Taking the Fall (2 page)

When the taxi drew up at Lorna’s house, Duncan got out, paid the cabbie and stepped back to take in the size of the property. ‘Anyone home?’ he said nervously.

‘Only the staff,’ Lorna said. ‘I’ll get the keys to the garage.’

She hurried off, leaving Duncan to take in the sweep of the lawns, the outbuildings and the great Georgian columns trumpeting the front of the house and its gravel driveway. Just one of those outhouses was bigger than the old cottage he’d shared with his dad as he’d grown up.

Dad it had been who had raised him and put him in the saddle. Dad who had taught him everything he knew, who’d showed him the way. Yes, he was a lot older than all the other lads’ fathers, in his late forties when Duncan was born. And when his mother – who by all accounts was a screaming basket case – had upped and left when Duncan was only five years old, it had been Dad who had taken over and done the whole damned thing.

His dad, Charlie, was a small-time trainer. Not any more, but back then. Struggling to make it, always struggling. He didn’t have big-time players investing in his tiny stables: no football managers, no business tycoons, no fake dukes. He did everything the hard way. Went over to Ireland, or even to France – something no one else was doing at the time – to find a prospect, bring it back, get it fit, race it and sell it on. Some of these trips Charlie pulled Duncan out of school and took the boy with him.

‘I love you, Dad,’ Duncan heard himself whisper as his eyes surveyed the four-million-pound property. ‘And I will fucking get them. All of them.’

He was brought out of his reverie by the sound of Lorna trudging across the gravel. She beamed at him, dangling a big set of keys in front of her. ‘Shall we see what’s there?’

He followed her over to a modern garage with steel doors. She unlocked a side door, hit a switch and the doors rolled upwards, purring as they went. A row of lights flickered on, one after the other, to reveal Cadogan’s collection of motors.

They walked slowly between the silent vehicles, Lorna lightly trailing a finger on the slightly dusty paintwork. She seemed to be waiting for him to choose. The motors looked sort of sad and sleepy and forgotten, like beautiful courtesans in a harem no one ever visited, losing their best years. There was a Mercedes-Benz 450 SL soft-top; the Porsche and the Lamborghini she’d mentioned; a 1960s American Dodge Dart and an early seventies Chevy Camaro. There were a couple of vintage classics like the 1939 Simca 5. Heck, there was even a new Volkswagen Beetle in the mix, and for a moment he felt like taking that just for perversity. But the Lamborghini had more curves than a
Playboy
centrefold.

‘I think you’ll look pretty in the sunflower,’ he said.

‘Oh good,’ Lorna said. ‘I’ve always fancied the yellow one.’

She went over to a cabinet, unlocked it and puzzled over the rows of keys until she found the right set. She tossed them through the air and Duncan caught them. He weighed them in his hand for a moment before unlocking the Lamborghini doors. He stepped round to the passenger door and held it open for her.

She blushed. ‘You’re a gentleman!’ She sank into the low-slung plush leather of the passenger seat and it made her skirt ride up her legs.

‘Oh yes, every inch a gentleman.’ He unclipped the seat belt and reached across her to fasten it in place. Then he pulled the strap across her chest.

‘Not too tight!’ she protested.

But he tightened it anyway, then leaned down and kissed her, putting his tongue in her mouth at the same time as he slipped his hand between her legs. She wore thin tights but no knickers.

Moments later he was outside the garage, listening to the motor purr. He depressed the accelerator and the purr turned to a big-cat snarl. He looked at his watch. This was going to be good.

‘This has grunt!’ he said. But then he was distracted by a whirring noise from overhead. He looked up through the tinted glass of the windscreen and saw a helicopter high in the sky. It looked like it was descending.

‘That will be Daddy popping in for a few things,’ Lorna said. ‘Probably best if we shoot off.’

The Lamborghini did have grunt. It ate the motorway. They were so low in the seats that it was like riding in a snake’s belly. Duncan felt his own body weight pressing on his kidneys, and the diuretic pills meant he was going to have to stop pretty soon. He wished he’d stopped at the last services, but time was short if he was going to make the race. He looked at his watch and gave the accelerator a little more toe. The motor spat in response.

He wished he could pile up enough money to give his old dad one of these things. Not that his father was at all interested in cars. There was only one kind of horsepower for Charlie, and that was the kind where you pumped oats in one end and shovelled shit from the other. But when he made it, he would give his dad one of these anyway.

He looked at his watch. He was going to have to floor it to make the race in time.

School had come and gone and had barely touched Duncan. It wasn’t that he didn’t get along with his teachers – though the old lippy problem had got him into a couple of scrapes with teachers and older boys alike – it was just that all that geography and maths and other stuff didn’t seem to stick.

‘Don’t you worry,’ his dad had told him. ‘You’re too sharp for ’em, that’s the problem. You’ve got brains enough. It’s just a different kind of brains.’

And his dad was right: Duncan did have a brain. What kind of brain that was became clear one day when he was just nine years old and Charlie took him along to a race meeting in Leicester in the East Midlands, not far from the stables. It was a day of sunshine and the jockeys’ bright silks were shimmering and flying like flags at a gala. Duncan was mesmerised by the tic-tac men and the antics of the bookies’ runners. His dad gave him a brief explanation of what the signs meant, explaining that some of the gestures were secret. Duncan went over and stood by the white-painted rail dividing Tattersalls from the Silver Ring. He watched the signs and observed the runners, and then he studied the bookies’ chalkboards as the odds tumbled or went way out. Pretty soon he had it all worked out.

His dad was sceptical at first. ‘You can’t know that,’ he said. ‘Not for sure you can’t.’

‘Yes I can. It’s a pattern.’

‘I know it’s a pattern, but—’

‘I can tell when this one in Tattersalls is talking to his mate in the Silver Ring. He’s telling him too many people are backing one of the horses.’

His dad, who always wore a sporting trilby and a moth-eaten sheepskin coat, tipped his hat back on his head and thought for a moment. He studied the form in his folded newspaper. A minute later he said, ‘You little beauty! You sodding little beauty!’ and gave him a tenner.

Duncan, small for his years, had approached a bookie with the terrific name of Billy B. Bonsor. Billy B. Bonsor had a beautifully painted fairground-style board with the slogan ‘Payment as a Matter of Honour’. Mr Bonsor (so Duncan took the man to be) stood on an upturned wooden crate and announced as if to the entire racetrack, ‘Very young fellow says ten on Midnight at sevens and who knows it?’ Another man standing behind the crate recorded the bet in a ledger and Duncan was handed a betting slip. Before he released the slip, Billy B. Bonsor gave Duncan a weird look. Then he ran a finger under his nose and wiped the board, dropping Midnight Rambler from 7–1 to 5–1. Then he wiped the board again and changed it to 9–2.

Duncan ran back to his dad and gave him the betting slip. ‘Why did he drop the odds?’ he asked.

‘He thinks someone sent you with the bet.’

‘But you did!’

‘Yes.’

His dad told him that there was good money and mug’s money in gambling and that theirs was mug’s money, even though they were in the business. Mug’s money it might have been, but Midnight Rambler strolled home, and after deducting the stake, his dad let Duncan split the take. Thirty-five pounds was an inconceivable amount of money for a nine-year-old boy.

But what mesmerised Duncan even more than the tic-tac men and the painted boards was the racing itself. There was something unearthly and magical about the jockeys. He got up as close as he could to them and studied them. Some were tight-lipped before a race, and some would be wisecracking and all smiles. But Duncan knew it was the same thing. It was the tension. The excitement. They glowed with it.

And when he stood with his dad roaring them in near the whitewashed rail at the home stretch, there was something beyond beautiful in the growing rumble of the approaching riders. There was a moment when the silks flashed past, when the hooves thundered on the turf and the jockeys and their mounts seemed to be locked into position. If he could have frozen the world in time it would have been at that moment. It was perfection. It was life itself.

This was the obsession. Not so much with gambling, though that was part of it, but with the racing. He wanted in. He wanted to be bathed in that glowing thing.

He told his dad he wanted to start saving and would put his thirty-five pounds towards his own pony.

His dad laughed and tipped his trilby back on his head. ‘Well, you’re about the right size and weight,’ he said, ‘so long as you don’t grow too much over the years. So long as you keep your weight down.’

‘What is it?’ Lorna said.

‘It’s no good. I need to pee. I’m going to have to pull over.’

‘Can’t you wait till the next services?’

‘It’s a desperate situation. I’ve got to go.’ The pills didn’t take any argument. He was already slowing down and indicating for the hard shoulder. He stopped the car, got out, went round and faced away from the motorway, and unzipped. The release of pressure was indescribable. His body sagged with relief. He stood there pissing heartily, in full view of passing traffic. He didn’t care. It seemed to go on. And on. He looked at his watch. He was still pissing when he sensed another car cruising along the hard shoulder to draw up behind the Lamborghini.

The police officer was already getting out of his car. It made no difference.

The officer walked towards him with slow, measured strides. ‘Not exactly discreet, is it?’ he said. ‘Not exactly discreet in a big yellow sports car, relieving yourself in full view on the Queen’s highway, is it?’

Duncan finished the task in hand, vented a huge sigh and zippered himself up. He turned and offered the policeman a smile that went the full distance.

‘I mean,’ said the officer, ‘it’s all a bit of a circus, isn’t it?’

‘You’re right, officer. And I’m not going to try to argue my way out of this one. Let me say this: you fellows do a fine job. I’ve always said so. So I can’t complain when I’m found out myself, now can I? But in my own defence, I wouldn’t be standing here like this if there was any other way on this earth. Believe me, I wouldn’t. Now without taking anything away from you, or without trying to stop you from doing a proper job, will you give me permission to tell you how I came to be here, like this, on the Queen’s highway and all that?’

The officer blinked very slowly. ‘Try me,’ he said.

A few minutes later Duncan got back in the car, still smiling.

‘Did he book you?’ Lorna said.

‘Nope.’

‘What did you say to him?’

‘What did I say to him? He’s a racing fan. I gave him a winner.’

‘You did? Isn’t that a bribe?’

Duncan toed the accelerator and got another big-cat squeal out of the engine before pulling on to the motorway. ‘Oh no. I just told him I was a jockey and that I was late for the two thirty at Doncaster and I was riding a mare called Trojan’s Trumpet and that it was guaranteed to at least get a place but that I needed to get there and that I was really sorry. That’s all I said.’

‘He went off pretty quick.’

‘Oh yes. He’s off now to find the nearest bookie.’

She looked at Duncan with a mixture of admiration and disapproval. ‘How do you do it?’

‘How do I do what?’

‘That. People like you, doesn’t matter where you fall, you come up smelling of roses, don’t you? How do you do it?’

‘Ah,’ he smiled. ‘If only that were true.’ He pulled out into the fast lane and put his foot down to the board.

Doesn’t matter where you fall
, she’d said. He’d fallen off horses enough times, that much was certain. He’d forgotten falling off more times than he remembered. Duncan started riding when he was five and owned his first pony shortly after that first day at the races. He’d ridden gymkhanas and juvenile events until he was impatient for the real thing. He was always falling off. But it wasn’t all roses.

Keeping a small training concern going was hard for his old man. It broke your heart and it broke your back. They had occasional help but mostly they had to do everything themselves. Even so, his old man always put Duncan before himself.

Then one year things started to look up. His dad’s hard work began to pay off and in one great season he had a slew of point-to-point winners. Then in the next season he started competing with the National Hunt big boys. He had winners at Cheltenham, took fourth place over the giant fences of the celebrated Grand National and finished a great run with victories at Punchestown in Ireland and at Sandown. People started looking their way. Owners were always dissatisfied if their expensive animals weren’t pulling in the prizes, and it was easy and lazy to blame the trainer; and so one or two owners were always moving their horses along. Some started to come to Duncan’s father.

And one or two big-time trainers didn’t like it. Duncan wasn’t aware – at the time – how easy it was to make serious enemies in horse racing. Ugly enemies.

At the track, the stewards pointed him to the car park reserved for owners and trainers. With the Lamborghini purring, he crawled into the parking area. He could see Kerry, already in his jockey’s silk, standing outside the entrance, puffing on a cigarette and anxiously looking the other way. He slipped on some dark glasses and inched the motor as close as he could to Kerry and wound down the window. Kerry glanced over. He obviously didn’t recognise Duncan in his shades, nor the car, because he looked away again. Duncan hit the horn.