Taking the Fall (3 page)

Kerry looked over again.

‘How are we for time?’ Duncan asked him.

Kerry’s handsome Irish jaw opened but he didn’t say anything. He tossed away his cigarette and stalked over to the car. He peered inside and the skin crinkled around his steely-blue eyes as he took in the red-headed Lorna in the passenger seat, and the plush interior of the car. Then he stepped back and folded his arms, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘And you can wipe that bloody silly smirk off your face.’

‘Was I smiling?’ Duncan said. ‘We’ll have to stop that, then.’

‘How in hell do you do it?’ Kerry said. ‘Go on. Tell me. I’d really like to know.’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Really? No? Well tell me something else. Is that a nippy car?’

‘Lamborghini? You bet it is.’

‘Good. Because when you’ve finished your race, with the amount of shit you’re in today you’re going to need to get away from this place very fast.’

2

H
e’d told that copper on the side of the motorway that Trojan’s Trumpet would finish in the frame, and he thought he might. The race was a seller, and Kerry was riding the fancied horse, but there wasn’t much in it across a field of six over two-miles-and-four. He got off to a poor, leaping start and was slowly away with four in front, the field already lit up by Kerry. After the second fence a horse called Mountain Block moved up close by and Duncan felt a sudden impulsion from his mount. He gave her a squeeze and she followed Mountain Block. Duncan sensed that she’d got a good turn of foot. He decided to wait and bide his time.

Trojan’s trainer Billy Miles had told him to stay on the outside, but Mountain Block tracked to the inner. He was going with it; fuck Billy, it was him riding the horse, not the trainer. Trojan had enough to go past Mountain Block, but Duncan held her, kept her back. He knew she’d got plenty.

It was something his dad had once told him.
Never disappoint a horse.
What he’d meant was that although a horse would often want to leap to the front and you had to hold it back, there were other moments when its mood and form flashed like white heat and you needed to let it go.

It was still about his dad. Well, that and the fact that Duncan was a competitive, bloody-minded and obsessive son-of-a-bitch who didn’t like getting beaten at anything, whether it was a donkey derby on Skegness sands or the Gold Cup at Cheltenham. Not that he’d ridden in the Gold Cup. Not yet. But that was coming.

Duncan wanted to give it all back to his dad. He wanted to repay him for all the sacrifices, the loyalty, the things he’d gone without. But time was not on his side. Dad was showing early signs of losing his memory. His own father had been a victim of early dementia, and both Duncan and Charlie knew that he was going the same way. There had already been a clinical diagnosis, and it was not good. Duncan didn’t know exactly how many years he would have before the idea of repayment became meaningless. He wanted to do things for his dad before it was too late. He only knew that if he was to achieve any of this and soon, he’d better make smart use of the whip.

He was very certain of what had quickened his father’s professional demise. Three terrific seasons had started to pull in the good horses. His dad changed his business model. Instead of scouting, buying, training and selling on quickly, he started to hang on to his winners and look upwards on the National Hunt calendar. The top races brought big cash prizes, and that in turn would attract still more owners.

It was all going so well. Then in a single season it all crashed spectacularly. Failure followed failure. Bad luck stalked bad luck. Then came the doping charge that destroyed him. It was crazy: there wasn’t a more honest trainer in the country, but Charlie was hauled up and found guilty. He became ill with the stress and the worry of it all. His burgeoning training business collapsed.

They hit the halfway, the pounding hooves picking up in tempo now, and took a fence together sweetly, Trojan still tucked in behind Mountain Block. From there he moved past two of the other runners, who were never going to be on terms. Kerry was still way out in the lead with the second horse just a length in front, kicking up a lot of shit into Duncan’s goggles, half blinding him. The jockey on Mountain Block must have thought the same thing, because he squeezed up, and Duncan followed, still with plenty in hand, and they were through the shit-storm with only Kerry out in front but starting to look tired.

Duncan felt a familiar blood-surge in his brain. This was the moment. He lived for this precise moment. The sound of the hooves blotted out all other sound; the smell of the sweat on the horse’s flanks obliterated all other smells; the grip of the reins in his hands and the balance of his toes in the stirrups were the only things he could feel.

We go
, thought Duncan, and the horse, picking up his message, just breezed in front of Mountain Block and was soon pressing on Kerry.

Kerry looked back at him. ‘Where the fuck did you come from?’ he shouted.

‘You’ve fucked it!’ Duncan shouted, and he laid his stick over Trojan’s haunches. ‘You dropped your pants!’

‘You’re not having this one!’ Kerry yelled back.

Duncan was fifteen when he left school. His dad gave him the choice and he leapt right out of the ring. But Charlie figured he’d already taught Duncan everything he could. With things going well, he had taken on other hands, and could afford to send Duncan to a stables where he might learn some new tricks. He’d chosen Penderton, run by an old friend, Dick Sommers. But mainly he had wanted Duncan to work with Dick’s head lad.

To call a man closing in on retirement a ‘lad’ was just one of the many odd things about the racing industry. Head lad Tommy was the wrong side of sixty. A former jockey himself, he’d seen pretty much everything from the days long before TV cameras had featured at the tracks and changed the game. He knew horses, and he knew where all the bodies were buried. He was a fierce taskmaster and had little to say to anyone, preferring to communicate by means of a growl and a curse and a stinging slapped ear.

But it was Tommy who found Duncan crying behind one of the stables at Penderton the day after the doping charge was made to stick. Tommy knew exactly what it was about. The grizzled old boy came up to him and fixed him with his unblinking green and yellow eyes.

‘Stop your snivelling. Now listen. Charlie’s a good ’un. He didn’t let anyone down.’ He held his hand up and Duncan backed off a little, thinking he was going to get a slap from the old man. ‘See that hand? Your dad can have that hand any day. I owe him. But I’ll tell you this for nothing, son. For nothing. He was done over.’

Ashamed to be caught crying Duncan tried to dry his eyes on the back of his hand. ‘What?’

‘You heard me, son. They got at him.’

‘Who?’

Tommy shook his head. He had eyes like ice in a yard bucket on a frosty morning. He poked Duncan on the shoulder with a hard, leathery finger. ‘Your old man’s a good ’un, and don’t you ever forget it.’

But the next time Duncan went up to Penderton, Tommy sent him to bring out a horse called Stormbringer. There in the stable, on the wall, was a dead betting slip. On the reverse were three names. They were the names of three top players in the field: a trainer, an owner and a major jockey. The handwriting was clumsy, almost childlike. Duncan knew that Tommy could barely read or write, but could do so well enough to write down the names of horses. This note was his work.

The dead betting slip was one issued by none other than Billy B. Bonsor, the bookie who had taken Duncan’s first ever bet. There was his slogan.
Payment as a Matter of Honour.
Duncan memorised the three names and then tore the slip into tiny pieces. Then he walked out Stormbringer and looked across the yard.

There was Tommy, watching, giving him a look that was as old as time.

Old mates that they were, after the race Kerry and Duncan always exchanged banter and occasionally offered a little flick of the whip when one bested the other. The competition between them as conditionals had been keen. By the time they were full jockeys it was mustard. Now they’d skin a horse with a thin whip to get in front of the other, even if it took them through the gates of hell.

‘Close thing.’

‘Closer than you think.’

‘No, I had you.’

‘No you didn’t.’

‘You let me win, then?’

The stable lads led the horses away, and as Duncan carried his saddle back to the Weighing Room, Billy Miles came over. Billy was a decent trainer and Duncan didn’t mind him, though he liked the owner of the horse, George Millichip, a lot less. Billy wore a brown fedora and a Berber coat and he had a way of squinting at you when he talked. ‘Not bad,’ he said.

‘That’s what I thought,’ Duncan said.

‘If you’d kept her on the outside you’d have won that race.’

‘Not a chance, Billy.’

‘You’ll not be told, Duncan, will you?’

‘Listen, I’ve just put a couple of thousand pounds’ selling value on that horse for the owner and here you are looking like you’ve lost a fiver.’

‘You can tell him yourself. He’s on his way over and he’s not best pleased with you.’

George Millichip, also wearing a brown fedora but with a camel-hair coat, came striding across the grass. He was already purple in the face. ‘What sort of a game do you think you’re playing?’ There was spittle on his lip.

Duncan saw Billy look away. ‘Well done, Duncan. You rode that nag to a good second place, Duncan. You made me a good few quid there, Duncan. Thank you, Duncan, here’s a drink for you, Duncan.’

‘I’m not talking about the race,’ Millichip spat. ‘I’m talking about your appalling behaviour. You were so late I was lining up another jockey. You left us no time for instructions. You made us look a pair of fools.’

‘How about that! With no effort on my part!’

‘What was that?’ Millichip replied, angry.

Duncan stopped walking. From behind his saddle he said, ‘You should never disappoint a horse. Did you know that?’

Millichip turned to his trainer. ‘What the hell is he on about?’

‘I’ll tell you something else,’ Duncan said. ‘Did you realise you were breaking one of the rules of horse racing?’

‘What?’

‘You and Billy here. You’re both wearing fedoras at the same time. You can’t do that. Only one of you can wear a fedora. The other has to wear a flat cap or something.’

‘What?’

‘I mean, did you ever see Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin both wearing a fedora together? No. It looks wrong.’

Millichip stared back at him. Billy, chewing on his lip, squinted even harder and looked away again. Duncan hitched his saddle up. ‘I’ve got to get weighed in, so’s you can claim your prize money.’

They didn’t follow him, but after a moment Duncan heard Millichip shout, ‘That’s your lot. That’s the last ride you’ll have for me.’

Duncan weighed in and started to strip off his sweat-soaked silks. As he was about to go into the shower, he got a message from his valet that another trainer, a man called Petie Quinn, wanted an urgent word.

Hair still wet and gleaming from the shower, he found Quinn waiting outside the Weighing Room. He was a stocky Irishman with a bullet head of close-cropped silver hair. He was a bruiser, but well-respected, if only middle-ranking. He pretty much kept himself to himself.

Quinn stepped up to Duncan, but from the side, as if he preferred to stand shoulder to shoulder. ‘I saw how you rode that seller. Will you ride in the last race for me?’ he asked.

‘What’s going on?’

Quinn looked round like there might be an enemy listening. ‘I’m running Brighton Taxi in the last and she’s good for a place at least, but my idiot jockey has broken his wrist.’ He linked his arm through Duncan’s and muscled him away from some eavesdroppers in the corridor. ‘We’re telling everyone he slipped in the shower, but the fuckin’ idjit was making an early weigh and he dumped himself off the scales.’

‘He did what?’

‘Will you ride for me or not?’

‘You’re joking! He’s riding steeplechasers and he fell off a weighing machine?’

‘Yes or no?’

‘You’ve got it.’

Quinn’s big face broke into a huge grin. The skin crinkled around his eyes and he offered Duncan a shovel of a hand to shake. ‘You do this favour for me and there’ll be more rides for you. Plenty more rides.’

‘One thing,’ Duncan said. ‘You’ll have to tell George Millichip.’

‘What? He doesn’t have you exclusively.’

‘No, you don’t need his permission. Let’s say it’s a courtesy. Don’t discuss it with him. Just let him know.’

Quinn shrugged. ‘I’ll find him in the owners’ and trainers’ bar and tell him right away. See you in the paddock.’

So it was one contact lost and another made. No change there then. But it did feel good to be driving out of the reserved car park in the sunflower Lamborghini with Lorna tipped back in the passenger seat as he toed the accelerator. The Lamborghini gargled fuel as he crept out of the gate, getting him attention he could take or leave. He’d made his mark on the card today.

‘A first and a second,’ Lorna said. ‘Are you pleased?’

‘It’ll do nicely. I came here only expecting to get round on the first one.’

‘What’s it like to ride a winner?’

He looked at her as he edged out of the racetrack grounds and on to the high road. Her eyes were wide and she darted her tongue to moisten her lips. She wanted an answer to the question no one could ever really answer; the question posed by every lazy journalist who shoved a microphone or a notebook in your face.
How does it feel?
She was a beautiful and naive young thing; it didn’t seem right or fair that he was going to have to hurt her just to get revenge on her father. He glanced at her again. Her hair was long and wavy and nut-brown, with natural red highlights; her skin was pale, but her lips were the same rosebud pink that appeared in her cheeks. Her hazel-brown eyes had a delicious sparkle, impossible not to see as an invitation.