Dick Francis's Gamble - Felix Francis [98]
“Nicholas,” he had written, “As you have obviously decided not to reply to my telephone call asking for your whereabouts, I have no option but to deliver the attached letter to you by e-mail. I find the whole situation most unsatisfactory. I hope that you soon come to your senses and start giving the firm the priority it deserves. Patrick.”
I clicked on the attachment. It was a letter from the lawyer, Andrew Mellor, acting on behalf of Lyall & Black. There were no niceties, and the letter was very much to the point.
Mr. Foxton,
In accordance with the Employment Act 2008, I am writing to inform you that your employer, Lyall & Black and Co. Ltd, hereby give notice that they consider your recent behavior to be far below the standard expected from an employee in your position.
Consequently, Lyall & Black and Co. Ltd hereby issue you with a formal warning as to your future conduct. Furthermore, and in keeping with the statutory requirements as laid down in the Act, you are requested and required to attend a disciplinary meeting with Patrick Lyall and Gregory Black at the company offices in Lombard Street, London, at nine o’clock on the Monday morning following the date of this letter.
Yours sincerely,
Andrew Mellor, LLB
It sounded to me that, this time, I really was about to be fired.
Strangely, I didn’t seem to care anymore. Perhaps that policeman at Aintree had been right all along—becoming a financial adviser had been a bit of a comedown from the thrill of being a jump jockey.
Maybe it was time for me to look for more excitement in my life?
Like being shot at? Or stabbed?
I think not. I’d had enough of that.
On Saturday morning I left the three women nursing their hangovers while I went to visit Billy Searle in the Great Western Hospital in Swindon.
“So who knocked you off your bike?” I asked him.
“Don’t you bloody start,” he said. “The fuzz have been asking me nothing else but that since I woke up.”
“So why don’t you tell them?” I said.
“Are you f-ing stupid or something?” he said. “I’d rather go on living, thank you very much.”
“So it wasn’t an accident?” I said.
“I didn’t say that. It might have been.”
“Now who’s being f-ing stupid?” I said.
He stuck a finger up at me and said nothing.
We were in a single room, hidden away at the far end of one of the wards. It had taken me three separate requests to find him as well as a security escort that had only departed after Billy had vouched for me as his friend, not foe.
“How much longer are you going to be here?” I asked him. He clearly wasn’t going anywhere soon as he was firmly attached to the bed by a weights contraption that was pulling on his right leg.
“About another week,” he said. “At least that’s what they tell me. They need to apply something called a fixator to my leg, but they can’t do that until the traction has pulled everything straight. Then I’ll be able to get up.”
“I thought they pinned and plated broken legs these days.”
“I did too,” he said. “But the doc here says that this is the best way, and who was I to argue?” He grinned. Both he and I knew that Billy Searle argued all the time. “Anyway, I was f-ing unconscious at the time.”
“They thought you were going to die,” I said.
“No bloody chance,” he replied, still grinning.
“And I was arrested for your attempted murder.”
“Yeah,” he said. “So I heard. Serves you right.”
“What for?” I said.
He laughed. “For being such a boring bastard.”
Was I really boring?
“I’m sorry.”
“You were much more fun as a jock,” Billy said. “Do you remember that time we all got thrown out of that f-ing hotel in Torquay after your big win at Newton Abbot?”
I smiled. I remembered it well. “It was all your fault,” I said. “You poured champagne into their grand piano.”
“Yeah, well, so maybe I did,” he said. “But it was a crap piano anyway. And it was you