Dead Ringer (The Eddie Malloy series Book 6)

by Joe McNally

  Dead Ringer

  Joe MCNALLY

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dear Richard,

  Dedication

  Author’s note

  Acknowledgements

  The Eddie Malloy series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  ARCANGELS wanted

  Copyright © 2015 by Joe MCNALLY

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  My partner in crime-writing for more than twenty years, Richard Pitman, retired in 2013. Richard’s hard work turned my first poor attempt at a manuscript, Warned Off, into something Hodder & Stoughton were willing to publish. We’ve been writing together since although Richard, for some time now, has been urging me to strike out on my own.

  Richard, as a top jockey, was a boyhood hero of mine. You can imagine then how much our partnership has meant to me. Very few are lucky enough to work with one of their heroes. Our idols can often turn out to have feet of clay. Not Richard. I’ve never known him deny help or a favour to anyone. Not long after his sixty-ninth birthday, Richard became an altruistic kidney donor.

  Some lucky person is now living life anew, thanks to the selflessness and kindness of a very fine man.

  Thanks Richard. I shall miss you.

  For Margy, with love

  Author’s note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a work of the imagination of the authors or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank the following, who helped with research for Dead Ringer…

  Weatherbys are racing’s administrators in the UK and Ireland. The company has been in business since 1770. I’ve had quite a few dealings with Weatherbys over the years. They are always helpful, gracious, polite, and quick to respond to enquiries, often in painstaking detail. A perfect example of this furnished me with the key facts which drive the plot of Dead Ringer. Those facts came from Paul Palmer, head of Horse Registry at Weatherbys. Thank you, Paul.

  Others in the racing industry have been helpful, although they have opted to remain anonymous, as have some of my contacts in the police force…you know who you are, and I’m grateful to you.

  Finally, to my proof-reader, and lifelong friend Charlie Smith, thanks, pal!

  Joe McNally

  January 2014

  The Eddie Malloy series

  The series is growing steadily. You can find news of the available titles here on our website, where you can also opt to join our mailing list

  1

  We were turning toward the straight at Ascot for the last time. I was crouched on a veteran steeplechaser swinging my whip, talking to him, urging him on through the cold blinding rain in pursuit of three others. The ground was like pudding and the brown horse below me plodded on as he’d been doing each winter for nine years. We had no chance of winning, but he kept going. His name was Excalibur. I reckoned he had cleared more than seven hundred fences in his life.

  Excalibur had long ago mastered the art of efficient jumping, spending minimum time in flight, battle-scarred belly brushing through black birch, empty scrotum ensuring painless contact, at the price of castration when still a colt, condemned by his lack of speed never to mount a mare.

  On we went.

  Three to jump in the gathering gloom, then a wash-down for the old gelding and a shower for me. His horsebox would carry him home to a familiar, welcoming stall. I faced an hour’s drive to an empty house, though no less comforting for that.

  Weary, winnerless and wondering what to do in the two-day break before Christmas, I got into the car and took my phone from the glove-box. New rules on integrity banned jockeys from using mobile phones on racecourse premises. Some of the lads carried them anyway. I preferred to leave mine locked up. My history made it vital for me to be above suspicion. I minimized risks where I could.

  Three voicemails waited. The last one was from Jimmy Sherrick. He sounded anxious. I called him.

  ‘Jimmy’

  ‘Eddie.’ He was on hands-free.

  ‘Any luck today?’ I asked. He’d been riding at Haydock, two hundred miles north of Ascot. ‘Waste of time, Eddie. Two rides. Two losers. You?’

  ‘I can beat you. Three rides, three losers. The best that can be said is that I’m going to be home a hell of a lot quicker than you are.’

  ‘I’ll be taking it easy. No point bursting my balls to get back. Traffic is shit as usual.’

  ‘You okay? Your voicemail sounded a bit edgy.’

  ‘Nah, things aren’t right. I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘I’m about to head home. I can put this on hands-free.’

  He didn’t answer. I thought we’d lost the connection. ‘Jimmy?’

  ‘Eddie, I’m chucking it with Bayley. I wanted you to know first, since you got me the job.’

  ‘What’s up?’ Jimmy had been riding for Bayley Watt for the last three seasons, and the new season wasn’t that old.

  ‘Ahh, things just aren’t right. I had a call last night from the Racing Post asking if I’d do one of these interviews for the Sunday edition. You know the usual crap, what’s your favourite horse and all this?’

  ‘An honour.’ I joked.

  ‘They must be well short of subjects to be phoning me. Anyway, one of the questions is “How would you like to be remembered?”, and that’s what decided me.’

  ‘What, you’d like to be remembered as a guy who packed in the best job he’s ever had?’

  ‘There’s jobs and jobs. You know that. Every
man has his price, so they say, but look, I’ll tell you about it over a drink. All I’ll say now is that you really need to think about things if Bayley offers you anything. Come over for a bite tomorrow.’

  We arranged to meet at Jimmy’s place next evening.

  Jimmy was a bit like the old gelding Excalibur. He’d been around for years, plodding through his career in the lower half of the jockeys’ table. In his forties now, Jimmy was a grinder; a reliable, workaday jockey whose dreams of stardom ended as mine were beginning. One of the things that had affected his career was the time he saved my life.

  He got a lot of praise for that, but a few whisperers questioned his “commitment” at a crucial time for him - heartless bastards.

  Jimmy threw a big race to help me.

  I was just nineteen and still claiming. Young professional jockeys start their career with a weight allowance which is supposed to offset their experience. The more winners they ride, the smaller the allowance they can claim until the allowance is ‘ridden out’.

  I was still claiming five pounds on the day of the fall. This meant the horse I was riding didn’t have to carry the ten stone eight pounds the handicapper had allotted; my claim reduced that to ten stone three. This was in a big race at Kempton. Prize money to the winner was forty grand, which was a lot fourteen years ago.

  I was a bold young buck, throwing horses at fences with a belief in my timing and talent that far outstripped caution and experience. Death seemed centuries away.

  My mount was a front-runner. Some horses just like to lead, he was one. But another horse, a grey, took us on from the start that day and I stupidly pitched myself into a “oh no you don’t” battle right from the off.

  In front of the packed grandstands, I called on my horse for a big jump, hoping to dishearten the grey. My mount did all he could but I’d asked him up way too soon and he smashed into the fence, front legs piercing the black birch two thirds of the way down, chest hitting the top of it, spine flexing as his back end tried to continue at thirty miles an hour. They told me the final somersault was spectacular; firing me out of the saddle like a missile, head first, straight into a blackout.

  I was young. So were the two medics who came to help. I’d stopped breathing. They figured out I’d swallowed my tongue but my jaw had locked. They told me afterward that they’d been frantic and scared trying to get my mouth open. The man admitted to crying in fear and frustration, and the woman, his colleague, was trying to calm him as well as help me. All this while the race continued. Fourteen runners were on their way toward us and the finish. Seven tons of horseflesh travelling at thirty miles an hour.

  But the fence I lay in front of, the second last in the race, had been dolled off with markers to warn the jockeys and send them round the wing. Jimmy Sherrick turned into the straight well clear on the chestnut mare whose name I can’t recall. As he galloped past the dolled-off fence he looked across and saw the medics struggling, the man crying, my face going blue. And he did something unheard of. He pulled his horse up. Jimmy sacrificed the race by stopping and turning back to jump off and land beside us. He knew what had happened and he pushed the crying medic away with such force the man rolled underneath the white rails. Then Jimmy punched me hard on the side of my jaw.

  Unlocked.

  The female medic reached and hooked my tongue out of my airway.

  I sat up to see the horse I’d been riding cropping grass on the infield. He was okay, and so was I.

  An anonymous donor sent Jimmy the money he would have earned from his percentage of the prize money. Jimmy made the international news bulletins. But at the end of the season his contract with that trainer was not renewed and Jimmy found himself drifting to the edges, freelancing, scrabbling for rides.

  When I recovered, I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t do half enough to try and help Jimmy Sherrick. Oh, I thanked him, posed for pictures, bought him champagne, offered him a holiday abroad. Material stuff thrown his way by a cocky kid on the road to the top; to being Champion Jockey at the age of twenty-one. Too busy playing the big star to stop and think and help a man who loved race riding as much as I did. A man who’d wanted to succeed, as I did. A man who had not lost perspective, or his sense of humanity.

  I’d lost mine.

  I remember asking myself, if the positions had been reversed, would you have sacrificed that race to save Jimmy Sherrick?

  No.

  My arrogance and self-perceived “professionalism” persuaded me that I should be proud of that answer. When fate took its revenge on me by way of a frame-up in doping allegations which got me warned off, I had five years in the wilderness to reflect on what a prick I had been after Jimmy Sherrick saved my life.

  When I finally regained my licence, seven years ago, Jimmy was still clinging on. He was working the fringes, riding the slow horses, the poor jumpers, the heart-breakers and soul-eaters who trailed home in the dying wake of winners, passing the post as the stands emptied, banished to a blind world where nobody watched anymore.

  Older, sorrier, wiser, I had tried to do for Jimmy what I should have done all those years ago.

  When I couldn’t take a ride, Jimmy was always the guy I suggested as a sub. Any owners I met, I’d talk Jimmy up. ‘There’s nobody better, believe me. Jimmy’s experience can’t be bought.’

  ‘He’s an old man. Past it.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. He’s tough and as fit as he ever was.’

  When Bayley Watt offered me the job of stable jockey, I’d persuaded him to give it to Jimmy Sherrick. OK, perhaps that was no great sacrifice. Bayley was just a permit trainer, restricted to training horses owned by himself and immediate family, but he’d had some good animals over the years. This had been his best start to a season. He had fewer than a dozen horses but he’d already won some good prizes, and looked set to break his own records.

  That’s what made Jimmy’s decision so puzzling. Christmas was days away. A hell of a time to give up security and good horses.

  As I passed Jimmy’s dark house on the way home, I considered calling on him later that night rather than waiting twenty four hours. I slowed and stopped close by to consider the options. He had two hundred miles to travel. I knew that once I reached home I’d be reluctant to come back out. I drove on. Tomorrow night would do. Even my curiosity could hold out that long.

  I suspected Jimmy had simply had enough of Bayley Watt. The trainer could be eccentric. He’d tried a few crazy schemes to improve horses. Maybe he’d just worn Jimmy out with them. Jimmy was forty four, a man of routine. He didn’t like surprises. I smiled as I pulled into my driveway, already looking forward to Jimmy’s story.

  But I never got to hear it.

  When I called on Jimmy next evening, I found him hanging from a rusty chain, looped through the rafters in his cellar. A wooden chair lay on its side and his body, lit by a bare bulb, was still swinging.

  2

  Jimmy’s next-of-kin was his father, Jim. His first-of-kin really, I thought as I watched the old man by the graveside. Short and slight like his dead son, a thick black coat engulfed him, protecting his pallid skin from the icy wind. His boots shone black in the snow. He looked on grimly as six jockeys fed purple cords through fingers that would normally be slipping reins on this last day of December. The lads lowered Jimmy into the ice-fringed hole and let the cords drop, knots drumming on the coffin lid. Mister Sherrick had wanted Jimmy buried before the new year began.

  The cold snap had wiped out racing since Boxing Day, although there was a benefit in the freeze. Empty changing rooms and deserted racetracks meant all Jimmy’s friends could be here. Most accepted Mister Sherrick’s invitation back to the hotel to “celebrate Jimmy’s life”. But suicide and celebration are hard things to reconcile. And jockeys anticipating a quick resumption of racing dared not delve into the buffet, so it was a subdued affair, ending with empty goodbyes and full platters.

  That night, at home, I went into the garden, leaving the door wide open be
hind me and the TV volume on high so I could hear the bells ring the dead year out over the frosty woods. I felt the old familiar tingle of hope in this thirty-third winter of my life.

  Renewal.

  Since childhood the thought of new days, new months, new years, new horses, new chances, had kept me going.

  Lambourn village lay a mile north across the fields. I heard faraway music and laughter, and I silently told the party goers to enjoy everything while they could.

  Perversely, I sat in the sun house, an expensive wooden hexagon I’d persuaded myself I’d use in my ‘new life’. That life was supposed to have begun more than two years before when I’d found this piece of land and decided, finally, to try to put down roots.

  I’d stumbled on the place by accident, out running one morning. Boredom steered me off my usual route, down a lonely road past a beautiful old Manor house then onward downhill, the tarmac giving way to a rutted track falling steeply, enticing me into a dancing hurtle as I dodged holes and jutting stones, my feet reacting almost before my brain, trying to keep me upright as adrenaline and gravity drew me down down down.

  The hill gave out, though I needed a wooden gate to stop me, arms reaching for the top bars then a bump and a slump and panting laughter and relief that I hadn’t broken a leg in the mad plunging run.

  And when my breathing calmed I stood upright and turned slowly, surveying this pocket of greenery in the fold of three small hills, deep woods on two sides. Something made me hold my breath…and I heard silence.

  Don’t let anyone tell you that silence can’t be heard. It can. Perhaps above all else it can. Pure. Clean. Peaceful. And for the first time in my life I knew I was home.

  It took eighteen months of planning, saving, borrowing, paperwork and meetings. In February the money ran out and I recalled standing again at that gate, looking at the concrete foundations, but knowing that everything was going to be all right. And my mother made it all right. She died.