As the horses approached I could see Tony on Arab Dancer. Like all the other riders, he was standing on his toes in the stirrups, his knees bent slightly and with his body crouched forward almost horizontally over the horse’s neck. In this way, his legs were acting as shock-absorbers, smoothing out the jerky movements of the horse beneath him as it galloped, so that both his head and body appeared to move forward in fluid effortless ease.
The four horses swept past us, the very ground beneath my feet trembling from the impact of their hooves on the turf. Even I had to admit, there was something hugely exciting at being so close to such raw power.
Arab Dancer seemed to gain a thumbs-up from both Ryan and Oliver.
‘He’s coming on well,’ Ryan said. ‘He was second on his first outing last month at Newbury. I might send him to Chester next week. Then we’re aiming for the Coventry Stakes.’ The way he said it made me think that I should know what the Coventry Stakes was. ‘It would be nice if Sheikh Karim could be there to see him run.’
‘In Coventry?’ I asked.
Both Ryan and Oliver laughed loudly. I’d obviously said something totally wrong, and very funny.
‘Oh dear,’ Oliver said, trying to stop the giggles, and wiping tears from his eyes. ‘No. Sorry, Harry. The Coventry Stakes is run on the first day of Royal Ascot. It’s the top race at the meeting for two-year-olds.’
They might have been sorry but that didn’t stop them continuing to laugh until the next group of four horses finally diverted their attention.
‘Right, that’s it for the first lot,’ Ryan said as the final group passed us. ‘Let’s go and have a coffee.’
We walked back across the grass to the Land Rover and climbed in, the pair of them still chuckling under their breath.
Surely it wasn’t that funny, I thought. Anyone could have made such a mistake from the name. Like finding out that a Bombay duck is, in fact, a fish, or that a hot dog has no canine bits in it at all, and a hamburger contains no ham.
‘So what makes a good racehorse?’ I asked. ‘Is it more breeding or training?’
‘Both,’ Oliver replied. ‘Breeding is important. It’s almost impossible to turn a poorly bred horse into a top-class winner simply by training, although it’s quite possible to do the reverse. And breeding isn’t everything. The best horses have to have the right temperament, the right mental attitude.’
‘Mental attitude?’ I said, surprised.
‘Absolutely. They need the will to win. There are lots of good horses that simply can’t be bothered to race. Originally, horses were herding prey animals with a strong flight response, like zebras still are. Some are happy to run in the pack while others want to lead it. It’s that special mental attitude that can make a good horse into a champion. As the great Italian racehorse breeder, Federico Tesio, once said: A horse gallops with his lungs, perseveres with his heart, and wins with his character.’
‘And his leg muscles, surely?’ I said.
‘Those can be produced by training,’ Oliver said. ‘But without a good heart and a fine pair of lungs you have no chance. A resting horse breathes about twelve times per minute, not unlike a resting human, but at the gallop it breathes with every stride. Its leg action causes the diaphragm to move back and forth like a piston, forcing air into and out of the lungs at high speed. A hundred and forty breaths a minute at full gallop. Sixty litres of air every second. Compare that to Usain Bolt. He takes only one, maybe two breaths during the full length of a hundred-metre race. Hence a horse needs a big heart to pump all that oxygen round the body to its muscles. How big do you think your heart is?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, smiling. ‘It’s not something I worry about, as long as it keeps on pumping.’
‘About two hundred and fifty grams,’ he said. ‘The size of a clenched fist.’ He demonstrated by clenching his own. ‘How big do you think a racehorse’s is?’
‘No idea,’ I said. ‘Bigger, I suppose, because it’s a larger animal.’
‘Five kilograms on average,’ Oliver said. ‘Twenty times a human heart. Larger than a basketball. And it can beat well over two hundred times a minute during a race.’
‘Amazing,’ I said.
‘Secretariat’s heart was even bigger, twice the normal size.’
‘Secretariat?’
‘Fantastic horse. Won the Triple Crown in the United States back in the 1970s. Still holds the record timings for all three races.’
I decided not to ask what the Triple Crown was. I had thought it was something to do with rugby, but I must be wrong.
‘And racehorses have another trick too,’ Oliver said. ‘During exercise they compress their spleens. That dumps another fifteen litres of concentrated red blood cells into their circulation, more than doubling the number of oxygen carriers.’
‘Remarkable,’ I said.
‘They certainly are.’
Ryan drove in through the gates and parked close to the yard office door.
I checked my watch. Quarter past seven. Still fifteen minutes until Janie arrived for work.
We went through the empty office to the kitchen, where Oliver spooned instant coffee into three cups.
‘Second lot go out in half an hour,’ Ryan said to me. ‘You’re welcome to come if you like.’
‘Are any more of the Sheikh’s horses working?’
‘Not today,’ Ryan said. ‘One runs on Friday at Newbury so is just doing a light canter today. Another of his colts is slightly lame.’
‘Lame?’ I said, concerned.
‘Nothing to worry about. Slight abscess in his rear offside hoof. That’s all. The vet’s been and given him antibiotics. He’ll be right as rain by next week.’
‘How about the two fillies?’ I asked.
‘I’m not bloody working those,’ Ryan said with feeling. ‘Waste of effort.’
I could imagine that the two fillies had been left to stand idly in their stables ever since the Sheikh had indicated he was moving them. I wondered if they’d been mucked out, or even fed.
‘I think I’ll give your second lot a miss, then,’ I said.
‘Right,’ Ryan said, downing the rest of his coffee. ‘I’m off round the yard. No doubt I’ll see you later, Harry. Dad, I’ll meet you in the Land Rover.’
He stood up but he didn’t get very far.
There was a loud knock from the front door. Ryan and I waited in the kitchen while Oliver went to answer it.
Presently, he returned to the kitchen followed by Detective Chief Inspector Eastwood, who looked across at me and nodded in recognition.
Oliver was ashen-faced.
‘What is it?’ Ryan asked, grabbing hold of his father’s arm.
Oliver didn’t speak. He just waved his hand feebly, and sat down heavily onto a chair, his head bent down.
‘We’ve identified the body from the fire,’ the detective said to Ryan. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Chadwick. It was your sister, Zoe.’
Ryan stood there staring at the policeman.
‘That can’t be right,’ he said. ‘There must be some mistake.’
‘There’s no mistake,’ said the chief inspector. ‘We have compared the DNA found in the body with your sister’s DNA that we had on file. It’s a perfect match.’
Ryan stood there as if in a trance.
‘On file?’ I said. ‘How come you had Zoe’s DNA on file?’
The detective came over to be closer to me.
‘Zoe Robertson was arrested last year,’ he said quietly. ‘As is customary, her DNA was taken at the time and recorded in the UK National Database.’