by Dick Francis
There would be no time to do the same here. Not with the race due to be run the following afternoon.
I called Crispin, getting a signal on my fourth attempt.
“How about a fire in one or more of the grandstands?”
“What about it, dear boy?”
“Do we organize a fire watch?”
“There is a security presence overnight. They would spot any fire.”
“Not until it was far too late if they are anything like those at the entrance gates.”
“I will get on to the racetrack management and ensure that adequate security is made available. But, of course, without specifically alarming anyone to an explicit risk.”
I reckoned they probably needed alarming.
“That’s a start,” I said. “But make sure they do continuous patrols especially in the kitchens. And also ensure they check for boilers set to explode.”
“Very funny,” Crispin said. There was still plenty of racing folklore surrounding a sabotage attempt at Seabury racetrack, where a heating boiler nearly blew up after someone had inserted a dead mouse as a plug into a pipe of the safety system.
“Check the stable fire precautions. We can’t afford to lose some of the best racehorses in the country due to arson. The BHA would never recover.”
“I’ll remind everyone about the need for vigilance against fire at all times.”
“And how about round the track?” I said. “Will that be patrolled? We don’t want any of the fences set on fire.”
“I’ll get on to that too,” said Crispin. “I’m sure precautions are already in place due to any bloody antis who might turn up. And I know that there will be police on duty at some of the fences tomorrow.”
“And check for wire,” I said.
“Wire?”
“Stretched across and above the fences to bring down the horses. It’s been done before.”
“I’ll make sure it’s checked.”
I walked past a long line of food outlets, each doing a roaring trade, with a choice of roast-pork baps, fish-and-chips, meat pies, bangers and mash, assorted curries, Asian noodles or huge slices of pepperoni pizza.
“I hope he doesn’t try poisoning members of the public. There is no way we could check every restaurant and food stall.”
Crispin laughed. “Some of those stalls are likely candidates for food poisoning without any help from our friend.”
“Yeah, you could be right.” I watched as a large man loaded bright yellow mustard onto an enormous portion of sausages, balancing the whole lot on a cardboard plate that was not really big enough for the purpose.
“Check the VIP lunch,” I said. Each year the chairman of the racetrack company entertained a couple hundred guests for lunch. “Make sure no one gets into that particular kitchen without proper authorization and double-check the wines are not tampered with.”
“Right,” said Crispin in a tone that suggested I was becoming rather extreme. “Anything else?”
“Plenty,” I said with a laugh. “I just haven’t thought about it yet.”
It would be so much easier, I thought, if the police knew we had a potential saboteur on the loose. Then there would be far more eyes looking, although they should be looking anyway.
I watched the seven races from various vantage points, but nothing unexpected occurred other than the red-hot favorite for the Melling Chase was beaten by a short head by a twenty-to-one outsider in a photo finish.
I hadn’t really expected anything to happen.
If our friend Leonardo was planning any disruption, it would surely be on the following day when the whole world would be watching.
And, sure enough, even though we were looking and did not have our heads in the sand, the juggernaut arrived right on cue at four twenty-five on Saturday afternoon and mowed us all down.
18
Grand National Day started inauspiciously with a call from Crispin at a quarter to nine on my cell. I looked at the number readout on the screen.
“What are you doing in the office on a Saturday?”
“Checking Roger Vincent’s mail. And a good job I did too. There’s a note from our friend.”
It was brief, and to the point.
Too little, too late. Enjoy your day.
“Not much doubt, then,” I said.
“No,” Crispin agreed. “What do we do?”
A trip to Outer Mongolia seemed like a good idea. Or maybe to the Moon.
“There’s nothing that we aren’t already doing,” I said. “I suppose you could phone the racetrack and say you’ve had a credible threat to the Grand National, but it will mean calling in the police.”
“I could say it was from the antibrigade.”
“That would still bring in the cops,” I said.
“And we aren’t certain that the disruption will be at Aintree. It could be at one of the other meetings.”
“We could cope with disruption anywhere else. No, it has to be here.”
And it was.
—
AINTREE on the Saturday of the meeting had been sold out for weeks. Hence, my first problem was to gain entry to the racetrack.
On Friday, I had simply paid my money at the turnstiles, but that was now not an option. Entrance on Grand National Day was by tickets purchased in advance only.
I made my way from the railway station around to the horse trailer parking area to find the special reception set up in a temporary cabin for the owners and trainers.
Aintree, in common with most other racetracks, looked after the horse owners pretty well, allocating up to six entrance tickets per runner, as well as providing free food vouchers and complimentary race programs, all of which had to be collected from reception.
I stood in the line of expectant clusters, many of them no doubt dreaming of winning “the big one,” while the three women behind the counter did their best to keep up with the demand.
When it was my turn, I simply passed my BHA pass across the counter to one of the young women and asked her for an owner’s cardboard badge. She looked up at me and then down at the pass and then back up at me again.
“I’m working undercover,” I whispered so that those collecting tickets alongside me wouldn’t hear. “That’s what I look like under this lot.” I smiled at her.
The photograph on the pass showed a clean-shaven man with short, spiky blond hair. I was currently wearing a full dark beard with matching curls, together with some thick-rimmed eyeglasses.
She hesitated, turned to the older woman standing next to her and showed her my ID.
“He says he’s working undercover,” she said rather too loudly for my liking. “He wants an owner’s badge.”
I smiled at the man standing next to me, who had turned to look my way.
The older woman waved for me to go around to the side door of the cabin.
“Why don’t you wear your BHA pass? That’s why it has a lanyard.”
“I could,” I said, “but not without broadcasting to everyone that I’m a BHA investigator. That wouldn’t exactly help, now would it?”
“I’ll have to call the office.” She turned to go.
“I would much rather you didn’t do that,” I said in my best authoritative voice. “You might just blow my cover altogether. Look at my eyes.” I removed the spectacles. “They are the same eyes as in the photo.”
She had a close look and then studied the picture.
“All right, Mr. Hinkley,” she said, “I agree that you are who you say you are. But it’s most irregular. Wait here.”
She went back inside and then reappeared with an owner’s badge, a white cardboard rectangle with a big red O5 printed large across the middle.
“The five means you have access to the parade ring for the Grand National. It’s the fifth race. Would you like
a race program as well?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
She disappeared back inside and re-emerged with one.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it. “And please don’t mention my name to anyone.”
“Who are you looking for?” she asked.
“The winner of the National, of course,” I said with a smile. “The same as everyone else.”
—
THE GATEMAN raised no objection as he scanned my owner’s badge at the turnstile, and even the security personnel seemed to have picked up their game as I was properly searched on my way in.
Once inside, I wandered around with my eyes and ears open, trying to notice something out of the ordinary.
There was nothing. At least nothing I could spot.
I spied Nigel Green standing on the viewing steps outside the weighing room, but he didn’t give me so much as a second glance as he chatted to another member of the BHA office staff enjoying a day out at the races.
The excitement of the crowd was palpable and there were many activities put on to keep them busy in the time before the races started. A Dixieland jazz band played a never-ending melody and a troupe of theatrical performers dressed as famous film stars entertained a circle of admirers behind the Princess Royal stand.
Not one of them was conveniently dressed in a mask and striped T-shirt.
I walked through the lines of bookmakers in the betting ring and watched the parade of former Grand National winners as they were walked up the track, past the scene of their greatest achievement, to the nostalgic cheers of the crowd.
I stood with my back to the running rail, scouring the scene with my eyes, looking for any telltale smoke that might indicate a fire.
Nothing.
As the races started I became more and more anxious. It was like sitting in an air-raid shelter during a raid—certain that a bomb would drop but not knowing exactly where or when.
As the time approached for the Grand National itself, I wanted to be everywhere, checking everything.
I went down to the parade ring to be close by in case someone made an attempt to attack a horse, or an owner, or one of the many high-profile guests gathered on the grass as the forty horses for the big race circled around them.
The great and the good were out in force, as one would expect on one of the most celebrated racing days of the year. The five days of Royal Ascot, Derby Day, Guineas weekend at Newmarket in May, the Cheltenham Festival and maybe the Sussex Stakes at Glorious Goodwood or British Champions Day at Ascot in October—these were the rare days of British racing, those not to be missed, and Grand National Day at Aintree was, for me, top of the list.
It was a day I usually enjoyed from dawn to dusk, and then some.
But not this year.
Roger Vincent, as chairman of the BHA, was holding court in the center of the parade ring, with Ian Tulloch, Bill Ripley and Neil Wallinger in close attendance. I wondered if they were as nervous as I was, but they didn’t appear to be as they laughed and joked with their guests.
Piers Pottinger was there too, together with his lovely wife Carolyn. They were deep in conversation with the trainer Duncan Johnson and another man I recognized as Tim Bell, a fellow PR executive of Piers’s.
I looked down at my program. Duncan Johnson had two runners in the big race and one was owned by the firm of Bell Pottinger. Last-minute instructions were clearly being passed on by the owners to their trainer.
Graham Perry was also in the parade ring, chatting to a middle-aged couple that I took to be other owners. According to the notes in the program, this was Graham’s first runner in the Grand National and his nervousness was clearly visible as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, unable to remain still for more than a few seconds. I hoped, for his sake, that the methylphenidate had long passed out of his horse’s system.
The jockeys appeared from the weighing room, bringing a burst of color to the scene.
I was getting pretty frantic as I searched around with my eyes, trying to spot the very first sign of any trouble. But I knew there was nothing I could really do to stop it.
I was reminded of an Afghan tribal leader who had asked his bodyguards if they could prevent him from being killed. “No,” they had replied, “but be comforted by the knowledge that we will be there to kill the assassin.”
There was no way I could prevent Leonardo from carrying out an act of malicious damage, but maybe I’d be close enough to catch him afterwards.
I watched as the jockeys mounted, their silks shining brightly in the sunshine. Another turn around the parade ring and then they were filing out through the tunnel under the grandstand and onto the track
I walked through the tunnel behind them, my adrenaline level climbing to stratospheric levels.
The horses circled, forming themselves into race-program order for the traditional parade in front of the stands. The crowd was in position, with every vantage point taken, the buzz of excitement building towards a crescendo.
Now, I thought. Now it will happen.
My heart was beating quickly, and I could even hear the rush of blood in my ears above the sound of the crowd.
But nothing untoward occurred.
The horses continued serenely on with the parade and the fever pitch of the expectant throng grew ever higher.
The horses broke from the formal parade, their jockeys turning them to canter down to have a look at the first fence while the crowd took a collective breath in preparation for the race itself, and still nothing happened.
The horses cantered or trotted back towards the grandstand in preparation for the start that would take place in the corner of the track right in front of us. Here the horses circled again as their girths were tightened and last-minute checks made of their saddles and bridles. Some of the jockeys stood up on their stirrups to try to release the nervous tension in their legs.
I leaned against the rail and looked back at the sea of faces staring back at me from the stands. I searched along the rooftops, trying to spot something that shouldn’t have been there—maybe a marksman taking aim at the starter who was climbing his rostrum.
Nothing.
“They’re under Starter’s Orders,” came the call over the public address system, and the noise level of the crowd was turned up a few more notches.
“They’re off!”
The crowd cheered even louder still as the horses swept away from them towards the line of six fences down to Becher’s Brook.
As the runners crossed the Melling Road, I could see all the heads move as the attention of the crowd switched from the horses to the giant TV screens, which gave a much better view of the field jumping the first fence.
The race had started without incident and I began to breathe slightly more easily.
Had I got it wrong?
Maybe something was going to occur at one of the other tracks and not here.
There was a groan from the crowd and my heart rate jumped, but it was due to one of the favorites having fallen at the third fence, the first open ditch.
I chanced a look at the screens and watched as the horses streamed over Becher’s, then on towards the Canal Turn for the first time. Here, at the farthest point of the circuit, they turned the famous ninety-degree corner and started back towards the grandstands.
There were a few fallers at the next six fences, but nearly thirty of the original forty runners were still standing and racing in a big group as they sped towards The Chair, a big open ditch in front of the enclosures. The leading horse stumbled on landing, pitched forward and went down to the turf, spilling his rider out in front of him, and there were gasps from the crowd as some of the following horses kicked the jockey around as if he was a football.
But the real disaster occurred at the next fence, the smallest on the track, the fence situated right in front of the main g
randstands in full sight of the seventy thousand people present, plus the hundreds of millions viewing worldwide on television.
Watch out for the fireworks.
As they raced towards the water jump the horses were confronted by a wall of fire as multiple fireworks ignited at either side, sending a thick curtain of bright, burning stars ten feet high across the whole width of the fence.
It was like a scene from some pyrotechnic horror movie playing out in slow motion before our eyes.
The cheering of the crowd instantly changed to screams of terror as the horses and jockeys tried to stop or veer to either side to avoid the flames.
Several of the leading horses were too close to the fence to pull up. Three of them clattered through the plastic running rails towards the grandstands, kicking the race sponsors’ advertising boards aside, while two others tried to jump the eight-foot-high fence wings on the far side, only to crash to the ground in a flurry of horses’ legs, jockey silks and rigid white-plastic spars.
The remainder managed to stop in time, but those closest to the fence reared up in fear of the fire. One toppled right back over, trapping the poor jockey under its bulk as it tried to regain its feet, before running off loose, the whites of its eyes showing in fear and panic.
Even those jockeys who were able to remain in the saddle looked shocked and bemused as to what to do next.
As the fireworks finally died away, one or two of the jockeys set their mounts to jump the fence, to continue with the race, but the horses were having none of it, refusing to move into a trot, let alone a gallop, despite some frantic urging and kicking.
The crowd had initially gone eerily quiet as the mayhem unfolded in front of them, but now there were shouts of anger and frustration, followed by boos of displeasure and condemnation.
My worst fears had been fulfilled.
But why?
The fences should have been searched.
Someone’s head would roll for this. And I was all too aware that it would probably be mine.
19
Twenty minutes after the fireworks were set off, the Grand National was officially declared null and void, and the remaining two races of the day were abandoned.