Nerve Read online

  DICK FRANCIS

  Nerve

  The Dick Francis Library

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Books by Dick Francis and Felix Francis

  DEAD HEAT

  SILKS

  EVEN MONEY

  CROSSFIRE

  Books by Dick Francis

  THE SPORT OF QUEENS (autobiography)

  DEAD CERT

  NERVE

  FOR KICKS

  ODDS AGAINST

  FLYING FINISH

  BLOOD SPORT

  FORFEIT

  ENQUIRY

  RAT RACE

  BONECRACK

  SMOKESCREEN

  SLAY-RIDE

  KNOCK DOWN

  HIGH STAKES

  IN THE FRAME

  RISK

  TRIAL RUN

  WHIP HAND

  REFLEX

  TWICE SHY

  BANKER

  THE DANGER

  PROOF

  BREAK IN

  LESTER: THE OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY

  BQLT

  HOT MONEY

  THE EDGE

  STRAIGHT

  LONGSHOT

  COMEBACK

  DRIVING FORCE

  DECIDER

  WILD HORSES

  COME TO GRIEF

  TO THE HILT

  10-lb PENALTY

  FIELD OF 13

  SECOND WIND

  SHATTERED

  UNDER ORDERS

  One

  Art Mathews shot himself, loudly and messily, in the centre of the parade ring at Dunstable races.

  I was standing only six feet away from him, but he did it so quickly that had it been only six inches I would not have had time to stop him.

  He had walked out of the changing-room ahead of me, his narrow shoulders hunched inside the khaki jerkin he had put on over his racing colours, and his head down on his chest as if he were deep in thought. I noticed him stumble slightly down the two steps from the weighing-room to the path; and when someone spoke to him on the short walk to the parade ring, he gave absolutely no sign of having heard. But it was just another walk from the weighing-room to the parade ring, just another race like a hundred others. There was nothing to suggest that when he had stood talking for two or three minutes with the owner and trainer of the horse he was due to ride, he would take off his jerkin, produce from under it as he dropped it to the ground a large automatic pistol, place the barrel against his temple and squeeze the trigger.

  Unhesitating. No pause for a final weighing-up. No good-byes. The casualness of his movement was as shocking as its effect.

  He hadn’t even shut his eyes, and they were still open as he fell forwards to the ground, his face hitting the grass with an audible thud and his helmet rolling off. The bullet had passed straight through his skull, and the exit wound lay open to the sky, a tangled, bloody mess of skin and hair and brain, with splinters of bone sticking out.

  The crack of the gunshot echoed round the paddock, amplified by the high back wall of the stands. Heads turned searchingly and the busy buzz and hum of conversation from the three-deep railside racegoers grew hushed and finally silent as they took in the appalling, unbelievable, indisputable fact that what remained of Art Mathews lay face downwards on the bright green turf.

  Mr John Brewar, the owner of Art’s prospective mount, stood with his middle-aged mouth stretched open in a soundless oval, his eyes glazed with surprise. His plump, well-preserved wife toppled to the ground in the graceless sprawl of a genuine faint, and Corin Kellar, the trainer for whom both Art and I had been about to ride, went down on one knee and shook Art by the shoulder, as if he could still awaken one whose head was half blown away.

  The sun shone brightly. The blue and orange silk on Art’s back gleamed: his white breeches were spotless, and his racing boots had been polished into a clean, soft shine. I thought inconsequentially that he would have been glad that – from the neck down at least – he looked as immaculate as ever.

  The two stewards hurried over and stood stock-still, staring at Art’s head. Horror dragged down their jaws and narrowed their eyes. It was part of their responsibility at a meeting to stand in the parade ring while the horses were led round before each race, so that they should be both witnesses and adjudicators if anything irregular should occur. Nothing as irregular as a public suicide of a top-notch steeplechase jockey had ever, I imagined, required their attention before.

  The elder of them, Lord Tirrold, a tall, thin man with an executive mind, bent over Art for a closer inspection. I saw the muscles bunch along his jaw, and he looked up at me across Art’s body and said quietly ‘Finn … fetch a rug.’

  I walked twenty steps down the parade ring to where one of the horses due to run in the race stood in a little group with his owner, trainer and jockey. Without a word the trainer took the rug off the horse and held it out to me.

  ‘Mathews?’ he said incredulously.

  I nodded unhappily and thanked him for the rug, and went back with it.

  The other steward, a sour-tempered hulk named Ballerton, was, I was meanly pleased to see, losing his cherished dignity by vomiting up his lunch.

  Mr Brewar pulled down his unconscious wife’s rucked-up skirt and began anxiously to feel her pulse. Corin Kellar kept passing his hand over his face from forehead to chin, still down on one knee beside his jockey. His face was colourless, his hand shaking. He was taking it badly.

  I handed one end of the rug to Lord Tirrold and we opened it out and spread it gently over the dead man. Lord Tirrold stood for a moment looking down at the motionless brown shape, then glanced round at the little silent groups of the people who had runners in the race. He went over and spoke to one or two, and presently the stable lads led all the horses out from the parade ring and back to the saddling boxes.

  I stood looking down at Corin Kellar and his distress, which I thought he thoroughly deserved. I wondered how it felt to know one had driven a man to kill himself.

  There was a click, and a voice announced over the loudspeaker system that owing to a serious accident in the parade ring the last two races would be abandoned. Tomorrow’s meeting would be held as planned, it said, and would everyone please go home. As far as the growing crowd of racegoers round the ring were concerned, this might never have been said, for they remained glued to the rails with all eyes on the concealing rug. Nothing rivets human attention as hungrily as a bloody disaster, I thought tolerantly, picking up Art’s helmet and whip from the grass.

  Poor Art. Poor badgered, beleaguered Art, rubbing out his misery with a scrap of lead.

  I turned away from his body and walked thoughtfully back to the weighing-room.

  While we changed back from riding kit into our normal clothes the atmosphere down our end of the changing-room was one of irreverence covering shock. Art, occupying by general consent the position of elder statesman among jockeys, though he was not actually at thirty-five by any means the eldest, had been much deferred to and respected. Distant in manner sometimes, withdrawn even, but an honest man and a good jockey. His one noticeable weakness, at which we usually smiled indulgently, was his conviction that a lost race was always due to some deficiency in his horse or its training, and never to a mis
take on his own part. We all knew perfectly well that Art was no exception to the rule that every jockey misjudges things once in a while, but he would never admit a fault, and could put up a persuasive defence every time if called to account.

  ‘Thank the Lord,’ said Tick-Tock Ingersoll, stripping off his blue and black checked jersey, ‘that Art was considerate enough to let us all weigh out for the race before bumping himself off.’ Tick-Tock’s face emerged from the woolly folds with a wide grin which faded comically when no one laughed.

  ‘Well,’ he said, dropping his jersey absentmindedly in a heap on the floor. ‘If he’d done it an hour ago we’d all have been ten quid out of pocket.’

  He was right. Our fees for each race were technically earned once we had sat on the scales and been checked out as carrying the correct weight, and they would be automatically paid whether we ran the race or not.

  ‘In that case,’ said Peter Cloony, ‘we should put half of it into a fund for his widow.’ He was a small, quiet young man prone to over-emotional, quickly roused and quickly spent bouts of pity both for others and for himself.

  ‘Not ruddy likely,’ said Tick-Tock, who disliked him openly. ‘Ten quid’s ten quid to me, and Mrs Art’s rolling in it. And snooty with it. Catch me giving her the time of day, you’ll be lucky.’

  ‘It’s a mark of respect,’ said Peter obstinately, looking round at us with rather damp large eyes and carefully refraining from returning young Tick-Tock’s belligerent glare.

  I sympathised with Tick-Tock. I needed the money, too. Besides, Mrs Art had treated me, along with all the other rank-and-file jockeys, with her own particularly arctic brand of coolness. Giving her a fiver in Art’s memory wouldn’t thaw her. Pale, straw-haired, light-eyed, she was the original ice maiden, I thought.

  ‘Mrs Art doesn’t need our money,’ I said. ‘Remember how she bought herself a mink coat last winter and used it as a hedge against all of us who didn’t measure up to her standards? She hardly knows two of us by name. Let’s just buy Art a wreath, and perhaps a useful memorial, something he would have appreciated, like some hot showers in the washroom here.’

  Tick-tock’s angular young face registered delight. Peter Cloony bent on me a look of sorrowful reproof. But from the others came nods of agreement.

  Grant Oldfield said violently, ‘He probably shot himself because that whey-faced bitch short-changed him in bed.’

  There was a curious little silence. A year ago, I reflected, a year ago we might have laughed. But a year ago Grant Oldfield would have said the same thing amusingly and perhaps vulgarly, but not with this ugly unsmiling venom.

  I was aware, we all were, that he didn’t know or care a jot about the private practices of Art’s marriage; but in the past months Grant had seemed more and more to be consumed by some inner rage, and lately he could scarcely make the most commonplace remark without in some way giving vent to it. It was caused, we thought, by the fact that he was going down the ladder again without ever having got to the top. He had always been ambitious and ruthless in character, and had developed a riding style to match. But at the vital point when he had attracted public attention with a string of successes and had begun to ride regularly for James Axminster, one of the very top trainers, something had happened to spoil it. He had lost the Axminster job, and other trainers booked him less and less. The race we had not run was his only engagement that day.

  Grant was a dark, hairy, thick-set man of thirty, with high cheek-bones and a wide-nostrilled nose bent permanently out of shape. I endured a great deal more of his company than I would have liked because my peg in the changing-room at nearly all racecourses was next to his, since both our kit was looked after by the same racecourse valet. He borrowed my things freely without asking first or thanking afterwards, and if he had broken something, denied he had used it. When I first met him I had been amused by his pawky humour but two years later, by the day Art died, I was heartily sick of his thunderous moods, his roughness and his vile temper.

  Once or twice in the six weeks since the new season had begun I had found him standing with his head thrust forward looking round him in bewilderment, like a bull played out by a matador. A bull exhausted by fighting a piece of cloth, a bull baffled and broken, all his magnificent strength wasted on something he could not pin down with his horns. At such times I could pity Grant all right, but at all others I kept out of his way as much as I could.

  Peter Cloony, paying him no attention as usual, indicated the peg on which Art’s everyday clothes hung, and said, ‘What do you think we had better do with these?’

  We all looked at them, the well-cut tweed suit neatly arranged on a hanger, with the small grip which contained his folded shirt and underclothes standing on the bench beneath. His almost obsessive tidiness was so familiar to us that it aroused no comment, but now that he was dead I was struck afresh by it. Everyone else hung up their jackets by the loop at the back of the neck, hooked their braces on to the pegs, and piled their other clothes into the tops of their trousers. Only Art had insisted on a hanger, and had provided his valet with one to bring for him.

  Before we had got any further than an obscene suggestion from Grant, a racecourse official threaded his way down the changing-room, spotted me, and shouted, ‘Finn, the stewards want you.’

  ‘Now?’ I said, standing in shirt and underpants.

  ‘At once.’ He grinned.

  ‘All right.’ I finished dressing quickly, brushed my hair, walked through the weighing-room, and knocked on the stewards’ door. They said to come in, and in I went.

  All three stewards were there, also the clerk of the course and Corin Kellar. They were sitting in uncomfortable-looking, straight-backed chairs around a large, oblong table.

  Lord Tirrold said, ‘Come along in and close the door.’

  I did as he said.

  He went on, ‘I know you were near Mathews when he … er … shot himself. Did you actually see him do it? I mean, did you see him take the pistol out and aim it, or did you look at him when you heard the shot?’

  ‘I saw him take out the pistol and aim it, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Very well. In that case the police may wish to take a statement from you; please do not leave the weighing-room building until they have seen you. We are waiting now for the inspector to come back from the first-aid room.’

  He nodded to dismiss me, but when I had my hand on the door-knob he said, ‘Finn … do you know of any reason why Mathews should have wished to end his life?’

  I hesitated a fraction too long before I turned round, so that a plain ‘No’ would have been unconvincing. I looked at Corin Kellar, who was busy studying his fingernails.

  ‘Mr Kellar might know,’ I said, non-committally.

  The stewards exchanged glances. Mr Ballerton, still pallid from his bout of sickness by Art’s body, made a pushing away gesture with his hand, and said, ‘You’re not asking us to believe that Mathews killed himself merely because Kellar was dissatisfied with his riding?’ He turned to the other stewards. ‘Really,’ he added forcefully, ‘if these jockeys get so big for their boots that they can’t take a little well-earned criticism, it is time they looked about for other employment. But to suggest that Mathews killed himself because of a few hard words is irresponsible mischief.’

  At that point I remembered that Ballerton himself owned a horse which Corin Kellar trained. ‘Dissatisfied with his riding,’ the colourless phrase he had used to describe the recent series of acrimonious post-race arguments between Art and the trainer suddenly seemed to me a deliberate attempt at oiling troubled waters. You know why Art killed himself, I thought; you helped to cause it, and you won’t admit it.

  I shifted my gaze back to Lord Tirrold and found him regarding me with speculation.

  ‘That will be all, Finn,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

  I went out and this time they did not call me back, but before I had crossed the weighing-room the door opened again and shut and I hea
rd Corin’s voice behind me.

  ‘Rob.’

  I turned round and waited for him.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ he said sarcastically, ‘for tossing that little bomb into my lap.’

  ‘You had told them already,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, and just as well.’

  He still looked shocked, his thin face deeply lined with worry. He was an exceptionally clever trainer but a nervous, undependable man who offered you life-long friendship one day and cut you dead the next. Just then, it appeared, he needed reassurance.

  He said, ‘Surely you and the other jockeys don’t believe Art killed himself because … er … I had decided to employ him less? He must have had another reason.’

  ‘Today was supposed to be his last as your jockey in any case, wasn’t it?’ I said.

  He hesitated and then nodded, surprised at my knowing what had not been published. I didn’t tell him that I had bumped into Art in the car park the evening before, and that Art, bitterly despairing and smarting from a corroding sense of injustice, had lowered the customary guard on his tongue enough to tell me that his job with Kellar was finished.

  I said only, ‘He killed himself because you gave him the sack, and he did it in front of you to cause you the maximum amount of remorse. And that, if you want my opinion, is that.’

  ‘But people don’t kill themselves because they’ve lost their jobs,’ he said, with a tinge of exasperation.

  ‘Not if they’re normal, no,’ I agreed.

  ‘Every jockey knows he’ll have to retire some time. And Art was getting too old … he must have been mad.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I said.

  I left him standing there, trying to convince himself that he was in no way responsible for Art’s death.

  Back in the changing-room the discussion on what to do with Art’s clothes had been ended by his valet taking charge of them, and Grant Oldfield, I was glad to find, had finished dressing and gone home. Most of the other jockeys had gone also, and the valets were busy tidying up the chaos they had left behind, sorting dirty white breeches into kit bags, and piling helmets, boots, whips and other gear into large wicker hampers. It had been a dry sunny day, and for once there was no mud to wash off.