by Joe McNally
Warned Off
By Richard Pitman and Joe McNally
Dear reader, All profits from the sales of this book during 2012 will be donated to Kidney Research charities. Thank you for buying Warned Off.
Richard & Joe
Also by Richard & Joe
Hunted
Blood Ties
For Your Sins
Bet Your Life
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Pitman and Joe McNally
First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton in 1993
This electronic edition published in 2012
All rights reserved
Authors’ note
This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents are either a work of the imagination of the authors or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
1
This was the earliest severe winter I could recall, albeit I was only twenty seven. That put me about a third of the way through my life I reckoned and it was one of the things that made me decide to try and find my sister.
Alcohol has that self-delusional effect on me. It makes me think that somehow everything is going to be alright again. I was bloody cold living in that caravan, Christmas wasn’t far off, and I longed for just one evening by a warm hearth. My skewed and boozy mind’s eye decided Marie, my sister, probably lived in a nice cottage in Newmarket with a big log fire. I hadn’t seen her since I’d left school. She wasn’t in the phone book. Address unknown, but Newmarket isn’t that big. That’s what I kept telling myself, when I hit the road, collar up, thumb out, plodding through grey slush, Newmarket isn’t that big.
As it turned out, its size didn’t matter. I stopped in the first pub I saw after being dropped off and left it at midnight with some old floozy who offered me a bed and some chips and curry sauce.
Come morning, a dull hangover and empty pockets stripped away my happy family yuletide ambitions. I left the sleeping beauty snoring and decided the solitary life of the caravan-by-the-dung-heap dweller was about as much as I deserved.
It was frosty and misty. I quickened, trying to keep warm, heading south along the High Street away from the town. I needed to pee. Keeping urine warm in the bladder’s an inefficient duty for the body when heat is needed elsewhere. Remember that next time you’re going out in icy weather and it might save you jumping a fence to find some bushes.
These bushes were on the golf course. I drew a yellow piss flower in the frosted grass and was conscious, as I zipped up, of smiling involuntarily for the first time in ages. Then, at the end of a line of rhododendrons, I saw a man’s leg on the ground, the rimed corduroy of his trousers clean above a bloodied brown shoe.
The body was lying face down, his left leg bent at the knee as though he’d been felled mid-run. I considered dragging him out but realised it was unlikely he’d be alive. The frost layers on his clothes would have taken more than one night to thicken that much. I went to the far side of the bush and parted the leaves till I could see his face. His eyes were frozen shut. A crust of pinkish frost, blood-tinted, lined either side of a long deep wound on his throat.
I turned round and headed wearily back into town and the police station.
The sergeant recognised him; Danny Gordon, twenty-nine years old, late of the Horseracing Forensic Laboratory, Newmarket. His face was the colour and texture of tripe and his throat was cut so deep his head had almost come off.
‘As bad as you’ve seen?’ I asked the sergeant
He turned on me as though I’d offended him. ‘What do you think?’
I shrugged, half apologetic, ‘Sorry. Stupid question.’
‘I know his wife well,’ he said. ‘Used to go out with her. They’ve got three kids.’
I felt useless, worn out and somehow guilty. He took me back to the police station, offered me coffee and asked questions. Shifts changed. They gave me soup and chicken sandwiches and lemonade. It was late afternoon when they let me go. My feet were cold and wet. I felt unclean and unshaven and still hungover. ‘Any chance you can organise me a lift home?’
The sergeant didn’t bother looking up at me. ‘Nope.’
I watched him, hunting with one finger above his keyboard. I said, ‘Remind me next time I get the urge to be a good citizen to walk on by.’
He ignored me. I said. ‘In fact, come witness time, count me out.’
‘You’ll be there.’ He said quietly.
I turned and headed for the door. ‘Here,’ he said. I looked round. He was offering me a banknote. ‘That should get you home.’
Twenty quid. I took it. ‘Thanks. Want me to sign something?’
He looked at me now. ‘There’s nothing to sign.’
‘You’re lending me this then?’
‘No. Keep it. Happy Christmas.’
‘I’ll send you a cheque. What’s your name?’
He was back concentrating on his keyboard again. ‘Santa Claus.’ He said. ‘Make a donation at midnight Mass.’
I put the money in my pocket. ‘Thanks. Sign of the staff shortages in the force when you have to play the bad cop and the good cop. See you sometime.’
‘I’ll look forward to it.’
2
About nine weeks after I’d found the body, McCarthy came to see me. I didn’t recognise him when I first opened the caravan door; the only light came from a weak gas lamp hanging behind me, and though he looked up when he spoke his face was still in shadow.
I stepped to one side. The lamp swung and flickered in the wind but enough light fell on his face to identify him as Peter McCarthy, Racecourse Security Services investigator.
‘Hello, Eddie.’
The surprise at seeing him kept me silent.
‘You remember me, don’t you?’
I nodded. ‘What do you want?’
‘Just to talk.’
‘The last time we talked it cost me my licence and eighteen months in jail.’
We stared at each other. The rain blew into his back and pattered in bursts on his trilby. ‘Give me fifteen minutes,’ he said. ‘If you’re not interested in what I’ve got to say after that you can throw me out.’ I moved aside.
‘Hell of a night, eh?’ He said.
I didn’t reply. Taking off his long coat, he looked around him. ‘There’s a hook behind the door,’ I said. Pulling a plastic chair from under the fixed table I left it for him, and went to sit on my bed in the corner. McCarthy hung his coat up then fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out a handkerchief.
He held it up to the light. There were dark smears and blotches on it and he was trying to fold it over to a clean bit. He saw me watching. ‘Nosebleeds,’ he said, ‘been getting them since I was a kid’. McCarthy had got even fatter since I’d last seen him. About six feet two and forty pounds overweight his face and dark untidy curly hair had a greasy sheen even after he’d wiped away the rain. Finally he sat down, resting his arms on the table, clasped his hands and looked straight at me like I was a camera and he was about to start reading the news.
‘Your ban expired yesterday.’ He said.
‘I know.’
‘I wondered what your plans were.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe I can help you out.’
‘What makes you think I need help?’
He looked around the caravan. It was old. God knows how many stablehands and labourers had used it before me. It was damp and dirty and full of holes which I’d plugged, though the winds coming off the fields still found their way in.
‘Not what champion jockeys are used to,’ McCarthy said.
‘Ex-champion ... I get by.’
‘Come on,
Eddie, how much longer do you want to be stuck in this box out in the wilds?’
‘I’ll move on when I’m ready, without any help from you.’
‘You’re bearing old grudges.’
‘Damn right I am.’ I got up to get a drink. All I had was a third of a bottle of whisky in a cupboard under the sink. I half-filled a small glass, feeling no more hospitable toward McCarthy than when I’d opened the door, but I did offer him a drink.
‘Coffee, if you’ve got some. Milk and two sugars.’
As I lit the one gas ring that worked I tried to figure what McCarthy’s angle was.
The last time I’d seen him he’d been investigating my ‘involvement’ in a racehorse-doping ring. I’d had nothing to do with it, but they didn’t believe me. They took away my jockey’s licence for life and ‘warned me off the turf’ for five years.
The kettle bubbled and I sloshed some boiling water into a mug and left McCarthy to stir it.
I took the whisky back to my bunk. He looked across at me and raised his mug slowly. ‘Cheers,’ he said.
He sipped coffee before taking up his newsreader’s pose again. ‘How close a touch have you kept with racing in the last five years?’
‘None. I’ve no reason to.’
‘Miss it?’
Racing had been my life. I’d been careful never to let them know that, “the authorities”. The injustice was bad enough, I didn’t want them knowing their “punishment” had ripped out my heart.
‘Not any more.’ I said, then drank and blinked as he stared me out.
‘Liar’
I glanced down, ready to check the time then felt ashamed at the cheap plastic watch I wore and left my hand at rest below the table. ‘Mac, I’m up early tomorrow. Tell me why you’re here.’
McCarthy pulled out the dirty hankie, dabbed at his nose then said. ‘Toward the end of November we heard from a good source that a new drug was being developed. Stimulant. Undetectable. The plan as far as we know is to have it ready for the Flat season which is now, what, about three weeks away? We got on to it fairly sharp and we were making reasonable progress till just before Christmas when things came to a dead end with a man called Danny Gordon.’
It took a few seconds for the name to register. ‘The guy I found with his throat cut?’
‘The same. I think the man who had him killed is the man behind the new drug. Gordon worked in the lab at the Horseracing Forensic Laboratory.’
‘I know.’
‘He was last seen alive leaving a Newmarket pub with two men. That was three days before you found him. Now, it turns out the same two men, or at least we’re pretty sure it’s the same two, were responsible for a couple of serious assaults about a week before Gordon’s death.
‘A small-time crook called Walter Bergmark got a home visit from two blokes. We don’t know what they wanted because Bergmark won’t talk, but before they left they pounded his ankles, feet and toes with a builder’s hammer. He had to have his feet amputated.’
Involuntarily my toes wiggled. ‘A week later the same two men, we think, went to see a guy called Kristar Rask who’s a much bigger fish than Bergmark. He’s been involved in syndicate fraud in England and bribing jockeys in Sweden.
‘Again, Rask won’t say what they wanted but they slit his eyelids with a scalpel, taped cotton-wool pads over his eyes and soaked them in weed killer ... Blind for life.’
I drank. ‘Is that it?’
‘Then they killed Danny Gordon.’
‘You think I’m involved because I found Danny Gordon?’
‘Nope’
‘So where do I come in?’
‘We want you to find the killers.’
This time I looked at my watch. ‘Your fifteen minutes are up, McCarthy, good night.’
‘Hear me out, Eddie.’
‘No thanks, I’ve heard enough.’ I got up, finished my drink at the walk and rinsed the glass.
‘Eddie, listen ...
‘Look, Mac, you’ve won the bet or the contest or whatever it was you came here for. The let’s take the piss out of Eddie Malloy trophy is yours, that makes you a dual winner. Now finish your drink and go away and amuse yourself somewhere else.’
‘Eddie, take it easy for God’s sake, I’m trying to help you!’
‘Sure you are, just like you helped me five years ago?’
‘Oh, come on, Eddie, be fair!’
‘Me be fair! What do you know about fairness? How much did I get from you and your people?’
‘Listen, I never agreed with your conviction or your punishment, it was way over the top. But I had to do the job I was paid for. What would you have done in my place?’
‘I’d have spoken up, that’s what I would have done, said my piece before your bosses decided to take away my fucking livelihood!’
We spent the next five minutes arguing, going over all the old shit I’d buried years ago. McCarthy wasn’t stupid. When I’d burned myself out he said, ‘Remember Kruger?’
I nodded slowly. ‘What’s he got to do with it?’
‘It was more what he had to do with your case. You were convinced it was Kruger who set you up, weren’t you?’
‘He was the man behind the doping ring, I know that. I wouldn’t have said he set me up. It was nothing personal, he just didn’t care who went down, as long as it wasn’t him.’
‘But you got him for it?’
‘Oh, I got him all right. It cost me eighteen months in jail but it was worth it. If you guys had caught Kruger before you took my licence away then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
‘We tried.’ He said.
‘Not very hard, though, did you? I managed to find him.’
McCarthy raised his open palms, apologetic. ‘We didn’t have enough grounds, Eddie, you know that ... and we didn’t have the time.’
‘Well, you should have found the time, Mr McCarthy. You should have found the fucking time! If it had been someone “important” instead of just an upstart jockey you’d have found it, wouldn’t you?’
He was ready to argue but stopped himself. ‘Look, we’re just getting into another shouting match. It’s pointless. We’ll be here all night if we keep raking through it all.’
I glared at him. He said, ‘Tell me how you tracked Kruger down.’
‘Why?!’ I realised I was still shouting and I felt angry now that I’d lost my temper and let him see how bitter I was.
He held both hands up. ‘Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to wind you up. Sit down for a minute, let me finish then I’ll leave.’
I sat. He said, ‘This case we’re working on, the new drug. We got our hands on some of it, just before Danny Gordon was killed. It took about two weeks to analyse properly and when the report came through it, well, it seems like a lot of the techniques used in the processing of these drugs can be very individual, peculiar to one man or one team and sometimes this shows up in analysis. What it comes down to is, if you were right five years ago and Kruger was running the doping ring then, it looks like he’s at it again. This stuff bears the same hallmarks.’
My mind was beginning to race. ‘So what you’re saying is, if Kruger is behind this and he gets caught there’s every chance you can pin the old one on him?’
‘Probably.’
‘Would that clear me?
‘You know it wouldn’t. You went down because you were a bit-part player. Correction, because you were thought to be a bit-part player. The only chance of your name being cleared would be if Kruger admitted you had nothing to do with it.’
‘And if he did?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
I sat forward on the bed. ‘Would I get my licence back?’
‘We have to find him first.’
‘Mac! Would they give me back my licence?’
He cradled the coffee mug and smiled. ‘There’d be a hell of a stink if they didn’t.’
3
I was finding it hard to control myself. If em
otions travel through your body like blood then none had flowed through me for five years, the well had dried up. If they had started just trickling back I’d have been able to handle it better but they were gushing. I was almost shaking. I felt panicky. I got to my feet and started pacing, almost marching, up and down. Glancing wildly in all directions I couldn’t keep my eyes still. I covered them with my hands, rubbing them hard, massaging my face, still striding up and down.
McCarthy mistook it all for impatience. ‘Eddie, slow down, you can’t start tonight.’ I didn’t answer. ‘You’re going to have to be fully briefed.’
I shoved my hands into my pockets and kept pacing. ‘Tell me more about Kruger.’ My voice sounded high-pitched, almost strangled.
‘Later.’
‘Now!’
‘Eddie, you’re building your hopes too high. Be realistic. If you do catch him he’s going to hate you enough to want to kill you ... probably already does. The last thing he’ll be inclined to do is clear your name.’
‘I’ll take my chances. Tell me everything you’ve got on him.’
‘Slow down, man! Kruger is the main suspect but the evidence on the whole case is too scant to pin anything on anybody just now.’
‘Just tell me, Mac!’
He got up. ‘Look, if you’re taking this on let’s do it right. We’ll arrange a meeting and you can have the full file on the case.’
‘Tomorrow, then.’
‘For God’s sake, Eddie, slow down!’
I stopped pacing and faced him. ‘Tomorrow, Mac. I’ve taken it easy and slowed down for five years. I want this bastard Kruger and I want my licence back. Meet me tomorrow’ I felt as if my eyes were bulging. My face was hot, it must have been deep red. McCarthy stared at me.
‘Where?’
‘What about the Red Ox?’ I said.
‘Fine. That’s not far from my house. Okay, around twelve thirty?’
I nodded.
‘Have you got transport?’