Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [68]
Fred Collyer, out on the balcony, watched the photographers running to immortalise the winner, Pincer Movement, and reflected sourly that none of them would have taken close-up pictures of the second favourite, Salad Bowl, down on the dirt. He watched the blanket of dark red roses being draped over the victor and the triumphal presentation of the trophies, and then went inside for the re-run of the race on television. They showed the Salad Bowl incident forwards, backwards and sideways, and then jerked it through slowly in a series of stills.
‘See that,’ said Clay Petrovitch, pointing at the screen over Fred Collyer’s shoulder, ‘it was Crinkle Cut caused it. You can see him crash into Salad Bowl… there!… Crinkle Cut, that’s the joker in the pack.’
Fred Collyer strolled over to his place, sat down, and stared at his keyboard. Crinkle Cut. He knew something about Crinkle Cut. He thought intensely for five minutes, but he couldn’t remember what he knew.
Details and quotes came up to the press room. All fallen jockeys shaken but unhurt, all horses ditto; stewards in a tizzy, making instant enquiries and re-running the patrol camera film over and over. Suspension for Piper Boles considered unlikely, as blind eye usually turned to rough riding in the Derby. Piper Boles had gone on record as saying ‘Crinkle Cut just suddenly swerved. I didn’t expect it, and couldn’t prevent him bumping Salad Bowl.’ Large numbers of people believed him.
Fred Collyer thought he might as well get a few pars down on paper: it would bring the first drink nearer, and boy how he needed that drink. With an ear open for fresher information he tapped out a blow-by-blow I-was-there account of an incident he had hardly seen. When he began to read it through, he saw that the first words he had written were ‘The diversion on Crinkle Cut stole the post-race scene…’
Diversion on Crinkle Cut? He hadn’t meant to write that… or not exactly. He frowned. And there were other words in his mind, just as stupid. He put his hands back on the keyboard and typed them out.
‘It’ll cost you… ten thousand in used notes… half before.’
He stared at what he had written. He had made it up, he must have. Or dreamed it. One or the other.
A dream. That was it. He remembered. He had had a dream about two men planning a fixed race, and one of them had been Marius Tollman, wheezing away about a diversion on Crinkle Cut.
Fred Collyer relaxed and smiled at the thought, but the next minute knew quite suddenly that it hadn’t been a dream at all. He had heard Marius Tollman and Piper Boles planning a diversion on Crinkle Cut, and he had forgotten because he’d been drunk. Well, he reassured himself uneasily, no harm done, he had remembered now, hadn’t he?
No, he hadn’t. If Crinkle Cut was a diversion, what was he a diversion from? Perhaps if he waited a bit, he would find he knew that, too.
Blisters Schultz spent Fred Collyer’s money on two hot dogs, one mint julep, and five losing bets. On the winning side, he had harvested three more billfolds and a woman’s purse: total haul, a hundred and ninety-four bucks. Gloomily he decided to call it a day and not come back next year.
Marius Tollman lumbered busily from window to window of the pari-mutuel and the stewards asked to see the jockeys involved in the Salad Bowl pile-up.
The crowds, hot, tired and frayed at the edges, began to leave in the yellowing sunshine. The bands marched away. The stalls which sold souvenirs packed up their wares. Pincer Movement had his picture taken for the thousandth time and the runners for the tenth, last, and least interesting race of the day walked over from the barns.
Piper Boles was waiting outside the stewards’ room for a summons inside, but Marius Tollman used the highest class messengers, and the package he entrusted was safely delivered. Piper Boles, nodded, slipped it into his pocket,