by Joe McNally
‘No need. I’ll ride. Thanks.’
‘Good. And keep what I’ve told you quiet, will you?’
‘I will.’ Eddie realized that Ivory would have to be dealt with outside the law. He’d seen a few like him. Eddie had beaten a few like him. And he was still feeling that power surge from earlier. Eddie decided he’d fix Ivory. No help needed.
41
Of the three Eddie had thrown out of the sauna, only Kellagher lined up against him in the Tingle Creek on this bright December Saturday. Shorn of his lieutenants and still feeling the humiliation of that sprawling naked slide along the floor, Kellagher did not speak and made no eye contact. Eddie worked himself across and alongside Kellagher as the starter mounted his rostrum, and as Eddie did so, the anger at what they’d done to Alex Brophy bubbled up.
Kellagher wouldn’t look at him. Keeping his whip low, Eddie jabbed the butt of it hard into Kellagher’s thigh. ‘Come anywhere near me and I’ll break your legs,’ Eddie said. Kellagher stared straight ahead.
Kellagher’s mount was a big black gelding called Midnight. He was second favourite at 11/4. Pearlyman was favourite at 13/8 and the others were poorly supported in the betting. Eddie thought back to Playlord and Tibidabo at Cheltenham: favourite and second favourite. This was obviously Ivory’s scheme; find a quality race where only two horses have a realistic chance and take the other one out.
Not this time. Eddie promised himself that. Today would be payback for Cheltenham.
Top class two-mile steeplechases are brilliant races to ride in. The horses are all athleticism and muscle and speed. Two miles is the shortest trip in any UK jumps race and these Grade One races were often run at a hell of a pace. Sandown offered the added bonus of seven fences set close together down the far straight. One error there could lose a race.
Eddie’s confidence and focus as he pulled down his goggles convinced him he could not lose. The starter raised his flag. Many of the 20,000 people in the stands raised their binoculars.
At the end of the Grandstand, beyond the winning post, stood the four-storey Eclipse Pavilion, housing mostly hospitality boxes. On the roof of the Pavilion, a man lay looking through a single scope. He wore white overalls, which helped camouflage him, though the paint around him was old and grimy. Beside him was a laser rangefinder, an altimeter and a Kestrel wind meter. He looked through a single optic: a Schmidt & Bender scope with 16 x magnification.
In the previous hour, the gunman had taken numerous readings. The wind was gusting up to 15 mph. He believed it was the only thing that might cause him a problem and he had downgraded the target from ‘heart’ to ‘core mass’: the triangle between both nipples and the base of the throat.
His equipment estimated a holdover allowance - holdover being the distance between rifle and target - of an eleven-inch drop and a right-to-left drift of five inches. It was almost always the case - aim high.
Kellagher’s mount, Midnight, was a front runner with a flawless jumping technique. Eddie’s horse, Pearlyman, was a strong traveller who never looked under pressure during a race. He could hold his position at any point regardless of the pace, and on the run-in, he was a head-down grinder, ruthless and relentless, and Eddie was certain they could track Kellagher, join him at the last fence, and outbattle him up the hill.
It developed into a re-run of the Cheltenham race, only this time it was Kellagher and the big black horse trying desperately to hold on. Midnight’s coat was sweat-soaked and foam-flecked and his tongue hung from the left side of his mouth. In the final two hundred yards, Eddie edged Pearlyman toward the rail, trying to get right upsides Midnight, to intimidate him.
The gunman on the roof adjusted his aim as Eddie moved across.
Kellagher’s black horse snorted air and raised his head trying to take in more. Pearlyman lowered his neck, stuck it out and in the dying strides, they moved ahead. Just before passing the post Eddie turned to his left to smile at the crowd and raise a victorious fist, opening his chest, stretching high…and the cheering stopped as though a switch had been thrown, and a collective gasp from the stands made Eddie look round.
Kellagher was out of the saddle, his right foot caught in the stirrup iron. The horse dragged him. He’d been ‘hung up’, and jockeys dread it. When it happens, you fight to keep your head away from the galloping hooves. Fear brings the strength to reach as best you can and try and free your trapped foot. But Kellagher did nothing. The bumps and drags and twists made him flop lifelessly and as the tired, frightened Midnight came to a halt, Kellagher ended up face down, arms at his sides, leg held above him in the stirrup as though he was about to kick the planet. Eddie saw on Kellagher’s back, above the muddy drag tracks, a small crater of bloody flesh. Around the hole was what looked like a still picture of a raindrop splash, crimson on yellow silks, caught at the moment of impact.
Thousands had left the course by the time the authorities had organized themselves. It took almost an hour to get the weighing room area in lockdown. Uniformed cops moved around trying to look as though they were on guard and in control. Plain-clothes guys whispered in groups. Lisle and Marcus Shear, the BHA chairman, stood with Sandown officials, all nodding and solemn, trying to agree a press statement and a time for a full press conference. Kellagher’s corpse remained on the course, surrounded by screens and arc lights, police photographers and detectives.
After the initial jolt of shock in the changing room, a general silence descended. Had Kellagher’s sidekicks Sampson and Blackaby not been there, the conversation would have been speculative and animated.
It was eight o’clock before Eddie got back to the car to start listening to voicemails. He rang Marie and Kim first to let them know he was okay. Kim seemed unsure about trying to cheer him up by congratulating Eddie on winning the race.
Millions watched the shooting that night on news channels around the world. Editorial doubts on the wisdom of showing such a brutal act were softened by requests from the police that as many people as possible should see the footage, in the hope that it would help them solve the crime. Each bulletin carried a warning prior to the video.
That evening, Mac called at Eddie’s house. They settled in the Snug, but the rain on Eddie’s picture window made such a racket they moved to the kitchen and sat at the table, Mac clutching a big blue coffee mug, while Eddie had a glass half full of whiskey and ice. The rain drummed softly on the roof. A few raindrops glistened in Mac’s hair.
He nodded toward Eddie’s whiskey glass, ‘Medicinal?’
Eddie smiled, ‘That’s my excuse.’
‘Remember when I first came to see you in that old caravan full of holes?’
‘You make it sound like you were full of holes.’ Eddie said.
‘You made me sound like I was full of bullshit.’
‘I was an angry young man, Mac. Long time ago.’
He looked around the big kitchen. ‘Your accommodation tastes are better now, I’ll give you that.’
‘What about you?’ Eddie asked, ‘You must miss days like these when the shit hits the racing world fan. Especially when it goes global.’
Mac nodded. ‘In a perverse way, I do. Sounds inhumane to say so when a man’s lost his life, but I’d like to have been involved in trying to find out who killed him.’
‘For his sake, or yours?’
He looked at me. ‘Both, I suppose. Mainly mine, if I’m honest.’
‘I’d be the same, Mac. So would most men. Especially when you should have been the one running this investigation for the BHA. It’s another chance for Lisle to fuck up, so you might get your job back yet.’
‘It’ll be a tough one for him. What’s the talk in the changing room?’
‘Not much. We mostly sat and watched the frightened faces of Sampson and Blackaby. Try and imagine what they’re thinking. Kellagher was the ringleader. Most of the lads were wary at best and afraid of him at worst, and the other two played on that. At least until yesterday.’ Eddie told Mac what had happened in the
sauna.
‘Do the police know about that confrontation?’
‘I told them, to save any of the lads from perjuring themselves.’
‘So you’re now in their books as having a major grudge against him.’
‘Mac, I think I have a pretty good alibi, don’t you?’
‘Well, the police know where you were when it happened, but they won’t discount the possibility of a paid assassin.’
‘But hopefully they will discount the fact that I’m not a moron, and that if I wanted someone to kill Kellagher, I’d have made sure it wasn’t done in front of twenty-thousand people and a TV audience.’
‘That is the real puzzle here,’ Mac said. ‘Why kill a man so publicly?’
‘Also, if the killing was to do with whatever those three have been up to, then Sampson and Blackaby might be next.’
‘I’d be interested to know what they said in their statements today.’
‘Couldn’t you get sight of them, the statements?’
‘I suppose I could, if I called in a few favours.’
Eddie had left out his conversation with Johnson Carver the night before. He didn’t know if Carver or Alex Brophy had told the cops about the threat to Brophy’s family. It wasn’t for Eddie to decide who should know about that.
It was also in his mind that Alex Brophy was not soft. He was quiet and deep. He was also absent from the changing room today. But, Eddie asked himself, was he absent from the racecourse? Was Brophy capable, morally and practically, of shooting a man?
Eddie drank and washed the whiskey around his mouth. Mac said, ‘There’s been some talk that Lisle and Marcus Shear might have offered Kellagher and his pals an amnesty for turning in Ivory.’
‘Where’d you hear that?’
‘Old friends in the office.’
‘Anything to it?’
‘Who knows? Could have been said in jest then gathered legs as these things do.’
‘So, if there was something to it, your thinking is that Ivory’s behind the killing?’
Mac, shrugged, opening his hands. ‘You say Ivory had a big bet on Midnight…why have the jockey killed in the closing stages?’
‘I had him beat at the time, Mac. He was winning nothing.’
‘And what if it had been neck and neck right to the post. You’d have been the man in the sights. The shooter couldn’t have got at Kellagher.’
‘Well, not if you’re assuming the shot came from the grandstands.’
‘You said the exit hole was in his back.’
‘True.’
‘It had to be someone high on the far end of the Grandstand, probably on the roof.’
‘If Ivory was behind it, it would have made more sense to shoot me. That way he lands his bet and gets rid of the only one in the changing room who stands up to his boys. And he also gets me back for confronting him at Cheltenham.’
‘But you can’t put him in jail for twenty years by turning Queen’s evidence on him. Kellagher could.’
‘So why wouldn’t he just have Kellagher quietly killed in a back alley, or in a staged road accident, or something? Think about it…he’s got to get a guy with a rifle into one of the biggest racecourses in the country, find him a concealed sniper’s point among twenty thousand people. There’s a TV blimp overhead, a dozen cameras around the track, and CCTV, I imagine. Then he’s got to get him out again. And, and, by the way, we’re not talking any old gunman here…this is a guy who can shoot stone dead a man on a galloping horse. Granted, Kellagher stood up in his stirrups when he knew he was beat, but if that shot came from the end of the Stand roof, what, a couple of hundred yards away, in a crosswind…’
Mac was nodding as Eddie spoke. ‘Perhaps Ivory thought there was no better warning to give Sampson and Blackaby than to kill their friend so brazenly? What do you think those two would say now to an amnesty for turning Queen’s?’
‘Fair point.’
‘And it means Ivory’s only had to arrange one killing instead of three. Pour encourager les autres.’
‘You’ve got me there, Mac.’
‘Sorry. To encourage the others…Irony.’
‘I guessed the irony bit.’
Mac smiled.
42
Eddie had black coffee for breakfast as he scanned the newspapers. Pat Kellagher’s picture was on the front of most of them. Only one carried him as a corpse, the others used the shot of him standing in his stirrups a second before he died.
The reports varied little but there was plenty speculation; a betting syndicate hit man; a disgruntled punter, angry at Kellagher being freed by the court in the race-fixing case; an animal rights fanatic. Not one source mentioned the theory Mac had come up with regarding the Queen’s evidence rumour.
The Times claimed the shot came from the roof of a building adjoining the Grandstand, one that contained hospitality suites. Eddie wondered if Jordan Ivory owned one of those suites. In the past, Eddie would just have called Mac and asked him to check if Ivory had a box there. It wasn’t so simple anymore, but maybe Mave could find out. Eddie sent her a text.
Each of the newspaper reports carried the statement from Jockey Club Racecourses, who owned Sandown, about their shock and sadness etc., and their intention to hold an emergency board meeting and a ‘full inquiry’.
Eddie went running in the woods in the Sunday morning rain then showered the mud away and sat at his PC. He’d missed Mave’s ping on the private system they used. He clicked and she answered right away. Her webcam pointed at the window. She seldom looked straight at it, but the least Eddie could usually see were her fingers on the keyboard.
‘Your webcam’s squinty.’
‘I’m incognito, today.’
‘Let me see you.’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I look like shit and you’ll nag me for not eating.’
‘Still under pressure from Sonny?’
‘It’s not Sonny, Eddie, it’s that woman!’
‘Well, if it’s that woman, it should be a hell of a lot easier to say no.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Okay…Let me see you.’
She turned the webcam slowly, and stared at it as though she hated it.
‘Mave, this is making you ill. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but a decision’s got to come sometime. Why don’t you arrange to meet Sonny here, along with me, and we’ll try and get to the bottom of this?’
She put her head in her hands, then pushed back her hair and looked at the camera. ‘Will you speak to him, then, and set it up?’
‘Of course. I’ll call him as soon as we’re done here.’
She sighed. ‘Okay. Thanks. You texted earlier?’
‘I want to know if Jordan Ivory has a special executive box at Sandown, in the Eclipse Pavilion, but there’s nobody I can think of to ask. Nobody who’s safe, if you know what I mean. Can you take a look at their hospitality database for me?’
‘You think Ivory’s behind Kellagher’s murder?’
Eddie told her about the conversation he’d had with Mac.
‘I think it’s dangerous to make assumptions here, Eddie. This could be some nut who’s just come up with the idea of killing jockeys.’
‘Unlikely though.’
‘What if it’s someone who thinks that bent jockeys should be shot. Literally?’
‘That still makes me okay.’
‘Not to someone who saw the pictures of you and Sonny in the papers and thinks you’ve got off Scot-free, just like Kellagher and his friends.’
‘That’s completely different!’
‘Eddie. Cool it. I’m playing devil’s advocate. Trust me. Trust logic, not assumptions. Correlation is not causation.’
‘I remember you telling me that before, along with the balance of probability theory. What happened to that?’
‘Listen, we’re not talking about getting some mathematical equation wrong here, we’re talking about you g
etting shot. Dead.’
She wasn’t in the mood for debate. Eddie kept quiet.
‘Listen, please, Eddie. You’ve been in plenty of scrapes. You’ve got out of plenty of scrapes, which tends to make you think things will always be that way. They won’t. Someday there will be one you’ll go into and won’t come back out of. Think about it…seriously.’
‘I promise to think about it, if you’ll promise to take a break for a while and make yourself something to eat and get some proper rest.’
‘I will. I’ll check that Sandown database first.’
‘Thanks. I’ll let you know what Sonny says, but not until tonight. Get some sleep.’
Eddie called Sonny, who told him he needed to see Mave soon anyway and that he’d book a flight to London for the following week.
‘Good. Send me the details. I’ll pick you up at Heathrow.’
‘I’ll catch the train, Eddie, thanks. If you can get me at Newbury station, that would be fine.’
‘Why don’t you stay a couple of days? You must need a break from all that sunshine.’
‘I do miss England’s rain sometimes, believe it or not.’
‘Well I think I can safely promise you a few million litres here in the valley.’
‘I’ll see how it goes with Nina. I think she’ll want me back here as soon as.’
‘But you’ll stay overnight, at least? Mave will. Plenty of room.’
‘Can I drop you an email and let you know?’
‘Sure.’
The email came within the hour: Sonny would be happy to spend a couple of days and catch up with Mave. When Eddie told her, she seemed relieved. ‘That’s promising, Eddie. It’s the first time Nina hasn’t put him under pressure to get straight back to Turkey. Maybe she’s loosening the claws at last.’
‘Or Sonny’s coming to his senses.’
‘I’ll tell you one thing, when this is done, it’s done. I’m burying this programme for good.’
‘Never say never, Mave.’
‘Oh, by the way, Jordan Ivory has an annual reservation for the whole top floor of the Eclipse Pavilion at Sandown.’
