Nerve

Dick Francis Nerve

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 mistake 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.’