Iraqi Icicle

by Bernie Dowling

  ‘Sorry, Steele, I was distracted. I’ve just worked out how we’re going to dope the horse. Let me and Bill worry over that. If you have a few pieces left out of your memory of what happened, it might help you justify yourself to the stewards or the coppers.’

  He chewed half a mushroom, offering me the other half. I declined, so he ate it, then went to his fridge and returned with a litre carafe of water.

  ‘I don’t know what these mushies will do to a horse. I presume they only take them in the wild by accident when they’re grazing. We’re gambling that they won’t ring the bells on a computer when they run a test on Who Loves Yer Baby. If they’re testing for psilocybin, the racing authorities are a lot hipper than I give them credit for.’

  Mick chewed half of another mushroom and swallowed it before he continued. ‘We do know what shrooms do to people. They provide a great deal of stamina for work, play or prolonged contemplation of the universe. I’ve also seen people unable to sign their names after a few fungi, but Who Loves Yer Baby won’t have to sign his scorecard even if he romps in and sets a track record. We just have to be sure that the human part of the equation, the jockey up top, does right by us.’

  I had been thinking about that. When I finally found Flick Sailor, I would ask her to lie low until after the race, not to go running back to her husband. ‘I told Mick Felicity being mad at her husband could work in our favour. ‘I doubt she’ll want to help her father but, if she’s grateful to me for arranging her freedom, she might play along.’

  ‘Offer her ten grand if the horse wins,’ Mick said in an authoritative voice, which proclaimed that he had quickly solved that problem.

  I told Mick I didn’t have $10,000. I’d never seen such an amount in my life.

  He took a hearty swig of water. ‘If this horse wins, you’ll see a lot more than ten grand. That I can guarantee.’

  ‘You’re going to have a go at the horse, even though you have no idea whether the mushies will work,’ I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

  ‘Why not?’ he replied. ‘If the stewards aren’t going to find any trace of drugs, they can wonder as much as they like as to the reason for a successful plunge. They’ll probably figure Bill Smith and Gregory Sailor have taken the horse to a private track, and it’s been running sensational times. I’d really kick myself if, after all the hassle we’re going through, it won without us backing it. I can only vaguely recall its recent form, but I know it’s only been in open company for this campaign, and only has a couple of minor placings at best. It’s got to start between twelve-to-one and twenty-to-one, so a few grand on its nose will not go astray.’

  So Mick was going to the track? This would turn our spree into a life-changing adventure for him. On that score, I was wide of the mark.

  ‘No, I will definitely be listening to our big one on my trusty radio. On Saturday morning, you swing by about ten. I’ll give you a satchel. You probably won’t want to put it all on at once, and create more suspicion than we need to. Every time Mecklam’s boys have a go at their horse, you follow with a decent whack on ours. No need to put your own money on. You can have ten grand from any winnings, the same as Felicity.’

  I rolled my eyes heavenward. ‘Buddha, Mick, how much are you putting on?’

  ‘At least twenty grand will be in the briefcase, Steele. And Bill Smith and Gregory Sailor receive not a cracker from any of our winnings.’

  He nodded his head up and down to confirm his decree was fair. ‘Those bastards have got themselves all in a sweat with their fighting and fucking, and they leave us to clean up the mess. Now, it’s our turn to party.’

  He popped some more mushrooms in his mouth, put Hendrix on the stereo and invited me to stay for tea. I asked him what he had to eat, and he pointed to the mushrooms drying on the tea towel.

  I said I would grab some Chinese take-away. ‘Don’t eat all of our investment capital,’ I told him. I left Mick Clarence laughing heartily as he slipped on a pair of headphones to indulge in a golden purple haze.

  27

  TUESDAY AND THURSDAY MORNINGS, most trainers give their horses serious track work hit outs before their big race on a Saturday. On other mornings, they might hack along at half pace – just a bit of fun for the horse, and it helps to maintain the relationship between animal and jockey. Some of the best jockeys only ride track work on the top-notch horses. The apprentices, and sometimes the stable hands or trainers, work the average neddies.

  Before dawn on Monday morning, I stood in the shadows watching the car park. This was where the people who went by the misnomer of the ‘racing fraternity’ put their vehicles. The brotherhood was not an egalitarian one. BMWs and expensive four-wheel-drives sat close to, but not right beside, clapped-out V8s that could barely fulfil their purpose of towing horse floats. Nearby slumped twenty-year-old bangers, with a couple of cylinders on the blink, that would struggle to take the battling jockeys even short distances to work.

  I recognised Bill Smith’s ancient V8 as it entered the car park towing his battered float. Bill hopped out, followed by – and this would have shocked most on the track – Gregory Sailor. I couldn’t see the expression on Howdy Sailor’s face, but his head was bowed and, when he did raise it, he glanced from side to side as if worried about who might see him. Smith went behind the float to release a tall bay horse, and he handed the reins to Sailor. Son-in-law Gregory was about to have his first ride on Who Loves Yer Baby. I left the family enterprise to their preparations for Saturday’s big race.

  Bill Smith’s place was less than ten minutes’ drive from the track. His house had to be forty or fifty years old. The solid wooden construction could have done with a coat of paint for general aesthetic purposes. For my own purposes, it could have done with an open door or manageable window. The sun was about to peek over the horizon; I figured I had an hour at the most to uncover whatever clues I could.

  No open window, but the back door had a huge old lock. A peek into the keyhole revealed a steel key resting inside. I shook the door gently, and the key’s blade moved slightly more towards the vertical from its horizontal position. I found an old racing form guide in the EH’s tray and, in my toolkit, a long thin round metal tool with a pointy end and a wooden handle. I’d no idea what the implement was supposed to be for, but it just might do the job for me.

  I slid the newspaper under the bottom of the door, pushing it in until there was only just enough showing on my side of the door to retrieve it with my fingers. I poked the pointy round thing into the keyhole. I felt it get behind the key’s blade, which I gently manoeuvred into a vertical position. Now I pulled the pointy thing back a little, and pushed at the round piece of steel above the blade. The key slid from the lock and onto the piece of paper. The key just fitted through the gap at the bottom of the door, as I gently slid the form guide back out to my side. I had backed a winner.

  Walking into the house, I was about to turn on a light when I heard the sound of stone shattering glass. I turned to my right to see a leather-gloved hand brushing aside broken shards from the lounge room windowsill with a brick.

  Sure, that was another way to get into Bill Smith’s house. It was little less tidy than my effort, but it showed faith in Hendra humanity, at least when it came to sleeping through a little noise. I looked down at the pointy thing in my hand, thinking of my aversion to stabbing, either as the stabber or stabbee. I was glad to see the newcomer throw the brick into the room before turning the latch on the window.

  I decided the element of surprise could not hurt. As a tiny man clambered through the window, I sprung on the light, revealing a familiar face – a retired jockey who I would see at every race meeting.

  ‘Hi George,’ I said.

  I was gratified by the startled look on his face. He must have been similarly pleased at my expression when I saw the ex-jockey followed through the window by a huge man wearing a dark-brown polo shirt that could barely contain his chest and shoulder muscles. It was probably my imagination, but I f
elt the house shake when the big man squeezed sideways through the old wooden frame of the window.

  The jock went on the offensive once his muscle was inside. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ He looked accusingly at what could easily be construed as a weapon in my hand.

  I dropped the thin tool and apologised for carrying it. ‘Just used it to break in,’ I said.

  ‘So what the fuck are you doing here, what’s-your-name, Steve or some shit?’

  I corrected him name wise, and told them I had left behind my diary. I kept all my calculations for backing winners in it, and I’d need it for Wednesday.

  George considered my excuse for a fraction of a second. ‘Bullshit,’ he decided. ‘You’re supposed to be mates with this old bloke, but turds of a feather stick like shit, I guess.’

  George was obviously a poet, in a charmingly repulsive sort of way. He could certainly mix his metaphors to create a noxious brew. But I’d heard small jockeys talking big before. I was keeping at least one eye on the giant most of the time. He just sat on the lounge and waited to be told what to do. I would have told him to go away, but my voice was not the one he was taking orders from. George put the big bloke into the picture.

  ‘You keep an eye on Steve here, Phil, while I search this place.’

  I’d already seen George’s form with a brick, and his technique for searching was just as indelicate. He opened the freezer, produced a screwdriver from his pocket, opened a plastic ice-cream container and swirled the dessert around with the rusty tool. Yum. He went through the whole fridge and freezer, and any packet he could not see through was unsafe from the prods of the screwdriver. My plan to have a late breakfast was losing its attraction. I decided I’d help George, if only to stop the culinary atrocities.

  ‘You know it’s always in the last place you look, so why don’t you try there next?’

  George screwed his face up to consider my logic, and ultimately found it faulty. ‘Smart-arse,’ he concluded, without conviction, as if I might have suggested a breakthrough beyond his comprehension. ‘You look too, Steve,’ he added.

  ‘Happy to help,’ I replied, not bothering to correct George about my name, this time.

  I walked towards a part of the kitchen where the retired jockey was not engaged in fruitless vandalism.

  Big Phil was uncertain what to do, so he followed me. George turned from the freezer to follow him, making our section of the tiny kitchen crowded when the three of us reached it. I began to open and close a set of three kitchen drawers from the bottom, and in the top one, I saw an item of interest. I immediately closed the drawer and turned to George. ‘Are we looking for anything in particular, or just having a perve because it’s naughty?’

  George had to think about that one too. I hoped whoever was hiring this comic duo received discount rates. George found the phone on a kitchen bench, and turned his back on me to dial a number. Phil looked up at his boss to see how he could be of assistance. I took the opportunity to put my hands behind my back and slide my fingers down, slightly opening the top drawer and feeling around inside for the business card I had seen there. I slipped what I hoped was the card into my trousers back pocket and shut the drawer. Unfortunately, I was concentrating so hard on this, I didn’t pick up any of George’s quick soft telephone conversation, which was now over.

  ‘You’re coming with us,’ he said.

  I told him I couldn’t leave my EH ute parked outside, as I would end up being blamed for their wrecking work.

  George turned to Phil. ‘You go with him in his car. If he acts suspicious, you grab the steering wheel and turn it around as fast and as far as you can.’

  Phil nodded earnestly, and I wondered where his threshold of suspiciousness was set. Just to be sure, I told them, unless they were going to put an anchor around me and throw me in the Brisbane River, I was happy to go anywhere with them, even if they refused to buy me flowers and chocolates.

  ‘I’m not sure where we’re going,’ Phil told me as we hopped into the ute. ‘I think it might be to Mr Mecklam’s.’

  I pretended to search my pockets for the car keys as I fished out the business card. It had attracted my attention because someone had scribbled ‘loser’ across the printed name on it. That name was Gregory Sailor, who had listed his occupation as ‘professional horseman’. Buddha, jockeys with business cards! The conceit, bred of insecurity, of the new horse-riding professionals. Their job was remarkably similar to earlier generations of tiny farm boys, with riding skills, who used to call themselves jockeys. For the old school, the word ‘professional’ would be associated only with scantily-clad women who walked and worked the night away along Fortitude Valley streets.

  I turned the professional horseman’s card over to find an East Brisbane address scribbled in blue ink. I glanced across at Phil. He was pointing to George’s old Mazda, turning into the street where we were parked. I threw the business card on the dash, found my keys in the pocket where I knew they were all along, and started the ute. We followed George to our breakfast meeting with a Prince within the Sport of Kings, the corporate lawyer Jim Mecklam.

  The Prince of the Turf lived in a Hamilton mansion, worth about $2 million, in those days when that was a fair whack of dough. Mecklam lived with his wife Prue, who organised charity fundraisers and supported the Arts. The couple was childless, which Prue made up for by sponsoring Cambodian orphans. She fell short of actually importing one to add to the family, though she threatened to do so at every girls’ lunch she attended. Rumour had it, rather than sponsor overseas waifs, her husband sought out young teenage runaways, of both sexes, closer, but not too close, to home.

  Maybe the rumour mill was right about something else, that Jim Mecklam was having trouble with the upkeep of his racing stable, on top of an expensive wife, family support for international and Australian homeless children, and the domestics who looked after the Hamilton domicile and its master and mistress.

  George drove his Mazda up to the imposing gates and spoke into an intercom. Perhaps he said ‘open sesame’, because the portals did just that. I followed the car down a long driveway, past the side of the house and around its back, past tennis courts and a guest house, to pull up outside the fence around the swimming pool. Another smaller gate opened magically as I alighted from the EH, to find big Phil moving to stand beside and above me.

  George pushed me through the gate, which closed behind me. Unsure what to do, George and Phil stood outside the gate for a moment, before getting back into the Mazda. I waved goodbye as they reversed away.

  The rising sun was fast removing the last shadows.

  No one spoke to me through the intercom, so I strolled around the pool perimeter to find a glass door wide open. Inside a large room, Jim Mecklam sat in a deck chair beside, rather than behind, an imposing desk. This held only a steaming coffee pot, a glass pitcher of milk, another glass container of sugar, three teaspoons and two mugs. Three mugs, if you count Mecklam, I thought.

  He was leafing through a racing magazine. Dozens of framed photographs of his racehorses in winning mode looked benignly down on him from three walls. A wooden library unit covered most of one wall. The library shelves were full of law books, catalogues from racehorse sales, breeding manuals and popular crime novels. Three folded deckchairs lay beside the library, while an unoccupied office chair behind the desk completed the potential seating.

  I had plenty of time to take all of this in, as I stood just inside the room, awaiting a summons. The lawyer refused to look up from his magazine.

  Finally, ‘I suppose you’ve never been in a property like this before.’

  ‘I’ve never been in a house where someone called it a property before.’

  Mecklam sneered above the open pages of his racing magazine. My money was on his not having read a word since I entered the room.

  ‘Come in. What’s your name?’ he asked. ‘I’ve seen you around.’

  I moved towards the desk. ‘I’ve been around, and it’s sti
ll Steele Hill.’

  Mecklam produced a ballpoint from the pocket of his polo shirt with the moniker of a polo club stitched across it. He wanted everyone to know he was the real deal. He wrote my name in his magazine beside a picture of a grey racehorse.

  ‘You forgot to ask why I had you brought here,’ Mecklam said.

  ‘The first morning cup of coffee activates my curiosity glands,’ I replied.

  I wondered whether he planned to offer me any of the heady-smelling coffee, or whether he had two mugs to prove some obscure point. He sipped on his mug and poured some more black liquid into it, before adding milk and two sugars. He was so enthralled in the ritual that he forgot to offer me the other mug.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ Mecklam asked in a deep, proud voice, one that would command authority at company board meetings.

  I nodded. ‘John Mecklam. You own a couple of racehorses.’

  He showed no offence at my deliberately getting his first name wrong and underestimating his contribution to the racing industry.

  ‘And who usually rides these couple of horses of mine?’

  ‘Gregory Sailor,’ I replied.

  ‘Exactly. And, of late, Sailor has been seen in the company of Bill Smith, who, I believe, intends to start a horse in the Brisbane Handicap against one of mine.’

  I pointed out that Smith and Sailor were relatives, and that relos often hung out together. This made Mecklam angry. The only trainer a jockey should hang out with before a big race, he said, was his own trainer. Mecklam grew more indignant as he relayed to me how Sailor had said he might not be able to ride track work on the lawyer’s horse, All The Favours, the next day.

  ‘I want to know what is going on here,’ Mecklam said.

  ‘Beats me,’ I replied. ‘I haven’t any horses with Smith, and Sailor has hardly said boo to me in the past three years.’

  ‘Well, that may be so, but you’re awfully chummy with Smith at the moment. If a dodge is going on, I feel sure you can find out about it.’