Warned Off (3 page)

I
found Bergmark at a run-down house on the outskirts of Nottingham. The gate was
broken and swung both ways as I pushed through it. Bergmark watched me from his
wheelchair at the front door, a heavy coat and flat cap protecting him from the
cold and an old blanket covering his legs. Allowing for his three or four days’
beard growth he looked to be in his mid-forties.

As I walked up the path toward him the
door opened and his sister came out carrying washing in a red plastic basket
with a vertical split in one side which opened and closed like a fish’s mouth
as she came down the short ramp.

When she saw me she stepped in front of
her brother’s wheelchair, shielding him.

‘What do you want? she asked.

 I stopped a few yards from her.
‘Is it okay if I have a word with Mr Bergmark?’

‘No, he’s not seeing anybody.’ She was
big and serious, maybe five years older than her brother.

‘It won’t take long. I’ve come all the
way up from London,’ I lied.

‘Well just turn round and go all the way
back,’ she said. Bergmark spoke. ‘It’s okay, Margaret, let him in.’ I saw his
hand on her hip, easing her aside. She scowled and stamped back into the house.
I offered my hand. ‘Eddie Malloy.’ He shook it.

‘Thought I recognised the face.’

There was the trace of a foreign accent.
‘Walter, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘That’s right.’

‘How have you been?’ I asked

‘I remember you, you were a fair jock.’

‘Thanks. Look, I’m doing a favour for a
friend and ...’

‘Used to ride Sandown well, as I
recall.’

‘Yes, thanks ... Listen, Walter, I ...’

‘You got sent down, didn’t you?’ He was
staring into the distance and hadn’t looked at me once.

‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘Got you in the end, eh?’

His questions were rhetorical. I might
as well not have been there.

‘Walter, do you remember the man who did
this to you?’

‘I landed a real nice touch on your horse
at Sandown once, Whitbread day it was.’

I sat on the ramp beside his wheelchair.
Our eyes were on the same level. ‘Look Walter, I’m trying to help catch these
guys, I need ...’

‘Wasn’t it the big race? You finished second,
didn’t you? Got it on an objection?’ I spent another five minutes on the same
lines with no result. Either he was putting on a hell of a good act or they’d
screwed the guy’s mind up. He was still rambling when I left. ‘They’d give her
a gallop too many, too, by mistake and she still won easing up ...  funny
old game, eh?’

Yes, Mr Bergmark, a funny old game.

I decided to drive to Kent and find out
if Kristar Rask would be any more helpful. It was pointless putting it off till
tomorrow; the time with Bergmark had been wasted and I didn’t want to waste any
more.

Rask lived right on the shore. I got
there just after 7 p.m. It was dark and the wind blew cold off the sea as I
approached the unlit cottage. The curtains were drawn on the front windows. The
doorbell was a mechanical pull type. The chimes sounded, slow and hollow. I
waited.

I rang again. Nothing. I went round the
back. The rear windows were heavily curtained and I tried looking for gaps,
searching for some light inside. There was none. Not my day for meeting people.

I was surprised Rask wasn’t at home. As
far as I knew he lived alone except for his new guide dog. Mac’s file had said
Rask had become a virtual recluse since being blinded. He’d dropped what
friends he’d had and if he went out at all it was only to walk on the nearby
beach.

Where was he then? I decided to find a
pub and pass a couple of hours before coming back to check again.

The landlord of the Ancient Mariner had
enough time on his hands to be throwing darts at the board in the corner. He
had no opponent. Only two other men were in the bar. One was slumped in a chair
by the gas-fire either asleep or dead and the other sat eating nuts and reading
The Times
. The owner put down the darts long enough to pour me a whisky,
fold the fiver I gave him into a wad in his pocket and give me change. He came
back my side of the bar and resumed his mechanical throwing.

‘Fancy a game?’ he asked.

‘Don’t play it,’ I said.

He  threw quickly. ‘Pity,’ he said,
recovering the darts.

‘Mmm.’

He threw again. ‘We’ve got a good pub
team here, y’know,’ he said, dropping a dart as he pulled them out.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yep.’

No more chat, six more darts.

‘On holiday?’ he asked, throwing again.

‘Visiting a friend,’ I said.

‘Local?’

‘A mile or so down the front, Kristar Rask.’

‘A close friend?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘He killed himself yesterday morning.’

The
woman who’d been training Rask’s guide dog had found the Labrador whining below
his dangling feet as he hung by its leather lead from the doorway.

She told the police Rask had become
increasingly depressed since his ‘accident’ and the police said they were not
seeking anyone else in connection with Rask’s death. There was no suicide note.

Rask was dead. Bergmark had a mental
block. The only lead left was the jockey, Alan Harle who’d been seen with the
two men I was looking for. I hadn’t wanted to approach Harle so early as there
was a chance he was involved, but it seemed I’d little choice. I would just
have to be careful.

I tried to contact him through a mutual
jockey-friend who said Harle was in France, looking after some horses for his
guv’nor. I was told he’d be back for the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham, but
that was eleven days away.

Eleven days with nothing to do but contemplate
what it would be like to be on a racecourse again, the course I’d loved above
all others, back among the people I’d known so well. I wondered how I’d handle
it, how I’d cope, how many people would recognise me and turn away. I’d been an
outcast since my teens and sometimes wondered if I was just too scared of life.

At
last the Cheltenham festival came round. I got there early on day one and went
to the Arkle bar and ordered whisky. The place was already beginning to fill
but I found a space by the window and unfolded the
Racing Post
. The
headline said: ‘Spartan Sandal to Trample Rivals’. This was their tip for the
Champion Hurdle, the biggest race of the season for two-mile hurdlers. There
had been a time when I’d have known every runner’s form by heart, but these
past five years I’d deliberately deprived myself of all racing information.

I had a lot of catching-up to do. I read
on: ‘Spartan Sandal looks to have a favourite’s chance, in what appears to be a
sub-standard Champion Hurdle, of landing the prize for the Essex stable of Jim
Arlott.’

A piece near the end of the page took my
attention. ‘Castle Douglas, one of the outsiders, will be a first runner in the
race for second season trainer, Basil Roscoe, who enjoys the exclusive
patronage of the mysterious Louis Perlman, with whose horses he’s done so well
this year. A first ride in the race for Alan Harle, Castle Douglas would have
to show mighty improvement to figure here.

‘Still, if the miracle happened, surely Mr
Perlman would at last come out of hiding to receive the trophy from the Queen
Mother. Despite 23 winners this season Perlman has yet to be seen on a
racecourse, or anywhere else for that matter.’

I’d never heard of Perlman or his
trainer Roscoe and, back when I was riding, Harle wouldn’t have had a chance of
a mount in the Champion Hurdle. He hadn’t been getting fifty rides a season
five years ago.

Drifting around the course over the next
couple of hours I saw some familiar faces. A couple of them stopped to talk,
some nodded, embarrassed, and a handful ignored me. To the ones who spoke I
told them that since my ban was now up I planned to come racing occasionally
for old time’s sake.

An owner I used to ride for asked if I’d
be getting my licence back, too. I told him I doubted that very much and he
touched my arm and looked sympathetic. Pity riled me but I appreciated the
gesture.

Twenty minutes before the off of the
Champion Hurdle I was in the stand. This was a  race I wanted to see from
start to finish.

Spartan Sandal and Kiri jumped the last
together and were having a hell of a tussle till halfway up the hill. That’s
when Alan Harle brought along on the outside the horse I’d been watching
throughout, Castle Douglas. With Harle riding as though the devil were at his
heels, he drove his mount past the battling pair halfway up the run-in and won
going away by four lengths.

Twenty-to-one winners of the Champion
Hurdle are seldom greeted with cheers by race-goers and Harle’s was no
exception. He galloped past the post to cries of ‘What the hell’s that?’ and
walked back in applauded by small polite sections of the crowd. Raising my
binoculars I focused on Harle’s face. He was wiping his nose on his sleeve and
smiling. Leaning forward he slapped the horse three times on the neck and
ruffled the delighted groom’s hair.

Harle had certainly prospered since I’d
left racing. He’d stumbled into the sport as a kid straight from the orphanage
and had been riding for almost a decade when I first came on the scene, round
the gaffs mostly, on bad jumpers nobody else would sit on. He’d suffered more
than his share of falls but had always seemed to bounce back. From what I
remembered of his personality he was an easy-going type who took opportunity
where he found it.

Harle had never been noticeably
ambitious or dedicated. To see him come back in on a Champion Hurdler just
didn’t seem right.

People hurried from the stand to watch
the winner being unsaddled. I went against the flow, climbing to the top level
to look down on the paddock.

Harle dismounted to hearty
congratulations from a camel-coated man and a slim blonde in a tight black
skirt. He was probably the trainer, Roscoe. The woman would be either his wife
or girlfriend. I raised my binoculars. Roscoe was fairly young, early thirties
maybe, and, from his  styled hair to his brown Gucci shoes, impeccably
dressed. Arms out of the sleeves, he wore his coat like a cloak.

A handful of pressmen surrounded him and
the blonde who looked older, maybe forty. I tilted the glasses slowly: good
legs, good figure, good dentist. Her mouth got a lot of exercise between
smiling, pouting and talking and I decided she was Roscoe’s girlfriend.

The MC for the presentation put me right
when he picked up the microphone. ‘Your Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen,
unfortunately the winning owner, Mr Louis Perlman, cannot be here today and so
I now call on Mrs Basil Roscoe to receive the Champion Hurdle Challenge Cup on
his behalf.’

The blonde minced forward, her stiletto
heels murdering a few worms as she crossed the lawn. Her husband watched,
smiling smugly, and I wondered what kind of owner Louis Perlman was and what
pleasure he took from his horses if he never watched them run.

What was Roscoe’s past history? He was a
new one on me. The press bar was only one floor below me so I put my glasses
down and went looking for some information.

I found Joe Lagota of
The Sportsman
in the press bar and he told me little more about Harle and Roscoe than the
Racing
Post
article had. He said Harle had only been riding for Roscoe for about
six months. According to Joe none of the press guys liked Roscoe mainly because
he’d never tell them anything. They’d all given up asking about his owner,
Louis Perlman.

When Joe started asking
me
questions about my interest, I knew it was time to leave.

There wouldn’t
be a chance of getting near Harle while he was celebrating so I bought a card
from one of the stalls, scribbled a congratulatory message and asked a passing
jockey to give it to him.

I walked on through to the ring, the
bookmakers’ stronghold. The next race was fifteen minutes away and I had
decided to go on to the course and watch it from ground level at the last
fence. A stroll among the betting boys would pass the time nicely.

I knew a few of the bookies and some
nodded recognition as I wandered among them. None looked surprised to see me. I
walked to the rails where the real big money boys bet, most of their customers
were known to them by name and bank account number.

At the end of this line was an old and very
familiar face which opened in a wide smile when it saw me.

‘Eddie, my old son, come ‘ere!’ The
battered voice hadn’t changed. I walked up smiling and shook hands with Wilbur
Slacke. He clasped my hands in both of his which were cold and white with thick
blue veins.

‘Still skinning the punters then, Will?’
I said.

‘Just enough to keep the wolf from the
door as usual, Eddie, though the bugger’s getting a bit too close to the front
gate recently!’

‘Does that mean you’ll have to sell one of
the Mercs? My heart bleeds.’

He smiled even wider, showing his own
teeth still. His eyes watered in the cold wind as he stepped rheumatically off
the stool to lean on the railings. ‘How’s business?’ I asked.

‘Not so bad, Eddie. Can’t complain
really.’

‘The big winner must have been a good
one for you?’

‘Brilliant result. Best one I can
remember in the Champion for a long time. We all won a few quid except that big
bugger at the end.’ He nodded down the line of bookies toward a sour looking
character handing someone a wad of notes as thick as a sandwich.

‘The big guy with the black hair?’

Will nodded, still smiling. ‘A right
mean bastard.’

‘I don’t remember him from when I was
riding.’

Will coughed raggedly and turned away to
spit. ‘Nah,’ he said, ‘Johnny-come-lately from up North, shouldn’t even be
here. He’s never been on the waiting list for that pitch. Claims he’s operating
it on behalf of Sammy Wainwright but I’m sure he bought Sammy off. Still, he’s
took a few doings with results recently so maybe he’ll get skint soon and crawl
back into the hole he came out of.’

I’d never heard Will call anyone down so
much. I looked at the guy again. He was taking money this time but didn’t seem
any happier.

‘What’s his name?’ I asked.

‘Stoke. Howard Stoke.’ He started
coughing again and I slapped his back gently. When he stopped his face was
crimson and his eyes full of water.

‘A nice glass of malt would quieten that
down,’ I said.

‘Likely.’ He nodded.

‘Half a dozen would kill it stone dead.’

His smile returned. ‘And me with it.’

Out on the course, away from the crowds,
the grass was lush on good to soft ground which gave an inch under my heels. I
stood by the open ditch way over on the far side of the track. The black birch
was tightly packed between the white wings that led the horses in. The fence
sloped away, inviting them to jump.

The field approached. Sixteen
thoroughbreds. Eight tons of horse flesh moving at thirty miles an hour.
Watching the leader, a big chestnut, his ears pricked as he came to jump, I
found myself counting the stride in with his jockey ... one, two, three, kick –
up and over he goes.

The rest reach it now, closely grouped,
the jockeys’ colours mixing, meshing with speed. The thunderous hoofbeats shake
the ground and the birch crackles like a long firework as their bellies brush
through. Cameras click and whirr, jockeys shout and whips smack on flesh. They
land, their front feet gouging the turf. Hooves slide and a big brown head goes
low. The rider cries out but his mount recovers. They are last by a length as
the runners gallop away.

Silence now.

Emptiness.

In the depths of depression I head home.