Dick Francis's Gamble - Felix Francis [5]
At about ten, during a break in the rain, I went out for a Sunday paper, nipping up to the newsagent’s shop on Regent’s Park Road.
“A very good morning to you, Mr. Foxton,” said the shop owner from behind the counter.
“Morning, Mr. Patel,” I said in reply. “But I’m not sure what’s good about it.”
Mr. Patel smiled at me and said nothing. We may have lived in the same place but we did so with different cultures.
All the front pages on the shelves had the same story: DEATH AT THE RACES read one headline, MURDER AT THE NATIONAL read another, GUN HORROR AT AINTREE ran a third.
I glanced quickly at them all. None gave the name of the victim, and, to me, there appeared to be far greater coverage about the aggravation and inconvenience suffered by the crowd rather than any commiseration or condolence towards poor Herb. I suppose some conjecture was to be expected as the reporters had so little real factual information from which to make a story, but I was surprised at their apparent lack of any sympathy for the target of the assassin.
One paper even went so far as to suggest that the murder was likely to have been drug related, and then went on to imply that everyone else was probably better off with the victim dead.
I bought a copy of the Sunday Times for no better reason than its headline—POLICE HUNT RACE-DAY ASSASSIN—was the least sensational, and the story beneath it didn’t immediately assume that Herb had probably deserved to be killed.
“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Patel, giving me my change.
I tucked the heavy newspaper under my arm and retraced my tracks home.
Lichfield Grove was a fairly typical London suburban street of mostly 1930s-built duplexes with bay windows and small front gardens.
I had lived here now for the past eight years yet I hardly knew my neighbors other than to wave at occasionally if we happened, by coincidence, to arrive or leave our homes at the same time. In fact, I knew Mr. Patel, the newsagent, better than those I lived right next to. I was aware that the couple on one side were called Jane and Phil (or was it John?), but I had no idea of their surname or what either of them did for a living.
As I walked back from the newsagent’s, I thought how strange it was that members of the human race could live here so cheek by jowl with their fellow beings without any meaningful reaction between them. But at least it made a change from the rural village life I had experienced before, where everyone took pains to know everyone else’s business and where nothing could be kept a secret for long.
I wondered whether I should make more of an effort to be more community minded. I suppose it would depend on how long I intended to stay.
Many of my racing friends had thought that Finchley was a strange choice, but I had needed a clean break from my former life. A clean break—that was a joke. It had been a clean break that had forced me to stop race riding just as I was beginning to make my mark in the sport. The clean break in question was to my second cervical vertebra, the axis, on which the atlas vertebra above it rotated to turn the head. In short, I had broken my neck.
I suppose I should be thankful that the break hadn’t killed or paralyzed me, either of which could have been a highly likely outcome. The fact that I was now walking down Lichfield Grove at all was due to the prompt and gentle care of the paramedics on duty at Cheltenham racetrack that fateful day. They had taken great pains to immobilize my neck and spine before I was lifted from the turf.
It had been a silly fall, and I had to admit to a degree of carelessness on my part.
The last race on Wednesday of the Cheltenham Steeplechasing Festival was what was known as the Bumper—a National Hunt Flat race. No jumps, no hurdles, just two miles of undulating rich green grass between start and finish. It is not the greatest spectacle the Festival has to offer, and many of the large crowd had already made their way to the parking lots, or the bar.
But the Bumper is