That was more like it, I thought, smiling as I clicked off my microphone.
‘First number one, Ed Online,’ Terence the judge called over the public address from his box next door, ‘second number three, third number six, the fourth horse was number two. Distances were a neck, and half a length.’
‘Well done, Mark,’ said Derek through my headphones. ‘That was more like it. Back with you for the next.’
‘OK,’ I replied to him, pushing the right button on my control box. ‘I’ll be here.’
There was a thirty-five-minute gap between the second and third races, which gave me about twenty minutes until I was needed back in my position, so I decided to go down to the weighing room for a cup of tea. However, I was intercepted by Harry Jacobs, my leisurely friend whom I’d last seen at Lingfield the day Clare had died.
‘Hello, Mark,’ he said, shaking my hand warmly. ‘You must come and have a drink.’
‘I’m working,’ I said.
‘I know,’ he replied with a smile. ‘I’ve been listening to your dulcet tones through the loudspeakers. But surely you’ve got time for a quick one?’
I looked at my watch. ‘All right,’ I said, smiling back. ‘But it will have to be quick.’
‘But they can’t start the race without you anyway,’ he said, chuckling.
‘Oh, yes they can,’ I assured him. ‘The race will start on time, with or without the commentary.’
‘We’d better be quick, then.’
He put his hand on my shoulder and guided me round behind the stands towards the pre-parade ring. ‘I’ve got a box,’ he said as we climbed a metal staircase. ‘In here.’ He opened a door and we went into a room almost full to overflowing with people who all seemed to be talking at once. The noise was almost overwhelming.
‘Are all these your guests?’ I asked him, shouting.
‘Yes,’ he shouted back. ‘Stratford’s my local course so I’ve asked along a few chums from home. Plus a few others I’ve, sort of, picked up since we arrived.’ He grinned broadly at me. ‘Now, what will you have?’
‘Do you have a Diet Coke?’ I asked.
His face showed that he didn’t approve of any of his guests drinking non-alcoholic beverages. ‘Are you sure you won’t have champagne?’
‘Oh, all right then,’ I said with a laugh. ‘I’ll force it down.’
A waiter miraculously moved through the throng and delivered two slender glasses of bubbles into our hands.
‘Cheers,’ I said, lifting mine to my lips.
We were still standing close to the door and Harry decided to dive deeper into the room. ‘Come on,’ he said, reaching out his hand and grabbing my jacket.
I didn’t have much choice so I followed him.
We struggled through and out onto the balcony on the far side, overlooking the parade ring.
‘That’s better,’ Harry said. ‘More air out here.’ He looked over my shoulder. ‘Hi, Richard,’ he shouted and dived back into the melee, leaving me alone.
I turned to my right just as the lady behind me turned to her left so that the two of us ended up standing face to face, crammed together by the crowd.
‘Hello, Sarah,’ I said.
Her irate husband, Mitchell Stacey, stood behind her looking at me and, I swear, I could see steam emanating from his ears.
I turned away from him and left, forcing my way through the mob without much finesse or consideration for their toes, and I didn’t look back to see if Mitchell was following. I almost ran down the metal stairs and then back to the commentary box where I remained, holed up for the rest of the afternoon.
I left immediately after the last race and hurried out to the car park, but Mitchell Stacey was ahead of me, waiting for me at my car. I stopped ten yards away.
‘I told you to stay away from my wife,’ he hissed at me through clenched teeth. ‘And I warned you.’
I decided to say nothing. I could have tried to explain to him that Sarah and I had come together by accident, that I hadn’t even known she was at Stratford until we had ended up nose to nose on Harry Jacobs’s balcony. But I didn’t think it would help. Saying nothing was surely the best policy. Allow the volcano to subside, I thought. Don’t go poking it with a stick.
He’d told me at Newmarket that he would have had my legs broken, but he could hardly do it on his own. For a start, I was half his age. I was also a good four or five inches taller than he, and I kept myself fairly fit, not least by climbing stairs to the commentary boxes at the tops of all the racecourse grandstands.
If he was going to break my legs, he’d need help.
I glanced around but there were no Stacey henchman lurking in the shadows. Rather there was a group of inebriated racegoers making their unsteady way towards a line of coaches.
‘I warned you,’ he said again.
He suddenly strode towards me so I moved quickly to the side to put a car between us, but he didn’t follow. He simply marched past where I’d been standing and continued in a straight line back towards the racecourse enclosures.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The confrontation was over for now, but I would be naïve if I thought it would be over for ever.
10
Toby Woodley’s story didn’t fade away. Quite the opposite.
Wednesday morning’s Daily Gazette had upgraded it from the back page to the front with an ‘exclusive’ tag beneath a two-inch-high bold headline in capital letters: RACE FIXING.
The article beneath reiterated the allegation that Clare had stopped Brain of Brixham in the race at Wolverhampton and even gave further details of the amount of money that had supposedly been won by those laying the horse on the internet betting exchanges.
It must have been a quiet day for other news, I thought, and Toby Woodley’s imagination had obviously been running in overdrive to fill the gap.
But there was also an underlying tone to the piece that vaguely implied that Clare’s ride on Brain of Brixham might not have been an isolated incident but rather only one in a pattern.
Watch this space, it said at the end, for further revelations tomorrow, and not only about Clare Shillingford, but also about her brother, Mark.
I stared at it. What revelations about me was Toby Woodley going to make up now? He’s told me I’d regret saying at Stratford that he’d been treated at Clare’s funeral not like dirt but like shit. Now the little bastard would make me pay. At least, unlike Clare, I would be able to take him to court if he lied.
And this wasn’t the first time that the Daily Gazette had made accusations about race fixing either. It had done so the previous May, but not on its front page. On that occasion the whole thing had quickly died away to nothing as the paper had been unable to produce any firm evidence and had declined to name any individuals, probably for fear of being sued.
Even the Racing Post, which should have known better, had a report following up on the Gazette’s story, demanding answers and challenging Toby Woodley to reveal the identity of members of the betting syndicate ‘for the good of racing’. The Post’s tenor may have been more ‘put up, or shut up’, but it wouldn’t help to reduce the speculation. At least Jim Metcalf in UK Today had refused to join the chorus.
Other than reading the newspapers, I spent most of Wednesday morning studying the brochures for the eight houses I had looked at on the internet. The various estate agents had been most efficient in sending the details and each brochure had arrived with a covering letter telling me, each in a slightly different way, that now was the ideal time to buy a house.