Whip Hand Part 44

The Security Section had its own corridor of smaller workadays offices, and down there without difficulty we eased into Eddy Keith's.

None of the internal doors seemed to be locked, and I supposed there was in fact little to steal, bar electric typewriters and other such trifles. Eddy Keith's filing cabinets all slid open easily, and so did the drawers in his desk.

In the strong evening sunlight we sat and read the reports on the extra syndicates that Jacksy had told me of. Eleven horses whose names I had written down, when he'd gone, so as not to forget them. Eleven syndicates apparently checked and accepted by Eddy, with Rammileese's two registered-owner pals appearing inexorably on all of them: and as with the previous four, headed by Philip Friarly, there was nothing in the files themselves to prove anything one way or the other. They were carefully, meticulously presented, openly ready for inspection.

There was one odd thing: the four Friarly files were all missing.

We looked through the desk. Eddy kept in it few personal objects: a battery razor, indigestion tablets, a comb, and about sixteen packs of book matches, all from gambling clubs. Otherwise there was simple stationery, pens, a pocket calculator and a desk diary. His engagements, past and future, were merely down as the race meetings he was due to attend.

I looked at my watch. Seven forty-five. Chico nodded and began putting the files back neatly into their drawers. Frustrating, I thought. An absolute blank.

When we were ready to go I took a quick look into a filing cabinet marked 'Personnel' which contained slim factual files about everyone presently employed by the Jockey Club, and everyone receiving its pensions. I looked for a file marked 'Mason', but someone had taken that, too.

'Coming?' Chico said.

I nodded regretfully. We left Eddy's office as we'd found it and went back to the door to the stairway. Nothing stirred. The headquarters of British racing lay wide open to intruders, who were having to go empty away.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

On Friday afternoon, depressed on many counts, I drove comparatively slowly to Newmarket.

The day itself was hot, the weather reportedly stoking up to the sort of intense heatwave one could get in May, promising a glorious summer that seldom materialised. I drove in shirtsleeves with the window open, and decided to go to Hawaii and lie on the beach for a while, like a thousand years.

Martin England was out in his stable yard when I got there, also in shirtsleeves and wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.

'Sid!' he said, seeming truly pleased. 'Great. I'm just starting evening stables. You couldn't have timed it better.'

We walked round the boxes together in the usual ritual, the trainer visiting every horse and checking its health, the guest admiring and complimenting and keeping his tongue off the flaws. Martin's horses were middling to good, like himself, like the majority of trainers, the sort that provided the bulk of all racing, and of all jockeys' incomes.

'A long time since you rode for me,' he said, catching my thought.

'Ten years or more.'

'What do you weigh, now, Sid?'

'About ten stone, stripped.' Thinner, in fact, than when I'd stopped racing.

'Pretty fit, are you?'

'Same as usual,' I said. 'I suppose.'

He nodded, and we went from the fillies' side of the yard to the colts. He had a good lot of two-year-olds, it seemed to me, and he was pleased when I said so.

'This is Flotilla,' he said, going to the next box. 'He's three. He runs in the Dante at York next Wednesday, and if that's O.K. he'll go for the Derby.'

'He looks well,' I said.

Martin gave a carrot to his hope of glory. There was pride in his kind, fiftyish face, not for himself but for the shining coat and quiet eye and waiting muscles of the splendid four-legged creature. I ran my hand down the glossy neck, and patted the dark bay shoulder, and felt the slender, rock-hard forelegs.

'He's in grand shape,' I said. 'Should do you proud.'

He nodded with the thoroughly normal hint of anxiety showing under the pride, and we continued down the line, patting and discussing, and feeling content. Perhaps this was what I really needed, I thought: forty horses and hard work and routine. Planning and administering and paperwork. Pleasure enough in preparing a winner, sadness enough in seeing one lose. A busy, satisfying, out-of-doors lifestyle, a businessman on the back of a horse.

I thought of what Chico and I had been doing for months. Chasing villains, big and small. Wiping up a few messy bits of the racing industry. Getting knocked about, now and then. Taking our wits into minefields and fooling with people with shotguns.

It would be no public disgrace if I gave it up and decided to train. A much more normal life for an ex-jockey, everyone would think. A sensible, orderly decision, looking forward to middle and old age. I alone... and Trevor Deansgate... would know why I'd done it. I could live for a long time, knowing it.

I didn't want to.

In the morning at seven-thirty I went down to the yard in jodhpurs and boots and a pull-on jersey shirt. Early as it was, the air was warm, and with the sounds and bustle and smell of the stables all around my spirits rose from bedrock and hovered at somewhere about knee level.

Martin, standing with a list in his hand, shouted good morning, and I went down to join him to see what he'd given me to ride. There was a five-year-old, up to my weight, that he'd think just the job.

Flotilla's lad was leading him out of his box, and I watched him admiringly as I turned towards Martin.

'Go on, then,' he said. There was amus.e.m.e.nt in his face, enjoyment in his eyes.

'What?' I said.

'Ride Flotilla.'

I swung towards the horse, totally surprised. His best horse, his Derby hope, and I out of practice and with one hand.

'Don't you want to?' he said. 'He'd've been yours ten years ago as of right. And my jockey's gone to Ireland to race at the Curragh. It's either you or one of my lads, and to be honest, I'd rather have you.'

I didn't argue. One doesn't turn down a chunk of heaven. I thought he was a bit mad, but if that was what he wanted, so did I. He gave me a leg-up, and I pulled the stirrup leathers to my own length, and felt like an exile coming home.

'Do you want a helmet?' he said, looking around vaguely as if expecting one to materialise out of the tarmac.

'Not for this.'

He nodded. 'You never have.' And he himself was wearing his usual checked cloth cap, in spite of the heat. I had always preferred riding bareheaded except in races: something to do with liking the feel of lightness and moving air.

'What about a whip?' he said. He knew that I'd always carried one automatically, because a jockey's whip was a great aid to keeping a horse balanced and running straight: a tap down the shoulder did the trick, and one pulled the stick through from hand to hand, as required. I looked at the two hands in front of me, I thought that if I took a whip and fumbled it, I might drop it: and I needed above all to be efficient.

I shook my head. 'Not today.'

'Right, then,' he said. 'Let's be off.'

With me in its midst the string pulled out of the yard and went right through Newmarket town on the horse-walks along the back roads, out to the wide sweeping Limekilns gallops to the north. Martin, himself riding the quiet five-year-old, pulled up there beside me.

'Give him a sharpish warm-up canter for three furlongs, and then take him a mile up the trial ground, upsides with Gulliver. It's Flotilla's last work-out before the Dante, so make it a good one. O.K.?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Wait until I get up there,' he pointed, 'to watch.'

'Yep.'