Odds against by Dick Francis

Author:Dick Francis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Private investigators, Detective and mystery stories, England, Mystery & Detective, Horse racing, Fiction, Sid (Fictitious character), Talking books, English, General, Halley
ISBN: 9780449212691
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 1987-09-12T19:09:09.449595+00:00

TEN

Dolly lent me her telephone with resignation on Tuesday morning, and I buzzed the switchboard for an internal call to Missing Persons.

‘Sammy?’ I said. ‘Sid Halley, down in Racing. Are you busy?’

‘The last teenager has just been retrieved from Gretna. Fire away. Who’s lost?’

‘A man called Smith.’

Some mild blasphemy sped three storeys down the wire.

I laughed. ‘I think his name really is Smith. He’s a driver by trade. He’s been driving a tanker for Intersouth Chemicals for the last year. He left his job and his digs last Wednesday; no forwarding address.’ I told him about the crash, the suspect concussion and the revelry by night.

‘You don’t think he was planted on purpose on the job a year ago? His name likely wouldn’t be Smith in that case… make it harder.’

‘I don’t know. But I think it’s more likely he was a bona fide Intersouth driver who was offered a cash payment for exceptional services rendered.’

‘O.K., I’ll try that first. He might give Intersouth as a reference, in which case they’ll know if he applies for another job somewhere, or I might trace him through his union. The wife might have worked, too. I’ll let you know.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t forget, when the old man buys you a gold-plated executive desk I want my table back.’

‘You’ll want for ever,’ I said, smiling. It had been Sammy’s lunch.

On the table in question lay the slim file on the Andrews case that Jones-boy had unearthed from the basement. I looked round the room.

‘Where’s Chico?’ I asked.

Dolly answered. ‘Helping a bookmaker to move house.’

‘He’s doing what?’ I goggled.

‘That’s right. Long-standing date. The bookmaker is taking his safe with him and wants Chico to sit on it in the furniture van. It had to be Chico, he said. No one else would do. The paying customer is always right, so Chico’s gone.’

‘Damn.’

She reached into a drawer. ‘He left you a tape,’ she said.

‘Undamn, then.’

She grinned and handed it to me, and I took it over to the recorder, fed it through on to the spare reel, and listened to it in the routine office way, through the earphones.

‘After wearing my plates down to the ankles,’ said Chico’s cheerful voice, ‘I found out that the worst things your Clerk of the Course did at Dunstable were to frame a lot of races that did the opposite of attract any decent runners, and be stinking rude to all and sundry. He was quite well liked up to the year before he killed himself. Then everyone says he gradually got more and more crazy. He was so rude to people who worked at the course that half of them wouldn’t put up with it and left. And the local tradesmen practically spat when I mentioned his name. I’ll fill you in when I see you, but there wasn’t anything like Seabury – no accidents or damage or anything like that.’

Sighing, I wiped the tape clean and gave it back to Dolly. Then I opened the file on my table and studied its contents.

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