Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [5]
Cawdor-Jones received report after report with a face of anxious despair. He knew no doors had been locked after the stampede to the exit. He knew no security measures whatever had been taken. The racecourse wasn’t equipped to deal with such a situation. The Committee would undoubtedly blame him. Might even give him the sack.
At 4.30 he listened with astounded relief to news from the police that a man had been apprehended and was now helping to explain how his binoculars case came to be crammed to overflowing with used treasury notes, many of them bearing a fresh watermark resulting from the use of a wet beer glass as a paper-weight.
Monday morning, Tricksy Wilcox appeared gloomily before a magistrate and was remanded in custody for seven days. The great Bandwagon idea hadn’t been so hot after all, and they would undoubtedly send him down for more than nine months this time.
Only one thought brightened his future. The police had tried all weekend to get information out of him, and he had kept his mouth tight shut. Where, they wanted to know, had he hidden the biggest part of his loot?
Tricksy said nothing.
There had only been room in the binoculars case for one-tenth of the stolen money. Where had he put the bulk?
Tricksy wasn’t telling.
He would get off more lightly, they said, if he surrendered the rest.
Tricksy didn’t believe it. He grinned disdainfully and shook his head. Tricksy knew from past experience that he would have a much easier time inside as the owner of a large hidden cache. He’d be respected. Treated with proper awe. He’d have status. Nothing on earth would have persuaded him to spill the beans.
Monday morning, Major Cawdor-Jones took his red face to an emergency meeting of his Executive Committee and agreed helplessly with Bellamy’s sharply reiterated opinion that the racecourse security was a disgrace.
‘I warned you,’ Bellamy repeated for the tenth self-righteous time. ‘I warned you all. We need more locks. There are some excellent slam-shut devices available for the cash drawers in the Tote. I’m told that all money can be secured in five seconds. I propose that these devices be installed immediately throughout the racecourse.’
He glared belligerently round the table. Roskin kept his eyes down and merely pursed his mouth, and Kingdom Hill voted to bolt its doors now that the horse was gone.
Monday evening, Angelisa Ludville poured a double gin, switched on the television and put her feet up. Beside her lay a pile of stamped and addressed envelopes, each containing a cheque clearing one of her dreaded debts. She sighed contentedly. Never, she thought, would she forget the shock of seeing her empty till. Never would she get over the fright it had given her. Never would she forget the rush of relief when she realised that everyone had been robbed, not just herself. Because she knew perfectly well that it was one of the other sellers whose take she had scooped up on the scramble to the door. She had thought it plain stupid to lift the money from her own place. She couldn’t know that there would be another, more ambitious thief. It would have been plain silly at the time to steal from her own place. And besides, there was far more cash at the other window.
Monday evening, Kevin Cawdor-Jones sat in his bachelor flat thinking about the second search of Kingdom Hill. All day Sunday the police had repeated the nook-and-cranny inspection, but slowly, without fear, looking not for a bang but a bank. Cawdor-Jones had given his willing assistance, but nothing at all had been found. The money had vanished.
‘Tricksy must have had a partner,’ said the police officer in charge morosely. ‘But we won’t get a dicky bird out of him.’
Cawdor-Jones, unsacked from his managership, smiled gently at the memory of the past few days. Cawdor-Jones, impulsive and rashly courageous, had made the most of the opportunity Tricksy Wilcox had provided.
Cawdor-Jones, whose nerve could never be doubted, had driven away unchallenged on Saturday evening with