The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  * * *

  Everything Cassie had learned she put in her next letter to Joel. In return he wrote back to say the progress he had reportedly been making already was continuing for now with the addition of Mike Gold’s name to the list he had been able to establish a full list of all those people with some sort of grudge who had either had some direct connection with Cassie, Claremore or Tyrone. Joel’s list read as follows:

  Leonora

  Leonora’s mother

  Herr Brandt

  de Vendrer

  Tom McMahon

  Mark Carter-James (?)

  Mike Gold

  Better still, he had established a correlation between Brandt and Cassie’s defaulting insurers. The company was wholly owned by one of Brandt’s own subsidiary companies, Brandt having turned himself into quite an active player in the livestock insurance game. Obviously, Joel wrote, like most things to which Herr Brandt turned his hand, it was more in his rather than his clients’ interest.

  That makes perfect sense, Cassie wrote back. I’ve checked the records and in fact when I was training for Brandt it was he who persuaded me to change my insurers, putting all my horses in the care of the company who handled all his business. I had them thoroughly checked out and it seemed to make perfect sense at the time, particularly since they offered such competitive rates with no apparent drawbacks. They paid up and on time, too. I never had one moment’s worry with them whenever we had a claim on a horse. Just goes to show, right? You throw back the little fries and sit and wait for the big one.

  As for your list – Leonora, Leonora’s mother, Brandt, de Vendrer, Tom McMahon and Mike Gold – even the Carter-James – yes, it all makes a kind of sense, an awful sense let’s face it because every one of these people has some sort of axe to grind, but what connects them? And if something does, how do we prove this connection? Leonora we know all about, but yet I can’t see her going the full hog and fixing up to kidnap the horse. You were right about that – that isn’t her style. She couldn’t organise that famous party in a brewery, I agree, and although her mother would have been simply furious to have been denied a share in The Nightingale’s syndication, I reckon she’d have looked for vengeance some other way, Von Wagner fashion. Brandt sure – I know he blamed me for not running my horses to suit him, that is either running them over the wrong distances until they’d come down in the h’cap so as he could get a good price about them, or simply not letting them run to their form until he was ready to back. But it wasn’t my fault he ended up in gaol, unless he was banking on the money he hoped to make gambling on his horses. He certainly never forgave me when The Donk (a particularly good horse I bought him) won at long odds unbacked.

  Then there’s de Vendrer. Well I told you all about him. He’s a sadist, a fascist and hated it seems by everyone who knows him. He told me his first wife died tragically but in fact she killed herself because he treated her so terribly and yes – I humiliated him in front of his staff by locking him in his closet when I made my famous escape. He has reason enough to hate me, but then my guess is he probably hates all women. But there is one thing which would keep him on the list as a prime suspect and that is where I first met him. I first met him at (wait for it) Leonora’s, would you believe? So there may well be wheels within wheels here.

  Mark Carter-James: well I have to say I think he’s capable of anything, but then I would have to ask why? Jo thinks he and his father have some longstanding grudge against me – which sort of makes sense in an absurd chauvinistic way. Even so he and his father are last on my list because of the lack of any recognizable motive, but don’t strike them off at any cost – not yet at least.

  Mike Gold: yes well here we have suspect number one, obviously, even though as you always tease me, I maintained that the bookies didn’t do it. But who else? We now have a motive for him, revenging the father, and the Golds being Irish we’re looking at another form of the Cosa Nostra, wouldn’t you say? If you’d seen the way he looked at me at the races, you’d have seen real hate. And by now it won’t just be because of what happened his father; it’ll be Tyrone’s ongoing success, mine, and The Nightingale, because Nightie must have cost the bookmakers plenty of money during his racing career. People like Gold don’t like horses. Well, they do – they like losing horses. But what they don’t like is winning horses, particularly consistent winners, and particularly the sort of horses whose form is so watertight that as soon as the ante posts lists opén the real players wade in. How they must have hated The Nightingale, just think! And I suppose they might even just have had nightmares about the sort of progeny he might have sired. So all in all I’d say somewhere in that list we have the person (or persons) responsible for what happened to the horse. The only thing is, how do we prove it????

  And while you’re at it, could you put that great mind of yours to work also to find out how they’re still managing to get to horses? Even in yards as secure as this, and with travel arrangements apparently watertight they still got to Wally, you bet (we’re still awaiting the results of the official dope tests). What are they using? And by whatever method?

  By the way – I was really intrigued by your postscript. What made you suspect that the infamous photograph of Nightie when kidnapped was not taken in Switzerland after all? Was it just the logistics?

  ‘It was just a hunch apparently,’ Cassie told Niall when they were discussing the subject over coffee at one of their daily meetings. ‘Joel got to thinking why take the horse at Ascot, fly him out to Switzerland somehow, either in a private cargo plane or else as substitute for a horse left behind—’

  ‘Why leave a good or even not so good horse behind?’ Niall said. ‘And where do you leave it? Fine, so it’s not such a great horse, it belongs to one of the villains, and they leave it with someone else in on the act, but what you’re saying, Cassie, is why go to all the trouble of taking it to Switzerland?’

  ‘There’d be a point,’ Cassie replied, replenishing her coffee cup from the cafetière, ‘if they were either going to kill the horse and bury it without trace, or if they’d been going to hold it to ransom. But they did neither. They castrated the horse and returned him here. So what Joel reasoned was who would go to all the bother to fly the most famous stallion in the world out by plane to somewhere in Europe just to castrate him, keep him for a while from sheer malice and then fly him all the way back to Ireland, box him out to Claremore and leave him turned loose in a local lane. It didn’t make sense, not one bit of it.’

  ‘What they must have done was take the horse at Ascot and either hide him away somewhere in England till they thought the heat was off,’ Niall surmised, ‘then either box him back by ferry or fly him over when one of the bastards was bringing some other horses into the country. That’d be easily enough done, would it not? But then what about that photograph? The one that Joel said placed them definitely in Switzerland because of some tell tale codemark on the front page of the newspaper or whatever?’

  ‘Joel had one of his contacts blow it up to about one foot square to see whether or not it was genuine,’ Cassie replied. ‘And sure enough, what did they find? The horizontal line that runs under the edition number and the dateline wasn’t true. In fact it was very untrue. When the photo was enlarged you could see two lines.’

  ‘Meaning the top of the newspaper as seen in the photograph had been stuck on? Over the paper underneath?’

  ‘Exactly, Niall. To make it look as though they were in Switzerland.’

  ‘Sure. That’s perfectly possible, I’ll grant you that. But if they really were say in England, or even back over here – how in hell could they get the front page of a foreign edition of that day’s Times?’

  ‘They could have had one flown in, but given the logistics it would have been much easier to have had a copy faxed to them,’ Cassie replied. ‘Not the whole paper, just the portion of the banner which marks the edition. Then all they had to do was paste it onto their own edition and if they did it well enough on a polaro
id who’s going to see the joins? Joel got a friend to try it in his office on a plain paper fax machine, with a nice thin adhesive and a bog standard land camera. He said unless you blew it up to about six times the size, you’d never know the difference. So at least that’s one part of the mystery solved. And brings everything a lot closer to home.’

  ‘As far as possible suspects go, you mean?’

  ‘I think as far as suspects go, Niall, we’re looking at a conspiracy between a possible four, five, maybe half a dozen people or more. But the more I think about it, the more I get this feeling that the whole enterprise was masterminded by someone who’s done this sort of thing before. Or things very similar.’

  A few days later they got the results of the official dope test run on Big Wallow. It was negative.

  ‘How could it be negative?’ Josephine demanded as she and Cassie drove down later that morning to school The Nightingale. ‘If a horse is doped, and particularly as doped as you reckon Wally was, then how can it not show up on an official blood test?’

  ‘Because as Niall’s always pointing out, nowadays some of the most effective stoppers they use leave absolutely no trace whatsoever anywhere, blood, urine, kidneys, droppings, you name it,’ Cassie sighed. ‘There was a whole report in one of the racing papers only last year saying that the security officers at the English Jockey Club were completely baffled, although they’d be the last to admit it publicly. The dopers have had various substances for years, so the rumour goes, which are not virtually but totally undetectable.’

  ‘Great,’ Josephine nodded. ‘So not only doesn’t anyone know what they use, they don’t even know how they do it. I mean how does anyone get past watertight security? If it was some thriller or something they’d have some fantastic gadgetry or soluble capsules hidden inside the horses’ bits which dissolve as soon as they come in to contact with saliva or some such rubbish. But this isn’t some piece of hokum, is it? This is serious villainry, with serious guys shooting up decent horses and in so doing almost killing some of them.’

  ‘Your father always said as far as a horse that’s been got at goes, forget it,’ Cassie remarked.

  ‘Does that mean Wally’s no good any more?’

  ‘Probably.’

  Josephine swore.

  ‘Joel once said – this was before Wally, of course – this was sometime during the summer. Anyway he maintains it has to be someone on the inside,’ Cassie said, turning from the wheel to look at her daughter for a moment. ‘Naturally I refused to believe it—’

  ‘I should think so too,’ Josephine agreed. ‘Particularly with your staff. You couldn’t have a more loyal lot.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Cassie said. ‘But that’s really why I got so annoyed with Joel, because of course I knew he had to be right. If you think about it, anyone really seriously trying to stop a horse isn’t going to leave it to chance, are they? They’re not going to wait to see if they get a moment on the racecourse to slip the horse a Mickey Finn in whatever shape or form the modern equine Mickey Finn comes. It’s too risky. You might not get it done – in fact you probably won’t. We’re talking about people stopping horses because a lot of money’s at stake, thousands of pounds, possibly even hundreds of thousands of pounds. Whoever’s behind it, they’ll want to make sure that horse is stopped so they’re not going to leave one damn’ thing to chance.’

  ‘Yes, but someone inside Claremore?’ Josephine said in disbelief. ‘Come on, Mums – who?’

  ‘Something else your father used to say was follow the man home,’ Cassie replied. ‘Meaning we think we know everything there is to know about the people we employ. But really we know very little. We don’t know what pressures they might be under, financially or personally, nor do we really know how they see us. What they think of us.’

  ‘Your staff think the world of you and you know it.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I was thinking only the other day that just lately there are always a few I don’t know that much about. I mean I always have to take on at least one or two new faces every season when someone leaves to get married or have a baby, or because they’ve been enticed away by the promise of much more money at one of the big English yards. And it takes time for them to settle in and for Liam and myself to assess them fully.’

  ‘Who, for instance?’

  ‘This lad Phelim O’Connell, if you want an example. He’s new to the yard, yet he was looking after Wally at Ascot. Obviously Liam must think enough of him to give him such a responsible job, but we don’t really know everything about him. You can never know everything about the people who work for you. Even their references which we check are often “adjusted”, if you like. I’m not saying it was him, Jo. What I am saying is even in a yard like ours which is after all more like a family, you can’t follow every one of them home. All it takes is for one of the lads to get into a scrape.’

  ‘When aren’t lads in a scrape, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Precisely. I mean, look – they look at the racecard and they see the owners getting anything up to quarter of a million in prize money. Even some bread and butter race at an all-weather track’s worth four or five thousand. Even the horses they look after have a more expensive wardrobe than their own. They’re never going to make the sort of money people dream of, which they see people making leading up horses. The only way – and I’m only talking about the ones who aren’t satisfied with their lot – the only way they’re going to see big money is either by becoming a top flight jockey themselves—’

  ‘Unlikely—’

  ‘There’s a chance, but a very outside one,’ Cassie returned. ‘And the only other way they’re going to get rich is by falling off the straight and narrow. They’ll be able to justify it, too. They’ll tell themselves there can’t be any harm in just stopping one horse for one race. So the rich owner misses out on the prize money. So what. Either the horse has collected enough already, or they’ll kid themselves it’ll come out and win again—’

  ‘Which according to you it won’t—’

  ‘Right. But they don’t tell themselves that. They look at what they’re being offered just to stop a horse once, with a dope that leaves no trace so they’re not going to get caught, are they? They probably get offered a good few thousand pounds. If it’s a big race like the Ascot one with a lot of money gambled ante post they might even make five figures, provided the horse loses. I pay my stable staff over the odds and I give them every home comfort. But all it takes is one. Just one bad egg.’

  ‘And that’s what you reckoned happened to Wally? You think one of the lads got at him.’

  ‘I think someone inside Claremore got at him. I can’t see any other possible explanation.’

  ‘That’s terrible. That must make you feel terrible.’

  ‘As a matter of fact it does,’ Cassie replied despairingly. ‘As a matter of fact it makes me feel as though I want to give it all up.’

  On an altogether more cheerful note, The Nightingale did a thrilling piece of work, galloping with so much of his old zest that when she got off him Josephine was moved to announce that if such a thing were possible he would win another Derby.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Cassie laughed. ‘I don’t want to pour water on the fire but I’d say just from looking at him he’s a good stone inferior to when he had all his equipment. He’d still murder most horses, but there are quite a few around now who could probably take the race off him.’

  ‘You weren’t sitting on him,’ Josephine retorted. ‘I had a ton of horse under me. As soon as you ask him to pick up even just a little, whoosh.’

  ‘Well, that’s what matters. Even if he’s slower than he was, if he hasn’t lost the ability to quicken, that’s all that matters.’

  ‘I can’t wait to do it for real.’

  ‘Well you’re going to have to,’ Cassie replied, pulling the horse’s head up by its bridle from the grass. ‘And that’s quite enough for you, old boy. We can’t have you getting fat on us.’

 
‘You don’t want him getting too thin either,’ Josephine added.

  ‘No, we don’t want that either.’

  ‘Not like the way some of the state of the art trainers produce horses at Lambourn and Newmarket.’

  ‘Certainly not, Jo.’

  ‘Some of those smart-arse young trainers. They think the way to train a horse is to have it looking like a toast rack. That’s why I like Kevin England. They all laugh at him for the way he dresses, and because they think he runs his horses out of their depth in Group races, but not only do his so-called pudgy horses win, but they keep on winning. Right through the season – and the next.’

  ‘Now if that concludes today’s lecture on Training My Way by Josephine Rosse—’

  ‘All I was saying is we don’t want to run Nightie up too thin.’

  ‘And all I’m saying to you is that I’ve been doing this for so long I could do it in my sleep, but I won’t. Instead I’ll just simply agree and say No of course we don’t, sweetheart. And I was only joking about the lecture.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Josephine said, and grinned, ‘or I’ll throw the race.’

  Happily for Josephine her relationship with Gareth Plunkett was a lot less argumentative than the one she enjoyed with her mother. Gareth had obviously grown very serious as far as his intentions towards Josephine went and when he wasn’t at Claremore to work on Cassie’s legal situation he visited Josephine regularly to take her out. Even when he was locked away with Cassie in her study, she often had her work cut out to keep the young man’s attention and it amused her to watch his eyes wandering, particularly when Josephine, dressed in her riding out breeches, boots and figure-tight polo-neck jumper, kept wandering past the window.

  ‘You said you had bad news, Gareth,’ Cassie said to him one day in late August.

  ‘I have, Mrs Rosse,’ Gareth agreed, trying valiantly to avoid looking at Josephine who had appeared to dead-head some rose bushes right outside the window. ‘We only heard this morning, but apparently your bloodstock insurers have shut up shop and done a bolt.’