Taking the Fall

by A. P. McCoy

  ‘A woman knows. I can tell by the way she asks you questions. Your phone has been busy for over an hour. Who have you been talking to?’

  ‘Well I’ll come clean,’ Duncan said. ‘It was Mandy Gleeson.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I thought a woman would know these things.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m getting ready for an early night. I’ve got two rides tomorrow.’

  ‘Can I come over?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m lying on my bed, naked.’

  ‘You should cover up. You might catch a chill.’

  ‘I recorded you being interviewed. On the video. I’m watching you now while I play with myself. Are you sure I can’t come over?’

  ‘It’s still a no. How was your Christmas?’

  ‘Horrible. Listen, Daddy’s got a horse running at Wetherby tomorrow. I’ve suddenly developed an interest. I told him I want to go with him.’

  Duncan paused. ‘Okay. We’d better not let on, though.’

  ‘All right. But I won’t take my eyes off you.’

  ‘See you tomorrow.’

  Wetherby the next day was a much less glamorous affair. There was no TV coverage, no media hoo-hah, and no glitter. It was back to the serious punters and racegoers and the steady day-to-day business of the turf. What there was instead of glamour was wind and rain.

  Duncan often liked to walk the course before a race. Sometimes he walked it with another jockey, sometimes alone. Today he was alone. He was on the far side of the racecourse, on the opposite side from the grandstand, walking in light rain, when two men stepped from behind one of the birch fences. One wore a heavy serge overcoat, the other was a baldy with a sheepskin jacket. The one in the overcoat was smiling; the other wasn’t. They were big men, with a heavy, maybe ex-military air. Security men.

  ‘Hello, Duncan!’ said the man in the overcoat. Midlands accent, maybe Birmingham. ‘How’s the course looking?’

  Duncan stopped. He didn’t know either of them. ‘The course is looking fine.’

  ‘Fancy it?’

  ‘I always fancy it.’

  ‘I’m ’aving a punt on you, anyroad. Cigarette?’

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  The man in the overcoat didn’t offer his companion a cigarette, but lit up his own, squinting into the gusting wind. ‘You know the Duke? Course you do. His daughter’s got a crush on you. But you know that. Course you do. Anyway, the Duke ain’t happy with that. I said you’re too old for her. I said you wouldn’t be interested. But the Duke asked me to have a word with you.’

  ‘Right. You’ve had a word. Thanks.’

  ‘Listen, Duncan, I’m a friendly sort of guy. Nice to be nice, ain’t it? Take Bill here. He’s not friendly. He’d break your legs soon as look at you.’

  Duncan started walking again, but the two men swung in beside him.

  ‘See, Duncan, natural for a father to be concerned about his daughter, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think the going is a bit softer than they’re saying, don’t you?’ Duncan said.

  The man stepped in front of him, impeding him. ‘I’m tryin’ to help you out here, Duncan. You wouldn’t want Bill here to break your fingers, one at a time, would you? Snap snap snap. You see, it can all be avoided.’

  They were at a stand-off. Eventually Duncan stepped around the man and carried on walking the course. The two thugs followed at his heels.

  They came round the bend into full view of the grandstand. ‘Mind how you go, boys,’ Duncan said cheerily. ‘Don’t forget to get your bets on.’

  They let him go on. Even though his back was turned, he could feel them staring after him.

  Duncan had rides in the second and the fourth races. In the earlier race he was dumped from his horse at the fifth fence. He lay crumpled in the mud, breathless and hurting but then got up dazed and found his horse, which seemed fine. Duncan always showed more concern for his mount than for himself when he fell off. And there was another reason for getting up quick: you didn’t want the track doctor to come over and find something wrong with you that would get you scratched from the next race.

  Duncan’s fall ratio was about one in twelve. In the past he’d got up from a fall and ridden with a broken wrist, a broken rib, a broken cheekbone and even a broken collarbone. Pain, he’d decided long ago, was just Nature’s way of telling you that you were a fucking idiot for wanting to be a jockey. But jockeys were hard men and they always carried on until they actually had to be carried away in an ambulance.

  What did those thugs think they could do to a jockey that he didn’t already do to himself on a regular basis?

  ‘That looked bad,’ Petie said to him afterwards. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You look a bit concussed.’

  ‘That’s my natural look, Petie.’

  ‘You want me to get someone else for your next race? You look awfully pale.’

  ‘Fuck off. That’s my fucking ride.’

  Duncan waved all attention away. He found a private spot to throw up, then wiped the vomit from his mouth and prepared himself for his next race half an hour later on a horse called Winklepicker. It was a maiden hurdle, over two miles and three furlongs. Winklepicker beat off twelve other horses to win at 7–2 to improve Duncan’s strike rate.

  After he’d dismounted in the winners’ enclosure, Lorna rushed up to him, flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. When he managed to untangle himself from her, he took his saddle and the stable lad led Winklepicker away.

  ‘Lorna, my darling,’ he said. ‘I’ve been dying to see you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Burning for you. But it’s not to be. Those heavies that came with your dad. They threatened to break my fingers and my legs. They said my career would be over if they saw me so much as speak to you again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m risking my life talking to you now. I can’t take it, Lorna. I love you. But I just can’t deal with that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I love you, Lorna. Goodbye for ever.’

  He turned with his saddle, leaving her paralysed behind him. He had to work hard not to smile as he approached the Weighing Room door. He suspected that Duke Cadogan didn’t really know very much about horses. About girls he knew absolutely nothing.

  Duncan weighed in, stripped off and showered with the other lads. One threat, one fall, one win. It was a day’s work.

  ‘Are you having a drink with me?’ Petie said afterwards.

  ‘No. I want to get away.’

  ‘So you’re coming up to see us tomorrow?’

  ‘In the morning.’

  ‘You’ve only been up there a couple of times recently, what with things being so hectic. You know you’re going to have to be spending a lot more time with us. You might want to move somewhere a bit nearer.’

  ‘We’ll have a talk.’

  Petie looked at him oddly. ‘You know I’m going to ask you to be my first-choice jockey, don’t you?’

  ‘We’ll talk in the morning, Petie.’

  He got up early and drove through the morning, past the ancient Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire and across the county border into Warwickshire. The fields were streaming with white mist and the grass shimmered with dew. When he pulled into the yard he saw Roisin coming across a field in boots and a long skirt, a scarf wrapped three times around her neck. With her long dark hair and the rose flush on her pale face she looked like she’d been dropped there with the dew. She waved and came across.

  ‘We’ll go in the house,’ she said.

  Duncan had never been in the house before. The few hours he’d had at the yard ahead of one or two of the races, he’d spent the time in the stables or on a horse’s back. The house was an old cottage in need of renovation, while the yard itself was all modern blocks, newly built, clean as a whistle and orderly throughout.

  When he got inside the kitchen he thought maybe the hors
es should live in the house and the people in the stables. It was a tip. Roisin put the kettle on for a cup of tea. She filled it from a tap on the end of a pipe that stood a foot away from the wall. The kettle itself was set on top of a metal plate in an open hearth, by means of an ancient swinging bracket and hook. The kitchen was full of spilling cupboards and boots and piles of racing forms and the sense that the whole thing stayed glued together by a resin or grime that was maybe three or four hundred years old. There was old braided electric flex poking from broken plaster in the walls. Duncan could see through to the lounge, where the floor was carpeted in uneven and various-coloured off-cuts.

  ‘Do you live here?’

  ‘What do you think I am?’ said Roisin. ‘I have a nice modern bungalow up in the village.’

  ‘Cosy,’ he said. He wondered if Petie were short of money after all.

  She laughed, seeming to read his mind. ‘You don’t know my father. If I said “Daddy, I want a shiny Rolls-Royce, please”, he’d say “Right you are, darlin’” and in the morning there’d be one sitting in the driveway; and if I said I wanted a new Cartier bracelet, well, he’d phone and have one delivered. But if I ask him why he doesn’t get the builders to come and do something about this place, he’d say “Why do you want to be wasting all that money for nothing?”’

  They both heard Petie coming up the path. ‘I’m for a bacon sandwich,’ he said.

  ‘Well you’ll have to wait for the kettle because we’ve only got the one hob,’ she said, but to Duncan.

  There was no good morning, how are you, did you have a nice trip for Duncan. Instead Petie said, ‘You wanting anything?’

  ‘I’ll have a slice of toast.’

  Petie sniffed, rummaged inside a packet of white bread, brought out a slice and impaled it on a long fork, which he propped against the fire. They all sat looking at it. When the bread started to blacken, Petie turned it round on the fork and set the other side to toast. The kettle boiled, and when Roisin lifted it, Petie took a skillet, filled it with bacon slices, and put it down on the hob. Then he went to a dresser, found a knife and half a pound of butter and handed them to Duncan. The toast was done, so he picked up the fork and offered it to him as well.

  ‘Give him a plate, for pity’s sake,’ said Roisin.

  ‘What’s he want a plate for?’

  ‘Let’s think why he might want one, shall we, Daddy?’

  ‘What ye getting all posh for?’ To Duncan he said, ‘She’s getting all posh since you’re here.’

  Roisin sighed, got up, found a plate and thrust it at Duncan.

  With the bacon sizzling in the pan, Petie, now apparently mesmerised by its bubbling, said, ‘So I want you to be my first-choice jockey. That means you have first choice of everything in my yard. But it also means that I have first call on you, above any other yard. For the rest of the jump season. And we sign to that effect. You know, a document. Then next season we look at it again. And if you want to walk away, you can; and if I think you’re no use, the same.

  ‘In the meantime, I’ll not stop you riding for other trainers so long as it doesn’t interfere with any of the fixtures that I have.

  ‘You’ll get the fixed rate per race, which wouldn’t keep a horse in hay, so I’ll add on a decent retainer, plus you’ll get ten per cent of any prize money coming to you.’ Petie’s eyes, which he’d kept on the sizzling bacon in the pan, suddenly swivelled and he looked at Duncan. ‘You’re not saying very much.’

  Duncan glanced at Roisin, who was stirring the tea.

  ‘Oh don’t mind her,’ Petie said. ‘She’s the business head around here. She has to agree everything anyway. I keep no secrets from her. She’s smarter than she looks.’

  ‘No, you’re fine,’ Roisin said, sensing something afoot. ‘Here’s your tea. I’ll leave you boys to it.’

  She went out and closed the door behind her with a click.

  ‘She’s very smart,’ Duncan said.

  ‘I see. What is it? Speak.’

  ‘Okay. Sandy Sanderson. He told me all your cash here comes from the IRA. He says you’re money-laundering for terrorists.’

  Petie leaned across the hearth, shook the pan and poked the bacon hither and thither. ‘I see. And what about Duncan Claymore? What does he think?’

  ‘I don’t know anything. I just thought I’d ask you. Straight up, like.’

  Petie took two slices of white bread and slapped all of the bacon between them. ‘Have you seen the sauce anywhere?’ he said.

  There was a bottle of tomato ketchup on the table, so Duncan handed it to him and the Irishman gave himself a good helping. Then he took a great bite out of the sandwich. Duncan sat in silence. It was a few minutes before Petie finished eating. Then he took a great swig of his tea to wash it down. ‘You know what, Duncan? Tea and a bacon sandwich. The two things go together, don’t they? I mean, you could have coffee but it’s never the same. No. Tea and bacon. Egg and chips. Beer and cigarettes. Some things go together. You know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Selling sand to Arabs. I was in building. When the petrol dollars started to flow in the Arab countries they wanted sports stadiums and horse tracks and all the rest of it and I got some jobs. I found out they couldn’t make their tracks with all that sand they have. Too fine. It won’t drain, you see. So I said I knew where there was some sand.

  ‘Do you know how many sports stadiums and race tracks and athletics fields I built? That’s where I got my interest in racehorses. The sand cost me almost nothing and the Arabs threw money at me. I had tankers of sand going out there every day at one point. I had boys shovelling sand over here and I almost needed to employ some lads to shovel the cash into my account, so much of it was there coming in. So then what? You can only eat three meals a day and you can only have one bacon sandwich for breakfast. There’s more than I need. So I’m sixty-two and I’m retired from all that and now I’ve got my horses.

  ‘My money is my own. It’s not the RA’s, or anyone’s else’s. Mine. Do you understand?’

  Duncan nodded. ‘I had to ask, Petie.’

  ‘And I’ve answered.’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘Good. Now where’s that girl? Roisin! ROISIN!’

  Roisin appeared pretty quickly. She might have been eavesdropping, but she’d changed into jodhpurs and was ready to ride out. ‘Are you boys done?’

  ‘We are. Get some papers drawn up so I can put my cross there and he can put his cross there, and we’re away.’

  ‘We’ll ride out first,’ Roisin said, showing no sign of wanting to be ordered around. ‘Are you ready, Duncan?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well then, why are you still sitting on your arse?’

  8

  Duncan had been waiting in the hotel restaurant for almost forty-five minutes. He thought she wasn’t coming and the waiters were starting to look at him a little oddly as he took tiny sips of his lemon-flavoured water. At last she arrived, wearing a very short skirt and dark glasses.

  ‘Are you in hiding?’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s not sunny outside.’

  ‘You never know who’s watching,’ she said as she sat down with the waiters fussing around her. They whisked away her coat and pulled back her chair a few inches. ‘The Ritz. Very impressive. If you were trying to impress me, that is.’ She took off her dark glasses, folded them and placed them on the crisp linen in a neat line with her cutlery.

  Mandy Gleeson had beautiful eyes. It wasn’t the nut-brown colour of them, nor the way her eyelids wrinkled, nor their almond shape. They seemed to be able to see through him. They would be difficult to lie to. So mesmerised was Duncan by Mandy’s eyes that it made him smile.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Would you like to order?’

  She trawled the menu quickly and ordered a Caesar salad. He asked for the same but without the croutons. When the waiter had gone, she unclipped her handbag, took out a video cassette and laid it on the table. ‘What are you going to do wit
h it?’

  ‘I’m just collecting tapes of my rides. For when I’m an old man. So’s I can watch them from my armchair.’

  ‘Bullshit!’

  An elderly couple on the next table looked across at them.

  ‘It’s against the rules here at the Ritz,’ Duncan said, ‘to shout out your middle name.’

  She smiled. She grazed her lower lip with her teeth. ‘You think you’re pretty cool, don’t you?’

  He took a sip of water by way of answer, but without taking his eyes from hers.

  ‘Cool and confident. How confident are you? Let me guess. I know your sort so well. You’ve already booked a room upstairs, haven’t you? Go on. Admit it.’

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? Have you seen these prices?’

  She shook her head. ‘Liar. You thought I’d come here, have a nice lunch and then follow you upstairs. Just because you are ridiculously good-looking. Just because you are smart and witty and funny. Just because you have an outrageously sexy body. Admit it. Go on. You already reserved that room. I’d bet my horse-racing winnings on it. It’s a cert.’

  ‘There are no certs. And you’d be wrong. There’s no way you would go upstairs with me right now.’

  Her mood changed as she relaxed back into her chair. ‘Well, you got that right.’

  ‘Not on the first date anyway.’

  ‘Oh, is this a date?’

  That depends on what happens in the future. If we see each other again, it will have been. If we don’t, it won’t.’

  Their food arrived. Mandy paused until the overattentive waiters had gone before speaking again. ‘Okay, smarty. The quid pro quo. I want something from you in return. In return for the cassette, that is.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘Information.’

  ‘Ha! Sorry! Everyone wants that. More than my jockey’s licence is worth.’

  ‘I’m not talking about betting information, you saddle sausage!’

  ‘Saddle . . . So what are you talking about?’

  ‘We’re doing an investigation into corruption. We think organised crime is behind a lot of it. We—’

  ‘We?’ said Duncan. ‘Who’s this we? Have you got a microphone in your knickers?’