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.
