Nerve Read online

  ‘Did you stop on the way?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, Joe’s Caff, same as always when we go to Dunstable.’

  ‘Did you see anyone there you knew?’

  ‘Well … Joe, and the girl who pours out the char.’

  ‘No one you wouldn’t expect?’ I pressed.

  ‘No, of course not. Like I said, we got to the course and unloaded the horses, two of them, in the stables there, and went and got another cuppa and a wad in the canteen, and then I went round the bookies, like, and put ten bob on Bloggs in the first, and went up on the stands and watched it get stuffed … sodding animal didn’t try a yard … and then I went back to the stables and got Shantytown and put on his paddock clothing and led him out into the paddock …’ His voice was bored as he recited the everyday racing routine of his job.

  ‘Could anyone have given Shantytown anything to eat or drink in the stables, say a bucket of water just before the race?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t be so ruddy stupid. Of course not. Who ever heard of giving a horse anything to eat or drink before a race? A mouthful of water, I dare say, a couple of hours beforehand, but a bucketful …’ The scorn in his voice suddenly changed to anger. ‘Here, you’re not suggesting I gave him a drink, are you? Oh no, mate, you’re not putting the blame on me for the balls you made of it.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘no, Davey. Calm down. How tight is the security on the Dunstable stables? Would anyone but a lad or a trainer get in there?’

  ‘No,’ he said, more moderately, ‘it’s as tight as a drum. The last gateman got sacked for letting an owner in alone without a trainer, and the new man’s as pernickety as they come.’

  ‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘We’ve got you as far as the paddock.’

  ‘Well, I walked the horse round the assembly ring for a bit, waiting for the guvnor to bring the saddle up from the weighing-room …’ He smiled suddenly, as at some pleasant memory ‘… and then when he came I took Shanty into one of the saddling boxes and the Guvnor saddled up, and then I took Shanty down into the parade ring and walked him round until they called me over and you got up on him.’ He stopped. ‘I can’t see what you wanted to hear all that for.’

  ‘What happened while you were walking round the assembly ring?’ I asked. ‘Something you enjoyed? Something you smile about when you remember it?’

  He sniffed. ‘It’s nothing you’d want to know.’

  I said, ‘The quid was for telling everything.’

  ‘Oh very well then, but it’s nothing to do with racing. It was that chap on the telly, Maurice Kemp-Lore, he came over and spoke to me and admired the horse. He said he was a friend of the owner, old man Ballerton. He patted Shanty and gave him a couple of sugar knobs, which I wasn’t too keen on, mind, but you can’t be narky with a chap like him, somehow, and he asked me what his chances were, and I said pretty good … more fool me … and then he went away again. That’s all. I told you it wasn’t anything to do with racing.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, never mind. Thanks for trying.’

  I straightened up and turned away from the door, and Tick-Tock had taken a step or two towards the car when Davey said under his breath behind me, ‘Trying … you two could both do a bit more of that yourselves, if you ask me.’ But Tick-Tock fortunately didn’t hear, and we folded ourselves back into the Mini-Cooper and drove un-mourned out of the yard.

  Tick-Tock exploded. ‘Anyone would think you’d killed your mother and robbed your grandmother, the way they look at you. Losing your nerve isn’t a crime.’

  ‘Unless you can put up with a few harmless sneers you’d better get out at the next railway station,’ I said cheerfully, having blessedly discovered in the last half-hour that they no longer hurt. ‘And I haven’t lost my nerve. Not yet, anyway.’

  He opened his mouth and shut it again and flicked a glance at me, and drove another twenty miles without speaking.

  We reached the next yard on my list shortly before one o’clock, and disturbed the well-to-do farmer, who trained his own horses, just as he was about to sit down to his lunch. When he opened the door to us a warm smell of stew and cabbage edged past him, and we could hear a clatter of saucepans in the kitchen. I had ridden several winners for him in the past two years before disgracing his best horse the previous week, and after he had got over the unpleasant shock of finding me on his doorstep, he asked us, in a friendly enough fashion, to go in for a drink. But I thanked him and refused, and asked where I could find the lad who looked after the horse in question. He came out to the gate with us and pointed to a house down the road.

  We winkled the lad out of his digs and into the car, where I gave him a pound and invited him to describe in detail what had happened on the day I had ridden his horse. He was older, less intelligent and less truculent than Davey, but not much more willing. He didn’t see no sense in it, he didn’t. He said so, several times. Eventually I got him started, and then there was no stopping him. Detail I had asked for, and detail I got, solidly, for close on half an hour.

  Sandwiched between stripping off the paddock clothing and buckling up the saddle came the news that Maurice Kemp-Lore had lounged into the saddling box, said some complimentary things to the farmer-owner about his horse, meanwhile feeding the animal some lumps of sugar, and had drifted away again leaving behind him the usual feeling of friendliness and pleasure.

  ‘A proper corker, ain’t he?’ was how the lad put it.

  I waited until he had reached the point when the farmer had given me a leg up on the horse, and then stopped him and thanked him for his efforts. We left him muttering that we were welcome, but he still didn’t see the point.

  ‘How odd,’ said Tick-Tock pensively as we sped along the road to the next stable, eighty miles away. ‘How odd that Maurice Kemp-Lore …’ but he didn’t finish the sentence; and nor did I.

  Two hours later, in Kent, we listened, for another pound, to a gaunt boy of twenty telling us what a smashing fellow that Maurice Kemp-Lore was, how interested he’d been in the horse, how kind to give him some sugar, though it wasn’t really allowed in his stables, but how could you tell a man like that not to, when he was being so friendly? The lad also treated us with a rather offensive superiority, but even Tick-Tock by now had become too interested to care.

  ‘He drugged them,’ he said flatly, after a long silence, turning on to the Maidstone by-pass. ‘He drugged them to make it look as if you couldn’t ride them … to make everyone believe you’d lost your nerve.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘But it’s impossible,’ he protested vehemently. ‘Why on earth should he? It can’t be right. It must be a coincidence that he gave sugar to three horses you rode.’

  ‘Maybe. We’ll see,’ I said.

  And we did see. We went to the stables of every horse (other than James’s) that I had ridden since Shantytown, talking to every lad concerned. And in every single case we heard that Maurice Kemp-Lore had made the lad’s afternoon memorable (before I had blighted it) by admiring the way the lad had looked after his horse, and by offering those tempting lumps of sugar. It took us the whole of Saturday, and all Sunday morning, and we finished the last stable on my list on the edge of the Yorkshire moors at two o’clock in the afternoon. Only because I wanted my facts to be as cast-iron as possible had we gone so far north. Tick-Tock had become convinced in Northamptonshire.

  I drove us back to our respective digs in Berkshire, and the following morning, Monday, I walked up to the Axminster stables to see James.

  He had just come in from supervising the morning exercise, and the cold downland air had numbed his toes and fingers.

  ‘Come into the office,’ he said when he saw me waiting. His tone was neutral, but his protruding lower jaw was unrelenting. I followed him in, and he turned on an electric heater to warm his hands.

  ‘I can’t give you much to ride,’ he said, with his back to me. ‘All the owners have cried off, except one. You’d better look at this; it came this morning.’ He str
etched out his hand, picked up a paper from his desk, and held it out to me.

  I took it. It was a letter from Lord Tirrold. It said, ‘Dear James, Since our telephone conversation I have been thinking over our decision to replace Finn on Template next Saturday, and I now consider that we should reverse this and allow him to ride as originally planned. It is, I confess, at least as much for our sake as for his, since I do not want it said that I hurried to throw him out at the first possible moment, showing heartless ingratitude after his many wins on my horses. I am prepared for the disappointment of not winning the Midwinter and I apologise to you for robbing you of the chance of adding this prize to your total, but I would rather lose the race than the respect of the racing fraternity. Yours ever, George.’

  I put the letter back on the desk.

  ‘He doesn’t need to worry,’ I said thickly. ‘Template will win.’

  ‘Do you mean you aren’t going to ride it?’ said James, turning round quickly. There was a damaging note of eagerness in his voice, and he saw that I had heard it. ‘I … I mean …’ he tailed off.

  ‘James,’ I said, sitting down unasked in one of the battered armchairs. ‘There are a few things I’d like you to know. First, however bad it looks, and whatever you believe, I have not lost my nerve. Second, every single horse I have ridden since that fall three weeks ago has been doped. Not enough to be very noticeable, just enough to make it run like a slug. Third, the dope has been given to all the horses by the same man. Fourth, the dope has been given to the horses on sugar lumps. I should think it was some form of sleeping draught, but I’ve no way of knowing for sure.’ I stopped abruptly.

  James stood looking at me with his mouth open, the prominent lower teeth bared to the gums as his lip dropped in shocked disbelief.

  I said, ‘Before you conclude that I am out of my mind, do me the one favour of calling in one of the lads, and listening to what he has to say.’

  James shut his mouth with a snap. ‘Which lad?’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter. Any of them whose horse I have ridden in the last three weeks.’

  He paused dubiously, but finally went to the door and shouted for someone to find Eddie, the lad who looked after Hugo’s big chestnut. In less than a minute the boy arrived, out of breath, and with his curly fair hair sticking up in an uncombed halo.

  James gave me no chance to do the questioning. He said brusquely to Eddie, ‘When did you last talk to Rob?’

  The boy looked scared and began to stutter, ‘N-not since l-l-last week.’

  ‘Since last Friday?’ That was the day James himself had last seen me.

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘Very well, then. You remember the big chestnut running badly last Wednesday week?’

  ‘Yes sir.’ Eddie treated me to a scornful glance.

  ‘Did anyone give the chestnut a lump of sugar before the race?’ There was now only interest to be heard in James’s voice: the severity was masked.

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Eddie eagerly. The familiar remembering smile appeared on his grubby face, and I breathed an inward sigh of bottomless relief.

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Maurice Kemp-Lore, sir. He said how splendidly I looked after my horses, sir. He was leaning over the rails of the assembly ring and he spoke to me as I was going past. So I stopped, and he was ever so nice. He gave the chestnut some sugar, sir, but I didn’t think it would matter as Mr Hugo is always sending sugar for him anyway.’

  ‘Thank you, Eddie,’ said James, rather faintly. ‘No matter about the sugar … run along, now.’

  Eddie went. James looked at me blankly. The loud clock ticked.

  Presently I said, ‘I’ve spent the last two days talking to the lads of all the horses I’ve ridden for other stables since I had that fall. Every one of them told me that Maurice Kemp-Lore gave the horse some lumps of sugar before I rode it. Ingersoll came with me. He heard them too. You’ve only to ask him if you can’t believe it from me.’

  ‘Maurice never goes near horses at the races,’ James protested, ‘or anywhere else for that matter.’

  ‘That’s precisely what helped me to understand what was happening,’ I said. ‘I talked to Kemp-Lore on the stands at Dunstable just after Shantytown and two other horses had run hopelessly for me, and he was wheezing quite audibly. He had asthma. Which meant that he had recently been very close to horses. I didn’t give it a thought at the time, but it means a packet to me now.’

  ‘But Maurice …’ he repeated, unbelievingly. ‘It’s just not possible.’

  ‘It is, however, possible,’ I said, more coldly than I had any right to, having believed it myself for twelve awful hours, ‘for me to fall apart from a small spot of concussion?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said uncomfortably. There was a pause. There were two things I wanted James to do to help me: but in view of his ingrained disinclination to do favours for anyone, I did not think my requests would be very enthusiastically received. However, if I didn’t ask, I wouldn’t get.

  I said slowly, persuasively, as if the thought had just occurred to me, ‘Let me ride a horse for you … one of your own, if the owners won’t have me … and see for yourself if Kemp-Lore tries to give it sugar. Perhaps you could stick with the horse yourself, all the time? And if he comes up with his sugar lumps, maybe you could manage to knock them out of his hand before the horse eats them. Perhaps you could pick them up yourself and put them in your pocket, and give the horse some sugar lumps of your own instead? Then we would see how the horse runs.’

  It was too much trouble; his face showed it. He said, ‘That’s too fantastic. I can’t do things like that.’

  ‘It’s simple,’ I said mildly, ‘you’ve only to bump his arm.’

  ‘No,’ he said, but not obstinately. A hopeful no, to my ears. I didn’t press him, knowing from experience that he would irrevocably stick in his toes if urged too vehemently to do anything he did not want to.

  I said instead, ‘Aren’t you friendly with that man who arranges the regular dope tests at the races?’ One or two spot checks were taken at every meeting, mainly to deter trainers of doubtful reputation from pepping-up or slowing-down their horses with drugs. At the beginning of each afternoon the Stewards decided which horses to test – for example, the winner of the second race, and the favourite in the fourth race (especially if he was beaten). No one, not even the Stewards, always knew in advance exactly which horses would have their saliva taken, and the value of the whole system lay in this uncertainty.

  James followed my thoughts. ‘You mean, will I ask him if any of the horses you have ridden since your fall have been tested for dope in the normal course of events?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Could you possibly do that?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ he said. ‘I will ring him up. But if any of them have been tested and proved negative, you do realise that it will dispose of your wild accusations absolutely?’

  ‘I do,’ I agreed. ‘Actually, I’ve ridden so many beaten favourites that I can’t think why such systematic doping has not already been discovered.’

  ‘You really do believe it, don’t you?’ said James, wonderingly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, getting up and going to the door. ‘Yes, I believe it. And so will you, James.’

  But he shook his head, and I left him staring frozen-faced out of the window, the incredible nature of what I had said to him still losing the battle against his own personal knowledge of Kemp-Lore. James liked the man.

  Ten

  Late that Monday evening James rang me up at my digs and told me that I could ride his own horse, Turniptop, which was due to run in the novice ’chase at Stratford-on-Avon on the following Thursday. I began to thank him, but he interrupted, ‘I’m doing you no favour. You know it won’t win. He’s never been over fences, only hurdles, and all I want is for you to give him an easy race round, getting used to the bigger obstacles. All right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘All right.’ And he ran
g off. There was no mention of whether he would or would not contemplate juggling with sugar knobs.

  I was tired. I had spent the whole day driving to Devon and back to visit Art Mathews’s beautiful widow, the ice maiden. A fruitless journey. She had been as chilly as ever. Widowhood had warmed her no more than wifehood had done. Blonde, well-bred and cold, she had answered my questions calmly and incuriously and with a complete lack of interest. Art had been dead four months. She spoke of him as though she could barely remember what he had looked like. No, she did not know exactly why Art had quarrelled so continuously with Corin. No, she did not know why Art had thought fit to shoot himself. No, Art had not got on well with Mr John Ballerton, but she did not know why. Yes, Art had once appeared on television on Turf Talk. It had not been a success, she said, the shadow of an old grievance sharpening her voice. Art had been made to look a fool. Art, whose meticulous sense of honour and order had earned him only respect on the racecourse, had been made to look a cantankerous, mean-minded fool. No, she could not remember exactly how it had been done, but she did remember, only too well, the effect it had had on her own family and friends. They had, it appeared, loudly pitied her on her choice of husband.

  But I, listening to her, inwardly pitied poor dead Art on his choice of wife.

  On the following day, Tuesday, I again appropriated the Mini-Cooper, much to Tick-Tock’s disgust. This time I went towards Cheltenham, and called at Peter Cloony’s neat, new bungalow, turning down the narrow, winding lane from the high main road to the village in the hollow.

  Peter’s wife opened the door to me and asked me in with a strained smile. She no longer looked happy and rosily content. She was too thin, and her hair hung straight and wispy round her neck. It was very nearly as cold inside the house at it was outside, and she wore some tattered fur boots, thick stockings, bulky clothes, and gloves. With no lipstick and no life in her eyes, she was almost unrecognisable as the loving girl who had put me up for the night four months ago.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid Peter isn’t here. He was given a lift to Birmingham races … perhaps he’ll get a spare ride …’ She spoke without hope.