“I need to speak with him,” I said. “It’s urgent.”
“Everything’s always bloody urgent. You’d better come in.”
I stepped inside and waited in the tiny hallway while Judy went up the narrow wooden stairs to consult.
“He’ll be down in a minute,” Judy said. “Do you want a cup of tea?”
“No thanks,” I said. It didn’t seem right to accept their hospitality when I was about to apply the thumbscrews.
Robert came down the stairs in a thin blue paisley dressing gown, wincing every time he put his left foot down.
“Bad?” I asked.
“Bloody nag kicked me. I’ve got a nice horseshoe-shaped bruise on the inside of my left thigh. But it could have been worse. At least it missed my bollocks.”
“Nothing broken?”
“No, luckily not. It would have buggered my knee.”
Yes, I thought, and kneecaps were notoriously difficult things to fix. Billy McCusker had told me so.
“Will you be stood down?” I asked.
“I hope not,” he said. “I’ll have to pass the doctor tomorrow at Exeter, but I should be all right in the morning. Nothing a few codeine and a good night’s sleep won’t fix. Come on, let’s go outside.”
We stepped out through the front door and stood on the path. It wasn’t exactly a cold night, but it was a bit sharp for dressing gown and slippers. I reckoned he didn’t want to be overheard by Judy.
“So what do you want?” he asked. “I don’t suppose this is a social call.”
“No,” I said. “Are you at Aintree this week?”
“I certainly am. I’m riding Summer Nights in the National, for a start.”
“And are you riding Maine Visit in the two-mile handicap hurdle on Friday?”
He didn’t say anything.
“He’ll start favorite, I reckon.”
He still said nothing.
“Have you been told to lose?” I asked.
Again he said nothing.
“Come on, Robert,” I said, “yes or no?”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“When were you told?”
“This morning, before I went to Huntingdon. I got a phone call.”
“And are you going to lose?” I asked pointedly.
“What do you think?” he said. “While McCusker’s got that video of me accepting that cash, I’ve not got a leg to stand on. Of course I’m going to bloody lose.”
“How about if I threatened to tell the BHA Security Service that you had stopped the horse.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“Then I’d fall off on Thursday and break something so I that I couldn’t ride on Friday.”
“Then you’d also miss the ride on Summer Nights, and rides on Grand National favorites don’t come along too often. I assume you’re not planning to fix that race as well.”
“You bastard,” he said with feeling.
“You could always explain away the video by saying that you’d sold something on the Internet and you were simply receiving the cash for it.”
“Don’t be bloody stupid,” Robert said. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? McCusker would simply produce some fall guy who’d happily get warned off by saying it was him in the video giving me money for information or for stopping one. There’s no need for beyond reasonable doubt at the BHA, you know, they convict on the balance of probability.”
He was right, and we both knew it.
“So will you tell them?” he asked. There was a degree of pleading in his voice.
“That depends,” I said. “Would you try to win if all the others were trying to win as well?”
“You’re living in cloud-cuckoo-land if you think you can get the other jocks to agree to that. If they’re anything like me, they’ll be absolutely bloody terrified of winning because of the consequences.”
“But the consequences of losing are hardly slight either. The BHA would take away your licenses, and then you’d all lose your livelihoods.”
“Maybe,” he said, “but McCusker can take more than your license and your livelihood. He can take your life as well.”
Didn’t I know it?
• • •
“ANY LUCK?” Chico asked as I got back into the Range Rover.
“Not really,” I said. “Everyone is so frightened.”
“Perhaps we should be too,” he said with a wan smile. “Where to now?”
“David Potter’s place in Upper Lambourn.”
• • •
“HELLO, SID,” said David with resignation. “I sort of knew I hadn’t seen the last of you.”
“David, this is Chico,” I said. “He works for me. Can we come in?”
“It’s not very tidy.”
“I’m sure you can find us a couple of clean cups for some coffee.”
He gave me a look that had a touch of panic about it. “I’ll try.”
Not very tidy was a major understatement. It was only two and a half weeks since I’d last been in David’s kitchen, but the transformation was dramatic. Whereas, then, the place had been spotless, it was now a mess—a true humdinger of a mess. Every inch of flat surface was stacked high with unwashed crockery, half-eaten takeaways and empty cans of beer.
“Joyce left me,” David said by way of explanation, “just after you were here last time.”
I remembered his wife fussing around us cleaning everything in sight. I looked at the piles of dirty dishes and decomposing food. I reckoned that David hadn’t felt the urge to clean anything since her departure.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yeah,” he mused, “so am I, really. We argued about money. It is always about money. I spend too much—always have—and more than I’m earning these days. Joyce reckons I’d be better off on welfare than spending my days at the tracks, hoping to pick up spare rides. She’s probably right, but I can’t give it up, can I? It’s like a drug. I only feel alive when I’m riding in races.”
I knew how he felt. For me, it had been exactly the same, but retirement had been forced onto me.
“How old are you now, David?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“You’ll have to give it up soon. And all this junk food can’t be doing much for your riding weight. To say nothing of the beer.”
He stood looking at the chaos. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“Are you going to Aintree this week?” Chico asked, clearly bored with David’s domestic arrangements.
“I sure am,” David replied with enthusiasm. “I never miss the National meeting. And I’ve got seven rides already booked—that’s if they all run. It’s bonanza time.” He smiled broadly and rubbed his hands together.
“Is one of those rides in the two-mile handicap hurdle on Friday, after the Topham Chase?” I asked.
David’s smile instantly disappeared. He said nothing.
“Is it, David?” I pressed.
“Maybe.”
“Which horse?”
He shook his head and said nothing.
“And have you been told by the Irishman to lose.”
Again nothing.
“Would you like me to ask my friend Chico here to twist your arm a little?” I smiled. “Just enough so your shoulder dislocates?” I tried to put as much menace into my voice as I could muster.
“I’m not afraid of you, Sid Halley,” David said brazenly. “I’ve known you for too long, and I know what you’re like. You won’t hurt me. But the Irishman would.” He paused and took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself. “I now wish I’d never told you anything.”
“How is your mother?” I asked.
“She’s fine,” he said. “And I intend that she should stay that way.”
“So you will lose the race on purpose?”
He looked me straight in the eyes and then he nodded slightly. “Unless I’m told I’m riding the one that has to win.”
“When are you told that?” I asked.
“The day before,” he said.
“And you always do as you’re told?”
“Yup,” he said with a sigh. “For my old mum’s sake.”
I could see that there was nothing I could say or do to convince him otherwise. As he had said, he knew what I was like.
“I think we’d better go,” I said.
“Don’t you want that coffee?”
I looked again at the mess, and the green-and-yellow mold that was beginning to grow on what looked to me like the remains of an onion bhaji.
“No thanks, David,” I said. “We’re fine. And I hope Joyce comes back soon.”
“Yeah,” he replied with a sigh, “so do I.”
• • •
“WHO NEXT?” said Chico when we were back in the car.
“I had thought of paying Tony Molson another visit,” I said, “but I doubt that he’ll speak to me.”
“Do we need to persuade him?”
“I honestly think we’ll be wasting our time. He as good as told me he’d do whatever McCusker wants. No, let’s go home. From what Angus Drummond said in that voice mail message, and after our encounters with David Potter and Robert Price, I think it’s safe to say that the betting coup is definitely on for Friday. We can look up the entries for the race on the Racing Post website, but we’ll have to wait for the twenty-four-hour declarations on Thursday to find out the actual runners and their jockeys. Then we’ll decide.”
“So what do we do until then?” Chico asked.
“Keep safe.”
“We could always go on another trip up north,” Chico said with excitement. “What d’yer say?”
“What for?”
“What for! To keep watch on McCusker, of course. But, this time, I reckon we should steer clear of the local pubs. But anythin’s better than sittin’ round, twiddlin’ our bleedin’ thumbs, all week at the Admiral’s house. For a start, we could go and check out that Liverpool bookie—you know, the one from Uttoxeter.”
“Barry Montagu,” I said.
“That’s the one. Provided he got out of Uttoxeter alive with all those punters after him.” He laughed at the memory.
“OK. How about we go up on Wednesday, ready for the start of the three-day Aintree meeting on Thursday? And we’ll spend some time Wednesday afternoon checking out Barry Montagu.”
“Right you are,” Chico said cheerfully.
“Although God knows where we’ll stay,” I said. “I reckon everywhere will be fully booked by now.”
“You’ll manage somethin’,” Chico said confidently. “You’re Sid Halley.”
• • •
“I CANNOT SPEND another day here,” Marina said to me when we arrived back just after midnight. She was standing in our bedroom in her dressing gown with her hands on her hips, and she was annoyed. “If it’s not Charles, it’s Mrs. Cross.”
“What about them?” I asked gently, trying to take the heat out of the situation.
“They’re both driving me completely crazy. Charles is a complete nuisance who hovers round the place, watching everything I do, as if he’d never seen a woman work before, and Mrs. Cross won’t stop talking to me. I’ve been trying to edit a paper, but there’s no Wi-Fi here, so every time I need to use the Internet I have to borrow the cable in Charles’s study, and I’m obviously completely in his way, although he doesn’t actually do anything. And the Internet is so slow, even worse than at home. It took me half an hour just to download a paper on the post-translational modification statistics of glycoproteins. I ask you!”
It was no good asking me, I thought. It would take me more than half an hour just to spell it.
“Do you want me to have a word with Charles?” I asked.
“No,” she said angrily. “I want to go home.”
“So do I, but what can I do? I’ve asked the police to vary their bail conditions, but, until they do, I can’t go home. You can, if you want, but I can’t. It’s up to you. Perhaps you could go home to work during the day.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll do that tomorrow. Even the bloody cell phones don’t work here properly.”
I made the mistake of trying to explain. “The signal is very intermittent because we’re on the wrong side of the hill. You have to be patient. They generally work, in the end.”
She gave me an angry stare that I took to mean that her patience was completely exhausted and that now was past the time for excuses.
She was clearly not a happy bunny, and her body language towards me was hostile, almost aggressive.
Sadly, therefore, there was no repeat of the previous night’s sexual delights. Instead, Marina climbed into bed, turned her back towards me and went straight to sleep.
Why did I think it was unfair for me to shoulder the blame for Charles and his broadband failures?
• • •
I FOUND CHICO asleep in a kitchen armchair when I went downstairs to make tea at seven o’clock on Tuesday morning. He was fully dressed.
“Forget to go to bed?” I asked as he stirred, woken by the sound of me getting mugs out of the cupboard in spite of my best effort to keep quiet.
“Someone has to stand watch when you’re upstairs screwin’ your missus,” he said with a mischievous laugh. Little did he know.
“Want some tea?” I asked.
“Ta.” He stood up and stretched. “Come on, Rosie, time you and I went outside.” Rosie just opened an eye and looked at him without moving. Her bed in front of the AGA was clearly much too comfortable. “Bloody useless guard dog.”
I gave him his tea and took a steaming mug up to Marina.
“Feeling any better this morning?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Yeah. Sorry about that. Must be the wrong time of the month. I’m always a bit cross just before my period starts.”
I sighed. She wasn’t pregnant this time, then. But I hadn’t really expected her to be, not with all the stress of the past three weeks and the consequent lack of sexual activity. Ah well, we’d just have go on trying again next month, as we had done each month for the past six years.
I took my tea down to the study and switched on Charles’s computer. I had tried to explain to him that it didn’t need to be switched off every night, but he knew better.
“It surely needs to rest,” he’d said. “All that thinking must make it tired.”
I’d thought he was joking, but he wasn’t.
In his day, technology meant an Aldis lamp flashing Morse code between warships or shortwave radio communication using a Marconi transmitter. And even though he had owned a computer for many years, its finer points had mostly passed him by. He was always asking me what my e-mail number was, as if it was a telephone system, which would then change if I moved from one location to another.
Eventually, Charles’s computer finished its booting-up procedure, and I was able to look at the card for Friday’s two-mile handicap hurdle at Aintree on the Racing Post website.
There were twenty-eight horses entered for the race, although over half of those would almost certainly not be declared to run. Most horses were entered for more than one race within a few days, and some for two or more races on the same day at different racetracks. One horse of the twenty-eight, Transfer Fee, was entered in six different races, one on Thursday, three on Friday and two on Saturday, but he would run in only one of them at most.
Between now and the declaration-to-run deadline on Thursday morning, there would be frantic telephone calls between the trainers as each tried to find out which horses were actually going to run and in which races. They were all hoping to give their
horses the best chance to win and would avoid a particular race if a highly rated rival was definitely going to be in it.
Of the twenty-eight entrants in the Aintree two-mile handicap hurdle on Friday, twenty-one were entered in other races within a day or two either side of it, leaving only seven that were entered for this race alone. But even that did not guarantee that any of the seven would actually run.
Ten of the twenty-eight had names of jockeys next to them, but everyone knew that at this stage they were speculative. Names would often be added by the jockeys’ agents simply to advertise the fact that their jockeys would be at that racetrack on that day.
The actual rider for each horse had to be declared by one o’clock on the day before the race, ready to be printed overnight in the official race program and in the newspapers, but even that was subject to change in the event of illness or injury.
The final confirmation of who would ride each horse was made by the trainer at least forty-five minutes before the race was due to start, but there could still be a late change if the declared jockey was subsequently injured due to falling in an earlier race.
In truth, no one could be certain who would ride a particular horse until the jockey appeared from the Weighing Room wearing the owner’s silks, and even then the rules did allow for a substitution to be made if the jockey was prevented from riding before coming under starter’s orders.
All of this made it impossible for me to be sure which jockeys, or even how many, would actually be riding in the race at Aintree in three days’ time.
The ten allocated jockeys included Robert Price on Maine Visit, but there were no horses yet with David Potter’s or Angus Drummond’s names next to them.
There was, however, one other jockey of interest listed.
Jimmy Guernsey was down to ride a horse called Staplegun.
27
So who the hell is this Jimmy Guernsey anyway?” Chico asked as I went through the details with him.
“I believe he’s McCusker’s man in the jockeys’ changing room. He’s definitely involved somehow. He certainly knows Billy McCusker by name, and he knew in advance which horse was due to win at Sandown in one of the fixed races.”
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