Dick Francis's Damage

by Felix Francis

  I waited a while longer, again checking the layout of the stables and the house to ensure that I had it correctly logged in to my memory. Mrs. Perry completed her window boxes and went back inside, and all was quiet.

  I looked at my watch. It was nearly four o’clock.

  Like every other racing yard in the country, the one below me would soon be coming to life for “evening stables,” when the grooms would come back on duty to brush the horses, give them food and water, muck out the stalls and finally rug up the horses for the night. It is also when the trainer would generally do his daily round, examining each horse in turn, feeling for any unusual heat in its legs, and arranging for any special feeds or medications.

  According to the BHA register, Graham Perry currently employed ten staff, all of whom had also been issued a Racehorse Attendant’s Identity Card to allow access to the secure areas at British racetracks. Over the past couple of days, I had learned the names of all ten by heart and had even searched the files to study the photographs on their identity card applications. I was confident that I’d know them if any came into the pub that evening.

  Not one of the ten was Lee Furness, former employee of Matthew Unwin and possible relation to Jordan Furness, the murdered bookmaker.

  7

  I walked into the Tilston local at ten past seven, having parked the rental car a couple of streets away. I didn’t want anyone who might have seen the car parked off the road earlier near the woods spotting it again outside the pub and asking difficult questions.

  I had remained at my vantage point up the hill until evening stables were well under way, with the lights in the stalls beginning to shine brightly in the gloom of the March afternoon. I had departed only when the daylight began to fade to such an extent that waiting any longer would have left me unlikely to find my way back to the car through the trees.

  Graham Perry had emerged from his house at twenty minutes to five, and I had watched him intently through the binoculars as he had moved from stall to stall to inspect the horses within. There appeared nothing unusual about his actions, but, without night vision goggles, I had no idea if he’d again crossed the courtyard to the stables after the other staff had left with mischief on his mind and a loaded syringe in his hand.

  —

  THE PUB was busy, with Friday-evening drinkers raiding their weekly pay packets for a few pints with their mates.

  A large circle of ten men stood in front of the bar loudly discussing soccer, especially the match between Liverpool and Manchester United scheduled for the following afternoon.

  “That new boy—you know, the Czech with the unpronounceable name—he’ll make all the difference for United,” one said. “Can’t see them losing with him on the team.”

  “Nonsense,” said another. “Liverpool at home—no contest.”

  I bought myself a nonalcoholic beer at the bar and stood on the periphery of the circle, scrutinizing my fellow drinkers, as the banter continued back and forth.

  “Your goalie’s no good anyway. He couldn’t catch a cold.”

  “He saved that penalty last week against Chelsea—kept us in the game.”

  None of them were grooms from Graham Perry’s stable. I was sure of it.

  “Are you a Liverpool or United fan?” asked the man standing on my right.

  “Neither,” I said with a smile. “Can’t stand either of them. I want them to draw so they both lose ground.” I was using my best Newcastle accent.

  “Bloody Geordie,” said one of the others, a big man who’d had a few pints in his time if his protruding beer gut was anything to go by.

  “And proud of it,” I replied with a laugh. They all laughed with me. I was now an accepted member of the circle. “I’m more of a horseracing man myself. I’m off to Bangor-on-Dee tomorrow.”

  “Me too,” said the tall young man on my left.

  “And me,” piped up another. “I reckon Perry will win the big race. He always does well at Bangor.”

  “Perry?” I queried.

  “Graham Perry,” said the big man. “His place is just down the road.”

  I nodded in understanding. “So do you get any local tips? Any insider info?”

  “His grooms are usually down here on a Friday. They’ll put you right.”

  As if on cue, the door of the bar opened and four of Graham Perry’s stable staff came in.

  “Speak of the devil,” said the big man with a huge guffaw. “Evening, lads. Want a drink? Who’s going to win tomorrow?”

  “Ah. That would be telling,” one of the four replied, placing a finger alongside his nose.

  I knew him from his BHA photo. His name was Sean Caddick, and he’d been at Perry’s yard for at least the last five years.

  “Come on, lads,” said the big man, not giving up so easily. “You must know what’s going to win. It’s only fair you let us locals in on the deal.”

  “If only we knew,” Sean replied. “We’re forever losing because we think ours will win and then they don’t.”

  The talk was all in good humor with plenty of smiles

  “Surely you use go-faster juice?” I said it with a laugh.

  I watched him closely for any reaction. A tightening of the muscles in the face, a widening of the pupils of the eyes—both involuntary consequences of increased adrenaline, both giveaways of stress and fear.

  “You must be joking,” Sean said. “You can’t even give a horse a piece of chocolate these days without it failing a dope test.”

  “Chocolate?” said the big man. “How the hell does chocolate make a horse go faster?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Sean replied. “But I do know that it will make it fail a dope test. It once happened to a horse I looked after. The bloody owner gave it a Mars bar as a treat on the morning of a race. Stupid woman. The horse was disqualified and we all nearly lost our jobs.”

  I decided not to tell them that it was the theobromine in chocolate that was the prohibited substance, along with the caffeine. Both were banned stimulants.

  Paradoxically, eating chocolates could make you run faster, provided you didn’t spend all day sitting on the sofa watching television while you ate it.

  “How many runners have you got at Bangor?” asked the tall young man on my left.

  “Three,” said one of the other grooms, a man I recognized as Tom Lindsay. “One in the first, and two in the Wrexham.”

  The Wrexham Handicap Chase would be the big race of the day.

  “Will they win?” asked the big man.

  “If they’re fast enough,” came the ironic reply.

  “You’re no bloody help.”

  “Tribute Lunch has a great chance,” Sean Caddick said, “but don’t blame me if you lose your shirt.”

  That seemed to end the conversation, and the four grooms collected beers from the bar before moving over to sit together at a table by the window. The circle broke up into smaller groups, and I found myself talking to the tall man who was going to Bangor races the following day.

  “You’re a long way from home,” he said. “Don’t get many Geordies round here.”

  “Visiting my aunt,” I said. “And for the races.”

  “Where does she live?” he asked.

  Damn it, I thought, I really didn’t need an inquisitive local.

  “Fancy a game of darts?” I asked him, ignoring his question.

  “No thanks, I’m rubbish.” He turned away to talk to the man on the other side.

  Meanwhile, I took a set of darts from behind the bar and practiced on my own. Not that I really liked throwing darts, but the board was on the same side of the room as the grooms now sitting at a table.

  All the better for hearing what they were talking about.

  That is, if they’d been saying anything interesting, or at least something interesting about racing. Inste
ad, they were discussing the relative merits of girls—in particular, the four members of a popular band who were all the rage.

  “God, I’d like to give that Justine one,” said Tom Lindsay. “I wouldn’t chuck her out of bed for eating biscuits.”

  “Much too snobbish, if you ask me,” said one of the others. “But Gillian—now, she’s just my sort. Nice and cuddly, with gorgeous tits.”

  It was not great conversation and of little use to me. Not for the first time, I wondered why I was here. These lads were like all other grooms the world over, spending their time drinking beer and chatting about girls. And I was sure that listening to them wouldn’t give me any insight into whether their boss was or was not doping his horses.

  Sean Caddick’s face and eyes had remained steadfast and completely unaffected by my comment concerning go-faster juice. If Graham Perry was indeed dosing his horses with amphetamine, then one of his long-serving stable staff didn’t know about it. Of that I was certain.

  I went on throwing darts.

  “Fancy a game?” I turned around. Tom Lindsay was on his feet.

  “Sure,” I said. “Loser buys the beers?”

  “OK,” he said. “But it’ll be you.”

  “How are you so sure?”

  “I’m the local champion.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  I was good at darts, the result of having had a board on the back of my bedroom door during my early teens, but I was no match for Tom Lindsay.

  I bought the beers, mine again nonalcoholic, and we played a second game with him giving me a 200-point start.

  “Are you going to Bangor races tomorrow?” I asked as I finally managed to hit a treble twenty.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “We all go to Bangor on race days. The gaffer lets us do evening stables late.”

  “Good to work for, then, is he?”

  “He’s OK,” Tom said. “I’ve worked for worse.”

  He beat me again. Easily.

  “Thanks,” he said, drifting back to the table to rejoin his mates. I was clearly not a sufficient challenge for his skills.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I returned the darts to the barman, drained my glass, and decided it was time to leave. There was nothing else to gain by staying any longer.

  —

  I WAS BACK at my vantage point in the woods above Graham Perry’s yard by eight in the morning.

  Some of the horses were exercising up the gallop when I arrived. Hence, I stayed well back behind the tree line so as not to be visible.

  I was now dressed and appeared as myself. The beard and tousled mousy brown wig of yesterday were neatly packed away in my overnight bag along with the jeans and the leather bomber jacket. Today I was clean-shaven, short-haired, with gray pants and a navy blue sweater.

  I watched as the eight horses walked back down to the start of the all-weather gallop before once again moving fluently up in pairs, galloping upsides under the careful watch of Mr. Perry, who leaned against the front of his Land Rover.

  I studied the horses and riders through my binoculars and could clearly distinguish the features of Sean Caddick riding one of the leading pair.

  Thirty or more years ago, trainers, especially steeplechase trainers like Graham Perry, would have galloped their horses over a much greater distance than the half mile or so of this all-weather track, perhaps over a mile or even a mile and a half as a single exercise.

  All that had changed, not least due to the influence of the trainer Martin Pipe, who had had such phenomenal success either side of the millennium being champion jump trainer a total of fifteen times in seventeen years.

  Martin trained his horses in a manner far more akin to how a coach would train a human athlete. Instead of a single long exercise run, he used shorter, interval training gallops. And everyone else soon followed suit.

  Graham Perry’s horses were blowing hard by the time they reached the top of the rise, their nostrils rhythmically flaring and contracting as the air rushed in and out, the expelled moisture condensing into a fine mist in the morning chill like steam from a two-spout kettle.

  They were then walked around in a large circle until their breathing rates had returned to normal.

  When all eight horses had recovered from the exertion, the pairs moved off in turn, walking down to the start of the track, from where the whole procedure was repeated.

  After the horses had galloped past the Land Rover for a third time, I watched as Graham Perry drove himself back to the yard, the horses following a few minutes later, led home by Sean Caddick.

  —

  I REMAINED in the woods all morning, keeping watch as events unfolded beneath me.

  Another eight horses were taken through the same exercise regime, with the trainer again watching from in front of his vehicle. And there was considerable movement in the training yard as well.

  At eleven o’clock a horse trailer was driven into the loading area close to the stable blocks and I watched as three horses were loaded aboard.

  The runners for Bangor-on-Dee, I assumed.

  Boxes of tack and other kit were also lifted aboard, and the trailer departed down the lane at twenty past eleven.

  It was only about ten miles from Perry’s yard to Bangor-on-Dee racetrack, but, sensibly, the horses would be there early, with time to calm down after the journey and relax in the stables until their race times.

  There was plenty of other activity as the whole team rushed through their duties, getting ready to depart for the races.

  I had checked that the first race at Bangor started at half past two, and, as two o’clock approached, there was a final mad rush, with several people running out to cars and disappearing down the lane with their wheels spinning.

  I didn’t follow them to Bangor. In fact, I never did get to the races.

  I waited on the hill for another half hour to see if there were any lategoers, then I walked back to the rented Toyota and drove around to Graham Perry’s stable, pulling up in the middle of the courtyard and sounding the horn with three long loud bursts.

  No one came out to greet me.

  For good measure, I went over to the house and rang the doorbell.

  No reply.

  I stood outside the two-story accommodation block and shouted for attention.

  I got none.

  In my hand I held my BHA credentials and a letter indicating that I had the right to enter any BHA-licensed premises, including this stable yard.

  No one emerged to read either.

  It appeared that, as Tom Lindsay had told me in the Tilston pub, the whole workforce had decamped to Bangor-on-Dee races, and Mrs. Perry had gone with them.

  In fairness, in spite of the place being deserted, security had not been completely compromised. Each lower stall door was padlocked shut, and the feed and tack rooms were locked as well. I tried them.

  Fortunately, as far as I could see, there were no CCTV cameras recording my visit.

  As my credentials made clear, I had every right to be there, but I didn’t really have the right to pick the three-lever lock on the door of the feed store, something I managed with ease.

  It was much like any other racing stable’s feed store. There were unopened bags of horse pellets stacked in one corner, and a feed bin containing more loose pellets in another. Some trainers with big yards had their own special mixtures made up by the feed companies with added cod liver oil or cider vinegar, others had added garlic or Cortaflex for joints, others still even had Guinness included in the recipe.

  It appeared that Graham Perry used the standard mixture, but even he would probably add some vitamin supplement or special potions to the feed. Gone, however, were the days when trainers created their own feed mashes, concoctions of boiled barley, linseed oil, and bran, all mixed hot in an old bathtub. The mode
rn nutritional horse pellet had consigned these mashes to history and no one had complained, not least the poor groom who’d had to stir them.

  As a general rule of thumb, racehorses eat one pound in weight of mixed feed for every hand high they stand at their withers. Most Thoroughbreds are around sixteen to seventeen hands high, so they eat sixteen to seventeen pounds of feed a day, plus some hay.

  If Graham Perry was dosing his horses with powdered amphetamine, then there would likely be traces of it in the feed store.

  I took some swabs from the floor and also from the bowls that were used to measure out the feed, placing them into sealed plastic bags. I also put a handful of the horse nuts into my pocket, but I was pretty sure they would be all legal and aboveboard.

  I checked around for anything unusual without finding it, then used my skeleton keys to relock the feed store.

  I walked through an arch into the stable blocks. The lower doors may have been padlocked shut but the upper ones were wide open, and half a dozen horses put their heads out through the opening to see who had arrived.

  I went over to each of them in turn, holding a couple of the horse nuts from my pocket flat on my left palm. As they leaned down to take the nuts, I reached up with my right hand to pluck out a few hairs from between their ears. These too went into plastic bags.

  Hair could be a splendid source of information. It provided a history of what a horse has consumed, and recent advances in analytical techniques had shown great promise in the detection of even the smallest traces of illicit drugs.

  Phar Lap, the New Zealand/Australian hero horse of the Great Depression years, was widely believed to have been deliberately poisoned by gangsters while racing in the United States. Seventy-six years later, in 2008, six mane hairs were taken from his hide, which is still on display in Melbourne Museum, and they confirmed that he had been given a huge dose of arsenic some thirty to forty hours prior to death.

  In all, I removed hairs from twelve of Graham Perry’s horses, each carefully placed in separate bags.