by Joe McNally
‘Yes. He’s entitled to an apology too.’
‘Sounds like you weren’t to blame.’
‘No matter. I should have stayed on top of it.’
‘Don’t take the fall for them, sergeant. Because they rank higher, it doesn’t mean they can shift the blame.’
He smiled. ‘Thanks. Anyway, does that put your mind a bit more at rest?’
‘Well, I’m glad it’s being taken seriously, because that laptop at Jimmy’s wasn’t his.’
I told him what Mave had found on the laptop.
‘Our guys wouldn’t have checked it to that level,’ he said.
‘Your guys had a different PC anyway. Whoever cleaned that floor beneath the beam took Jimmy’s laptop and left a replacement. Jimmy didn’t record that message which makes it highly doubtful he committed suicide.’
‘So somebody gave him cyanide then hanged him?’
‘And forged the recording.’
He sat looking at me, probably wondering if he’d been too open, too honest in the past five minutes.
‘Would that chain have been checked for prints?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Would prints be easily left on a rusty chain?’
He shrugged. ‘Probably, partial ones, at least. But if a murderer takes the time and trouble to make a pretty elaborate faked suicide message, wouldn’t he wear gloves?’
‘I suppose he would. What about the autopsy? Did that say whether the cyanide had killed him, or asphyxiation from hanging?’
‘Cyanide poisoning was the cause of death.’
‘Wouldn’t the pathologist have thought twice? He, or she, assumes suicide, as everybody did.’
‘Except you.’
‘All I was sure of was that Jimmy hadn’t made the recording. I was open to suicide, if you see what I mean. But think about it, Jimmy’s timing would need to have been spot on. If he takes the cyanide before he climbs onto the chair and tries to organize the chain and kick the chair away etcetera, how can he be sure the poison won’t kill him before he gets everything done?’
‘He could have set it all up, swallowed the cyanide, then kicked away the chair.’
‘Or somebody could have given him cyanide, waited until he was dead, then strung him up.’
I watched him. He’d need to be careful now because there was a PR side to this and maybe a negligence aspect.
I said, ‘Do you believe Jimmy having cancer is still a big factor?’
I watched him try to run through the implications of the question. Was I suggesting that the police weren’t treating it seriously?
He batted it back to me. ‘You’ve seen the medical reports?’
‘Jimmy’s dad told me Jimmy had terminal cancer.’
‘And what do you think? Has it changed the way you look at it?’
‘Whatever I think, it doesn’t alter the fact that the message was faked and his PC stolen and doctored.’
‘But those factors don’t mean he was murdered. What strikes me is that Mister Sherrick died before he could tell you what he had called you about the day before. Who else could have known about the meeting you’d planned?’
‘Well, I told no one. Jimmy could have told a dozen people.’
‘Could he just have changed his mind about talking to you? Or perhaps he wanted to be found quickly.’
‘Maybe. But why cyanide as well as hanging? One or the other, yes, but not both. I daresay nobody’s lived to tell what it’s like when cyanide gets to work on you, but I’ll bet it’s not a pleasant death.’ As I finished saying that, it dawned on me what Jimmy might have meant in his letter - “I tried something new. I don’t know what else will come out by the time you read this.”
‘Sergeant, this is probably going to sound like a very stupid question. Is there any way of knowing if the cyanide was taken all at once? Could it have built up from very small doses?’
‘It’s possible, I suppose. Why? Do you think someone had been trying to poison Mister Sherrick gradually?’
‘I’m wondering if he was taking tiny amounts of cyanide in the hope of killing the cancer.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘A sudden hunch, probably wildly wrong. What would be the chance of getting the body exhumed?’ I asked.
‘On the basis of a hunch?’
‘On the basis of a double check to confirm exactly how he died.’
‘That would be a tough one.’
‘Well, given the incompetence of your colleagues in this, losing files, losing the chain. You know what I’m saying.’ I didn’t feel too guilty about pulling this on him, given he hadn’t been directly to blame.
Still, his look hardened a bit as he took in the implications. ‘Let’s see what Soco get, and maybe then I’ll speak to the pathologist. I believe we still have the memory stick so I’ll ask for another analysis on the recording.’ He straightened and made to get up, reassert authority.
I stood and said, ‘Will you be able to let me know what you find out?’
He made a face which reinforced what he then said, ‘That could be tricky. The inquest date hasn’t even been set yet. We had to push things a bit just to allow the funeral. Mister Sherrick senior was in a, was, . . anxious to have his son buried before the new year. He, Mister Sherrick senior, is next of kin, so let’s see how things go. You seem pretty close to him anyway, no doubt he will keep you informed.’ We shook hands and he saw me all the way downstairs and out.
Walking through the rain to my car, I reflected on his hesitation when talking about Jim Sherrick. He’d been going to say that he was "in a hurry" to get Jimmy buried. He knew Jimmy had left his father a neat bundle of letters. I suspected he also knew Jimmy had left him the house. And with my suggestion that whoever had swapped the PC and cleaned the floor had easy access to Jimmy’s place, I wondered if, in the sergeant’s mind, Jimmy’s dad was becoming something more than next of kin.
16
I always enjoyed the drive to Taunton. If you picture the right leg of England kicking out into the Atlantic, Taunton sits about mid-thigh, in the county of Somerset. The course lies just off the M5 motorway, and soil from the dig for that road had been used to lengthen the straights and ease the bends on this tight little track at the foot of the Blackdown Hills.
On most of Britain’s sixty tracks, horses race anti-clockwise. At Taunton, they go clockwise, or right-handed, and some horses enjoy racing that way. I hoped my ride in the first, Spiritless Fun, would be one of them.
In the small changing room there was more hilarity than usual as we celebrated our return after more than a week of frozen ground.
Jockeys working a particular region, in my case mostly the south and the midlands, saw each other almost daily. When we weren’t riding in a race, this was our haven, the changing room. Only jockeys and valets allowed. Track officials could come in but seldom did. Here we were safe from frustrated trainers, boorish owners and the odd angry punter.
We each had a ‘peg’ where our clothes hung below saddle racks. Some jocks carried three saddles. The lightest consisted of little more than strips of fabric or leather strong enough to support stirrups. These were reserved for those horses allocated a low weight by the handicapper. The heaviest saddle was kept for the luxury of riding a horse carrying more than eleven stones.
Pegs, benches, heaters, showers, sauna, deep sinks for valets to plunge muddy silks and breeches into, wood floor, tables and the smells of liniment and leather.
The top jockeys got the best peg. I was about halfway down the pecking order and I’d long ago stopped thinking of the days when the best peg had been mine.
We trooped out, a snaking line of colour among the dark winter clothing of those in the paddock.
Normally, the groom will be walking your horse around while the trainer chats with owners on the lawn. But Bayley was groom, owner and trainer. He led number 7, a compact bay gelding.
Bayley nodded to me. I went to the edge of the lawn and waited
for the mounting bell.
Bayley legged me into the saddle and I settled, feet in stirrup irons, Spiritless Fun already belying his name with a springy athletic jog. Bayley looked up and said, ‘There’s not much of him but he’s fit and ready and he’s been schooling well.’ He took hold of the rein, leading me out onto the track where the wind was cold. He said, ‘You’ll find him straightforward so I’ll leave it to you.’ With that he released the rein, and the horse launched immediately into a canter.
Many trainers give instructions to jockeys on where and when to take certain positions in a race. Some horses pull hard and need settling, some stop trying when they hit the front and must be brought with a very late challenge.
But Bayley would know little about this one’s racing style as the horse hadn’t raced before. For a debutant, he seemed remarkably composed. Normally, they’ll be looking around, pricking ears at the PA announcements, acting curious, like a child on a first trip to the funfair.
But this fellow just put his head down and moved determinedly toward the start, his gait relaxed but powerful. You don’t need to be going fast on a horse to tell how good he might be, and although five others were shorter in the betting, horses from the big yards, I’d never sat on a first-timer who felt so good. We started on the far side, opposite the crowded stands. Behind us lay the snow-clad Blackdown Hills, ahead of us ten hurdles. Fourteen horses set off, a big field for this tight little track but Spiritless Fun went anywhere I asked, responding immediately. Tactical speed they called it; the ability to accelerate very quickly at any point in a race and grab a gap or avoid being boxed in.
Many horses need stoking up to reach full speed, and some have only one pace at the gallop. But this bay gelding was special, and as we glided to the front coming to the last hurdle, I felt two quick stabs of regret. One for Jimmy, who should have had the thrill of sitting on this. The other for myself when I remembered that Bayley Watt would want a different jockey next time he ran.
Spiritless Fun beat the others as though they were a different, short-legged, clumsy species. Bayley was smiling as he came to meet me. ‘I thought he’d go well,’ he said, shaking my hand. ‘Bayley, this is the best horse I’ve sat on since my comeback. He’d be in the top ten of anything I’ve ridden, ever.’
‘That good?’ Bayley Watt knew I had three Cheltenham Festival winners to my name.
‘He’d be a Cheltenham horse.’
‘That’s a thought, Eddie.’
‘Let me ride him next time.’ I rarely begged for rides and I’d never have dreamt of doing so with Bayley, especially as he’d told me what his supposed policy was. But I knew the Comanche stuff was nonsense. I’d no idea why he’d spun me that crap. But I didn’t want to lose the ride on this horse.
‘Eddie -’
‘Bayley, I know what you told me and I believe you’re a genius mostly, but this horse doesn’t need a change to find more speed. My granny could win on him. He is a tailor-made, fresh out of the mould, proper fucking horse and I don’t want to lose the ride.’
We walked into the small winner’s enclosure to growing applause. I looked down on Bayley’s hat. He didn’t respond. I jumped, off, undid the girths and slid the saddle off. The horse hadn’t broken sweat. I glanced at the runner-up, his big ribcage heaved. Spiritless Fun wouldn’t have blown a candle out. I looked at the trainer, ‘Bayley …’
‘I’ll think about it. Go and weigh in.’
I stamped back toward the weighing room feeling a fiery mixture of frustration and excitement and, I realized, nostalgia. In my brief spell as Champion Jockey, horses like this would be something for me to ponder: which should I ride. Fuck! Damn!
What a stupid complacent bastard I’d been.
I sat on the scales, clutching my saddle as the clerk watched the needle bob to ten twelve, confirming that I had carried throughout the race the weight officially allotted. ‘Okay, Eddie,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
I went into the changing room. Riley Duggan sat on the bench, next to my peg. He said, ‘That looked a piece of piss.’
‘He wasn’t out of second gear.’
‘So what’s the problem? You look like a man who just flushed his lottery ticket down the pan.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Watt not pleased? Not supposed to be off today?’
‘No, he’s fine.’ Many horses that show promise at home are given ‘educational’ rides first time. "Not off", as Riley had said, was a euphemism for a non-trier. Few things upset owners and trainers more than one of their horses winning when they hadn’t had a decent bet.
‘Well cheer the fuck up, Eddie. Racing’s back, all your old mates are still around. A new year awaits.’ He slapped my back.
I tried to smile.
I had two more rides and found myself stupidly resenting their slowness, their inability to keep up, their tired slog up that Taunton straight. At least Bayley Watt’s other runner lost. That was some compensation on the long trip home in the dark.
Even as I pulled into my driveway, an arrival that always calmed me, I couldn’t settle myself, the irritability goading me to slam the car door so hard it echoed into the cold, dark woods.
The security lamp lit my angry, frowning, teeth-grinding face and I marched inside and half-filled a glass with whiskey and kicked the wash-basket over and bawled every swear word I knew until I ran out of curses and ended up half-laughing, half-crying at my ludicrous behaviour.
By the time I’d finished the whiskey and lit a fire, some stability had returned.
Some.
I sat in the dark, watching the flames. My head remained full of regrets, but they were weary regrets now, having been kicked and cursed for hours. Tired, old, self-pitying regrets.
I even wished I hadn’t ridden that horse today. My tumultuous time was supposed to be behind me. This place had been built for a fresh beginning, to lay the foundations for a new life, a life in the middle lane, my cruise control into old age.
Now a horse had blown a hole in that road. He’d rebuilt a burnt bridge and offered me a route back. Back to the glory days when all was young and new and everything lay ahead. And all my years of practised self-analysis, of determined acceptance of a lost career, of trying to keep some mental stability, had been shattered by the simple exquisite motion of a galloping horse, each hoof-beat cracking that careful path I’d laid across the years.
Whiskey sedated me for two hours in bed, then I woke and tossed and turned and tried to open once more the logical part of my brain. But dark rooms in the dead of night encourage doubts and fears, not rational thinking. I got up, reached for my dressing gown and went to the kitchen.
Nursing a hot lemon drink I stared at my blank PC screen, then remembered that Maven Judge would be storming through her working ‘day’ .
Unable to quiet my own brain, I decided to pick at hers. Booting the PC I hit the secure link she’d set up for me.
She answered right away, her small thin face lit from the side by a desk lamp ‘Nightmares again?’
‘Night geldings if there were such a thing. How are you doing up there on the edge of the world?’
‘I’m doing okay. What’s wrong?’
‘I’m upset.’
‘Aww.’
‘I rode a horse today that opened me up from belly to brain and hauled out my entrails and spread them like fucking trophies and said, "come and see what you could have had"‘
‘Multi-talented horse, that. What’s its name?’
‘Spiritless Fun. If it gets beat this season I’ll show my arse at midnight Mass.’
‘I preferred your previous image, the entrails and stuff. Who trains this mighty beast?’
‘Bayley Watt who is fucking madder than you are with his tales of Comanche jockey changes.’
‘Didn’t Jimmy Sherrick ride for him?’
‘He did. Jimmy told me he was packing the job in. Bayley Watt told me he sacked him a week before he died.’
‘Who do you
believe?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Why would Watt sack him?’
I told her what the trainer had told me about the Comanches and that I could find no trace of it online.
‘Want me to check it out?’
‘I spent an hour on Google.’
‘There are other ways.’
‘Okay. See what you can find.’
‘So do I guess right when I say that Mister Watt would like to stick with his new policy, ergo you are jocked off the next time this potential superstar runs?’
‘He says he’s thinking about it.’
‘You begged him.’
‘I wouldn’t put it … Yes, I begged.’
‘That’s what’s keeping you awake. A traitor to your principles, Mister Malloy. How do you plead?’
‘Guilty. ‘
‘Tut tut.’
‘A fool to myself, my mother used to say.’
Her fingers worked the keyboard, as they had since we’d started talking. ‘Who isn’t?’
‘What?’
‘A fool to themselves, Edward.’
‘Are you?’
‘I don’t believe so. Others will.’
‘Does it matter to you?’ I said.
‘That others think me a fool? No. I have two things in common with Lester Piggott: I want money, and I don’t care what people think of me.’
‘I don’t believe that. I don’t believe any person does not care what other people think of him, or her.’
‘Only because you’re so fragile about your image.’
‘It’s not an image, Mave, it’s not some PR thing, it’s me.’
‘It’s low self-esteem, my friend. Pure. Simple. And very common.’
‘Oh, I’m not getting into some philosophical debate with you halfway through the night.’
‘What news on J Sherrick? Are the plods going to reopen the case?’
‘Re-open his grave, maybe. I asked them if they’d consider exhumation.’ I told her what I’d said to Sergeant Middleton, that he might have been killed by cyanide before being hung on the chain.
‘Think they’ll agree?’
‘No. Not yet. Maybe after they analyze that recording again.’