royal Ascot Saturday, and it was one of the most lucrative races of the whole meeting for us bookmakers. It was also a popular race with the trainers, with the number of runners limited only by how many starting stalls could be accommodated across the width of the racetrack.

But it was not only a cash cow for the bookies, it was fun as well. While it was true that most bets tended to be smaller than for some of the group races, there were plenty of them, and it seemed like a happy race, with no one placing white-knuckle wagers that they couldn’t afford to lose.

Betsy went to sleep in the back and Luca looked through the Racing Post as I drove.

“Thirty runners again today,” he said. “They reckon here that Burton Bank will start favorite at about six- or seven-to-one.”

“Who trains him?” I asked.

“George Wiley,” Luca replied.

“Wiley trains in Cumbria, doesn’t he?” I said. “That’s quite a way to come. He must think he’s a good prospect. How about the others?”

Luca studied the paper. “About ten with a realistic chance, I’d say, but the Wokingham is always a bit of a lottery.” He smiled.

“How about the Golden Jubilee?” I asked. The Golden Jubilee Stakes was the big race of the day. Like the Wokingham, it was also run over a straight six furlongs and was for three-year-olds and upwards.

“Eighteen runners this year,” he said. “Pulpit Reader will probably be favorite, but, again, it’s anyone’s race. Always the same in the sprints.”

We discussed the afternoon’s races and runners for a while longer. I thought we would need the unpredictability of the Wokingham and the Golden Jubilee Stakes after the first two races of the day. The Chesham Stakes and the Hardwicke Stakes were both renowned for producing short-priced winners favoring the punter.

The previous day’s rain had swept away eastwards into the North Sea and the sun had returned, bringing out the Saturday crowd, which was streaming into the racetrack by the time we had negotiated the traffic jams and parked the car. It looked like being another busy day at the office.

Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn and Detective Sergeant Murray were waiting for me in the betting ring.

“That was quick,” I said to the sergeant before either of them could say a word.

“What was quick?” he asked.

“Didn’t you get my message?” I asked him.

“No,” he replied blankly.

“Oh,” I said. “I left one for you this morning at Windsor Police Station.”

“What did it say?” he asked.

“Just to call me,” I said.

“And what exactly did you want to speak to my sergeant about?” the chief inspector asked in his accusing tone.

“Nothing much,” I said. “Forget it.”

I had wanted to ask Sergeant Murray for more details about my mother’s demise, but I wasn’t going to ask his boss. I didn’t want to give the chief inspector the pleasure of refusing to answer, as I was certain he would.

“We need to ask you some more questions,” he said.

I hoped the questions weren’t about bundles of cash in a missing rucksack.

“What about?” I said. “Can’t it wait until after I’ve finished work?”

“No,” he said with no apology.

“Sorry, Luca,” I said. “Can you and Betsy set things up?”

“No problem,” Luca said.

The policemen and I wandered down away from the grandstand to a quieter area.

“Now, Chief Inspector,” I said, “how can I help you today?”

“Did your father tell you which hotel he was staying at in London?” he said.

“No,” I replied truthfully, “he did not.”

“We have been unable to find any hotel where someone called Grady or Talbot checked in,” he said.

“He told me that he’d only recently arrived from Australia, but not exactly when. Perhaps he arrived that morning and came straight to the Ascot races.”

“No, sir,” said the chief inspector. “British Airways have confirmed that he arrived from Australia on one of their flights, but that was the previous week.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but the first time he contacted me was on the day he died.”

“According to the airline, when he arrived at Heathrow, he had a piece of hold luggage with him,” the chief inspector said. “We have been unable to trace it. Did he give you anything? A luggage receipt, for example?”

“No,” I said, “I’m afraid not. He gave me nothing.”

Why, I wondered, didn’t I just tell them I had the luggage? And the money, and the other things. There was something that stopped me from doing so. Maybe it was a hope that my father was not, in fact, a murderer as everyone seemed to think, and the only chance I might ever have of finding out was somehow connected with the dubious contents of that rucksack. Or perhaps it was just down to my natural aversion towards policemen in general and Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn in particular.

“Do you have any further recollection of the person who attacked you?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said. “But I am sure he was a white man, aged somewhere in his mid to late thirties, wearing a charcoal-gray hoodie and a dark scarf. And he wore army boots.”

“How about his trousers?” the chief inspector asked.

“Blue jeans,” I said.

“A distinctive belt or buckle?” he said.

“Sorry, I didn’t see.”

“Any distinguishing marks, scars or so forth?”

“None that I could see,” I said, again truthfully. “I think he had fairish hair.”

“How could you tell if his hood was up?” asked the chief inspector.

“Thinking back, I believe I could see it under the hood.”

“Long or short?” he said.

“Short,” I said with certainty. “It stood upright on his head.”

“Mmm,” he said. “You didn’t say that on Tuesday night.”

“I hadn’t remembered on Tuesday night,” I said. Or seen it, I thought.

“Could you do an e-fit for us?” he asked.

“An ‘e-fit’?”

“A computer-made image of the killer,” he explained.

“So he did actually kill my father?” I said somewhat sarcastically. “The post-mortem results are in, are they?”

“Yes,” he said. “According to the pathologist, your father died from two stab wounds to his abdomen, one on each side of his navel. They were angled upwards, penetrating the diaphragm and puncturing both his lungs. It was a very professional job.” To my ears, it sounded like the chief inspector almost admired the technique employed. There was certainly no sorrow in his voice that it had resulted in the loss of my parent. To him, I suppose, a murderous villain had got his just desserts after thirty-six years on the run.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“About what?”

“My father,” I said. “Can there be a funeral? And how about any family he may have in Australia? Have they been informed?”

“I understand the Melbourne police have been to his home address,” he said. “They found no one there. It seems your father lived alone, under the name of Alan Grady.”

“But he told me he had two daughters from a previous marriage,” I said. “Has anyone told them?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” he said. His tone indicated that he didn’t consider it in the least important. And he might have been right. According to my father, even he hadn’t seen my sisters for fifteen years. They could be anywhere.

“How about the funeral?” I asked.

“That will be up to the coroner,” he said. “The inquest will be opened on Monday. You should have received a summons to attend by now.”

I thought about the pile of unopened letters on my hall table. The opening of my mail, or rather the lack of it, was another of my failings. On a par with failing to eat properly, or at all.

“Why do they need to summons me?” I said.

“For identification purposes,” he said. “You are the deceased’s next of kin.”

So I was, I thought. How strange to be next of kin when, for all my life, I hadn’t even known that I had any kin, other than my aged grandparents.

“But isn’t it a bit soon to hold an inquest?” I said.

“It will only be opened for formal identification of the deceased and then it will be adjourned to a later date,” the chief inspector said. “The coroner may issue a certificate for burial. But that will be up to him.”

Formal identification could be interesting, I thought. Talbot, Grady, or Van Buren, Willem.

“As next of kin, is it my job to organize the funeral?” I asked.

“Up to you,” he said. “It’s usual but not compulsory.”

“Right,” I said. I looked at my watch. “Is there anything else?”

“Not for now, Mr. Talbot,” said the chief inspector. “But don’t go anywhere.”

“Is that an official request?” I asked.

“You know, there’s something about you I don’t like,” he said.

“Perhaps you just don’t like bookmakers,” I said back.

“You are so right,” he said. “But there’s something else about you.” He jabbed his finger in my chest.

I thought he was trying to intimidate me, or perhaps he was hoping to provoke me into saying something I would regret. So I simply smiled at him.

“I can’t say I’m very fond of you either, Chief Inspector,” I said, staring him in the eye. “But I don’t suppose it will cloud the professional dealings between us, now will it?”

It certainly would, I thought. At least, it would on my side.

He didn’t answer the question but turned on his heel and started to walk away. But he only went three paces before turning and coming back.

“Don’t pick a fight with me, Mr. Talbot,” he said, his face about six inches from mine. “Because you’ll lose.”

I decided that silence here was the best policy.

Eventually, he turned again and walked off.

“Be careful, Mr. Talbot,” the detective sergeant said to me in a more friendly tone. “He doesn’t like to be crossed.”

“He started it,” I said in my defense.

“Just take the warning,” he said seriously.

“I will,” I said. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

“And I’d also watch my back, if I were you,” he said.

“Surely Chief Inspector Llewellyn is not that malicious?” I said jokingly.

“No, not quite,” he said with a smile. “But I was really thinking about the man who killed your father. You were a witness to that, don’t forget. I just wouldn’t walk down any dark alleys alone at night, that’s all. Witnesses to murders are an endangered species.” The smile had left his face. He was deadly serious.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” I said again. “I’ll take that warning too.”

He nodded, and set off to follow the detective chief inspector.

“Just a minute,” I called after him. “Do you happen to know where my mother was murdered?”

He stopped and came back. “Where?” he said.

“Yes,” I replied. “Where did she die? And when?”

“Thirty-six years ago,” he said.

“Yes, but when exactly? What date? And where was she found?”

“I’ll have a look,” he said. “Can’t promise anything, but I’ll read the file.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He went off, hurrying to catch up with his boss, leaving me to wonder if my father’s killer knew who I was, and how to find me.

What was all that about?” asked Luca when I went back to our pitch.

“Tuesday,” I said.

“What exactly happened on Tuesday?” he asked.

“I got mugged,” I said, repeating my original story.

“Those two coppers have been here now to see you twice,” he said. “Come on, don’t tell me it was just because someone mugged a bookie. What else?”

“Well,” I said, “you know about the murder in the parking lot?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Of course.” Everyone was still talking about it.

“It seems the man who mugged me might have been the killer.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s all right, then.” He seemed relieved.

“What do you mean ‘all right’?” I cried, exasperated. “He could have killed me too, you know.”

“Yeah,” he said.“But he didn’t.” He smiled.“Betsy and I reckoned you must be in some sort of trouble with the law.”

“Oh thanks,” I said sardonically. “Such confidence you have in your provider.”

As predicted, the first two races, the Chesham and the Hardwicke Stakes, were each won by the favorite.

“That was fine by us,” said Luca into my ear after the second. “We had that laid at better odds, so, for a change, the favorite’s done us a favor.”

“Well done,” I said back to him. “Now for the fun and games.”

Betting on the Golden Jubilee Stakes was brisk, with queues of eager punters forming in front of me wanting to hand over their money. As Luca had expected, Pulpit Reader was established as the market leader, but at odds of four-to-one or better. The race was wide open, and the market reflected it.

“Fifty on Pulpit,” said the man in front of me.

“Fifty on number five at fours,” I said to Luca, who pushed his keypad. I took the ticket from the printer and handed it to the man.

“What price number sixteen?” asked A.J., the next man in the queue, who was sporting today a rather traditional gray vest under his expansive black jacket.

Our electronic board was not big enough to have all the runners displayed at once.

“Horse sixteen?” I said to Luca.

“Thirty-threes,” he said back.

“Tenner each way,” A.J. said, pushing a twenty-pound note towards me.

The ticket duly appeared from the printer.

And so it went on. Mostly smallish bets of ten or twenty pounds or so. A wager on the Golden Jubilee was more for entertainment than for making serious money.

We were still taking bets as the race started. A young woman in a black-and-white dress with a matching wide-brimmed hat was my last customer, thrusting a ten-pound note my way even as the horses were passing the five-furlong pole. “Ten pounds to win on horse number five, please,” she implored breathlessly from somewhere beneath her headgear. I took her money and issued the ticket.

“No more,” I said, but there were no more. Everyone was watching the race, most of them on one of the big-screen TVs set up opposite the grandstand.

The Golden Jubilee Stakes is the British leg of the Global Sprint Challenge, and, consequently, it attracts horses from overseas. It was an American horse on this occasion that broke away from the pack in the final furlong to win by more than a length. The crowd were unusually hushed. Pulpit Reader, number five, could only finish fourth. The young woman in black and white had enjoyed less than a minute’s run for her money, which would now remain firmly in my pocket.

People gamble for many reasons but it is always, ultimately, the thrill of the win that gives them the “high” they crave. The professional gamblers-those few who can make their living from betting on the horses-would say that it is all about long-term returns, not short-term thrills, but even they would have to admit to having an extra burst of adrenaline running through their veins during a close finish involving one of their selections.

For most, gambling is for recreation rather than remuneration. It adds to their enjoyment of a day at the races. Some of my clients thought they’d had a really good day if they backed a couple of winners, even if their wagers on other losers had cost them more than their winnings. The delight of a win banished the memories of the losses.

Bookmakers, I suppose, would have to be placed in the “professional gambler” bracket. Bookmaking is a business, and solid, regular returns, rather than sharp peaks and troughs, are the aim. Nevertheless, it still gave me a thrill to be able to keep the young woman’s ten-pound note, especially when she had been so eager to place the bet even after the horses had started running. I suppose, to be honest, no one becomes a bookmaker unless they have at least a touch of Schadenfreude in them. After all, unlike for stockbrokers or investment-portfolio managers, it was my clients’ misfortune that made me richer.

Next up was the thirty-runner Wokingham Stakes, and that was even more of a lottery than the Golden Jubilee.

The race was always like a cavalry charge, flat out for three-quarters of a mile, from the starting stalls along the straight to the winning post. It is also a handicap, which means that the better-rated horses have to carry the most weight as determined by the handicapper, whose aim and dream it is that all the runners will finish in one huge dead heat. Wins by favorites have been rare, and rank outsiders have often claimed the prize.

Again, betting was brisk, with money spread fairly evenly on both the short-priced favorites and on the outsiders alike. Historically, there were very few pointers that helped the discerning punter in this race. Often in sprints, one side of the track seems to produce more winners than the other, and the number of the starting stall a horse was drawn in could be a good indicator of its chances. However, over the years, the draw in the sprint races at Ascot typically hadn’t proved to be much of a factor with winners of the Wokingham Stakes coming from all across the track.

Nearly every punter has some system or another that he swears by, even if it’s closing his eyes and sticking a pin into the list of runners on the race card. Some will never back mares or fillies in races with colts on all-weather surfaces, while others avoid short-priced favorites in handicaps. Some follow a particular jockey or a trainer with a proven record, while others will trust their cash only on horses that have run and placed within the last seven days.

In general, those punters who do the best are the ones who are disciplined and who study the form. Disciplined insofar as they record everything, don’t go mad on hunches and don’t panic when they have a losing streak, as they surely will.

The most successful are those who know almost every horse in training. And they study the races every day. They learn, over time, which horses run consistently to form and which do not. They discover which horses prefer right-handed tracks and which do better left-handed, which jumpers like long run-ins and which short, and whether they are more likely to win with uphill finishes or flat ones. They know if a horse runs above or below par on firm or soft ground, and also what weight suits a particular horse and whether to keep away from it in handicaps when it’s rated too highly. They know where each horse is trained, if it runs badly after long journeys in a horsevan and even if a particular horse tends to do better than its rivals in sunshine or the rain.

Too much information, some might say, but the discerning punter soon learns which pieces of the jigsaw are the crucial ones. Horse racing is not a science, and there will always be surprises, but, over time, just like human athletes, good horses run well and bad horses don’t.

Making a profit from gambling on horses involves identifying those occasions when the offered odds for a horse to win are better than the true probability of that outcome. So if the knowledgeable punter calculates that the chances of a horse winning a particular race are, say, one in two, and the odds offered by a bookmaker are better than evens, that is the time to bet.

In 1873, Joseph Jagger famously broke the bank at Monte Carlo by discovering and exploiting a bias in the casino’s roulette wheel, which made some numbers come up more often than others. These days, no one can seriously improve their chances of winning a lottery jackpot by simply studying how often the numbered balls have come out of the machines on prior occasions because so much effort goes into ensuring that the draw is completely random and unpredictable. But, in horse racing, if previous form was not a fair indicator of future performance, then there would be no bookmakers, and probably no racing. Certainly there would not be British Thoroughbred racing as we know it, with over five million people per year attending race meetings and some seventeen thousand racehorses in training.

“Ten each way on Burton Bank,” said a man in front of me.

“Ten pounds each way number two at seven-to-one,” I called to Luca over my shoulder.

I took the man’s twenty-pound note and gave him the ticket in return. “Ten pounds each way” meant ten pounds on the horse to win and ten on it to place. In British racing, in a handicap with over sixteen runners, a place bet would pay out if the horse finished somewhere in the first four.

The next person in the queue was the young woman in the black-and-white dress and matching wide-brimmed hat.

“Ten pounds each way on number eleven,” she said, tilting her head up so she could see me and I could see her. She was gorgeous.

“Ten each way number eleven at sixteens,” I called to Luca.

The ticket appeared, and I handed it over. “Better luck this time,” I said to her.

She looked slightly taken aback that I had spoken to her, and she even blushed a little, her cheeks showing pink against her monochrome outfit. “Thank you,” she said, taking the ticket and hurrying away. I watched her go.

“Do you take a forecast?” said the next man in line, bringing my attention back to business.

“No,” I said. “Win or each way only.”

He turned away. A “forecast” is a bet that predicts the first two finishers in a race. A “straight forecast” meant the first two in the correct order, and was known in the United States as an “exacta.” There are lots of multiple bets, from simple doubles or trebles, when all selections have to win, to others, with such strange names such as Trixie, Yankee, Canadian, Patent or Lucky 15, that contain multiple singles, doubles and trebles on three, four or five horses running in different races. We didn’t accept any of them because it became too complicated and too time-consuming. We left those to the betting shops and the big boys. Luca was keener to take them than me, but our regular betting ring customers would go elsewhere if we kept them waiting longer than the next guy.

Betting became fast and furious as the race time approached. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to have a bet on the Wokingham. A probable long-odds winner was encouraging everyone to have a punt, and the wad of notes in my hand grew steadily as the minutes ticked by to the start.

Burton Bank was just about holding his favoritism at seven-to-one, although there were two other horses whose prices had shortened to fifteen-to-two.

“Twenty pounds to win on Burton Bank,” said my next customer, a young man in morning dress.

“Twenty to win number two at sevens,” I said over my shoulder to Luca.

“Bloody hell,” he replied. “The Internet’s gone down again.”