by Joe McNally
‘I’m aware of all the arguments, Eddie, and I’m not saying I disagree with you, but at my level you have to deal with red tape, much as I’d like not to. Now, I’ll try and get something done to secure the house. I’ll speak to Watt’s solicitor in the morning.’
‘If you knew for sure it was a crime scene, would that help?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well somebody stole a horse.’ I told him about Fruitless Spin, then added the fact that Watt had assaulted me with a wok. I was tempted to throw in the most obvious one, that Watt had been running a major fraud with the ringer scam. But bringing that up might compromise Mac and the BHA. I knew that keeping the scam quiet was top of his agenda with Sara Chase next day.
‘Leave it with me. Please.’
‘Sergeant, before you go, I had bit of an accident today with Mister Sherrick’s watch.’
‘The bugged watch?’
‘I’m afraid it’s now a boiled bugged watch. I dropped it into some very hot water. Clumsy of me.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘In a drawer in my kitchen drying out.’
‘I’ll call by and see Mister Sherrick tomorrow.’
‘You don’t seem too upset.’
‘The benefits of using it were questionable.’
‘Did your guys do anything to try and track down where it was bought?’
‘I would need to check the progress on that.’
‘I’d best let you get on then.’
‘Eddie…there are other things going on that we need to deal with, you know. I appreciate how frustrating it must be for Mister Sherrick, I really do.’
‘Tell him that tomorrow. And come and take the watch into custody. It won’t ask for a lawyer, and it’ll do its time without complaint. Should make a nice change for you guys.’
32
As midnight rolled us into Tuesday, Maven Judge was examining the picture I’d taken at Watt’s of the cable ends dangling in the fireplace.
‘Quality stuff, Eddie. Not a cheap system, going by the cables alone.’
‘Were they connected to a laptop or a PC?’
‘Just a hard drive. A big hard drive that would be programmed to record to its capacity then start recording over the oldest files.’
‘What if you needed to see the oldest files?’
‘Well, we’re talking weeks here, maybe even months, before it would delete. He’d be reviewing it before that and saving anything he needed. Email me that pic, will you? I want to take a closer look on my screen.’
I mailed the picture.
‘Give me a minute,’ Mave said.
‘What do you think you’ve got?’ I could see her leaning forward. ‘Maven Judge, you’re screwing your eyes up. You need glasses, my friend.’
‘Eyes like a shithouse rat, me…listen…I can see the supplier’s name on the cable. They’re the best in the business and, if I’m not mistaken…’ She keyed quickly and leaned back, clicking her mouse three times, ‘…they offer free backup for the first year for all files.’
‘You think they have a copy of all the footage from Watt’s camera?’
She was clicking rapidly. ‘I think, I think, I think…yep, free backup is automatic. Watt would need to have opted out rather than in to reject it.’
‘Backed up to where?’
‘The company’s servers.’
‘The site you’re looking at now?’
‘Keeerect, my friend, and I anticipate your next question. Yes, I probably could get in, though I don’t know how long a job it would be. A warrant from your sergeant buddy might be quicker.’
‘Only if it’s going to take you the rest of the year to crack their system.’
‘Let me have a nose around tonight.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’
‘Sure you do.’
‘Mave. Mave…’
She stopped typing and turned her plain, gaunt face to the webcam. I’d rarely seen her express emotion. Her brown eyes always had a guarded look, as though she was constantly assessing whatever she was seeing. A handful of times I’d broken through with a wisecrack that had made her expose those crooked teeth in a smile, giving me a ridiculous feeling of accomplishment, almost like riding a winner. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I am really grateful to you. I’m not just saying it. You ask nothing in return for the favours you do.’
‘Oh, don’t go all soppy on me, for God’s sake. You’re an investment for me. I’m looking after that investment, despite its propensity to dash around on a white charger. You were born in the wrong century, Eddie. You should have been on earth when there were dragons to slay and maidens to rescue.’
‘An investment, eh? There was me thinking I was your friend.’
‘Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself. And I’m still waiting.’
‘Sayeth who?’
‘Sayeth me for the second part and sayeth Confucius, the first.’
‘You’re a big softy, really, Mave. Thou shalt blubber at my grave, I do not doubt.’
‘Any blubbering from me at your grave will be no louder than it would for watching a casket of banknotes being lowered into a furnace.’
‘Well, at least I’m precious to you all the same.’
‘You are. You are. Now go away and let me get on with this.’
‘Ping me if you find anything on that CCTV footage.’
‘I will take great pleasure in waking you up.’ She moved her hand toward the webcam until it took up my whole screen, then fanned her fingers in a goodbye wave and closed the connection.
33
On the way to ride at Warwick on Tuesday, I left a message on Peter McCarthy’s voice mail. I needed to drag him deeper into this and the lure was his fear of the ringer scam reaching the media. Racing depends on income from betting. If punters lost faith in the BHA, and in Mac’s department in particular, the sport was in big trouble.
Punters didn’t mind a degree of skulduggery. Many clung to it as a ready-made excuse for their poor judgement. What chance did they have with their money and hard-won knowledge of the formbook if trainers and jockeys were pulling stunts?
But most of those stunts were limited to running a horse over the wrong trip or on ground it didn’t like or when it wasn’t quite fit. Little tricks to try and get its handicap mark down and its odds up. That was ‘fair cheating’ in the eyes of the punter. But if news broke that one horse was running in the name of another, and a good horse at that, then the game changed. When somebody writes a horse’s name on a betting slip and stops to question if it might not be the horse whose form figures he’s based his assessment on, then racing will be on its way out.
Mac must have got the message in more ways than one. Rather than return my call, he came to Warwick. I saw him walk past the paddock as I went out on a leggy chestnut to ride in the handicap chase. He raised a hand, but kept walking, miming the turning of a steering wheel. He wanted to meet me in the car after racing. I nodded and he hurried off toward the weighing room.
Brawny Rogue carried me and sixteen pounds of lead plates to the start. He’d been allotted eleven stones five pounds in this three mile race and had eight opponents. His handicap mark allowed me the luxury of two layers of thermal underwear next to my skin. A canter to the start in mid-January was often driven by wishes of getting there as close to the off time as possible to save circling in the teeth of the wind.
Once racing, as thigh muscles contracted and pumped and arms and shoulders and back flexed and warmed, you could begin to enjoy it. But the pre-race minutes were cold ones, more so for those on the long shots, the hopeless cases. Anticipation of a winner was a fine warmer, and I was on the favourite.
Brawny Rogue was an old hand. Good in some ways - he was a reliable jumper and knew his job - bad in other ways as he’d become an idler. Once he reached the front of the pack, he believed he’d done enough and would prick his ears and down tools. He needed kidding along through the race then an urgent message lat
e on that he’d better get cracking if he was to pass the post in front.
I enjoyed riding Warwick. It was a much trickier jumping test than it looked. The fences were far from frightening to look at. But a row of five of those black birch jumps came pretty close together down the back straight, often catching horses out. Most tracks had a reasonably spaced run between fences, and horses grew used to that, to jumping and settling down to gallop for a while before preparing again for take-off. At courses like Warwick and Sandown, they had to adjust their thinking and timing.
Some horses enjoy measuring their approach to a fence, but many rely on the rider to count them in and ask them to rise on the correct stride. A horse with no confidence in himself must have confidence in his rider or he will end up in the mud, the air whooshing from his huge lungs as his half ton body meets the planet. Welcome to earth.
And in the race, we lost three to those five jumps on the second circuit. Mine found himself having to jump a fallen horse just after landing, and that lit him up, scared him into acceleration to try and escape this melee and reach the safety of the front, of the clear view and open air.
But he was determined to make his move four fences too soon, and thus began the mind games. His instinct was saying let’s get out of here. I was trying to send him a telegram down the reins saying take it easy, big fella, no need to panic. All is well. They were only kidding you, messing around. You know the score, steady up, plenty time. But he wasn’t quite sure I was telling the truth and he quickened again going into the third last, and I decided to do the opposite of what I usually aim to do, which is to fly the fence and land running. If I did that here, there might be no holding and he’d pass the four horses ahead then chuck it.
He had a tendency to go slightly left approaching each fence, and half a dozen strides out, I hauled him to the right and he hesitated and thought about it and took the extra stride I’d hoped for, and put in a short one, almost hopping the fence rather than flying it. He landed awkwardly and by the time he’d collected his senses, the speed and the fizz had gone from him and I was in control again.
I nursed him over the last two fences, landing three lengths behind two bays battling up the run-in, and I eased him out and onward and gave him a couple of quick slaps with the whip and his ears flicked toward me as if to ask why I couldn’t make up my mind whether I wanted him to speed up or slow down and I gave him another across his flanks to settle the argument.
We passed the tussling pair of bays and won by a neck.
As we walked into the winner’s enclosure, the applause was warm on this cold Tuesday at a small midlands track. Winning favourites are always popular. I undid the girth and slid the saddle, squeaking off his steaming back, talking as I did so, telling the trainer and owners, a small pub-based syndicate, how well he’d gone and what a reliable and consistent horse he was.
The excitement and celebrations of winning owners was something I never tired of seeing, especially with syndicates. There might be a dozen people sharing the costs and the ups and downs, but each thought of the horse as his or hers. One hatless dark haired girl whose warmth I envied in her white fake fur coat, put her arms round my neck and stood on her tiptoes to kiss me full on the lips…for quite a long time, and I found myself smiling and blushing to kindly jeers as I walked off to weigh in.
Mac was smiling too, watching from inside the weighing room as I approached, still feeling slightly bewildered at an intimate moment with a stranger in such a public place. ‘You’re crimson,’ Mac said. ‘I think she heated you up more than the ride did.’
I smiled and waved him away as I sat on the scales. ‘Eleven five. Thanks, Eddie,’ said the clerk of the scales. ‘Thank you, Michael,’ I said as I rose, only to feel Mac’s hand on my shoulder, steering me into a corner, his six-two bulk in that long dark coat making him look like my bodyguard, or probation officer. I looked up at him. ‘Don’t you be thinking of kissing me, too.’
He screwed his face up. ‘That’s gross.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
He’d turned me so my back met the corner of the room. He put a hand on each wall, his coat opening so that anyone behind him wouldn’t be able to see me. I waited. ‘You don’t have anything in the last two, do you?’ he said.
‘Not yet.’
‘Will you give them a miss? There’s somebody I want you to meet.’
‘I might pick up a spare, Mac. Can’t it wait until after racing?’
‘She’s a very busy woman who’s broken an appointment to do me a favour. And Nic Buley will be there too.’
Buley was chief exec of the BHA. The fact that he often corrected people about the spelling of his first name told you pretty much all you needed to know about him. ‘You lot must be running scared over this, Mac. What’s happened?’
‘Nothing. We’ve just decided to step this up a few gears and box it off before it gets out.’
I looked at him. ‘Box it off? Mac, you’ve been spending too much time in Buley’s office. Management speak comes from dickheads trying to fool people into believing they know what they’re doing. Fucking hell, don’t fall for that, please?’
‘He’s doing his best. He’s sharp enough to realize how important this situation is.’
‘Probably after you sat on his skinny gym-bunny ribs and rolled around a bit to persuade him.’
Mac, pushed his hat back and raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘Close. I must admit, You’re close.’
I smiled. ‘Okay. I’ll leave after the fourth, but only on condition I hear no more bullshit management speak from you.’
‘I’ll try. It can be catching when everybody in the office is at it.’
‘Catching like the black plague. Shun it, Mac. Resist. You’re too old to be a clone, anyway.’
He lowered his arms and straightened and reached in his pocket to give me an envelope with an address scribbled on it. ‘It’s not far. Down by the river, tucked away in a cul-de-sac. I haven’t got a postcode but call me when you leave. I’ll talk you in.’ He went to turn away. I grabbed his arm. ‘Mac! Mac, don’t talk me in, just give me directions, okay?’
He smiled. ‘See you there.’
34
The Old Barn was one of those big conversions some people gloried in. I didn’t care for them, with their floor to ceiling plate glass, their atriums and their echoing vastness. It must be like living in an office block or a hotel foyer. Mac led me in to where a ‘living flame’ fire burned in a hearth that would have dominated my house. But in this cavernous room it looked as though someone had a struck a match and set it against the wall.
Our footsteps click-clacked off the oak as we approached a set of sofas laid out like a Tetris puzzle. Nic Buley and the woman I took to be Sara Chase were laughing together, not looking at us. Behind them through the cinema screen window, mist was rising from the river Avon at the foot of the long garden. A small yacht was moored there. Tiny lights on the boat, on its outside came on as dusk deepened. I took them to be some sort of parking or mooring lights.
We stopped in front of the seated pair. Still they didn’t look up. Their shared joke was in the air, and I was already getting angry. Until recently, jockeys were treated by the racing establishment as little more than servants. In front of the stewards we used to be addressed by surname only and told to stand up straight. That had died out in the past few years, or at least I thought it had. I’d yet to be introduced and was already getting the impression they thought I was the butler or the coachman or something.
Mac said, ‘This is Eddie Malloy. Eddie, this is Sara Chase, superintendent with Thames Valley police, and you know Nic Buley, don’t you?’
‘I don’t believe we’ve met formally,’ I said. Buley didn’t get up. He reached a hand and touched mine, almost brushing it off. The woman’s handshake was firmer. ‘Hello,’ she said, then turned back toward Buley.
‘Hello to you,’ I said, and she looked at me again, more keenly this time. Mac sensed the tension. ‘Eddie was go
od enough to leave before racing finished to join us.’ She nodded, still eying me. Buley stretched a flowing arm, ‘Sit down, the pair of you.’ It was more order than invitation. He was one of these professionally slim people who ate just enough to fuel their daily gym workouts and their sense of superiority. His dark suit was narrow-cut in case anyone might not have noticed how slim and fit he was. And he glowed. He glowed like he’d stepped from a shower and massage. His reddish hair was thinning, although he’d be mid-thirties at most.
‘Do you want me to make tea, or fix you two some cold drinks or something before I sit?’ I asked, glaring at them.
Buley didn’t get it. He turned to the woman and raised an inquisitive eyebrow, ‘Sara?’
She seemed amused. ‘I think Mister Malloy was being, eh, satirical.’
Buley looked confused. ‘Why? Were you?’
‘Yes. I was.’
‘Oh,’ he straightened, angling his body away from the prim Sara Chase in her checkered cravat and uniform blouse. ‘Take a seat,’ he said.
‘I’ll sit when I’m ready.’
Mac deserted me and slunk off to sit on the edge of a pale green sofa.
Buley and Chase watched me now. Buley wasn’t yet done with the Alpha Male stuff. ‘What’s the problem, Edward?’
‘You’re the problem. And don’t call me Edward. It’s Eddie, or Mister Malloy. Got that?’
He shifted in his seat and I could see him trying to weigh things up, but he was away from his office domain and the ranks of yes men, and I watched him puff himself up. ‘Had a bad day at the races, I take it?’
‘You take it wrong. My day was fine until I walked in here to be ignored by you and the superintendent. I’m not some lackey, summoned to speak when I’m spoken to. The indenture system in this country died out years ago. Has nobody told the BHA?’
‘Well, I’m sorry you choose to adopt that attitude. I thought we could work together.’ He joined his hands in a finger clench to reassure himself.