by Joe McNally
He had a point. ‘Have you asked her?’
‘What, if she’s told anyone?’
I nodded.
‘That’s the last thing I need - for her to know I’m being blackmailed!’
‘We are being blackmailed.’
‘We, I know. It’s the only reason she’s still there. She knows we won’t be able to sell the business until Town Crier’s back on song, so she’ll have to sit and suffer till it’s sorted out. Or rather I’ll have to suffer the constant bloody nagging.’
‘I thought you were in the cottage with Fiona?’
‘I am but she summons me every day for a bloody progress report.’
He bit fiercely into a sandwich. I said, ‘You’re going to have to ask her.’
‘What do I say?’
‘Just ask if she’s mentioned it to anybody.’
‘And if she has, do you think she’s going to tell me?’
‘I don’t know, but if you don’t ask, we won’t find out.’
He sipped beer and sulked. I was learning more about him all the time. I said, ‘Martin, it’s the only card we’ve got at the moment. You have to play it.’
‘I’ll speak to her tonight,’ he said quietly.
‘Don’t accept the first thing she says,’ I warned.
‘Unless it’s yes.’
I smiled. ‘If it’s yes, make sure you get the name of the guy she told.’
‘That’ll probably cost me another ten grand on the settlement.’
We moved on to priority two - could Town Crier be cured? Any vet we used would have to be discreet and totally trustworthy. If word got out about the stallion, I doubted we’d ever restore breeders’ faith in him.
Town Crier had been three or four pounds short of top class when racing over a mile and a half on the flat. When breeders are trying to get jumping stock, there aren’t many reliable stallions. As most ‘practicing’ jump horses are geldings, there is no stud career waiting after retirement. No matter how talented they’ve been on the racecourse, the chance to pass on genes had disappeared, commonly in their formative days, along with their testicles.
So for ex-flat stallions to establish themselves as good sires of jumping stock normally takes years, as their early crops are usually tried on the flat for a couple of seasons at least. If they don’t prove successful, they’re often put over jumps where it might take three or four seasons for them to shine. Even then, breeders will be cautious and wait a few seasons more to check if the rest of that stallion’s progeny also show talent over hurdles or fences. By the time a jumping stallion does make a name for himself, he can be sixteen or seventeen - or, more likely, dead.
Town Crier was twelve and could easily have another decade at stud, covering approximately a hundred mares a season. Multiply that by his fee, which would rise in accordance with the success of his stock, and you could see what a blow it would be to the stud if his infertility proved permanent. It was this simplified breakdown of figures and prospects that drained the colour from Martin’s face.
I’d called an old friend and fellow jockey who also happened to be an excellent vet. His name was Brian Kincaid, and I’d arranged to meet him while he was at work in Gloucester next day. Martin was very anxious about it. ‘Can’t you just give him the samples? He doesn’t have to know what stallion they’ve come from, or even the stud.’
‘And what’s the likelihood of his learning anything more from the samples than your man in Ireland did?’
He had no answer for that.
‘He’s going to have to examine Town Crier, Martin.’
He clasped his head, fingers pushing out thick wings of almost dry hair, and stared at his feet.
‘Martin, I trust this guy. I’ve known him for years. He’s one of the old school.’
He nodded, head still in his hands. ‘Okay, okay, Eddie.’
‘I’ll ring you as soon as I’ve spoken to him.’
He finished his beer and stood up, soggy trousers sucking noisily at the chair. ‘I’d better get cracking.’
As we returned to my flat, he had one more go. ‘Couldn’t we bring Town Crier to him, tell him it was something else?’
‘Then expect him to give us one hundred percent trust?’
He hunched his shoulders again and stuffed his hands moodily in his pockets. We walked the last half-mile in silence.
11
Next morning I found Brian Kincaid in a stall at a Gloucester stud, with his arm so far up a mare’s backside his right cheek rested on her buttock. He winked and smiled at me. I nodded. He was watching a small monitor, pointing with his free hand to what looked like a white UFO on the black screen.
‘Cyst, I’m afraid,’ he said to the man holding up the mare’s tail. ‘It may look like an embryo but it’s another cyst.’
The man swore. ‘Bad luck,’ said Kincaid, withdrawing his arm and a thin cable. The cable was attached at one end to the computer and at the other to an egg-sized rubber ball. He placed the ball in a white bowl on the table, peeled off the long dirty rubber glove, dropped it in the bin and reached over to shake my hand. I took his rather gingerly. The smell of fresh horseshit rose from a brown plastic bin beside him, and the apron he wore was heavily soiled with shit and blood and membraney type stuff. ‘How’re you doing, Eddie? Nice to see you.’
‘And you.’
He introduced me to the disgruntled tail-holder, the stud manager, who was anxious to get the next mare in. Kincaid said, ‘Just one more to do and we’ll have a cup of tea.’
I nodded. ‘Sure. No hurry.’
The mare with the cyst was led out and the rear doors slid open to reveal another mare waiting in the yard with her foal. A lad half-pushed, half-carried the foal in and placed it in the stall beside its mother, who walked quietly after them. Kincaid swung the half-doors closed to stop her kicking and a groom held her halter while the stud man pulled her tail aside.
Kincaid bent low, plucking a fresh blue glove from a box of disposables and pulling it onto his right arm, which he then eased inside the mare. A few seconds later, he drew out eighteen inches of shit that seemed moulded beautifully to the shape of his arm all the way to the crook of his elbow. A deft flick saw the load dumped in the bin. Two more excavations, carried out while chatting congenially to the tail-holder, and he was happy enough to pick up the scanning bulb and go back in.
His eyes turned in my direction. ‘You’ll have seen this before, Eddie?’
‘Once or twice.’ I’d been raised on a stud farm, but had never quite come to terms with how casually vets took this part of their job.
Kincaid passed the scanner over the top of the uterus, and watched the ultrasound waves paint a picture on the screen, which seemed clear to Kincaid and the stud man but looked like it always did to me - abstract.
‘Twins,’ Kincaid said.
The stud man swore again. Thoroughbred mares showed a high incidence of twins, which might at first seem like good news for the breeder. But mares rarely carried healthy twins successfully; if they went their full term, they tended to be born weaker than single foals, which made them poor investments.
This meant that in almost every case the vet would decide which embryo should be killed in the womb to allow the other to develop. The vet simply ‘popped’ one embryo, squeezed it between his fingers, but a wrong decision by him could prove the most expensive pop in the history of the turf. What if that squashed embryo held the genes to be a Triple Crown winner?
The vets were in the happy position that nobody would ever know how that embryo would have turned out. They based decisions on whatever evidence was available from a fourteen-to twenty-day-old blob. Inevitably, the smallest or most misshapen one would be popped and then everyone just hoped for the best.
Kincaid withdrew his arm and put on another fresh glove before gently pushing his way along the vaginal tract. No scanner to help now, everything done by feel. The mare shifted uneasily and the lad at her head cooed and comforted her. Her ears and e
yes were back, almost as if she sensed what Kincaid was trying to do in there. He spoke quietly to her. ‘It’s for your own good, old girl.’
He eased out his arm and said to the stud man, ‘I’ll have another look at her on Thursday.’ Using clean cotton wool and soapy water, he spent a minute thoroughly cleaning the mare’s vagina and the surrounding area before she was led out through the sliding doors at the front.
The stud man didn’t look too happy. Kincaid put an arm across his shoulders. ‘Good days and bad, Stan, good days and bad.’
Stan nodded.
Kincaid said, ‘Any chance of a pot of tea?’
Stan wandered off to fetch it. Kincaid smiled and stretched, yawning. ‘How goes it, Mister Malloy? What’s the big mystery this weather?’
Kincaid was a six-footer and strong looking. He had to waste hard to ride at ten and a half stone. His natural weight would be over twelve. He only rode as an amateur with maybe forty or so mounts a season, but was one of the best amateurs I’d ever seen and well respected in the weighing room.
In his early-thirties, he was fair-haired and threw quite a distinctive profile with his hooked nose and prominent, slightly upturned chin. The lads called him Mr. Punch, often in a puppet-show voice, and he took it with good humour - but what a ribbing he’d got last year when he married a girl called Judy. He had smiling blue eyes and was very even-tempered. I don’t think I’d ever heard him complain, but he always had a sympathetic ear for others who wanted a moan.
And like most vets I’d known, Kincaid was a true animal lover. One of the things he’d always claimed had stopped him becoming a professional jockey was the expectation of a number of owners and trainers that the whip be used to maximum effect on their horses. ‘No way do I want my living to depend on that,’ he’d told me once.
He stood now, hands on hips, smiling at me as smelly steam rose from the bin between us. ‘You look well,’ I said.
‘Bloody tired.’ And he yawned again then took a couple of steps into a gloomy corner and reached out. On a shelf was a shiny platter of sandwiches. Kincaid swung it toward me, resting the edge against his soiled apron. ‘Sandwich?’
‘No, thanks.’
He started munching happily, enjoying my expression. ‘God, you’ll catch beriberi or something.’
Smiling, he shook his head. ‘Beriberi’s caused by a thiamine deficiency. Plenty of thiamine in blood and shit.’ He waved the platter and I turned away in disgust. Kincaid laughed.
The stud man brought a tray with tea on it and I took it from him. We headed across the yard to sit on a low wall in the sunshine. Kincaid brought his sandwiches and as I laid down the tea tray, he reached for the pot and said, ‘Will I be mother?’
I grabbed at it. ‘Will you hell! Poison yourself if you like; I prefer tea minus the germs!’
He laughed again.
We spent quite a while on that wall; our shadows had shifted noticeably by the time we got up. I outlined the problem, missing out the ruse Martin had pulled on some breeders. Kincaid talked me through the reproductive system of the stallion in detail but the bottom line was that never before had he heard of such a sudden loss of fertility, not without an obvious physiological cause.
He agreed to come and see Town Crier on Wednesday afternoon.
Back at the flat, I checked my answerphone - nothing of consequence. I called Martin and told him when Kincaid was coming. ‘Did you get anything out of Caroline?’ I asked.
‘Dog’s abuse.’
‘She hasn’t told anyone?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘Do you believe her?’
‘I’m inclined to. She went ballistic when I even suggested it.’
‘Guilty conscience, maybe?’
‘Well. I don’t think so.’
He questioned me on everything Kincaid had said and I dressed things up a bit.
I asked how serious Caroline’s drink problem was.
‘She never drinks while she’s asleep.’
‘So it’s pretty bad?’
‘Morning till night, most days. Very steady though, can shift a couple of bottles before blacking out.’
‘Is there any way she could have told someone about Town Crier while she was drunk?’ ‘Like who?’
‘I haven’t a clue. It was just a thought. That might be the reason she doesn’t remember saying anything.’
He was silent for a few seconds. ‘Could be,’ he said. ‘But how do we find out?’
‘Who does she see? Does she drink with any of her friends?’
‘Friends? Eddie, all of Caroline’s friends are forty proof and don’t talk back.’
‘There must be somebody she sees outside of the stud. What about a hairdresser, a local shopkeeper or something?’
‘On the odd days she goes out she manages to be relatively sober, which means she’d most probably remember what she’d said. Anyway, she wouldn’t discuss stud business outside. Shit, she doesn’t know much stud business to discuss!’
Except that Town Crier’s a dud, I almost said. I left it at that and told Martin I’d see him next day, and we could go through the list of breeders whose mares were carrying what they thought were Town Crier foals.
I spent the rest of the evening hoping the blackmailer would call. Finding him was top of our priority list, and I had nothing to go on. I’d copied his last message from the answerphone on to a normal audio tape, and played it repeatedly in the hope that something would trigger my memory.
London accent, voice pitch on the high side, suggesting he was fairly young. I had to assume he was quite deeply involved in racing; he knew the implications of using a ringer at stud and he seemed to have the know-how to set up whatever betting coups he was planning. I resolved to start the process of elimination tomorrow, involving Caroline if necessary.
12
‘I’ll say one thing, Martin, you don’t mess about.’ I was examining the list of ‘conned’ breeders. On it were two prominent Jockey Club members and the wife of the High Sheriff of Wiltshire.
He shrugged, half-smiled.
‘You’d better start thinking up a convincing story for when you have to go back and tell them a mistake was made,’ I said.
‘No problem. So long as Town Crier’s okay, that’s the main thing. I’ll come up with something.’
Martin brewed tea while I got my portable radio-cassette from the car. We sat at the kitchen table in the cottage playing the blackmailer’s tape. Martin concentrated, brow furrowed, right ear inclined toward the sound. He said, ‘There’s something familiar about the voice.’
Pressing the play button again, I watched him. He looked frustrated. ‘I can’t say I know it.’ He gestured with his hands. It’s not somebody I know, if that doesn’t sound daft, but it’s familiar, I’ve definitely heard it.’
‘Recently?’
He shook his head, listening again. ‘It’s like someone I’ve heard but I don’t know the person. Like somebody on TV, a newsreader or something, know what I mean?’
‘Sort of.’
His frustration was almost painful to watch and the tip-of-the-tongue element was getting to me too as I silently urged him on. I said, ‘You’re lucky I don’t have my whip with me. I’d be sorely tempted to give you a smack to make you go through with your effort.’
He laughed, easing the tension.
We played that tape until it squeaked, drew up lists of people Martin had met recently, tried to plot Caroline’s movements, but came up with nothing. I wanted to confront her, but Martin asked for one more day to try to pin down the voice.
Brian Kincaid was due down next day and Martin offered me the spare room. I refused as politely as I could. The presence of the sour-faced Fiona (boy, could Martin pick ’em) and the thought of spending the night in that dismal cottage held no appeal. Maybe I was getting too used to my own company. Anyway, I went back to the small hotel in Marlborough where I’d stayed last week.
Skimming through the Racing Post I checked the
entries for Market Rasen on Saturday. Cliptie, my synchronized swimming partner from Perth, was entered in the second race. Sure enough, the jockey’s name was given as R. Dolan, Barney’s son, and I wondered how the poor kid felt about being used as a stooge in betting coups.
If Barney was to pull this off and the Corish Stud was to stay out of the weekend scandal sheets, then we had four days to find the blackmailer.
On Wednesday, Kincaid spent more than an hour with Town Crier, giving him as full an examination as was possible without anaesthetic. Martin anxiously followed him, asking questions which Kincaid handled good-naturedly. He took away more samples and left in an ill-concealed state of excitement, which raised Martin’s hopes till I told him Kincaid was simply thrilled at being involved in such an unusual case. ‘It’s the scientist in him coming out. If he finds the cure he’ll want it named the Kincaid Serum or something.’
Watching the vet’s car disappear along the drive, Martin said, ‘He can call it the Kincaid Master Triumph Total Genius Cocktail if he wants, so long as he cracks it.’
We returned to the yard. The phone in the office was ringing. Martin hurried over but it stopped as he opened the door. ‘Damn!’
He picked up the receiver and dialed a short number, listened and noted something down. He dialed again. ‘Tom, you rang me…Uhuh. Yeah, Friday’s fine.’ He hung up and said to me, ‘Blacksmith.’
‘Makes a change from blackmail. What did you just do? How did you know it was him that called?’
‘Just dialed one four seven one, that tells you the last person who called you.’
‘When did that system start? Do you have to apply to have it installed?’
‘Don’t think so. We didn’t. It was Fiona who showed me how to do it. You don’t need it anyway, your answerphone’s always on.’
‘Answerphones don’t tell you the number of the last blackmailer to call.’