Emil Jacques Guirlande was a murderer by trade, a killer uncaptured and unsuspected, a quiet-mannered man who avoided attention, but who had by the age of thirty-seven successfully assassinated sixteen targets comprising seven businessmen, eight wives and one child.
He was, of course, expensive. Also reliable, inventive and heartless.
Orphaned at seven, unadopted, brought up in institutions, he had never been warmly loved for himself, nor had ever felt deep friendly affection for any living thing (except a dog). Military service in the army had taught him to shoot, and a natural competency with firearms, combined with a developing appetite for power, had led him afterwards to take employment as a part-time instructor in a civilian gun club, where talk of death reverberated in the air like cordite.
‘Opportunities’ were presented to Emil Jacques through the post by an unidentified go-between he had never met, but only after careful research would he accept a proposition. Emil considered himself high class. The American phrase ‘hit man’ was, to his fastidious mind, vulgar. Emil accepted a proposition only when he was sure his customer could pay, would pay, and wouldn’t collapse with maudlin regrets afterwards. Emil also insisted on the construction of unbreakable alibis for every customer likely to be an overwhelming suspect, and although this sounded easy it had sometimes been the overall stop or go factor.
And so it was on a particular Tuesday in December 1986. The essential alibi looking perfect, Emil committed himself to the task and carefully packed his bags for a short trip to England.
Emil’s English, functional rather than ornate, had sustained him so far through three English killings in four years. Tourist phrase-book’s gems — (‘Mon auto ne marche pas’; ‘my car’s broken down’) — had both kept him free from the damaging curiosity of others and also allowed him to abort his mission prudently if he felt unsafe before the act. He had, indeed, already twice retreated at a late stage from the present job in hand: once from bad weather, once from dissatisfaction with the sickness alibi proposed.
‘Pas bon,’ he said to himself. ‘No good.’
His client, who had paid a semi-fortune in advance, grew increasingly impatient at the delays.
On the Tuesday in December 1986, however, Emil Jacques, as satisfied with the alibi as he could be, having packed his bag and announced an absence from the gun club, set off in his inconspicuous white car to drive to Calais to cross the wintry waters of the English Channel.
As usual, he openly took with him the tools of his trade: handguns, ear defenders, multiple certificates proving his accreditation as a licensed instructor in a top-class Parisian club. He carried the lot in a locked metal sponge-lined suitcase, in the manner of photographers, and as it was still years before the banning of hand-guns in England, his prepared tale of entering competitions passed without question. Had he run into trouble on entry, he would have smiled resignedly and gone home.
Emil Jacques Guirlande, murderer, ran into no trouble on this Tuesday in December 1986. Unchallenged at Dover, he drove contentedly through the hibernating fields of southern England, peacefully reviewing his wicked plan.
On British racecourses that year the steeplechasing scene had been sizzlingly dominated by the improbable trainer — jockey allegiance of a long-haired descendant of true gypsies with the aristocratic nephew of an historic house.
Gypsy Joe (more accurately, John Smith) felt and displayed the almost magical affinity with animals that ran like a gene river in his people’s blood. To please Gypsy Joe, thoroughbreds dug into their own ancient tribal memory and understood that leading the herd was the aim of life. The leader of the herd won the race.
Gypsy Joe gave his horses judiciously the feed and exercise that best powered their hearts, and whispered mysterious encouragements into their ears while he saddled them for races. He was successful enough by ordinary standards and grudgingly admired by most of his peers, but for Joe it was never enough. He searched always — and perhaps unrealistically — for a rider whose psyche would match what he knew to be true of his horses. He searched for youth, courage, talent, and an uncorrupted soul.
Every year he watched and analysed the race-riders new on the scene while he busied himself with his regular runners, and not for five years did he see what he wanted. When he did see it, he wasted no time in publicly securing it for his own.
So Gypsy Joe rocked the jump-racing fraternity in the late spring of 1986 by offering a riding contract to a light-hearted amateur who had ridden in races for precisely one season and had won nothing of note. All the amateur had to do in order to accept the unusual proposal was to take out a professional licence at once.
Red Millbrook (he had red hair) had listened to the telephoned offer from Gypsy Joe in the same general bewilderment that soon raised eyebrows from the Jockey Club mandarins to critical clusters of stable-lads in local pubs.
Firstly, few retainer contracts of any sort were offered to jockeys in steeplechasing. Secondly, Gypsy Joe already regularly employed two long-time professionals (without contracts) whose results were widely considered satisfactory, as Gypsy Joe lay fifth on the trainers’ races-won table. Thirdly, Red Millbrook, not long out of school, could be classed as an ignorant novice.
With the assurance of youth, the ‘ignorant novice’ applied for a licence at once.
Red Millbrook, thus newly professional, met Gypsy Joe face to face for the first time when he walked with curiosity into the parade ring before the April Gold Cup at Sandown Park. Gypsy Joe, at forty and full of bullish confidence, knew he was inviting sneers for letting this almost untried lordling loose on a testing track in a big-news event on a horse he’d never even sat on. Adverse comments in various racing papers had already lambasted Joe for passing over both of his two useful, faithful — and fuming — stable jockeys and ‘throwing away the chance of a Golden Cup for the sake of a publicity stunt’. Gypsy Joe trusted his instincts and was not deterred.
Young Red Millbrook, meeting Gypsy Joe in the parade ring, thought him a big untidy long-haired shambles of a man and rather regretted the impulsive promise he’d signed, which was to ride always where and when bidden by the trainer.
The two ill-assorted future allies tentatively shook hands with television thousands watching, and Red Millbrook thought the tingle that ran through him was due only to the excitement of the occasion. Gypsy Joe, however, smiled to himself with satisfaction, and was perhaps the only onlooker not surprised when his runner clung on for the Gold by half a length.
It wasn’t that Red Millbrook had ever in his short life ridden badly: he had in fact spent all his adolescent spare hours on horseback, although those spare hours had been purposefully limited by parentally imposed education. His titled father and mother could summon pride in an amateur jockey for a son, but shied away wincing at the word professional. Like a tart, his mother groaned.
Red Millbrook thought his new professional status a step up, not down. Anxious to put on a reasonable show at Sandown, he took a fierce determination to the starting gate, and over the first fence awoke to an unexpected mental alliance with the horse. He had never felt anything like it. His whole body responded. He and the horse rose as one over each of the string of jumps constructed and spaced to sort out the fleetest. He as one with the horse swept round the final bend and stretched forward up the last testing hill. He shared the will and the determination of his animal partner. When he won, he felt, not amazement, but that he had come into his natural kingdom.