He found his voice acquiring an almost servile whine when speaking with Nadia. He hated anyone hearing that, but he couldn’t stop himself.
‘So?’ Nadia queried. ‘I need money and I’m on my way over. Be there in about fifteen minutes. And you can give me some dinner while I’m there.’
Unlike her well-trained mother, lodged at a safe distance in Shalakov’s Queen Anne country house in the Kentish Weald (‘my dacha’, he called it), Nadia would not be told what to do, and if she really wanted something could never be placated or put off. Shalakov sometimes wondered if this ruthlessness was part of the genetic inheritance he had passed on, or a result of an expensive English education that he’d paid for. Not that it mattered, since it was his own fault either way. But, if Nadia was coming over, Ana the pretty little horse-lover, for whom Shalakov had devised such complicated short-term plans, would have to be paid off and turfed out without delay. There would be nowhere to hide from Nadia once she got here. His evening of pleasure was over before it had begun.
Shalakov disconnected the call and sighed deeply.
‘Get your clothes on. Get out of here.’
‘Yes, Comrade-General,’ Ana said deferentially.
Harrison paid Ana’s minder who was waiting downstairs. She wouldn’t see a penny of it. She hadn’t done any work.
Tipper’s arrival at Sinclair’s yard had attracted some notice in the racing press. He had also attracted another kind of interest, from an unexpected direction. Early in December, coming back from the gallops, Alison Sinclair rode up beside him.
‘How are you enjoying the Newmarket nightlife, young Tipper?’ she asked breezily.
‘I don’t go out much, Mrs Sinclair,’ Tipper said guardedly. ‘Got to get up so early in the morning, you see.’
‘Surely your girlfriend won’t put up with that.’
‘No problem there, Mrs Sinclair. I haven’t got one.’
‘No girlfriend? I find it hard to believe in such a good-looking boy as yourself. It must be rather a—well, a deprivation.’
Tipper concentrated on his mount, not looking at Alison and just wishing she would go away.
‘I’m all right, really,’ he said. ‘Although I thought I might have ridden a few of the runners recently that Mr Sinclair used other jockeys for.’
‘We’ll have to see about that,’ she told him, in a voice loaded with insinuation. ‘He doesn’t make all of the decisions on the jockey front you know. I’m closely involved in that.’ Then she edged her mount a fraction closer and swung out her knee so that their legs touched.
Tipper was fly enough to see that he had to be careful about Mrs Sinclair. It hadn’t been her words exactly, but her tone of voice and the way she touched his knee as they rode upsides each other. But he’d have to keep her on side.
In the next few weeks Alison Sinclair was in Tipper’s space a fair bit. It made him feel uneasy. She was always asking him about horses, alright. No other stuff. And he always told her everything he could about the horses. But he wasn’t used to the attention. Nobody had really talked to him at Doyle’s.
‘That kid O’Reilly, he’s a rude little shit,’ Alison said to Sinclair.
‘Fancy him do you?’ mocked her husband. ‘I expect the idea’s too much for him, and he’s running a mile.’
‘Don’t sneer, David. I’d like a modicum of respect from the staff, that’s all. O’Reilly has the manners of a sewer rat. Tell him to get his act together.’
Sinclair knew precisely what this was all about. But it was, after all, her credit card that bought the feed and paid the blacksmith; her finger on the internet banking clicker; her name on the cheques. He’d have to speak to Tipper.
Shelley was all over Tipper whenever he and Sam went to the Partridge. But Tipper showed no interest whatsoever. The whole scenario was winding up Sam and Shelley something rotten. Sam was desperate to have a crack at Shelley himself, but he had no chance while she practically threw herself at Tipper. Shelley too was getting agitated. The Duke had told her to get Tipper into the Covey Club sooner rather than later. He wanted to know why she wasn’t using all of her assets to snare him.
‘He’s not bloody interested,’ she told the Duke.
‘Of course he is, for God’s sake. He’s a jockey. They’ll bloody well ride anything if it stays still for long enough.’
‘His bloody cousin. Christ. I can hardly keep the sod off me,’ Shelley complained. The Duke thought about that.
‘I tell you what. Let’s try this. Put the cousin on a promise. Tell him he can have his way with you if he delivers O’Reilly into the club. And Shelley. Don’t let him have his way till he’s delivered. All right?’
‘Who d’you think I am?’ she protested.
Unless there’d been a hard frost, every trainer wanted to be first out onto the gallops, to get the best ground for their horses. The competition was so fierce that some of them would be on the Heath even before dawn.
Sinclair wasn’t as sharp out as some, but on misty winter mornings Tipper could barely see where he was going. It felt like they were galloping into a cloud. And that suited the trainers. Because getting the freshest ground wasn’t the only reason to be early out. It also avoided prying eyes of the scouts and the touts. In Newmarket, everyone likes to know everyone else’s business. And it’s no good having a good horse if the whole town knows it can go a bit before it sets foot on the racecourse.
Not that Tipper was put off. He loved the spooky atmosphere of the Heath around dawn. And he loved the adrenaline rush of galloping upsides two or three other horses. Most of the work riders would play the game of hiding how well their horses were going. They wouldn’t even be straight with Sinclair, because this kind of knowledge, if they kept it to themselves, was valuable. When the horses ran, it gave the lad an edge. He could use the knowledge to assist his own betting or, for a price, someone else’s.
But they couldn’t hide anything from Tipper. He had all the time he needed to concentrate on his own horse, as well as take a good look at his galloping companions. Not only was he a better judge than the others, he was guileless with Sinclair too.
Sinclair wasn’t a bad judge of horses, either, but he was always some distance from the action. On a couple of occasions he’d heard Tipper’s opinions after working a horse and later, when the horse ran, found the boy had been spot-on. So now, every work morning, he got into the habit of riding back to the yard on his hack upsides Tipper, probing him for his opinions on this horse and that. On one morning, however, early in the new year, it was Tipper that had a question that he wanted answering.
He waited until Sinclair had picked his brains on all of the horses they’d had out that morning. He fidgeted with his reins and his girth-strap, and took a deep breath.
‘Guvnor, do you mind if I ask you something?’
