Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [82]
He wondered if he should see about a new prescription for his glasses. Photographs never seemed so sharp in outline to him these days.
Greg Simpson thought regretfully that the judge was overdoing the delay. If he had known he would have had so much time, he would have brought with him more cash. Still, the clear profit he would shortly make was a fine afternoon’s work, and he would send Mr Smith his meagre share with a grateful heart.
Greg Simpson smiled contentedly, and briefly, as if touching a lucky talisman, he fingered the tiny transistorised hearing aid he wore unobtrusively under hair and trilby behind his left ear.
Jamie Finland listened intently, head bent, his curling dark hair falling onto the radio with which he eavesdropped on aircraft. The faint hiss of the carrier wave reached him unchanged, but he waited with quickening pulse and a fluttering feeling of excitement. If it didn’t happen, he thought briefly, it would be very boring indeed.
Although he was nerve-strainingly prepared, he almost missed it. The radio spoke one single word, distantly, faintly, without emphasis: ‘Eleven.’ The carrier wave hissed on, as if never disturbed, and it took Jamie’s brain two whole seconds to light up with a laugh of joy.
He pressed the telephone buttons and connected himself to the local bookmaking firm. ‘Hello? This is Jamie Finland. I have some credit arranged with you for this afternoon. Well, please will you put it all on the photo-finish of this race they’ve just run at Ascot? On number eleven, please.’
‘Eleven?’ echoed a matter-of-fact voice at the other end.’ Jetset?’
‘That’s right,’ Jamie said patiently.
‘Eleven. Jetset. All at evens, right?’
‘Right,’ Jamie said. ‘I was watching it on the box.’
‘Don’t we all, chum,’ said the voice in farewell, clicking off.
Jamie sat back with a tingling feeling of mischief. If eleven really had won, he was surely plain robbing the bookie. But who could know? How could anyone ever know? He wouldn’t tell his mother, because she would disapprove and might make him give the winnings back.
He imagined her voice if she came home and found he had doubled her money. He also imagined it if she found he had lost it all on the first race, betting on the result of a photo-finish that he couldn’t even see.
He hadn’t told her that it was because of the numbers on the radio he had wanted to bet at all. He’d said that he knew people often bet from home while they were watching racing on television. He’d said it would give him a marvellous new interest, if he could do that while she was at work.
He had persuaded her without much trouble to lend him a stake and arrange things with the bookmaker’s, and he wouldn’t have done it at all if the certainty factor had been missing.
When he’d first been given the radio which received aircraft frequencies, he had spent hours and days listening to the calls of the jetliners overhead on their way in and out of Heathrow; but the fascination had worn off, and gradually he tuned in less and less.
By accident one day, having twiddled the tuning knob aimlessly without finding an interesting channel, he forgot to switch the set off. In the afternoon, while he was listening to the Ascot televised races, the radio suddenly emitted a number: ‘Twenty-three.’
Jamie switched the set off but took little real notice until the television commentator, announcing the result of the photo-finish, spoke almost as if in echo. ‘Twenty-three… Swan Lake, number twenty-three, is the winner.’
‘How odd,’ Jamie thought. He left the tuning knob undisturbed, and switched the aircraft radio on again the following Saturday, along with Kempton Park races on television. There were two photo-finishes, but no voice-of-God on the ether. Ditto nil results from Doncaster, Chepstow and Epsom persuaded him,