You’re not going to believe this. You won’t guess who walked into the yard this morning. You won’t believe it!’
‘Okay I’ll go for Lester Piggott. Or maybe Shergar. I know. Lester Piggott riding Shergar.’
‘Fock off Sam. It was Red. You remember Red?’
‘No. Can’t say I do. Some mare we met in the pub?’
‘Sam, stop messing with me. Red. You know the filly that we had on the stud. Who cut her leg. She’s here at Doyle’s. She’s called Stella Maris now.’
‘No way. That can’t be right. She went to America for Christ sake.’
‘Well she’s back Sam, and she hasn’t changed. She’s not easy, but by Christ is she a good sort.’
‘Please, Mr Kerly,’ he said a couple of days later to the Head Lad. ‘Let me ride the new filly’s work. I know her. I looked after her when she was a foal at Fethard. She was always a bit nervous, like, but we got on famously. Ask my uncle. You seen that scar on her leg? I was there when she got that, see?’
In his anxiety to get through to Kerly he was gabbling. He took a breath and went on more slowly.
‘I saved her life, the vet said, with a tourniquet. She’s a bit difficult all right, but I can quieten her. I can handle her.’
Stella Maris may have exasperated her American owners, but her genes wore diamond tiaras, and Doyle and her new owner, the Hon. Rupert Robinson, hoped that, by returning to the wide galloping turf tracks of home, and with the correct handling, she might soon be worth her weight in jewellery. So Kerly’s eyes widened in disbelief at Tipper’s request to take responsibility for this potential turf princess. He fired a gob of spit at the ground and told him straight.
‘Give it up, Tipper. Jesus this is a valuable filly. She’s got a hell of a pedigree. Now don’t be bothering me.’
Kerly soon learned how wrong he was. The new filly was so unbiddable she wouldn’t even walk out into the yard. When a lad went into her stable she’d sulk in the back of it and then lash out at him in self-defence. For a week Tipper looked on in mounting frustration, until he could bear it no longer. One morning, without dwelling on the consequences, he skipped breakfast and went down to the stable block. He let himself into Red’s box, hurriedly tacked her up and took her out for a hack.
Half an hour later they came trotting in again under perfect control. Joe Kerly was at the gate waiting. Tipper got the bollocking of his life, but he’d proved the point. Red became his ride every day.
Nico began his research in London. England was the cradle of the thoroughbred horse, and English racing retained just the right mixture of glamour, snobbery, chicanery and big money to satisfy a man like Shalakov. He stepped from a cab in Wardour Street and strolled through to Berwick Street market. Pushing his way through the throng of shoppers and market traders, Nico selected a number on his phone and, when it was answered, spoke briefly. It was only a short walk from here to his destination, a large basement club with a thick carpet and a dozen different ways of losing money, ranging from one-arm bandits to roulette and blackjack. Flitting between the tables were leggy hostesses in smart burgundy uniforms. The place was pretty empty bar a few excitable Chinese swarming round a roulette table like bees round a hive. A sallow-faced Arab sat expressionless near the roulette wheel, looking glumly at the table.
This dive was called the Piranha Club.
Nico was greeted at the bar by a figure known to his circle as the Duke. Aged somewhere in his fifties, the Duke looked innocuous enough. He had the slack, tapering body of a taxi driver, with fish-like hands, slightly grey skin and thinning straw coloured hair. A pair of large gold-framed bi-focals lived on the tip of his nose giving him a slightly studious look. But the benign appearance, as Nico knew, was seriously deceptive. Not only did the Duke own the Piranha Club, he was one of the largest private bookmakers in London.
‘All right, Nico my son? It’s been a while.’
‘Delighted to see you again, Duke.’
It was pretty well five years since Nico had first met the Duke. He’d needed to buy some marching powder for a client and had been sent in the Duke’s direction.
‘Vodka’s your tipple isn’t it?’
Nico rather wanted a champagne cocktail but that would have upset the Duke’s sense of what was proper. Nico was a Russian, and Russians drank vodka. Turning to the barman he ordered a bottle of Uluvka and a shot-glass. The Duke never drank himself, but he liked debilitating others.
‘So, to what do we owe the pleasure?’ he said, pouring a preliminary shot and watching while Nico obediently drained the glass in one gulp. ‘We don’t usually see you in the dark days of winter.’
‘I’m on a bit of business. Thought you might be able to steer me in the right direction.’
‘Anything to oblige an old mate, Nico. Let’s go over there, where we can talk.’
Carrying the strangely shaped bottle with him, the Duke led Nico towards a table in a quiet booth.
An hour later Nico stumbled out into a rainy night, his head fuddled and spinning from the vodka. He meandered up to Broadwick Street in the hope of a taxi and stood on the curb shivering and peering up and down the street. One after another, black cabs sluiced past, not one of them with its yellow beacon lit. His hair, and the shoulders of his fair-weather suit, were soaked by the time a taxi pulled up.
The soaking and the cold had the effect of sobering Nico up a little. He concentrated on what the Duke had told him and tried to decipher the notes he’d written on the paper napkin as the cab passed under the street lights.
At the top of the napkin he’d scribbled:
The Partridge—Johnny the Fish.
Under that he’d written:
David Sinclair—bit of a chin—training plenty of winners. Posh.
At the bottom of the napkin was a third name:
Shug Shaunsheys—a few dodgy habits but sharp. Will find the goods.
Red was straight away in harmony with Tipper and making good progress, until the day she had to re-acquaint herself with the starting stalls. This is always an ordeal for temperamental animals. Each stall is fitted with two sets of gates. The back gates are shut individually behind the horses as the handlers load them; the ones in front are instantaneously flipped open by the starter, to release an explosion of horseflesh as the race begins. The practice drill should have involved Red merely walking up to, into and through the stalls, with both sets of gates open. It looked like a simple task, but it wasn’t for her. Tipper presented her to the stalls and a group of handlers—the same handlers that assist at every course on race day—crowded round her back end to heave her in, while one of them led her by a rope threaded through the
