Dick Francis's Gamble - Felix Francis [15]
So I now regularly spent a couple of days a week at one racetrack or another, all with Patrick and Gregory’s blessing, making appointments to see my clients before or after, and occasionally during, the racing.
Cheltenham in April has a touch of “after the Lord Mayor’s Show” about it—rather an anticlimax following the heady excitement of the four Steeplechasing Festival days in March. Gone were the temporary grandstands and the acres of tented hospitality village. Gone too was the nervous energy and high anticipation of seventy thousand expectant spectators waiting to cheer home their new heroes.
This April meeting may have been a more sedate affair in the enclosures, but it was no less competitive on the track with two of the top jockeys still vying to be crowned as the champion for the current season that concluded at the end of the month. Both were my clients, and I had arranged to meet one of them, Billy Searle, after racing.
Part of the government’s anti-money-laundering requirements was that financial advisers had to know their clients, and Lyall & Black, as a firm, reckoned that a face-to-face meeting with every client should occur at least annually, in addition to our regular three-monthly written communications and twice-yearly valuations of their investments.
I had long ago decided that expecting racing folk to come to a meeting in the London offices was a complete waste of time. If I wanted them as clients—and I did—then I would have to come to see them, not vice versa. And I had found that seeing them at their place of work, the racetracks, was easier than chasing them down at home.
I had also discovered that being regularly seen at the races was the best way to recruit new clients, which was why I was currently standing on the terrace in front of the Weighing Room, warming myself in the midday April sunshine, more than ninety minutes before the first race.
“Hi, Foxy. Penny for your thoughts? What a lovely day, eh? Did you see the National yesterday?” Martin Gifford was a large, jovial, middle-ranking racehorse trainer who always joked that he had never made it as a jockey due to his large feet. The fact that he stood more than six feet tall and had a waist measurement that a sumo wrestler would have been proud of seemed to have escaped him.
“No,” I said, “I missed it. I was stuck in the office all day. I just saw the short report on the television news. But I’d been at Aintree on Saturday.”
“Bloody rum business, that was,” Martin said. “Fancy postponing the Grand National just because some bastard got themselves killed.”
He had obviously been reading the papers.
“How do you know he was a bastard?” I asked.
Martin looked at me strangely. “Because it said so in the paper.”
“I thought you knew better than to believe what you read in the papers.” I paused, deciding whether to go on. “The person murdered was a friend of mine. I was standing right next to him when he was shot.”
“Bloody hell!” shouted Martin. “God, I’m sorry. Trust me to jump in with both feet.”
Trust him, indeed. “It’s OK,” I said. “Forget it.”
I was suddenly cross with myself for even mentioning it to him. Why hadn’t I just kept quiet? Everyone in racing knew that Martin Gifford was a five-star gossip. In an industry where there were many who believed that there was no such thing as a private conversation or a secret, Martin was the past master. He seemed to have a talent for knowing other people’s private business and passing it on to anyone who would listen. Telling Martin that the murder victim had been a friend of mine was akin to placing a full-page spread in the Racing Post to advertise the fact, except quicker. Everyone at Cheltenham would probably know by the end of the afternoon, and I was already regretting my indiscretion.
“So was the National a good race?” I asked, trying