Tip Off

by John Francome

  I made myself a pot of mega-strength Java Lava and hacked a few segments from a fleshy grapefruit. Whatever other disadvantages Baltimore may have been going to suffer, carrying overweight wasn’t one of them.

  A few minutes later I was in the car, driving with my headlights on. The day was still struggling to emerge through the moist blanket that lay in scattered patches over the folds of the downs, but by the time I drove between the high stone gate-posts at Wetherdown twenty minutes later, the sun had just appeared as a faint silvery ball above the long horizon behind me.

  I by-passed the house, set in a circle of giant specimen pines, and parked close to the broad arch of the brick gatehouse to Jane’s handsome Edwardian stables.

  I climbed out and stretched while I filled my lungs with crisp dawn air. A thrush anticipated trouble and with a noisy ‘chip-chip’, fled to an ancient yew that guarded the entrance, scattering the dew that sparkled on the tree’s dark green needles.

  From within the yard, I heard the clop of hooves on cobbles, the snorting of the horses, the bustle of lads rushing to be ready to pull out their rides on the dot of seven-thirty. Baltimore would be tacked up and waiting for me.

  I walked in through the arch. I didn’t look for Jane immediately. I hadn’t seen her since my fall at Fontwell, but I’d spoken to her at length on the phone the night before. First, I went to Nester’s box and let myself in. He turned to look at me with what I was sure was a friendly nod. I glanced around with my eyes smarting from the sharp tang of a peeled onion dangling from a rafter. This was Jane’s way of warding off the bugs and viruses that liked to plague a horse’s stable.

  I noticed with a smile that the straw bedding was neatly rucked up into what looked like a vast bird’s nest on the clean side of his box – he was the nearest I’d seen to a house-trained horse.

  In a separate corner, his empty manger was on the floor, since he’d shown long ago that he would only eat up if his food was offered at ground level.

  I dropped to one knee and slid my hand down his tendon to feel for heat. There was none there and none in his feet either. There hadn’t been since Esmond Cobbold had declared his task finished. I nodded with relief. You could never tell for certain how well injuries had healed until they’d stood the test on a race-course. Nester had galloped a good two and a half miles over the sticky ground at Fontwell, and he was fine.

  I also had to give Jane a lot of the credit for his remarkable recovery. She had started his exercise regime with great restraint. For weeks on end he’d barely walked a stride, but he’d swum miles, toning his muscles with no strain on his foot. Then he’d walked slowly and, eventually, begun to trot, but only on the grass or the softness of the all-weather gallop.

  Then Jane had cantered and schooled him gently over her least demanding chase fences for another two months, while he rebuilt his formidable driving muscles. The only hitch in the programme so far had been my falling off.

  It had been Jane’s suggestion to enter Nester for Cheltenham. I was more than happy just to see the horse back on a race-course again, but she was convinced he was as good as ever. After my dismal effort at Fontwell, we still didn’t know for sure.

  I left Nester’s box thinking of the Senior Steward’s views on his return to the track, which led my thoughts inevitably back to Toby Brown.

  So far I had no firm plan on how I was going to get an angle on his success. Matt’s less than subtle suggestion had been to break into his cottage and his flat in London, bug his phones and conduct a thorough search. I had talked him out of this for the time being, on the grounds that Toby was too intelligent not to be alert to the possibility that this might happen.

  Abruptly, though, all thoughts of him fled my mind. Walking under the arch into Jane’s yard was Emma. It was the first time I’d set eyes on her in over a year.

  She was dressed in Levi’s and well-worn chaps, and shivering under a thickly lined Drizabone.

  ‘Hi, Si,’ she said, as if she’d seen me the day before.

  ‘Emma! It’s great to see you.’ I grinned my welcome. ‘You look wonderful!’ I walked over to kiss her on both soft, tanned cheeks. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you only arrived back late last night?’

  ‘I did, and rang Jane as soon as I got home. She said you were riding out so I asked if there was something I could take as well.’ She nodded at a small hurdler being led up from a box as we spoke.

  ‘Great. I’ll see you on the way up.’

  I found Baltimore and joined Emma as the string drew out of the yard to clatter up the flinty track towards the deep green sweep of Jane’s private gallops.

  ‘So, what did you get up to in Florida?’

  She glanced up from adjusting her leathers. ‘I met a few gorgeous horses and a lot of hideous men.’

  I laughed, looking at her and waiting for more, but it was clear that she didn’t want to expand.

  ‘How’s Nester?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s in great shape. I rode him on Monday.’

  ‘I heard.’ She made a face. ‘Jane told me.’

  ‘Don’t you start,’ I warned. ‘I’ve taken more than enough flak already. Has your father mentioned it?’

  ‘Not really. Mind you, I’ve hardly seen him. But it’s fantastic that Nester’s recovered so well.’

  ‘One hundred percent.’ I smiled. ‘He hasn’t had a lame day since Esmond came to look at him.’

  ‘Dad’ll go ape when he realises Nester’s sound again.’ She winced at the thought. ‘Are you still going to run him in the Queen Mother Chase?’ she added quickly.

  ‘He’s entered. That’s why I thought your father might have said something.’

  ‘He wouldn’t confide in me. Anyway, Nester’s yours now. Will you run him before Cheltenham?’

  ‘We might run him in another two-and-a-half mile chase. It would be too far, of course, but the ground’s good at the moment and the conditions of the race mean he won’t be giving away too much weight.’

  We had reached the end of the lane and the gate that gave on to the southern slope of the down. Jane was already waiting in her Land Rover to shout instructions to each of the riders as they went by. Emma had to go on; Baltimore and I were going last so that I could keep him settled. For a slow horse, he could pull like a train; the problem was that, when you let him have his head, he would never go any faster.

  I pulled up at the end of the gallop, looping round as I slowed to a trot then a long lazy walk. Jane stood and studied every horse as we walked back past where she’d been standing.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘Fine, absolutely fine. Which is more than I can say for you.’

  ‘I didn’t ask about me,’ I laughed, as if she wasn’t being serious.

  ‘Just as well. I’ll see you back at the yard – I’d like a word.’

  As I hacked back, I wondered about Jane. Although I’d known her for years, I still couldn’t quite tell what she was thinking. I had the impression she liked me, though nothing she’d said ever confirmed it; and I thought she trusted me, but that wasn’t obvious either.

  I was putting Baltimore away when she came into his stable. ‘He’s looking well,’ she congratulated herself.

  ‘So he should, with all that money I give you to feed him,’ I retorted, rubbing the sweat off the horse with a fistful of straw.

  Jane ignored that. ‘By the way, Gerald Tintern’s on his way over.’

  I felt suddenly uncomfortable and wondered if he knew he’d find me here. He might already be expecting results from my enquiries, which I hadn’t even started yet.

  ‘What for?’ I asked apprehensively.

  ‘He’s just bought another horse to run in the Champion Chase.’

  That was news to me. ‘Is it coming here?’

  ‘It arrived yesterday. Would you like to see it?’

  ‘I’d love to. What is it?’

  ‘Purple Silk.’

  ‘Bloody hell! He must have paid th
e earth to get Jimmy Doyle to part with it.’

  Jane laughed. ‘He didn’t take any notice of what I said, or anyone else for that matter. I told him to try and buy Nester back from you but he wouldn’t hear of it. Pride wouldn’t let him.’

  ‘Tell me,’ I asked as she lifted the latch and drew back the bolt on Purple Silk’s stable, ‘why’s Gerald so keen to win the Queen Mother Chase?’

  ‘He wants to have his photo taken, shaking hands with Her Majesty.’

  It had never occurred to me that this might seriously be a motive for winning, but maybe Jane was right.

  Purple Silk was a beautifully built animal with all the characteristics of a classic two-miler.

  I’d seen him race on television and my own impression of him was that he had an abundance of talent but had never been asked a serious question. I wondered, though, if push ever came to shove at the finish of a race, just how big his heart would be. Nester, I knew, would battle until he dropped.

  We were leaving the box when Jane turned to me. ‘Simon, I don’t quite know how to say this,’ there was a rare note of embarrassment in her voice, ‘but Gerald has put me in rather an awkward position. As you know, he’s got six horses here, including Purple Silk, and he’s suggested that he might have to take them all elsewhere if I carry on training Better By Far. He was perfectly nice about it, but said he thinks no matter how good a trainer I am, I’ll never be able to train two horses for a race as well as I will one. And he’s right, of course.’

  As Jane pulled the bolt across the stable door, my mind raced, weighing up the options and wondering what I should do. I couldn’t ask her to forfeit six good horses and all the training fees, but I couldn’t think who else would train Nester as well. She knew him inside out and he was thoroughly settled at Wetherdown.

  ‘It’s up to you, Simon,’ she was saying. ‘I’m not going to be browbeaten by Gerald, and I’d almost rather he did take his bloody animals away.’

  ‘But it’s not that simple, is it?’ I said with a smile. ‘I can leave you with Baltimore, though, can’t I?’

  ‘Of course you can,’ she said, without trying to disguise her relief. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind about Nester? Believe me, Simon, I wouldn’t put up with this kind of behaviour if it wasn’t for the fact that our families go back a long way. You know that Toby is Gerald’s godson? I’m Emma’s godmother, and my brother Frank was a founding shareholder in Gerald’s King George Hotel Group. My brother still owns thirty-five percent of it. And my godfather, David Green, is Gerald’s lawyer.’

  ‘It all sounds very incestuous, but I do understand,’ I said. ‘It’s not the end of the world. If you don’t mind, though, I’ll send Nester to a yard where you can still keep an eye on him for me?’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind.’

  ‘I’ll let you know where he’s to go as soon as I can.’ I dismissed the topic. ‘Now, do you happen to know if Toby’s around?’

  ‘Yes, he is. He’s going to Newbury this afternoon, but I’m sure you’ll find him at the cottage now.’

  Before I left the yard, I hunted for Emma to tell her the news I’d just heard.

  I found her still rubbing down the horse she had exercised, with her helmet off and her hair, longer than before, falling in pale copper-tinted waves to her shoulders.

  ‘Hi!’ She looked up with a smile that stopped me in my tracks. ‘That was great! How was it for you?’ She opened big, innocent turquoise eyes.

  ‘Please don’t say things like that so early in the morning,’ I begged.

  ‘Down, boy.’ She grinned. ‘Now, are you going to take me to lunch and tell me what’s been going on since I’ve been away?’

  I knew I hadn’t time to have lunch with her. With her father’s brief and another new one that had just come in, Matt and I were at full stretch.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘We’ll go to the Greyhound. Nothing’s changed there.’

  ‘It never does. I’d like that.’ She stood back to inspect the horse. ‘What did Jane want?’ she asked casually.

  I explained that her father wanted me to take Nester from the yard.

  Her jaw stiffened with anger. ‘God, I’m sorry. I don’t know how he gets away with it.’

  ‘Ask Jane.’ I looked at my watch. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll see you at one.’ I gave her a quick kiss and left her in the stable.

  I climbed into my car, guilty and delighted at the thought of seeing Emma later, but with an effort I refocused my thoughts and drove the half-mile to Toby’s cottage.

  To reach the cottage, I didn’t need to leave Jane’s land. When Gervaise Brown had died, he had left her the Wetherdown Estate and enough money to keep it going comfortably without ever having to earn a penny.

  The main house had been built and the grounds re-landscaped for a London banker in the 1880s; Gervaise had bought it from the official receiver in bankruptcy in the early-sixties.

  Toby had been just five and Jane less than thirty when her husband died. She’d been desolate at first to be left such a young widow, but she made up her mind not to be beaten by it, calling up reserves of energy which friends hadn’t realised she possessed. With a little knowledge and a lot of enthusiasm, she’d set about turning the domestic stables into a supremely well-equipped racing yard, and one of the prettiest in the country. She never kept more than sixty horses, and I thought she’d probably lived on her earnings ever since.

  Her greatest personal challenge had been not to over-indulge her only child. She had already told Toby that unless he produced an heir, Wetherdown would be left to an equine charity.

  But Toby, proud and resourceful, had proved he was quite capable of looking after himself without any need to compromise the comfortable bachelor existence he’d chosen.

  His mother had compensated for her firm stand by offering him the use of Yew Tree Lodge, a small exquisite Neo-Gothic dower house that pre-dated the main house by a hundred years, but he’d accepted only on the condition that he paid rent for it.

  In the five years he’d occupied the house, a constant stream of interior decorators, special effect painters, curtain makers, antique dealers and creative gardeners had turned the eccentric but charming house into the celebrated centrefold of half a dozen glossy style magazines.

  It was too over the top for my functional tastes, but I could appreciate the flair that had gone into achieving it. I hadn’t been there for several years, and I was intrigued to see what recent improvements he’d made.

  Driving through the wrought-iron gates, I was relieved to see his car parked on the neat gravel circle to one side of the house. It was a pristine DB5 in an implausible shade of metallic elderberry.

  I parked my more pedestrian Audi beside it and walked beneath a long, vine-bearing pergola, in the same wrought-iron as the gates, to the Gothic-panelled front door. I tugged a small brass handle that prompted a chain reaction through a series of wires and levers inside the house and culminated in the tinkle of a distant bell.

  A few moments later, Toby opened the door to me, tall and slender in a paisley silk dressing-gown. His straight, dark chocolate hair was, as always, perfectly groomed. When he saw me, his smoothly tanned face creased into an enigmatic smile. ‘Simon, how lovely to see you. Come in.’ He wrinkled his nostrils fastidiously as I passed through the front door. ‘I sense you’ve been near a horse recently.’

  I laughed, acknowledging the strong smell of horse sweat still on my hands. ‘You can sprinkle me with rosewater, if you like.’

  ‘There’s some Roger et Gallet in the cloakroom.’ He waved at a door halfway along his elegant hall.

  I took the cue. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Coffee in the conservatory when you’re ready,’ he called.

  I made my way through to a lushly planted, almost tropical hall of glass, in the middle of which stood a well-aged iron table and some chairs, where Toby was ready to dispense dense black coffee from a small cafetière.

  He waved me to a seat and poured. ‘What
brings you here, then?’ he asked in a markedly more no-nonsense way.

  ‘This place, as a matter of fact.’ I gestured around the conservatory. ‘I saw that piece in Interiors, and I’m thinking of putting something similar on to my own house.’

  Toby’s eyes lit up. ‘You need a lot of time or a housekeeper with very green fingers to keep a room like this going.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of quite so much vegetation.’

  ‘Here, let me show you the plans and drawings – they might help.’

  I let him spend ten minutes on an illustrated lecture on how I could recreate what he’d done before the conversation moved on inevitably to horses.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to speak to you,’ he said. ‘Mother tells me you’re serious about running Better By Far in the Champion Chase?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But I thought he was a total write-off?’

  ‘That’s what it looked like, but fortunately for me he’s come right. He was going really nicely at Fontwell, would probably have won . . .’

  ‘If you hadn’t stepped off,’ Toby interrupted disparagingly.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said with a dry laugh. ‘But at least the horse was going well, which is all I cared about.’

  ‘Perhaps I ought to nap him for the QM – unless you’re thinking of riding him yourself again?’

  ‘No, I’m not. But I presume you know there’s another form horse just come in from the cold?’

  ‘Purple Silk? Yes, of course I know; I persuaded Doyle to part with it. Mind you, if your horse is back to his best, he could give Purple Silk a run for his money.’

  ‘Well, the way you’re going,’ I grinned, ‘whichever horse you nap will win.’

  Toby gave a quick, almost embarrassed grin, and shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You’ve hardly got it wrong for about three weeks,’ I pressed, taking my opportunity.