10 lb Penalty

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

New York Times
bestselling author Dick Francis is “one of our most reliable storytellers, a master of understated suspense” (
The San Diego Union-Tribune
). With this block-buster novel, he lives up to his dazzling reputation, delivering the compelling story of a father and son who must work together to defeat a deadly adversary ...

 

Even though Ben Juliard had always dreamed of becoming a jockey, he couldn’t say no when his father—a prominent politician—pulled some strings and got him a job in his campaign for Parliament. Now Ben needs to do more than smile for the cameras. With each step up on the ladder of power come new dangers to the aspiring candidate. And as the mysterious attacks grow ever more lethal, Ben discovers that politics can be the most perilous horse race of all ...

 

“FEW THINGS ARE MORE CONVINCING THAN DICK FRANCIS AT A FULL GALLOP.”

 

“NOBODY SETS UP A MYSTERY BETTER THAN DICK FRANCIS.”

 

“It’s either hard or impossible to read Mr. Francis without growing pleased with yourself: not only the thrill of vicarious competence imparted by the company of his heroes, but also the lore you collect as you go, feel like a field trip with the perfect guide.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

 

“One of the most reliable mystery writers working today ... Francis’s secret weapons are his protagonists. They are the kind of people you want for friends.”

—
Detroit News and Free Press

 

“[Francis] has the uncanny ability to turn out simply plotted yet charmingly addictive mysteries.”

—
The Wall Street Journal

 

“A rare and magical talent... who never writes the same story twice ... Few writers have maintained such a high standard of excellence for as long as Dick Francis.”

—
The San Diego Union-Tribune

 

“Francis just gets better and better ... It can’t be as easy as he makes it look, or all mystery writers would be as addictive.”

—
The Charlotte Observer

 

“After writing dozens of thrillers, Dick Francis always retains a first-novel freshness.”

—
The Indianapolis Star

 

“He writes about the basic building blocks of life—obligation, honor, love, courage, and pleasure. Those discussions come disguised in adventure novels so gripping that they cry out to be read in one gulp—then quickly reread to savor the details skipped in the first gallop through the pages.”

 

“Dick Francis stands head and shoulders above the rest.”

—
Ottawa Citizen

 

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

10 LB. PENALTY

 

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY

G. P. Putnam’s Sons edition / September 1997

Jove edition / October 1998

Berkley edition / August 2004

Copyright © 1997 by Dick Francis.

 

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-00720-4

 

BERKLEY
^®

Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

 

With thanks to my grandson, .
MATTHEW FRANCIS,
AGED EIGHTEEN YEARS,
AND
WEATHERBYS
AND
NO. 10 DOWNING ST.

Glue-sniffing jockeys don’t win the Derby.

I’d never sniffed glue in my life.

All the same, I stood before the man whose horses I rode and listened to him telling me he had no further use for my services. He sat behind his large antique paper-covered desk fidgeting with his clean fingernails. His hands were a yellowish white, very smooth.

“I have it on good authority,” he said.

“But I don’t!” I protested in bewilderment. “I’ve never sniffed glue or anything else. Certainly not cocaine. I’ve never even smoked pot. It’s not true.”

He looked at me coldly with the knowing eyes of a rich, powerful, assured and physically bulky man who had inherited a good brain and a chunk of merchant bank, and trained racehorses prestigiously out of obsession.

I was not yet eighteen at that point and, I now know, immature for my age, though of course I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I felt helpless, though, in the face of his inaccurate certainty, and had no idea how to deal with it.

“Sir Vivian ...,” I began with desperation, but he effortlessly cut me off with his heavier authoritative voice.

“You can clear off at once, Benedict,” he said. “I’ll not have my stable contaminated by rumors of a drug-taking jockey, even if he is an amateur and not much good.” He saw me flinch but went on relentlessly. “You’ll never be a top race rider. You’re too big, for one thing, or at least you will be in a year or two, and frankly you look clumsy on a horse. All arms and legs. In your hands, the most collected jumper turns in a sprawling performance. With that and an unsatisfactory reputation ... well, I no longer want you associated with my stable.”

I stared at him numbly, hurt more deeply by his fairly brutal assessment of my lack of riding ability, which could perhaps be substantiated, rather than by the accusations of drug taking, which couldn’t.

Around me the familiar walls of his stable office seemed to recede, leaving me isolated with a thumping heart and no feeling below the ankles. All the framed photographs of past winners, all the bookshelves and the olive green wallpaper faded away. I saw only the stony face spelling out the effective end of my long-held dream of winning all races from the Grand National down.

I expect seventeen is a better age than most to be chopped off at the ambitious knees. It just didn’t feel like it at that moment of the slice of the ax.

“Outside that window,” said Sir Vivian Durridge, pointing, “a car is waiting for you. The driver says he has a message for you. He’s been waiting a good hour or more, while you’ve been out riding exercise.”

I followed the direction of his finger, and saw, some way across the raked gravel of the imposing entrance driveway to his porticoed domain, a large black car inhabited solely by a chauffeur in a peaked cap.

“Who is it?” I asked blankly.

Vivian Durridge either didn’t know or wasn’t telling. He said merely, “On your way out, you can ask him.”

“But, sir ...,” I began again, and dried to fresh silence in the continuing negation of his distrust.

“I advise you to clean up your act,” he said, making a gesture that directed me to leave. “And now, I have work to do.”

He looked steadfastly down at his desk and ignored me, and after a few seconds I walked unsteadily over to the high polished door with its gilded knob and let myself out.

It was unfair. I had not cried much in my life but I felt weak then and near to weeping. No one before had pitilessly accused me of something I hadn’t done. No one had so ruthlessly despised my riding. I still had a thin skin.

No other good trainer would let me into his stable if Vivian Durridge had kicked me out of his.

In a mist of bewildered misery I crossed the wide Durridge entrance hall, made my way through the heavy front door and crunched across the gravel to where the car and chauffeur waited.

I knew neither of them. The August morning sun gleamed on black spotless bodywork, and the chauf feur with the shiny black peak to his cap let down the window beside him and stretched out a black uniformed arm, silently offering me a white unaddressed envelope.

I took it. The flap was only lightly glued. I peeled it open, drew out a single white card from inside, and read the brief message.

Underneath an afterthought had been added.

I looked back towards the big house from which I’d been so roughly banned and saw Vivian Durridge standing by his window, watching me. He made no movement: no reconsidering action, no farewell.

I understood none of it.

The handwriting on the card was my father’s.

 

I sat on the backseat of the car for almost an hour while the chauffeur drove at a slow pace through the county of Sussex, south of London, approaching finally the seaside spread of Brighton.

He would answer none of my questions except to say that he was following instructions, and after a while I stopped asking. Short of jumping out and running free at any of the few traffic-light stops, it seemed I was going to go wherever my father had ordained, and as I had no fear of him I would, from long-conditioned habit, do what he asked.

I thought chiefly—and in a mixture of rage and unhappiness—of the scene in Durridge’s study, his words circling endlessly in memory and not getting more bearable as time went on.