by Joe McNally
‘Eddie, how am I supposed to justify asking for a warrant here? On the basis of some hunch you have? What if that gets out to the press?
‘My hunch?’
‘The bloody warrant!’
‘Calm down, Mac. I was kidding.’
‘You’ve got a macabre sense of humour.’
‘That’s one of the reasons I like talking to you Mac, I get to hear words like macabre. Look, cool it. I know you’re under pressure, and I’m trying to help you here. Give me until tomorrow. I’ll have a look around it again in daylight.’
‘Eddie, don’t be breaking in-’
‘Mac! Just trust me, will you? Have I ever let you down?’
‘Yes!’
‘Only for your own good.’
‘Eddie, listen, just be prepared if anybody finds you snooping around Watt’s place. No mentions of ringers or even of any of his horses,’
‘I know, Mac, I know! Relax! You’re coming close to pissing me right off now. There’s an old man sitting alone in the middle of Lambourn who lost his son, remember? That’s a hell of a lot more important to me than keeping Bayley Watt’s business quiet. Remember that!’
‘Okay. Okay. Fair enough.’
‘One thing you can do for me, send me a copy of Watt’s email to his solicitor.’
‘I won’t ask why you want it.’
‘Good.’
The copy was in my Inbox ten minutes later.
The summary was that Watt had asked that the horses be allowed to complete the current season under Kilberg’s care, for which Kilberg was to be paid fifty grand from his estate. He said that he hoped the BHA would look kindly on Kilberg’s application for a trainer’s licence as all prize money earned by the yard that season was to go to the Injured Jockeys Fund, as was the remainder of the funds from his estate after Kilberg had been paid.
I printed it and carried it to the kitchen where I read it twice more while waiting for the kettle to boil. Whoever had written it wanted Kilberg to be in charge of the horses. Plan A must have been to carry on the ringer scam if Kilberg could get his licence. When I had confronted Kilberg, with our man listening in somehow, he then decided Kilberg had to be taken out too. So long as he got the horse he’d know he could keep going. Lie low for a while, a year maybe, then start over with nobody any the wiser as to who he was.
Mave’s early call that this guy was the real deal had proved spot on. Three men were dead. The horse that had got them killed had disappeared. No witnesses left alive. Not the faintest of tracks leading to this Mister Big. Nothing on Bayley’s PC. Had he kept another one somewhere? What about Kilberg’s belongings, his electronic paper trail?
I called Mac again and asked him to find out what the police had done about searching Kilberg’s place, his stuff, for clues. He put up no resistance and said he’d come back to me soon.
37
I sipped black coffee and played around with Watt’s email, the email someone had hacked into his phone and written, probably after Watt was dead. But how had this guy forced him to swallow a handful of cyanide in a locked cabin halfway across the Irish Sea? Where was Watt heading for that night if not to meet the man who was bossing this? Was the guy based in Ireland?
Or was Watt running from him?
I tried Mave. It was dark outside, so there was half a chance she’d be around. She was.
‘You’re up early,’ I said.
‘Couldn’t sleep for the noise of the wind sucking and spitting like it was trying to hawk up a gob of phlegm the size of the moon.’
‘That’s what coastal winds do, Mave. That’s their job in winter. The price you pay for living on a cliff.’
‘Yea, yea, yea. What do you want?’
I told her about yesterday’s meeting and how Watt’s place had been boarded up and that I thought Jimmy’s body could be inside. I reminded her of her foresight when she’d predicted how smart this guy was and said, ‘I’m convinced he hacked Watt’s phone and sent that suicide note email, and that he did the same with Kilberg. By the way, I’m trying to get hold of Kilberg’s PC for you to have a look at.’
‘Oh, really? I can’t wait!’
I smiled but she wasn’t looking at me. ‘Listen, Mave, could he have had some sort of remote control of Watt and Kilberg, and maybe even Jimmy? Could he have had them hypnotized or something, to react to a word or command or a certain sound from their phone?’
‘Anything’s possible. Some trigger for them to take a cyanide pill, you mean?’
‘Yes. Why would Watt go on the run then suddenly change his mind? He was eccentric and moody but he wasn’t a quitter. And Kilberg, he thought far too much of himself to just give it up out of the blue. He was a fair bit younger than Watt too. And Watt had just supposedly left him all his horses to train with the promise of fifty grand at the end of the season. No way did he kill himself deliberately.’
‘But if your man had them pre-programmed somehow… hypnotism would have been very chancy. I’m no expert, but I’d have thought the effects would last hours at the most, not weeks or months.’
‘What about these hypnotherapists who claim success with long term problems, smoking and weight loss and that sort of stuff?’
‘That’s just persuading people to change habits. But sending some keyword or sound where the subject drops everything and takes a pill that’ll kill him, you’re in the realms of fiction there, I think. Science fiction. Also, even if he had found a way to trigger that action, how could he be sure they’d be carrying the cyanide pill at the time?’
‘True.’
‘I wouldn’t discount the claim about the serious illnesses, especially if you say you’d seen a few physical changes in Watt. This fella obviously had something on them too. The threat of exposing them, plus a reminder that they might not have had much longer to live anyway, could easily have been enough to push them into taking the pills.’
‘You think he had something on them beyond their involvement in the ringer scam?’
‘Well, how did he get them into that in the first place? And why? It doesn’t look like it was doing them any good, because nobody was betting or laying, according to your contacts. In which case, why was your man doing it? It’s a hell of an intricate plot if no money was being made, and the only way to make it was through betting. Could your bookie contact be wrong?’
‘I doubt it. That’s his job, or part of it, he’ll have a string of contacts from Perth to Plumpton plus all that monitoring software they have online now. That would be set to pick up anything of any size, even if he was spreading the bets around different bookies.’
Mave glanced at her webcam, fingers still working that keyboard. ‘What about bookies overseas?’ she asked. ‘Could he have been placing bets in the far east or somewhere like that?’
‘I suppose he could. I could ask Gerry to take a look at that.’
‘Your bookie man? His tentacles reach that far?’
‘Gerry’s made an awful lot of friends in his life.’
‘A singular talent.’
‘It is. I’ll call him now.’
‘You’re on a roll here, Eddie, by the sound of it.’
‘I want to find Jimmy. Soon. I want into that house.’
‘Well, I’m here if you need anything.’
‘Thanks, Mave. What I need is a break. Even finding Jimmy won’t get me any closer to this guy.’
‘Motive and relationship. The motive’s got to be money. If this fella wasn’t betting them, somebody else was. And what was his relationship with the dead men? If you can crack that, you’re on your way.’
‘You’ve changed your tune, Maven. You’re usually trying to talk me out of it.’
‘I’ve decided to stop wasting my time. The sooner you get this done, the better chance I have of getting you to concentrate on helping me.’
‘So you’re in with me?’
‘Yep. I’m going to start my own little mind map tonight and see what I can come up with.’
�
�You serious?’
‘Never more so. With a brain your size, you’ll be at this for years. I’m going to let you hook it up to mine for a while.’
‘Like giving me a jump start?’
‘Well…sort of…a very low power one, toned right down, if you know what I mean. A straight feed from my brain to yours would fuse your box. Blow your mind.’
I smiled. ‘I believe it would, Mave. I believe it very probably would.’
38
I sketched a rough picture of Bayley’s house, ran through in my mind what I could recall of the interior, wondering where Jimmy’s body might be hidden. Would Bayley have been able to sleep at night knowing the corpse of his stable jockey was under the same roof?
Somewhere in the outbuildings would make more sense. My PC beeped and I clicked the link to take Mave’s call. Unusually, she was looking straight at me via her webcam. ‘Did you tell me that Jimmy had the same watch as his father, the one that was bugged?’
‘I think Bayley told Mister Sherrick that Jimmy had bought it for him for Christmas, but when we discovered it was bugged I just assumed that Watt had been lying and that he’d provided the watch through whoever is running this. Why? What are you thinking?’
‘Jimmy was being bugged somehow. If they were using a watch for his dad, there’s no reason they wouldn’t try that with Jimmy, is there?’
‘Why are you saying “they”? You think this is a gang?’
‘No, they as in whoever’s behind this plus Watt and Kilberg.’
‘Oh, I thought you’d found something out. Yes, I suppose the bugged watch could have been used with Jimmy, why?’
‘Because if there’s a radio transmitter in it, it might still be broadcasting a signal.’
I dropped the pen and looked at Mave. ‘How would we pick it up?’
‘With a scanner. If you think Jimmy’s body is at Watt’s place, we take a scanner there and run a search.’
‘We? As in you and me?’
‘Don’t you want my help?’
‘Mave, I’d pay good money just to get you out of that clifftop eyrie for a day. If you’re saying you’ll travel down here to help me out, then there’s nothing I’d appreciate more.’
‘You’re a right charmer, aren’t you? I’ll bet you run riot with women and you’re one of these guys who doesn’t like boasting about it.’
‘Mave, the only woman I want to see at the moment is you.’
‘Lord, you’re a silver tongued devil, right enough.’
‘Listen, you know I’d give pretty much anything for your help in this. Even if it’s only with finding Jimmy. In fact, you might be right about the transmitter. Maybe that’s why they wanted the body out of the way before the police exhumed it. If the cops traced the transmitter that could have led them to-’
‘It wouldn’t have led them anywhere, would it? They found the bug in Jimmy’s dad’s watch but it was untraceable.’
‘So why was this guy worried about Jimmy being exhumed?’
‘Exactly.’
I drew a watch on the page then tapped the pen against my teeth trying to remember if Jimmy wore a watch. I looked at Mave: ‘You got a hunch as to why they wanted Jimmy’s body out of the way?’
‘Not yet, just a curiosity. It couldn’t have been for the transmitter, if there was one buried with him. But something about Jimmy, even dead, has made this guy nervous enough to want to keep him away from the police.’
‘Maybe it was Bayley and Kilberg. What if they’d left some sign, some mark or DNA tying them to Jimmy?’
‘Maybe, but it’s unlikely to have been anything Watt couldn’t have explained away through his regular contact with him. You know, if they found a clipping from Watt’s fingernail or whatever, Watt would have said, well I saw the guy every day, was legging him up on horses all the time, driving him around. No, it’s something else. If I’ve got a hunch, it’s that this guy has blundered somehow with Jimmy.’
‘Even a tiny hunch is good enough for me, Mave.’
‘As Quasimodo said when he was speed dating.’
I laughed, looking forward to having Mave and her razor wit staying with me for a while. ‘So, when are you travelling, and how?’
‘I’ll get the kit together and book a train ticket. Can you pick me up from Newbury?’
‘Sure will. I’ll even paint the guest bedroom pink if you want.’
‘Nah, the usual dust covered cobwebbed garrett will do for me.’
‘Have you got a scanner?’
‘I know a man who has.’
‘One who doesn’t ask many questions?’
‘Unlike you, Edward, he doesn’t ask any.’
39
I woke to what I’d decided was lucky Friday. I had three mounts booked at Newbury, my nearest track, and Mave’s train was due at Newbury station half an hour after the last. Everything felt as though it was about to click into place.
Also, I was set to ride the hot favourite for Ben Tylutki in a valuable handicap hurdle. Ben led me out onto the track. Before letting go the reins he said, ‘Let him get on with it in his own sweet way. With a bit of luck, you’ll see nothing else.’
Ben’s regime for his horses was tough. His belief was that if your horse was as fit as it could be, it could beat better horses that were less fit. It was a policy that had served him well and he was steadily attracting more owners.
He got horses hard fit and put up jockeys he trusted. Ben would say his granny could win on many of his horses so all he required was a rider who was straight and could point a horse in the right direction. No complicated tactics: “jump off in front and improve your position”.
And that’s exactly what I intended doing on Burbank, this bay gelding built more like a greyhound than a racehorse. We flew the first hurdle ahead of sixteen others, then it was simply a matter of relaxing and trusting the trainer’s fitness regime. Aboard many horses I’d have judged this pace to be too fast to see out the two miles, and would have been fighting, trying to settle him, slow him down.
As with many of Ben’s, he couldn’t wait to reach the next jump, so I just perched above his withers and tried to look stylish and enjoy the ride. Ben trained his horses to gallop alone. Most trainers would work horses in pairs. But Ben wanted his to feel at ease out in front, and Burbank blazed away, leading this pack of decent horses.
Approaching the fifth, I spotted a photographer raising his camera. I crouched lower, trying to look part of the horse, man and animal, a single smooth racing machine, and I counted in the stride to his usual take-off point and set my final position for the picture. But Burbank rose too soon and pierced the hurdle below the top bar, locking his legs in the frame, depriving him of the chance to save himself, and he somersaulted and threw me like a half-ton judo expert would onto the turf.
Even in that split second between launch and landing, your instinct kicks your feet from the stirrups and prepares you for impact. Sometimes in a fall from a ‘chaser, you’re higher up and travelling more slowly and you have a chance to tuck in neatly and aim to land and roll. But being fired off at that low hurdling trajectory, the best you can do is put your hands out to break the fall and hope it doesn’t cost you a wrist or forearm fracture.
I was lucky. He sent me along the turf like a fast-skidding bowling ball on my front, and as I came to a halt, I knew the real trouble was on its way. My left ear was to the ground through the padding of my helmet strap, and I could hear eight tons of galloping horseflesh coming. The earth shook. I curled up tight, trying to offer a small target. A horse will do what it can to avoid stepping on a man, or on another horse, but all sixty four hooves would be unable to avoid me. All I could do was hope for the best.
They broke in shell bursts over my head.
Noise.
The gorse in the hurdle crackling, rapping hooves on the frame, the thump of front feet landing on turf, a whip smack, shouts from the jockeys, then metal-shod feet on my helmet, stunning me. The catch on my goggles broke and s
uddenly everything was brighter. A hoof caught my knee, stepping on it and I yelped and reached instinctively to cover it, raising my head, and something hard and sharp and fast hit me across my eye from forehead to cheekbone in a diagonal. I remembered that detail and then nothing.
I regained consciousness after what I took to be few seconds as I saw the doctor hurrying toward me, and I knew I had to cut through the fuzziness of concussion and prepare some answers to the inevitable questions. Loss of consciousness meant an automatic holiday of at least forty eight hours, and I tried to remember what the usual questions would be, as well as the answers.
I sat up, as the doc reached me. That would impress him. He knelt, looking at my eyes and I tried playing for time. ‘It’s my knee, doc. Got stood on.’ And I lay down again, trying desperately to call home the logical thoughts scattered among my neurons, fleeing at the first kick in the head. Cowards.
He examined my knee. I had to play a tight game. Too many flinches or groans would see me sent to hospital for an X-ray, and I had two mounts to come with no intention of letting anyone else ride them.
He moved away from my knee. ‘Nothing broken. How do you feel?’
I thought of answering from the prone position, but that wouldn’t look good. I sat up. ‘All right, thanks. Have you seen my goggles?’
‘Never mind your goggles. Look at me.’
I looked at him. He had a tough job. If there is an opposite of hypochondriacs, jockeys are it. A nightmare for doctors whose job it is to protect us from ourselves.
‘What was the name of the horse you were riding?’
‘Eh, Burton…Burbank!’
‘Which track are we at?’
‘Newbury.’ I knew that more because I recognized the surroundings than remembered where I was.
‘Which trainer were you riding for?’
‘Ben. Ben with the hard name. I’ve never been able to pronounce it. Starts with T.’
He smiled. ‘You’re a trier, I’ll give you that. Listen, Eddie, you took a kick in the head there. That’s what broke the clip on your goggles. If you were out, even for a few seconds, you’d be a fool to ride again today.’