Crisis

by Felix Francis

  I waited in silence. If he wanted to tell me more, he would.

  He did.

  ‘Oliver Chadwick told me I had to buy the two fillies to save his stables. He was overstretched. Too much in debt and his bank was threatening to take away his house.’

  ‘So you bought the horses to help him out?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Sheikh.

  ‘But now you are moving them?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘I bought the horses only because my bloodstock agent convinced me that they were good value for money.’

  ‘Bill Vandufful?’

  ‘Yes. Do you know him?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But Oliver Chadwick told me that Mr Vandufful was the individual who did the bidding for him at the sale last year.’

  ‘He had also bought Prince of Troy for me as a yearling. He recognised the potential without having to pay silly money.’

  What had Oliver told me the previous evening? Sheikh Karim told me he wanted good colts but not at any price. Half a million was my limit.

  I was a little surprised that the Sheikh would be bothered about the amount he paid for a champion racehorse. If magazine rich lists could be believed, he was individually worth more than a few billion, to say nothing of the wealth of his nation that he personally controlled. I thought it was the winning that was important, not the price. Maybe I was wrong.

  ‘Moderation in their leader is important for my people,’ he said, as if he was reading my mind. ‘We have to prepare for the day the oil runs out.’

  ‘But why are you moving the fillies to Declan? Why not to another stable unconnected with the Chadwick family?’

  ‘Vandufful tells me that Oliver has passed Castleton House Stables to the wrong son and that, in time, Declan will prove to be the better trainer of the two.’

  ‘So will you move your other horses to Declan?’ I asked.

  ‘I am content to leave those with Ryan,’ he replied, but there was something about the tone of his voice that made me think that future purchases might go directly to Declan.

  ‘Are you aware there is bad blood between Ryan and Declan?’

  ‘Bad blood between brothers is nothing new to me. It is commonplace in this part of the world.’

  ‘But your moving the horses from one to the other has exacerbated the hostility between them.’

  ‘There is an old Arab saying that sometimes it is necessary to hit a camel with a stick to see if it has any life left in it.’ There was amusement in his voice as if he knew exactly what he’d been doing. It was all a game.

  ‘I just hope your camel didn’t turn into a fire-breathing dragon,’ I said.

  All his amusement evaporated instantly.

  ‘Are you serious?’ the Sheikh asked. ‘Are you saying that the fire was deliberate?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know. We will have to wait for the results of the police investigation.’

  There was another slight pause.

  ‘I want you to stay in Newmarket,’ the Sheikh said. ‘I need you to be my eyes and ears. You will ask questions and determine why my horses died.’

  There was now a degree of desperation in his voice as if he was suddenly afraid that his little game had precipitated the disaster.

  ‘Surely the police will do that,’ I said.

  ‘I do not control the police in your country. You will report directly to me. I will speak with Colonel White to arrange it.’

  ‘How long do you want me to stay here?’ I asked.

  ‘For as long as it takes.’

  Just after eight o’clock, I walked from the hotel down Bury Road and in through the top gate into the new yard.

  Unlike the old, it was not laid out around a central quad but consisted of three parallel American-style stable barns with a fourth sitting at right angles to the other three at the farthest end from the house. Beyond the barns were an automatic horse-walker and a large covered exercise oval set on the far side of a railed paddock. The stable-staff hostel was tucked into the corner of the paddock close to one end of the cross barn.

  I went into the nearest barn.

  It had a wide central concrete walkway running the full length between large open sliding doors at the ends. There were twenty-four stalls in total, twelve on each side of the walkway, six at either end, with tack room, bedding and feed stores located between them in the middle.

  And everywhere there were large NO SMOKING signs in bold black type, threatening instant dismissal for anyone caught doing otherwise.

  I expected the place to be a hive of activity but, while there were plenty of horses standing in their stalls, the only human I could find was one small elderly-looking man busily sweeping the walkway with a stiff brush.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ I asked.

  ‘Warren Hill,’ he replied without stopping his sweeping. ‘Second lot went out about half an hour ago now. First lot today was at six.’

  ‘On the gallops?’ I said, not completely sure of what he was on about.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘Up the Warren Hill polytrack. They’ll be back soon.’ He stopped his sweeping, leaned on the broom and looked me up and down. ‘And who are you, might I ask?’

  ‘Harry Foster,’ I said. ‘I’m here to help Mr Chadwick deal with the fire.’

  ‘Dreadful thing, that fire,’ he said wistfully. ‘Bloody shame.’

  I held out my hand and he shook it, the feel of his palm all leathery and dry from a life outside in the elements.

  ‘I’m Fred Piper,’ said my newfound friend. ‘Been here pretty much all my life. The only one left now from old Mr Chadwick’s time. I don’t ride the horses these days, mind – hips and knees are bloody crocked.’ He grinned briefly, showing me several gaps in his teeth. ‘I just keep the place tidy now. Pass me that muck shovel, will you?’

  I picked up the metal shovel that was leaning against the stable wall and handed it to him. He used it to collect what he’d been sweeping and put it in a wheelbarrow.

  ‘All I’m useful for these days is tidying.’

  He sighed deeply and I thought there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘I’m sure Mr Chadwick is very pleased you are,’ I said.

  ‘Mr Chadwick senior might be,’ Fred said with surprising bitterness, ‘but young Mr Ryan isn’t. Wants me gone at the end of the month. Told me last week he couldn’t afford to pay me wages any more. I said I’d do the job for nothing. I’d be lost without it.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ I asked.

  ‘In the hostel,’ he replied gloomily. ‘Losing my home as well as my job. And no one’s going to give me another, not at my age. Castleton House Stables is all I know.’

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Fifty-nine.’

  He looked much older.

  ‘Where are you going to go?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Fred said. ‘Had hoped Mr Ryan would change his mind, but that won’t happen now. Not with seven less horses to look after. He laid off another two boys this morning. Told them to pack up and go, right there and then when they turned up for work at six o’clock. Bloody disgrace. Back in Mr Chadwick senior’s time we had a lad for every two horses. Treated like royalty, they were. Now it’s four per lad if you’re lucky, maybe five. Same everywhere.’

  ‘Do you have any family?’ I asked.

  ‘These are my family,’ he said, throwing his arm around. ‘These horses and those that went before them.’

  At that point our conversation was interrupted by the return of several other horses into the barn, presumably back from Warren Hill, being led by other stable lads.

  There was no banter at all. The animals were led silently into their stalls and their tack removed. They were given a brief rub-down and a cursory brush followed by having a rug thrown over their backs. Then the lads trudged off to prepare their next horse for the third lot, hardly lifting their eyes from the floor.

  ‘Not a very happy bunch, are they?’ I said to Fred Piper.


  ‘And why would they be?’ he said acidly. ‘They’re worried about their jobs. The yard hasn’t had a winner since Prince of Troy won the Guineas.’

  ‘But that’s only just over a week ago,’ I said.

  ‘A week is an age in racing. Never would have happened in Mr Chadwick senior’s days. Last Saturday, we had five runners at Lingfield with three more at Ascot and none of them were even close. Prince of Troy was our only hope and now he’s gone. Everyone’s wondering who’s next for the chop.’

  ‘How many staff have gone already?’ I asked.

  ‘Half a dozen or so in the past month.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘Some have found jobs with other trainers but many of those are cutting back on lad numbers too. More and more work riders are being used – mostly ex-jocks – which means the lads don’t actually ride the horses so they can spend more time mucking out. Some yards now have six or seven to a single lad. It’s crazy. How can you learn to love them when you’ve got seven to look after?’

  He put out his hand and patted the head of a horse in one of the stalls on my left. The huge creature moved its head up and down as if it were agreeing with him.

  ‘The lads these days don’t seem to care as much as we old-timers do.’

  The age-old gripe, I thought, of the elder towards the younger.

  Was it true?

  Maybe, but were things any worse for that? A racehorse was a working beast, bred and trained to run faster than its neighbour. Surely they weren’t pets to be loved and mollycoddled like a lapdog.

  I personally had never owned an animal of any sort. I’d always had more than enough trouble from the humans in my life without taking on a being that couldn’t sit down and have a rational discussion about anything. Not that any members of my immediate family were in that category anyway.

  My father always started an argument fairly coherently but quickly reverted to type, shouting down anyone with a view different from his.

  If I contradicted him, which I invariably did, he would loudly accuse me of being a ‘stupid boy’ but without the affection and tolerance of Captain Mainwaring to Private Pike in Dad’s Army.

  My mother was scarcely any better. If forty years of marriage to my father had taught her anything, it was to keep her own counsel and say nothing. Especially if she wanted a quiet life.

  The only thing they appeared to agree on was that a move away from my nice secure job in a solicitors’ practice in rural Totnes to the cut-and-thrust, man-eats-man uncertainty of central London was a huge mistake, and very hurtful.

  In spite of what ASW had said at our first meeting, I was now earning more than three times as much as I’d done in Totnes, and I loved my work infinitely more, but that was irrelevant as far as my parents were concerned. They only saw that I had forsaken them for the bright lights of the wicked metropolis.

  And, if I were being honest, I would have to agree that one of my main motivations for seeking a change from the boredom of Totnes was indeed to put as many miles as possible between me and the family home.

  London was far enough away to make a trip home for Sunday lunch very difficult, if not impossible, and I had managed to resist my mother’s pleas to come home for any weekend that wasn’t near Christmas or her birthday.

  But I was not fooling myself. As an only child, I knew that it would come down to me to look after them eventually and, of course, I would then step up to the plate. But, until then, I would keep away as much as possible and hope that, when the Grim Reaper was ready, he would take them both swiftly before they became infirm and incontinent.

  At least my parents had one child to care for them in their dotage. The prospects of me ever becoming a father seemed to be diminishing year on year.

  For several years from my late twenties I’d had a regular but neurotic girlfriend and we had even rented a flat together. The romance had been steady rather than deeply exciting or passionate and had come to a dramatic end one night when I’d taken her to a smart restaurant in Torquay.

  Having gone down on one knee and removed a very moderately priced solitaire diamond ring from my trouser pocket, I had popped the question only to be given a firm ‘Not bloody likely’ for an answer.

  It seems that she had been planning for some time to end our relationship, as she longed for someone more aspirational than a country solicitor for a future husband. Little did she realise that it was her actions that night which spurred me on to seek out Simpson White less than a year later.

  And, if the truth were told, I was more relieved than heartbroken, even at the time. Looking back now, I realise that we weren’t at all suited and I had only asked her to marry me because I naively believed it was the next logical step.

  It had been a lucky escape and I sometimes still lay awake at night in a cold sweat, thanking my lucky stars that she had turned me down.

  I’d moved out of our shared flat that very night and vowed never to ask the question of anyone unless I was absolutely certain that I couldn’t live without her for a single second longer. As a result, however, I’d since had a string of short-term liaisons with various girls, most of which I had finished almost as fast as they had started because I was in search only of Miss Perfect.

  Had I set my sights too high? At the age of thirty-seven was I now in danger of missing out in the matrimonial stakes altogether? Or at least until it was too late to have a family?

  Maybe love and marriage would happen one day, or maybe not. I’d long ago stopped worrying about it and had become quite used to living on my own. In many ways it was preferable, not least in being able to please only myself with regard to what I did and when. I suppose it made me selfish, and I did have a few pangs of guilt when my mother spoke of her intense desire to have grandchildren. She should have had more than one child, I thought, but then the mental image of my parents procreating together quickly put paid to that.

  Perhaps I should be grateful that I existed at all.

  The sound of metal horseshoes clattering on the concrete floor brought me back from my daydreaming and I watched as the third lot were ridden out to exercise on the polytrack up Warren Hill.

  I went in search of Ryan Chadwick.

  6

  I had to go back onto Bury Road to get down to the house as the old yard was still taped off by the police. Hence I was unable to see into the burned-out shell of the stable block, but some drone shots on the breakfast television news had shown that a square tent had been erected inside, the white of its canvas in sharp contrast to the fire-blackened remains.

  I assumed it had been placed over the spot where the human body had been found, about a third of the way along the building from the house.

  The fire engines had finally disappeared from outside the main gate but there were several vehicles still parked close by on the verge. One was a white van with ‘CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION UNIT’ painted in small black letters down each side, and there were two men in full-cover white plastic overalls standing next to the van’s open rear doors, hoods pulled back off their heads and face masks hanging at their throats.

  ‘Find anything?’ I asked them as I walked by.

  They ignored me completely but I wasn’t going to be palmed off that easily.

  ‘I’m Harrison Foster,’ I said. ‘I represent Sheikh Karim. He owned two of the horses killed in the fire including Prince of Troy.’

  They may not have heard of the Sheikh but they certainly had of Prince of Troy. Both of them turned to face me.

  ‘How can we help you, sir?’ one said in a tone that implied he had no intention of actually helping me at all.

  ‘The Sheikh wants to know why his horses died,’ I said. ‘What caused the fire?’

  ‘It’s too early to say,’ the other man replied. ‘We still have tests to carry out in the lab.’

  ‘You must have some idea,’ I said. ‘Was it an accident?’

  ‘Are you implying it wasn’t?’ asked the first man.

  ‘You te
ll me. You’re the ones who’ve been in there. Have you identified the human victim yet?’

  ‘That information will be given out in due course,’ the first man said unhelpfully.

  ‘Who’s your senior officer?’ I asked. ‘Is it still Superintendent Bennett?’

  If they were surprised I knew the name, they didn’t show it.

  ‘He’s in overall charge but our immediate boss is the scene-of-crime officer.’ The man glanced over my left shoulder as he spoke.

  I turned around and saw a third white-overalled individual coming out of the yard gate and walking towards us.

  ‘I’m the scene-of-crime officer here,’ he said, not extending his blue-plastic-clad right hand. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I wondered if you had identified the human remains,’ I said.

  ‘And who are you exactly?’ He said it in a manner that I thought was more disparaging than intentionally rude, although it was a close-run thing.

  ‘Harrison Foster,’ I repeated. ‘I am the personal representative of His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Karim bin Mohamed Al Hamadi, owner of two of the horses who died, including Prince of Troy.’ I had used the Sheikh’s full name for added gravitas.

  I received a look that made me believe that it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been the Sheikh himself, he wasn’t going to tell me anything, but I was wrong, at least partially.

  ‘We have yet to establish the victim’s identity,’ he said. ‘Analysis of DNA still has to be carried out.’

  ‘So there was enough of the body left to find some DNA?’ I said.

  ‘It is expected so. That will be a job for the pathologist.’

  ‘How about the horses?’ I asked.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Will you do DNA tests on them too?’

  He looked at me as if I were mad.

  ‘To prove they are the horses they are claimed to be,’ I said. ‘They were very valuable animals and some were insured.’

  The ‘you are mad’ look didn’t change but he seemed to comprehend what I was saying.

  ‘Do you know something I don’t?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just the way my mind works.’