Warned Off (26 page)

1

In the dying days of the old jump season,
after the toughest five months since my comeback, I got a phone call.

‘Malloy?’

‘Yes.’ I didn’t recognise the voice.

‘You don’t know me but you’ll get to
know my voice.’

I hoped not. It had a sniggering,
know-it-all tone. I said nothing.

He said, ‘You’re riding right through
the summer?’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Just listen. You’re riding through the
summer.’ No longer a question.

‘Maybe.’

‘No maybe. You will be.’

Stern now. Commanding. Certain. I felt a
nervous ripple in my gut.

He said, ‘Over the next few months I’m
going to call you a few times - probably on the evening before you ride
something fancied. I’ll give you riding instructions and you’ll stick to them.’

Trainers gave riding instructions, very
occasionally owners would, complete strangers were a new one on me. But I held
my tongue, held my breath.

‘You listening, Malloy?’

‘Keep talking.’

‘I know something about you. You do what
you’re told or I give it to Kerman.’

Jean Kerman was a ruthless tabloid
journalist specialising in dirt-digging in sport - she’d ruined at least a
dozen apparently solid careers.

I’d been shamed and scorned enough in my
life. There was only one thing left, one secret, and I said a brief intense
prayer against his knowing it.

He spoke again.

He didn’t know it. The sudden relief
cushioned the shock of what he did say. I stayed silent, trying to gather my
thoughts.

He said: ‘You’ve gone all quiet and shy,
Malloy.’

‘Just run it past me again.’

‘Don’t mess me around! You heard.’

‘I just want to be sure I’ve got
everything right.’

There was a pause then he repeated
everything in an impatient monotone, like a teacher with a backward kid. ‘You
and Martin Corish are conning breeders. Town Crier isn’t covering the mares you
say he is. You’re using a cheap ringer and charging the full fee. Now, if that
gets out, do you want a point by point lesson on how it will affect your
career? Or a written declaration of what it will do to your nice little stud
business?’

Just over a year ago I’d invested
everything I had in becoming equal partner with Martin Corish in the stud he
had started. I didn’t have a clue what this guy was talking about but he
sounded very convincing. I said, ‘I think we’d better meet.’

‘I think you’d better get your cheating
boots on. I’ll be in touch.’

‘Listen . . .’

He hung up.

I rang Martin. His secretary-cum-groom
was evasive, defensive. She told me he wasn’t around.

‘When will he be around?’

‘Ummm . . . I’m not really sure.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Maybe if you call this evening . . .’

‘Where is he?’

‘I’m sorry Mr Malloy, I can’t say.’

‘Look, don’t make me drive all the way
down there.’

‘I’m sorry'. I’m just to say he’s
uncontactable. That’s what I was told.’

‘Where’s Caroline?’

‘Mrs Corish isn’t well. She’s lying
down.’ The girl was obviously agitated, her voice rising. It wasn’t fair to
take out my frustrations on her. There was obviously something wrong at the
stud. I told her I’d see her in an hour, clicked the answerphone on, grabbed my
jacket and pointed the car toward Wiltshire.

I’d been sucked into enough whirlpools in
recent years to sense another one when it was still some way off. I was already
feeling the pull of its vortex.

2

It was dusk when I reached the farm. As
I swung the heavy wooden gate open insects hummed in the greenery and swarmed
toward my car headlights which illuminated the sign reading: THIS GATE MUST BE
KEPT CLOSED AT ALL TIMES. It wasn’t unusual for a horse to get loose somewhere
on the enclosed three hundred acres. If you could keep them off the roads you
stood a good chance of getting them back unharmed.

Martin Corish and his wife lived in a
big farmhouse close to the stableyard. The house was in darkness as I pulled in
by the low wall. I got out. The dusk had deepened. The outlines of mares and
their foals in the nearby paddock merged into single shapes. No dogs barked.

Something was wrong.

I stood still, listening. Nothing but
the sounds and smells of a warm June night in the country. Insects. Musky
flower scents. Quiet whickering from horses. Away across the fields the eerie
cry of a vixen. Shut your eyes and you’d bet you weren’t within a hundred miles
of humanity.

I walked into the yard. Halfway across
it I heard a phone ringing. After half a dozen rings a light came on inside the
office in the corner of the yard and glowed yellow through the barred window.
Along with the moths and their brethren I moved quietly toward it.

The top part of the uncurtained window
was open about three inches. I listened to Corish’s secretary. She sounded much
more aggressive with this caller than she’d been with me an hour and a half
ago.

‘When? . . . Soon’s not good enough.
It’s been “soon” for the past nine months! . . . Oh, it’s different all right!
It’s worse!’

She was shouting. The other party must
have told her to cool down.

‘Why should I? ... I won’t wake
Caroline! She’s out of her head as usual and I can see why she does it! . . .
Why should I? Give me one good reason!’

It had to be Corish on the other end and
he must have given her a few good reasons because she shut up for a full minute
and when she spoke again all the fire had gone out of her. The tone was one of
weary resignation.

‘But what do I tell Eddie Malloy? . . .
But what if he does turn up, Martin, what do I tell him?’

Melodramatic by nature, I was tempted at
this point to burst in and grab the phone so he could tell me personally. But I
thought I might learn more by staying put.

She said, ‘When? . . . Where? . . . What
if he asks for your number? . . . Martin! . . . Martin!’

He must have hung up. The girl did the same
then started working through every swear word she knew in a steady monotone, as
though reciting tables at school.

I went in. She was sprawled in a swivel
chair, long red hair unkempt, blue eyes tired and puffy. When she saw me she
gasped and reached toward her groin, pulling frantically at the open zip on her
tight beige jodhpurs, trying at the same time to get to her feet and turn her
back on me.

In a TV sitcom it might have looked
funny but I felt an instant pang of regret and shame, almost as though I’d
assaulted her. I didn’t even manage to redeem myself by catching her as she
collapsed in a dead faint. On the way down her head smacked hard against a
metal filing cabinet.

By the time I was on my knees beside her
she was already bleeding.

The wound was on her scalp and not
dangerously deep. Blood trickled across her temple forming a small pool in her
ear. Her pulse was steady, her breathing even.

Making a pillow of my jacket I gently
raised her head and eased the makeshift cushion underneath. In the corner of
the office was a small sink. As I got up to fetch a wet cloth I noticed the
girl’s white swollen belly exposed by the gaping fly of her jodhpurs. Red pubic
hair curled over the pink waistband of her pants. Looking around for something
to cover her, I scooped a purple fleecy jacket from the back of the swivel
chair and laid it across her midriff.

I checked her pulse again and was
wondering whether I should call an ambulance when her eyes opened and tried to
focus on me. I moved away, not wanting to seem threateningly close. I sat on
the chair. Her face remained calm. She reached up slowly to feel her head.

‘Fiona, are you all right?’ I asked.

She looked at the sticky blood on her
fingers.

‘Just a flesh wound,’ I said.

Puzzled, she stared at me. ‘You hit your
head on the cabinet,’ I explained. ‘My fault for barging in like that and
scaring you. I’m sorry.’

She made to get up. I was caught between
helping her and saving her embarrassment as the jacket covering her bare middle
slipped away. She grabbed at it. I stood up. ‘I’ve got a first-aid kit in the
car - won’t be a minute,’ I said, and went out into the cool darkness.

When I got back she was sitting at the
desk sipping water from a cracked cup and sobbing quietly. I said, ‘Fiona,
look, I’m sorry for scaring you like that. I didn’t mean to.’

She wiped at her eyes with the
blood-stained cloth I’d been using on her head. Opening the green plastic
first-aid box, I handed her a clean dry pad. She took it and carried on wiping.

‘Got some good painkillers here,’ I
offered.

She shook her head slowly.

I spent the next fifteen minutes asking
questions. Where was Martin Corish? Where were the rest of the staff? Who was
tending the horses? I told her I’d overheard her telephone conversation - where
had he called her from? Although tempted, I thought it best not to question her
about the stallions, Town Crier especially. Martin Corish was the man with the
answers but if Fiona knew his whereabouts she wasn’t saying. She didn’t speak a
single word, just sat dabbing at the now dry wound and staring at the desk. Her
Snoopy watch read eleven o’clock when I gave up.

Footfalls deliberately heavy on the
cobbles, I crossed the moonlit yard wanting to convince Fiona I’d given up in
disgust. I started the car, drove about a few hundred yards then pulled in,
jumped out and ran back.

Outside the office once again I listened
for the frantic return call to Corish but all was silent. Either she’d made it
just after I’d left or she genuinely didn’t know where he was.

I waited twenty minutes. Nothing.

I was tempted to visit Town Crier’s box.
I knew the horse well and reckoned it would take a pretty good ringer to fool
me. But like a number of stallions he wasn’t the friendliest beast in the world
toward humans, particularly, I suspected, the kind who intrude in the hours of
darkness. I decided to leave it till next morning.

With no clouds to blanket the day’s heat
it was quickly growing cold. I returned to the car, wondering where to spend
the night.

The nearest town with a hotel that would
let me in this late was Marlborough, about fifteen miles away. But my credit
card was swipe-weary and battle scarred; even a three-star hotel bill would
probably finish it off. Basic guesthouses would already be locked up and I had
no friends in the vicinity.

As I sat looking through the windscreen
at the stars it became plain that the overnight sleeping arrangements were a
choice between kipping in the car or heading back to Corish’s hay barn. The
prospect brought a smile to my face as I remembered past conversations with
people who envied the glamorous life of a professional jockey.

Last season’s glamour for me had
included a virus-stricken stable, three periods of suspension for ‘irresponsible’
riding, and a series of damaging falls which had left me with a fractured
wrist, a broken collarbone and, most recently, four smashed ribs and a
punctured lung. Not to mention severely dented confidence and a badly bruised
bank account.

Now, just when I thought it was safe to
get back in the saddle, this had to happen. The partnership with Martin Corish
was the only real investment I’d ever made. No jockey rides forever and the
stud was supposed to provide me with some security when I hung up my boots, a
notion I’d entertained often in the past few months. I sighed, fighting off
self-pity.

I decided to find a lay-by and get what
sleep I could before returning in the morning. The ignition fired and the
buttons on my mobile phone lit up as it beeped into life. Before setting off I
went through the motions of ringing home to my answerphone though it had been a
while since there’d been any worthwhile messages on it.

Tonight there was one and it drew me
back north at speed.

3

I reached the flat just after 2 a.m. and
stopped barely long enough for tea and a sandwich. I replayed the message
again: ‘Eddie, Barney Dolan. If you get this message in time there’s a winner
waiting for you tomorrow . . . er, that’s Wednesday. I heard you passed the doctor
and thought I’d give you a nice start back. The bad news is it’s up at Perth
and it’s in the two o’clock. I’ll hold off till nine in the morning to hear
from you.’

Good old Barney. He was one of a handful
of trainers I rode for when it was mutually convenient. My retainer was with
Gary Rice whose flat I was sitting in now. Gary owned a string of twenty-two
trained by Charles Tunney, whose Shropshire yard my flat overlooked. Gary paid
me a reasonable retainer to ride his horses, and when the stable had no
runners, I was free to take rides elsewhere.

Many of our horses had been down with a
virus last season and we’d had just eleven winners - a disastrous total that
had shaken Charles’s confidence. He’d closed the yard for the normal summer
break during which he’d vowed to attend Mass every day to pray for a better
season next year.

In the meantime he’d buggered off to
Alaska for a month’s holiday, leaving his secretary to feed the dogs and keep
things ticking over.

Until this season jump racing had always
stopped completely for two months in the summer but the British Horseracing
Board had decided to grant a limited number of fixtures to courses wanting to
hold meetings during the summer. Most of the top jockeys had said they wouldn’t
ride at these meetings; eight weeks was little enough break from the daily
grind of driving, dieting and the inevitable injuries.

I could have done with the holiday - at
least my battered body could have - but my bank balance dictated otherwise. So
after an hour’s restless sleep I left rural Shropshire in the early hours of
Wednesday morning for the long drive to Perth, a course lying so far north it
never risked racing during the winter months. Every minute on the road took me
further away from where I’d planned to be at first light, the Corish Stud.

My thoughts returned to my mystery
caller. If my partner was doing what was claimed, how had the guy found out?
And how had he discovered my involvement with Martin Corish? We’d both kept it
quiet. And what was the caller’s link with Jean Kerman, the tabloid hack with
the poisonous pen?

I’d count myself lucky to have twenty
rides during the summer but that would be twenty opportunities for the
blackmailer to try to influence me. And who was to say he wouldn’t carry on
right through next season proper? What would I do if he asked me to ride a bent
race?

I didn’t know.

I knew what I’d want to do. I’d never
pulled a horse in my life. Ethics aside, my belief was that as soon as someone
had something on you, you could never be free. Even one guilty little secret
would always stay fixed to you like a choke-chain - a very long chain maybe,
but one that would snap you backwards when somebody finally tugged on it then
slowly hauled you in, to face either justice or another demand.

As dawn lit the hills of the Scottish
borders I was no nearer a solution. The choices were: find Corish and get the
truth or track down the blackmailer and deal with him. If Corish proved guilty
as charged, then apart from finding out why he’d done it, I’d still have to
trace the blackmailer. Until that was achieved I had to face the fact that this
Perth ride might have to be my last.

The only way to stay clean was to make
sure the blackmailer had no leverage. If I wasn’t riding he couldn’t influence
my performance.

But how many rides could I refuse before
trainers stopped asking me?

As the summer morning brightened my
future looked darker. That little choke-chain was already around my neck and
whichever way I turned strangulation seemed the only outcome.

It looked like my first decision in the
battle, to go north for one ride, was the wrong one. The time would have been
better spent trying to find Martin Corish but I was committed now and at 8.15 I
rang Barney Dolan and told him I’d be at Perth by 11.

‘Good man, Eddie. You won’t regret it.’

I had a very strong feeling that I
would.