by Joe McNally
‘What do you mean?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
He still looked worried. ‘Mac, there’s a race going on, everyone is on the other side of the stand.’
Looking more resigned than relieved he said, ‘Okay, what is it?’
I told him about Jackie. ‘That’s a bad decision, Eddie.’
‘How the hell is it a bad decision? She won’t take any risks, she’s just observing! She’s an insider, for God’s sake! It’s the best break we’ve had.’
He stood shaking his head. ‘What else can we do?’ I asked.
Glaring at me he said, ‘Look, Eddie, do what you want, just start getting me some results.’
I stared at him. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means I need some results from you! I’m under pressure!’
‘Results? Pressure? I just came out of the fucking hospital after getting my face fried for you and you talk to me about pressure!’
He looked around nervously. ‘Calm down, Eddie, for God’s sake. I’m sorry ... Look, I’m getting calls from my boss virtually every time there’s a major form upset. We’re well into the flat season, there could be a drugged horse in every damn race and we wouldn’t know about it.’
‘That’s way over the top, Mac, and you know it.’
‘Okay, maybe it is, but everybody’s feeling it, not just you. Now look, I’ll have to go. We’ll talk soon when we’ve both calmed down a bit.’
The way I felt, that would take a while.
After half an hour spent searching the bars for Priscilla, I saw her walking toward me, deep in conversation with Wendy.
‘Hello.’ I said. They stopped and stared but didn’t recognise me immediately. When Wendy did her eyebrows went up and her hand clapped her open mouth. ‘Eddie! What the hell happened to you?’
‘It’s a long story, as they say.’
‘You look like you’ve had skin grafts from an old saddle.’
‘I wish it were as tough.’
Wendy stepped to the side to see how far round the scarring went. I turned to her friend. ‘Hello, Priscilla, remember me?’ Priscilla looked more bored than shocked. ‘Not like that I don’t.’
‘Heard anything from Alan?’ I asked.
She gave me a bitter look and shook her head. ‘You told me he was in Cyprus.’
‘I think he might be back.’
‘He’d be riding if he was back.’
‘Yes, I suppose he would.’
She sneered. ‘Tell him when he does come back I hope he falls off his first ride and it kicks his balls up into his belly.’
‘Painful.’
‘Not half enough for the slimy little sod.’
Wendy had completed her inspection and was back facing me.
She knitted her brows in a half-quizzical smile. ‘You got scars anywhere else then, Eddie?’
‘Nowhere you haven’t seen before,’ I said. She giggled, uninsulted.
‘You coming in to buy us a drink?’ she asked.
‘Sorry, Wendy, not today. But if you hear anything of Alan Harle, ring me. There’ll be a bottle in it for you.’
‘Make it a magnum.’
‘Give me a break.’
Her smile said it was worth a try. Priscilla’s frown said let’s get away from this freak. I said goodbye and went to see a couple of guys I knew in the press bar.
The rest of the day was spent drifting, listening, trying to pick up any snippet leading to Harle, but I came up with nothing and left before the last race.
As I approached my car I knew something wasn’t right but couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Slowing down I started looking around.
From what I could see there was nobody but me in the car park, though the high sides of the numerous horseboxes could be hiding any number of potential attackers.
Ten paces from the car I realised what was wrong, it was parked nose up to a horsebox. I had reversed into the space when I’d arrived. Someone had been driving my car.
As I reached it I looked through the windows. No unwanted passengers. I walked to the front and checked the bonnet-catch to see if it had been tampered with. There were no signs.
Squatting, I ran my hand along the underside of the car then decided that wasn’t thorough enough. Lying down I dug my heels in and pushed myself under the car for a proper look. I found nothing.
Sliding back out I got to my feet and dusted myself down. Close behind me someone spoke. ‘Looking for something?’
I took a large step, almost a jump away from the voice and turned very quickly. My hand was raised to punch when my brain registered the uniform of the Metropolitan Police. It cancelled the message to my fist and began whirring through the plausible excuse file.
I tried playing for time since I didn’t think he’d quite believe I was looking to see if someone had stuck twenty pounds of explosive on my exhaust pipe. ‘Do you always creep up so quietly on people?’
‘Only suspects, sir.’
I looked suitably flustered. ‘Suspect? Me? What of? This is my car.’
‘What were you doing lying under it?’
‘I saw a cat.’ Jeez, I thought, what a lame excuse.
‘A big black one. It was under the back wheel. I saw it as I came up and I didn’t want to risk running it over if it was trapped.’
‘Animal lover, are you, sir?’
‘Honestly!’
Unclipping the radio from his lapel he asked HQ to run a computer check on the licence number. That’s when it dawned on me the car wasn’t registered in my name. I thought about trying to explain while he waited for an answer but decided to stay quiet.
The tinny voice of the controller came through. The constable had his notebook out. ‘The car is registered in the name of the Jockey Club, Portman Square, London.’
‘Roger,’ he said, pressing a full-stop from his pencil into the book. I waited for him to speak. He looked at me. ‘You a member of the Jockey Club, sir?’
Very droll.
‘I have the use of the car for a while.’
‘Do you have the keys?’
I pulled them from my pocket. ‘Open the car, please,’ he said. I pushed the key in, the lock clicked and I opened the door.
‘Close it now, please.’
I closed it.
Walking to the back of the car he looked again at the registration plate. He still had his notebook and pencil in hand.
‘Will you open the boot, please, sir?’
‘Sure.’
I pushed the key in and turned it. The boot lid came smoothly up and I stared inside and wondered if the day was going to get any worse. There was someone in the boot. It was Alan Harle. He was dead.
23
They took me to a small square room with a table and two chairs and a vase of daffodils on the window-sill and kept me waiting with only a silent constable for company.
Under the circumstances it didn’t take detective sergeant Cranley all that long to get there and the evil glee which had no doubt shone on his face throughout the journey was still obvious as he came through the door.
One of the London CID boys was with him and couldn’t have failed to be impressed by Cranley’s completely unbiased opening line. ‘Well, well, well, Malloy, got you by the bollocks at last!’
I saved my reply. This already had the makings of a long night. Cranley didn’t disappoint me. He kept referring to my previous jail term on the basis that the leopard never changes its spots. He claimed I’d almost killed Harle the first time and that my taking him to the hospital had been a front to give myself an alibi.
So I’d boiled my own face, I asked, to give me another alibi for Harle’s abduction from the hospital? Cranley said he wouldn’t put it past me.
‘You haven’t asked for a lawyer yet, Malloy. I’m surprised.’
‘Why would I want a lawyer? I’ve done nothing, Cranley, and you know it.’
But he persevered, all night he persevered, trying to extract a
confession, screaming at me, pushing his sweaty pock-marked face into mine, breathing his garlic breath. At one point he raised his fist, but then he looked in my eyes and what he saw made him think twice.
As dawn broke they took my belt and tie and shoe laces and threw me in a cell. I’d had no food or drink and my head pounded from Cranley’s screaming. I lay down and tried to clear my mind.
Who the hell were these guys of Kruger’s? I’d been at Kempton no more than two hours. You don’t just happen across a car and dump a body in it. How had they known I’d be there? How could they know which car I was driving? They began to seem somehow superhuman.
If they were that good I thought I’d better tell Jackie to forget what we’d arranged. She wouldn’t be safe doing even that. Jackie ... I thought about holding her the way I had on Sunday morning when we’d parted. Trying to comfort myself, I replayed in my head our final conversation.
What are your immediate plans, Eddie? Well, tomorrow I’ll be at Kempton ...
Jackie ... Surely not?
The more I thought about it the more my suspicion deepened, though I desperately didn’t want to believe that she’d betrayed me, set me up. Surely everything we’d had during those three days couldn’t have been false? There wasn’t a woman alive who could put on such an act.
In the end I convinced myself it was just tiredness and mental bruising that made me suspicious of Jackie. After all, hadn’t Kruger’s men traced me before, followed me to Roscoe’s place?
Or had they? Maybe they’d been on their way to Roscoe’s and just happened upon my car. If they’d followed me there, why hadn’t they stopped me entering Roscoe’s house?
My weary, battered mind tumbled the thoughts over in slow motion. I didn’t know what to think any more, couldn’t trust myself to be logical. Attempts at sleep resulted in a fitful two hours punctuated by snatches of the same nightmare.
At ten o’clock a policeman brought me breakfast, soap and a towel. ‘Get that down you, then get cleaned up. There’s somebody here to see you.’
I ate but didn’t bother cleaning up as I knew it was for their cosmetic purposes rather than mine. Then I was led to a room where McCarthy waited.
‘You look awful,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
‘Have you been up all night?’
‘Almost. Cranley was conducting one of his special interviews. You know, one of those where they tell you what you did rather than ask you.’
‘Yes, he looks the type, I’ve just spent fifteen minutes with him. He is not your biggest fan, Eddie, I can assure you of that. What the hell have you done to upset him so much?’
‘Nothing, let’s just say we took an instant dislike to each other. He’s obsessed with my supposed involvement in all this, keeps saying he’s going to get me.’
‘Not this time he isn’t. He’s just had the results of some of the forensic tests. Harle’s been dead at least a week, which gives you the perfect alibi, since you were lying in a bed in Newbury Hospital when he was killed.’
‘What was the cause of death?’
‘Still to be confirmed, but they’ve detected Hepatitis B along with a massive quantity of heroin. Either he injected himself with an infected needle or somebody else did.’
‘I think we can safely say it was somebody else, don’t you? They’ll be claiming he dumped his own body in my car next.’
He smiled.
‘I guess that’s how they got you involved, through the car?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Mac, I know that’s really dropped you in it.’
‘Forget it, it turned out to be a sort of blessing in disguise. It’s made my people realise just how serious this is. There were a lot of heads in the sand, Eddie, a lot of people who didn’t want to face the reality of what was going on, didn’t want to admit that you were in there on our side. Harle’s body in the boot of a Jockey Club car at Kempton sort of brought matters to a head. We had a very interesting meeting last night. If you still want to carry on with this, I can tell you that you now have everybody’s support. And I mean everybody.’
He sounded like he was knighting me. ‘What do you want me to do, Mac, get down on my knees and thank the Lord?’
He shrugged and looked hurt. ‘We’ve been skulking around in back alleys so long I though you’d appreciate being ... accepted.’
‘Well, how gratifying! I’m so pleased to know that Jockey Club members have now voted not to hold their noses and cross the street when they see me approach. I’m honoured, but did they say anything in passing about returning my licence?’
‘I’m afraid that wasn’t discussed, Eddie. And I’m not going to bullshit you, that is still going to depend very heavily on getting a confession out of Kruger.’
‘Well, surprise, surprise.’
He looked tentatively at me. ‘Are you sticking with it?’
‘Can you get me out of here today?’
‘This morning.’
‘Can you get Cranley off my back?’
‘I’ve told him you are now officially employed by the Jockey Club, temporarily, of course.’
‘Of course!’
‘I said you’d be working on this case on the basis that the police, good as they are at their job, do not have enough time to dedicate exclusively to this particular problem.’
‘And how did detective sergeant Cranley take that little speech?’
‘Let’s say he didn’t applaud. I then told him that you would give the police all the help and information you could and that you’d expect the same from them.’
‘Fat chance. What have the press got to say about it this morning?’
‘Not that much in the racing papers who are closing ranks as usual, thank God, but a couple of the tabloids are featuring it, though that should soon blow over since Cranley intends to keep it low-profile.’
‘Now, I wonder why that is? Could it be anything to do with the fact that so far he’s made a complete balls of the whole thing?’
‘Probably.’ McCarthy looked at me expectantly.
‘Well? Are you still in?’
I nodded. ‘Either until they get me or the Jockey Club runs out of cars.’
McCarthy got me another car, a white Granada (‘It’ll make you feel like a cop’), and I went back to the cottage to bathe and change.
Mac had underplayed the press reports. Harle’s death made the front pages in some papers.
Roscoe was quoted as being ‘devastated’ by the news and repeated his story about Harle running out on him back in March and never contacting him since.
I slept for a while then prepared myself for another trip to Roscoe’s. On the drive down, thoughts of Jackie occupied my mind. I was missing her, regretting I wouldn’t be there for her ten o’clock call. I’d shaken off my suspicions of the previous night, though some dregs obstinately remained, making me feel guilty about harbouring them.
The gathering dusk found me and my binoculars halfway up a tree about three hundred yards from Roscoe’s front door. Things were bound to be stirred up by Harle’s murder and I thought there was a reasonable chance Roscoe might be entertaining some interesting visitors.
It was almost midnight when I shimmied down to the ground, stiff, sore and cold. I could still smell the exhaust fumes of the car which had left Roscoe’s and passed below me a minute before. The two men inside had been with Roscoe for almost three hours. One was my little bumbling friend from the toilet of the Duke’s Hotel and the other was a young man I’d last seen lying unconscious on the Cheltenham turf – Phil Greene, Harle’s stand-in. Somehow, I didn’t think they’d been on a social call.
Resisting a brief crazy temptation to break into the grooms’ quarters and find Jackie, I jogged to where I’d hidden the car and headed home.
24
I was in Cheltenham by nine next morning, drinking coffee in a restaurant overlooking the broad boulevard in the centre of town. Roscoe had announced the appointment of his new stable jockey, twenty-one-year-old Phil
Greene. I very much doubted that all he was doing at Roscoe’s last night was signing his contract.
And who was the little man who’d been with him, the same one who’d been shadowing Harle at the Duke’s Hotel? The difference this time was that Greene obviously knew who he was. Harle hadn’t, or so he’d claimed at the time.
I rang McCarthy’s office and his secretary said sorry he wasn’t in and who was calling.
‘Eddie Malloy.’
‘Oh, Mister McCarthy did leave a message that he’d be at Salisbury races this afternoon.’
‘Fine, I’ll see him there.’
It was the warmest day of the year so far and when I reached the racecourse I decided to have a beer before seeking out McCarthy.
Carrying the drink to the corner I tucked myself in to watch the world go by. Part of that world was McCarthy, in a big hurry. I left my beer and followed him, catching him as he slowed approaching the weighing room. I touched his shoulder, ‘Mac.’
He turned, looking flustered. ‘Later Eddie, please. After racing.’
‘Okay. I’ll see you in the car park.’
Standing by the rails I watched the next race, a decent sprint handicap. I was half a furlong from the winning post and as they charged past me the whips cracking on rumps sounded like a busy rifle range.
All around me the crowds were bawling their horses on to run faster, their jockeys to hit harder. As the winner passed the post the roar collapsed to a murmur in seconds. I headed back toward the winner’s enclosure to watch them come in.
Walking steadily on the outside of the crowd flow I saw Charmain crossing the lawn. Elegantly dressed and beautiful as ever, moving smartly and staring straight ahead, she looked pleased with herself. Stepping out of the shuffling line I turned and watched her walk away and thought about the last time I’d seen her; the Champion Hurdle night party at the Duke’s Hotel.
A fine party that. One for reflecting on. Charmain had been there, so had Roscoe, and Harle and our little bumbling friend who’d visited Roscoe’s with Greene last night. Maybe Skinner had been at the party too, and Phil Greene.