Triple Crown

A mile and three-sixteenths

Pimlico Race Course, Baltimore, Maryland

Two weeks after the Kentucky Derby

First run in 1873

14

‘Can you ride?’

‘To be sure, sir, I can,’ I answered in my best ex-headmasterly Cork accent.

‘You’re a bit tall.’

‘I blame my parents, sir,’ I said. ‘They fed me too well when I was a wee lad.’

My interviewer laughed. His name was Charlie Hern and he was the assistant to George Raworth, the Derby-winning trainer of Fire Point. I took him to be in his mid-thirties but he looked older, having already lost most of his hair.

‘You won’t have to ride the horses anyway,’ he said. ‘We have exercise riders for that. But it might be a bonus.’

He looked again at the slightly battered Green Card he was holding in the name of Patrick Sean Murphy complete with my picture and thumbprint. A Green Card’s official name was a United States Permanent Resident Card (USCIS Form I-551) and Tony Andretti had worked a miracle with the State Department to have mine delivered to his home the previous day.

It meant that I, as Patrick Sean Murphy, had the right to work legally in the United States.

Not only was the name on the card false but so was the date of issue, as it stated that I had been a US permanent resident for the past three years. Consequently I had spent some time the previous afternoon ‘aging’ the card by rubbing it under my shoe on a concrete floor.

The man shuffled once again through my equally fake testimonials while I stood in front of him without speaking, waiting.

‘Why did you leave Santa Anita,’ he asked, tapping one of the references.

‘Too hot, sir,’ I said. ‘Especially in the winter. I prefer me winters cold, same as at home, like.’

He was silent for a moment, then he shuffled the papers together.

‘OK, Patrick,’ Charlie said finally. ‘You’ll do. We’ve just had to let a groom go, so we’re shorthanded here at present. Can you start immediately?’

‘Indeed I can, sir,’ I said, smiling broadly at him. ‘And please call me Paddy.’

‘All right, Paddy,’ he said, handing me back the Green Card. ‘You’ll be paid minimum wage and half of it will be withheld for your room and board.’

I had looked up the minimum wage. I hadn’t been particularly impressed.

‘Where do I sleep?’ I asked.

‘Keith will show you. He’s the barn foreman so you do as he says.’

Keith had been standing next to me throughout the short interview.

We were in an office at the end of a training barn on the backside of Belmont Park Racetrack in New York. It was Wednesday morning, four days after the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, and two days after every racehorse trainer in the United States had received a strongly worded letter of warning from Immigration and Customs Enforcement concerning the employment of illegal immigrants.

‘And Paddy,’ said the assistant trainer as I turned to leave, ‘Mr Raworth expects absolute loyalty from his staff. You will do as you are told without question. You will not discuss your work with others, and you especially will not speak to the press about any of the horses. Do you understand?’

I turned back to face him.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

Keith and I went outside.

‘Where’s your stuff?’ Keith asked.

‘Me life’s all in here,’ I said, indicating the canvas holdall over my shoulder.

Keith led me round the side of Raworth’s barn to a two-storey building that was desperately in need of a coat of paint.

‘In here,’ he said, pushing open the door. ‘Do you want to share with a Mexican or a Puerto Rican?’

‘You keeps half me wages and then you makes me share a room?’

‘Take it or leave it. We have others after jobs, you know.’

‘The Mexican,’ I said, for no particular reason.

Keith showed me into a room that reminded me of a prison cell as depicted in a British TV sitcom of the 1970s. It was uniformly grey with a set of bunk beds taking up almost half the available floor space. In the corner, at the foot of the beds, were two wooden lockers stacked one upon the other, plus a hard, upright wooden chair. And overlaying everything was the smell of cheap disinfectant mixed with the characteristically pungent ammonic ‘horsey’ aroma.

There was no sign of my roommate.

‘Yours is the top,’ Keith said.

‘Bed or locker?’ I asked.

‘Both.’

‘And the jacks?’

He looked at me quizzically.

‘The jacks, man?’ I said. ‘The bleeding lavvies?’

‘If you mean the bathroom, that’s down the end of the corridor. You share it with four other rooms.’

It made my former life in the army look rather luxurious.

‘Dump your kit and I’ll show you the rest of the place,’ Keith said.

I tossed my bag onto the top bed and followed him out.

The ‘backside’ at Belmont Park was not actually in the back of the racecourse but to the side, situated around a second exercise track set close to one end of the main racetrack.

The barns were similar to those at Churchill Downs insofar that they were long thin structures, but these were enclosed at the sides rather than open, perhaps reflecting the fact that New York was further north than Louisville. And, whereas Churchill barns were white with green roofs, those at Belmont were the opposite.

Keith and I walked down alongside George Raworth’s barn. There was little chance of confusing his barn with any other. The initials GR were emblazoned everywhere and there was already a workman screwing a white sign to the green outside wall that read, Home of Fire Point. Winner of the Kentucky Derby.

‘That was a great day last Saturday,’ Keith said. ‘Now for the Preakness.’

‘Is Fire Point here?’ I asked.

‘Sure is,’ he said. ‘We flew back together from Louisville on Sunday afternoon. He’ll stay here now until he goes down to Maryland.’

‘Will he fly there?’ I asked.

Keith shook his head. ‘He’ll go by truck. It’s only two hundred miles from here. We could probably go down only the day before the Preakness but Pimlico demands that all the horses are down there earlier. It helps them market the race to the public. I expect we’ll go Monday. That would be usual.’

‘Does Mr Raworth have his own barn at Pimlico?’ I asked.

‘No. He did once but they’ve closed the barns there now, except for during the actual meet. I expect we’ll use the Stakes Barn.’

A Stakes Barn was where a trainer would keep a horse brought in especially for a big race when he didn’t have a barn of his own at the track. It would normally be shared by several trainers.

‘Do you think Fire Point will win?’ I asked eagerly.

‘Sure, he’ll win,’ Keith replied with unshakable confidence. ‘He’s in great shape. He’ll win the Belmont too.’

We walked over to a blue pickup truck.

‘Get in,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll show you around and get you registered.’

First we went to the backside office where I was issued with a groom’s photo ID card on a lanyard that I was expected to wear round my neck at all times, and handed a printed sheet of rules and regulations that mostly consisted of dire warnings not to smoke anywhere near the barns.

Next, we set off round the site. The backside at Belmont Park was considerably bigger than that at Churchill Downs, the barns being more spread out and separated from each other by smart white railings. It was like a small town with a recreation hall, learning centre, chapel, medical facility, even a bank branch where employees could cash their pay cheques and wire money home. But there was also the quirky side to the place — roosters pecking at undigested oats on the dungheaps, tethered goats acting as lawn-mowers on the grass between the barns, and dogs and cats lying out, warming themselves lazily in the mid-afternoon sun.

Add the occasional neighing of the horses and it was more like a tranquil rural oasis than the actual reality, squeezed as it was between a busy suburb and a six-lane highway of a major metropolis.

‘You eat here in the track kitchen,’ Keith said as we pulled up in front of it. ‘You get tokens from me for basic meals. If you want extra, you pay for it.’

We went inside and Keith introduced me to Bert Squab, the manager. ‘Paddy here has just joined Raworth’s,’ Keith said to him. ‘Usual system.’

Bert nodded at him and at me. ‘Supper at six-thirty,’ he said without much friendship in his voice. ‘Don’t be late or it’ll be gone.’

I smiled at him, trying to break through his icy exterior, but without response. In spite of working in a hot kitchen, Bert was solid permafrost.

Keith and I went outside and climbed into the pickup. He drove us back to Raworth’s barn.

‘Here, take these.’ Keith counted a number of plastic discs into my hand. ‘These are meal tokens. These will last you until Sunday. You’ll get more then with the others.’

I put the tokens in my pocket.

‘Evening stables are from four to six,’ Keith said.

‘Which horses do I do?’

‘That’ll be decided by Mr Hern.’

‘How many?’

‘Four or five horses to a groom, it depends on how many we have in. Our barn is one of the larger ones here. It has thirty-two stalls and we’re usually pretty full — today’s count is twenty-eight. We also have two other permanent barns, one at Del Mar in California and the other at Gulfstream in Florida. Mr Raworth splits his time between the three, the fall at Del Mar, winter in Florida and the rest of the time either here or upstate at Saratoga where we all go for six weeks in the summer.’

‘So he’s here right now?’ I asked.

‘Certainly is,’ Keith said. ‘Arrived back from Louisville last evening for today’s racing.’

‘Here at Belmont?’

He nodded. ‘We race here throughout May, five days a week. Mr Raworth is coming over from the track to see everyone at four, so don’t be late.’

I could see that ‘don’t be late’ was going to be my mantra as long as I was here.

I went back to the bunkhouse and lay on my bed to do some thinking.

The full FACSA team, including Tony Andretti and myself, had flown back to Washington on Sunday morning as originally planned, on the government-owned jet, a converted Boeing 737 fitted out with thirty business-class seats. It wasn’t quite Air Force One but it was very comfortable nonetheless.

I purposely sat well away from Tony, with him up near the front and me down the back next to Larry Spiegal.

On the flight I had gone round to most of the agents individually to thank them for their hospitality and to say goodbye.

‘You leaving us already?’ Larry had said. ‘You’ve hardly had time enough to spit.’

‘I’m afraid I have to,’ I’d replied, smiling. ‘I can’t spend my life gallivanting around the world in private jets like you lot. I have work to do in London.’

We had landed at Andrews around midday and most of the agents had dispersed immediately to their homes, eager to catch up with wives and children for what remained of the weekend.

I had hung around until the last of the agents had departed then I’d called Tony Andretti. He, meanwhile, had been collected by Harriet, but they now returned to where I was waiting at a secluded spot outside the base main gate.

I slung my suitcase onto the back seat and climbed in after it.

‘Where to?’ Tony asked.

‘No idea,’ I said. ‘Where do you suggest?’

‘Our place?’ Harriet asked.

‘Do you have neighbours?’

‘Sure,’ Tony said. ‘Why?’

I had always been obsessed with my own security, to the extent of being paranoid. But that paranoia had helped keep me alive through three long tours in war-ravaged Afghanistan and subsequently, working undercover for the BHA.

‘I don’t want anyone to see you and me together. You never know who’s watching or who they will talk to.’

‘The neighbours don’t need to see you,’ Harriet said. ‘We can drive straight into the garage. You lie down on the back seat.’

‘OK,’ I said.

So, perhaps against my better judgement, I had gone home with Tony and Harriet to Fairfax, Virginia, where I had spent the next two days hiding from their neighbours, studying bank statements, growing my beard and making plans to become a groom.

‘Why Raworth’s?’ Tony had asked when I’d told him where I was going for a job.

‘Partly because George Raworth trains at Belmont Park. Do you remember telling me that FACSA had conducted a raid on a barn at Belmont last October but had found nothing, the whole place having been steam cleaned?’

‘Of course,’ Tony had said. ‘That was the raid that Jason Connor was so furious about.’

‘Can you recall the name of the trainer?’

‘Man called Mitchell, Adam Mitchell. But he’s now gone from Belmont permanently. He went back to Florida after that trouble and NYRA were glad to see the back of him. We interviewed him in Miami about Jason Connor and how he had been tipped off regarding our raid, but he wasn’t talking. It was a total dead end.’

‘How about his grooms?’

‘They mostly went down with him to Florida. We interviewed some of them too, but they all said they knew nothing. I think they were frightened of Mitchell. That’s why Connor tracked down the one at Laurel, he didn’t go with the others and was apparently prepared to talk, but now even he’s disappeared.’

‘And what that groom said to Connor is anyone’s guess.’

‘Exactly.’

‘There may still be some of Mitchell’s past grooms at Belmont, working for other trainers. I could try to find them.’

‘Seems like a long shot to me,’ Tony had said. ‘Is that the only reason to work for George Raworth?’

‘No. I also want to go there because he won the Kentucky Derby and he has since indicated that he intends to run three horses in the Preakness, including the Derby winner, Fire Point.’

‘What difference does that make?’

‘To start with, it means I may have more chance of getting to Pimlico, but mostly I’m curious as to whether his other two will actually be trying to beat Fire Point, or will they only be there to spoil the chances of the other runners.’

‘You’re a cynic.’ Tony had laughed.

‘Maybe I am. But I believe there is something very fishy about the way those three competitors conveniently all fell ill on the very morning of the Derby.’

‘The track veterinarian didn’t think so,’ Tony had said. ‘He said that it was not uncommon for horses to go off their food and run a fever, especially when being moved around. But, I grant you, it looks a bit suspicious for those three to have fallen ill on that particular day.’

I’d read the vet’s interim report. Not that I’d really understood much of it. It had all been a bit too scientific for me and it didn’t answer the most important question, which was what was wrong with the horses. One of his paragraphs had stuck in my mind: Antigenic drift of antigenically heterologous viruses may reduce the degree and duration of protection conferred by previous infection or vaccination.

The phrase ‘blinding with science’ came to mind. At least I could understand the last bit.

‘Does he think it may have been a new strain of equine influenza?’

‘He doesn’t know yet,’ Tony had replied. ‘Apparently he has to wait for the horses to produce antibodies and then test for those, rather than for the virus itself. It takes a few days.’

But, if it was equine influenza, one of the most infectious diseases around, why hadn’t it infected more of the horses? What was so special about those three? Other than, of course, they were three of the most fancied runners in the Kentucky Derby.

I thought that fact alone was sufficiently suspicious for me to go to work in Raworth’s stable, in order to find out.

My roommate returned from wherever he’d been at about ten minutes to four as I was still lying on my bed. He rushed into our room, grabbed some boots from his locker and was pulling them on before he even noticed me.

He was a short man that I took to be in his fifties. He looked up at me.

‘Hola,’ he said, totally unfazed to find another man in his bedroom. ‘Mi nombre es Rafael Diaz. Y tu?’

‘Paddy,’ I replied. ‘Paddy Murphy. From Ireland.’

‘Mexicano,’ Rafael said, pointing a finger at his chest. ‘Vine aquí hace diez años.’

I shook my head. ‘No Español.’

He had exhausted my Spanish by asking my name.

He smiled broadly, exposing the few teeth that still remained in his head, which themselves appeared to be in need of some urgent dental treatment.

‘Mexican,’ he said in heavily accented English. ‘I came to here ten years.’

I climbed down from my bunk and shook his hand. He grinned some more. ‘We go work. No late. Mr Keith say boss come.’

‘Yes,’ I said, looking at the watch on my wrist.

It was five minutes to four.

Don’t be late, Keith had said.

Rafael and I rushed along from the accommodation block to the barn.

‘Come on, you two,’ Charlie Hern shouted at us. ‘Hurry up and get in position.’

We quickly lined up with seven others, including Keith who stood on the end. It reminded me slightly of the FACSA special agent parade at the National Guard facility on the morning of the Hayden Ryder raid.

But that is where the similarity ended.

The FACSA team had been a crack outfit while this motley crew appeared anything but. Instead of a smart uniform, the nine of us wore a variety of T-shirts, jeans and assorted footwear ranging from Rafael’s ankle-high jodhpur boots to my off-white trainers.

George Raworth appeared from the office in which I had been interviewed earlier, and walked over to where we were paraded. He was casually dressed in blue jeans and a polo shirt, in contrast to the last time I’d seen him wearing a suit and tie on the giant TV screen at Churchill Downs as he’d led Fire Point into the Derby winner’s circle.

During my stay with Tony and Harriet, I had used the Internet to do some research on Mr George S. Raworth.

He had been born near El Paso in western Texas where his great-great-grandfather had established a longhorn cattle ranch in the 1890s, just as soon as the railroad had arrived to transport the stock to markets in the north.

The 100,000-acre ranch was now run by two of George’s cousins, primarily producing beef for the California market, but also raising American Quarter Horses, a strong muscular breed with a compact body, favoured as cowboys’ working horses, and named for their prowess as the fastest equine breed over a quarter of a mile from a standing start.

George had started his adult life training the young Quarter Horses from the family ranch, racing them at the Lone Star racetrack near Dallas, before graduating to the more lucrative Thoroughbred circuit.

Initial successes had marked him as a new golden-boy of American racing but his reputation had been tarnished over the years by several cases involving the misuse of medications, especially steroids.

He was now in his mid-fifties but looked somewhat older, with a head of prematurely white hair and facial skin ravaged both by teenage acne and by too many of his former years having been spent in the harsh Texas sunshine.

He walked along the line of his staff and stopped in front of me.

‘And who are you?’ he asked in a voice that didn’t have as much drawl as I’d been expecting.

‘I’m Paddy, sir,’ I replied in my best Cork accent. ‘I has only started today.’

‘Well, Paddy,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the most successful training barn in the United States. Did you see the Derby on Saturday?’

‘Indeed I did, sir,’ I said, ‘On TV.’ I smiled broadly at him.

He smiled back and moved on down the line.

Satisfied by the inspection of his staff, he faced us.

‘Well done all,’ he said. ‘Now for the Preakness and then the Triple Crown.’

George turned and went back into the office.

Charlie Hern scowled at the line. ‘Go on then, the lot of you, get to work. Paddy, you go with Maria. She’ll show you what’s where. You’ll do four horses to start with until we see how you go. Maria, show him Stalls One to Four.’

Maria was the only female in the line-up. Slim and young, she was wearing a skimpy, olive-green T-shirt above tight denim jeans with mock-designer holes in the knees. She was beautiful, with high cheekbones under a bronze skin, and she clearly knew how to display her body to maximum advantage, but she didn’t seem too pleased to be asked to look after the new boy.

‘I should not be treated like common hot-walker,’ she said with a slight Spanish accent, tossing her thick dark hair from side to side in displeasure. ‘I am not hot-walker, I should be groom.’

She was certainly hot, at least to my eye.

15

I very quickly slipped into the routine of George Raworth’s barn.

Other than Keith, the barn foreman, there were seven full-time staff, including Maria, plus a yard boy who was clearly the oldest of us all, using his ever-present broom more as a support than for actual sweeping.

Maria showed me where the stable equipment was stored.

‘Have you been here long?’ I asked her, trying to be friendly.

‘I came here January as hot-walker,’ she said haughtily, still unhappy, ‘but I should be groom by now. I have done my study.’

A hot-walker was someone employed simply to lead the horses around as they cooled after exercise. It was the lowest rung on the horse-care ladder.

‘But I am still treated by boss as mere hot-walker.’ She sighed and drew herself up to her full height, posing and pouting with obvious irritation. Her facial expression reminded me of a flamenco dancer.

I berated myself slightly for fantasising about Maria cavorting around a dance floor in high heels. I was not here to chase the female stable staff.

‘Is being a hot-walker all that bad?’

‘I want better,’ she said. ‘How come you are groom already when I be here much longer?’ She turned and walked off, gyrating her hips in an overly belligerent manner. I found it rather sexy, and she knew it.

I sighed and went to work.

I cleared the soiled bedding in stalls one to four and replenished the straw for the equine residents, placing the waste into the huge grey metal skips that were earmarked for the purpose at either end of the barn.

I was quite surprised to see that straw was in widespread use, the preference in the UK having moved towards wood pellets, shavings or shredded newspaper.

As Keith had told me earlier, the barn had thirty-two stalls — two blocks of sixteen built back-to-back down the centre — with a wide covered walkway called a shedrow that ran right around the building inside the exterior walls.

The stalls, like the rest of the building, were constructed from wood and they opened onto the shedrow so that the horses were able to look out over half-doors.

At each corner of the barn was an exit with a sliding door. During the day the doors were left open with only a single bar across the gap to prevent any loose horses from escaping.

The doors were slid shut at night but not locked. The wooden structures, together with large quantities of straw and hay, meant that fire was always uppermost in people’s minds and large signs with ‘No Smoking/Prohibido Fumar’ hung from the rafters every twenty feet or so along the shedrow.

The barns at Belmont were fitted with sprinkler systems but, nevertheless, locked exit doors would hamper the evacuation of the horses if the worst was to happen, as had occurred in 1986 when forty-five top Thoroughbreds, collectively worth several million dollars, had all died one night when fire destroyed barn 48 on the eastern edge of the site.

George Raworth, accompanied by Charlie Hern, made a tour of his stable, stopping at each stall to inspect the occupant and discuss progress. We grooms had to remove the bandages from the horse’s legs and stand, holding the animal’s head, while both George and Charlie ran a hand down the back of each equine limb, feeling for unwanted heat in the tendon or ligaments.

Like many others, the Raworth’s horses all wore leg bandages as a matter of course, not because they were injured but to add support and to hold cotton pads that prevented nicks and bruises caused by kicking into themselves. The bandages were also used to hold medications and liniments in place, often used after racing to ease any slight sprains.

‘Everything OK, Paddy?’ Charlie asked as he and George came into Stall 1 where I had a firm grip of the headcollar of a four-year-old gelding called Paddleboat.

‘Fine, sir, thank you,’ I replied.

‘Which part of Ireland are you from?’ George asked.

‘From the south, sir,’ I said. ‘County Cork.’

‘My mother’s father was Irish.’

I hadn’t spotted that in any of my research.

‘He came from a bit further north. From Thurles in County Tipperary.’

‘I know it,’ I said. ‘I went to the racecourse there as a kid.’

‘I’ve never been able to get there myself,’ George said. ‘Maybe one day.’

I breathed a small silent sigh of relief. I hadn’t been there either.

I stood and listened as the two men turned their attention to Paddleboat.

‘He ran Thursday in a seven-eighths-mile, fifteen-grand claimer,’ Charlie said. ‘Finished sixth of eight. Never in with a chance and not claimed.’

‘Is he on Clen?’ George asked.

‘Has been,’ Charlie replied. ‘Came off it to go to the track.’

‘Put him back on it. Up the dose.’

Charlie wrote something down in a notebook.

‘If he shows no improvement soon,’ George went on, ‘we’ll have to get rid of him — maybe in an even lower claimer. Ship him down to Philly Park if necessary.’

Unlike in the UK, claiming races made up the bulk of contests at US racetracks. Before the start, any horse in the race could be claimed by a new owner for a fixed amount as determined by the race conditions. Title in the horse was transferred as the starting gates opened, although the former owner was entitled to any purse-money earned in that particular race.

It would clearly not be sensible to run a really good horse in a race in which the claim figure was very low. The horse would be sure to be claimed by a new owner and, even if it won the purse, the original owner would lose a valuable animal for a fraction of its true worth.

However, if a horse was valued around the claim figure then, if it were claimed, the original owner would recover his initial investment, plus he has the chance of picking up a substantial purse on top if it won the race.

In this way, racetracks used claiming races to encourage horses of roughly equal value, and hence of a comparable standard, to race against one another. This made the racing more competitive and thus boosted the ‘handle’, the total sum of money wagered by the public. The handle was what ultimately determined the tracks’ income, which was what they really only cared about. Each day’s programme would have claiming races with a range of claim amounts and horses were entered accordingly.

Claiming races were popular with some owners but usually less so with the trainers, as they had little idea if a horse that was in their care in the morning would be residing in someone else’s barn come evening.

Not that all horses were entered in claimers. The top-class ones, those that contested the major stakes races, never had their ownership so easily changed, but for the journeyman horses, those that made up the majority of the backside population at Belmont Park, they lived a merry-go-round life in the barns, being repeatedly claimed by new owners and sent to different trainers.

Paddleboat was clearly not going to remain in Raworth’s barn for much longer. If a new owner didn’t claim him soon, I feared he’d be off to the knacker. However, I was much more interested in what drugs George was planning to give him in the interim.

Clen was short for clenbuterol, a drug used extensively in certain parts of the world to treat asthma in humans but also as a decongestant to help clear an unwanted build-up of mucus from a horse’s respiratory tract.

But I could hear Paddleboat’s airways. They were as clear as a bell — not even a hint of a wheeze.

I’d once done some research on clenbuterol for the BHA. Although not in fact a steroid, it had similar anabolic effects in horses, such that it helped to build muscle. It was rumoured to have been widely used in US training barns for many years almost on a daily basis, like a feed supplement. Only recently had new regulations been introduced requiring that clenbuterol use be suspended at least fourteen days prior to racing.

‘See to it he also gets a five-millilitre shot of HA in each hock joint and five hundred milligrams of Adequan into his hindquarters,’ George said to Charlie, who wrote again in his notebook.

HA is hyaluronic acid, a component of synovial fluid found naturally in healthy joints, while Adequan is an osteoarthritis drug. Both are used for the treatment of degenerative joint disease, something that really shouldn’t affect a horse that was only four years old. Paddleboat’s future prospects were looking worse by the minute.

George and Charlie moved out into the shedrow.

I quickly closed the stall door and moved on to my next horse, a five-year-old gelding called Debenture. The trainer and his assistant repeated the process of feeling his legs and discussing his future.

‘He’s still getting the vitamin shots,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve given him two already this week and I’ll do one more tomorrow. They should set him up well for the Spring Handicap.’

‘Good,’ George said, before moving back out into the shedrow and on to the next horse.

And so on, down the full line of stalls.

When the inspections of my four horses were complete, I returned to each one in turn, replacing the protective pads and bandages on their legs and removing their halters.

George Raworth and Charlie Hern were still on their tour when I’d finished, so I walked round the shedrow towards Stall 17, which was at the other end of the barn, next to the office.

Stall 17 was the home of the barn star.

Fire Point had his head out over the half-door and he seemed to be taking a special interest in everything around him. Horsemen often talk about a horse having an intelligent head, by which they mean it is broad with eyes set far apart, a straight profile with ample nostrils. Fire Point’s head was none of those things. It was narrow, slightly dished, and with a small muzzle. However, his eyes were bright and alert.

‘Wonderful, isn’t he?’ said a voice behind me. I turned. It was Keith. ‘I love redheads,’ he said. ‘He’s like a reincarnated Secretariat.’

It was quite a statement. It was true that both Fire Point and Secretariat were chestnuts, but Secretariat was a legend in racing. Big Red, as he had been nicknamed, didn’t just capture the 1973 Triple Crown, he destroyed it, completing his trio of wins with an astonishing 31-length victory in the Belmont Stakes, a feat so extraordinary that it reportedly made those watching it cry.

And now, more than forty years later, Secretariat still held the record times for all three of the Triple Crown legs. He had been quite a horse, maybe the best ever.

I went over to stroke Fire Point but Keith put a hand out to stop me.

‘Mr Raworth doesn’t like anyone going near him. Other than me, that is. I look after him.’

I remembered that it had been Keith I had seen leading Fire Point over from the barns before the Kentucky Derby. Now he looked at the horse almost in awe. Certainly in adoration.

When the trainer’s tour of the barn was over, the grooms lined up at the feed store for Charlie Hern to issue the correct amount of concentrated mixed horse nuts for each animal.

As a general rule, racehorses eat one pound in weight of mixed feed for every hand high they stand at their withers. Most Thoroughbreds are around sixteen to seventeen hands high so they eat sixteen to seventeen pounds a day, plus some hay for fibre.

‘Paddleboat,’ I said, getting to the head of the line.

Charlie scooped two large measures of nuts from the feed bin into a black plastic bucket with a large number ‘1’ painted on the side in white. He then poured some thick syrup onto the food from a stubby brown glass bottle with a white label.

The syrup contained the clenbuterol — it said so on the label. Next, he measured more feed into the buckets marked 2, 3 and 4, for my other horses.

‘Make sure they eat it all up,’ Charlie said.

I took the buckets back to the appropriate stalls, gave the feed to the horses and waited while they ate it. I then checked they all had fresh water before returning the equipment to the appropriate store. My first evening’s work as a groom was done, and I hadn’t messed up.

Raworth’s six grooms plus Maria and the yard boy went together to the track kitchen for supper.

‘Food good,’ Rafael said to me on the way. ‘Plenty.’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ Maria said. ‘It is garbage. Always full of chilli. Mexicans will eat anything.’

‘Where are you from?’ I asked.

‘Puerto Rico,’ she said.

Hell, I thought. I hope I hadn’t turned down the chance to share a room with her.

‘Are there many Puerto Ricans here?’ I asked.

‘Lots,’ she said. ‘Diego, my cousin.’

She indicated towards one of the others in our group. I smiled at him but it wasn’t reciprocated. He simply glared back at me with cold black eyes.

The eight of us did not eat together as a single unit. Having individually swapped a meal token for food with Bert Squab at the service counter, most went off to sit on their own or with grooms from other barns. Maria, however, sat down right opposite me.

Cousin Diego clearly wasn’t happy.

He moved to our table, taking the chair right next to Maria. He continued to stare at me, eating his supper without ever looking at it once. I found it rather disconcerting, and Maria wasn’t happy with him either.

‘Go away,’ she shouted at him in English.

He didn’t like that.

‘Habla Español,’ he shouted back at her. ‘Mantente alejado de este gringo.’

‘Púdrete!’ She stood up and raised her hand as if to strike him but stopped short. She sat down again. ‘Por favor vete.’

Diego reluctantly moved away across the gangway, but still he continued to stare.

‘I sorry,’ Maria said, looking down at the table. ‘Diego speak very good English, much better than me, but he still act like he in San Juan. All his friends here from Puerto Rico. They like control of women. He not like me speak to men not from Puerto Rico.’

‘Do you speak to men not from Puerto Rico often?’ I asked.

She looked up at me and smiled broadly. ‘Only every day.’

I smiled back at her and sensed Diego getting agitated to my left.

We ate for a while in silence. Maybe the food was a little too hot for Maria’s taste, but I liked things spicy and, as Rafael had said, there was plenty of it.

Attached to the track kitchen was a recreation hall and Maria and I went through there after eating. Diego followed. In the hall were some casual seating, a jukebox, two pool tables and five computer workstations. There was also a large TV currently showing a baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Kansas City Royals.

‘Where’s the bar?’ I asked.

‘No here,’ said Maria. ‘Sometime boys go out to bar but drinking not allowed on backside, although some still do.’ She smiled as if implying that she was one of those.

‘Is there much else to do?’ I asked.

‘We have classes. English most, but also reading and math.’

‘Hey, Maria,’ shouted one of the young men watching the baseball, ‘come and give us a kiss and a cuddle.’

She raised her middle finger to him but she wandered over to join them nevertheless. Maria clearly enjoyed being the centre of attention.

If possible, Diego looked even less happy.

I, meanwhile, went over to another group of eight grooms gathered at the far end of the hall.

‘May I join you?’ I asked in my best Cork accent.

None of them said anything but two shifted along a bench to make some room. I sat down.

‘I’m new here,’ I said. ‘Name’s Paddy. I’m Irish. I started today, on Raworth’s crew.’

All I received was a few nods.

‘I’ve come from working the barns at Santa Anita,’ I went on, ‘in California.’

I received a couple more nods.

‘How about you?’ I asked, turning to the boy sitting right next to me. ‘Been here long?’

‘A while,’ he said nervously, glancing across at an older man.

‘Where do you come from?’ I asked him.

‘Why do you want to know?’ the older man said sharply. He was probably in his early forties, with slicked-back black hair and a matching goatee, and was clearly the group’s leader.

‘I’m only being conversational,’ I said.

‘Well, don’t be,’ the man said abruptly. ‘We don’t like people asking questions. Especially about who we are and where we come from. Too many of us are trying to forget.’

I could see that finding any of Adam Mitchell’s previous grooms was going to be difficult, if not impossible.

This was not the first time I’d come across those with such a sentiment.

I thought of them as victims of a ‘here-and-now’ syndrome — people that exist only for the here and now, without any consideration of their future, and without learning any lessons from their past.

Many habitual criminals have it. It is not that they enjoy going to jail, they just persistently ignore previous experience and mistakenly believe that it will not happen to them again this time. The notion that long prison sentences act as a deterrent against criminal behaviour simply does not apply to such people.

In many respects, steeplechase jockeys have exactly the same here-and-now mentality. History should have taught them that future mounts will fall and they will be seriously injured, but they live only for the here and now, for the thrill of the race, not contemplating for one second the inevitable agony of broken bones or dislocated shoulders. Once they do, it is time to retire.

I stood up and went outside to find a quiet corner to call Tony Andretti.

16

‘Equine viral arteritis,’ Tony said. ‘EVA.’

‘What is that?’

‘It’s a disease caused by a virus. The three horses at Churchill have tested positive for antibodies in their blood. There’s no doubt. It seems it is quite common in some breeds but less so in Thoroughbreds.’

I’d never heard of it

‘How did they get it?’ I asked.

‘Strictly speaking, according to one of the veterinarians I spoke to, EVA is contagious rather than infectious,’ Tony said. ‘It is a respiratory disease but horses have to have their noses in contact to pass it on, as the virus exists in their nasal discharges — snot to you and me — rather than in the air. But it can also be transmitted via any nasal droplets left on shared tack or feed bowls, anything that is moved from one animal to another, as long as it is done immediately.’

‘How long is the incubation period?’

‘Anywhere from three to fourteen days depending on the strain of the virus and the amount transmitted.’

‘That means that one of them couldn’t have given it to the other two because all three went down with it on the same day. So where did it come from initially?’

‘Maybe there was another horse with a mild case of the disease,’ Tony said. ‘It seems that some horses don’t show any clinical symptoms when infected but they still shed the virus and so can infect others.’

‘Can you find out when those three horses arrived at Churchill Downs and where they stayed when they were there? If you can, find it out for all the Derby runners. See if any were together in a Stakes Barn.’

‘I’ll contact the Churchill backside manager,’ Tony said. ‘He must have had a list of where each horse was housed to know where to detail the sheriff’s deputies.’

‘Also try to discover if there’s anything else that might be a common denominator for those three. Perhaps they flew to Louisville on the same flight or something.’

‘OK,’ Tony said. ‘I’ll get on to it. Oh yes, there’s one more thing. We’ve had the results back from the samples taken from Hayden Ryder’s horses after he was killed in the raid at Churchill. At least half of them were dosed to the eyeballs with the steroid stanozolol and had obviously been running with it in their system.’

‘That’ll be why he was trying to ship them out to Chattanooga.’

‘Stupid man,’ Tony said. ‘Hardly worth dying for.’

I agreed.

‘Anything else?’

‘Not that I can think of at the moment,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you again tomorrow, same time.’

‘I’ll be here.’

I went back into the recreation hall. Maria was now sitting on one of the young men’s laps holding court, and cousin Diego was almost beside himself with rage. Meanwhile, the baseball was in the bottom of the fifth inning, not that anyone was taking much notice any longer.

There was now a far more interesting game to watch — sexual electricity.

I left them to it.

One of my greatest frustrations at working undercover was that I’d had to leave my laptop and iPhone at Tony’s house — a groom working on minimum wage would never have such things — and I desperately wanted to do some Internet research on EVA.

I left Maria to her admirers and sat myself at one of the recreation-hall computer workstations, the one at the far end closest to the wall. I angled the screen such that prying eyes could not see what I was reading.

According to a veterinary website, equine viral arteritis had been first isolated as a separate disease in horses in Ohio in the 1950s, although it had been blighting horses around the world for centuries. It was easily confused with other equine respiratory diseases such as influenza or herpes, and could be confirmed only by the detection of EVA antibodies in blood.

Most infected horses, even those badly affected with the associated hives, conjunctivitis and swelling of the legs, made complete clinical recoveries in three to four weeks without any specific treatment other than rest.

I learned that, apart from the snotty discharge route, it could also be sexually transmitted from stallion to mare.

What’s more, the virus was able to remain permanently active in equine sperm, totally unaffected by the animal’s natural immune system. It seemed that this was because testicles, both equine and human, are strange organs in immunological terms insofar that they generate proteins that are not present at birth. Nature has had to develop a mechanism to prevent the body’s own immune system from reacting against these alien substances when puberty comes around.

And the same process that prevents the immune system from attacking sperm tissue also means that it can’t kill off any virus that settles in the testicles. Consequently, stallions that become infected continue to shed EVA virus in their ejaculate for the rest of their lives, whilst otherwise being entirely healthy.

The owner I had seen weeping behind the media tent at Churchill Downs was about to have a fresh reason to cry. His hoped-for future stud-fee gold mine had struck iron pyrite — fool’s gold.

Even if the three infected colts recovered sufficiently quickly from the disease itself to become champion racehorses, they would never be permitted to stand at stud for fear of infecting the mares they covered, often resulting in barren seasons or miscarriages.

I also discovered that a vaccine existed against EVA but it was not widely used in the United States or Europe unless there had been a specific outbreak.

The vaccine worked, as did most vaccines, by introducing a quantity of dead virus, which couldn’t infect the horse but nevertheless stimulated the production of antibodies in the blood. These antibodies would remain in the system and immediately kill off any live virus that might subsequently appear, so preventing infection.

Because the illness was relatively rare in Thoroughbreds and generally short-lived without any lasting complications, the racehorse population was not routinely vaccinated.

The only animals for which infection was a serious matter were stallions or sexually mature colts destined to be such. But there was an added problem. If vaccinated, a routine blood test of a colt would confirm EVA antibodies and it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prove that those antibodies were as a result of the vaccine rather than due to the live virus.

Would you then take the chance of breeding the stallion with your best mare?

Hence colts were also not normally vaccinated as a matter of course. It was only given to valuable stallions, when it could be categorically proven by every single test available that they were free of the virus prior to vaccination.

So where did that leave the seventeen other colts that had made it to the starting gate in Louisville the previous Saturday and, in particular, the winner? Any colt that won the Kentucky Derby would be expected to retire to a lucrative career at stud after his racing days were over.

It was now almost five days since the three horses had become ill. With an incubation period of up to two weeks, there were still another nervous nine illness-free days to go before it could be safe to assume that Fire Point and the others had not also contracted the disease.

I clicked off the website and erased the web history. I am sure that some computer whiz kid would have been able to find out precisely what I’d been browsing, and there would definitely be a record on the server, but no one here would casually be able to look.

Next I checked my emails.

Among the usual junk were several messages from work colleagues in London, most of which I was able to ignore.

But there was one from Nigel Green that caught my eye.

He reported that Jimmy Robinson, the jockey nicked for buying banned diuretics in the A34 lay-by, had since been sacked as stable jockey for a top Newmarket establishment. He may not have done anything against the law of the land but British racing valued its integrity.

‘Be warned though,’ Nigel wrote, ‘there’s a strong rumour he’s off to ride for a trainer called Sidney Austin in New York.’

Nigel was one of the very few people at the horseracing authority who knew where I was, and why. Most of the others believed I was on extended unpaid leave, visiting friends in the Far East and Australia.

I scanned again through the list of emails.

There was nothing from Henrietta.

I hadn’t really expected there to be and, strangely, I wasn’t sure if I was happy or sad by the omission.

However, there was one from Faye.

She said that her new course of chemotherapy had started and it was making her tired but, as always, she was positive about the outcome and didn’t complain — although, God knows, she had enough to complain about.

As usual, she was more concerned with me than herself, asking how I was doing and reminding me that I was to (a) get enough sleep, (b) eat healthily and (c) launder my clothes regularly.

I smiled. She couldn’t help herself. Faye had taken over the maternal role when I was eight and she’d been twenty, when our dear mother had died from cancer.

Here we were, twenty-five years later, and nothing had changed.

I wrote back sending her all my love and wishing her success with the treatment. She wouldn’t have wanted me to be too emotional about it, so I wasn’t. I knew she could just about hold everything together provided everyone else was not wailing and whining on her behalf. We all had to be strong individually and collectively.

I also assured her that I was doing all the things she asked, even though privately I thought that getting enough sleep might be a problem. Maria had already told me we had to be at work at 4.30 a.m. now that May was here.

It seemed that George Raworth liked the horses to go out for their exercise before the heat of the day became too great. I couldn’t think why. All the racing at Belmont in summer was in the afternoon when the mercury was at its highest. Surely part of the training should be to get the horses accustomed to running fast when it was hot.

But it had been made very clear to me by Charlie Hern that my place as a groom was not to question anything — it was only to do exactly as I was told.

Sleep on the top bunk did not come easily, not least because of my flatulent roommate lying below.

I had returned from the recreation hall at eight-fifteen, as it was getting dark, to find that someone had been tampering with my belongings.

My holdall had been still there on my bed, where I’d left it and, as far as I could tell, nothing had been taken, but I was certain someone had been through it. I had purposely left the zips in a particular position so that I’d be able to tell, and there was no doubt they had been moved. They weren’t even close to where I’d left them.

I smiled to myself.

If I’d been working here and someone new turned up out of the blue, I’d have had a look through their stuff too. But that was probably because I was naturally curious.

I emptied the contents of the canvas bag onto my bed.

All my usual smart clothes, including my Armani suit and my silk ties, were safely hanging in the guest-room closet in Tony Andretti’s home, along with my polished black-leather shoes, my smart leather toilet bag, my Raymond Weil wristwatch and my suitcase.

I had spent some of Monday afternoon at a discount store at the Fair Oaks mall in Fairfax, buying five ten-dollar T-shirts, two pairs of bargain jeans, plus other sundry items like underwear and a patterned green nylon sweater that I wouldn’t ordinarily be seen dead in. I also picked up some discounted sneakers, a pair of faux-leather black loafers, a plastic wash bag, a cheap digital watch with an imitation crocodile strap, and a blue baseball cap with the interlinked LA logo of the Los Angeles Dodgers on the front from a sportswear shop.

I then amused Tony by rubbing the lot of them in the dirt in his backyard and scuffing the shoes against the brick wall of his garage. Next, the dirty clothes all went into his washer, together with the sneakers and the baseball cap, for a couple of cycles without any detergent or softener.

My new clothes hadn’t been particularly fashionable to start with but, afterwards, they looked just as I had wanted — drab and rather shabby, with the white underwear now a delicate shade of grey.

I stacked everything in my locker.

At the bottom of my holdall, underneath all the clothes, I had meticulously placed two pieces of folder paper with one of them sticking out from the other by precisely the width of my thumb.

The pieces were still there but now they were folded together in line. Someone had definitely been peeping.

Not that the papers were secret or anything. They weren’t. In fact, I had left them there in order for them to be looked at.

One was a handwritten letter, supposedly from my old Irish mother back in County Cork but actually penned by Harriet Andretti, telling me how much she missed me and expressing hope that I might come home very soon. The second was a letter on IRS-headed notepaper, addressed to me at the Santa Anita racetrack, advising me that I was being charged a penalty for late filing of my income tax return the previous April.

Neither was true or particularly important. I had only added them to my kit to augment my story of having previously been an Irish groom working at Santa Anita. And one never knew when an official-looking letter from a government agency might come in useful as a form of ID, even if it had been created on my laptop and run off on Tony’s desktop printer.

I climbed up onto my bed and, presently, Rafael returned. He was clearly one of the boys that went out to a bar or indulged in some illicit drinking on the backside. He reeked of alcohol and was so inebriated he could hardly find his bed in a room that was only eight feet long by six wide.

He said nothing to me, as if he hadn’t noticed I was there, and eventually he tripped over the wooden chair in the corner, crawled onto his bunk, still half-clothed, and went to sleep.

I had travelled to America in an attempt to learn the identity of a mole in the FACSA racing section. I wondered how the hell I had come to the point where I was lying in the dark trying to ignore a drunken Mexican, farting beneath me?

17

Other than making calls and sending texts, my non-smart phone had one other function that was useful — it had an alarm, and it went off under my pillow at four o’clock in the morning.

The sky was still pitch-black but there was plenty of illumination coming into the room from the electric security lights that constantly lit up the whole barn area. The wafer-thin curtains didn’t stretch across the full width of the window and were obviously there more for decoration than to provide greater privacy or darkness.

I swung myself down to the floor from my top bunk.

The occupant of the lower was still out for the count and snoring gently. I was tempted to leave him sleeping — if he was late and got fired, I’d not have to put up with the flatulence. However, my good nature prevailed and I tried to rouse him by shaking his shoulder, but to little effect.

In the end I rolled him off the mattress onto the floor and forced him to sit up but, even then, I wasn’t quite sure if he was conscious in the normal sense of the word. I left him there and went down the corridor to the bathroom.

I was, therefore, quite surprised to find Rafael not only upright but dressed and ready for work when I returned, even if his eyes were rather bloodshot.

‘Lo siento,’ he said. ‘Bebido demasiado.’

I smiled at him. I knew siento meant sorry and that was enough. I didn’t expect him to be able to speak English with a hangover.

‘No late,’ I said, tapping my watch.

‘OK.’ He smiled back with his mostly toothless grin.

We went out together to the barn.

Charlie Hern was there ahead of us and he was barking out orders to the other grooms.

‘Paddy,’ he shouted at me.

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied.

‘All four of yours go out today in stall order. Paddleboat first at five-thirty. Have him ready.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said again. ‘Sure will.’

I turned and calmly walked away, but I was far from composed inside. I thought I’d done my homework about what being a groom involved but, quite suddenly, I felt I was in the deep end, and wearing lead boots.

I went in search of Maria and found her in the tack room.

‘Where are the saddles?’ I asked, looking around at walls draped only with bridles on numbered hooks. There were a few metal saddle racks but all but one were empty.

‘Exercise riders bring their own, stupid,’ Maria said. ‘Where you been?’

Stupid was the right word. I had really only spent any time at racing stables in England and, even then, only as a visitor or as an integrity inspector. The stable lads there not only looked after the horses’ needs in terms of bedding, feed and water, they generally rode them out to the gallops each morning as well. Hence the stable tack room had racks full of saddles, one for each of the lads plus a few spares.

But it was getting increasingly difficult to find good stable lads who could not only ride well, but were of the right size and weight. It wasn’t only jockeys like Jimmy Robinson for whom maintaining riding weight was a problem.

I knew that exercise riders were becoming more popular in the big English racing centres like Newmarket and Lambourn but in the United States, where the training barns were grouped together in clusters at the racetracks, the exercise riders had completely cornered the market. Here a groom could spend his whole life with racehorses and never once sit on one’s back.

Maria showed me which of the bridles I needed.

Each horse had his own bridle with the specific style of bit that the trainer had chosen as the most suitable. Most were simple snaffle bits, but a few were special with extended side pieces for controlling excess sideways motion of the head, or with added rings and straps that prevented the animal rearing.

I selected the correct bridle for Paddleboat and turned to leave.

‘Why you desert me last night?’ Maria asked in an aggrieved tone.

‘You seemed to be enjoying yourself with the others,’ I replied.

She laughed and batted her long eyelashes at me. ‘I only trying to make you jealous.’

Surprisingly, I now realised that she had.

More by luck than judgement, and on the dot of five-thirty, Paddleboat was ready for Victor Gomez, a 44-year-old semi-retired Venezuelan jockey who was employed as Raworth’s exercise rider. He had pitched up ten minutes earlier with his saddle over his arm. By then, I had given the horse his breakfast, brushed him down, removed his overnight bandages and picked out any muck from his feet.

Maria helped me with the saddle, fetching me the right pad to put underneath, and assisting with girth adjustments so that everything fitted perfectly.

‘No tendon boots,’ she suddenly shouted when I thought that all was finished.

‘Tendon boots?’ I’d never heard of them.

Maria rushed off and returned with two black padded tubes about nine inches long that she strapped to the horse’s forelegs.

‘Gives tendon support,’ she said. ‘Horses always wear them for exercise and racing. How come you are groom and not know of tendon boots?’

‘We never used them at Santa Anita,’ I said.

I’m not sure she believed me but I didn’t wait to find out. Instead, I led Paddleboat out of his stall and round towards the office.

Charlie Hern was there, giving Victor instructions on what work he wanted the horse to do. He broke off to inspect my handiwork. Satisfied, he gave Victor a leg-up into the saddle.

‘OK, Paddy,’ he said. ‘I’ll take him along to the training track. You carry on with getting the next one ready.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

I did as I was told and that was how the morning progressed, with only a short break for a hurried breakfast in the track kitchen at seven.

Each of the horses went out to the track for a workout lasting about twenty to twenty-five minutes. Not that they ran fast for all that time. I leaned on the rail and watched the last of mine at exercise. Victor Gomez took him through a combination of walking and trotting, interspersed with a few fast gallops over no more than half a mile at a time.

Meanwhile, George Raworth and Charlie Hern stood on a raised platform at the edge of the training track, Charlie with a stopwatch in his hand, recording everything in a notebook. Occasionally Victor would go over to George for further instructions before setting off again.

When its exercise was finished, each horse was handed over to Maria who would first give it a wash to remove the sweat from its coat, and then, as her hot-walker job title suggested, she would walk the hot horse round and round the shedrow until it had cooled, giving it a drink of water every lap or two.

There was another exercise rider also working that day for Raworth and, between him and Victor, they rode all the horses scheduled for track exercise in about two and a half hours.

All except Fire Point.

He was a special case and his Derby-winning race jockey, Jerry Fernando, had made the journey up from Baltimore especially to ride him after the other horses had finished. All the Raworth stable staff, including me, stood and watched as the star of the barn was led out to the track by Keith.

We were rightly proud to have a Triple Crown contender in our midst.

I, however, couldn’t help wondering if he’d been given a dishonest helping hand to become so.

Not that the daily grind of a groom was over just because the horses had finished their exercise. There were still stalls to be cleaned, bedding to be laid, coats to be brushed, standing-bandages to be replaced, water to be fetched and carried, plus countless other things that needed to be done for the horses before it was time for any rest.

And then there was the visit from one of the track veterinary surgeons to collect blood and give injections.

I held Paddleboat’s head as five different needles were stuck into him. First, about 20ml of blood was drawn from the jugular vein in his neck. Next, a quick-acting sedative went into the same vein to keep the horse calm so that the hyaluronic acid could be injected directly into his hock joints. Finally, an intramuscular shot of Adequan went into his bottom.

‘What’s the blood for?’ I asked.

‘Regular weekly testing,’ he said. ‘We do a quick cell count at our lab here at the track. High white would indicate an infection, while low red is a sign of anaemia.’

I wanted to ask if he also did a test for EVA antibodies but decided against it.

Blood was taken from all the horses in the barn, and most had medications of some sort thrust into them one way or another. Two were running that afternoon and, as was usual, they would both receive their 500mg dose of Lasix four hours before race time.

Next a delivery truck arrived, piled high with bales of straw, all of which needed to be transferred by hand from the vehicle to the bedding store, which was inconveniently situated right on top of the office, in the space below the roof rafters.

And all the moving had to be done by the grooms, while the truck driver stood around watching.

I was sent up to the store, climbing the wooden ladder that was attached to the wall. I then had to bend down to grab each bale in turn after it had been carried from the truck and lifted up towards me by the others. I stacked it in place before repeating the process. Over and over, it seemed to be never-ending.

I had always tried to maintain a pretty good standard of fitness, ever since my days at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, but by the time the last of the straw had been raised my muscles were seriously complaining, especially in my back. I obviously wasn’t quite as fit as I’d thought.

I was looking forward to a soothing lie-down on my bunk when Charlie Hern put paid to that idea.

‘Paddy,’ he shouted into the barn. ‘Here. Now.’

‘Coming, sir,’ I shouted back, running round the shedrow to the office.

‘Good,’ Charlie said, seeing me. ‘Rafael claims he’s sick with flu, so you will look after Anchorage Bay today. Stall Eighteen. He runs in race four. Have him at the receiving barn on time and over at the paddock ready for saddling by two o’clock.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

Flu, indeed.

I’ll murder that bloody Rafael.

18

Anchorage Bay ran second in race four, pushing the winner all the way to the line but failing to get up by a neck.

I was just glad he’d made it to the starting gate on time, and that I hadn’t somehow messed up.

George Raworth seemed to be fairly pleased with the outcome.

‘I reckon he’ll win next time out,’ I heard him tell the owner after the race. I was holding the horse’s head as he was unsaddled on the track in front of the grandstand. ‘And he wasn’t claimed so we still have him.’

The owner smiled wanly at his trainer but he was enviously eyeing those having their photographs taken in the winner’s circle. He had wanted to win this time.

‘Well done, Paddy,’ George said to me. ‘He looked nice.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, although the horse’s smart appearance had mostly been down to Maria.

She had come to my rescue again, showing me where the racing bridles were kept, how to prepare the horse to look his best, and when and where I had to take him. In fact, she had stayed by my side all afternoon, walking Anchorage Bay with me through the horse tunnel that ran from the barn area under the main-entrance roadway to the paddock. She also helped take him back to Raworth’s barn afterwards.

Even though there was no touching of hands, or lips, it was clear to both Maria and me that some sexual chemistry did exist between us. We laughed and joked as we washed Anchorage Bay, and she sprayed me playfully with the hose.

Don’t get involved — I kept telling myself. It was far too dangerous.

‘Stop it,’ I said seriously, cutting short her antics. ‘Let’s get the horse back in his stall.’

By which point it was four o’clock and time for evening stables.

I finally finished work at six having been on the go continuously for over thirteen hours. I was exhausted.

‘Do we get double-rate for overtime?’ I asked Charlie Hern as I collected the feed for my horses.

He laughed. ‘Be thankful you have a job in the first place.’

I took that to mean that no, we didn’t.

‘We’re classified as agricultural workers,’ said one of the other grooms who had overheard the exchange. ‘Overtime doesn’t apply until you’ve done more than sixty hours in a single week, and then they don’t count meal breaks or time spent waiting over at the track.’

The European Union Working Time Directive clearly didn’t apply here.

I acquired a new-found sense of admiration for the humble stable lad.

‘They all travelled to Louisville separately,’ Tony said when I called him after supper. ‘Two flew in from California, but on different days and from different cities, while the third, Liberty Song, arrived by horse trailer from Keeneland racetrack in Lexington.’

So they hadn’t become infected with EVA on the journey.

‘When did they arrive?’ I asked.

‘The two from California came the previous week, one from LA on Thursday and the other from San Francisco on Friday. The one from Lexington also arrived Friday, eight days before the Derby.’

‘So they had to have been infected while at Churchill Downs,’ I said. ‘It would be too much of a coincidence if all three had been infected elsewhere, especially as there have been no other cases.’

‘There has now,’ Tony said. ‘Another horse at Churchill fell sick today. They’re doing tests to confirm it is EVA, although it has all the signs.’

It was Thursday. Five days since the others had first shown signs of illness.

‘It must be due to secondary infection from one of the original three.’

‘Most likely,’ Tony said. ‘The new horse that’s fallen sick had been in the next-door stall to Liberty Song up until last Saturday.’

‘Was that in the Stakes Barn?’ I asked.

‘No. Liberty Song was in his trainer’s own barn. One of the two from California was in the Stakes Barn but the other was in a separate barn right at the far end of the site that, ironically, the trainer had rented specifically to prevent his horse catching anything from others in the Stakes Barn.’

‘Is there any common denominator at all between the three?’

‘Not that I have found. As far as we can tell, they weren’t ever in the same place together. They had different training schedules so they didn’t even use the track at the same time.’

‘There has to be something,’ I said. ‘Assuming the incubation period was the same as for the latest case, they must have all been infected on the Sunday or Monday before the Derby.’

‘But how?’ Tony asked.

‘If there was no accidental coming together of the three,’ I said, ‘then there has to be another virus carrier that did come into contact with each of them on that Sunday or Monday.’

‘But other horses would surely also become sick.’

‘Not if it was deliberately targeted at those three,’ I said.

‘How?’ he asked again. ‘You can’t lead an EVA-infected horse over to three separate stalls in completely different parts of the backside and get it to snort some virus into the noses of only those three specific horses. You would have been seen and stopped for a start. And the virus doesn’t live long outside the body so, even if you could transfer the infection with nasal droplets, those would have had to come from an infected host, so where’s that horse?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said forlornly.

It was frustrating.

The only thing we knew for sure was that the three horses had somehow been infected — there was no doubt about that.

‘Anything else to report?’ Tony asked.

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Other than to say that the life of a groom is bloody hard work. I ache all over.’

He laughed.

‘It is not a laughing matter,’ I said.

‘Then let’s get a FACSA raid sorted so that you can get out of there. Have you found anything suspicious for us to search for?’

‘Not yet. I’ve been so damned busy doing the job.’

He laughed again.

‘Give me a while longer,’ I said. ‘I’ve already seen some evidence of the drug regime Raworth uses but I’m not sure if it breaks the rules. I’ll have a proper scout round and see if I can spot anything else. It would be much better if I could actually find something dodgy going on rather than you just making it up. If Raworth is tipped off about an upcoming raid, there would only be a major reaction if he was really doing something wrong.’

‘OK,’ Tony said. ‘I’ll do nothing yet. Will you call tomorrow?’

‘I’ll try. If not tomorrow, then Saturday.’

‘Harriet and I are out to dinner with friends that night, but you can call earlier if you want. I won’t be at work Saturday.’

I would, I thought.

This Saturday was an important day at Belmont Park. It marked the annual running of the Man o’War Stakes, one of the major races of the year for horses aged four or over. It was named after the great champion racehorse and sire of the 1920s, and George Raworth had two runners.

‘Enjoy your dinner,’ I said to Tony and we disconnected.

I had walked well away from the track kitchen to make the call and now I started to return.

I didn’t make it.

There were four of them and Diego was their leader.

The Puerto Rican mob.

‘No toque Maria, gringo!’ Diego shouted at me. ‘Dejarla sola!’

They didn’t wait for me to reply.

Instead, they rushed at me before I had a chance to react, two of them grabbing me by the arms and a third placing his arm round my neck from behind. I was trying to crouch down and make the target as small as possible but the man with the headlock hauled me up straight. The two holding my arms then spread my legs wide with their feet.

Diego ran up and kicked me hard in the groin, scoring a direct hit on the family jewels.

The pain was excruciating, running up into my abdomen and right down to my toes.

The three men behind let go and I collapsed to the dusty ground, tucking myself up to try to ease the fire that was now raging between my legs.

‘La próxima vez, te mataremos,’ Diego shouted, and he drew a finger across his throat in case I hadn’t understood his Spanish.

As a parting gesture he gave me a kick to the side of the head, then he and his friends laughed, turned away and walked off, leaving me curled up in the dirt.

I lay on the ground for quite a while, unable to do anything other than draw up my knees and wait for the tide of pain to ebb away.

Why people think it is funny when a cricketer or baseball player gets hit in the nuts baffles me. There’s nothing funny about it at all, especially when it has been inflicted on purpose, as in this case.

I heard someone approaching and was worried that Diego and his chums were coming back for another go.

‘Estas bien?’ said a voice from above me.

Still holding my knees, I rolled onto my back and looked up. It was Rafael and he stared down at me with deep concern in his eyes, shocked to discover that it was his roommate lying at his feet.

‘You OK, Paddy?’

I tried to smile at him. ‘Yes, OK,’ I croaked.

He held out a hand to help me up but, in spite of it still being quite early, Rafael was already the worse for wear with drink and I almost pulled him over on top of me.

Being on my feet didn’t seem to help the pain much, and I was hardly standing upright. Instead I was crouched down on my haunches.

Gradually the intense pain subsided, replaced only by a dull ache and a feeling of nausea that made my skin feel cold and sweaty.

Rafael was still concerned by my appearance.

‘You sick,’ he said, slightly slurring the words. ‘I fetch doctor. You go hospital.’

‘No,’ I replied quickly. ‘No doctor. No hospital.’ I forced myself to stand up straight, and then I smiled at him. ‘I’ll be OK now.’

Rafael didn’t look convinced by my bravado and I wasn’t entirely sure I was either. I did worry that Diego had done some real damage to my nethers, but doctors and hospital would have required such awkwardnesses as my real name and payment, neither of which I was prepared to give at the moment.

If things didn’t improve with time, then I’d seek medical help, but not yet.

Rafael and I made our slow way back to the bunkhouse, me walking delicately with my knees spread wide apart like a cowboy who’d spent too long in the saddle, and him holding on to me for support.

I went along to the shared bathroom and delicately examined my privates. Everything was very tender but at least it all appeared to be in the right place and there was no blood in my pee, which was encouraging.

‘Who do this to you?’ Rafael asked when I went back to our room.

‘I didn’t see,’ I lied.

‘You call policía.’

I shook my head. ‘No police. It would only make things complicated.’

He looked at me with a quizzical expression.

‘More bad,’ I said, and he nodded, steadying himself on the bedpost.

Rafael then lay down on his bed and went straight to sleep while I carefully climbed up onto the bunk above him.

Calling the police was not an option. For a start, it would blow my cover, but mostly it would be a waste of time. It would simply be my word against those of the Puerto Rican four who would all swear it wasn’t them and each one would give the other three an alibi.

Diego and his chums had actually been rather clever, either inadvertently or on purpose. They had used the right degree of violence to seriously hurt me, but not enough to cause any lasting harm. I didn’t think the police would be interested, and I was quite sure they wouldn’t have arrested anyone. Indeed, I was convinced that going to the police would have placed me in greater danger of receiving a repeat performance, and I had absolutely no desire for that.

No police.

I would fight my own battles, and I would choose when and where.

19

I had a restless night.

When my phone alarm went off at four, I’d already been awake for ages, and I was sore.

Even the slightest of movements sent shock waves down into my groin.

Gritting my teeth, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and lowered myself gently to the floor.

I dug into my plastic wash bag for a couple of painkillers and hoped they would work quickly. Next I walked gingerly along the corridor to the bathroom, feeling sick.

Using the cracked and tarnished mirror above the sink, I examined myself again as best I could. There was a slight darkening of the skin due to bruising but no major swelling and my pee was still clear of any blood.

I decided that I’d live.

In an ideal world I would have lain still on my bed for a day or two to allow the bruising to come out and for recovery to start. But I wasn’t currently living in an ideal world. I had to get to work, not least because I wasn’t prepared to give Diego the satisfaction of seeing that I was off sick.

As it was, I managed to get myself dressed and over to the barn by half past four. Not for the first time, I was glad that Raworth’s grooms didn’t have to ride the horses. That would have been a step too far for the throbbing orbs between my legs.

I readied my four horses for exercise and spent the entire morning moving slowly round with my knees slightly spread apart. Two more painkillers helped and, gradually, things started to return to normal.

I came upon Diego as we were both collecting feed from the store. He said nothing. Instead he repeated his finger-across-the-throat gesture. I just smiled at him but that made him angry and he tipped the feed bowl I was carrying out of my hands and into the dirt.

I sighed.

I could do without this difficulty. It wasn’t that I’d even made a hit on Maria; it was all the other way around.

I did my best to avoid her but she spent most of the morning walking hot horses round and round the shedrow, passing by the stalls where I was working every couple of minutes.

Finally, after I had ignored her for almost two hours, she came in.

‘What wrong with you today?’ she demanded, standing full square in the middle of Paddleboat’s stall.

‘Nothing,’ I said, not turning round and continuing to lay the straw bed for the horse.

‘I watching you,’ she said. ‘You move like Chuck.’

Chuck was the yard boy, eighty years old if he was a day, permanently shaking, and only kept moderately upright by his broom. The way I felt right now, I wouldn’t want to pick a fight with him — he’d have won easily.

‘I caught myself on the bedpost,’ I said, still not turning to face her. ‘I’ll be fine in a couple of days.’

‘You want me apply ice?’ she asked with a laugh.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I do not.’

But I couldn’t help smiling.

I spent the afternoon lying on my bed, alone, for more thinking.

I needed to move things on and, in order to do that, I needed to have a look in Raworth’s drug store, and also in the barn office.

But that was easier said than done.

Even though most of the grooms were off duty from about midday until four in the afternoon, the barn was never totally free of humans.

When he wasn’t actively engaged in looking after Fire Point, Keith spent most of the afternoons in the office, often watching the live racing on a television connected to the racetrack system. Every hour or so he would do a circuit of the barn, looking briefly into each stall to ensure that the equine resident wasn’t stuck down or suffering from colic.

And then there were always the day’s runners going back and forth from the track, led by one of the grooms or a hot-walker.

The barn was never deserted.

Even at night, Keith slept in a bedroom adjoining the office, with a connecting door between the two. And, for added security, the door contained a small glass viewing panel.

I considered my options.

If I’d had my top-of-the-range night-vision goggles readily available, I might have gone in at midnight, but how would I have explained them away to whoever had been through my bag on my first day?

The only possibility was to do it during the day, maybe when Keith was having a meal at the track kitchen.

And what exactly was I going to look for anyway?

I’d already witnessed clenbuterol in use on Paddleboat, but it wasn’t against the rules provided the horse didn’t race until the drug had cleared its system. That alone would not be sufficient for FACSA to mount a raid. I would have to find something else.

The drugs for the horses were kept in a large, walk-in cupboard at one end of the feed store, and it was always kept locked except when Charlie Hern was there issuing items from it. The feed store was also locked most of the time. The keys were on a ring in Charlie’s pocket.

Suddenly even the idea of getting in seemed hopeless, never mind actually finding something there that I shouldn’t.

The office was slightly better.

As a general rule the office door was left open during the day when Keith or Charlie Hern were in the barn but I’d seen Keith pull it locked when he went to lunch.

All three of the locks, on the doors to the office, feed store and the drug cupboard, were of the pin-tumbler cylinder variety, like those found on many front doors, where the door would lock automatically when pulled shut.

I’d been taught how to pick such a lock by one of my corporals in the army. He had learned it from his father, who had been nicknamed Harry Houdini by the East London criminal underworld on account of him escaping twice from prison by picking all the locks. The son had then perfected the technique and could reportedly open anything, including safes. During the many hours of boredom of an Afghan tour of duty, he had wiled away the time by teaching the art to the rest of his platoon, me included.

All you needed were two simple pieces of kit — a torsion wrench, which was a small L-shaped metal bar inserted in the keyhole to apply tension to the cylinder, and a thin piece of metal called a rake that was moved back and forth inside the key slot to lift the pins. As always, I had both in my wash kit.

It was not the process of getting in that concerned me; it was doing it, and getting out again, without being seen.

I went over to the barn half an hour early for evening stables with the two lock picks in my left sock. But the office door was already open and Keith was in there, tipping an office chair back on two legs, with his feet up on the desk. He was watching the racing on the TV.

I went in.

‘Hello, Paddy,’ Keith said, taking his eyes from the screen for a mere split-second. ‘We have a runner in this. Teetotal Tiger. Gate Two.’

I watched as the starting gates flew open and the horses emerged in a line, Teetotal Tiger easy to spot as his jockey was wearing a white cap.

Belmont Park boasted the longest Thoroughbred track in North American racing with a one-and-a-half-mile dirt oval, but this race was only half that distance, at six furlongs. Hence the start was midway down the back stretch.

As on all US racetracks, the horses ran anticlockwise round the home turn. Keith took his feet off the desk and leaned forward, concentrating on the screen.

The white cap was clearly visible in third or fourth place out of the eight runners, keeping close to the rail for the shortest trip. As they straightened up for the run to the line, the leading pair drifted slightly to their right, allowing Teetotal Tiger room to sneak through on the inside and win by half a length.

Keith was now on his feet cheering. I was cheering too and suddenly Keith turned and hugged me in his excitement.

‘I knew old Tiger would win sometime,’ he said, punching the air in delight. ‘I’ve been telling Mr Raworth so for ages. He’s such a sweet old thing. I hope he hasn’t been claimed.’

It made me smile to think that a six-year-old was called a sweet old thing. American racing was almost exclusively for horses aged two, three, four and five, and there were very few horses still in training over seven. In England a seven-year-old was a youngster, especially in steeplechasing. No horse under eight has won the Grand National steeplechase since the Second World War, and Red Rum is one of thirteen horses that have won the race aged twelve or older — one was fifteen.

‘How long has Teetotal Tiger been here?’ I asked.

‘On and off since he was two. He’s been claimed a few times and has spent short spells in other barns but his owner, Mrs Crichton, always claims him back the next time he runs. She loves him.’

‘Then why does she allow him to run in claiming races in the first place?’ I asked.

‘That’s the way the system works, especially for a six-year-old maiden. Not many of them left at the track, I can tell you. Most would have gone for dog meat long ago — old Tiger as well, if it wasn’t for Mrs Crichton.’

Keith stepped outside looking for the returning horse, leaving me alone in the office.

Apart from the desk, there were two chairs plus a four-drawer filing cabinet up against the far wall near the corner. Alongside the cabinet, hung on a row of hooks, were a series of multi-coloured racing silks, complete with caps. I presumed that there was at least one set for each of Raworth’s owners.

I glanced down at the desk. It was about six feet wide by three deep, kneehole style, with three drawers on either side of the central space. The surface was covered with several stacks of papers, a china mug full of pens and a heavy horseshoe-shaped clock in one corner.

I was tempted to go behind and have a quick look through the drawers but Keith would surely be back soon. Indeed, no sooner had I dismissed the notion than he returned.

‘There’s no sign of them coming back,’ Keith said. ‘I’m worried he’s been claimed.’

‘Maybe he’s been sent for testing,’ I said. ‘Who’s over there with him?’

‘Diego.’

I’d have been happier if the groom had been claimed instead of the horse.

No such luck.

Shortly thereafter, both Teetotal Tiger and Diego returned to the barn and George Raworth and Charlie Hern arrived with them. Keith and I went out to greet them and there was a party atmosphere in the shedrow with everyone in good humour.

Even Diego grinned briefly at me as I congratulated him, but then he remembered and the smile instantly vanished as he took the horse off to be washed down.

‘I told you he’d win eventually,’ Keith said to George.

‘And about time too. If it hadn’t been for Mrs Crichton, he’d have gone to the glue factory years ago.’ We all laughed, even though it was hardly funny. ‘Now, how are preparations progressing for Pimlico? We have five going down altogether. Fire Point, Classic Comic and Heartbeat in the Preakness, Ladybird in the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes on Friday, plus Debenture in the Maryland Sprint Handicap. Although God knows why we’re taking him. He’s good enough for claimers but he’ll surely have no chance in that company. But his owner has insisted, and he’s paying for the transport, so he goes. The truck for the horses is booked for Monday morning, nine o’clock.’

‘Are we using the Stakes Barns?’ Charlie asked.

‘Yes,’ George said. ‘I’ve reserved stalls for all five. Pimlico would like to have Fire Point in Stall Forty.’

‘We’ll need a minimum of three grooms for the Preakness itself, one for each runner,’ Charlie Hern said. ‘Keith with Fire Point, plus two others. They will be more than enough to cover everything else while we’re down there.’

‘Hot-walker?’ George said.

‘The grooms can do most of that but we’ll take Maria as well,’ Charlie said. ‘She’s experienced enough by now to act as an extra groom if one of the horses plays up. We’ll also have Victor. He’ll be getting there Tuesday morning to ride exercise. And Jerry will be riding Fire Point. We have plenty of manpower.’

‘Right,’ said George, turning to Keith. ‘That’s sorted then. We have a runner here at Belmont on Wednesday and another on Friday, so Charlie will stay here until Preakness Day itself, overseeing things. He’ll come down to Pimlico early Saturday morning. Keith, tell Rafael to sleep in your room Friday and Saturday nights. He’ll be in charge when Charlie’s gone. No track exercise Saturday. Back to normal Sunday. Got that?’

‘Yes, Mr Raworth,’ Keith said. ‘Any particular grooms you want to take?’

‘We’d better take Diego,’ Charlie said. ‘He does both Classic Comic and Heartbeat. Keith can also keep an eye on him.’

I was still standing in the shedrow nearby, and now I moved forward.

‘Paddy,’ said George Raworth, looking straight at me. ‘You look after Debenture, don’t you?’ I nodded. ‘Want a trip to the Preakness?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied enthusiastically. ‘I sure do.’

‘But Paddy has been with us only a few days,’ Charlie said with doubt in his voice. ‘The others won’t like it.’

Bugger the others, I thought. I wanted this gig.

‘I promise I won’t let you down, sir,’ I said quickly before George had a chance to reply. ‘Please, sir.’

He hesitated.

‘Paddy’s been very good,’ Keith said in a surprising vote of confidence. ‘He cheered on Teetotal Tiger with me just now.’

‘OK,’ George said. ‘Paddy, you’re in. We leave Monday morning.’

‘Great,’ I said out loud, almost forgetting to use my Cork accent.

Charlie wasn’t very happy. Perhaps he thought his authority had been undermined. But I didn’t care — I was going to the Preakness. I felt like a child on Christmas morning who finds his stocking full of gifts.

Indeed, the level of my excitement rather surprised me.

I had been to most of the world’s major horseraces but, I realised, this was the first time the decision that I should go had been out of my hands, and not as a result of my position within the BHA.

In spite of the ache that still persisted in my groin, I went to work at evening stables with a spring in my step only slightly dampened by the knowledge that Diego would be another of the grooms going to Pimlico.

‘Why did Charlie say you needed to keep an eye on Diego?’ I asked Keith when I got him alone.

‘No idea,’ he replied. Something in his tone told me he was lying.

‘Will I have to share a room with him at Pimlico?’ I asked.

‘All three of us will have to share,’ Keith said. ‘We’ll have only two rooms down there and Maria will be in the other one.’

I could always share with her, I thought.

‘Rafael says no bedpost. He says he find you lying on ground, beat up. Who do this to you?’

Maria was standing in front of me as I ate my supper.

‘I didn’t see,’ I said, lying to her just as I had to Rafael.

‘Was it Diego?’ she demanded loudly.

‘I didn’t see who it was,’ I said again, looking down at my food.

What would be the point in telling her the truth? She would only have a fight with her cousin and that would hardly make my life any easier. In fact, it would surely make it worse.

‘Why you lie to me about bedpost?’

‘I didn’t want you to worry,’ I said. ‘I am fine now, so forget it.’ I waved a dismissive hand at her without looking up, hoping that Diego had spotted it from where he was sitting with his three chums at the far end of the dining hall. I was uncomfortably aware that he had been watching the whole exchange.

Maria hesitated but then slowly turned and walked away. She had only been trying to help but I’d cold-shouldered her assistance. She was understandably angry at my sudden indifference towards her. I didn’t much like myself for doing it, but there was no way I was going to rectify the situation, not with Cousin Diego and his three amigos looking on.

20

I let myself into the drug store using my lock picks. I’d already searched the office without turning up anything out of the ordinary.

Saturday evening stables had been brought forward from four o’clock to three, and everyone had worked extra fast so that we had finished everything by five, ready for the big race of the day, the half-million-dollar Man o’War Stakes. All Raworth’s staff not actively involved had rushed off to the recreation hall to view the race on the large-screen TV.

All of them except me. I had volunteered to keep an eye on the barn, plus its residents, while Keith went with Diego and Maria over to the track with our two runners.

I checked my watch — 5.07 p.m.

George Raworth and Charlie Hern would, right now, be readying the two horses in the saddling boxes next to the Belmont paddock.

The race was due off at 5.28.

I had asked Keith to leave the office unlocked so I could watch the race on the television, and he had readily agreed. Being allowed to be in the office meant that searching it was so much easier and far less stressful.

‘I reckon we have a good chance with both of ours,’ Keith had said before he left, hardly managing to control his excitement. ‘There’ll be a bonus for us all if we can win this.’

My bonus would have been to turn up something that would justify a FACSA raid but there was nothing incriminating in either the desk or the filing cabinet, only regular papers concerning such mundane matters as deliveries of feed or bedding, plus the personnel files for the stable staff, which included references and testimonials from previous employers.

I skimmed through them looking for anything from Adam Mitchell that might indicate a prior employment, but there was nothing.

I glanced at Maria’s file. She had been born Maria Isabella Quintero in San Juan City Hospital, Puerto Rico, some twenty-seven years ago, and this was her first job since coming to the United States the previous January. There was nothing particularly remarkable in that. However, the file for her cousin, Diego Ríos, was much more revealing.

Diego was two years older than Maria, and also hailed from San Juan. He had been a groom at Raworth’s barn for a little over a year but he had been in trouble on two occasions in the past four months, since Maria’s arrival. Both were for violence against other grooms, and the second had resulted in his arrest.

According to a letter in the file from Judge Davidson of the local district court, Diego Ríos was subject to something called an ‘adjournment in contemplation of dismissal’, an ACD.

It was a bit like a suspended sentence except that Diego had not yet been convicted of anything.

But he had been charged with one count of assault and the ACD simply meant that his trial had been deferred for six months. The letter went on to say that, provided Diego did not commit another offence of any kind in those six months, the case against him would be dismissed. However, if he did offend again in that time, Diego would go on trial for the assault and, if found guilty, would be jailed for up to one year at Rikers Island, the notorious New York prison.

The letter was dated April 4th. Just one month ago. And it had been sent to George Raworth as the ACD had needed the consent of Diego’s employer to give him ‘the benefit of the doubt’ and to continue with his employment.

So that was why they had to keep an eye on him.

They clearly didn’t give him that much benefit of the doubt, and for good reason. My sore groin was witness to the fact that he had not learned his lesson.

I glanced once more at my watch — 5.10. Eighteen minutes to the race.

The drug store was well ordered with packets of powders and bottles of pills in neat rows on the two upper shelves. Below that there was an open box of sterile needles along with small red-, green- and purple-capped glass Vacutainer test tubes used for taking blood. There was also a supply of multi-sized hypodermic syringes in sealed plastic packs.

Several brown clenbuterol syrup bottles were lined up next to them, and also some packs of stanozolol, the anabolic steroid that the FACSA vets had tested for at Hayden Ryder’s barn at Churchill Downs.

Was Raworth using them too close to a race, just as Ryder had been suspected of doing? Was that a good enough reason to raid the barn?

I had seen no sign of their illicit use, but I looked after only four of the twenty-eight horses. I was also confident that Fire Point hadn’t been on steroids as he’d been tested both before and after the Kentucky Derby and found to be completely clear of any banned substance.

Standing upright on the left-hand side of the second shelf was the stable drug register, a ledger in which all drugs given to all the horses in the barn had to be recorded. At least that is what the New York Racing Association demanded.

I flicked through the pages and looked at the entries for the past few days. The record showed the pre-race injections of Lasix given to Anchorage Bay on Thursday and Teetotal Tiger on Friday, plus the ones given today to the two runners in the Man o’War Stakes. It also recorded the sedatives, hyaluronic acid and Adequan injected into Paddleboat by the vet on Thursday morning. There was also a record of the clenbuterol being administered daily in Paddleboat’s feed.

I checked my watch again: 5.16. Twelve minutes to post-time.

Beneath the shelves of drugs were stacked several cardboard boxes and I briefly took a mental snapshot of their positions before looking in them. One had rolls of unused leg bandages, a second had spare saddle pads and a third was full with plastic containers of disinfectant.

Underneath the boxes, in the corner of the store, there sat what appeared at first to be a rather stumpy beer keg — a heavy metal cylinder about eighteen inches tall and a little over a foot in diameter, with two carrying handles welded to the top. I lifted out the cardboard boxes so I could see it more clearly.

The white cylinder had ‘CryoBank’ painted in blue letters on its side, and it certainly didn’t contain beer — far from it.

The lid was much smaller in width than the cylinder, similar in size and shape to the caps on those large bottles of water used in office drinking fountains, except that it was metal not plastic. There was a slight ‘pop’ sound as I removed it, as if a little pressure had been released. I tried to look in but couldn’t see anything due to a white fog that swirled about inside the container.

I’d seen something like this before, at the equine research hospital in Newmarket. This was a cryogenic flask used to store living cells at very low temperatures, immersed in liquid nitrogen. But what was it doing here?

I remembered asking the laboratory staff at the hospital how often the liquid nitrogen had to be replaced due to it evaporating into the air. Every two or three weeks, they had said, depending on how often the flask was opened and how much material was being stored.

So this flask, which clearly still had liquid nitrogen in it, must have been refilled fairly recently.

I glanced again at my watch: 5.20.

I had to get back to the office in time to watch the race. I needed to know what happened.

The flask had a metal rod clipped to the rim that went down into the tank beneath. I went to touch it but it had frost on the handle, so I folded one of the saddle pads from the box and used it as an insulating glove to lift the rod. On the end was a metal cup containing three straws, similar to plastic drinking straws but rather smaller in both length and diameter. Each of the three contained some deep-frozen material.

I would have loved to remove one of the straws for testing but, with only three there, I was worried it would be missed. But, if I couldn’t take the chance of taking a whole straw, how about if I took just a bit of one? Or would it then stand out as being shorter than the other two?

I went back into the feed store. Hanging on a hook were a pair of scissors used to open the feed bags. I fetched them and cut about half an inch off the bottom of each of the straws, making sure that the bits contained some of the frozen material. I carefully placed them into one of the red-capped Vacutainer test tubes, which I then slipped into my pocket.

5.23.

Time to go.

I returned the three straws to the metal cup, lowered it back into the liquid nitrogen and re-clipped it to the rim as before. Then I secured the lid, returned the saddle pad and restacked the cardboard boxes. I spent a moment checking they were back exactly as I had found them.

5.25.

Satisfied, I relocked the drug store, silently let myself out into the shedrow and went quickly back to the office.

The ten runners were at the start, still having their girths checked. The Man o’War Stakes was run on the turf course that sits inside the main dirt track. The race was over a mile and three furlongs so the starting gate was in front of the grandstand.

With one eye on the TV screen, and with the outer office door shut and locked, I used the picks to let myself into Keith’s bedroom. Maybe I was just naturally inquisitive, but it seemed a shame not to have a quick look in there while I had the opportunity. I might not get the chance again.

Not that there was much to see.

Keith appeared to have very few clothes, hardly enough to fill even half the available locker space. Indeed, he had more well-thumbed copies of hardcore girlie magazines than anything else, mostly spread across the floor under his bed.

Each to their own.

I went back into the office, locking the door to Keith’s bedroom behind me.

‘They’re in the gate,’ called the track announcer through the TV. ‘And they’re off and running in the Man o’War Stakes.’

Neither of the Raworth horses won the race. One finished a creditable third but the other was always well off the pace, trailing in last of the ten, some twenty lengths behind the winner.

The mood in the camp when everyone returned to the barn couldn’t have been more in contrast to that of the previous day after Teetotal Tiger’s triumph.

George Raworth was spitting feathers in anger, in particular over the horse that had brought up the rear of the field.

‘That damned jockey,’ he kept saying over and over to Charlie Hern. ‘He never gave the horse a chance.’

I’d watched the race pretty closely on the TV and, in my opinion, a combined reincarnation of both Fred Archer and Willie Shoemaker wouldn’t have managed to get the horse any closer. It was sometimes easier for a trainer to blame the pilot than to accept the fact that the horse was simply not good enough.

I slid away from the inquest.

Just as I had been happy to hang around during the good times of yesterday, I was eager to be away from the doom and gloom of today. I wanted to be perceived as a lucky omen, not a portent of failure.

Instead, I found a quiet spot away from listening ears to call Tony.

‘A cryogenic flask?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s hidden away under boxes in the drug store. There are three straws of material kept in it, frozen solid in liquid nitrogen.’

‘Liquid nitrogen?’ Tony said. ‘Is that toxic?’

‘No,’ I said, laughing. ‘Eighty per cent of the air we breathe is nitrogen.’

‘But that’s not a liquid.’

‘Liquid nitrogen is just like the nitrogen in the air,’ I said, ‘but it has been made so cold that it liquefies.’

‘But how do you get it?’

‘It’s created as a by-product when air is liquefied to produce oxygen, you know, for medical use and such. Anyone can buy liquid nitrogen from an industrial gas producer. It’s storing it that’s the problem. You need what is called a Dewar — a bit like a big thermos. That’s what a cryogenic flask is.’

‘But what’s the liquid nitrogen for?’ Tony asked.

‘To keep the material inside deep frozen.’

‘But what is this “material”?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, ‘but I have acquired some. It is in a test tube in my pocket. It’s no longer frozen but we could still get it analysed.’

‘How did you acquire it?’ Tony asked somewhat sarcastically, as if he could already guess.

‘You don’t want to know.’

He laughed down the line. ‘Do you want me to arrange a pickup?’

‘Yes, please,’ I said.

‘We have a FACSA office in New York. They deal mostly with boxing. I’ll get the station chief to collect it himself. His name is Jim Bradley. No one at the racing section will know anything about it.’

I still didn’t like it. It would mean someone else would then know that I was not who I said I was.

Tony seemed to sense my hesitation.

‘I’ve known Jim Bradley since we joined the NYPD together as cadets some forty years ago. I’d trust him to hell and back. If I tell him it is hush-hush, he’ll not tell anyone, I promise.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Where and when?’

‘It’s Saturday. I’ll try Jim at home. Call me back in half an hour.’

I used the time to have my supper at the track kitchen, exchanging a plastic token with Bert Squab for a plate of highly spiced chilli con carne with rice.

Fortunately, there was no sign of Diego or his chums as I sat down to eat. I could do without that distraction at the moment.

I called Tony on the stroke of the half-hour.

‘Jim says pass it through the chain-link fence on Plainfield Avenue, which runs up the east side of the barn area. Jim drives a black Ford Bronco SUV and he knows the area well. He’ll park up exactly opposite the high-school sports field at eight-thirty sharp. It will be dark by then.’

I looked at my cheap watch. It read 6.46 p.m. I had an hour and three-quarters to wait.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there.’

‘Do you need him to get anything for you?’

How about a cricket box?

I was next to the chain-link fence opposite the high school sports field at least fifteen minutes before the allotted time, mostly obscured from the barns by a line of trees and some bushes.

The streetlights out on Plainfield Avenue, and the other lights on poles around the barns, did nothing more than throw deep shadows beneath the trees within which it was easy for me to remain hidden.

I crouched, stock still, facing inwards towards the barns, searching for any telltale movement that might indicate the presence of other eyes, there to watch me.

There was nothing. Not even a rabbit or a squirrel.

I waited.

Jim Bradley arrived in the black Ford Bronco right on cue at eight-thirty exactly, and the handover of the Vacutainer test tube through the fence took only a few seconds.

I was already well on my way back to the bunkhouse before the Bronco had even turned the corner at the end of the street.

21

‘It’s semen.’

‘What?’

‘Semen. Probably equine semen but more tests are needed to confirm it.’

‘But that’s ridiculous,’ I said.

‘Quite so,’ Tony agreed. ‘But that’s what it is, nevertheless. I dug a biochemistry professor at Columbia University out of bed early on Sunday morning to test it. He swears to me that the stuff you gave to Jim Bradley was semen. Some of the sperm in it were still swimming.’

It didn’t make any sense.

‘Why would a training stable need frozen semen?’ I said. ‘Artificial insemination is not even permissible in Thoroughbreds. All mating has to be done by live cover — the stallion has to physically mount the mare.’

‘Maybe George Raworth is collecting semen from his colts and freezing it to breed from later, even if it’s not permitted by the rules.’

‘I very much doubt that,’ I said. ‘It’s not all that easy to get semen in the first place, not unless you have a mare on heat to get the colt excited. You would also need specialist collecting equipment, and I saw none of that during my search. And what would be the point? He couldn’t use the semen for breeding, anyway. Nowadays, every Thoroughbred foal has to be DNA-tested to confirm its parentage before it can be registered into the stud book.’

‘Then your guess is as good as mine,’ Tony said.

It was Sunday afternoon and I was behind the track kitchen, talking on the telephone. I had purposefully chosen a wide-open space so that no one could creep up to listen to my conversation without being seen. It also had the added advantage that I would be able to see any potential attacker from afar.

I spun through 360 degrees.

No eavesdroppers. And no Diego.

‘So what do we do now?’ Tony asked. ‘Don’t you think we have enough for a raid?’

‘I think we should wait a while longer,’ I said.

‘What for?’

‘Two reasons. First, I am interested in finding out what the semen is used for, and second, I am off to Pimlico tomorrow. I’ll be down there until after the Preakness. There would be no point in planning a raid here at Belmont if I’m not around to see any reaction if Raworth is forewarned.’

‘Is his whole operation moving down to Pimlico?’ Tony asked. ‘We could mount the raid there.’

‘He’s sending only five horses down in a truck — three run in the Preakness itself, and the other two in different races. The rest of them stay here.’

‘How did you manage to get yourself included?’ Tony asked.

‘I was lucky. In the right place at the right time. Four of the staff are going, including me, plus George Raworth himself.’

‘Well, it’s your call,’ Tony said. ‘Can the British do without you for another week?’

‘Paul Maldini was not expecting me back for at least two weeks.’

‘But it has already been two weeks since I met you at Dulles.’

So it had. Somehow, it didn’t seem that long.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I need a bit longer.’

‘Shall you tell Paul or shall I?’ Tony asked.

‘It might be better if it came from you,’ I said. ‘Tell him that I’m not coming back just yet.’

‘How long shall I say you’ll be?’ Tony asked.

‘You said to me in London that you needed me to work for you for as long as it takes. Paul Maldini was at that meeting. He didn’t object.’

I reckoned Paul hadn’t objected because he knew I was contemplating leaving the BHA. He was aware of my unhappiness that I no longer had the opportunity to work undercover. Perhaps he thought it was better to lend me to Tony for as long as it took, and then have me back, than to lose me altogether.

‘Tell Paul that it might take a little longer, that’s all,’ I said. ‘When is the Belmont Stakes?’

‘Not for another four weeks,’ Tony said. ‘You’re surely not thinking of working as a groom until then?’

‘For as long as it takes,’ I said.

On Monday morning, after normal stables and exercise, Keith, Diego, Maria and I loaded the special horse-transport that would take us the 200 miles southwest to Pimlico.

I was more used to British-style horseboxes than the huge eighteen-wheel articulated lorry with its massive cab that arrived for us at nine o’clock. It was similar to the one I had seen arrive at Churchill Downs to collect Hayden Ryder’s horses on the morning he’d been shot.

Quite apart from the five horses, there was a mass of other stuff to go — feed, tack, buckets, blankets, bedding, pitchforks and brooms — not to mention our own personal effects.

There had been a few murmurings from Raworth’s other grooms, but not because I had been chosen to go to Pimlico ahead of them, rather for the reason their individual workloads would increase here due to me being away.

Charlie Hern told them to shut up and get on with it, or leave. ‘There are plenty of others wanting your jobs,’ he warned them. In my opinion, it wasn’t the best example of how to conduct relations with one’s labour force, but I didn’t say so. I just got on with the loading.

Diego was a pain. Twice he purposely knocked things out of my hands as I was carrying them to the vehicle.

‘Estúpido gringo,’ he said each time. But he was the stupid one, I thought. I wouldn’t fancy a year on Rikers Island for any money.

George Raworth drove a white Jeep Cherokee four-by-four right up inside the barn at the far end from the office, next to the drug store.

Charlie Hern had been in there for a while busily filling boxes with pills, potions and other paraphernalia, and these were now put into the Jeep, along with the CryoBank flask.

George and Charlie carried the heavy white metal cylinder out of the drug store together, each holding one of the handles, and then they lifted it into the vehicle, placing it upright behind the front passenger seat. They did it when they thought all the grooms were otherwise engaged and wouldn’t notice. But I’d been keeping a special eye out to see if they would take it.

But I still had no idea why.

Finally, when everything else was packed, the five horses were loaded into the trailer.

I led Debenture out from Stall 2, patting him all the while on the neck to keep him calm. Horses generally don’t like any changes to their routine. It can make them nervous, and half a ton of skittish horseflesh can cause a lot of damage both to themselves and anyone close by. That’s partly why the five-year-old gelding went in first. He was the old man of the five, the other four being three-year-olds, and his presence on board should help settle the younger horses.

Next, Ladybird, the filly, was loaded, going into a stall at the rear of the trailer behind a solid partition. It was not ideal to take colts and a filly on the same transport, as the very presence of the filly could make the colts become excited. Hence the use of a solid partition and the placing of the filly at the rear so that, as the vehicle moved, the airflow prevented the colts from smelling her. I knew of one transport operator in England who sometimes resorted to smearing Vicks VapoRub into the colts’ nostrils to overpower the smell of fillies travelling in the same horsebox.

Fire Point was the last of the horses to be loaded.

He appeared to be in perfect condition, the muscles in his neck standing out sharply and those in his flanks rippling gently under his short summer chestnut coat. Keith coaxed him up the ramp and into his travelling stall in the trailer. All the horses had thick bandages wrapped around their legs and rubber boots on their hooves to reduce the chance of injury caused by a bump or kick, but Fire Point went in without anything more than a shake of his narrow head, as if he already knew he was the star of the show.

Keith and I rode in the back with the horses while Diego and Maria were up front in the cab with the driver. It was an arrangement with which I was very happy. I didn’t have to keep my eyes on Diego to prevent him niggling me, or worse, and I didn’t have to fight off Maria’s sexual advances. Not that I really wanted to, but the fallout from Diego wasn’t worth the reward.

Our route went right through New York City and I was able to glimpse some of the iconic sights of Manhattan, including the Empire State Building, before it all disappeared from view as we descended into the Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River, and on into New Jersey.

Keith lay down on some bales of straw and went to sleep, while I counted the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, as in the Simon and Garfunkel song.

Was I looking for America?

No, I didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. True, I was enjoying the challenge of working undercover again, but my life seemed to be drifting by.

During my time with the army in Afghanistan I’d felt there was a purpose, a goal, even if that goal now appeared somewhat blurred since the British forces had pulled out and everything had started to return to how it was before.

Then, when I joined the BHA, I believed I had enlisted in a righteous crusade to weed out corruption and wrongdoing. I was the standard bearer — prepared to do almost anything in the fight for justice. But, over the years, the shine on my shield had dulled as I became increasingly snowed under with procedures and paperwork.

Even my love life was in tatters.

At twenty-three, and as the youngest captain in the Intelligence Corps, I had felt like a sexual god, an Adonis, with a string of gorgeous young women hanging on my every word and deed. Between operational tours overseas, I had fully satisfied my desires, running up a reputation as a bit of a Casanova.

But, aged twenty-six, I had bucked the trend of my army colleagues by abandoning the exploits of the past, leaving the service and settling down with a steady girlfriend.

I hadn’t regretted either at the time, happy to have some stability in my life while leaving behind the fear and danger of an intelligence officer in war-torn Afghanistan. Among other things, my role had been to determine if the locals in Helmand Province were on our side or not, without getting myself killed in the process.

However, recently, I had begun to crave once more the ‘high’ generated when terror grips one’s stomach and adrenalin surges through the body.

On the lover front, things had also gone somewhat pear-shaped. More than a year ago now, the steady girlfriend had left me for another man who had a ‘safer’ job, the irony being that my own work had been getting less dangerous.

I’d had one serious romance since then, with Henrietta, but it hadn’t worked out.

So here I was, thirty-three years old, single and rudderless.

This American sojourn had been a distraction and I was delighted to be able to extend it. It meant I didn’t have to face the realities of my future for a while longer yet.

The truck continued on its steady way southwestward on the interstate highways while I checked the horses.

All of them seemed to be taking the journey in their stride. Fire Point in particular was unperturbed by the noise of the engine and the continuous swaying of the vehicle. But he’d been used to flying so this was a ‘walk in the park’.

After a couple of hours, we pulled over into a rest area east of Philadelphia to give the driver a meal break, and us a chance to stretch our legs.

‘Leave the horses on board,’ Keith said. ‘It’s more than my life’s worth to have Fire Point loose on the highway. They’ll be fine until we get to Pimlico.’

We went over to the rest-area café and Keith paid for the four of us to have a burger each with fries.

‘Mr Raworth said food only,’ he explained. ‘Buy your own soda if you want one. The driver has to have a half-hour break, so be back at the vehicle in good time. I’ll eat mine while keeping an eye on the horses.’

He went out and walked back towards the truck while the three of us sat down at one of the Formica-topped tables.

‘Want a drink?’ I said to Maria.

She glanced at Diego. ‘Water,’ she said.

I collected three cups of water from the cooler in the corner and put them on a table.

I could tell that Diego didn’t like me doing him any favours. He moved away, without his cup of water, and sat at a different table, on his own.

Maria sighed. ‘Diego very difficult today. He not stop telling me to be good girl all way from Belmont. I very tired of him.’

‘Join me down the back,’ I said.

What was I saying? Was I mad?

‘Good,’ Maria said, and gave me one of her flashing smiles. ‘I do that.’

In the end, it didn’t work out quite as we had planned.

When Diego saw Maria climbing in with the horses, he immediately went in there with her.

Fine, I thought, I’ll ride up front in the cab.

Keith also went into the trailer to be near to Fire Point.

I had spent much of the last two hours staring at Diego’s bag, stacked as it was in the trailer along with Maria’s, Keith’s and mine. I had even been through it while Keith had been asleep, without finding anything incriminating. At one point I had seriously thought of throwing it out of a window to pay him back for kicking me but I had managed to resist the temptation, not least because it may have caused an accident.

Diego might not be so considerate with mine, so I picked up my canvas holdall from the trailer and took it with me to the driver’s cab, chucking it onto the spare seat.

We set off again.

‘God, I’m glad to get rid of those other two,’ said the driver. ‘They’ve not stopped jabbering at each other in Spanish since we left Belmont Park. It has nearly driven me nuts.’

I wished he wouldn’t mention nuts.

Mine still ached dreadfully.

22

We stopped again briefly just outside Baltimore in order to team up with four motorcycles and two squad cars from the city police department, who traditionally escort the Kentucky Derby winner the last few miles to Pimlico Race Course for the Preakness.

It was not so much about ensuring the horse’s safe arrival as getting the event shown on the local TV news channels.

Marketing the race was the key.

It was hoped that in excess of 130,000 spectators would cram into the racecourse on Saturday to watch the big race, and that that one day would bankroll the track for the rest of the year.

With only twenty-eight racing days per year, compared to eighty or more at each of Churchill Downs and Belmont Park, Pimlico had become rather the poor relation of the Triple Crown venues. But it had a proud history, being the first of the three tracks to open in 1870.

The first running of the Preakness Stakes predated the inaugural Kentucky Derby by two years, with the first Belmont Stakes held at Belmont Park being some thirty years after that.

Several TV crews filmed our arrival and there was quite a crowd waiting, as the horse transport pulled up close to the Stakes Barn, which was situated behind the grandstand in a corner of the racecourse site. I did my best to keep out of camera shot, especially face-on. I had no wish to be recognised, not least by any of the FACSA team who might happen to see the transmission. After all, Baltimore was only some forty miles from the FACSA offices in Arlington.

I had been cultivating my beard now for almost two weeks and the growth was reasonably substantial, but it was always the eyes that would give me away. Consequently, I pulled the grubby LA Dodgers baseball cap lower, so the peak cast a deep shadow over my eyes in the afternoon sunshine.

The media lost interest as soon as Fire Point had walked the thirty yards from the trailer to Stall 40 in the Preakness Barn, the traditional Pimlico home of the Kentucky Derby winner.

Above and to the right of the door was a plaque showing the sixteen previous winners of the Preakness who had been accommodated in that particular stall, including the great sire Northern Dancer and Triple Crown champions Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed.

In truth, it was rather a basic space about twelve feet square with off-white walls and a dirt floor, no different from any of the other stalls in the barn. But traditions are traditions, even if some Derby-winning trainers have recently flouted the convention because they think that Stall 40 is too noisy.

Fire Point didn’t seem to mind, circling a couple of times to investigate his new environment before sticking his head out through the doorway to watch what else was going on.

Keith, Diego, Maria and I then unloaded all the kit plus the other four horses, putting them in their allocated stalls which were not all together, as the barn with Stall 40 was reserved only for those horses due to run in the Preakness itself.

Debenture and Ladybird were in the next barn along and I was told by Keith that I would be looking after them both, a situation that suited me fine as I thought it would keep me away from Diego, at least while we were working.

However, there would be no respite from him at night.

The grooms’ accommodation was up an outside staircase above the horses. As Keith had said, we had two rooms allocated, a small single for Maria, and another only a fraction larger for Keith, Diego and me, the metal bedsteads so close together that they would be considered inappropriate in an episode of I Love Lucy.

I bagged the bed in the corner furthest from the door and, fortunately, Keith took the middle one. The communal bathroom was three doors along the open-air balcony, and was shared with two other rooms, eight people in total.

George Raworth arrived in the white Jeep Cherokee about an hour after us. He parked his vehicle in a space next to the barns and then proceeded to conduct a tour of inspection of his horses to check they had settled into their temporary homes. While he was busy with Fire Point, I took the opportunity to have a quick look through the windows of the Jeep. The white cryogenic flask was there, still standing upright behind the passenger seat. But what was it for?

I went in search of George in the Preakness Barn.

With only five days to go before the big event, security at the barn was already pretty tight with a uniformed guard posted at either end.

‘ID?’ one asked as he blocked my path.

I showed him the groom’s pass hanging round my neck. He scrutinised the photo carefully before letting me through.

Ten horses were expected to contest the big race, making it about an average-sized field for recent times. Final declarations would be on Wednesday afternoon, ahead of the draw for starting-gate positions, and all bar one of the ten were already in residence.

Even so, only about half of the barn was actually in use, with many empty spaces. The Raworth three were housed in stalls together down one end with Fire Point in the middle.

The fact that a single trainer had three horses in the field was unusual, but not unique. Nick Zito, Hall of Fame inductee who had worked his way up from hot-walker to become a racing legend, had three runners in the 2005 Preakness. They had finished fourth, sixth and tenth.

Could George Raworth’s trio do any better?

Life at Pimlico settled down into a routine, although I could hardly describe the Raworth team as cheerful.

I had realised pretty quickly that the lot of a groom was not a particularly happy one.

For me, the total lack of privacy was the worst aspect, with nowhere to call your own to relax in peace — share a bedroom, share a bathroom, communal feeding and, at Pimlico, not even a recreation hall with computers to act as a distraction.

It was depressing.

On top of that, Diego was acting like a petulant child and I was getting pretty fed up with it.

First he emptied my holdall all over the floor of our bedroom before throwing the bag itself onto the roof. Then, at evening stables, he came round to the barn where I was working merely to tip a bucket of wet manure into a stall I had just finished cleaning. As a parting gesture, he then pulled the hay out of Debenture’s freshly filled haynet and threw it down into some muddy water.

It was as if he was trying to provoke me into some sort of reaction. Perhaps he thought I would hit him in the same way he had me, and then he could go whining to George Raworth to get me fired.

But I wasn’t going to play that game.

I would put up with his puerile tactics of disrupting my work and messing about with my kit. Instead I would wait my chance. Revenge for me would be a dish eaten cold, when he was least expecting it.

Finding a secluded spot to call Tony was more difficult at Pimlico than at Belmont Park.

While the other grooms went in search of takeout joints and liquor stores outside the main gate on Park Heights Avenue, I walked across the lawn in front of the Preakness Barn, through the bushes, and into one of the deserted car parks beyond.

‘How did you communicate with the journalist Jason Connor?’ I asked.

‘Initially he contacted NYRA, and they called in FACSA.’

‘Did you speak to Connor yourself?’

‘Not at that point. I became involved after the raid on the barn had found nothing but spotless stalls and no horses. Only when I suspected we had a mole in our midst.’

‘So you spoke to Connor then?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’ I asked. ‘On the phone or in person?’

There was a pause on the line as Tony tried to remember.

‘On the phone, I think,’ he said. ‘But only the once. After that we used email.’

‘Did you know he was going to see the groom at Laurel Park on the day he died?’

‘Definitely,’ Tony said. ‘He informed me by email the previous day.’

‘Using the FACSA office email system?’

‘No. My private email address. I thought it would be safer.’

I said nothing.

‘Are you implying that my private email has been compromised?’ Tony asked finally.

‘Yes. That’s if you’re right about Jason Connor’s death not being an accident.’

‘But how?’ Tony asked.

‘All email is compromised to some extent,’ I said. ‘They are checked by the security services for a start. They have automatic scanners that look for certain keywords such as “bomb” or “explosive” or “jihad”. I assume your private emails aren’t encrypted.’

‘No.’

‘All it needs is for someone to have your email address and password.’

‘But how would they get my password?’ he asked.

‘How often do you change it?’

‘Never.’

‘So someone at work may have seen you enter it. Or maybe it’s easy to guess. Please don’t tell me it’s your mother’s maiden name, or your wife’s.’

There was a long pause from the other end of the line.

‘I’ll change it right away,’ he said rather sheepishly.

‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘Don’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Two reasons,’ I said. ‘One, whoever has accessed your private emails would then know that we know, and, two, we might be able to use it to set our mole a trap.’

‘How?’

‘I’m working on it,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, do nothing.’

‘But someone else is reading my personal emails. I don’t like that.’

‘Then don’t write suggestive emails to your mistress,’ I said flippantly. ‘At least, not until after we’ve caught the mole.’

‘I don’t have a mistress,’ he said nervously.

I wasn’t at all certain I believed him.

But flippancy aside, it was a serious breach of security.

‘Tony,’ I said with concern, ‘did you tell Paul Maldini that I wasn’t coming back yet?’

‘I sure did,’ Tony replied.

‘How?’

‘What do you mean, how?’

‘Did you use your email?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I called him on this phone, like you said to. Spoke to him myself.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘What did he say?’

‘He didn’t seem that concerned. He said that you could stay for as long as you need, provided you come back eventually.’

‘Did he say those exact words?’ I asked.

‘He sure did.’

Paul clearly did know me better than I realised.

‘Any further word on the semen tests?’ I asked, changing the subject.

‘What further word are you expecting?’

‘Is it equine semen, for a start?’

‘My biochemistry professor is still doing the DNA tests. Apparently he’s had to do a procedure called poly-something chain reaction.’

‘Polymerase chain reaction,’ I said. ‘To amplify the amount of DNA.’

‘That’s the one. It seems it takes all day.’

‘They can do it instantaneously on CSI Miami,’ I said.

Tony laughed. ‘Yeah, and they always catch the bad guys, too. Don’t believe everything you see on TV.’

Or in the newspapers.

‘Can you ask your pet professor if he can tell what breed the semen is from, assuming it is equine? In particular, if it is Thoroughbred semen? I could then take hairs from all the horses in Raworth’s barn for comparison.’

‘Right,’ Tony said. ‘I’ll ask him. Call me again tomorrow. Same time.’

My first night at Pimlico could hardly be described as restful.

The bed was lumpy and uncomfortable and that, together with an apparent who-can-be-the-loudest-snorer contest between Keith and Diego, had me longing for nights only with the farting Mexican.

Hence I’d been wide awake and up for some considerable time prior to four o’clock, when I was expected to be at work.

With only two horses to deal with, the workload was only half what I had faced at Belmont, so it was easy. Ladybird went out first for her morning exercise, ridden by Victor Gomez, while I cleaned her stall and prepared Debenture.

When Ladybird returned from the track, I walked her round for half an hour until she had cooled, gave her a washdown, and then returned her to her stall for a feed. I repeated the routine for Debenture, thankfully without any interruptions from Diego, who was busy with his two. Meanwhile, Keith and Maria fussed around Fire Point, who was ridden out to the track by Jerry Fernando, his race jockey, under the watchful gaze of trainer George Raworth.

I was through by eight o’clock and went in search of some breakfast.

The white Jeep Cherokee was parked up against the back wall of the Pimlico track kitchen.

I had a quick look to make sure that George was still out by the track watching Fire Point and no one else was about, then I peeped inside the vehicle.

The cryogenic flask was still there behind the passenger seat exactly as before. But did it still contain the frozen semen?

I tried the Jeep’s doors. They were locked.

How I wished my trusty lock picks could open them but there was no hope. It was not even worth trying. For a start, the doors had no visible keyholes for the picks to go into. I spent a moment wondering if my ex-army corporal could open cars that were locked by remote control. Probably. But for me, short of breaking one of the windows, I had no chance of getting in.

Just as in Wagner’s Pharmacy at Louisville before the Derby, talk in the Pimlico track kitchen over breakfast was all about who was going to win the big race.

‘Fire Point will surely trot up,’ said one man sitting near me, ‘especially with those other three not running.’

The three he meant were the horses diagnosed with EVA. Two had since returned to California to recover, and the third was still in isolation at Churchill Downs.

However, the man’s companion disagreed. ‘I think that big bay colt of Bryson’s has a good chance. What’s his name?’

‘Crackshot,’ said the first.

‘That’s it. Won the Florida Derby at Gulfstream by five lengths back in March.’

‘If he’s so good, why didn’t he run at Louisville? His win in Florida would have surely qualified him.’

‘No idea. Perhaps Bryson was saving him for the Preakness.’

‘Don’t talk garbage. No one in their right mind bypasses the Kentucky Derby in favour of the Preakness.’

‘He might have this year. There’s that new bonus being offered for winning both the Florida Derby and the Preakness. Five million bucks is a lot of money.’

‘Even so…’

The man might have been right, and Crackshot was not the only one of the ten that hadn’t lined up for the big race at Churchill Downs.

There were also Raworth’s other two, Classic Comic and Heartbeat, as well as a couple of local Maryland colts.

So only half Saturday’s expected field in the Preakness had contested the Derby at Louisville. Some had not been eligible for the Kentucky race and were simply after the big prizes on offer here. The $1.5million purse meant that this race alone was well worth winning, even without the bonuses. Even the fourth horse home would collect nearly a hundred thousand dollars for his owner.

The day dragged.

There was not even live racing to watch, as Tuesday was a dark day at Pimlico.

I lay on my lumpy bed for part of the afternoon trying to catch up on some sleep but without much success, not least because Diego had had the same idea.

He spat onto the floor when he saw me.

‘Charming,’ I said.

‘Qué?’ he replied in an aggressive tone.

‘What is wrong with you?’ I asked.

‘No comprende,’ he replied, waving a hand at me in a contemptuous manner.

But Maria had said that Diego ‘speak very good English’, much better than her.

‘Yes, Diego, you do comprende,’ I said. ‘So listen to me. You leave me alone. You don’t even talk to me. I know about you.’

He stared at me with his black eyes.

‘I know about you,’ I said again. ‘One word from me and you’ll be in the slammer for a year on Rikers Island.’

He understood that all right.

But if I thought it would shut him up, I was sorely mistaken. The look of pure hatred in his eyes caused a shiver to run down my spine.

Letting on to him that I knew about his little problem with the New York courts had clearly been a mistake.

I might need to watch my back more than ever.

23

The Preakness post-position draw took place at five o’clock on Wednesday afternoon with all ten of the expected runners declared for the race.

Crackshot had been the last of the contestants to arrive at Pimlico, flying in from Florida only at lunchtime to join the other nine already in the Preakness Barn.

Fire Point had been installed as the favourite in the morning’s edition of the Daily Racing Form with Crackshot a whisker behind. All the others were outsiders in comparison.

Of the two, Fire Point certainly had the better draw. He would be out of trouble in Gate 8 while Crackshot was drawn next to the rail in Gate 1, with both Heartbeat and Classic Comic immediately outside him in Gates 2 and 3 respectively.

George Raworth was clearly delighted and had a smile on his face as big as the Grand Canyon as he was interviewed by the assembled media.

Suddenly, the Preakness roller coaster was under way and Pimlico Race Course was coming to life. Celebrities and politicians would be flying in to Baltimore from all over the country during the next two days in order to be here for the race.

It may not be quite as grand as the carnival that had surrounded the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, but it was big enough, especially on an otherwise quiet weekend for US sports.

And the weather was set fair. Indeed, it was getting hot, with afternoon highs in the mid- to upper-eighties Fahrenheit, dropping down only into the seventies at night. It was so hot, in fact, that Keith had installed two electric fans outside Stall 40 to keep Fire Point cool.

There were no such luxuries for the grooms.

Wednesday night was completely still without a trace of breeze. Even with the door and window of our bedroom wide open, the lack of air meant that getting to sleep was difficult, the situation not helped by having ten horses stabled beneath, pumping out energy from their massive bodies like fiery furnaces.

As I tossed and turned, Diego and Keith seemed untroubled by the heat and went back to their snoring games, which only made things worse.

Eventually, at ten minutes to midnight, and wearing only a T-shirt and my boxer shorts, I took my blanket down the outside staircase and lay on the neatly mown lawn in front of the barn, curling up on the ground as I’d done so often before in the army.

I’d had to cope with higher temperatures than this in the past. July in Kandahar had a daily average well into the nineties and here, at least, I wasn’t wearing full combat kit including body armour and helmet, plus a twenty-kilo backpack and as much again in weapon and ammunition.

Lying on the grass was surprisingly comfortable. I found myself a quiet, dark spot in the shadow of a tree and settled down.

I was drifting off to sleep when I was disturbed by the arrival of a vehicle, its headlights lighting up the trees above my head. It pulled up near the end of the barn closest to me and the engine was switched off.

I rolled over onto my knees and slowly raised my head to have a look.

It was George Raworth’s white Jeep Cherokee.

What was he doing here at midnight?

I watched as he climbed out of the driver’s seat and walked over to the barn.

‘Good evening,’ I heard him say, presumably to the night guard who was out of my sight on the far side of the barn. ‘George Raworth. Here to check on my horses.’

Who was I to criticise a trainer who wanted to check his horses at any time of night? It must be worrying for him to have the favourite in his charge, especially with all the hopes of the nation riding on it as another Triple Crown champion.

I lay down once more and was drifting off again when a noise made me instantly awake.

I recognised that particular noise. I’d heard it before.

It was the sound of the cap being removed from the cryogenic flask, with the slight ‘pop’ as the excess pressure inside was released.

I again rolled onto my knees and looked towards the Jeep.

George had the rear door open behind the passenger seat. Even though there were plenty of security lights around the barn, I couldn’t actually see what he was doing as the vehicle was in the way. But why would he have opened the flask if he wasn’t either getting something out or putting something in?

He closed the Jeep and went back to the barn. In his right hand he held an electric torch and in his left what looked like a small cup.

He disappeared into the barn.

I was now curious.

I rose to my feet and moved silently forwards, making sure that I remained deep in the shadow of the trees.

At night, the lights in the barn itself were switched off to allow the horses to sleep, while the glow of those outside seemed to further deepen the darkness of the interior.

At first I could see nothing but then the glow of the torch appeared as George made the inspection of his horses.

I moved down the side of the barn to get a better view.

George spent only a couple of moments with each horse before moving along the line of stalls.

What was he up to now?

I moved as close as I dared, silently padding over the grass in bare feet and keeping as low as I could behind the post-and-rail fence that ran along parallel to the side of the barn, and about five yards from it.

George stopped at one of the stalls near the far end. The torch went out.

I crouched down, looking through the fence, straining my eyes to try and see what he was doing.

There came a noise, a hissing sound like that made when a pump blows air into a bicycle tyre. There it was again.

Then silence.

I waited, listening hard, but there was nothing more.

George then retraced his steps along the barn towards his own three horses, turning the torch back on as he did so.

Maybe the sound had been one of the horses having a snort, or perhaps it had been the security guard blowing his nose, but the noise hadn’t been right for either of them.

I tiptoed back to the end of the barn and was about to creep closer when George appeared right in front of me, coming out of the barn into the bright glare of the security lights.

I immediately stepped back into the deep shadow of the bushes so he wouldn’t spot me.

‘Good night,’ he called over his shoulder.

‘Good night, Mr Raworth,’ replied the guard, who I still couldn’t see.

George then walked back to his Jeep and threw something onto the back seat, before climbing in and driving off into the night.

I returned slowly to my blanket and went to sleep wondering what all that had been about.

I was none the wiser in the morning.

I woke at three o’clock, slightly chilled, and went back up the stairs to my bed. Diego and Keith were both giving the snoring a rest so I lay down and returned to sleep for another hour.

I didn’t mention my nocturnal excursion to the others and especially not to George Raworth when he arrived to watch his horses at exercise.

I prepared Ladybird for Victor Gomez to ride a steady breeze over five furlongs. She would be racing on Friday afternoon in the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes, a graded race over nine furlongs for three-year-old fillies that was named in honour of the yellow perennial daisy with a black centre that is the state flower of Maryland. So all Ladybird needed today was a gentle pipe-opener to maintain her condition, nothing that would overtire.

Just to confuse people, in 1940, the Maryland Jockey Club decided that, in addition to the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes for fillies, the Preakness Stakes itself would henceforth be designated as the ‘Run for the Black-Eyed Susans’ and a garland of the yellow-and-black flowers would be draped over the winner, to rival the garland of red roses that was draped over the victor of the Kentucky Derby.

However, there was one slight problem. The Preakness is run in May, some two months earlier than black-eyed Susans come into bloom.

Not that such a trivial matter would be allowed to deter the gentlemen directors of the oldest sporting organisation of North America, one that could boast two US presidents among its former members. They decreed that the garland would be made using early-flowering, but all-yellow, Viking daisies, with their centres hand-painted black in order to resemble black-eyed Susans.

Nowadays, yellow-and-black flowers of the chrysanthemum family are used but, in all its 140-plus years of existence, the Run for the Black-Eyed Susans has never once seen an actual black-eyed Susan.

Victor Gomez came back on Ladybird to swap his saddle onto Debenture.

‘Ladybird good,’ he said to me. ‘She win tomorrow, yes?’ He gave me a thumbs up and grinned, not that it was a pretty sight with several of his teeth missing.

‘Yes,’ I replied, raising my thumb back at him. ‘Hope so.’

I walked the horse around for ten minutes for her to cool off before giving her a washdown with soap and water. Next I dried her using a large towel and then brushed her coat until it shone.

I wanted Ladybird to look her best in the paddock, not least because Tony Andretti had told me the previous evening that he would be coming to Pimlico for both Friday and Saturday and I didn’t want him giving me any grief about poor standards of grooming, even in jest.

‘How about the tests on the semen?’ I had asked him.

‘Still waiting,’ he’d replied. ‘Full results should be in tomorrow. All I can tell you at the moment is that it is definitely horse semen but not from a Thoroughbred. My professor is still doing DNA similarity tests for other equine breeds.’

So, if it wasn’t from a Thoroughbred, there was no point in me taking hair samples from the colts in Raworth’s barn for comparison. None of them could have been the donor.

I continued grooming Ladybird, brushing out her tail and then trimming a straight edge at the bottom.

As I worked, I thought about the next two days.

It was not only Tony Andretti who would be coming to Pimlico, other members of the FACSA racing section would also be in attendance, and I didn’t want them spotting me as a ringer.

It would be twelve days since I had left them at Andrews Base and, in spite of the fairly vigorous hair growth on my chin and upper lip since then, I was concerned that federal special agents should be well enough trained in recognition techniques to identify me easily, not least because my beard had not grown dark and concealing as I had hoped, but rather blond and wispy like my hair.

Since first arriving at Belmont, I had taken to always wearing my LA Dodgers baseball cap, with the peak pulled down low. Here at Pimlico, there were too many press and TV cameras around to avoid completely, so it was better to be as incognito as possible at all times. So tomorrow, I decided, I would also wear my cheap dark sunglasses to cover my eyes. With luck, the sun would shine so I wouldn’t look too out of place.

I finished with Ladybird as Victor Gomez returned on Debenture. With two days before his race, he had been given a far sterner workout and Maria walked him round the shedrow for a good twenty-five minutes to cool.

While she did so, I went over to the Preakness Barn to fetch some more straw.

George Raworth’s white Jeep Cherokee was again parked close by. The man himself was out at the track so, having swivelled round on my heel to check no one else was watching, I went to the far side of the vehicle and tried the door handle.

It opened.

The cryogenic flask was still there but it was now lying on its side behind the driver’s seat with the cap off. I tipped it up. It was completely empty both of liquid nitrogen and of the semen.

I had a quick look around the rest of the Jeep. On the back seat sat an electric torch and a small cup, along with what looked like a miniature red rubber rugby ball. The ball was about three inches long, with a short blue plastic pipe extending from one end, and it had ‘Polaroid’ stamped into the rubber on one side.

I knew exactly what it was. I’d once owned something very similar.

It was an air duster, designed to blow a stream of air to remove dust from the lens or the inside of a camera. I squeezed the ball and was rewarded by the same hissing pump sound that I had heard the previous night.

I was sorely tempted to put the air duster into my pocket but I could see George Raworth in the far distance, coming back towards me from the track with Victor Gomez, and it wouldn’t do to be caught with it.

I left things as they were, closed the Jeep door as quietly as I could, and moved quickly away. Thankfully, George had been too busy talking to Victor to notice me.

‘ID?’ said the guard at the barn entrance.

I showed him my groom’s pass and he let me through.

The place was a hive of activity, with veterinary staff from the Maryland Racing Commission taking blood samples from each of the Preakness runners for pre-race drug testing.

I stood and watched as one of them inserted a hypodermic needle into Fire Point’s neck just behind his head. The horse was well used to this procedure. He made no movement as the needle went into his jugular vein and blood was collected into two Vacutainer test tubes, identical to the one I’d passed through the chain-link fence to Jim Bradley at Belmont.

I picked up the straw from the bedding stockpile but, instead of going straight back to my horses, I walked along the line of stalls until I came to the one where George Raworth had stopped during the night. I took a step forward and looked inside. It was empty.

‘What do you want?’ asked a deep angry voice behind me that made me jump.

‘Nothing,’ I replied automatically, turning round.

The voice belonged to a tall man with ebony skin who was standing in the shedrow, the whites of his prominent eyes standing out against a dark face as he stared at me accusingly.

‘I’m Paddy,’ I said with a broad smile, putting down the bale of straw and extending my right hand towards him. ‘I’m here with Raworth’s crew. My first time at Pimlico.’

‘Tyler,’ the man replied. ‘I’m with Bryson.’

He slowly shook my offered hand and even grinned at me, exhibiting a fine collection of gold teeth. My overtly friendly approach had completely disarmed his anger.

‘I’m based at Belmont,’ I said. ‘Only here for the big race.’

‘Gulfstream,’ Tyler said, pointing a finger at his own chest. ‘In Miami. Too damn cold up here, for my liking.’ He shivered.

Cold? He must be joking. But I could see from his thick woollen sweater that he wasn’t.

‘Who do you look after?’ I asked.

‘Crackshot,’ he replied with another flash of the gold teeth. ‘He’s out at exercise right now.’ He waved a hand towards the empty stall. ‘I’m doing his bed.’

Crackshot.

What had George Raworth been doing in the middle of the night outside the stall of the only other horse in the Preakness that most of the pundits gave any chance to other than Fire Point?

My suspicious mind was working overtime.

24

I led Ladybird from the barn to the paddock about thirty minutes before the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes and walked right past FACSA Special Agent Trudi Harding, the shooter of Hayden Ryder at Churchill Downs.

She ignored me, not giving me a first glance let alone a second. She was standing with Frank Bannister on a raised platform near the track entrance and they were too preoccupied scanning the faces of the large Friday crowd to notice the groom passing by right under their noses.

Uniquely in my experience, the paddock at Pimlico was indoors, and not at all what British racegoers would expect. Here, instead of being a parade ring where the horses would walk to be inspected, the paddock was an area where the horses stood to be saddled in numbered stalls that corresponded to their post-draw positions.

I held Ladybird’s head as George Raworth and Keith made her ready.

First they placed a thin chamois cloth onto the horse’s bare back to prevent slippage. That was followed by the saddle pad, weight cloth, numbered saddle cloth and finally the saddle, all of them held in place by a wide strap passed under the belly and secured tightly to buckles on either side of the saddle. Over the top of everything, for added safety, went a three-inch-wide webbing over-girth.

Satisfied, George gave Ladybird a friendly smack on her rump as Keith and I led her up the ramp under the jockeys’ room, back into the daylight, and onto the track. George issued jockey Jerry Fernando with some last-minute instructions and a leg-up into the saddle before I handed the horse over to one of the outriders.

Unlike in England, where a horse runs free to the start under the control of its jockey alone, those in the United States are led to the gate by an outrider on a ‘lead pony’, one pony to each runner.

Whereas a ‘pony’ is properly defined as a member of an equine breed in which normal mature horses stand less than fifty-eight inches tall at the withers, the lead ponies at racetracks are often retired Thoroughbred racehorses, and therefore are not ponies at all.

But no one seemed to care as the excitement built.

I watched on the big screen as the horses, plus the ponies, circled behind the starting gate that was situated right in front of the grandstand.

The crowd for the Preakness the following afternoon was expected to be three times bigger but, nevertheless, there was a loud cheer as the gates flew open and the nine runners in the feature race of the day surged forward.

Victor Gomez had been right.

Ladybird was good. Very good.

She led from start to finish, holding off a late challenge to win by a neck.

Understandably, George Raworth was delighted, coming out onto the track with me to lead the horse into the winner’s circle.

I could see both Bob Wade and Steffi Dean standing by the rail. I pulled the peak of my cap lower and kept my eyes down but I think the special agents were more interested in each other than in anyone else.

I had realised that being a groom was, in fact, a very good undercover persona. Grooms were invisible, even more so than waiters in restaurants. Anyone looking my way was staring into the eyes of the horse rather than into those of the man leading it.

I knew of one trainer in England who could readily identify every horse in his hundred-strong yard just by looking at it, even in the rain, but he couldn’t tell his stable staff apart, one from another. Irrespective of their real names, he simply called all his lads ‘John’.

While Ladybird’s owner, trainer and jockey were receiving their trophies from the star of a TV soap opera, Maria and I walked the horse from the winner’s circle to the post-race testing barn.

Here we waited with the horse for almost an hour, whistling and pouring water until Ladybird finally acquiesced and supplied the urine sample the testers required.

Maria was not her usual ebullient self, not speaking to me once during the wait.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ I said, but she didn’t understand the idiom. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked slowly instead.

She nodded. ‘OK.’

‘Then why don’t you say something?’

This time she shook her head. ‘No talk.’

I thought she almost seemed frightened.

‘What has Diego said to you?’ I asked.

‘No talk,’ she repeated. ‘Diego, he say no talk.’

‘Or what?’ I asked.

She definitely appeared frightened this time. She looked all around her with wide eyes and then whispered. ‘Diego say he cut me if I talk to you.’ She traced a fingernail down her cheek from a tearful right eye all the way to her chin.

Diego was getting to be more than just a nuisance. He had clearly decided that it was easier to intimidate his cousin than me, and he was probably right. The sooner he was dragged off in chains to Rikers Island the better.

George Raworth came into Ladybird’s stall when I was still brushing her down after washing away the sweat of her exertions.

‘Well done, my girl,’ George said, patting the horse on the neck in love and gratitude. ‘Great job, Paddy. Now for the Preakness tomorrow.’

He even patted me on the back as well.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Let’s hope so.’

‘Hope doesn’t come into it,’ George said with a laugh. ‘I believe Fire Point is a sure thing.’

He should know, I thought.

‘The professor thinks the semen is probably from an American Quarter Horse,’ Tony Andretti said when I called him at eight o’clock on Friday evening. ‘The DNA doesn’t match that of any known stallion held by the National Quarter Horse Registry but it closely resembles other Quarter Horse DNA records that are available, as if the source was possibly related.’

‘Quarter Horse semen?’ I said. ‘Why on earth would anyone want that around a Thoroughbred?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

A notion was stirring in my mind. Something I’d read was hovering somewhere just beneath my consciousness.

Was it to do with Quarter Horses?

Suddenly, like a switch being turned on, I remembered what it was.

George Raworth had grown up on a ranch in Texas that bred Quarter Horses. It was still run by two of his cousins.

Was that where the semen had come from?

Other things also floated to the surface.

‘Tony?’ I said. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Sure am,’ he replied.

‘Could you ask your professor if he can do one more test for me?’

‘He says he can’t do any more than he’s already done. If the DNA of the semen doesn’t match anything that’s registered, then there’s no way of telling exactly which horse it came from.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m happy with that. The test is for something else.’

‘What?’

‘EVA,’ I said ‘Equine viral arteritis.’

There was a long pause from the other end.

‘What are you implying?’ Tony said eventually.

‘Nothing,’ I lied. ‘I’d just like to know if the EVA virus exists in the semen sample. I read on the Internet that stallions that have been infected shed the EVA virus in their semen for the rest of their lives. Could you also ask your professor if freezing infected semen would kill the virus or does it preserve it in the same way it preserves the sperm?’

‘I’ll ask him,’ Tony said. ‘But I can’t think why. The infected horses at Churchill Downs were all colts. Surely infected semen would only infect mares during mating.’

I thought back to the sound of the air being expelled from the air duster, the sound that had come twice from the Preakness Barn on Wednesday night.

‘How about if you squirted it up a colt’s nostrils?’ I said.

‘But why would you?’ Tony said. ‘Semen up the nose wouldn’t do any good.’

I laughed. ‘Not for reproduction, I’ll grant you, but EVA is primarily a respiratory disease. Ask your prof if inhaling EVA-infected semen would make a horse sick.’

‘I’ll call him straight away,’ Tony said.

‘Good. I’ll call you back in an hour.’

We disconnected.

If I was right, and it was a big if, then Crackshot should also come down with EVA in the days ahead. And if that occurred, George Raworth might have some difficult explaining to do.

For the time being we had to sit tight and wait.

‘The professor will do the EVA test tomorrow,’ Tony said when I called him back. ‘He wanted to leave it until Monday but I convinced him otherwise. In fact, I asked him to go into the lab to do it tonight but he’s hosting a birthday dinner for his daughter.’

‘Tomorrow will do fine,’ I said. ‘Did you ask him the other things?’

He laughed. ‘The professor says that he doesn’t know. It seems that no one has ever done any research that involves squirting EVA-infected semen up a horse’s nose. But he did say that some sexually transmitted diseases in humans could be caught if infected semen gets into the eyes, so he doesn’t see why not, especially as EVA is a respiratory illness. And he also says that, if the semen does contain EVA, freezing it would not kill the virus. It would still be active when thawed.’ He paused. ‘But are you seriously suggesting that the three colts that became ill with EVA at Churchill Downs had been purposefully infected by squirting semen up their noses?’

Was I?

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am.’

‘By whom?’

‘George Raworth,’ I said. ‘And I think he’s done it again here at Pimlico to a horse called Crackshot.’

‘That’s quite an accusation,’ Tony said. ‘Are you sure?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure, but everything seems to fit, at least it will if the professor finds EVA virus tomorrow.’

I now wished I had taken the air duster from the Jeep. I could have had it tested for traces of semen. But it would have been a huge risk. George Raworth might have seen me next to the vehicle, and what would I have said if he had discovered the air duster was missing, only for it to reappear from my pocket during a search.

‘So what do we do about it?’ Tony said. ‘Should we arrest Raworth?’

‘We can’t. You and I may believe it is true but, at the moment, it’s all speculation and circumstantial. Raworth would deny it, cover his tracks, and there would be nothing we could do. We need proof.’

‘Surely the semen sample is all the proof we need,’ Tony said.

‘But would it stand up as evidence in court? Raworth would deny that it had ever been his. Indeed, the sample might not even be admissible as evidence in a trial because I stole it in the first place. We need something more.’

‘And how are we going to get that?’ Tony asked.

‘I’m working on it,’ I replied.

‘That’s what you said about my emails.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m still working on that too.’

‘Can’t we stop Raworth running his horses in the Preakness? Surely it isn’t right that he can nobble the opposition and still be allowed to participate.’

‘I agree that it doesn’t seem fair,’ I said, ‘but if we make a move now, all we would be doing is forewarning Raworth and any remaining evidence would disappear faster than jelly beans at a children’s party.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Nothing for the moment,’ I said. ‘And we don’t tell anyone. Not a soul. Does your professor know where the semen came from?’

‘No.’

‘Then let’s keep it that way,’ I said. ‘Ask him to keep everything confidential unless we tell him otherwise.’

‘OK. Is there anything else?’ Tony asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Find out what you can about the Raworth family ranch in Texas. In particular, are there any veterinary records of an EVA outbreak?’

‘I’ll see what I can manage.’ He didn’t sound too confident. ‘What will you do?’

‘Continue with my job as a groom,’ I said. ‘We have three runners in the Preakness tomorrow.’

‘I thought you looked very professional with the winner of the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes this afternoon. I was watching you through my binoculars.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘If anything you looked rather too adept and alert, compared to some of the other grooms.’

‘I’ll be more careful,’ I said, making a mental note. ‘I saw a number of your racing team here today. I walked right past Trudi Harding and she didn’t recognise me. She didn’t even look at me twice.’

‘I’ll have to have words with her,’ Tony said.

‘Not yet,’ I said with a laugh. ‘I don’t want her shooting me.’

Tony didn’t think it funny and, I suppose, neither did I.

25

Preakness morning dawned bright and warm without a cloud in the sky, not that I had waited for the sunrise before starting my day’s work. I’d been hard at it for two hours by the time the fiery globe made its appearance in the east.

I had risen earlier than usual to give Debenture his breakfast. His race, the Maryland Sprint Handicap, was due off at half past one in the afternoon and George Raworth had told me that he didn’t want the horse eating within eight hours of race time.

I arrived at the barn at 3.30 a.m. to find Debenture standing upright in the corner of the stall with his eyes closed, gently snoring. I stood silently watching him, marvelling at the fact that such a large bulk could be fast asleep and yet not fall over, especially as he was actually using only three of his legs to stand on, the fourth being slightly bent up with only the toe of the hoof resting on the floor.

Horses are not the only creatures able to sleep standing up. Elephants can also nap on their feet, and flamingos famously do it on only one leg.

In horses, it is due to what is called the ‘stay apparatus’, a natural locking of the limbs that keeps the animal upright while also allowing the muscles to relax. It is thought the ability evolved because early equines were prey, as zebras still are, and the time taken to get up from a lying position before running could mean the difference between life and death.

Not that horses always sleep standing up. They occasionally lie down for deep body sleep, so comfy bedding and enough space are essential.

I waited. I didn’t want to wake Debenture. He was going to have a tiring enough day as it was.

I knew that horses do not normally sleep for very long at a time. In all, they need only about three hours’ sleep in any twenty-four, mostly taken in short naps. And, sure enough, the horse soon woke on its own, snorting twice and shaking his head from side to side.

I gave him his regular breakfast of horse nuts plus feed supplements, and then refilled his bucket with fresh water.

Next I brushed Debenture’s coat, starting with a stiff dandy brush and then finishing with the softer body brush, working backwards and downwards from his head to his feet on each side until his hide was polished to perfection.

Over the past ten days, I had discovered that there was something quite therapeutic about grooming a horse. All of one’s troubles faded away with the strong rhythmic motion of the brushes over the animal’s skin. Even the horses seemed to love it.

I began to understand how a mother could spend so long brushing her daughter’s hair. It probably wasn’t so much for the shine it created but for the relaxing sensation the movement generated in herself.

For a while in the quiet I was even able to forget my ongoing troubles with Diego.

True, we hadn’t had a face-to-face confrontation since I’d spoken to him on Tuesday afternoon, but that hadn’t stopped him trying to disrupt my life at every available opportunity, sometimes in the most childish of ways. I had no proof, but I was quite certain that it had been he who had squeezed my toothpaste out of its tube and smeared it all over my bed.

Sadly, there was no lockable space in our cramped bedroom, so my phone and wallet never left my side, residing inside my boxers even when I was asleep.

The rest of the barn came to life about four-thirty as other grooms came to start work.

The Preakness Barn itself was already a hive of activity when I went over to collect some bedding. I took the chance to walk up the shedrow.

‘Morning, Tyler,’ I said. ‘How’s Crackshot today?’

‘Never better,’ he said, showing me the gold molars.

The big bay colt certainly looked fine, sticking his head out towards me with a sparkle in his eyes.

‘He’s eaten up really well,’ Tyler said. ‘I reckon he’ll win easy.’

Was I wrong about the EVA?

I thought back to Churchill Downs.

Three horses had become sick early on the morning of the Derby, with another showing signs of illness some five days later, most likely as a secondary infection.

If five days was the incubation period, and if Raworth had indeed squirted large quantities of the EVA virus up Crackshot’s nose only fifty or so hours ago, then it would be quite likely that the horse would still look healthy. Whether he would be able to run full pelt for a mile and three-sixteenths in fourteen hours’ time was quite a different matter.

I took the new bedding back to the other barn.

Debenture had also eaten up well, so I prepared him for his light exercise.

Jerry Fernando was due to ride the horse in the race that afternoon and he arrived to give Debenture a warm-up jog, once round the track with a lead pony in attendance. It was more to accustom the horse to his rider, and vice versa, than any serious training.

Ladybird, meanwhile, was having a day off after her efforts of the previous day. So I walked across and stood next to the track to watch the others at exercise.

Eight of the Preakness horses had opted to go out in what was an abbreviated training session. All of Raworth’s three were there, with Jerry Fernando having swapped his saddle from Debenture to Fire Point for a steady half-mile trot followed by a brisk but conservative gallop over three furlongs to open the pipes and expand the lungs.

Crackshot was noticeable by his absence, but there was nothing sinister in that. Some trainers chose not to give their horses track exercise on the morning of a race, wishing to keep them fresh for when it mattered later in the day, while others might be walked for an hour or so to loosen any stiffness in the legs.

Keith had told us that, for the walkover to the track before the big race, Diego and Charlie Hern would take Classic Comic, while I would be looking after Heartbeat, assisted by Maria. Keith himself would be with Fire Point, along with George Raworth.

Diego had scowled when Keith had allocated Heartbeat to me and Maria.

‘I don’t mind swapping,’ I’d said to him, but he had refused to answer. Diego clearly didn’t want me doing him any favours.

That suited me fine.

Debenture tried his best in the Maryland Sprint Handicap but, as George Raworth had predicted, he was outclassed by the opposition, finishing seventh of the eight runners, some nine lengths behind the winner — a huge gap in a six-furlong sprint.

The owner didn’t seem to mind one iota.

‘At least we weren’t last,’ he said to me with a broad grin.

I was standing on the track after the race, holding the horse’s head while the jockey’s saddle was removed.

‘OK, Paddy,’ George said, ‘take him back to the barn.’

I turned away but was stopped by a racetrack official.

‘Take him to the testing barn,’ he said to me. ‘This horse has been selected for a random drug test.’

I happened to be facing George Raworth as the man said it, and I couldn’t help but see the look of concern that swept across his face.

Perhaps it was only a natural reaction to being tested, like that insuppressible feeling of anxiety one has when being breathalysed by the police, even when you are certain you are not over the limit.

Or maybe, just maybe, those ‘vitamin’ injections Charlie had given to Debenture had not been quite as innocent as I’d been led to believe.

It would be ironic, I thought, if my investigation into what appeared to be a colossal Triple Crown scandal was derailed due to a positive dope test from a journeyman horse that had finished seventh out of eight in a relatively minor race on the supporting card.

George recovered his composure and told me to take Debenture to the testing barn as requested, and then to start preparing Heartbeat for the big race.

As Preakness race time approached, the excitement swelled towards fever pitch.

An enormous party had been going on for hours, especially in the infield where multicoloured tents of all sizes and shapes abounded, some acting as shade against the blazing sun, while others were beer outlets providing a continuous flow of the amber nectar to quench the heat-induced thirsts of the vast crowd.

And it wasn’t only among the spectators that the anticipation was growing. Back at the Preakness Barn, there was a highly charged atmosphere of hope and expectation, with nerves beginning to fray at the edges.

‘Are we all ready?’ George asked for at least the third time.

‘As ready as we’ll ever be,’ Charlie replied, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

I thought they were in danger of transmitting their nervousness to the horses, and it was a great relief when a track official arrived to announce that it was time for the walkover.

The Preakness Barn was behind the grandstand, so the horses were walked right round the public enclosures and then back along the track in order to be paraded in front of the crowd.

For this race, there was a special mounting yard in the centre of the course opposite the finish line and beyond the turf track, and half the field were saddled in there, while the rest, including Raworth’s three, went down the ramp into the indoor paddock.

‘It’s quieter inside,’ George said. ‘Helps keep them calm.’

It wasn’t the horses that needed to be kept calm, I thought.

Crackshot was also being saddled inside and I looked over to where Tyler was placidly holding the horse’s head while the trainer made him ready. There appeared to be no concern whatsoever over his health.

Eventually all was ready.

I led Heartbeat up the ramp to the track with Maria on the other side of his head.

She ignored me completely and I didn’t speak to her. It was for the best, I thought, and safer for the both of us. It didn’t, however, stop Diego glaring at me with his cold black eyes as he and Charlie Hern followed us up the ramp with Classic Comic. Fire Point, flanked by Keith and George, brought up the rear of the three.

Out in the mounting yard, Victor Gomez was waiting for Heartbeat, having been promoted from stable exercise rider to big-race jockey for the day.

‘Just like old times,’ he said as I gave him a leg-up. ‘It is eight years since I had a ride in the Preakness.’ He gave me a gappy-toothed grin like a kid with stolen candy.

I watched as George Raworth tossed Jerry Fernando up onto Fire Point’s back and Charlie did likewise with the jockey riding Classic Comic. Then we led the horses back onto the dirt track and handed them over to the outriders on their lead ponies, to take them to the start.

There was nothing more we could do. It was up to them now.

I realised that, despite my firm intention not to become emotionally involved, I was actually getting quite excited as the race time approached.

A trio of top-hatted and scarlet-coated trumpeters walked out onto the track and played the traditional ‘Call to Post’, and then everyone joined as one in singing, ‘Maryland, My Maryland’, the official song of the state.

American sporting venues certainly knew how to wind the crowd up into a frenzy. By the time the starting gates swung open, the noise was so loud that I had absolutely no chance of hearing the race commentary from where I stood on the grooms’ stand.

But I could see one of the big TV screens set up in the infield.

The horses broke in an even line with Crackshot on the inside rail and Heartbeat outside him. Victor Gomez immediately took Heartbeat ahead and to his left, squeezing the Florida Derby winner for space and forcing his jockey to take a strong pull on the reins to prevent a collision. The poor horse would have been confused with a ‘go’ message as the gates opened being followed by a ‘stop’ one only a few paces later. Not surprisingly, he dropped back sharply.

Fire Point, meanwhile, had a clear run from Gate 8 allowing him to establish a lead of some six or seven lengths over his main rival as they passed the finish line for the first time.

Crackshot’s troubles continued round the clubhouse bend as he was boxed in by both Heartbeat and Classic Comic, who seemed to have nothing else in their game plan but to thwart the progress of the big bay colt.

By the time the lead horses were at the half-mile pole, and Crackshot had finally worked himself away from the rail and past his distractors, he was all but out of contention, having been forced to make up ground while the others were taking a back-stretch breather.

Not that it really mattered.

Crackshot would not have won the race anyway.

The horse was clearly labouring as they straightened up for the run to the line and, when his jockey asked him for a supreme effort, there was nothing left in the tank.

Fire Point, in contrast, was having a dream race. Always well placed on the outside shoulder of the lead horse, Jerry Fernando kicked for home off the final turn and sprinted away impressively from the pack to win by four lengths, much to the delight of George and Charlie who I could see laughing and embracing in the stands.

Crackshot trailed in a disappointing seventh, behind Classic Comic and Heartbeat, both of whom had repassed him in the final hundred yards.

The crowd were relatively subdued by the result, as no one enjoyed watching a horse finish a race in the sort of distress that Crackshot was clearly exhibiting. There was even a smattering of boos, as some rightly disapproved of the apparent Raworth tactics, but even the least discerning of them could not seriously argue that Crackshot would have won with an uninterrupted passage.

And George Raworth certainly didn’t care.

He was smiling from ear to ear as he led Fire Point into the winner’s circle alongside the horse’s owner, who was equally delighted. Even an announcement over the public address system that the stewards would hold an inquiry didn’t seem to bother him.

Maybe it was because he knew that, even if the stewards found Heartbeat or Classic Comic guilty of interference, they couldn’t take the race away from Fire Point just because all three horses happened to be trained by the same man.

In the event, the stewards took no action at all, other than to give Victor Gomez a ten-day suspension for careless riding after he had admitted to accidently taking Crackshot’s ground after the break from the starting gate. The fact that everyone knew it had not been accidental was irrelevant, there was insufficient evidence on the video footage to prove it, and the incident had clearly not cost Crackshot the race.

I didn’t know how I felt about things. It was difficult not to be drawn into the celebrations among the staff in the Raworth camp over wins in the first two Triple Crown legs, but there was a huge part of me that despised the man himself for cheating his way to such a position, as I was sure he had done.

I led Heartbeat back to the Preakness Barn to find that there was much veterinary activity in and around Crackshot’s stall.

‘Take that damn horse outside,’ someone shouted at me as I tried to hot-walk Heartbeat round the shedrow.

I took him back out into the hot sunshine, which wasn’t ideal, and tied him to a fence in the shade of a large tree. Then I hurried back inside to see what was going on.

Tyler was standing in the shedrow, watching three other men busy in Crackshot’s stall. There was deep worry etched on his face.

‘What’s up?’ I asked him.

‘Crackshot is sick,’ he said in his deep bass tone. ‘The veterinarians are worried that the race has affected his heart.’

I looked into the stall. The poor horse was dripping with sweat and clearly very unwell.

‘It is very hot here today,’ I said.

‘Not as hot as he’s used to in Florida,’ Tyler replied.

That was true.

‘Have they taken a blood sample?’ I asked.

Tyler nodded. ‘First thing they did.’

I wanted to tell them it wasn’t his heart that was the problem.

They should test his blood for equine viral arteritis.