I shook hands with both the boys, marveling at how identical they were in every way. They were even dressed identically. Tony had said they would be thirteen next birthday, but they were tall, almost as tall as their mother, and already an inch or so taller than Tony. They would clearly not be following him into racing, not as jockeys anyway.
“Simon,” Margaret said to one of them. “Please go and put the kettle on.”
I presumed it was Simon who went out to the kitchen, although how his mother had known it wasn’t Jason was anyone’s guess. I suppose there must be some differences, but I couldn’t spot them.
“Jason,” Tony said, “go and help your brother. And both of you wait in the kitchen until we come through. We have things to talk about here first, alone.” Jason did as he was told and followed Simon. Tony went over to make sure the door was closed behind them.
“Mrs. Halley,” said Margaret, “would you like to sit down?”
“I prefer to stand,” Marina replied. Things, I thought, were not going very well.
“Why did you kidnap my daughter?” Marina said loudly.
“Shhh!” said Tony, putting up his hands. “The boys will hear you.”
“Perhaps they should,” Marina said. “Then they’d know what their parents are really like.”
I was beginning to regret having brought her here.
“I understand your anger,” Tony said to her. “I would be angry too. And we are dreadfully sorry for the pain we’ve caused you. But we didn’t harm your lovely little girl. We wouldn’t. And we tried very hard to be nice and not to frighten her.”
“You frightened me,” Marina said.
And they’d frightened me, I thought.
“We are so sorry,” Margaret said. “We were frightened too. And we felt we had no choice. Please don’t be angry.”
“We are ready to go with you to the police and tell them everything,” Tony said. “Right now, if you want. We will have to take our chances with the French authorities. We may lose our boys, but so be it. It’s up to you.”
There was a long silence before Marina waved her hand in a dismissive manner. I wasn’t sure whether she was dismissing the notion of going to the police or dismissing the Molsons to the severity of the law and to the loss of their sons.
“There would be conditions for our silence,” I said, and received no negative vibes from Marina. “I need your help to defeat this man. Tony, you will sign a statement, detailing all the horses you have stopped.”
Tony didn’t look very happy. “I’ll lose my jockey’s license.”
“Only if I give the statement to the BHA,” I said. “And you’ll lose a lot more than just your license if we go to the police right now.”
“So why do you want a statement?” he asked.
“Two reasons,” I said. “First, I want a hold over you, to ensure you never go near my daughter again. And, second, it will be the first brick in my wall of evidence against which I hope one day to crush the Irishman. And you will also let me know every time he contacts you to stop a horse.”
Tony went on looking miserable. “He called this morning. I’ve got to stop one at Uttoxeter tomorrow. Black Peppercorn in the first.”
“Does it have a chance?”
“Yeah, a good chance. It’ll probably start as the favorite.”
“Then win, if you can,” I said.
“Are you crazy? The Irishman will contact the French authorities.”
“No, he won’t,” I said confidently. “He may be angry with you, but he won’t do anything. He will still want to use you in the future. If he tells the French about the boys, he’ll have lost control over you forever. So call his bluff.”
He didn’t look very sure.
“Tony,” I said in my most commanding tone, “you will try and win on Black Peppercorn. And, if you don’t, it won’t bode well for you at any future inquiry by the BHA. Do I make myself clear?”
He looked even more miserable than before.
He was being squeezed from both sides, but if my experience was anything to go by, he would surely be more scared of Billy McCusker than he would be of me and the British Horseracing Authority.
I reckoned that the chances of Black Peppercorn winning tomorrow were very slight, almost nonexistent.
• • •
“HOW CAN this bloody man McCusker get away with it?” Marina said as I drove her back to Aynsford. “Surely he should be in prison.”
“Indeed, he should,” I said.
How did he get away with it? It was a very good question.
It seemed to me that the bigger the crime, the easier it was to escape the clutches of the law.
Perhaps it was that if the offense was large enough, people found it difficult to believe what was happening. Or maybe it was simply a combination of belief, barefaced boldness and balls.
If I were to commit a crime, I was certain that I’d be found out, and I no doubt would be. But McCusker believed he was invincible and that was partly what made him so. Whatever situation he might be in, he would have absolute faith that there was a route to safety and freedom and that he’d find it even if it involved corrupting the entire law-enforcement multitude lined up against him.
Al Capone had ruled Chicago in the 1920s with impunity because he believed that it was he who was the “untouchable,” not the agents of the FBI. He corrupted police and politicians alike, and he was not averse to nobbling juries as well. He was responsible for numerous murders, many at his own hands, but he was never tried for a single one. And, perversely, it was not his involvement in bootlegging, prostitution and gambling that was his downfall but his failure to pay income tax on the illegal profits from such activity.
I wondered if McCusker paid his taxes, both on the bookmaking profits and also on his other, less salubrious activities.
“So what do we do to get him in prison?” Marina said.
“We could start by checking his tax returns.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking out loud.”
I drove on in silence for a while.
“Do you really think you and Chico can do something about him?” Marina asked as we approached Aynsford. “I’m getting cold feet about the whole thing.”
“Let us go to Manchester and have a look first,” I said. “Check out his home and the betting shops. Ask a few questions. It should give us a feel for how we stand. We’ve done that sort of thing before.”
“But that was a long time ago. When you were a lot younger.”
“I’m not that old,” I said mockingly in my defense, “and Chico is still pretty fit. And our brains are as good as they always were, probably better.”
“I’m still frightened,” Marina said.
Secretly, so was I.
• • •
CHICO AND I left Aynsford at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, aiming the Range Rover northwards towards Manchester.
We didn’t take overnight bags, Chico having convinced me that if this were going to be more than a one-day trip, we would sleep as we were, in the car. My protestations that I was now too old for that sort of thing were dismissed with derision.
“Come on, Sid,” Chico had said, “we used to do it all the time.”
“Maybe we did,” I’d replied, “but these days my aching bones need soft mattresses.”
“You’re the one that’s gone soft,” he’d replied.
He had such a way with words, so I’d agreed to his plan while secretly hoping we would be back at Aynsford that night.
Chico had been itching to depart from first light, but I wanted to go via Uttoxeter to watch the two o’clock race.
“Blimey,” he said cheerfully as we turned into the rapidly filling parking lot, “I haven’t been to the races in years. Not since I stopped working wit
h you. I’ve watched it on telly, mind you, occasionally in the local betting shop. But I don’t suppose much has changed.”
“There’s a little less formality these days,” I said. “And I sense that a lot more young people go to the races.”
“You just think that because you’re getting so old,” he said with a smile.
“Sod off.”
“So what are we looking for, exactly?” he asked.
“I want to watch Tony Molson ride a horse called Black Peppercorn in the first.”
“Will it win?”
“I doubt it. Tony has been told by McCusker to make sure it doesn’t, but I’ve told him to win if he can.”
“Should be interesting, then,” Chico said with a laugh. “What do you want me to do?”
“Hang round the betting ring and look at the prices on the boards. Make a note of any bookmakers offering larger-than-expected odds on Black Peppercorn, not that I really expect there to be any. Other than that, keep your eyes and ears open, usual stuff.”
“Right you are.”
“And unless I call you, we’ll leave after the second race. Call me if you need anything.” I gave him the number of the new, cheap, cameraless, pay-as-you-go phone I’d bought in Banbury the previous afternoon on the way to the Molsons’.
“Here, use this to get in.” I held out a twenty-pound note to him.
“I don’t need your cash,” he said, slightly affronted.
“Take it anyway. Use it to make a bet, if you want.”
He took the money and drifted off towards the entrance as I hung around in the parking lot for a minute or two to let him go through first. We had always worked on the principle that the less we were seen together at a racetrack, the better. One never knew who was watching.
“Halley!” a voice shouted over my left shoulder. “Sid Halley!”
I turned to see Peter Medicos, complete in his tweed suit plus trilby, hurrying towards me through the ranks of parked cars. Dammit! I could have done without that.
“Hello, Peter,” I said as he approached.
“Halley,” he said, slightly out of breath, “I’ve been trying to call you.” There had been no courteous lifting of the trilby today.
“I’ve not been at home,” I said. “I’m staying with my father-in-law.”
“That would explain it,” he said. “Now, what’s this business about you being a child abuser?”
I knew that after all the publicity, coming to Uttoxeter races wasn’t going to be easy, but I’d hardly expected to be confronted by the head of racing security in the parking lot before I’d even gone into the enclosures.
“It’s a mistake, that’s all,” I said, trying to be dismissive.
“We can’t afford to have racing’s good name tainted.”
I sensed for a moment that he was about to ask me to remove myself altogether, but perhaps he thought better of it.
“And what’s all this nonsense about disassociating yourself from that report you sent me? I picked up your e-mail this morning.”
“Just what I said. The report is wrong. I now believe that Sir Richard was absolutely correct in his assertion that someone is manipulating results.”
“On what evidence?” he asked.
“I’ve had some private discussions.”
“With whom?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” I said. “I spoke to people in confidence.”
“What nonsense,” he said. “You must tell me.”
“I will not,” I said with determination. “But, as you rightly declare, you can’t afford to have racing’s name tainted. So I suggest that you start your own inquiries into the matter beginning with Honest Joe Bullen, the bookmakers from Manchester.”
“I must insist that you tell me who you’ve been speaking to and what they have said.”
“You can insist all you like, Peter,” I replied. “But I won’t tell you.”
“You know that I can make you persona non grata on all racetracks?”
“I think you’d be a fool to do that,” I said. “And many would agree with me. I too have racing’s good name at heart, and lots of people know it.”
He was far from pleased but there was little he could do, short of having me bodily thrown off the premises.
He stomped off in a huff towards the entrance.
Oh dear, I thought. It hadn’t been in my plan to make an enemy of Peter Medicos. In fact, I would surely need him as an ally.
• • •
MUCH TO MY SURPRISE, Black Peppercorn won the first race by a length, cheered home enthusiastically by the crowd as the favorite, at a starting price of seven-to-two.
I watched as the horse returned to the unsaddling area for the winner. Tony Molson looked even more worried than when he’d stopped Ackerman at Towcester.
I went to stand so that he would have to go past me to get back to the Weighing Room.
“Tell me what the Irishman says,” I said quietly as he passed me.
He gave me a look of abject horror at what he’d done.
For me, it was only a minor victory. But I reckoned anything that would shift McCusker out of his comfort zone was valuable.
I wandered back towards the parking lot, fed up with the barrage of stares and whispered comments.
“Isn’t that the pedophile Sid Halley?” I heard one woman say to the man she was with. “I think it’s disgraceful allowing him in here.”
I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t a pedophile and that I hadn’t done anything wrong, but it wouldn’t have helped. She almost certainly wouldn’t have believed me.
Was it a trait only of the British to always think the worst of everyone? To accept every accusation without question and to condemn even before the evidence had been presented?
I suppose I shouldn’t really blame her. There was news value in the arrest of a suspected pedophile but very little in the subsequent release without charge.
What worried me most was that it was so easy to gain a false reputation but so extremely difficult to shed it again, if and when the grounds of an arrest were found to be false. People mostly went on believing the worst of their fellow man even in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary and that was because proving something didn’t happen was usually impossible.
I waited for Chico in the Range Rover, wondering if my life could ever return to where it had been before.
In the twenty-first century, accusing someone of being a pedophile was most damning, far worse than being labeled a murderer or even a rapist. Even when untrue, it left a stain on one’s character that was difficult to eradicate.
Chico appeared, full of smiles, which helped to drive away the demons in my mind.
“Bloody marvelous, that was,” he said, climbing in. “Nice little earner.”
“Explain,” I said.
“That nag, Black Peppercorn—you know, the one we was watching.” I nodded. “Being offered at four-to-one by one of the bookies while the others all had it at threes or seven-to-two at best. I watched him take loads of money from the punters, but he still didn’t reduce his odds. In fact, at one point he went out to fives. That was when I invested that twenty note you gave me.” He grinned and tapped his pocket. “I was first in line to get paid out. The poor guy looked sick, and he didn’t have enough cash in his bag for all those with winning tickets, not even half enough.” Chico laughed. “It nearly came to fisticuffs, let me tell you. The cops are still in there trying to keep the sides apart.”
“Which bookmaker?” I asked.
“It had Barry Montagu of Liverpool on the board. I took a couple of snaps.”
He leaned over and showed me the pictures on his phone, one before the race with the board clearly showing Black Peppercorn offered at five-to-one, and the second one showing irate punters surrounding the bel
eaguered bookie, waiting to get paid out.
“Bloody funny, it was, and he was getting no sympathy from the other bookies. They all thought he was bonkers for offering such large odds in the first place. Served him right to get stung. They were all smiles. One of them had tears flowing down his cheeks, he thought it was so funny.”
No such thing as honor amongst thieves.
• • •
CHICO CHUCKLED to himself all the way to the M6, where I turned north towards Manchester.
“So where are we going first?” he asked.
“Well,” I said, “according to the information we received from Norman Whitby, McCusker lives in the suburb of Didsbury, south of the city center. I think we should start there.”
“Looking for what, exactly?”
“The lie of the land. Rumors. Chat in the pubs and bars. Local word on McCusker and the Shankill Road mob. That sort of thing. But nothing too obvious. We need to keep a low profile.”
“Do we have any idea what this geezer looks like? I’d hate to sidle up to him in a pub and ask the wrong question.”
I pulled a copy of the police mug shot out of my pocket and handed it to him.
“It’s nearly twenty years old,” I said. “But age will not change the shape of his cheekbones, nor that protruding brow.”
“Ugly brute,” Chico said, studying the picture. “I think I’d know those eyes anywhere.”
“It’s the others that are the worry,” I said. “The Volunteers, and we have no idea how many of them there are. I’ve met two in the parking lot at Towcester and I’d be happy not to cross paths with them again, thank you very much. Best to steer clear of anyone with an Irish accent.”
“Do you have any idea how many Irishmen there are in Manchester?”
“No,” I said. “Do you?”
“Thousands of them,” he said. “Maybe as many as a hundred thousand.”
“How come you’re suddenly such an expert?”
“I looked it up on Charles’s computer yesterday evening when you and your missus went to see the kidnappers and when I wasn’t playing doctors and nurses with your kid.”
I gave him a sideways glance. “I wouldn’t go round telling people you were playing doctors and nurses with a six-year-old girl, if I were you. You’ll end up in the same boat as me.”
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