‘Of course not.’
‘Then you must have some supper. I’ll make you an omelette.’
I smiled at him. ‘That would be nice.’
Grant put his head round the sitting-room door.
‘Bedtime,’ he said to the twins, and received the usual howls of protest in reply.
‘Come off it, Dad,’ they complained. ‘Can’t we watch the end of the film?’
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s time for your bed. You can watch the rest tomorrow.’
Reluctantly the boys switched off the DVD and went up the stairs.
‘I’ll be up in a minute,’ I shouted after them. ‘Do your teeth.’
How things change in life. No teenager ever wants to go to bed early, I certainly hadn’t, but now in my forties there was nothing better than an early night. As a family, we had almost reached the point where the parents went to bed first, leaving the children to lock up and turn out the lights.
Role reversal.
But that didn’t only apply to the boys.
Over the past couple of months my mother’s health had begun to fail and she’d had a couple of TIAs – Transient Ischemic Attacks, also known as ministrokes. Even though most of the symptoms rapidly disappeared, the attacks had left her somewhat confused and very frightened.
After many years of stubborn independence since the death of my father, she was now forced to rely on me more and more. And, whereas in the past I might have resented this intrusion into my own freedom, I discovered a newfound tolerance, even love.
So I had started caring for her as if she were a small child, as she had once done for me.
Perhaps that is why we humans are so keen to have children – we instinctively know it is the best way of being looked after when we get old.
But that is assuming we actually do get old and our children aren’t run over in the meantime by a long black Mercedes with dark-tinted rear windows.
The very thought made me shiver with fear.
I went into the sitting room and peeped through a crack in the curtains, out towards the driveway, checking that there was no dark-suited chauffeur with big biceps lurking between the rose bushes.
‘What are you doing?’ Grant asked from behind me.
‘Just checking,’ I said.
‘Checking for what?’
I turned and looked at him, trying my hardest to keep the worry out of my face. But he could read me all too well and he knew straight away that something was wrong.
‘What is it?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Nothing,’ I replied, but I had difficulty holding back the tears. I needed to tell him. I needed his reassurance that everything would be fine.
But he wouldn’t give it. He couldn’t.
In fact, Grant was cross when I told him. Very cross indeed.
‘Why did you ever even go near them?’ he demanded. ‘I knew that working at that bloody racecourse was a bad idea. I wish now I’d stopped you going. It’s been nothing but trouble.’
We were in the kitchen.
While I’d been up to say goodnight to the boys, Grant had made me an omelette. Now I sat with it only half-eaten in front of me.
I pushed it away.
‘And you won’t bloody eat either. Do you realise what that does to our social life? We haven’t seen any of our friends for months.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ I said. ‘The boys will hear you.’
‘I don’t care if they do,’ he said, louder than ever. ‘If you had an ounce of sense in you, you’d put their welfare first rather than starving yourself to death and pursuing this ridiculous notion you have.’
‘That’s not fair,’ I said. ‘And it’s not a ridiculous notion. Do you really think there would have been this reaction if it wasn’t true?’
He threw his hands up in frustration. ‘There you go again. It’s none of your bloody business. Leave it alone.’
He turned away from me and leaned on the sink.
But it surely was my bloody business.
As a doctor, I was obliged to call in the police if I suspected a patient had been the subject of serious abuse or assault. That didn’t apply in this case but, as a responsible citizen, was it not at least my moral duty to report wrongdoing to the authorities?
‘I don’t want you going back to the racecourse tomorrow,’ Grant said without turning round.
‘I have to,’ I said. ‘Adrian Kings says they need me. There were only three doctors there today and that’s the absolute minimum required by the rules. Without me, there will be no racing.’
‘Then there will be no racing,’ he said adamantly, turning back to face me. ‘You’re not going.’
‘Oh yes, I am,’ I said equally adamantly. ‘I have to. My reputation will be ruined if I don’t.’ To say nothing of my prospects of ever being asked to be a racecourse doctor again.
‘What if you were ill?’ he said. ‘Then what would they do?’
‘But I’m not ill.’
‘I don’t care. Call in sick. You’re not going, and that’s final.’
How dare he tell me what to do?
I bit my lip not to answer him back. It would have only fanned the flames.
We didn’t normally argue. In eighteen years, only twice had we gone to bed without speaking and, for both of those occasions, neither of us could now even remember why.
But something about this current row made me apprehensive.
Was Grant finally getting fed up with me?
Would it actually be best if we took some time away from each other?
Best for whom? For him? Or me? Certainly not for the boys. I had seen too many friends break up with early-teenage children and it all too often ended in disaster. Happy, confident youngsters became insular and withdrawn and neither parent ever regained the trust of their children that they had enjoyed previously.
Maybe that would be a step too far, but inside I was seething with annoyance that Grant thought he could order me not to do what I wanted.
However, he may be right.
Perhaps it would be better if I didn’t go to the races the following day. But I resented him laying down the law in such a manner, and he knew it.
For the third time in our married life, we went to bed without speaking.
Not that I could get to sleep.
I kept churning things over and over in my head, trying to decide what to do, and not just whether I should defy Grant and go to the racecourse the following morning.
I still couldn’t get the dead man out of my mind.
Dick McGee had simply corroborated what I already believed to be the case, and Jason Conway’s reaction had only confirmed it further. There was no question in my mind that he and Mike Sheraton had been involved in spot-fixing races by jumping the first fence in front on instruction from the man in the black Mercedes.
That knowledge, and the fact that Rahul Kumar had been an investigator for a racing authority in India, where gambling on anything was endemic, plainly threw the ‘misadventure’ verdict of the inquest into doubt.
Misadventure implied accidental death precipitated by unintentional, ill-advised or reckless actions of the deceased. It certainly didn’t cover murder and, the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Rahul Kumar had been killed to prevent him exposing the corruption.
So what should I do about it, if anything?
No one else seemed to think that anything untoward was going on in the first place. But that was surely the key feature of the most ingenious frauds – no one even noticed they were happening.
Things were hardly better in the morning.
Breakfast was a very quiet affair with both the boys sensing that Grant and I were at loggerheads. Either that or they’d heard the exchanges the previous evening and had decided that keeping quiet was the best policy.
My mobile phone rang to break the silence.
It was Adrian Kings.
‘You are coming in today, aren’t you?’ he said
with a touch of panic in his voice. ‘I managed to get a fourth doctor, from Warwick, but Jack Otley has now called me. He’s been ill all night and he’s unable to make it so we are back down to the minimum.’
I looked across at Grant.
‘Hold on a minute,’ I said to Adrian.
I covered the microphone with my hand.
‘They desperately need me at the racecourse today,’ I said. ‘One of the other doctors is sick.’
Grant wasn’t happy but he waved a hand dismissively, which I took to be a reluctant acceptance.
‘OK,’ I said to Adrian. ‘I’ll be there.’
He was relieved. ‘Great. I’ll still try and get someone else but it’s such short notice and in school holiday time too. Try and be here by twelve. The first race is at one-fifty.’
We disconnected.
‘What about the boys?’ Grant said acidly.
‘They’re at a cricket coaching course all afternoon,’ I said. ‘I’ll take them in early before going on to the races. Can you collect them after?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘They could wait for me like last night.’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘We’re all sorted then. I’ll try and be home a bit earlier. How about if I cook you steak and chips with a peppercorn sauce?’
His favourite. A peace offering.
He smiled and it lit up my life. ‘That would be lovely.’
Shame he didn’t get it.
31
The only good thing to say about the Thursday of the April meeting was that it was less busy than the day before, at least as far as the medical team was concerned. However, the sunshine of the previous day had given way to overcast skies and a steady drizzle, interspersed with heavier showers as a cold front moved in from the west. Definitely an anorak day.
I dropped the boys off at their cricket-coaching course at eleven. They didn’t mind the rain as they would be inside anyway, using the indoor nets in the college sports hall.
‘Don’t wander off,’ I told them seriously. ‘And wait inside for Dad to collect you. He should be here by six.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ they said, rolling their eyes in unison. ‘We could have caught a bus home, you know. We’re no longer little kids.’
Catching a bus would have involved walking down the hill from the college to the bus station in the town centre, as well as along our road in Gotherington at the other end and, for reasons I didn’t explain, I wasn’t keen for them to be out wandering the streets alone. Not just at the moment.
Indeed, I checked all around to ensure I couldn’t spot a lurking long black Mercedes before I was happy to leave them and go on to the racecourse.
As on the day before, I was the first doctor to arrive at the medical room, but there were already three jockeys waiting in there for clearance to ride.
One of them was Mike Sheraton with his stitched right knee, and he wasn’t pleased to see me.
‘I’ll come back,’ he mumbled to no one in particular, walking back out into the changing room.
Go ahead, I thought, taking off my coat.
I didn’t want to see him every bit as much as he clearly didn’t want to see me.
The other two were straightforward and I removed their Red Entries from RIMANI.
Next, I helped the nurse go through all the medical supplies, checking that they were all back in order after busy use the previous afternoon.
Adrian Kings arrived as we were finishing off.
‘Ah, hello, Chris,’ he said. ‘Thank you for stepping into the breach. Don’t know what we’d have done today without you.’
‘I’ll remind you of that before the Festival next March,’ I said with a laugh.
Mike Sheraton came back into the medical room and presented himself to Adrian.
‘Can you clear me, doc?’ he said.
Adrian was busy working out the doctor and ambulance positions for each race, writing them up on the whiteboard on the wall ready for his briefing.
‘Chris,’ he said to me. ‘Can you do it?’
Mike Sheraton wasn’t happy, and nor was I, but neither of us had much choice.
He pulled up his right trouser leg and put his foot on a chair while I removed the dressing and inspected the knee.
The nurse really had done a good job with the suturing and healing had clearly started.
‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Healing well. You will need a support dressing over it but otherwise you are fit to ride.’
He looked at me with distaste.
‘I could have bloody ridden yesterday. You cost me a winner in the last.’
‘My job is simply to ensure you receive the best possible medical care,’ I said. ‘No other considerations are important. Today you are fit to ride, yesterday you were not. I will confirm to the Clerk of the Scales that your Red Entry has been removed.’
He didn’t thank me. He just pulled down his trouser leg and walked out without even waiting for the dressing to be replaced. I wasn’t going to call him back. If he landed on his knee and split it open again, he would have no one to blame but himself.
Did I care?
Not a jot.
Thankfully, there was not a single faller in any of the first three races, which allowed me to remain in the dry of the Land Rover as much as possible.
However, the third race was not without some interest.
I was in the centre of the course for the start of a two-and-a-half-mile handicap hurdle with thirteen runners.
I confirmed to the officials that the medical arrangements were in place and then watched as the horses circled, having their girths tightened by the starter’s assistants.
Mike Sheraton was riding horse number one, the top weight, and he jumped off fast when the flag dropped, skipping over the first hurdle in front of the other twelve.
They’re at it again, I thought.
They must be very sure of themselves.
Mike Sheraton had known I was there, he’d seen me at the start. Perhaps they still didn’t realise I knew what they were up to, or maybe the bets had already been laid and it was too late, and too expensive, to cancel.
Either way, I considered it a personal insult.
But it was none of my business, right?
I had a customer in the fourth race, a pretty young lady jockey called Jane Glenister, who fell at the open ditch at the top of the hill while leading the pack of nine runners.
‘Hi, there,’ I said when I reached her. ‘Dr Rankin here.’
She was sitting on her haunches, groaning.
‘Where does it hurt?’ I asked.
‘Where doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘Got kicked around by all of them like a bloody football.’ She started to get slowly to her feet. ‘But I’ll be fine.’
‘Did you bang your head at all?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said, taking off her racing helmet and shaking free a huge bundle of bouncing red curls. ‘Thank God.’
I walked with her away from the fence towards the inside rail.
She winced as she ducked under it.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’
‘Nothing a couple of ibuprofen and a long stretch in the sauna won’t cure. I’m just sore, that’s all.’
‘Make sure you report to the medical room when you get back to the weighing room,’ I reminded her. ‘You’ll need to be checked over there.’
‘Sure will. Thank you, Dr Rankin.’ She smiled at me with a set of gleaming-white perfect teeth before climbing into the jockey transport that had stopped to collect her. I stood for a second and watched her go, wondering why such a beautiful face wanted to gallop over fences at thirty miles per hour with the inevitable injuries that would surely come. Had she not seen the men in the changing room with mouthfuls of gaps and dentures?
But, I suppose, if she loved the excitement of racing and the surge of adrenalin in her veins that it produced, then maybe it was worth the bumps and bashes. I ju
st hoped she still thought the same in the years to come. If I had teeth like that, I’d take up something safer, like BASE jumping.
I returned to the Land Rover and rejoined the chase of the remaining runners on their second circuit, but there were no more fallers and I made my way back through the rain to the weighing room.
Jane Glenister was there, lying on one of the beds. She watched me come in.
‘You OK?’ I asked her.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Just resting my aching bones until the ibuprofen kicks in. I’ll be fine in a bit.’
‘No more rides today.’ It was more of a statement than a question.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just the one. All this way just to get my arse walloped.’
‘Where’s home?’ I asked.
‘In Devon, near Plymouth.’
‘Are you driving back tonight?’
‘That’s the plan. Straight down the M5.’
I turned to the nurse. ‘Has she done the concussion tests?’
‘Passed with flying colours,’ the nurse said with a laugh. ‘She didn’t just know which jockey won the Gold Cup, but also his extra-large condom size.’
‘That was meant to be a secret between you and me,’ Jane whined in mock complaint.
‘Too much information,’ I said, laughing. But I was satisfied that she wasn’t concussed. ‘Lie there for as long as you like. But promise me you’ll tell us if something doesn’t feel right, and don’t drive home unless you’re well enough. Better to stay somewhere locally.’
‘OK, OK,’ she said, waving a hand at me. ‘Don’t make a bloody fuss.’ She closed her eyes. She was clearly in more pain than she was letting on, but there was nothing unusual about that in racecourse changing rooms.
‘Jockeys, five minutes,’ announced the loudspeaker.
Time for me to go out again to the Land Rover.
There were two more fallers in the remaining races but neither of the jockeys was injured, one of them getting up from the turf beyond the second-last fence and running off so fast that I was left gasping in his wake.
‘No strenuous exercise.’ I could almost hear my GP’s stern warning ringing in my ears.
I gave up the chase, watching him disappear into the distance. I’d done my best to attend to him within one minute. If he was able to run all the way back to the weighing room, I reckoned I could safely assume he was unhurt. Not that he wouldn’t still be tested for concussion when he got there.
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