Taking the Fall (18 page)

The letter was very clear. Charlie had been warned off from racing for nine years. He was already sixty years old. His training days were done.

‘Come on, Dad, sit down. I’ll make you a cup of tea. There has to be a way we can fight this.’

Charlie allowed himself to be guided to the sofa, but he was still beyond speech. He seemed to be in a state of shock. Duncan made the tea and they sat in silence as it cooled before them untouched. Later, Duncan was able to identify the start of Charlie’s decline to that very moment.

13

A
nother small gift arrived at Duncan’s door. It was a bottle of fine single malt whisky. Duncan wasn’t partial to whisky but he knew someone who was. He drove out across the Midlands to where his father used to have his stables.

Nothing was there of the old set-up. It was only a matter of five years and the entire thing had been knocked down. Charlie had sold up and the money was now paying for his stay at Grey Gables. The land had been divided into smaller lots, mostly used by people stabling and grazing leisure ponies.

There was one stretch of land of about an acre that Charlie hadn’t sold off. It ran up against a tangled blackthorn hedgerow and a clear stream. In the corner of the plot a scruffy old caravan rotted into the deep grass. Dogs started barking as Duncan approached.

The caravan door opened a crack. A pair of hooded eyes looked out.

‘George, it’s me. It’s Duncan.’

The door opened further. Two dogs ran out but they didn’t bother Duncan. Gypsy George wore a white vest and dark tracksuit-type trousers. Duncan had visited him twice a year since the land was sold off, but the old boy had gone downhill a bit. His silver hair was close-cropped and his swarthy skin looked even more like leather. ‘Oh, it’s you!’

George let Duncan into the caravan. It was kept neat and tidy but it smelled a bit ripe, mainly of dog. Duncan set the whisky on the table without a word.

‘I don’t get many visitors,’ George said.

‘Never mind that,’ Duncan said. ‘George, I’ve found you a job.’

George had been Charlie’s most loyal worker. After Charlie was warned off from racing and the racehorse owners had pulled all their horses from his stables, there was no money to pay the stable hands and they’d all been let go. It was George that Charlie had felt worst about. Not only did George know everything there was to be known about horses, he worked all hours and asked for little in return other than a spot of grass on which to rest his rust-bucket caravan. Not that Charlie had ever exploited George – always paying him the going rate – but he’d somehow become almost a family member. They went to each other for favours, and came to expect favours to be delivered.

When the stable hands had all gone from Charlie’s yard, George was still there, still working, still cleaning up, still making himself useful long after Charlie had told him he had no more money to keep him.

Some evenings the three of them had sat up drinking and going over events, working out when the doping might have been done. The lad in charge of Whistle And I’ll Come was a good ’un and hadn’t left the horse’s side. His name was Andy, and George was certain of him. But then Andy had told George that there had been a girl in the yard at the racetrack who had stopped by and admired Andy’s plaiting. She’d been charged with the job of plaiting the mane and tail of another horse but admitted that she’d only pretended she was up to the job and was afraid of getting fired. Would he take five minutes to show her?

That was it. That was when it was done. Did he know the girl? No, never seen her before or since. What did she look like? Pretty. Well, she would be. He thought that maybe she had an accent. Where from? Lancashire or Yorkshire maybe – oh and a head of red curls. It was hopeless. Did he recognise the other horse? No. It would only take a minute. Cocaine in solution. Syringe in the chest, probably. Job done. ‘There’s your answer,’ George had said as he, Charlie and Duncan had sat drinking late into the night.

After Petie’s recent bout of ill-temper had left him short-handed, Duncan had sung George’s praises to the trainer. He’d seen a way to help both men.
If you can find him a spot of land for his caravan, Petie, you won’t need a security officer. If a horse casts a shoe three fields away, George will hear it. Hard as nails, too.

‘It’s just across the county border, George. In Warwickshire.’

‘Warwickshire? Strange folk, they are.’ George still had a strong Irish brogue.

‘He’s a rough diamond. Took a swipe at me. But he won’t take a swipe at you.’

‘Why’s that then?’

‘Come on, George. No one ever takes a swipe at you. They take one look at you.’

‘Saying I’m ugly?’

‘Your face will fit right in.’

He promised that George could still keep the deeds to this bit of land and said that Petie had offered to tow the caravan to its new site.

George scratched his head doubtfully. ‘This caravan won’t tow anywhere. It’ll fall apart.’

‘We’ll work something out.’

‘Has he got any rabbits on his land?’ George was partial to rabbit stew.

‘He’s plagued with the things.’

George rubbed his chin.

It was all settled. Petie found George a new caravan, installed it on his land and piped water to it. The two men looked at each other without a word and yet the deal seemed to have been struck.

‘That fellow’s been around horses,’ Petie said later to Duncan. ‘Even if he does look like he’s been kicked in the face by every one of them.’

‘He’s the reason my dad was doing so well,’ said Duncan. ‘Take him on a buying trip with you. You’ll see.’

Privately Duncan was glad Petie had been in such a filthy mood the day he’d taken a swing at him. With George on the same team he felt his strength growing. It was another step on his way to making his move.

Lorna was complaining that she wasn’t seeing enough of him. She didn’t know about Christie Sanderson and Duncan was careful to keep it that way. He was genuinely busy training with Petie in Warwickshire, but when he did have some time off he asked if she could find out a day when her father would be at William Osborne’s yard. He wanted her to arrange for him to have a look around.

‘But that’s boring!’ Lorna said.

‘After that we’ll spend the day together. You’d better get Duke to square it with Osborne first.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m working for another stable. Don’t want him to think I’m a spy.’

Before he went off to Osborne’s place, he found that another small gift had arrived, in the form of an invitation. It was from Pleasance. A handwritten note, in the post, saying that he and some of the ‘other boys’ were having a night out at Tramp nightclub. Duncan’s name would be ‘on the door’. Don’t bring Lorna, the note suggested, since this was a boys’ night out. Duncan looked at the date offered. Saturday night, no racing the next day. There was no request to reply.

Duncan thought of Aaron the Monk. He placed the invitation under the transistor radio in his kitchen.

William Osborne’s set-up was modern, well-regimented, clean and efficient. It dwarfed Petie Quinn’s stables, and somehow made the Irishman’s efforts look a little amateurish. Osborne stabled over a hundred horses with the staff list to match. They had so many young jockeys and stable lads and lasses that they ran a kind of hostel in the grounds where everyone was fed, lodged, counselled and, it was said, supplied with condoms after the local doctors complained that the place was an incubator for venereal disease.

Duncan and Lorna watched an ambulance leave the grounds. One of the young jockeys had been thrown over a hurdle when his mount stopped dead as if to say, no, you go over, I’m staying here. The lad had landed badly and had broken an arm.

‘You’re all mad,’ Lorna said, squeezing up to him. She’d been guiding him on a tour of the place when the accident happened several fields away.

Duncan didn’t need telling what a dangerous sport jump racing was. He was about to reply when someone came up behind them.

‘Spying on us, are you, Duncan?’

Duncan turned. It was Duke Cadogan, in a cloth cap, muffler and green wellingtons. Osborne was there too, in a waxed Barbour coat. ‘That’s right. I’m taking notes on how fast the ambulance got here.’

‘Bad break,’ said Duke.

‘What happened?’ Duncan asked.

‘Three-year-old gelding we’re trying to get ready. But he’s perfected this trick of running at a hurdle and stopping on a sixpence. You think he’s taking the hurdle, and . . . well.’

‘He wouldn’t do that with me,’ Duncan said.

‘I wouldn’t be too sure. Better jockeys than that lad crying in the ambulance have parted company with him.’

So far Osborne hadn’t said anything. He looked a little sour. Whether that was because of the accident or because Duncan was on his turf, it was impossible to tell.
They both know who I am and yet they say nothing. What sort of men can do that?

‘It’s just bad training,’ Duncan said, ‘and bad riding, too.’

Osborne looked at him coolly. His mouth was twisted in a suppressed smile, but he couldn’t keep the contempt out of his face either. Duncan had laid down a challenge knowing exactly how the man would react. ‘You’ve got a lip on you, haven’t you, son? Prepared to back that up?’

The fact was, that was exactly why Duncan had come. He had arrived on the lookout for anything that might get him into his jockey gear. Anything. He just hadn’t expected it to arrive so early. He would have carried his boots and hat except that would have displayed his hand. ‘Where can I get my gear on?’

‘No!’ Lorna shouted. ‘We’re supposed to be spending the day together!’

‘Follow me.’ Osborne was already leading him across the yard.

‘Daddy, don’t you dare let him get on that creature!’

‘Looks like it’s out of my hands,’ said Duke.

‘Tack room is over here,’ said Osborne.

Within half an hour Duncan was changed and being shown the horse – a flighty liver chestnut called Parisa – and Osborne and Duke seemed to have assembled a small audience of stable hands eager to see a big mouth get his comeuppance. They probably sniggered too when the already frothed-up Parisa tried to take a bite out of Duncan before he was in the saddle.

Duncan took Parisa on a canter before he tried the jump that had caused the problem. He wanted the horse to get a feel of him in the saddle as much as the other way round. He cantered and stopped. Cantered and stopped. Went through a few changes of pace and direction.

He decided Parisa was a fine horse.

Then he turned and galloped the horse wildly towards the hurdle where the accident had occurred. Parisa’s ears pricked up. He made for the centre of the jump. But about four lengths ahead of the hurdle, Duncan wheeled him round and out of the jump, cantering him away. Maybe those watching thought he had bottled it, but he didn’t care about them. He wasn’t there to entertain them. He did the same thing again: put Parisa at the jump but called him round the moment he felt the horse’s excitement.

He did it again. And again. And again.

Charlie had told him that lots of horses refused jumps, in different ways. There was the ditcher, who dropped his shoulders and swung away at the last moment, ditching you into the fence. There was the ditherer, who showed he was scared early on, and was just no way going over that fence. There was the dirt-sprayer, who ran full pelt at the fence then somehow locked his foreleg in the dirt, spraying up mud and sending you clattering over the top. There was the drifter, who came off the jump line and simply tried to bypass the jump altogether. Then there was the ding-dong, Charlie had said, and that was a horse who had decided it was fun just to fuck you up.

Parisa was a ding-dong, and Duncan knew it. It was all about who was going to be in control at the crucial moment of takeoff. Parisa was a smart horse who had learned to pretend to go into the jump with all engines, only to stop dead, and then to peer over the hurdle at the dumped rider as if to say, ‘Everything all right?’

This time Duncan galloped Parisa at the hurdle, knowing that he would stop, and simply reined him back before the jump-off point. The horse stood at the hurdle, possibly surprised at still finding the jockey on his back. Duncan repeated the exercise, and held him there, looking at the hurdle. Then he went back to turning the horse away from the jump. Then standing. Then turning.

If the horse was confused, that was all part of the programme. Parisa had to know that Duncan was calling the shots. This entire process went on for some time. Duncan wasn’t interested in an early spectacle; he was out to make a point. A few of the spectators drifted away, cheated of their chance to gloat. Not until Duncan was good and ready did he pat the horse and say, ‘Come on. Now we go.’

Parisa took the jump beautifully. Duncan cantered him back and took the same hurdle again. He took the jump five times before going off on a gentle canter to jump several flights of hurdles. By the time he took the horse back to Cadogan and Osborne, the two men were standing with Lorna, all the other hands having drifted away.

‘Nothing wrong with this horse,’ Duncan said. ‘Though I wouldn’t try that unless you know what you’re doing. Could make him worse.’

‘You bored him to death,’ Osborne said.

‘No charge for fixing him, in that case,’ Duncan said.

Lorna sniggered. ‘Perhaps you should get Duncan to ride for you. Get a few more winners.’

Cadogan turned a pair of bulbous blue eyes on his daughter. Osborne looked away.

The entrance to Tramp nightclub was framed by a simple awning squeezed between the rows of classy tailors on Jermyn Street. There were a few people waiting outside in a line, so Duncan decided to push his luck and simply walk down the steps. At the desk he gave his name and said he was with George Pleasance. It did the trick.

The place looked like a gentlemen’s club, with wood-panelled walls, as if some old buffer had had a disco and lights put in as an afterthought. But the atmosphere was excitable. The age range was very mixed and some people were dancing badly on the disco floor. There were lots of women in tiny skirts, and before he’d gone three yards he’d spotted an ageing film star, three footballers and a well-known politician. There was no VIP room. The entire club seemed to be offering itself as a VIP room.