Dick Francis's Gamble - Felix Francis [16]
“I suppose so,” he said. “Diplomatic Leak won easily in the end, but he made a right hash of the Canal Turn first time round. Nearly ended up in the canal.”
“Were there many people there?” I asked.
“Looked pretty full to me,” he said. “But I watched it on the television.”
“No runners?” I asked, but I knew he hadn’t any.
“I haven’t had a National horse for years,” he said. “Not since Frosty Branch in the nineties, and it was the death of him, poor fellow.”
“Any runners today?” I asked.
“Fallen Leaf in the first and Yellow Digger in the three-mile chase.”
“Good luck,” I said.
“Yeah. We’ll need it,” he said. “Fallen Leaf probably wouldn’t win if he started now, and I don’t rate Yellow Digger very highly at all. He has no chance.” He paused. “So who was this friend of yours who got killed?”
Dammit, I thought. I’d hoped he would leave it, but I should have known better. Martin Gifford hadn’t earned his reputation for nothing.
“He was just a work colleague, really,” I said, trying to sound indifferent.
“What was his name?”
I wondered if I should I tell him. But why not? It had been in all of yesterday’s papers.
“Herbert Kovak.”
“And why was he killed?” Martin demanded.
“I’ve no idea,” I said. “As I told you, he was only a work colleague.”
“Come on, Foxy,” Martin said in an inviting tone. “You must have some inkling.”
“No. None. Nothing.”
He looked disappointed, like a child told he can’t have any sweets.
“Go on,” he implored once more. “I know you’re holding something back. You can tell me.”
And half the world, I thought.
“Honestly, Martin,” I said. “I have absolutely no idea why he was killed or who did it. And if I did, I’d be telling the police, not you.”
Martin shrugged his shoulders as if to imply he didn’t fully believe me. Too bad, I thought. It was true.
I was saved from further inquisition by another trainer, Jan Setter, who was everything that Martin Gifford wasn’t—short, slim, attractive and fun. She grabbed my arm and turned me around, away from Martin.
“Hello, lover boy,” she whispered in my ear while giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Fancy a dirty weekend away?”
“I’m ready when you are,” I whispered back. “Just name your hotel.”
She pulled back and laughed.
“Oh, you’re such a tease,” she said, looking up at me beguilingly from beneath her heavily mascaraed eyelids.
But it was she who was the tease, and she’d been doing it since we had first met more than ten years ago. Back then I had been an impressionable eighteen-year-old, just starting out, and she was an established trainer for whom I was riding. I hadn’t really known how to react, whether to be flattered or frightened. Apart from anything else, she’d been a married woman at the time.
Nowadays, she was a mid- to late-forties divorcée who seemed intent on enjoying life. Not that she didn’t work hard. Her stables in Lambourn were full, with about seventy horses in training, and, as I knew from experience, she ran the place with great efficiency and determination.
Jan had been one of my clients now for three years, ever since she had acquired a substantial sum from her ex during a very public High Court divorce case.
I adored her, and not just for her patronage. Perhaps I should accept her invitation to a dirty weekend away, but that would then have changed everything.
“How’s my money?” she asked.
“Alive and kicking,” I replied.
“And growing, I hope.” She laughed.
So did I. “How was the preview?”
“Fabulous,” she said. “I took my daughter, Maria, and a college friend of hers. We had a really wonderful time. The show was terrific.”
At my suggestion, Jan had invested a considerable sum in a new West End musical based on the life of Florence Nightingale set during the Crimean War. The true opening night was a week or so away, but the previews had just started, and I’d read some of the newspaper reports and prereviews. They had been somewhat mixed but that didn’t always mean the show wouldn’t be a success. The Wizard of Oz spin-off musical, Wicked, had been panned by the New York Times after its opening night