Krim Times Revisited: Chapter 49

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Chapter 49: Down at the racetrack

The racetrack was next to the South Gate Fairgrounds, which were south of the city walls. Crowds were sparce, since only the most die-hard fans and inveterate gamblers bothered to show up for the qualifying races and Trask was easily able to get directions to the stables, though having Matilda along didn’t hurt. 

It was remarkable how helpful people became the second they noticed her presence.

Trask was surprised to find that Gervis Gefroi was in charge of all the horses.

“I thought you’d be headed off to the war,” he told the stablemaster, who normally managed the Baron’s private stables.

“Well, it’s not a real war, is it?” Gervis said. “Just a little squabble over trinkets. Now, back in my day, we had real wars. You should have been there when Prince Searle led the army at the battle of Coldmarsh. We lost seventy-nine horses that day, but their deaths meant something.”

The horse next to him whinnied softly and Gervis fed it a piece of carrot. “Don’t worry, Pancake,” he murmured. “You’ve got a nice racing career ahead of you, then a cushy retirement at a stud farm.”

“So this is Warm Pancake,” Trask said. “He looks…. fast.”

The horse eyed him with disdain, then nudged Gervis for another piece of carrot.

“That he is,” Gervis said. “That he is. Now, what brings the Chamber here? Holding another fundraiser?”

“No, well, probably, but right now I’m looking for William Lockton. Do you know him? The grid administrator?”

“I may have met the weasel a time or two,” Gervis conceded.

“Have you heard that he got fired?”

“No, I’ve been a little busy.”

“Apparently, he’s been taking bribes from everybody,” Trask said. “Investors, merchants. And lying about everything. Almost got the grid sold off to some Humanists.”

“That’s awful, but I had nothing to do with that,” said Gervis.

“We found a list in Lockton’s office…”

“That’s all Rodge,” Gervis said. “I just do what I’m told. I’m told to go to such-and-such a place, and buy a horse, and I do that. How the boss knows what horse to buy, I don’t ask.”

“You mean the Baron?” Trask didn’t know the Baron’s had a first name. He made a mental note.

“That’s what I said. It was all him. I should have known there was something underhanded going on. Now, the previous guild leaders, they got their jobs the right way. They killed for it. They didn’t just whip out a checkbook and buy the whole guild. That’s not how you’re supposed to do things.”

“How does Lockton know about horses?” Trask asked.

“Well, he’s a grid admin, isn’t he? There might be privacy laws in place to protect players, but management knows where all the objects are. You know, buildings, artifacts, animals. They have to, since it’s all part of the game. And he knows all the stats. He knows which horses are the fastest, which ones have the most endurance…”

“Did Lockton take bribes to approve import licenses, too?”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Gervis. “You can’t import horses. You have to catch them, raise them, train them, breed them.”

“But I’ve seen horses coming out of the commercial gate,” Trask said.

“They don’t go through,” Gervis said. “The horses go in and there’s a turnaround and they come right out again. Only objects with an export license can actually go out through the gate. When I first got to Krim, they didn’t have commercial gates yet, none of these import-export cludges. If you couldn’t find food to eat, you didn’t go import it from off-world. You starved to death, like nature intended. It totally ruined the character of the grid when they made that change, and Krim’s been going downhill ever since.”

Trask barely restrained himself from bringing up the nightly rains. 

“So Lockton told the Baron where to find Warm Pancake?” he asked instead.

“Pancake? No. We raised him from a foal.”

“What about Egg Custard?”

“Not Rodge’s horse, but I know what stable’s he’s from.”

“So Lockton had nothing to do with it?” 

Gervis shook his head.

“What about Fancypants?” 

“She’s one of ours. Rodge bought her after last summer’s races.”

“So Lockton had no connection to any of them?”

“Nope.”

“So why would he have a list of their names in his office?” Trask tried to bring up a memory of the list before Lockton snatched it from him. “There were numbers after each name.”

“Could be odds,” Gervis said. “As an admin, he’d have access to detailed information about each horse. Plus an AI, of course. He could probably calculate more accurate odds than any of us.”

“How much would a list like that be worth?”

“To a gambler? The sky’s the limit. To a horse owner, not that much. It wouldn’t really affect how we’d run races.” He paused to think for a moment. “The list would probably be most useful to a bookmaker.”

“Are any of them here today?”

“They’re all here. Have been all week, watching the trials.”

Matilda reappeared when Trask left the stable.

“He’s probably not here,” he told her. “The horse list was a dead end.”

“I thought he was taking bribes from horse owners to import horses,” she said.

“No, just helping them find them. Still bad, and I’ll tell Binkie what he was up to, but the horses on the list weren’t ones he helped with. The numbers were probably not bribes. Gervis says they might be odds.”

Both of them turned away from the stable and looked towards the track itself. 

“There are a few people here I know but none of them have seen Lockton,” Matilda said. “And I’ve been keeping an eye out for a guy in a business suit, but didn’t see him.”

“He’s probably changed his clothes,” Trask said. “Maybe put on a hat that covers his face.”

“Like a ski mask?”

“Maybe not in July.” Trask looked around. “But maybe a straw hat. Or one of those hooded assassin cloaks. Or a floppy felt hat, like that one.” He pointed at a man in a long cloak under a wide-brimmed black hat. “That can’t be comfortable in this sun.”

Matilda glanced at him. “You’re wearing fifty layers.”

“Well, I’m used to it. He wouln’t be.”

And, as he watched, the man in the black hat took it off, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and quickly put the hat back on after glancing around to see whether anyone recognized him.

“His chin is looking pretty bad,” Matilda said. “Nice job with the punch. How’s your hand feeling?”

“It’s fine,” said Trask. “It was nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing. He’d woken up with his hand in agonizing pain that morning, and had gone out through the central gate, reset his avatar, and came back in again. As a side benefit, he no longer needed to worry about trimming his toenails, which was always a chore since toenail clippers hadn’t officially been invented yet.

“I’ll circle around,” Matilda said. “Give me a couple of minutes, then call out his name and head for him.”

But in the end, Matilda didn’t even have to do anything.

The minute Trask yelled, “William Lockton! You’re under arrest for the murder of Thomasin Bimbledeck and multiple other griefing attacks!” all the bystanders immediately turned and looked at Lockton, then rushed him and he was buried until a pile of bodies.

The people of Krim defended their own.