by Joe McNally
Martin Corish and his wife lived in a big farmhouse close to the stable yard. The house was unlit. I pulled in by the low wall and stepped out into the deepening dusk. The outlines of mares and their foals in the nearby paddock merged into single shapes. No dogs barked.
Something was wrong.
I stood, listening. Nothing but the sounds and smells of a warm June night in the country. Insects. Musky flower scents. Quiet whickering from horses. Away across the fields, the eerie cry of a vixen.
I walked into the yard. A phone rang. After half a dozen rings, a light came on inside the office in the corner and glowed yellow through the barred window. Along with the moths and their brethren, I moved quietly toward it.
The top part of the uncurtained window was open. I listened to Corish’s secretary. She sounded much more aggressive with this caller than she’d been with me an hour and a half ago.
‘When? Soon’s not good enough. It’s been “soon” for the past nine months! Oh, it’s different all right! It’s worse!’
She was shouting. The other party must have told her to cool down.
‘Why should I? I won’t wake Caroline! She’s out of her head as usual, and I can see why she does it! Why should I? Give me one good reason!’
It had to be Corish on the other end and he must have given her a few good reasons, because she shut up and when she spoke again, all the fire had gone out of her.
‘But what do I tell Eddie Malloy? But what if he does turn up, Martin, what do I tell him?’
Melodramatic by nature, I was tempted to burst in and grab the phone so he could tell me personally, but I’d learn more by staying put.
She said, ‘When? Where? What if he asks for your number? Martin! Martin!’
He must have hung up. The girl did the same then worked through a string of curses in a steady monotone, as though reciting tables at school.
I went in. She was sprawled in a swivel chair, long red hair unkempt, blue eyes tired and puffy. She gasped and reached toward her groin, pulling frantically at the open zip on her tight beige jodhpurs, trying at the same time to get to her feet and turn her back on me.
In a TV sitcom, it might have looked funny, but I felt an instant pang of regret and shame, almost as though I’d assaulted her. I didn’t even manage to redeem myself by catching her as she collapsed in a dead faint. On the way down, her head smacked against a metal filing cabinet.
By the time I was on my knees beside her, she was already bleeding.
The wound was on her scalp and not dangerously deep. Blood trickled across her temple, forming a pool in her ear. Her pulse was steady, her breathing even.
Making a pillow of my jacket, I gently raised her head and eased the makeshift cushion underneath. In the corner of the office was a small sink. As I got up to fetch a wet cloth, I noticed her white swollen belly exposed by the gaping fly of her jodhpurs. Red pubic hair curled over the pink waistband of her pants. Looking around for something to cover her, I scooped a purple fleecy jacket from the swivel chair and laid it on her midriff.
I checked her pulse again, wondering whether I should call an ambulance, when her eyes opened and tried to focus on me. I moved aside, not wanting to seem threateningly close. I sat on the chair. Her face remained calm. She reached to feel her head.
‘Fiona, are you all right?’ I asked.
She looked at the sticky blood on her fingers.
‘Just a flesh wound,’ I said.
Puzzled, she stared at me. ‘You hit your head on the cabinet,’ I explained. ‘My fault for barging in like that and scaring you. I’m sorry.’
She made to get up. I was caught between helping her and saving her embarrassment as the jacket covering her bare middle slipped. She grabbed at it. I stood up. ‘I’ve got a first-aid kit in the car - won’t be a minute,’ I said, and went out into the cool darkness.
When I returned, she was sitting at the desk sipping water from a cracked cup and sobbing quietly. I said, ‘Fiona, look, I’m sorry for scaring you like that. I didn’t mean to.’
She wiped at her eyes with the bloodstained cloth I’d been using. Opening the first-aid box, I handed her a dry pad. She took it and carried on wiping.
‘Got some painkillers here,’ I offered.
She raised a hand, pushing them away.
I spent the next fifteen minutes asking questions. Where was Martin Corish? Where was the rest of the staff? Who was tending the horses? I told her I’d overheard her telephone conversation - where had he called from?
I thought it best not to question her about the stallions, Town Crier especially. Martin Corish was the man with the answers, but if Fiona knew his whereabouts, she wasn’t saying. She stayed silent, dabbing at the now dry wound and staring at the desk. Her Snoopy watch read eleven o’clock when I gave up.
Footfalls deliberately heavy on the cobbles, I crossed the moonlit yard, wanting to convince Fiona I wasn’t coming back. I started the car, drove a few hundred yards then pulled in, and ran back.
Outside the office once again, I listened for the frantic return call to Corish, but all was silent. Either she’d made it after I’d left, or she genuinely didn’t know where he was.
I waited twenty minutes. Nothing.
I was tempted to visit Town Crier’s box. I knew the horse well, and reckoned it would take a pretty good ringer to fool me. But like a number of stallions, he could be unfriendly toward humans; particularly, I suspected, those who intrude in the hours of darkness. I decided to leave it till next morning.
With no clouds to blanket the day’s heat, it was quickly growing cold. I returned to the car, wondering where to spend the night.
The nearest hotel that would let me in this late was about fifteen miles east. But my credit card was swipe-weary and battle scarred. Basic guesthouses would already be locked up and I had no friends in the vicinity.
I sat looking through the windscreen at the stars, knowing the overnight sleeping arrangements were a choice between kipping in the car or seeking a warm corner in Corish’s hay barn. The prospect brought a smile to my face as I remembered past conversations with people who envied the glamorous life of a professional jockey.
Last season’s glamour for me had included a virus-stricken stable, three periods of suspension for ‘irresponsible’ riding, and a series of damaging falls, leaving me with a fractured wrist, a broken collarbone and, most recently, four smashed ribs and a punctured lung. Not to mention severely dented confidence and a badly bruised bank account.
Just when I thought it was safe to get back in the saddle, this had to happen. The partnership with Martin Corish was the only investment I’d ever made. No jockey can ride forever, and the stud was supposed to provide me with some security when I hung up my boots, a notion I’d entertained often lately. I sighed, fighting off self-pity.
I’d find a lay-by and get what sleep I could before returning in the morning. The ignition fired and the buttons on my mobile phone lit up as it beeped into life. Before setting off, I went through the motions of ringing home to my answerphone, though it had been a while since there’d been any worthwhile messages on it.
Tonight there was one and it drew me home at speed.
3
I reached the flat at 2 a.m. and stopped barely long enough for tea and a sandwich. I replayed the message again: ‘Eddie, Barney Dolan. If you get this in time there’s a winner waiting for you tomorrow, er, that’s Wednesday. I heard you passed the doctor and thought I’d give you a winner. The bad news is it’s up at Perth and it’s in the two o’clock. I’ll hold off till nine in the morning to hear from you.’
Good old Barney. He was one of a handful of trainers I rode for when it was mutually convenient. My retainer was with Broga Cates, whose flat I was sitting in now. Broga owned a string of twenty-two, trained by Charles Tunney, whose Shropshire yard my flat overlooked. Broga paid me a reasonable retainer to ride his horses, and when the stable had no runners, I was free to take rides elsewhere.
Man
y of our horses had been down with a virus last season and we’d had just eleven winners - a disastrous total that had shaken Charles’s confidence. He’d closed the yard for the normal summer break, and buggered off to Alaska for a month’s holiday, leaving his secretary to feed the dogs and keep things ticking over.
Until this season, jump racing had always stopped for two months in the summer, but the British Horseracing Board had decided to grant a few fixtures to courses wanting to hold meetings during the summer. Most of the top jockeys had said they wouldn’t ride at these meetings; eight weeks was little enough break from the daily grind of driving, dieting and injuries.
I could have done with the holiday - at least my battered body could have - but my bank balance dictated otherwise. So, after an hour’s restless sleep, I left rural Shropshire in the early hours of Wednesday morning for the long drive to Perth, a course lying so far north it never risked racing during the winter months.
Every minute on the road took me farther from where I’d planned to be at first light, the Corish Stud.
My thoughts returned to the mystery caller. If my partner was doing what was claimed, how had the guy found out? And how had he discovered my involvement with Martin Corish? We’d kept it quiet. And what was the caller’s link with Jean Kerman, the tabloid hack with the poisonous pen?
I’d count myself lucky to have twenty rides through summer, but that would be twenty opportunities for the blackmailer to get at me. And it was unlikely he’d stop at summer’s end. What would I do if he asked me to ride a bent race?
I didn’t know.
I’d never pulled a horse. Ethics aside, my belief is that as soon as someone gets something on you, you’re prisoner for life. Even one guilty little secret will stay fixed to you like a choke-chain - a very long chain maybe, but one that would snap you backward and haul you in to face either justice or another demand.
As dawn lit the hills of the Scottish borders, I was no nearer a solution. The choices were: find Corish and get the truth or track down the blackmailer and deal with him. Even if Corish was guilty, I’d still have to trace the blackmailer. I had to face the fact that this Perth ride might have to be my last until I caught this bastard.
The only way to stay clean was to make sure the blackmailer had no leverage. If I wasn’t riding, he couldn’t influence my performance.
But how many rides could I refuse before trainers stopped asking me?
It looked like my first decision in the battle, to go north for one ride, was the wrong one. The time would have been better spent trying to find Martin Corish, but I was committed now and at 8.15, I rang Barney Dolan and told him I’d be at Perth by 11.
‘Good man, Eddie. You won’t regret it.’
I had a very strong feeling that I would.
4
Perth Racecourse lies in the fertile grounds of Scone Palace on the banks of the River Tay. Early mist rose from the water on this hot morning. I was first into the jockeys’ room and sat wearily on the varnished bench, dropping my kitbag and saddle at my feet. I hadn’t been here in almost eight years.
It was quiet inside the antiquated wood-paneled room. Faint sounds of birdsong came through the open window, and I laid back my head and thought of the days when being in a room like this had brought me only pleasure. Every new changing room, every new course, had been a wondrous adventure to a wide-eyed and breathless teenager, drinking in the history of these old places, sitting on every inch of every bench so I could be sure to have sat where all the champions had sat before me. That teenager was long gone. It seemed a lifetime ago.
The sweet pine-scented air had come from an aerosol. Motes hung in the long sunbeam that warmed my legs. I must have dozed.
I woke feeling stiff. Sitting opposite me, crunching crispbread and sipping black tea, was Keith Allardyce, who’d been born in Stirling, ‘two doors down from Willie Carson’ as he always said. Cheeks full of soggy crispbread, he still managed a wide smile as I stretched awake.
‘Tired?’
‘It’s all right for you locals. Probably just fell out of bed ten minutes ago. I bet you’ve even had time for a plate of fried haggis before leaving home.’
‘Haggis season doesn’t start till August. We’re not allowed to shoot them till then.’
‘Contact the British Horseracing Board,’ I said. ‘They’ll get it brought forward.’
Keith swallowed. His smile widened and we chatted about what had been happening while I’d been laid up these last five weeks. The northern racing fraternity moved in their own separate world from the rest of the UK, so I picked up some new gossip.
‘Have you got a paper?’ I asked.
Keith hauled a rolled up copy of The Sporting Life from his bag and threw it to me.
‘How many in the first?’ I asked as I opened it.
‘A few, I think. Your old buddy’s got a ride, you’ll be pleased to know.’
I looked at him.
‘Tranter.’
‘Oh, Tranter the Ranter, that’s all I need!’
Billy Tranter didn’t like me. His antics had earned me two suspensions last season just for trying to keep him at a safe distance during races. The animosity stemmed from a successful objection I’d made to a winner he rode at Newbury in November. Nothing personal on my part - Tranter’s tiring horse had leant on mine on the run-in; it was arguable whether or not it affected the result, but I owed it to the owner and trainer to try an objection and it was upheld.
Tranter the Ranter lived up to his nickname that day.
Since then he’d had a go at me numerous times during races, using various dirty tricks. I’d responded accordingly in the hope he’d soon tire of it and lose the taste for revenge, but all it did was increase his appetite. My fuse burns slowly these days but eventually, for practical reasons, I’d laid him out flat and stone cold on the weighing-room floor at Bangor.
Next time we rode against each other, he tried to put me through the wing of a fence. Grassing on colleagues isn’t done, but after that incident, I told Tranter that if he persisted, I’d make sure he got warned off for a long time. It didn’t cool the fire in his eyes. Today would be the first time we’d met since that conversation.
I scanned the race; twelve runners. Dolan’s horse, Cliptie, was down to be ridden by his son Rod who, Dolan had told me this morning, had been hospitalized for a few days after a crash with the family tractor yesterday evening. The first that people would hear of the jockey change to E. Malloy would be when it was broadcast to the betting shops shortly before racing.
That suited me. It meant the mystery caller wouldn’t have the opportunity to ring me and make suggestions.
I left Keith Allardyce to the remains of his lunch and went out into the sunshine to call the Corish Stud. George, the stud groom, answered the phone but was reluctant to answer questions about Martin Corish. He was hiding something. I resolved to leave after my ride in the first and head back down there to get some answers.
The sun was high as we filed out for the first and my dark colours, black with scarlet crossbelts, held the rays, slowly cooking my upper half. Sweat ran from my armpits over the heavy rib strapping from my last injury. Eager for a cooling breeze, I cantered to the start more quickly than normal. Cliptie, a neat bay gelding, moved nicely beneath me. Well-balanced and alert, he seemed the perfect type for this tight track.
Circling at the start, I watched Billy Tranter with concealed amusement. He’d dismounted and was adjusting his mount’s bridle. Tranter’s face had been a picture when he walked into the weighing room and saw my head popping through the neck of Cliptie’s colours. His smile disappeared as though his facial muscles had been sliced.
Women thought him good-looking, which I suppose he was in a gunslingerish sort of way: high cheekbones, narrow deep-set eyes, strong jaw, and prairie-coloured hair. He could frame a mean look but at five foot five, he was more Alan Ladd than Gary Cooper.
He didn’t speak to me, didn’t have to. It was obvious th
at hostilities would be resumed as soon as possible.
Tranter remounted his horse, a big brute, its coat so black the sun glinted blindingly from it at times. It was a long shot in the betting and that made me especially wary. If Tranter felt he wasn’t expected to win, he would concentrate on doing me damage. He kept glancing behind as we walked round at the start, both playing a slow game of cat and mouse before lining up.
Dolan was confident we’d win and had told me to lie fifth or sixth and bring him to lead at the last. Tucking Cliptie away in this sort of field shouldn’t prove difficult, but if Tranter was determined to be in there scrimmaging with me, he’d have plenty of cover from the eyes of the Stewards.
It was a two-mile hurdle and the starter called us in and snapped the tape up quickly, letting us go to race clockwise for almost two circuits. I jumped Cliptie off smartly and led for the first furlong. He was keen and I had some trouble restraining him. After such a long layoff from riding, I felt my shoulder and back muscles stretch and resist as I gently wrestled Cliptie into submission, playing the bit in his mouth as an angler would play a salmon.
After we jumped the second, he settled and we swung along nicely six from the front with a horse either side. I peeked under my armpit to see Tranter three lengths behind, moving his horse toward the rails. As we turned into the straight for the first time, I heard angry shouts then felt my horse take a heavy bump on the quarters.
I looked round. Tranter had barged up the inside, forcing others to move out quickly. We’d been caught in the domino effect. But Cliptie seemed okay and galloped on. Through clear goggles, Tranter’s narrowed eyes were fixed on me. Jaw muscles grimly clenched, he ignored the curses as he continued barreling forward.
Kicking Cliptie through a gap, I moved to the wide outside to keep at least one horse between Tranter and us. It would also give the Stewards a clearer view as we turned to race away from the stands.
