5
There was an unusual feeling of bonhomie amongst the bookies in the ring as we waited to see who had been taken to the cleaners. Except, that is, for the on-course teams from the big outfits, who had been as much in the dark as the rest of us and who would, no doubt, carry the blame for something over which they had had no control.
Rumors abounded, most of which were false, but by the end of the day there was pretty strong evidence that all the big boys had been hit to some extent. That was, if they ever paid out. Bookmakers in general, and the betting shop chains in particular, didn’t like losing and were quick to refuse to honor bets. They seemed to believe that fixing the starting prices was their right and privilege, and theirs alone.
From our own point of view, it hadn’t made a whole lot of difference. I had taken two large bets of a thousand pounds each, with quite a few smaller ones following as punters chased the big money. Three-quarters of that had been laid by Luca with other bookies as their prices had tumbled, and he had laid a little more on the Internet during the actual running of the race. Both the horses that had been heavily backed with us had lost, of course, whilst we had taken only a very few last-minute wagers on the favorite on which we’d had to pay out, including that fifty pounds to win from A.J. Most of the bets with us on Brent Crude had been taken earlier in the day when his price had been even money, not fifteen-to-eight. Unlike the betting shops, we always paid out at the price offered at the time of the bet and not on the starting price. A satisfactory result all around, I thought. And a bloody nose to the bullies to boot. Now, that was a real bonus.
Luca, Betsy and I were still in good spirits as we packed up for the day after the last. There had been no repeat of the earlier excitement, but the betting ring was still buzzing.
“A great day for the little man,” said Larry Porter.
“They’ll cry foul, you know,” said Norman Joyner from behind me.
“Probably,” Larry agreed. “But it’ll make them uncomfortable, and it’s fun while it lasts.”
“They might want to change the system,” I said.
“Not a chance,” Norman said. “The current system lets them do whatever they like with the odds. Except today, of course. They will probably now demand more security for their communications.”
“Give them carrier pigeons,” I said, laughing.
“Then the fixers will have shotguns to shoot them down,” said Larry. “Where there’s a will, they’ll find a way.”
In the First World War, British soldiers were mentioned in dispatches for shooting down the enemy’s carrier pigeons. Reliable communications had always been the key to success, one way or the other.
Luca and I hauled the trolley up the slope to the grandstand and then on through to the High Street outside. Betsy carried our master, the computer, in its black bag.
“No drinks at the bandstand bar tonight?” I said to them.
“No,” said Luca. “We’re going straight from here to a birthday party.”
“Not either of yours?” I said in alarm, thinking I had missed it.
“No,” he said, smiling. “Betsy’s in March and mine was last week.”
So I had missed it. “Sorry,” I said.
“No problem,” he said. “Wouldn’t know when yours was either.”
No, I thought. It wasn’t something I advertised. Not for any good reason, but because my private life was just that-private.
“Millie, my kid sister, she’s twenty-one today,” said Betsy. “Big family party tonight.”
“I hope you have fun,” I said. “Wish Millie a happy twenty-first from me.”
“Thanks,” she said warmly. “I will.”
I thought about my own kid sisters in Australia and wondered if anyone had told them yet that their father was dead.
Luca, Betsy and I made it to the parking lot, on this occasion unmolested, and we loaded our gear into the capacious Volvo station wagon. Then they both started to move away.
“Don’t you need a lift?” I said to them.
“No thanks,” said Luca. “Not tonight. We’ll take the train from here to Richmond. That’s where the party is.”
“Look,” I said to him, “I fancy giving it a miss tomorrow. I could do with a day off. What do you think? You’re welcome to work with Betsy if you want.”
Even though I paid Luca and Betsy a salary as my assistants, they made easily as much again from sharing the profits, assuming there were some profits. Over the last couple of days we had far more than recouped our losses from Tuesday, and the days at Royal Ascot were some of our busiest of the year.
“What about the stuff?” he said, nodding towards my car. “We planned to stay at Millie’s place tonight. In Wimbledon.”
Luca and Betsy lived somewhere between High Wycombe and Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. I had collected them that morning, as I had often done, from a rest area just off Junction 3 on the M40.
“Isn’t your car in the rest area?” I asked. I had sometimes transferred the gear into his car there.
“No,” said Luca. “Betsy’s mum dropped us off this morning.”
Bugger, I thought. I would either have to come to Ascot again tomorrow or deprive Luca and Betsy of their day.
“OK,” I said with resignation in my voice. “I’ll be here. But I’m fed up with dressing like this. I’ll be more casual tomorrow.”
Luca smiled broadly. I knew he loved the exhilaration and energy of the big race days. I constantly reminded myself that I would lose him if I concentrated too much on the smaller tracks and stopped going to Ascot in June, Cheltenham in March and Aintree in April.
“Great,” said Luca, still grinning. “And you’d hate to miss another day like today, now wouldn’t you?”
“I can’t believe there will be another day like today. Not ever,” I said. “But, no, I wouldn’t want to miss it if there were.”
“We must dash,” said Luca. “See you here tomorrow, then. Usual time?”
“Yes, all right,” I replied. “Have fun tonight.”
They disappeared off towards the station through the gap in the hedge from where the police tent had now been removed, the gap in the hedge where my father had been stabbed.
I stood and watched them go. I couldn’t remember when I had last been to a birthday party.
Jason, the nurse, hadn’t been very happy when I called him to say that I would be late at the hospital. I had a job to do. I had hoped to do it the following day but…
I looked again at my watch. It was half past eight.
I’d promised Jason I’d be there in time to watch the ten o’clock news with Sophie. I still hoped I might make it, but things were not going quite as I had planned.
Having left my morning coat, vest and tie in my parked car, I was on foot in Sussex Gardens, in London, looking for a certain seedy hotel or guesthouse. The problem was not that I couldn’t find any. Quite the reverse. Everywhere I looked there were seedy little hotels and guesthouses. There were so many of them, and I hadn’t a clue which was the one I wanted.
“Near Paddington Station,” my father had said.
I imagined him getting off the Heathrow Express at Paddington with his luggage after the long flight from Australia and pitching up at the first place with a vacancy. So I had started close to the station and worked my way outwards. So far, after an hour and a half, I had drawn a complete blank, and I was getting frustrated.
“Do you, or did you, have a guest this week called Talbot?” I asked without much hope in yet another of the little places I had been in. “Or one called Grady?”
I pulled out the now-rather-creased copy of the driver’s license that Detective Sergeant Murray had made for me. A young woman behind the reception counter looked down at the picture, then up at me.
“Who wants know?” she asked in a very Eastern European accent. “Are you police?” she added, looking worried.
