So Luca could not have affected the price on his own.
“Was it Larry’s idea or yours?” I asked him.
“What do you mean?” he said, all innocent.
“It needed two of you,” I said.
“You were there too,” he said with a degree of accusation in his voice.
It was true. I was there, and it was my name on the board, or it was my surname at least. So I would carry the can, if a can indeed had to be carried. But I now realized how much I had subconsciously delegated to Luca and his computer.
“So was it Larry’s idea?” I asked, knowing full well that Luca had brains far in excess of Larry Porter and that it really was bound to have been Luca’s idea. But I wanted him to give me the option of not disposing with his services, to give him the chance to lie to me so that I could try to fool myself that maybe he wouldn’t try it again the next time I wasn’t there.
Was that why he had been so keen for me to stay at home and leave things to him and Betsy? Was that really why Betsy was in such a strop and had decided to absent herself from the scene of the crime?
I could almost hear the cogs whirling in his brain. He knew exactly what I had asked him and why. It wasn’t that I truly wanted to know whose idea and plan it had been. What I was really asking him was whether he wanted to keep his job.
If he started out in business on his own, he would have to purchase a number at a pitch auction in the future, which would require considerable outlay to obtain a decent spot in the ring. And he would most likely end up with a high number and hence a lowly choice of position. Those bookies with the best pitches took the most money, and, in a recession, it was no time to move further down the pack.
From my own point of view, I had come to rely very heavily on Luca. His expertise with our computer and Internet gambling had been instrumental in keeping the name of Teddy Talbot in the higher echelons of bookmaking circles. We had been remarkably profitable over the last few years, and I was not naive enough to think that it came solely down to me. It was all to do with the teamwork that Luca and I had perfected. Finding a new bookmaker’s assistant wouldn’t be easy, perhaps impossible to find one as good as Luca.
The trouble was, he knew it.
But, that said, I couldn’t keep him on if I didn’t trust him not to bring my business down, either in standing or in monetary terms. If my grandfather had taught me one thing, it was that reputation was important. Most bookmakers are not held in great respect by the majority on the racetrack. Punters tend to think they are being forever robbed blind by the bookies. But I considered that I had always acted fairly and honorably towards the betting public, and also towards my fellow bookmakers, something that had not gone unnoticed by my regular customers. I wasn’t about to see all that change, and Luca had to make his mind up if he could play by my rules. I might be sure that I needed him, but he, in turn, was now deciding if he needed me.
“How about offering me a proper partnership?” he said with a smile.
I took that as a positive sign.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Don’t take too long,” he said seriously, the smile having vanished.
Was he threatening me, I wondered, or simply warning me that he’d had offers from elsewhere?
Being a bookmaker’s assistant was, for some, a self-employed business in itself. In our case, Luca was my full- time employee, but he could do equally well, and maybe better, offering his expert services freelance on a daily basis to the highest bidder. Over the past seven years, since my grandfather had died and I had taken on Luca, I had often engaged a professional bookmaker’s assistant for various days here and there, either when one of us was ill or away on holiday or, in my case, tending to the needs of my sick wife. I tried to use the same man each time, but there were half a dozen or so who were all highly capable and in regular demand.
Maybe Luca was considering joining their ranks, or perhaps he’d had an offer from another bookmaker to become a partner.
I looked over at Larry Porter.
Surely not him, I thought. I had always considered that I was a better businessman than Larry, but maybe he thought the same about me.
“Hi, Larry,” I called across the deserted, rain-swept six feet between us. “What price will you give me on the favorite in the next?”
“Piss off,” he shouted back, “you self-righteous git.”
Charming, I thought. It might have been funny if it wasn’t for the fact that he and Luca had put us all in jeopardy by so blatantly changing the prices.
Larry clearly wasn’t enjoying his afternoon at the races. And he wasn’t the only one.
The day progressed with, if anything, a deterioration in the weather. The individual thunderstorms had coalesced into a single expanse of dark, menacing cloud stretching right across the sky, and the rain fell continuously straight downwards in the still air while the humidity rose to an oppressive hundred percent.
No doubt the gardeners of middle England were delighted by the downpour, but the punters at Stratford plainly were not. We took just two bets on the big race of the day, if that was an appropriate way of describing it.
The three-mile steeplechase on rock-hard going had attracted a paltry field of just three, in pursuit of a prize put up by a well-known Midlands building company. It was not the lovely summer’s day that the firm’s directors would have hoped for to entertain their clients when they had handed over their sponsorship check to the racetrack. Two small groups of their guests stood around under company-logo-printed umbrellas, watching the horses in the parade ring and trying unsuccessfully to look happy. Then they scuttled off back to their private box in the grandstand to dry off and to sip another glass of bubbly.
In the betting ring there was noticeably more activity than for the first couple of races, though that was due not to an increase in the number of punters braving the conditions but to the fact that several “suits” from the big outfits had turned up. They stood around getting wet, scrutinizing the prices on our boards more closely than a stamp collector studying a Penny Black.
Nothing untoward occurred, of course, but I caught a brief glimpse of Luca and Larry Porter having a secret smile at each other. Just how long, I thought, would it be before they couldn’t resist trying it again?
The race itself could hardly be described as exciting. The short-priced favorite, the only decent horse of the three, jumped off in front at the start and led the other two around and around the course by an ever-increasing margin, winning by a distance, almost at the trot. One of the remaining two slipped over at the last fence to leave the other to finish second, but so far behind the winner that the stands had emptied long before.
To add insult to injury, the stewards decided to abandon the rest of the day’s racing, citing the hazardous nature of the course. It seemed that the heavy rain, coming down as it had on the rock-hard ground, was causing the top surface of the grass to skid off the underlying dry, compacted soil, making the going treacherous.
Personally, I thought the stewards had done everyone a favor, and we gratefully packed up our stuff and made our way to the parking lots.
“Are you still OK for Leicester tomorrow evening without me?” I asked Luca.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Looking forward to it.” He smiled at me. I stopped pulling the trolley. “OK, OK,” he said. “I know. No funny business. I promise.”
“Let’s talk at the weekend,” I said.
“Fine,” he replied. “I want to talk things through with Betsy anyway.”
Betsy had appeared from the bar and had helped us to pack away the last few things. I was never quite sure what was going on in her head, and that day she had been more obtuse than ever. She had said hardly a word to me since a brief “Hello” when she and Luca arrived.
We loaded the equipment in the trunk of his car while Betsy simply sat inside it in the passenger seat. She didn’t say good-bye to me.
“Have a good day tomorrow,” said Luca. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I hope it all goes well.”
Sophie was due to have an assessment with a consultant psychiatrist from a different hospital. It was the final hurdle for her pass in order to be able to come home. Just as there needed to be agreement between two psychiatrists for her to be sectioned in the first place, there was also a need for such agreement for her to be “released back into the community,” as they put it.
The stress of an assessment was, paradoxically, bad for her condition, so I always tried to be on hand to
