by Joe McNally
I wondered where Rossington had been the day Alex Dunn died. I called McCarthy who came back fairly promptly with the information that Rossington had not been racing that day, so he could have been at my parents’ stud injecting prostaglandin into Alex Dunn and tying me on to that mare.
Maybe a quiet spot of tailing Mr. Rossington for a day or two might pay off. I pestered McCarthy again to find out where he would be next day. Mac was annoyed. ‘What’s this thing about Rossington, what are you up to now?’
‘I’m trying to persuade the guy to admit he was the last man to see Brian Kincaid alive.’
Mac sighed. ‘You know, Eddie, when you’re an old man walking with a stick, you’ll still be tottering around racecourses looking for the fictitious murderer of Kincaid.’
‘I know. Tenacious, ain’t I?’
‘Tendentious, more like.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means partisan, biased, bloody stubborn.’
‘I think I like tenacious better.’
Mac called me within five minutes with the news that Rossington would be at Worcester races next day. ‘So will I, then,’ I said. ‘So will I.’
45
There’s a small public car park just off the main road as you enter Worcester Racecourse. Most drive through it and over the track crossing to park in the grassy centre of the course. But it could be a bitch getting out and I needed to be close to Rossington when he left, so I got there early and found a space in the small car park.
I saw him a few times throughout the afternoon but did no more than say hello. I never strayed far from the weighing room. If the Aussie came out, I wanted to see where he was going. Sod’s law was in operation that day and I was offered a ride in the last, which I had to refuse, as none of Rossington’s jocks were in the race and there was every chance he’d leave before or during it.
He didn’t, and was among the last to go. The horse I could have ridden got beaten half a length and Rossington hung around so long that there was no way I could safely tail him to the official car park to see which car was his. I left before him and got to my car, where I watched through binoculars until I saw him come walking bow-legged toward his, a green Nissan Estate. He slung two obviously heavy bags in then seemed to have some trouble opening his driver’s door.
Eventually he came trundling out and I had to let him get onto the main road before following. Rossington lived near Bristol. If that was where he was headed I wouldn’t lose him, we were only ten minutes from the M5 and a straight run south.
When we reached the motorway I tucked in a few vehicles behind on the inside lane, but the Aussie made life difficult by staying below sixty - the only person in racing who didn’t drive everywhere at full tilt.
After twenty miles or so, he began varying his speed and I wondered if he’d sussed me. I dropped further behind, but ten minutes later the bastard pulled in on the hard shoulder, hazard lights flashing. I passed him on the outside of a truck so he wouldn’t see my face.
I took the next exit and waited on the bridge for Rossington to come by. When he did, I rejoined and tucked in again. Five minutes later, he pulled the same stunt on the hard shoulder, and I thought it safest to give up. He was onto me.
I drove home with some degree of satisfaction. If Rossington was nervous of me, he might make a mistake or force someone else to make one. When I reached the flat, I made coffee and a sandwich and called Candy.
‘Anything more on Capshaw?’ I asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘How’s old Sheikhy taking the setback?’
‘Calm as ever on the surface but I think his patience is running out.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘And we’ve got another vet badly ill.’
‘Who?’
‘John Snell, the guy who took over from Simon.’
‘Simon’s the one found dead in bed?’
‘That’s right, Snell took over his duties. Now he’s poorly too.’
‘He’s doing the mares now?’
‘Uhuh, been doing loads of tests on the ones who lost foals.’
‘Any findings?’
‘Not a jot so far.’
‘And what exactly is wrong with Snell?’
‘They don't know. They’re still doing tests on him too. He thinks it might be exhaustion, which they say could have been a contributory factor in Simon Nish’s heart attack.’
‘Can’t you tell these guys to slow down a bit?’
‘The vets? Eddie, everyone’s the same here! It’s not just them. We’re all under pressure, we want this sorted out.’
‘Okay, okay, but they’re only horses, for God’s sake! It’s only a job even if it does pay well. Are you going to kill yourself for it, too?’
‘Listen to who’s talking. The scrapes you’ve been in!’
‘But I do it for the love of it, not the money.’
‘Ha, bloody ha.’
‘Keep laughing, Candy. I’m planning to up the stakes now and you’d better get yourself in gear too. I’m beginning to think that whoever’s behind all this might have sussed what we were trying to do through Capshaw.’
‘Plant me in there, you mean?’
‘Exactly. And if they do suspect that then they know we’re closing in. Okay, we might not have them surrounded, but they’ll realize we’re on their heels. Also, Rossington’s rattled, and if he is involved, I think we can expect some action soon.’
‘If you’re right then I think Rossington will be more worried about his own health than doing us any damage.’
‘Maybe, but they’ve got to stop killing their own guys at some point.’
‘And start killing us?’
‘Start trying.’
Candy’s man got me the names of three people in Australia who knew Ken Rossington. None of them was available to talk when I called, though one, Clive Torpen, promised me a call back later if I could ‘stay awake long enough’
I don’t know what time I dozed off but the trill of the telephone woke me. In a daze, I reached out and scooped up the receiver, trying to remember the name of the Aussie I was expecting a call from, but all I heard was a dial tone.
A phone still ringing somewhere.
Then a click and the sound of my fax machine working.
I rolled off the bed and went to the machine whose digital clock read one minute past midnight. The paper spooled out. No first- page identification, just heavy dark print in a large typeface like a newspaper headline. The words below were laid out in newspaper-style columns and the content was a reproduction of the document I’d found beside Alex Dunn’s corpse. The headline read ‘Shameful Secret of Top Jockey’.
46
I didn’t think they’d given it to the press. That was their ace and they wouldn’t play it this soon. Also, whoever got the story would do the usual and ring me for my comments ‘in the interests of fairness’, which really meant in the interests of possibly getting some more salacious information. Still, thinking about it kept me awake, the light of the single lamp glowing on my scribbled notes on which I’d drawn boxes and arrows in the hope that some pattern would emerge to pull together damaged stallions, aborting mares and dead men.
At 2.10, my contact in Australia rang. Five minutes later, I told him how much I appreciated the call and how grateful I was he’d taken the trouble to tell me about Ken Rossington.
‘No trouble, mate, anytime.’
Come morning I’d had no more than three hours of troubled sleep, and promised myself I’d catch up by having an early night tonight. Then, over breakfast, Charles Tunney, the trainer I rode for, reminded me of a dinner date we both had in London.
‘Shit, that’s not tonight, is it?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘I thought that was next month.’
‘Afraid not.’ He was smiling, his chubby cheeks red from an hour out walking the gallops, checking and planning. Six of our horses were due back in tomorrow and Charles, as optimistic as m
ost other racing folk, was looking forward to a good season.
I told him I’d have to call off from this charity dinner but he reminded me that it was a ‘three-line-whip’ from Broga Cates who owned the property, the horses, and paid me a retainer to ride for the stable. Broga had ‘bought’ a table for this high-profile event at a cost of three grand. Charles and I were to be two of his nine guests.
After breakfast, I called Candy and told him what I’d discovered about Rossington, asking him to cancel any pending enquiries about the Aussie for fear of alerting him. Then I contacted McCarthy. I couldn’t afford to tell him everything about Rossington; he’d have gone all official on me. But I said enough to convince him he should carry on co-operating with me over Rossington’s past movements. I also arranged to take advantage of my trip to London by having a meeting there with Mac next morning.
At Euston station, the taxi rank was empty of cabs and full of people. We took the tube then walked the remaining few hundred yards to the Dorchester, skirting the edge of Hyde Park and its dog-walkers, roller-bladers and tourists.
It was a fine sunny evening and we smiled and chatted as we entered the pedestrian underpass to walk beneath Park Lane, at which point our smiles faded as we saw the ragged rows of homeless people already settled for the night in makeshift cardboard beds while chauffeur-driven limousines glided above their heads, carrying the lucky ones to their clubs and casinos and three-hundred-pound-a-night rooms.
My three-hundred-pound-a-head-dinner took some forcing down, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to join in the applause as egos fuelled by liquor paid crazy prices for sports memorabilia. It was for charity, which made it palatable, but I wondered what charity would help those poor bastards sleeping in the basement of the world. Especially when winter came.
By 11, the tables had been cleared, the lights were low, the orchestra played in the background and alcohol had draped its usual soft curtains around each party, making them think they were the only ones who really mattered. Nonsense was talked, boasts made, libidos stoked, promises sworn - until finally I decided to have a few more drinks and stop being so bloody judgmental.
Charles had been away from the seat beside me for about twenty minutes when it was quietly filled by a woman in a black dress, a string of pearls and a sweet haze of perfume. Early- forties, blonde shoulder-length hair, pale pink lipstick on narrow lips, grey-blue eyes wrinkled pleasantly by her smile, biggish nose but not unattractive given her strong bone structure. Her breasts were too heavy for whatever wire support was pushing them up, making little wrinkles either side of the tight line of cleavage.
She smiled at me as if I should know her and I did. I recognized her from that picture at Ascot. ‘Eddie?’ She held out her hand. ‘Jean Kerman.’
The newspaper columnist. The gorgon of the gossip pages, destroyer of reputations, specializing in sports personalities the way a forensic pathologist specializes in bodies - the difference being the medic has the good grace to wait till you’re dead.
I took her hand. ‘Nice to meet you at last,’ she said.
‘Likewise,’ I lied.
A stalking waiter, eager to help seal what he obviously saw as a potential liaison, appeared and offered champagne. Kerman, without acknowledging the man himself, took two glasses and placed one in front of me. She drank half the other at a gulp. I left mine untouched.
We small-talked, but I was finding it tough to hide my wariness of her. I was tempted to ask if she shouldn’t be moving around looking for someone to write about, but I had the uncomfortable feeling that was exactly what she had been doing.
She inched her chair closer and lit a cigarette, thin lips closing to a pencil line as she drew on it, then tilted her head to blow a stream of smoke from the corner of her mouth. Chin raised and eyes half-closed, she thought she was posing sexily, but the most striking part of the view was up her wide nostrils.
The band was doing some nice slow forties stuff and the floor was pretty full. Kerman stood up and asked if I wanted to dance. I didn’t but nor did I want to embarrass her, so I got up and she led me onto the floor, turned and moved in so close her breast wrinkles washed backward like a wave. Her high heels brought her to my height and she pulled my head forward, raising her shoulder to nudge me nearer her neck.
‘I never inspect ears on a first date,’ I said.
She laughed, pulling back to look at me. I managed what I hoped was a reasonably pleasant expression with a hint of warning attached that I wasn’t quite so keen on having sex on the dance floor of the Dorchester as she appeared to be.
She settled a bit then and we moved in a slow but rhythmic circle. She tried to ease her pelvis closer to me but her stomach got there first. Her perfume seemed muskier close up, her body warm. As the music came to an end, I was still trying to figure her out when she raised her chin, putting her mouth close to my ear. She said, ‘You dance well. Did your mum teach you when you were a boy?’ She drew back like a cobra and looked at me, eyes much colder now. Then she said, ‘Or were you too busy going out for walks in the bracing Cumbrian air? Walks by the river. Or climbing trees? Maybe that was your favourite, Eddie, eh?’ And I wondered if, in the relative darkness, she could see the colour draining from me. A smile glinted hard and steely on her face as she turned and walked away.
47
I went out into the brightly lit busy streets and found a newspaper seller. Kerman’s paper was called The Examiner and tomorrow’s early edition was already on the stands. I scanned through quickly, knowing that if she’d run the story it would probably be over two full pages.
It wasn’t there.
I leant against a lamppost, trying to breathe deeply, tension pulsing in my throat, realizing that the sense of relief I was feeling was false. It would be followed by another bout of fear, another steady winding of the anxiety spring as I waited for Friday’s edition then Saturday’s and so on.
The evening suit suddenly felt tight, the wing collar choking. I reached up to loosen it. Sweat broke through on my forehead as I stared at the sky.
It was after midnight when I reached the hotel, too late to call Mother and warn her. And what good would it do anyway? I’d goaded these people, tempted them to come out, and they had. They’d given the story to Kerman and she’d teased and goaded me and I knew she would publish the story soon. She had to, that was her job.
I spent another sleepless night, which led into the longest day of my life. The next morning I met Mac at Jockey Club HQ, Portman Square.
He looked at my face as we sat down in his office. A rich smell of coffee permeated the whole floor we were on and Mac ordered a pot. He said, ‘I can’t tell whether it was a good night or a bloody bad one, but you look like you’ve been up for most of it.’
‘I was. One way or another.’
He smiled. ‘One of those, eh?’
‘No, not one of those.'
He kept smiling stupidly until the coffee came. I hadn’t planned to tell him about Rossington, but Kerman had increased the pressure so much I was determined to get these people. I was going to suffer the consequences anyway, and if I could bring them down too it would help ease the pain.
I drank, savouring the long aftertaste, then said to Mac, ‘Ken Rossington’s not who he says he is.’
‘He says he’s Ken Rossington. His passport says he’s Ken Rossington. His racecourse ID from Melbourne says he’s Ken Rossington.’
‘He’s not.’
Mac settled behind the big desk in that comfortable way I’d now become familiar with. Before he knew me properly or trusted my judgment, he used to stiffen, sit straighter when I started setting out my theories. But experience had deflated the mild pomposity and quelled the doubts. We’d been through a few things together, arguing and falling out along the way, but always building respect for each other.
Slowly he drank his coffee. Lifting my cup and holding his gaze, I mimicked his action. We both smiled. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘The Ken Rossing
ton who worked at Melbourne was at least three inches shorter than our man and maybe twenty pounds lighter. He was quiet, reserved, industrious and private. Our guy behaves like CoCo the Clown half the time. His hair and eye colouring are the same and he has the same general facial shape but they are two different men.’
Mac shrugged. ‘Maybe they are. Maybe it was us that got them confused.’
I shook my head. ‘Rossington’s CV lays claim to everything his Melbourne counterpart has done.’
‘Okay, who is our man?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why is he impersonating Rossington?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where is the real Rossington?’
‘You’ve just completed the hat-trick. I don’t know. The real Ken Rossington left Melbourne on March the twelfth last year, after the break-up of a long-term affair with a jockey.’
Mac sat forward. ‘A jockey? A female jockey?’
‘No, the type with the hanging genitalia.’
Mac looked shocked. ‘A homosexual jockey?’
‘I certainly hope so, or it must have been a touch unpleasant for him.’
He sat back again, slowly shaking his head.
‘Why do you say “a homosexual jockey”?’ I asked. ‘Rossington was the other half, why don’t you say, “a homosexual valet”?’
‘I don’t know. It just seems odd.’
‘We’re all human under those silks, you know.’
He nodded. ‘Anyway, go on.’
‘Rossington decided to make a new life for himself in England. He had dual nationality so didn’t see a problem getting work in racing. The rumour is that an owner he knew out there, a guy who also had horses in England and France, promised to help him get started here.’