No reserve, p.1
No Reserve, page 1
FELIX FRANCIS
NO RESERVE
A DICK FRANCIS NOVEL
With my love and thanks, as always, to Debbie
“The unnamed Newmarket based bloodstock sales company depicted in this novel is fictional, but it is inspired by Tattersalls Ltd, the real Newmarket based bloodstock sales company, and I hereby acknowledge, with thanks, the help and encouragement I have received from all the staff at Tattersalls Ltd.”
FOREWORD
HORSE RACING AND gambling are intertwined, always have been, always will be. Right from the earliest recorded races at Smithfield, London, in the twelfth century, wagers have been placed on which horse was the fastest.
Racing as we know it today wouldn’t exist without gambling, but the biggest gambles in racing are not placed with a bookmaker or in the betting shops; they occur in the sale rings, where vast sums are staked on untested, unridden, and as-yet-unnamed yearling colts, in the hope they will turn out to be world beaters and future sires of champions.
Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t.
The American colt Justify was sold at the 2016 Keeneland September yearling sale for US$500,000. He raced just six times, all of them as a three-year-old. In just one hundred and eleven days, between 18 February and 9 June 2018, he won all of those six races, including the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes to become only the thirteenth horse in history to win the coveted American Triple Crown. His prize money on the track was an impressive US$3.8 million. But that figure is dwarfed by his potential future earnings as a stallion. Over a fifteen-year stud career, he is expected to amass fees in excess of US$150 million—making him worth at least six times his own weight in pure gold.
However, back in 1983, in the same Keeneland sale ring, Snaafi Dancer, a son of the great Northern Dancer, was bought by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum for $10.3 million, a world-record price for a yearling at the time (well in excess of thirty million dollars in today’s money). The horse never made it to a racetrack, as it was “embarrassingly slow,” so he was sent straight to stud, where he was found to have fertility problems. In all, he sired just four foals, none of which ever won a race.
Now, that’s what I call gambling!
CHAPTER
1
“THE BID IS two million six hundred thousand guineas. I’m looking now for two million seven.”
My voice boomed around the sale ring and outside through the public address speakers via the microphone clipped to my suit lapel.
“Two million six hundred thousand guineas I have.”
I scanned the rows and rows of expectant faces, searching for a tiny movement of a hand, a slight nod of a head or even a brief raising of an eyebrow—anything that might indicate another bid.
“Two million six hundred thousand in the stairwell at the back. Two million six. Now looking for two million seven.” I said, scanning the faces again from my lofty position on the auctioneer’s rostrum. “I’ll take two million six-fifty, if it helps.”
There was slight hush in the sale ring, reserved only for those special occasions when everyone realised that very serious money was about to be paid for a very young, untried horse that might, just might, turn out to be a world beater on the track and then go on to sire generations of future champions, in the manner of the great Epsom Derby winner Galileo.
Could this bay colt circling around the sale ring in front of me turn out to be “the special one”? Maybe even a modern-day Northern Dancer? Or perhaps his son, Sadler’s Wells, the most successful sire in the history of British and Irish Thoroughbred breeding, who fathered no fewer than seventy-three Group 1 race winners on the flat, as well as the winners of seven Champion Hurdles, a Cheltenham Gold Cup, and two American Grand Nationals over the jumps.
A man in the second row of seats across the ring from me removed his baseball cap and wiped his forehead in the early October heat. Was that a bid? I wondered. I stared in his direction, but he didn’t catch my eye. He replaced his cap.
“The bid is two million six hundred thousand guineas at the very back.” To avoid any confusion, I pointed at the bidder, barely visible in the right-hand stairwell at the top of the building. “Any more? The hammer is up. Last chance.”
I was about to bring my gavel down on the rostrum when a large man, standing near the main horse-entrance door to my left, lifted his right hand, placed his index finger on his temple, and then removed it, almost as if in a salute.
“Two million seven hundred thousand guineas,” I said. “Two million seven. Two million seven.”
I glanced up at the stairwell.
I could only see the previous bidder’s head and face, the rest of him hiding below the level of the stairs. And he appeared irritated, pursing his lips and frowning.
He nodded at me, hardly moving his face while keeping his eyes firmly on mine. Just the slightest of movements for such a large sum of money.
“Two million eight,” I called. “The bid is now two million eight hundred thousand.”
I knew these two remaining bidders well, all others having dropped out when the price passed two million.
The one at the back was a local top racehorse trainer in his sixties, called Brian Kitman, and the other was a bloodstock agent, aged about fifty, whose full name was Elliot Mitchell, although he was uniformly known simply as Mitch.
I also reckoned I knew who they were each bidding on behalf of, as would everyone else, or at least those seriously involved in the horse-racing industry rather than those just present for the excitement of watching horseflesh sell for so much.
One of Brian Kitman’s owners was a brash Yorkshire businessman who had made a vast fortune by owning car dealerships across the country, and I strongly suspected that it might be his money that was behind Kitman’s bids.
Elliot Mitchell, meanwhile, had a large number of high-profile clients for whom he bought horses, but I believed the only one with this sort of financial firepower was an Irish syndicate of wealthy individuals he had set up to challenge the buying power of the many Arab sheiks who were investing heavily in British and Irish bloodstock.
“Two million eight hundred thousand guineas,” I called again. “Looking for two million nine.”
I shifted my attention back to Mitchell near the main horse-entrance door, in the area known colloquially as “the gate.”
I leaned down on the rostrum, facing in his direction.
“Come on now,” I said to him. “Make it up.”
He lifted a mobile phone to his left ear—to receive instructions, I presumed.
He lowered the phone and used his right hand to show me three fingers.
“The bid is now three million guineas,” I called into the hushed silence. “Three million in the gate.”
I glanced down at the animal in question, being led slowly round the ring, seemingly unconcerned by the huge sum riding on his rump. He was the full brother of the current leading two-year-old that had won all six of his races so far.
Not that being a sibling of a superstar necessarily meant that he would be a superstar too, but in racehorses it made it slightly more likely. In 2014, Noble Mission won the Champion Stakes at Ascot, the most valuable horserace in Britain, two years after victory in the same event by his far-more-famous, older full brother, Frankel.
“Three million guineas, I have,” I said. “Looking now for three million two.”
I looked up, but Brian Kitman had disappeared. I glanced across to the other stairwell, searching for him, but there was no sign. He had just gone down and away, as he always did when the price became too high.
“Three million guineas,” I said again. “Are you all done? I’m selling this time round. The bid is three million. Last chance. Fair warning.”
I theatrically lifted my gavel and had one more scan of the faces in front of me. Kitman had not reappeared, and no one else was moving, not even a twitch in case it was misconstrued as a bid. Indeed, the only sound was the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves as it continued to be led around the ring.
After the horse had passed me one more time, I brought my gavel down onto the rostrum with a sharp crack.
“Sold to Elliot Mitchell.”
A smattering of applause broke out from a group of onlookers at the top of the tiered seating who knew no better than to make unnecessary noise that might frighten the horse. Three-million-guinea sales were not unheard of, but they were rare. It was certainly a first for me, and I felt like applauding too. My maximum before this had been a mere six hundred thousand.
There was a pat on my back.
“Well done, Theo.”
I turned to find the chairman of the sales company standing behind me—Peter Radway—my boss. He had been due to relieve me prior to this lot but he had been late arriving, so I had simply carried on.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Have a rest now,” he said. “I’ll take over.”
I stepped back from the rostrum. I reached up and tried to unclip the lapel microphone to give to him, but my hands were shaking.
“Adrenalin,” Peter said with a smile. “It’s okay—I’ll do it.”
He unclipped the microphone with ease and transferred it to his own jacket.
“Right then,” Peter said confidently, standing tall at the rostrum. “Don’t go away, anybody. Next up we have lot number one hundred sixty-seven, a fine filly by Star of Wessex out of a Galileo mare. Plenty of quality in the pedigree with this one, and a half-sister to a two-time winner as a two-year-old. Who will give me three hundred th
Locating those actually bidding was an art, and Peter was one of the best, assisted by several spotters placed at strategic points around the edges of the sale ring.
“The bid is one hundred and twenty thousand guineas. She’s a steal at that price. One thirty, thank you. One forty now. One fifty. One sixty.”
One of the spotters shouted and raised one hand while pointing with the other at a new bidder sitting in the seats to the right of the rostrum.
“One seventy.” Peter turned. “One eighty now, in the gate.”
He switched his attention back to the new bidder.
“Make it up.”
He waited and the man fractionally raised his catalogue.
“Two hundred thousand,” Peter said. “Thank you. Selling now.”
“Selling now” was code that the bid price had reached the reserve set by the vendor, and all future bids would result in a sale.
“Two ten in the gate.”
I decided to leave Peter to it. All day, I’d been drinking lots of water to keep my voice in good shape, and now I urgently needed a pee.
I made my way out of the back of the auctioneer’s box, situated behind the rostrum, and then outside into the last of the afternoon sunshine.
“So what is a goddam guinea anyway?”
A large American lady in a smart designer pink coat and high-heeled black leather boots was asking a man wearing a blue puffer jacket and a baseball cap, who was standing with her.
“It’s twenty-one shillings,” the man answered.
The woman rolled her eyes. “And what, for Christ’s sake, is a shilling?”
I inwardly smiled and paused a moment to listen. This could be fun.
“A shilling used to be what is now five pence,” said the man. “There were twenty shillings to a pound—that was before our currency went decimal in the 1970s.”
The woman stared at him. “You Brits are totally crazy. So a guinea is a pound plus five of your pennies?”
She made it sound as ridiculous as it was.
“That’s right.”
“Why don’t you simply use just pounds, or even dollars like the rest of the world?”
“It’s historical,” said the man. “Horses have always been sold here at Newmarket Sales in guineas. It used to be that the vendor received all the pounds, and the auction company simply kept the extra shillings as their commission. But VAT has changed all that.”
“What’s VAT?”
“Value Added Tax. It’s a bit like American sales tax, but it applies to goods and services, so it’s charged on both the sale price and on the commission.”
The woman rolled her eyes once more. “And what the hell is value added about commission? It’s more like value subtracted.”
I had to agree that she had a good point.
The two of them drifted away and out of my earshot.
What the man hadn’t told her was that a guinea was called a guinea because the first British “guinea” coins had been made of gold mined in the Guinea region of West Africa. Their value had originally fluctuated with the price of gold until it was fixed by the British government at twenty-one shillings in 1717. The original gold coins have long since disappeared as legal tender, not least because their gold content would make them worth hundreds of times more than their face value, but the guinea as a monetary unit is still used, not only for buying horses but also for some medical and legal fees.
I rushed into the main office building and ran up the stairs to the small gents’ restroom on the second-floor landing. By now, I was almost bursting.
The two urinals were occupied by others, so I dived into one of the two empty cubicles, struggling to unzip my fly before I wet myself.
As I thankfully relieved myself, I heard the two men who’d been at the urinals talking about the unusually warm weather.
“No doubt due to this wretched global warming,” one of them said.
“I suppose it’s better than an ice age,” said the other with a laugh.
They were still chatting as they left, the sound of their voices disappearing as the outside door closed behind them.
I finished and did up my trousers. I was about to flush when I heard the door open again.
“Bloody hell, Mitch,” said a voice, almost in a whisper. “I thought for a moment you were going to leave me in there at two million six.”
“Shh! Someone will hear you,” said a second voice that I took to be that of Elliot Mitchell—Mitch.
I felt rather than saw the cubicle door behind me open slightly and then swing shut again, me not having locked it in my haste.
“There’s no one in here.”
I wondered if I should cough or flush the toilet or do something to let them know of my presence, but instead I stood stock still, silently listening.
“But I told you beforehand that I’d go to three,” Mitchell said with a laugh.
“I know you did, but you took your bloody time about it. And that young auctioneer nearly dropped his hammer early. I could see it in his eyes as he stared up at me.”
So the other man was Brian Kitman, and he was right. I had almost dropped the hammer at two six, when he had been the high bidder.
“Beyond your limit, was it?” Mitchell said with amusement.
“A long way beyond. I was really sweating.”
Mitchell laughed again. “We had somehow got out of step, so I had to jump by two hundred grand to get it to three million.”
“I know,” Kitman said. “And damn glad I was of it too. Nice touch, though, using your phone like that. I could just see you from the stairwell.”
“To tell you the truth,” Mitchell said, “I was worried the bloody thing would ring while I had it up to my ear. I’d forgotten to put it on silent.” He laughed loudly once again.
I remained standing absolutely still, scarcely believing what I was hearing.
Agents or other persons conspiring together to bid up a horse to a predetermined maximum was a clear breach of rule seven of the Bloodstock Industry Code of Practice and could be considered as a criminal fraud against the person who had to pay the bill.
What should I do?
I went on being silent, hardly daring to breathe.
“Have you fixed the insurance?” Kitman asked.
“I certainly have,” Mitchell replied. “I always do it as soon as the hammer falls on anything I buy, just in case something happens to the horse before I get the money back from my principal. I just send my broker a text with the lot number and the price. He does the rest.”
“So you’re sure it’s covered for death from natural causes?”
“Positive. I checked. It’s covered for every eventuality for the next thirty days.”
I could hear as they washed their hands and then the loud noise of the hand dryer running. Finally, I heard the outside door open and then close.
I remained exactly where I was for quite some time, desperately trying to listen for any sound. Had they both gone? Or just one?
I heard the outer door open again, and someone came in, humming a tune.
Was it Mitchell or Kitman coming back?
I thought it unlikely, but I couldn’t stay in here for the rest of the day. I was due back in the sale ring shortly.
I took a deep breath, flushed the toilet, and then stepped out of the cubicle.
The newcomer was Nigel Stanhope, another member of the team of auctioneers. In his mid-forties, Nigel was a work colleague rather than a friend. In fact, I didn’t believe Nigel had any friends, certainly none at work.
“Oh, hello, Theo,” he said, glancing at me over his shoulder as he stood at the urinal. “What are you doing hiding in a gents’ cubicle?”
“I wasn’t hiding—just going to the toilet like anyone else.”
“Could have fooled me,” he said. “I hear you just got bloody lucky.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“That three million lot. Fell into your lap, I hear, and only because Peter was late arriving.” He said it without amusement. He was clearly envious. But little did he really know how much that lot had actually fallen into my lap.
