Warned Off
Page 26
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 town with a hotel that would let me in this late was Marlborough, about fifteen miles away. But my credit card was swipe-weary and battle scarred; even a three-star hotel bill would probably finish it off. Basic guesthouses would already be locked up and I had no friends in the vicinity.
As I sat looking through the windscreen at the stars it became plain that the overnight sleeping arrangements were a choice between kipping in the car or heading back to 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 which had left 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.
Now, 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 real investment I’d ever made. No jockey rides forever and the stud was supposed to provide me with some security when I hung up my boots, a notion I’d entertained often in the past few months. I sighed, fighting off self-pity.
I decided to 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 back north at speed.
3
I reached the flat just after 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 message 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 nice start back. 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 Gary Rice whose flat I was sitting in now. Gary owned a string of twenty-two trained by Charles Tunney, whose Shropshire yard my flat overlooked. Gary paid me a reasonable retainer to ride his horses, and when the stable had no runners, I was free to take rides elsewhere.
Many 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 during which he’d vowed to attend Mass every day to pray for a better season next year.
In the meantime he’d 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 completely for two months in the summer but the British Horseracing Board had decided to grant a limited number of 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 the inevitable 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 further away from where I’d planned to be at first light, the Corish Stud.
My thoughts returned to my 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 both 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 during the summer but that would be twenty opportunities for the blackmailer to try to influence me. And who was to say he wouldn’t carry on right through next season proper? What would I do if he asked me to ride a bent race?
I didn’t know.
I knew what I’d want to do. I’d never pulled a horse in my life. Ethics aside, my belief was that as soon as someone had something on you, you could never be free. Even one guilty little secret would always stay fixed to you like a choke-chain - a very long chain maybe, but one that would snap you backwards when somebody finally tugged on it then slowly hauled 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. If Corish proved guilty as charged, then apart from finding out why he’d done it, I’d still have to trace the blackmailer. Until that was achieved I had to face the fact that this Perth ride might have to be my last.
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?
As the summer morning brightened my future looked darker. That little choke-chain was already around my neck and whichever way I turned strangulation seemed the only outcome.
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.
Thanks
We’re very grateful for your custom and for the chance to sell almost direct to you after years of trying to please publishers and retailers who always took the lion’s share. A book without a reader is a dancer without a partner. Thank you for bringing Warned Off alive.
Richard and Joe
What the reviewers said first time round ...
Warned Off
‘It’s a racing certainty that Warned Off will offer a challenge to Dick Francis. It’s packed with authentic dialogue and characters.’ Today
‘A very professional racing thriller ... lots of rough stuff, plenty of racing background and action all mixed up with a love interest combine to provide a fast-moving story.’ Publishing News
‘The plot is from the racing stockpot ... fast and violent.’ The Times
Hunted
‘It’s a neat plot, very well developed ... and the climax is as good as anything Francis has come up with.’ Racing Post
‘If it’s fiction you’re after, the team of Richard Pitman and Joe McNally have struck again with another racing-based thriller mystery.’ The Sporting Life
‘There is plenty of well-written racing action and weighing-room atmosphere in which Richard Pitman’s expertise as a former top jockey shines through and the tension, so important in a thriller, is kept going from start to finish. Thoroughly recommended.’ Horse & Hound
Running Scared
‘Brings the racing scene so vividly to life ... racy in both the equine and the literary sense.’ Racing Post
About the Pitman McNally books
We published seven racing thrillers in the 1990s. We are now converting those to e-books. If you bought any of the originals, we hope you enjoyed them. We’ve made some changes to them for these editions which we believe improves them - we hope you agree.
The first five books feature Eddie Malloy. They can be read in any order but some readers enjoy following in sequence, in which case it goes Warned Off, Hunted, *Running Scared, Blood Ties, *The Third Degree.
Joseph’s Mansions (which will be re-titled For Your Sins for e-publication) introduces Fran
kie Houlihan and Bet Your Life features Eddie and Frankie.
By mid July, all our books will be for sale online except *Running Scared and *The Third Degree; we intend to do substantial rewrites on these and they will be available later in 2012.
We plan to write many more thrillers together; our eighth, Death Ride, is well advanced. You can follow progress, and get in touch at pitmacbooks.com or @pitmac on Twitter.
If you enjoy this book, we’d be most grateful if you’d review it online. If you didn’t enjoy it, we’d be even more grateful if you keep it quiet!
Best wishes
Richard and Joe
PS After the final page of Warned Off, we’ve added an excerpt from book two in the Eddie Malloy series, Hunted and one from book three, Blood Ties.
We will send you an email on publication day of our future books if you register on our website pitmacbooks.com and you can follow us on twitter @pitmacbooks
Acknowledgements
We are most grateful to Joanne Teare for her superb typing skills, to our illustrator John Amy and to our marketing guru Claire Ryan of The Raynfall Agency who designed our website
For old time’s sake, we’d also like to thank Nick Sayers, publishing director at Hodder UK - a humble editor when he helped so much with this book back in 1993!
A mention too for renowned literary agent Michael Sissons of Peters Fraser & Dunlop who signed their first author in 1924; goodness knows what Michael saw in us way back in 1992!
Table of Contents
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Excerpt from Hunted, the second in the Eddie Malloy series
An excerpt from Blood Ties, book 3 in the Eddie Malloy series
Thanks
What the reviewers said first time round ...
About the Pitman McNally books
Acknowledgements