Taking the Fall

by A. P. McCoy

  ‘Well. It’s okay. Not great. Why?’

  ‘Got your suntan lotion?’

  ‘What?’

  George had a big place in Marbella. Swimming pool, tennis court, all that. Close to the golf course. He and a bunch of his buddies were off there for a couple of nights’ rest and relaxation. Mostly jockeys, but a couple of other friends too. George had already checked on Duncan’s schedule and had established that he was free. All taken care of: car to the airport, flight, accommodation at the house, golf club membership, nightlife.

  ‘The most strenuous thing you’ll have to do,’ George said, ‘is put on your sunglasses. Are you in?’

  ‘Sure,’ Duncan said. ‘I’m in.’

  ‘Ask your friend along too. Kerry. The more the merrier.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Duncan put down the phone and walked back into the lounge, where Kerry was watching Blake’s 7 again. ‘Who was that?’ he asked.

  ‘Just Lorna.’

  ‘Checking up on you?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Kerry shouted at the TV screen. ‘Did you see that studio set wobble!’

  He called Lorna to tell her he was going.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she said.

  ‘It’s just a couple of nights.’

  ‘Duncan, it’s not the whores I care about. If you want to run around with whores, nothing I think or say about that is going to make any difference. It’s Pleasance.’

  ‘What about Pleasance?’

  ‘He pulls you into his world. Once you’re in, you can’t get out. I’ve seen how he works.’

  ‘I’m a big lad, Lorna.’

  ‘No you’re not. You think you’re smarter and you can ride everything that comes along. But he’s in a different league. Look at Daddy. You think he’s a major player, but he’s frightened of Pleasance. He hates him. Pleasance has Daddy in his pocket in ways I don’t understand.’

  Lorna had told Duncan that George Pleasance had entered her father’s life when Cadogan had run short of money. Cadogan had made his money in the City, mainly in the futures market. But he had made some disastrous decisions. Whereas most men would have sold off their car collection, their impressive artworks, their fine racehorses, Cadogan couldn’t bear to lose face. He simply had to hang on to the pretence that his stock hadn’t changed. Enter George Pleasance. Just as Lorna was trying to warn Duncan, once Pleasance had sunk his claws into you, there was no way he could be shaken off.

  ‘I’ll be careful, Lorna, I promise.’

  ‘You know what they call him? What people call George Pleasance? The Tailor.’

  ‘The Tailor?’

  ‘Because he’s always got the measure of you. And everyone else. He’ll stitch you up.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  ‘But no one says it to his face.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’m trying to protect you, Duncan.’

  ‘I appreciate it.’

  ‘You’re out of your depth. These are bad people. Daddy included. I love you, Duncan.’

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her say that. He had spent so long building an impenetrable shell around himself that now he didn’t even know his own feelings. Those three words were enough to make him doubt what he was doing. At first he had thought that Lorna was nothing more than a silly girl who ran around spending Daddy’s money. The truth was, he had come to admire her more and more. She’d been damaged by Cadogan’s remoteness and complete lack of interest in her. Despite that, she was a brave, witty and forceful girl. She was also very beautiful. What more could a man want?

  There was silence on the telephone.

  ‘I’ll see you in a couple of days,’ he said.

  He hung up.

  George Pleasance’s spread in Marbella was stunning. A great white wedding cake of a building amid sprinkler-fed green lawns and with a large kidney-shaped swimming pool into which a white statue of a urinating cherub pissed three streams of sparkling water. The Mediterranean spring sunshine was hot and the sky a brilliant blue. Duncan was given a cool tiled room in the shadows at the rear of the house. Four other jockeys had been invited, two of whom he recognised from his night out at Tramp. Three other men, friends of Pleasance’s, made up the party: two men who wore lightweight suits even in the Mediterranean sunshine, plus a braying figure in shorts and a polo shirt who was introduced to him as a stockbroker.

  There were girls around, too. And if anyone wanted a break from the beer and the wine and the whores and the silver dishes of cocaine that stood on the table in the hall, there was golf on offer. There was no pressure to join in. Duncan lay by the pool, he swam. He pretty much kept himself to himself.

  On the last afternoon he was alone in the pool. He swam a few lengths at high speed, and when he stopped, he closed his eyes and leaned his head against the cool concrete lip under the pissing cherub. That was when he felt someone else slip into the water next to him.

  15

  Of Petie’s best horses, Duncan and Petie were working on Wellbeing and The Buckler. Wellbeing was the mare who had hacked up easily as a 20–1 winner in a competitive Conditions Chase at Lingfield just before Christmas. The Buckler was the strong-minded gelding Duncan had run up second against Sandy Sanderson’s dirty tricks. Both horses had had trouble-free preparation since, and they were both in fine form. Petie had worked hard to get them into condition for the upcoming Cheltenham Festival; he’d also worked hard to try not to let anyone outside the stable see just how good the two horses were.

  ‘Spies are everywhere,’ he said.

  Duncan knew from his days as a lad at Penderton that that was true. Information was big business. There were men hiding behind trees with powerful binoculars. There were characters in pubs always willing to stand rounds for the stable hands. Successful bookmaking was about having access to information about the health and form of a horse: did a horse have a cough; had it got a bruised foot; had it missed any work through lameness; how was it performing in the gallops; how was its breathing; why was a trainer like Petie getting up at five o’clock in the morning to put a horse through a gallop? On and on it went. Detail after detail, all of which could be converted into cash. Information increased the bookies’ profits and decreased their losses.

  Wellbeing and The Buckler were queen and king of Petie’s stables. The average punter hadn’t worked this out yet. But certain people inside the business were sniffing round. Petie asked his staff to stay away from the local pubs, where snoopers had been asking questions. He asked them to drink further afield. He also increased security. He astonished everyone by having – at great expense – closed-circuit cameras installed. They were the sort of thing you only saw at airports, military bases and high-security depots. For the first few days the stable hands would stop and wave at the cameras, until the novelty wore off.

  Petie liked to bet, and he liked good odds. He was determined to keep the information at home.

  Kerry had adopted Wellbeing. The Buckler was Duncan’s pride. They were both going to be entered for the Cheltenham Festival in March. Those morning gallops in February at the crack of dawn were things of beauty. The light would be grey and then a flake of pink sunrise would appear as they pounded the turf, the horses’ breath steaming in the air, Roisin in a cape with her stopwatch, Petie huddled in a long coat and with his leathery face set in a grin of satisfaction.

  Glory days, preparing for the Cheltenham Festival.

  But before that, there were plenty of everyday races to be run. Duncan had been noticed. His dream of being Champion Jockey was a long way away, but he’d been gathering enough winners for his name to become a serious contender. His strike rate put him in with the runners. He was a major prospect for upcoming seasons. His name was mentioned in the racing columns as the kind of young jockey who might be looking for bigger stables than Petie Quinn’s next season.

  Petie showed him the article.

  ‘No one has asked me anything about that,’ D
uncan said. ‘They’ve just gone ahead and printed it.’

  ‘You’ll leave me or you won’t,’ Petie said.

  Of course there were rules against jockeys betting, but no rules to stop owners and trainers betting on their own horses. And no rules to stop jockeys’ mothers, grandmothers or maiden aunts betting on or against a jockey’s chances.

  ‘Can you be sure?’ Lorna asked him.

  ‘You can never be sure,’ Duncan told her. ‘Racing is sometimes rigged but it’s rarely fixed.’

  It was an evening when they had the entire Cadogan spread to themselves. Duke was away for a couple of days with his latest girlfriend and only the domestic staff and groundsmen were around. Duncan would stay over on these occasions. They might take one of Duke’s vintage motors from his car pool and drive it up to one of the pubs in the local villages, or to a restaurant.

  They lay sprawled on a giant white leather sofa in Duke’s lounge, with the lights dimmed and the expensive artworks on the walls lit by carefully trained low-level spotlights. ‘Explain the difference,’ she said.

  ‘A fixed race is where the winner is already sorted before the race. A rigged race is one where the chances have been shortened or lengthened in some way. To fix a race you would have to get all the jockeys to agree who is going to win. You’ll never do that. There are too many honest jockeys around. I’ve even met one or two. But for a rigged race you might get one or two jockeys to agree to lose. That might give another horse more of a chance. But it’s not quite fixed.’

  The conversation had all come about when Duncan had been discussing a horse he was riding for Petie the following day at Leicester. It was only a Class 4 race but the horse, he said, was certain to win. It was another almost unknown horse called Standard Contract. Through bad luck it had been pulled up, fallen or faltered in its most recent outings, but it was running way below its league, and Duncan was riding it. He was so confident, Lorna asked him if the race had been fixed.

  ‘We don’t fix our races,’ he said. ‘You think because the Duke and George Pleasance are into rigging races that the whole industry works like that, but you’re wrong.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can be so certain that it will win, then,’ she said.

  ‘There’s no certainty,’ he said again. ‘There’s no certainty a dead bird won’t drop out of that big fireplace in the next five minutes. But I know it won’t. And I know this horse will win.’

  Lorna looked at the fireplace. Then she got up and went across the room to the big polished mahogany desk. There was a Rolodex on the desk and she flipped it open. She picked up the phone and dialled a number. When someone answered she said, ‘Hello, I want to place a bet on the Duke Cadogan account, please.’

  She listened, then cupped the phone and said to Duncan, ‘What’s the name of the horse again?’

  ‘Standard Contract. What are you doing?’

  ‘He says, where is it running?’

  ‘Leicester, three fifteen.’

  She repeated the details into the phone. ‘He said the odds are six to one.’

  ‘That’s as good as you’ll get.’

  ‘Five hundred pounds to win,’ Lorna said into the phone.

  ‘No!’ Duncan shouted, hauling himself off the sofa. ‘That’s way too much!’

  She shushed him. ‘Five hundred to win,’ she repeated into the phone.

  Duncan stood over her as she completed the transaction. She hung on to the phone for a while, and then, as if in answer to a question, she said, ‘Red Rum.’

  There was some further instruction on the other end before she put down the phone.

  ‘That’s a fucking crazy bet, even if I’m certain, and I’m riding the thing,’ said Duncan.

  ‘I’ve got faith in you.’

  ‘But Lorna! The horse might have a cough in the morning, or go lame. Or have a bad journey up to Leicester. Or another stable might have a surprise. And this isn’t flat racing, this is jumps. Anyone can get unseated or brought down.’

  ‘Where’s all your confidence gone? You didn’t tell me all this before I put the bet on.’

  ‘No. But I didn’t know you were going to lay out five hundred quid on me. And what sort of bookie is open for business at this time of night?’

  ‘That’s daddy’s special bookie. They’ll take bets any time, anywhere, about anything.’

  ‘And what was all that about Red Rum?’

  ‘Oh that was just Daddy’s code to activate the bet.’

  ‘Does he have a code for everything? Five hundred quid! You’d better hope I’m in good form tomorrow.’

  ‘You mean I’d better not wear you out in bed.’

  ‘You’ve got some trunk, Lorna, I’ll give you that. Speaking of bed, why don’t you rustle up some cold things and some drinks from the kitchen and let’s take them upstairs. Don’t bother the staff.’

  Lorna was happy to oblige. ‘Okay!’ She shimmied away.

  Duncan waited a beat and then went across to the open Rolodex on the desk. He found a pen and made a note of the number Lorna had just dialled. Then he waited quietly for her to come back from the kitchen.

  Duncan was riding three horses at the Leicester meeting. Two for Petie, one for Cadogan and Osborne. Or rather, one for Cadogan and Osborne at the orders of George Pleasance. It seemed that if George Pleasance said he wanted something, he got it. And what he wanted was for Duncan to ride the favourite, Supernatural, in the fifth race of the day.

  Kerry was also there riding for Petie. He spotted George Pleasance early in the proceedings. ‘Hey,’ he said to Duncan in the Weighing Room, ‘you still haven’t told me much about what went on in Marbella.’

  ‘Very little. I swam in the pool. Slept on sunloungers. Stayed away from the whores.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  Duncan flicked a towel at him. ‘It’s all in your feverish Paddy imagination.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  Duncan looked up, and as luck would have it, there across the Weighing Room, gazing back at him with what was maybe half a smile, or half a frown, was the Monk. Aaron nodded briefly at him. He seemed to be able to look right into Duncan’s heart.

  ‘You look distracted this morning,’ Roisin said to him in the paddock, as he was preparing for a two-mile novices’ handicap chase. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I think I ate something that disagreed with me.’

  ‘When Petie came along she said, ‘He’s got the scutters, Da.’

  ‘No,’ said Duncan, ‘I’ll be all right once I get going.’

  ‘It’s that foreign food. I told you to be careful what ye was eating and the water ye drank.’

  ‘Let me get down to the start. I’ll be fine.’

  He saddled up and cantered down to the start line, trying to concentrate on the race ahead. But he wasn’t properly focused. He didn’t ride a bad race, but came in fourth on Standard Contract when he felt he could have given a much better account. Petie seemed reasonably happy. He was more interested in the progress of Lemontree in the fourth, whereas the previous race had been just an outing.

  Duncan stuck by the story of having a dicky tummy. He locked himself in the cubicle in the Weighing Room so he could have time to himself. His face was too readable. It was better if they thought he was nursing a bad gut rather than a bad conscience.

  In the fourth race he was up against the Monk. Aaron never acknowledged him before the off; he never acknowledged anyone. He was in the zone. It was his own crystal-clear place. There were no other riders. Duncan admired that. He tried to clear his head of all thoughts before the race. He sat behind Aaron all the way round, as if he was in the older jockey’s slipstream. Then, when he felt Aaron go, he gave Lemontree a squeeze, too. It was enough. Aaron’s horse went out into the front with only one fence to jump. But Lemontree had an extra set of burners. She jumped well at the last and left Aaron at a standstill. The last thing Duncan remembered was Aaron turning slightly and squinting at him through muddied goggles. There was the nearest th
ing to a smile on the Monk’s face. Not really a smile. But nearly. Lemontree hacked up six lengths clear.

  Petie was very happy; Roisin ecstatic, since the horse had been one of her purchases; Kerry was pleased for him.

  All he had to do now to complete the day was not win the fifth race for Cadogan on Supernatural.

  He weighed in from the previous race, then found the valet, who had his change of colours ready for him. He would be riding in the scarlet with white star and red chevrons of Osborne’s stables. When he came out, George Pleasance, showing off his great mane of silver-and-jet hair, was there to wish him luck.

  Out in the paddock, Osborne was waiting with his usual face. No eye contact, and this time no instructions either on how to ride Supernatural. Cadogan was there too, smiling broadly, fedora pulled down low over his eyes. ‘We’re letting you go on one of our favourites today,’ he said. ‘Don’t let us down.’

  Duncan wondered whether Cadogan and Osborne were in on it. Were they in on everything? Perhaps yes, perhaps not. George Pleasance made no appearance in the paddock. It wouldn’t do to have a known cocaine smuggler consorting openly with Cadogan and Osborne, even if the police and the Jockey Club and the betting authorities all knew about it. What would the punters do? Duncan thought. He fixed his goggles and cantered down to the starting line.

  The fifth race was the biggest race of the day. Supernatural was odds-on favourite to win the Class 3 Novices’ Hurdle for four-year-olds over two miles and four furlongs. The starter was having a problem with one or two horses and he was having to circle them. Duncan stood unaffected, trying again to clear his thoughts.

  But in his mind he was in a warm and quiet swimming pool, under a setting sun. There was a slight ripple as he felt someone else slide into the pool beside him. It was George Pleasance. No one else was around. George had his back to the sun, so that his face was almost in silhouette. Duncan had had to squint to see the whites of his eyes and his row of white teeth.

  Then the horses were away like a flock of birds. Herd instinct. Duncan took a clear central position behind four leaders and rode steadily, keeping pace, keeping plenty in hand. Supernatural was a decent ride, rightfully favourite in this class of race. The track had turned muddy and there was a lot of earth being kicked up by the leaders. She cleared the first hurdle neatly and the flying mud slapped at his goggles and his helmet and the drumming of hooves shut out the sound of everything else.