Pulse(41)

But the delinquent side was adamant. Something is up, it said, and you are the only person who knows it. Keep digging.

First I turned one way, and then the other.

‘What shall I do?’ I said, almost to myself.

‘I’d do the favourite, if I were you,’ said the man standing next to me, who had obviously overheard. ‘But I’m no judge, really. I’m down on the day. In fact, I’m down for the whole bloody meeting. Don’t actually know how I’m going to pay my hotel bill tomorrow.’ He laughed. ‘Not unless bloody Conway can win this one. Last-chance saloon.’

‘Jason Conway?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Useless sod.’ The man said it with feeling.

‘Why did you back him then?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t. I backed the horse, big time. Months ago and before I knew Conway was riding it.’

‘So why do you think he’s a useless sod?’

‘He just is. Did you see the way he rode Checkbook yesterday in the Champion Chase?’ The man threw his hands up. ‘Absolutely hopeless. Far too free early on then, unsurprisingly, the horse ran out of puff well before the finish. Then Conway trots out some cock-and-bull story to the stewards about being unable to hold him back. All bloody nonsense. Why didn’t he just admit that he got it wrong? I had him at a damn good price too.’

‘So you expected him to win?’

‘At least to place. Had him each way.’

‘Is Checkbook normally a front-runner?’ I asked.

‘Not according to Timeform. Couldn’t believe it when Conway set off as if he was in the bloody Nunthorpe.’

The Nunthorpe Stakes was the fastest horse race in the UK – a five-furlong dash, run each year at York in August, lasting less than a minute with the horses travelling in excess of forty miles per hour.

‘He did nearly the same thing today in the Stayers’ Hurdle,’ I said.

‘Did he?’ the man asked vaguely. ‘I wasn’t on him then.’

A former colleague of mine, who had also been a passionate gambler on the gee-gees, once told me that, in a race, he only ever watched the horses he’d bet on. What the others did was not his concern, not unless it impacted on how his choices ran.

My new-found friend and I moved away from the warmth of the open fire in order to watch the race on one of the many TV sets. We were both interested in how Jason Conway fared, but for different reasons. I wanted to see if he started fast again, while the man was far more concerned with how he finished.

There were seventeen runners in the Mares’ Novice Hurdle and all three of Dick McGee, Mike Sheraton and Jason Conway were riding.

But this time, Jason Conway seemed to be in no particular hurry at the start and, indeed, it was Mike Sheraton who jumped off fastest, easily in front over the initial flight of hurdles before settling down into the pack as the field came up past the grandstands on the first occasion.

As the horses made their way down the back of the course they remained closely bunched together. Meanwhile, the man next to me stared unblinking at the screen, his knuckles gleaming white as he gripped the edge of a table with such force that he was in danger of pulling it over. He really must have been right about not being able to pay his hotel bill unless Jason Conway won on the favourite.

As the horses came to the last flight, the man had almost stopped breathing, then he let out an audible moan of relief as Jason Conway’s mount took two lengths off her rivals in a huge leap, and then ran away from them up the hill to win easily.

‘Bloody hell!’ the man said, still holding on to the table for support. ‘I’m not doing that again.’

‘Doing what again?’ I asked.

‘Staking too much,’ he said. ‘Far too much. Real shirt-off-my-back stuff.’ He laughed nervously. ‘God, I need a drink.’

So do I, I thought, but I didn’t follow him off to find one. Instead I went back to the fire and stood there staring into the flickering flames.

Several recent scientific studies have shown that blood pressure is reduced by the hypnotic effect of flames dancing in a fire. It is believed to have something to do with human evolution and how the discovery of fire reduced the risks of the night by providing light and warding off predators.

Maybe President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew more than people realised when he delivered his famous series of ‘fireside chats’ during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Second World War in the 40s.

For me, it simply gave me an opportunity to think.

Why would the jockeys deny knowing the unnamed man when they clearly did? What were they trying to hide? Was it to do with his overdose of cocaine? Or something else? Was the man’s death not an accident or suicide as the police believed, but murder? Or did the jockeys at least think that?

Lots of questions but no answers.

Someone had to find them and I didn’t hold out much hope that it would be the police. It wasn’t that I thought the detectives were particularly incompetent. It was just that I felt they were overly convinced that the unnamed man had killed himself, intentionally or otherwise, so they weren’t looking at any other scenario.

So was it down to me?





16


At six-thirty sharp I was back at the first-aid room to find Isabelle leaning over a man lying on the treatment table.