by Dick Francis
With regret I made my confession that I had learned nothing from Beckett’s typescript.
‘Neither Beckett nor I expected as much from it as you did,’ he said. ‘I’ve been talking to him a lot this week, and we think that although all those extensive inquiries were made at the time, you might find something that was overlooked if you moved to one of the stables where those eleven horses were trained when they were doped. Of course, eight of the horses were sold and have changed stables, which is a pity, but three are still with their original trainers, and it might be best if you could get a job with one of those.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘AH right. I’ll try all three trainers and see if one of them will take me on. But the trail is very cold by now… and joker number twelve will turn up in a different stable altogether. There was nothing, I suppose, at Haydock this week?’
‘No. Saliva samples were taken from all the runners before the selling chase, but the favourite won, quite normally, and we didn’t have the samples analysed. But now that you’ve spotted that those five courses must have been chosen deliberately for their long finishing straights we will keep stricter watches there than ever. Especially if one of those eleven horses runs there again.’
‘You could check with the racing calendar to see if any has been entered,’ I agreed. ‘But so far none of them has been doped twice, and I can’t see why the pattern should change.’
A gust of bitter wind blew down the gully, and he shivered. The little stream, swollen with yesterday’s rains, tumbled busily over its rocky bed. October whistled to his dog, who was sniffing along its banks.
‘By the way,’ he said, shaking hands, ‘the vets are of the opinion that the horses were not helped on their way by pellets or darts, or anything shot or thrown. But they can’t be a hundred per cent certain. They didn’t at the time examine all the horses very closely. But if we get another one I’ll see they go over every inch looking for punctures.’
‘Fine.’ We smiled at each other and turned away. I liked him. He was imaginative and had a sense of humour to leaven the formidable big-business-executive power of his speech and manner. A tough man, I thought appreciatively: tough in mind, muscular in body, unswerving in purpose: a man of the kind to have earned an earldom, if he hadn’t inherited it.
Sparking Plug had to do without his bucket of water that night and again the following morning. The box driver set off to Leicester with a pocketful of hard-earned money from the lads and their instructions to back the horse to win; and I felt a traitor.
Inskip’s other horse, which had come in the box too, was engaged in the third race, but the novice ’chase was not until the fifth race on the card, which left me free to watch the first two races as well as Sparks’ own. I bought a race card and found a space on the parade ring rails, and watched the horses for the first race being led round. Although from the form books I knew the names of a great many trainers they were still unknown to me by sight; and accordingly, when they stood chatting with their jockeys in the ring, I tried, for interest, to identify some of them. There were only seven of them engaged in the first race, Owen, Cundell, Beeby, Cazalet, Humber… Humber? What was it that I had heard about Humber? I couldn’t remember. Nothing very important, I thought.
Humber’s horse looked the least well of the lot, and the lad leading him round wore unpolished shoes, a dirty rain-coat and an air of not caring to improve matters. The jockey’s jersey, when he took his coat off, could be seen to be still grubby with mud from a former outing, and the trainer who had failed to provide clean colours or to care about stable smartness was a large, bad-tempered looking man leaning on a thick, knobbed walking stick.
As it happened, Humber’s lad stood beside me on the stand to watch the race.
‘Got much chance?’ I asked idly.
‘Waste of time running him,’ he said, his lip curling. ‘I’m fed to the back molars with the sod.’
‘Oh. Perhaps your other horse is better, though?’ I murmured, watching the runners line up for the start.
‘My other horse?’ He laughed without mirth. ‘Three others, would you believe it? I’m fed up with the whole sodding set up. I’m packing it in at the end of the week, pay or no pay.’
I suddenly remembered what I had heard about Humber. The worst stable in the country to work for, the boy in the Bristol hostel had said: they starved the lads and knocked them about and could only get riff-raff to work there.
‘How do you mean, pay or no pay?’ I asked.
‘Humber pays sixteen quid a week, instead of eleven,’ he said, ‘but it’s not bloody worth it. I’ve had a bellyful of bloody Humber. I’m getting out.’
The race started, and we watched Humber’s horse finish last. The lad disappeared, muttering, to lead it away.
I smiled, followed him down the stairs, and forgot him, because waiting near the bottom step was a seedy, black-moustached man whom I instantly recognised as having been in the bar at the Cheltenham dance.
I walked slowly away to lean over the parade ring rail, and he inconspicuously followed. He stopped beside me, and with his eyes on the one horse already in the ring, he said, ‘I hear that you are hard up.’
‘Not after today, I’m not,’ I said, looking him up and down.
He glanced at me briefly. ‘Oh. Are you so sure of Sparking Plug?’
‘Yeah,’ I said with an unpleasant smirk. ‘Certain.’ Someone, I reflected, had been kind enough to tell him which horse I looked after: which meant he had been checking up on me. I trusted he had learned nothing to my advantage.
‘Hmm.’
A whole minute passed. Then he said casually, ‘Have you ever thought, of changing your job… going to another stable?’
‘I’ve thought of it,’ I admitted, shrugging. ‘Who hasn’t?’
‘There’s always a market for good lads,’ he pointed out, ‘and I’ve heard you’re a dab hand at the mucking out. With a reference from Inskip you could get in anywhere, if you told them you were prepared to wait for a vacancy.’
‘Where?’ I asked; but he wasn’t to be hurried. After another minute he said, still conversationally, ‘It can be very… er… lucrative… working for some stables.’
‘Oh?’
‘That is,’ he coughed discreetly, ‘if you are ready to do a bit more than the stable tells you to.’
‘Such as?’
‘Oh… general duties,’ he said vaguely. ‘It varies. Anything helpful to, er, the person who is prepared to supplement your income.’
‘And who’s that?’
He smiled thinly. ‘Look upon me as his agent. How about it? His terms are a regular fiver a week for information about the results of training gallops and things like that, and a good bonus for occasional special jobs of a more, er, risky nature.’
‘It don’t sound bad,’ I said slowly, sucking in my lower lip. ‘Can’t I do it at Inskip’s?’
‘Inskip’s is not a betting stable,’ he said. ‘The horses always run to win. We do not need a permanent employee in that sort of place. There are however at present two betting stables without a man of ours in them, and you would be useful in either.’
He named two leading trainers, neither of whom was one of the three people I had already planned to apply to. I would have to decide whether it would not be more useful to join what was clearly a well-organized spy system, than to work with a once-doped horse who would almost certainly not be doped again.
‘I’ll think it over,’ I said. ‘Where can I get in touch with you?’
‘Until you’re on the pay roll, you can’t,’ he said simply. ‘Sparking Plug’s in the fifth, I see. Well, you can give me your answer after that race. I’ll be somewhere on your way back to the stables. Just nod if you agree, and shake your head if you don’t. But I can’t see you passing up a chance like this, not one of your sort.’ There was a sly contempt in the smile he gave me that made me unexpectedly wince inwardly.
He turned away and walked a few steps, and then came bac
k.
‘Should I have a big bet on Sparking Plug, then?’ he asked.
‘Oh… er… well… if I were you I’d save your money.’
He looked surprised, and then suspicious, and then knowing. ‘So that’s how the land lies,’ he said. ‘Well, well, well.’ He laughed, looking at me as if I’d crawled out from under a stone. He was a man who despised his tools. ‘I can see you’re going to be very useful to us. Very useful indeed.’
I watched him go. It wasn’t from kind-heartedness that I had stopped him backing Sparking Plug, but because it was the only way to retain and strengthen his confidence. When he was fifty yards away, I followed him. He made straight for the bookmakers in Tattersalls and strolled along the rows, looking at the odds displayed by each firm; but as far as I could see he was in fact innocently planning to bet on the next race, and not reporting to anyone the outcome of his talk with me. Sighing, I put ten shillings on an outsider and went back to watch the horses go out for the race.
Sparking Plug thirstily drank two full buckets of water, stumbled over the second last fence, and cantered tiredly in behind the other seven runners to the accompaniment of boos from the cheaper enclosures. I watched him with regret. It was a thankless way to treat a great-hearted horse.
The seedy, black-moustached man was waiting when I led the horse away to the stables. I nodded to him, and he sneered knowingly back.
‘You’ll hear from us,’ he said.
There was gloom in the box going home and in the yard the next day over Sparking Plug’s unexplainable defeat, and I went alone to Slaw on Tuesday evening, when Soupy duly handed over another seventy-five pounds. I checked it. Another fifteen new fivers, consecutive to the first fifteen.
‘Ta,’ I said. ‘What do you get out of this yourself?’
Soupy’s full mouth curled. ‘I do all right. You mugs take the risks, I get a cut for setting you up. Fair enough, eh?’
‘Fair enough. How often do you do this sort of thing?’ I tucked the envelope of money into my pocket.
He shrugged, looking pleased with himself. ‘I can spot blokes like you a mile off. Inskip must be slipping, though. First time I’ve known him pick a bent penny, like. But those darts matches come in very handy… I’m good, see. I’m always in the team. And there’s a lot of stables in Yorkshire… with a lot of beaten favourites for people to scratch their heads over.’
‘You’re very clever,’ I said.
He smirked. He agreed.
I walked up the hill planning to light a fuse under T.N.T., the high explosive kid.
In view of the black-moustached man’s offer I decided to read through Beckett’s typescript yet again, to see if the eleven dopings could have been the result of systematic spying. Looking at things from a fresh angle might produce results, I thought, and also might help me make up my mind whether or not to back out of the spying job and go to one of the doped horse’s yards as arranged.
Locked in the bathroom I began again at page one. On page sixty-seven, fairly early in the life history of the fifth of the horses. I read ‘Bought at Ascot Sales, by D. L. Men-tiff, Esq., of York for four hundred and twenty guineas, passed on for five hundred pounds to H. Humber of Posset, County Durham, remained three months, ran twice unplaced in maiden hurdles, subsequently sold again, at Doncaster, being bought for six hundred guineas by N. W. Davies, Esq., of Leeds. Sent by him to L. Peterson’s training stables at Mars Edge, Staffs, remained eighteen months, ran in four maiden hurdles, five novice chases, all without being placed. Races listed below.’ Three months at Humber’s. I smiled. It appeared that horses didn’t stay with him any longer than lads. I ploughed on through the details, page after solid page.
On page ninety-four I came across the following: ‘Alamo was then offered for public auction at Kelso, and a Mr John Arbuthnot, living in Berwickshire, paid three hundred guineas for him. He sent him to be trained by H. Humber at Posset, County Durham, but he was not entered for any races, and Mr Arbuthnot sold him to Humber for the same sum. A few weeks later he was sent for resale at Kelso. This time Alamo was bought for three hundred and seventy-five guineas by a Mr Clement Smith-son, living at Nantwich, Cheshire, who kept him at home for the summer and then sent him to a trainer called Samuel Martin at Malton, Yorkshire, where he ran unplaced in four maiden hurdles before Christmas (see list attached).’
I massaged my stiff neck. Humber again.
I read on.
On page one hundred and eighty, I read, ‘Ridgeway was then acquired as a yearling by a farmer, James Green, of Home Farm, Crayford, Surrey, in settlement of a bad debt. Mr Green put him out to grass for two years, and had him broken in, hoping he would be a good hunter. However, a Mr Taplow of Pusey, Wilts, said he would like to buy him and put him in training for racing. Ridgeway was trained for flat races by Ronald Streat of Pusey, but was unplaced in all his four races that summer. Mr Taplow then sold Ridgeway privately to Albert George, farmer, of Bridge Lewes, Shropshire, who tried to train him himself but said he found he didn’t have time to do it properly, so he sold him to a man a cousin of his knew near Durham, a trainer called Hedley Humber. Humber apparently. thought the horse was no good, and Ridgeway went up for auction at Newmarket in November, fetching two hundred and ninety guineas and being bought by Mr P. J. Brewer, of the Manor, Witherby, Lanes…’
I ploughed right on to the end of the typescript, threading my way through the welter of names, but Humber was not mentioned anywhere again.
Three of the eleven horses had been in Humber’s yard for a brief spell at some distant time in their careers. That was all it amounted to.
I rubbed my eyes, which were gritty from lack of sleep, and an alarm clock rang suddenly, clamorously, in the silent cottage. I looked at my watch in surprise. It was already half past six. Standing up and stretching, I made use of the bathroom facilities, thrust the typescript up under my pyjama jacket and the jersey I wore on top and shuffled back yawning to the dormitory, where the others were already up and struggling puffy-eyed into their clothes.
Down in the yard it was so cold that everything one touched seemed to suck the heat out of ones fingers, leaving them numb and fumbling, and the air was as intense an internal shaft to the chest as iced coffee sliding down the oesophagus. Muck out the boxes, saddle up, ride up to the moor, canter, walk, ride down again, brush the sweat off, make the horse comfortable, give it food and water, and go in to breakfast. Repeat for the second horse, repeat for the third, and go in to lunch.
While we were eating Wally came in and told two others and me to go and clean the tack, and when we had finished our tinned plums and custard we went along to the tack room and started on the saddles and bridles. It was warm there from the stove, and I put my head back on a saddle and went solidly asleep.
One of the others jogged my legs and said, ‘Wake up Dan, there’s a lot to do,’ and I drifted to the surface again. But before I opened my eyes the other lad said, ‘Oh leave him, he does his share,’ and with blessings on his head I sank back into blackness. Four o’clock came too soon, and with it the three hours of evening stables: then supper at seven and another day nearly done.
For most of the time I thought about Humber’s name cropping up three times in the typescript. I couldn’t really see that it was of more significance than that four of the eleven horses had been fed on horse cubes at the time of their doping. What was disturbing was that I should have missed it entirely on my first two readings. I realised that I had had no reason to notice the name Humber before seeing him and his horse and talking to his lad at Leicester, but if I had missed one name occurring three times, I could have missed others as well. The thing to do would be to make lists of every single name mentioned in the typescript, and see if any other turned up in association with several of the horses. An electric computer could have done it in seconds. For me, it looked like another night in the bathroom.
There were more than a thousand names in the typescript. I listed half of them on the Wednesday night, and
slept a bit, and finished them on Thursday night, and slept some more.
On Friday the sun shone for a change, and the morning was beautiful on the moor. I trotted Sparking Plug along the track somewhere in the middle of the string and thought about the lists. No names except Humber’s and one other occurred in connection with more than two of the horses. But the one other was a certain Paul J. Adams, and he had at one time or another owned six of them. Six out of eleven. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The odds against it were phenomenal. I was certain I had made my first really useful discovery, yet I couldn’t see why the fact that P. J. Adams, Esq. had owned a horse for a few months once should enable it to be doped a year or two later. I puzzled over it all morning without a vestige of understanding.
As it was a fine day, Wally said, it was a good time for me to scrub some rugs. This meant laying the rugs the horses wore to keep them warm in their boxes flat on the concrete in the yard, soaking them with the aid of a hose pipe, scrubbing them with a long-handled broom and detergent, hosing them off again, and hanging the wet rugs on the fence to drip before they were transferred to the warm tack room to finish drying thoroughly. It was an unpopular job, and Wally, who had treated me even more coldly since Sparking Plug’s disgrace (though he had not gone so far as to accuse me of engineering it), could hardly conceal his dislike when he told me that it was my turn to do it.
However, I reflected, as I laid out five rugs after lunch and thoroughly soaked them with water, I had two hours to be alone and think. And as so often happens, I was wrong.
At three o’clock, when the horses were dozing and the lads were either copying them or had made quick trips to Harrogate with their new pay packets; when stable life was at its siesta and only I with my broom showed signs of reluctant activity, Patty Tarren walked in through the gate, across the tarmac, and slowed to a halt a few feet away.