Crisis

9

I spent the evening in the hotel wishing I were elsewhere, thinking about Catherine/Kate Logan. Assuming that she actually was Catherine Logan and not Kate Somebody Else, with a husband and four kids in tow.

I berated myself for not getting her phone number.

I imagined her at the birthday dinner, drinking wine and having fun, and positively ached to be there too.

Instead, I sat alone in the hotel dining room absentmindedly pushing my uneaten food around the plate, before giving up and going to my room.

My spirits were briefly raised by the red message light flashing on the phone beside the bed. I positively leapt across the room to pick it up but my joy was short-lived as the message wasn’t from Kate. It was from Ryan Chadwick inviting me to come out to watch the Sheikh’s horses at work on the gallops the following morning.

‘Be at the new yard by six o’clock at the latest,’ his recorded voice said.

I looked at my watch. Ten past nine. Obviously time for bed.

I’d always been a bit of a night owl and my move to London from rural Devon had opened my eyes to the delights of late nights in the West End. I couldn’t remember when I’d last been in bed before eleven o’clock, let alone ten. I would clearly be totally hopeless as a stable lad. Not only would I be frightened of the horses, I wouldn’t get up in time to ride them out.

However, on this occasion, I was up, dressed and standing in Ryan’s new yard at 5.55 a.m. on Wednesday morning, toasty warm in my new socks, boots and coat.

‘Morning, Harry,’ Ryan said, all smiles. ‘Glad you could make it.’ He hurried from one box to another, checking that everything was in order, while I trotted along behind him. ‘Still can’t get through to here from the old yard,’ he moaned. ‘We’ll have to walk right round the road. It’s a bloody nuisance.’

So is a dead body, I thought, but I decided not to mention it.

If I’d learned one thing over the past two days, it was that the good folk of Newmarket were grieving far more over the seven equine losses than they were over the human one.

It was a mindset with which I had some difficulty empathising. Did they also grieve for the cow that had died to provide the roast beef for their Sunday lunch? No, of course not. Surely horses were just animals too, weren’t they?

Clearly not.

For them, horses were different. They were like family, loved and admired by all, irrespective of their actual owners and trainers, whereas people were just... people, with all their faults and shortcomings.

‘Right,’ said Ryan, slapping me jovially on the back. ‘Let’s get going or we’ll miss my slot.’

We hurried down the road to the house and in through the old yard gates, the blue-and-white-police-tape tide having receded a little since yesterday.

‘Is Janie in yet?’ I asked.

Ryan gave me a look as if he thought it was a strange question to ask, which I suppose it was, to him.

‘She doesn’t get in until seven-thirty,’ he said.

Oliver was already sitting in the Land Rover waiting for us.

‘Morning, Harry,’ he said, leaning back over the front seats to shake my hand. ‘Good of you to join us.’

Both Ryan and Oliver were being uncommonly pleasant towards me, I thought, in spite of the early hour.

I wondered if I was being the subject of a charm offensive. Had they finally worked out that the best way to keep the Sheikh’s horses was to be nice to his representative? Or was I just being cynical?

Ryan turned left out of the yard onto Bury Road.

‘We’re on the Limekilns today,’ he said. ‘Fast gallops over six or seven furlongs. Some will do eight.’

Was horse racing the only activity left where distances were still measured in eighths of a mile? No metric units here, that was for sure.

‘How do you decide which horse does which distance?’ I asked, half fearing that the question might further show up my lack of knowledge.

‘The two-year-olds will run shorter, the threes longer,’ Oliver said, without any obvious irritation at the naivety of the question.

We pulled off the road into a parking area already half full with other vehicles, many with men standing near them by the rail, their binoculars and notebooks at the ready.

‘Bloody touts,’ Oliver said.

The three of us ducked under the rail and walked across the grass, eventually standing close to a strip of the undulating gallop marked off by pairs of small white discs placed eight yards apart all along its length, at about hundred-yard intervals.

‘They move the gallop across a bit every day,’ Oliver said. ‘So the turf doesn’t get too worn.’

‘Who’s they?’ I asked.

‘The Jockey Club. They own all the gallops. We pay a fee to use them.’

Ryan stood to one side speaking into his phone.

‘We used to have walkie-talkies,’ Oliver said to me. ‘But the touts would listen in. Phones are better. More private. We’ve done the lists beforehand. Ryan is just telling them to start.’

We stood and watched as a group of four horses came up towards us, galloping side by side. Ryan and Oliver inspected them closely through their binoculars.

‘What are you looking for?’ I asked Oliver as the four thundered past us and began to slow down at the end of their run.

‘Mostly we are watching to see how they perform relative to the rest of the group. We know how good one or two are and we want to see how the others compare.’

Another four were coming up the gallop towards us. Oliver again lifted his binoculars.

‘Two of these are Sheikh Karim’s,’ he said. ‘The one on the far side and second in from this.’

Even to my eye, I could tell that one of the four was struggling to keep up. Thankfully it was not one of the Sheikh’s.

‘Useless,’ Ryan said with feeling as they passed us. ‘Meant to be running him next week. No chance now. It would be an embarrassment.’

‘So what will you do with him?’ I asked.

‘More hard work. If that doesn’t do the trick he’ll have to go to the sales, not that anyone will want him, not after that.’

‘How would they know?’ I asked.

‘That lot,’ Ryan said with a disdainful wave towards the men standing by their cars. ‘They report everything.’

Another group of four horses was coming along the gallop.

‘The one this side is Arab Dancer,’ Oliver said. ‘He’s another of Sheikh Karim’s. Two-year-old. Nice colt.’

I wondered how he knew which one was which. They just looked the same to me, especially from this head-on angle.

‘Do you know them all by sight?’ I asked.

‘Pretty much,’ Oliver said. ‘I recognise horses like you recognise people. It’s often claimed that Lester Piggott could identify every horse he’d ever ridden when walking away from him in a rainstorm.’ He laughed. ‘But he was bloody hopeless at knowing the owners. But this one is easy, Tony’s riding it.’

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.’

‘Arrested?’ Oliver had heard and he looked up. ‘For what?’

‘Arson.’