Whip Hand Part 15

'Nutty bars?'

'No, not the nuts. They're risky.'

'I don't know how you find the time.'

'It takes as long as chatting up barmaids.'

'What do you want with all that money, anyway?'

'It's a habit,' I said. 'Like eating.'

Amicably we drew nearer to Newmarket, consulted the map, asked a couple of locals, and finally arrived at the incredibly well-kept stud farm of Henry Thrace.

'Sound out the lads,' I said, and Chico said 'Sure', and we stepped out of the car onto weedless gravel. I left him to it and went in search of Henry Thrace, who was reported by a cleaning lady at the front door of the house to be 'down there on the right, in his office'. Down there he was, in an armchair, fast asleep.

My arrival woke him, and he came alive with the instant awareness of people used to broken nights. A youngish man, very smooth, a world away from rough, tough, wily Tom Garvey. With Thrace, according to predigested opinion, breeding was strictly big business: handling the mares could be left to lower mortals. His first words, however, didn't match the image.

'Sorry. Been up half the night... Er, who are you, exactly? Do we have an appointment?' 'No.' I shook my head. 'I just hoped to see you. My name's Sid Halley.'

'Is it? Any relation to... Good Lord. You're him.'

'I'm him.'

'What can I do for you? Want some coffee?' He rubbed his eyes. 'Mrs Evans will get us some.'

'Don't bother, unless...' 'No. Fire away.' He looked at his watch. 'Ten minutes do? I've got a meeting in Newmarket.'

'It's very vague, really,' I said. 'I just came to enquire into the general health and so on of two of the stallions you've got here.'

'Oh. Which two?'

'Gleaner,' I said. 'And Zingaloo.'

We went through the business of why did I want to know, and why should he tell me, but finally, like Tom Garvey, he shrugged and said I might as well know.

'I suppose I shouldn't say it, but you wouldn't want to advise a client to buy shares in either of them,' he said, taking for granted this was really the purpose of my visit. 'They might have difficulty in covering their full quota of mares, both of them, although they're only four.'

'Why's that?' 'They've both got bad hearts. They get exhausted with too much exercise.'

'Both?'

'That's right. That's what stopped them racing as three-year-olds. And I reckon they've got worse since then.'

'Somebody mentioned Gleaner was lame,' I said.

Henry Thrace looked resigned. 'He's developed arthritis recently. You can't keep a d.a.m.n thing to yourself in this town.' An alarm clock made a clamour on his desk. He reached over and switched it off. 'Time to go, I'm afraid.' He yawned. 'I hardly take my clothes off at this time of the year.' He took a battery razor out of his desk drawer, and attacked his beard. 'Is that everything then, Sid?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Thanks.'

Chico pulled the car door shut, and we drove away towards the town.

'Bad hearts,' he said.

'Bad hearts.'

'Proper epidemic, isn't it?'

'Let's ask Brothersmith the vet.'

Chico read out the address, in Middleton Road.

'Yes, I know it. It was old Pollen's place. He was our old vet, still alive when I was here.'

Chico grinned. 'Funny somehow to think of you being a snotty little apprentice with the head lad chasing you.'

'And chilblains.'

'Makes you seem almost human.'

I had spent five years in Newmarket, from sixteen to twenty-one. Learning to ride, learning to race, learning to live. My old guv'nor had been a good one, and because I saw every day his wife, his lifestyle, and his administrative ability, I'd slowly changed from a boy from the backstreets into something more cosmopolitan. He had shown me how to manage the money I'd begun earning in large quant.i.ties, and how not to be corrupted by it; and when he turned me loose I found he'd given me the status that went with having been taught in his stable. I'd been lucky in my guv'nor, and lucky to be for a long time at the top of the career I loved; and if one day the luck had run out it was too d.a.m.ned bad.

'Takes you back, does it?' Chico said.

'Yeah.'

We drove across the wide Heath and past the racecourse towards the town. There weren't many horses about: a late morning string, in the distance, going home. I swung the car round familiar corners and pulled up outside the vet's.

Mr Brothersmith was out.

If it was urgent, Mr Brothersmith could be found seeing to a horse in a stable along Bury Road. Otherwise he would be home to his lunch, probably, in half an hour. We said thank you, and sat in the car, and waited.

'We've got another job,' I said. 'Checking on syndicates.'

'I thought the Jockey Club always did it themselves.'

'Yes, they do. The job we've got is to check on the man from the Jockey Club who checks on the syndicates.'

Chico digested it. 'Tricky, that.'

'Without him knowing.'

'Oh yes?'

I nodded. 'Ex-Superintendent Eddy Keith.' Chico's mouth fell open. 'You're joking.'

'No.'

'But he's the fuzz. The Jockey Club fuzz.'