Dick Francis's Damage (26 page)

I didn't complain. An ambulance sounded just fine to me.

“It's on the way,” she said, coming back. “Just a few minutes.”

I was still shaking with cold, so Lydia went to fetch the duvet from our bed and draped it around me. The weight of it on my left shoulder sent more spasms of pain shooting up into my neck, but the shivering diminished.

“What happened?” she asked again. “Where's the car?”

That was a good question.

The car hadn't stopped. And, thinking back, I was sure that it hadn't had any lights on despite the heavy rain and the gloom of a wet April evening in northwest London.

The more I thought about it, the more certain I became.

Someone had just tried to kill me.

A
ccording to one of the green-uniformed paramedics who arrived with the ambulance, my left arm wasn't broken. It was my shoulder that had dislocated.

“It's more painful than a break,” he said.

Tell me about it.

The ambulance took me to the Emergency Room at Northwick Park Hospital, where I was forced to sit in a wheelchair and wait for over an hour while the trauma team dealt with a motorcyclist and his passenger who had come off their bike and used their heads as brakes.

Lydia had come with me in the ambulance and she now sat next to me on a metal chair, muttering about how disgraceful it was that I had to wait so long.

“How much longer?” I asked one of the passing nurses. “It bloody hurts.”

“But it won't kill you,” she replied. “I'm sorry, but there are others who need us more at the moment.”

There was no arguing with that, so we waited in silence along with a whole host of other sick and injured members of humanity. Nine-thirty on a Friday evening was a busy time in the E.R.

A uniformed policeman came into the unit and went over to the reception before making a beeline to me.

“Mr. Hinkley?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“The paramedics called me. They told me you claim to have been injured in a road traffic accident. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” I said. “I was hit by a car on the road outside my house.”

The policeman removed a notebook from his pocket and sat down on the chair next to me.

“Did you speak to the driver?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “The driver didn't stop. In fact, I believe the driver tried to run me down on purpose.”

That grabbed his interest. And Lydia's as well.

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, for a start, because he didn't stop. And I don't remember the car having any lights even though it was quite dark. The driver just drove straight at me without slowing. In fact, he was still accelerating as he hit me.”

The policeman leaned towards me slightly and sniffed.

“Mr. Hinkley,” he said, “have you been drinking?”

—

EVENTUALLY
someone came and wheeled me to a treatment room, but not before my notion of being an attempted murder victim had been completely trashed by the policeman.

“Perhaps the driver just didn't see you in the rain as you ran straight out in front of him.”

He made it sound as if it were my fault.

I suspected that he didn't even believe I'd been hit by a car in the first place. I could tell from his attitude—he thought I'd had too much to drink and had simply fallen over in the street, dislocating my shoulder.

Maybe he was right about the first bit—I probably had drunk too much—but I still knew exactly what had happened. And I was convinced that it had been deliberate.

I had a developing bruise on my hip to prove it.

—

I SCREAMED
a bit more, but, eventually, a doctor managed to get the ball at the top end of my humerus to slide back into its socket. It did with an audible clunk and, magically, it switched off the pain.

From being in agony one moment, I was almost completely free of pain in the next. The relief was amazing and made me feel quite light-headed, although that might have had something to do with the bottle of sauvignon blanc that was still sloshing around in my system somewhere.

“You'll have to keep that arm in a sling for a while,” the doctor said. “The joint will be loose and the tendons need time to recover or it will be out again. And it will ache a bit for the next few days. Take some painkillers.”

An ache I could cope with, and I'd happily keep it in a sling—anything to prevent it dislocating again.

“Do you really think someone ran you down on purpose?” Lydia asked as we were in the taxi on our way home from the hospital.

“Yes,” I said.

“That policeman didn't really believe you.”

“He didn't believe me at all,” I said. “But it's true nevertheless.”

“But why would anyone do that deliberately?”

Why indeed?

Was it just some maniac intent on hitting any random pedestrian or had I, Jeff Hinkley, been specifically targeted?

If it were the latter, then who would want me dead?

Leonardo?

How could he have known where I lived? He clearly hadn't followed me today as I'd come home by train and he'd been in a car, but it didn't mean he hadn't followed me on another day.

Lydia and I were not in the phone book and we had chosen not to include our address in the public register of voters.

Sure, the BHA knew where I lived, it would be on file in the personnel department and also in finance, but I didn't think it was general knowledge among the staff.

Not that finding someone's address was really that difficult, I knew. I'd obtained lots of people's addresses without their knowledge or permission.

These days, one's address is part of one's identity. You are required to provide it to get anything from a credit card to a driver's license, an income tax form to a drug prescription. Any form of insurance requires a home address, to say nothing of vehicle registration, online purchases or almost any other financial transaction.

One is constantly being asked to provide a utility bill for everything from opening a bank account to obtaining a library card. Solely for someone to record your address.

New money-laundering regulations have, bizarrely, made it easier for the unscrupulous few to gain previously private information about the law-abiding many, placing them at greater, not less, risk of identity theft, deception and fraud.

And it wasn't as if Jefferson Roosevelt Hinkley was a common name like John Smith or Harry Jones with which one could hide among the throng.

Anyone who was capable of disrupting racing as effectively as Leonardo would have been able to find out where I lived in a heartbeat.

But why take the risk of being spotted? As it was, I hadn't seen the make or color of the car, but I could have, especially if it hadn't been raining. Surely the risks involved outweighed any potential gain.

And what did he have to gain by having me dead?

Only that I would stop investigating. So what was it that I was doing that made it important enough to kill me?

I was still pondering those questions when we arrived back in Spezia Road and I insisted on having a good look around before getting out of the taxi.

Lydia and I made it safely to our front door and I checked it was properly locked behind us, rattling the door just to make sure. My sudden security concerns were making Lydia nervous.

“Do you really think someone hit you on purpose?” she asked again.

“Yes.”

“But they'd have hit anyone, right? You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I'm not sure, but I don't think so, no.”

The implications of what I'd just said slowly registered and Lydia's eyes widened with fear.

“Are you telling me that someone tried explicitly to murder
you
?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Such a short question with such a long answer.

“I don't know. Obviously, I am doing something they don't like.”

“What?”

“I wish I knew. Then I'd do more of it.”

“You're mad,” Lydia said without any humor. “You must go to the police.”

“You saw what that achieved at the hospital. That policeman didn't believe a single word I said.”

“Then go and see someone more senior.”

Would it make any difference? I couldn't describe the car, not even its color, so what would the police have to go on? A car with a slight dent or scratch on its right front fender? There must be thousands of those, if not tens of thousands. And would they provide me with a twenty-four-hour bodyguard? Not a chance. They didn't have the resources.

“I'll be careful,” I said. “No dark alleys or lonely parking lots.”

I smiled at her, but it didn't appear to reassure, not that I didn't appreciate her concern.

“Come on,” I said, “it's late. Let's go to bed.”

Going to bed was one thing. Going to sleep was quite another.

My aching left shoulder, together with my arm in the sling, prevented me from lying on my left side or on my tummy, as I normally did, and, in spite of the painkillers, the bruise on my hip ruled out lying on my right side. The most comfortable position, I discovered, was lying on my back, almost sitting up, with my head and shoulders supported by a stack of pillows.

Between snatches of uneasy dozing, I thought back to exactly what had happened earlier, trying to recall any minor detail I might have missed.

I remembered running down the sidewalk and then out
between two cars parked on the far side of the road, opposite our front door. I must have instinctively glanced each way up and down the road to check it was clear, even though I couldn't recall actually doing so. But I would never forget the total shock and disbelief that had accompanied my last-second awareness of the speeding car.

I tried hard to think what had made me realize it was there. I knew that I had been aware of it fractionally before it hit me, long enough for me to register that a collision was inevitable. Perhaps it was the roaring noise of the engine. Or maybe some slight movement in my peripheral vision.

Try as I might, I couldn't recall anything about the car other than it hadn't slowed down and seemed to be accelerating. That must have been due to the constantly rising note of the engine.

However, I could vividly remember being tossed to one side by the impact, my legs being thrown up while my head went down.

In that moment, as I'd hurtled face-first towards the concrete, I had thought undeniably that I was going to die.

It is said that one's whole life flashes before your eyes in that moment of realization of imminent death.

But that didn't happen to me.

Far from being from the past, it was images of the future, and what I would be missing, that had materialized in my head: my wedding day, with Lydia walking down the aisle dressed exquisitely in white; the birth of a son; living in the country with a houseful of dogs and children playing in the garden.

They had seemed so real, so clear.

Was my subconscious trying to tell me something?

I reached out with my right hand and touched the delightfully naked form of Lydia lying fast asleep beside me. I softly stroked
her arm and shoulder with my fingertips and thanked my lucky stars that I hadn't died.

Yes indeed, it was high time I made an honest woman of her.

—

THE VISITATION ORDER
arrived from Long Lartin Prison in the mail on Saturday morning as Lydia and I were having breakfast in our kitchen.

Wow! I thought. That was quick.

I had only sent in the request on Thursday and had imagined it would take several weeks to be processed.

I immediately called the visitor's booking number on the VO and was told that due to a cancellation, there was an available slot at two o'clock on the following afternoon. I took it.

“What was all that about?” Lydia asked.

“I have to go to prison tomorrow.”

“Permanently?”

“On a visit.”

“Who to see? Should I bake a file into a cake for you to take with you?”

“I'm going to see a man called Matthew Unwin. He killed that bookmaker at Cheltenham last month.”

The humor drained out of her face.

“Is that wise?” she said. “Please do be careful.”

“I'm sure it will be quite safe. He has agreed to see me.”

“Maybe only because he wants to kill you too.”

It wasn't him that I was worried about.

T
he lady at
The Times
had failed me dismally, as the announcement in the personal column failed to appear in the Saturday edition. I wasn't particularly surprised. And, the way I felt, I didn't particularly care.

I spent the afternoon drugged up with painkillers, lying on the sofa in my front room, watching the racing on the television and wondering how I was going to get to Long Lartin in Worcestershire the following afternoon.

My shoulder ached badly and I certainly didn't fancy driving, even though, theoretically, I could have done it if I'd rented a car with an automatic gearbox. But I was too sore for that.

I thought of asking Lydia to drive me there, but she had a long-standing commitment to go with her parents to visit her grandmother in Kent.

In the end, I decided to take the train from Paddington to Evesham and get a taxi from there.

I watched on the TV as a horse trained by Duncan Johnson
won the second race at Ayr, the Future Champions Novices' Chase.

Duncan Johnson. He was someone else I needed to talk to.

What connected Matthew Unwin, Duncan Johnson and Richard Young, other than they had all claimed that someone had demanded money not to dope their horses? And how about Graham Perry? Where did he fit into this jigsaw puzzle?

Ian Tulloch had horses in training with both Duncan Johnson and Richard Young. I wondered if he had any connection to Matthew Unwin. If he had, it was something I'd not come across when I'd carried out the background check before Ian Tulloch had joined the BHA Board. Not that it would have been a problem—Matthew Unwin had been considered as a respectable member of the racing family prior to his horses testing positive for Dexedrine, in spite of his previous warning for administering Lasix.

But had Tulloch had any dealings with Unwin since his appointment to the BHA Board?

Next I speculated as to whether either of Ian Tulloch's two teenage daughters had ever been treated for hyperactivity.

How could I find out? Medical records were notoriously difficult to obtain legally, although I had a journalist friend who had claimed in the past that he could get them—for a hefty fee, mind, as bribery was involved.

I was tempted to telephone the Tulloch family home and claim to be from a hyperactive support group to see if there was any reaction, but even I balked at such an invasion of their privacy. After all, Ian Tulloch was now chairman of the BHA, head of the organization for which I worked.

I watched the big event of the afternoon, the Scottish Grand National from Ayr, more in dread that there would be another
disruptive episode rather than in interest at which horse would win, but the race passed off without incident.

Duncan Johnson's fancied runner finished second to a horse owned and trained by a very happy-looking farmer from the Scottish Highlands who could hardly talk due to his excitement.

And at a price of fifty-to-one!

I smiled at the farmer's ruddy-faced image shown on the television, his huge grin stretching almost from one side of the screen to the other.

It was such moments that were essential elements to the success and popularity of jump racing. The fact that a part-time Scottish farmer could do it gave others hope that they too might one day own the winner of a great race. The anticipation of such a victory kept many racehorse owners paying out hefty training fees for years in its pursuit.

After the trophy presentation to the still-grinning farmer, there followed a part of the program addressing the future of British racing.

One of horseracing's most respected reporters pulled no punches in his criticism of the current system, citing the recent disruptions to racing as evidence of “the rife ineptitude and incompetence of those individuals at the top.” He went on to imply that a return to stability could only be achieved by the sweeping away altogether of the BHA and the reestablishment of the Jockey Club in its rightful place.

I felt that the whole world must have gone mad.

Only ten years previously, the same reporter had used identical rhetoric in his argument for the demise of the Jockey Club as the sport's regulator and for the creation of a new, independent authority.

But he was only echoing what had already been written
elsewhere in the press, in what seemed to me to be coordinated manipulation of the media.

Where was this story coming from? And why?

The very name
Jockey Club
was a misnomer, as not a single current or former professional jockey had ever been admitted to its ranks as a member. Professional jockeys were simply not considered to be from the right class. Sir Gordon Richards, the greatest British flat jockey of all time, was eventually made an honorary, but nonvoting, member, and then only after he'd been champion jockey twenty-three times and had been knighted by the Queen.

Did racing really want to go back to a system that had garnered so much criticism for being elitist and self-serving?

I simply couldn't believe it.

—

IT WAS
difficult to imagine that over six hundred of the most evil and dangerous criminals in the country were housed behind the high walls of Long Lartin Prison, set as it was in the glorious open countryside of the Vale of Evesham, an area of outstanding natural beauty where much of the country's fruit and vegetables were grown in the fertile soils of the River Avon floodplain.

However, the natural beauty ended at the prison walls. Even for the visitors.

There were about thirty of us waiting in the visitors' center. Most of the others were women, some of them with small children in tow. I'd seen some of them on the train from London but hadn't realized they were going to the same place.

I had my driver's license closely checked against the name on the visitation order and was then required to leave my phone, most of my money, my watch and even my belt in a locker before
passing through a metal detector, being patted down in a body search and then sniffed at by a drug dog.

Only when all the visitors were finally declared clear of contraband were we taken through to the visiting area, a bleak, gray-painted room with three rows of gray metal tables and chairs that were all bolted to a sky blue vinyl floor. Even though there were two small heavily barred windows at one end, the room was mainly lit by banks of overhead fluorescent tubes that gave everything a rather stark and cold appearance.

There was a small table on one side that provided tea and coffee in plastic cups and there were two vending machines for sodas and snacks in the far corner.

I allowed the other visitors to choose first in case I took one of their “usual” places and then selected an empty table close to the tea and coffee.

A door opened at the far end and the prisoners came streaming through, some in gray T-shirts and gray tracksuit-style pants, one or two in green-and-yellow coveralls and the rest, including Matthew Unwin, in jeans with various colored tops. Two burly prison officers accompanied them into the room, one standing at either end, as the men made their way to the tables to greet their friends and relatives.

Matthew Unwin had the look of a broken man. His eyes seemed deep set in their sockets and there were dark bags under them as if he hadn't slept for a week.

He spotted me and ambled over, his body language shouting his lack of enthusiasm.

“Hi,” he said.

I stood up and offered my hand. “I thought you might not know me.” I had been in disguise at Cheltenham on the day of his arrest.

“I know you,” he said without taking my hand. “You were at my inquiry.”

He sat down on the metal chair opposite. I sat back down as well.

“How are things?” I asked, leaning forward and speaking quietly, conscious of the others around us.

“How would you expect them to be? I survive.”

“Tea?” I asked. “Or coffee?”

“Tea,” he said.

I went over to the table and collected a plastic cupful of hot brown liquid in exchange for fifty pence.

Unwin lifted the cup and sipped at its contents, never taking his eyes off me.

“What do you want?” he said.

“To know why you attacked Jordan Furness.”

“Have the police sent you?”

“No,” I said.

“Then why are you here?”

“You said at the inquiry that someone else gave your horses drugs because you wouldn't pay them.” He nodded. “I now believe you.”

He stared at me without saying anything.

“Was it Jordan Furness?” I asked.

“What difference would it make if it was?”

It was like trying to get blood from a stone. Every one of my questions was answered with another question.

“I'm trying to help you,” I said.

“Why?”

“I'm trying to find out who doped your horses.”

“Why?”

“Because I believe that the same man is behind all the disruption currently going on in racing. You must have heard about it even in here.”

He nodded. I hadn't intended telling him that so openly, but I was getting nowhere otherwise.

“When did you last see Graham Perry?” I asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Wasn't he once your assistant trainer?”

“He was. Then he took off and left me in the lurch.” There was no affection whatsoever in his voice. “I never see him now away from the races.”

Two young children began running around and around the room between the tables, shouting and screaming. They had obviously quickly become bored with visiting their father, who was one of those wearing green-and-yellow coveralls. No one made any move to stop or quiet the children until their father suddenly bellowed loudly at them to shut up and sit down, raising his hand as he did. They immediately sat down on the floor, gripping their knees tightly to their chests and with their heads down. I thought it was an action born out of fear, but it didn't keep them sitting still for very long. They soon returned to their game of chase, albeit without the shouting and screaming.

Meanwhile, everyone else went back to talking, but more quietly.

“Was it Furness who doped your horses?” I asked.

Matthew Unwin stared at me again.

“Why should I help you?” he said. “What has the BHA ever done for me other than taking away my life?”

“Why did you agree to see me, then?” I asked.

“Anything to alleviate the boredom,” he said miserably.

I began to think I'd wasted my time coming here. I felt a bit like these wretched children—running around in circles and getting nowhere.

“It wasn't the BHA that murdered Jordon Furness, you know,” I said, “it was you.”

“Little shit had it coming to him.” He said it with real venom in his voice.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he was greedy,” Unwin said.

“Did you owe him money?”

He shook his head. “It was him that owed
me
money. Refused to pay his training fees, didn't he?”

“I hadn't realized that Jordan Furness was one of your owners.”

“Not officially,” he said. “Wouldn't have passed your lot's fit-and-proper-person test, now would he? Not that one. Far too many skeletons to find in his closet.”

“So who was the registered owner?”

“I was. But the horse ran on Furness's orders.”

“Winning or losing?”

“Losing, I reckon—but I knew nothing about it. All I know is, the horse never won a race when I thought it could have.”

“What was the horse's name?” I asked.

He laughed. “Criminal Intent. I'm not kidding. It was called that when we bought it. Furness thought it was a huge joke.”

“How often did it run?”

“Loads of times. Mostly up north.”

“And you're sure Furness arranged that it didn't win?”

“I reckon,” he said again. “He must have fixed it with the jock. Or got his bloody son to dope it.”

“Lee Furness is his son?”

“Yeah. He worked for me—at least he was meant to. Idle toad. I only took him on because his father insisted and then he didn't pay up. Old Man Furness deserved what he got, if you ask me.”

I wasn't sure that I would ask him. Murder seemed rather an extreme measure to settle a training debt. Any sympathy I might have had for Matthew Unwin's situation was rapidly fading away.

“So Furness had nothing to do with the drugs found in your horses?”

He laughed again. “Is that what you think? I suppose he might have done it. I wouldn't put anything past the rat.”

I clearly had been barking up the wrong tree. The killing of Jordan Furness had been unrelated to the reason Matthew Unwin had lost his trainer's license.

One of the two noisy children, a girl, age about five, ran over to our table and stopped, staring at me from about two feet away. I stared back at her and she pulled a face. I smiled at her, but there was no smile in return, just a scowl. How sad, I thought. She turned and ran off.

“Have you ever trained horses for Ian Tulloch?” I asked Unwin.

“You must be joking. Tulloch would have never come to me. He's far too much of a snob.”

Another dead end.

My left shoulder had started to ache again and the painkillers I needed were shut away in the locker outside with my other things.

I glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was ten minutes to three and my taxi wasn't booked until half past.

I'd obviously wasted my Sunday afternoon coming here and I was suddenly eager to get out of the oppressive atmosphere in
the prison, with its heady bouquet of stale sweat and cheap disinfectant.

I decided to wait for the taxi out in the fresh air.

“I think that will be enough,” I said. “I'll be on my way.”

“Suit yourself.”

I stood up and turned for the door, but I was almost knocked down by the little girl, who was weaving in and out of the tables at high speed in pursuit of her brother.