experiences at airports that to do so usually caused more problems than leaving it where it was.
I stepped through the detector and, predictably, it went into palpitations.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said the security man. ‘Please stand with your legs apart and arms out to your side.’
He waved a black wand up and down my legs and around my waist without success and was about to wave me on through when the wand went berserk at my left wrist. The poor chap was quite startled when he switched to a manual search and discovered the hard fibreglass shell that constituted my lower arm.
Lord Enstone had been watching this exchange with ill-disguised amusement and now burst into laughter.
‘Why didn’t you tell him?’ he asked.
‘He would ask me to take it off and it’s such a bore. It’s normally easier this way.’
The guard regained his composure and, with an embarrassed chuckle, he allowed me to pass. I thought about getting a gun installed to shoot through my middle finger. It was a common failing of security that, having discovered I had a prosthetic hand, they rarely checked it well enough to determine if I had a firearm or a knife built into it.
Jonny Enstone was in his element and clearly loved being a member of what has often been described as the best gentlemen’s club in London (women were not admitted until 1958, and then reluctantly). We climbed one of the hundred or so staircases in the Palace of Westminster and strolled along bookcase-flanked corridors to the peers’ bar overlooking the Thames.
‘Afternoon, my lord,’ said the barman.
Jonny Enstone obviously enjoyed being called ‘my lord’.
‘Afternoon, Eric. G amp; T for me, please. You, Sid?’
‘G amp; T would be fine, thank you.’
We took our drinks over to a small table by the window and sat and discussed the state of the weather.
‘Now, Sid,’ said his lordship at last, ‘how can I help?’
‘Well, sir,’ I started, opting for a formality that matched our surroundings, ‘after our little chat at Cheltenham I was hoping you might be able to give me some more details of why you think that Bill Burton and Huw Walker were fixing the races in which your horses ran.’ I purposely kept my voice low and he leaned closer to hear.
‘Did you hear that Burton’s been arrested for killing Walker?’ he replied.
‘I was there when it happened,’ I said.
‘Were you indeed!’ He made it sound like an accusation in the same way that Carlisle had done.
‘I went to ask him about your horses but never got the chance.’
‘Fancy Burton being a murderer,’ he said. ‘One never can tell.’
‘He hasn’t been convicted yet. Maybe the police have the wrong man.’
‘No smoke without fire,’ he said. I thought about some of the many rumours that surrounded his business dealings and wondered if there was fire there too.
‘But about your horses and your suspicions,’ I prompted.
‘Doesn’t really matter now, Sid. Took your advice and moved the lot this morning. New trainer, new start. No good crying over spilt milk. Walker’s dead and Burton’s been banged up for it. Little bit of race-fixing seems a bit trivial now, doesn’t it, so I’ve cut my losses and moved on.’
‘Who’s your new trainer?’ I asked.
‘Another Lambourn man. Chap called Andrew Woodward,’ he replied. ‘Fine fellow, won’t stand any nonsense. My type of man.’
He of the riding-whip reputation, a man prepared to run roughshod over other people’s feelings. He was, indeed, Jonny Enstone’s type of man.
‘Sorry, Sid,’ he went on, ‘won’t be needing your services any more. Send me the bill for your time — not that I’ve taken up much of it.’ It was his way of telling me that my bill had better not be too big. He hadn’t become a multi-multi-multi-millionaire by paying more for things than he could get away with. It was usually the poor who were more spendthrift with their money, one of the reasons they remained poor.
‘Shall we go through to lunch?’ he said, closing the matter.
There are two dining rooms. One for peers alone, to discuss in private the affairs of state, and one for peers and their guests where such discussion was frowned upon, if not exactly forbidden.
Needless to say, we were in the second one, an L-shaped room with heavy oak panelling covered with stern- looking portraits of past lords of the realm. The upright dining chairs were covered in red leather and the carpet was predominantly red, and so were the curtains. Everything in the Lords’ end of the Palace of Westminster was red. The commoners’ end was green.
Jonny Enstone worked the room, stopping and speaking to almost every group as we made our way to what was obviously his ‘usual’ table at the far end. Why did I wonder that he liked this table for that very reason?
It was like walking into the pages of
I decided on the soup and the mushroom risotto for one-handed eating while Lord Enstone chose the pate and the rack of lamb. I rarely ate much for lunch and two large meals within twenty hours were not going to be good for my waistline.
We talked racing for a while and I asked what hopes he had for his horses.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll need to talk with Woodward but I hope that Extra Point might be ready for the big handicap at Sandown next month. He’s still entered for the National but he’s not fully fit, at least that’s what Burton told me last week. I’ll reserve judgement until Woodward has seen what he can do.’
‘When did you start to question what Bill Burton told you?’
‘I didn’t really, not until last week.’
‘What happened last week specifically?’ I asked.
‘It was something I heard — I can’t remember exactly when, Tuesday or Wednesday, I think.’ He paused. ‘No, it was definitely Tuesday, after the Champion Hurdle. I was in the Royal Box having a drink with Larry — you know, Larry Wallingford.’
Larry Wallingford, or rather Lawrence, Duke of Wallingford was a regular on racecourses, a major owner of racehorses on both the flat and over the jumps, and a stalwart of the Jockey Club. I wondered when a boy from the wrong end of Newcastle had taken to calling dukes by their nicknames and most others by their surnames. Tomorrow, no doubt, Lord Enstone would tell someone that he had lunched with ‘Halley, you know, Halley the crippled jockey’.
‘Did the Duke tell you something specific?’
‘No, no. It was a lady who was sitting with him. I didn’t get her name. She said something about having been told by a friend that Burton’s horses didn’t seem to be always doing their best.’
‘That doesn’t sound much like evidence to me.’
‘No, nor to me. But it was enough to make me ask around and to look at the results of my horses.’ He stopped to take a sip of an excellent Merlot, the ‘House’ red.
‘I have seven horses at present. I keep a detailed account of all their races and on Tuesday evening I went right through my records for the past two years. I had ninety-two runners over that time. Fourteen winners but not one of them won when they started with odds of less than 5 to 1. Sixteen started favourite and only one of those won, and that was when the leading pair both fell at the last.’ He took another drink. ‘So I began to be suspicious and asked your father-in-law to get you to my box last week. I didn’t want to go to the Jockey Club. Discreet enquiries were what I wanted.’
What he meant, I thought, was that he didn’t want everyone to know that he had been a mug.
‘Well, now I’ve moved the horses so that’s that. End of story.’
‘But it’s not the end,’ I said. ‘Huw Walker’s been murdered. Maybe he was shot because he was fixing races. Or perhaps for not fixing them when he had been paid to do so.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t want to get involved.’
‘You may not have that luxury,’ I said.
‘I won’t thank you for getting me involved with this business and it will be to your advantage not to.’ He shifted in his chair and moved closer to me. ‘Leave it alone, Halley. Let the police do their job. Do you understand me?’ It was said with venom and there was little doubt that I was being warned off.
