Georgina looked at me. ‘How could things get worse than this?’
Little did she know.
I hadn’t originally planned to go to Lingfield races on Saturday evening, expecting to spend the afternoon at Haydock watching one of Victrix’s northern trained horses run in the Group 3 John of Gaunt Stakes, but events changed all that.
The post in our village normally didn’t arrive until well into the afternoon, and Friday’s was no exception. I was in the kitchen making myself a cheese sandwich for a late lunch when I heard the letters drop through the slot in the front door.
I went to collect them.
As always there was the usual unsolicited junk mail offering a free gift if I were to visit a newly constructed local retirement home, some clothes catalogues for Georgina, and a couple of utility bills. There were also three envelopes addressed to Amanda that I assumed were birthday cards, but it was the plain white envelope with my name and address written on it in bold, black, capital letters that particularly caught my eye.
I used a knife from the cutlery drawer to slit open the end of the envelope, and then I withdrew the single sheet of paper from inside. Written on it in the same bold, black, capital letters were just two lines:
DREAM FILLER WILL LOSE
I KNOW WHERE SHE IS HIDING
I studied the front of the envelope. A single first-class stamp had been franked with three wavy lines alongside some printed words that showed that it had been through a sorting machine at the Royal Mail Swindon Mail Centre at precisely 16:19 and 50 seconds the previous afternoon.
There was nothing else to show where it had been posted, or by whom.
I stuffed the paper and the envelope into my trouser pocket.
Who could be doing this? Did I really believe his threats?
But could I afford not to?
So, on Saturday morning, I called the northern trainer of my Haydock runner and apologised for not being able to be there for the John of Gaunt Stakes after all, and set off southeast for Lingfield in Surrey instead.
The one-mile Class 6 Handicap for three-year-olds was the first race on the card, due off at 5.35, and I wanted to be there a good hour and a half beforehand, even though I had little idea of what I was going to do, if anything.
I had some mad idea of perhaps claiming in the parade ring that Dream Filler was lame and shouldn’t be allowed to race. Being withdrawn was not what Squeaky Voice had said he wanted — he’d said the horse should run — but it might be better for him than the horse winning.
The traffic on the M25 was lighter than normal, and I arrived at Lingfield Park Racecourse at quarter past three, more than two hours before the first race. I parked in the car park across the road from the main entrance, and I was so early that I had to wait fifteen minutes before the gates were opened.
Lingfield Park had always been one of my favourite racecourses, and I could well remember being brought here as a child by my father.
That had been before the installation of the first British all-weather racetrack at Lingfield in the late 1980s. Since then the building of a new grandstand, a hotel complex, and other developments have transformed the racecourse into one of the most popular in the country, with some sixty-seven race days throughout the year.
Many of the summer evening fixtures had music acts playing after racing on a stage set up on the paddock lawn, and I noticed from the racecard that today would be one of those, with a well-known band performing. It was the racecourse’s way of attracting more people through the turnstiles, especially the young, who would come by train from London to Lingfield station, conveniently positioned adjacent to the racecourse.
I had called Owen Reynolds before I left home, to tell him I was coming and that I would meet him in the saddling boxes before the first race. In the meantime, I wandered around, enjoying the June afternoon sunshine.
As always when at the races, I was wearing a jacket and tie, this time a lightweight, blue-checked sports coat and a yellow tie, but it was so hot that I took the jacket off and slung it over my shoulder.
I may have looked to anyone else as if I was relaxed and enjoying myself, but my mind was spinning as I tried to work out if there was anything I could do to stop Dream Filler from winning.
I convinced myself there was nothing.
I could hardly offer Tim Westlake, Dream Filler’s jockey, a backhander to lose the race on purpose — he would simply report me to the authorities, and then my world would begin to crumble around my ears. The penalties for attempting to fix a race, whether successful or not, were intentionally severe to deter anyone from trying it.
Never mind the potential criminal fraud conviction and likely prison sentence that would follow, the worldwide racing authorities would almost certainly ban me for life from being a syndicate manager and from ever setting foot on a racecourse or in a registered training stable anywhere in the world. Any mitigating pleas of threats or coercion would simply be swept aside.
No, I would just have to hope for the best that, on this occasion, Dream Filler would be one of the two-thirds of favourites that didn’t win.
But what about next time?
About forty minutes before the first race, Dream Filler was led into the pre-parade ring.
He had probably been at the racecourse for at least a couple of hours and would have been settled into the racecourse stables to recover from the journey from East Ilsley. On arrival, the horse’s identity would have been checked by a racecourse official by taking a scan of the microchip embedded in his neck — to ensure he was actually the horse the trainer claimed him to be, and not an imposter.
I leaned on the white rail of the pre-parade ring and watched him being walked round, led by one of Owen’s stable staff. He looked sound, well, and eager for the race. Some horses just knew what being at a racecourse meant, and Dream Filler was clearly one of those, looking around him and savouring the building atmosphere as more and more racegoers arrived.
Owen showed up carrying Tim Westlake’s saddle, saddle pad, and weight cloth. They would have been weighed, along with Tim himself, to check that together they matched the nine stone and seven pounds as decreed by the handicapper, plus the three-pound allowance given for the jockey’s safety vest.
The safety vest, or back protector, is mandatory for all jockeys to wear under their silks, so it is weighed, whereas an approved racing helmet, known as a skull cap, is also compulsory equipment but is not weighed.
Owen would have collected the saddle and other things from Tim in the weighing room in order to put them on the horse. Now he walked over to one of the vacant saddling boxes and waved for the stable lad to bring the horse over.
I went over to join them.
‘Do you think he looks a bit lame?’ I asked. ‘Front nearside leg?’
‘Really?’ Owen said. ‘I thought he was fine. We’d better check.’
He put the saddle and associated equipment over the half-height wooden partition between the saddling boxes and told the lad to take the horse back out to the pre-parade ring. I slung my jacket over the partition next to the saddle and followed them.
Owen and I watched as the lad led him around a couple more circuits.
‘He looks absolutely fine to me,’ Owen said.
And he did.
‘I still think we should get a vet to check him over,’ I said. ‘Just to be sure. He looks all right now, but I still feel he was favouring that leg earlier.’
Owen sucked air through his teeth in frustration, but I suspect he felt that if I was concerned, then perhaps he should do as I’d asked. After all, I was the syndicate manager for by far the best horse in his stable yard, and he surely wouldn’t want to rock that particular boat.