Dick Francis's Gamble

“I told him I’d lose, but then I went and bloody won it,” he said.

“That was rather careless of you.”

“No, not really,” he said. “I did it on purpose. I was so fed up with that bastard Vickers overtaking me in the championship, I was trying to win on everything I rode. Fat lot of good it did me. I’ve come bloody second yet again.”

“So who was it that you told you’d lose the race?”

He thought for a moment.

“Sorry, mate,” he said. “I can’t tell you that. My f-ing life wouldn’t be worth tuppence.”

“Is he a bookie?” I asked.

“No,” he said with certainty. “He’s a bloody nob.”

I expect, to Billy, anyone who spoke the Queen’s English without a liberal scattering of swear words would be classed as a nob.

“Which nob in particular?” I asked.

“I’m not saying,” he said. “But even if I did you wouldn’t f-ing believe it.”

“And does this nob still want his hundred thousand?”

“I expect so,” he said. “That’s what he claims he lost because I won the race. But I haven’t actually talked to him since this little caper. Perhaps I’ll tell him to bugger off. A broken leg must be worth a hundred grand at least.”

“Tell him you’ll enlighten the cops as to the identity of your attacker if he doesn’t leave you alone.”

“Don’t be bloody naive,” he said. “These sort of guys don’t mess about. Telling him that would get me killed for sure.”

“Sounds to me like you’re in trouble if you do say who attacked you, and also if you don’t.”

“You are so right,” he said. “Once you say yes to them the first time, you’re bloody hooked for life. They’ve got you by the balls, and there’s no way out.” He leaned his head back against the white pillows, and I thought there were tears in his eyes.

“Billy,” I said. “There never will be a way out unless you fight back.”

“Well, count me out,” he said adamantly without moving. “I am not going to be first over-the-top to be shot down. I value my jockey’s license.”

“So how often have you stopped one?” I asked.

“Too bloody often,” he said.

I was surprised. Billy didn’t have a reputation as being a fixer.

“About ten times altogether, I suppose,” he said. “Spread over the past three years or so. But I decided there would be no more when Frank Miller broke his leg in December and I finally had the chance to be champion jockey.”

“But then young Mark Vickers pops up to beat you.”

“The bastard,” he said with feeling. “It’s not bloody fair.”

Life wasn’t fair, I thought. Ask anyone with cancer.

Jan Setter had already left for Uttoxeter races by the time I arrived back at her house at noon. I would have loved to have gone with her, but I was worried that my enemies might have seen us together and worked out where I was staying.

Claudia was beginning to think I was becoming paranoid, but I would rather be paranoid than dead. And I only had to mention the dead gunman for her to agree to almost anything.

“But how much longer do we need to stay here?” she asked. “I want to go home.”

“I do too, my darling,” I said. “We will go home just as soon as it is safe.”

I had asked Jan over breakfast how much longer we could stay.

“How long do you need?” she’d asked.

“I don’t know. Another few days at least.”

“I’ll need you out by next Friday at the latest,” she’d said. “I’ve got my sister and her family coming for the weekend.”

By next Friday we would have been here for eight nights.

“I sincerely hope it won’t be as long as that,” I’d said. But, in truth, I had no real idea when it might be safe to go home.

“That’s a shame,” Jan had said. “I’m quite enjoying the company. I get so bored here on my own since my divorce.”

I logged on to the Internet and checked my e-mails. There were none-it had to be the weekend. With the exception of dealings on foreign markets, which could extend the working week for a few hours at either end, all financial services in the UK usually went to sleep at five o’clock on a Friday afternoon and awoke again at eight on Monday morning, as if the weekend had never been.

Except, of course, for interest, which was charged daily on loans whatever day of the week it was.

I used online banking to check on my personal accounts.

Things might be going to get quite tight if I did lose my job at Lyall & Black. I had managed to save quite well over the previous five years, but much of it had been used to pay off the debts that I’d run up as a student.

Whilst I might regularly handle investments for others of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of pounds, my own nest egg was much more modest.

Historically, the stock market has always outperformed fixed-interest investments, such as bank accounts, certificates of deposit, and government bonds. However, stock markets are very susceptible to even minor changes in investor confidence and can fluctuate quite dramatically, especially downwards. For long-term investment, say over ten or twenty years or more, the stock market is considered to be the best, but if you need your money out sooner, the risk that the market may go down suddenly just before you need it would be too great and more lower- risk assets may be better. Consequently, as an investor gets older, and the time for buying a pension becomes nearer, the balance tends to move away from high-risk stocks and further towards the “safer” bonds.

In my case, with my expected pension requirement still a long way over the horizon, my savings were almost totally in equities. I would ride the stock market roller coaster but hope, and expect, the underlying trend to be upwards.

If I did get fired from my job, I might need to live off my savings for a while. And then what would I do? Billy had accused me of being boring, but it wasn’t me that was boring, I decided, it was my job. I needed more excitement in my life, more adrenaline rushing through my veins, but not necessarily due to having a silenced pistol pointed at me.

But what could I do? I was trained and qualified only to be a financial adviser. But what I wanted to be most was a jockey or a rodeo rider or a free-fall-skydiving instructor or a crocodile fighter or…

Bugger my dodgy neck.

My mother interrupted my depressing thoughts by asking me what I wanted for lunch.

“What have we got?” I asked.

“Jan said we can use whatever we want from the fridge or from the larder.”

“So what is there?” I said.

“Come and have a look.”

In truth, there wasn’t very much to choose from, just a few low-calorie meals-for-one in the freezer, with more bare shelves than anything in the larder. Old Mother Hubbard would have felt quite at home.

“Time to go shopping,” I said.

So the three of us piled into the unremarkable blue rental car and went to a huge supermarket on the outskirts of Newbury in order to fill the empty spaces in Jan’s fridge and larder. It was the least we could do as uninvited guests.

While Claudia and my mother went from aisle to aisle, loading two large trolleys with mountains of food, I was banished by them to the clothing section.

I browsed through the rails of shirts and trousers, jackets and suits, but, sadly, this particular supermarket didn’t stock bulletproof vests.