Free Under Orders by Dick Francis

stand a bet from someone else who wants to bet on the horse to win, which means I effectively bet on it to lose. The Triumph Hurdle – Candlestick’s race last Friday – is a race that you can gamble on ante-post, which means you can bet on the race for weeks or months ahead.’ I nodded; one didn’t need to be a gambler to know all about ante-post betting.
    ‘Because you lose your money if the horse doesn’t run, the odds are usually better. Prices are even better before the entries close because you’re also gambling that the connections will choose to enter the horse for the race in the first place. Then lots of the horses that are entered never actually run.’ He briefly drew breath. ‘The entries for the Triumph Hurdle close in January, but I put a monkey on Candlestick to win at 30 to 1 way back in November.’
    ‘So if he won, you’d win fifteen thousand,’ I said. A monkey is gambling slang for five hundred.
    ‘Right,’ he said, ‘but if he didn’t win I would have lost my five hundred. So on Thursday morning, I bet on him to lose to cover my stake.’
    ‘How exactly?’ I asked.
    ‘I took a bet of a monkey at sevens. So if the horse won I would win fifteen thousand minus the three and a half thousand I would have to pay on the other bet, and if he didn’t win I was even. I would have lost my win stake but made it back on the lay bet. Understand?’
    ‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘You stood to win eleven and a half thousand against a zero stake.’ And win he had.
    ‘Piece of piss,’ he laughed. ‘Money for old rope. But you losebadly if the horse doesn’t run so I only tend to do it if I am pretty sure my horse will actually run and it has a reasonable chance, which means the starting price will be a lot shorter than the ante-post price. On Friday, Candlestick’s starting price was down to 6 to 1.’
    ‘Do you ever make money if the horse loses?’ I asked.
    ‘Well,’ he paused a moment as if deciding whether to continue. Discretion lost. ‘I suppose I do sometimes, when I know a horse isn’t too well or hasn’t been working very well. Occasionally I will run a horse I really shouldn’t. Say if it’s got a cold or a bit of a leg.’
    I remembered an owner who was surprised to hear from his trainer that his horse had ‘a bit of a leg’ when he expected that it had four full ones. ‘A bit of a leg’ was a euphemism for heat in a tendon, a sure sign of a slight strain. To run a horse in such a condition was quite likely to cause the horse to ‘break down’, that is, to pull or tear the tendon completely, requiring many months of treatment and, at worst, the end of a racing career.
    Bill would know, as I did, that the powers-that-be in racing, while allowing trainers to bet on their horses to win, forbid them to bet on them to lose.
    ‘So the Stewards only saw the win bet on your account?’ I said.
    ‘Bloody right,’ he said.
    ‘So how did you take the lose bet on Thursday?’
    ‘There are ways,’ he grinned again.
    I wondered how big a step it was from running an under-the-weather horse that was likely to lose, to running a horse that was fit and well that would also lose because the jockey wasn’t trying. I was getting round to asking such a pivotal questionwhen we were interrupted by the arrival of vehicles in the driveway, the gravel scrunching under their tyres.
    ‘Who the hell can that be at this time?’ said Bill, moving to look out of the window.
    It was the police.
    In particular, it was Chief Inspector Carlisle of Gloucestershire CID, together with several other policemen, four of them in uniform.
    Bill went to meet them at the back door.
    ‘William George Burton?’ asked the Chief Inspector.
    ‘That’s me,’ said Bill.
    ‘I arrest you on suspicion of the murder of Huw Walker.’

C HAPTER 6
    ‘You must be having a joke,’ said Bill. But they weren’t.
    The Chief Inspector continued, ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not