front of the television on a Saturday afternoon and playing rugby or football in the garden on Sunday mornings. And, of course, there was riding, plenty of riding, hunting in the winter and Pony Club gymkhanas in the summer. School had simply been a time-filler between more important pursuits. Now aged about twenty-five, I believed this was Juliet’s first job as an assistant trainer after doing her time as a stable groom in and around Lambourn.
‘Hey, you can’t take that. It’s the entries record,’ she shouted at a policeman who was busy placing a large blue-bound ledger into a polythene bag.
‘We can take whatever we like,’ said Carlisle.
‘They’re also investigating race fixing,’ I said.
Juliet stared at me with her mouth open.
‘Bill was arrested on suspicion of race fixing,’ I said. ‘As well as for murder. I was here.’
‘Bloody hell!’ She turned to Carlisle. ‘You’d better take all the bloody horses as well, then. They’ll be accessories.’
Carlisle was not amused and politely asked us both if we would leave his men to their task.
Juliet and I went out to the stable yard where the lads were busy with the horses. The daylight was fading fast and bright yellow rectangles from the stable lights extended out through the box doors. Steel buckets clanged as they were filled with water from the taps in the corners of the yard and figures carrying sacks of straw or hay scurried about in the shadows. Life in the yard, at least, was continuing as normal.
‘Evening, Miss Juliet,’ said one lad coming up to us, ‘I think old Leaded has a bit of heat in his near fore. Evening, Mr Halley. Nice to see you.’
I smiled and nodded at him. Fred Manley had been Bill Burton’s head lad since Bill had started training, taking over the licence from his father-in-law, and had done his time in various stables around Lambourn before that. He had a wizened face from a life spent mostly outdoors with far too many early cold mornings on the gallops. He was actually in his late forties but looked at least ten years older. One of the old school: hard working, respectful and all too rare these days.
‘OK, Fred,’ said Juliet, ‘I’ll take a look.’
Juliet and Fred walked to a box midway down the left-hand bank and went in; I followed. Leaded Light turned and looked at the three of us. I had last seen him giving his all up the hill at Cheltenham on Friday, beaten a short head in the two-mile chase. Now he stood calmly in his straw-covered bedroom with a heavy canvas rug hiding his bulk and keeping him warm against the March evening chill. He was also wearing a leather head-collar that was firmly attached to a ring in the wall to prevent him wandering out through the open door.
Juliet moved over to the left-hand side of the docile animal, faced away from its head, bent down and ran her hand slowly down the back of Leaded Light’s lower leg. I watched her make such a natural movement, a movement repeated thousands of times a day in Lambourn alone. Every trainer, every day, with almost every horse. The feel for heat in the tendon is as regular a part of looking after a racehorse as feeding it. Her left hand on the horse’s left front leg, feeling for the slightest variation in temperature. I looked at my own left hand. I could have plunged it into boiling water without it telling me a thing.
Juliet straightened. ‘Mmm. He obviously gave himself a bit of a knock on Friday,’ she said. ‘There’s a touch of heat there but nothing too bad. Thanks, Fred. We’ll give him light work for a day or two.’
‘OK, Miss,’ Fred replied. ‘Is the guv’nor not here? He asked me to find out about holiday dates for the lads.’
‘I’m afraid he’s a bit tied up this evening,’ said Juliet, only fractionally hesitating.
I hoped not and nearly laughed. Unlike in the United States where handcuffs were de rigueur, Bill had been driven away without restraint. I assumed that he would not have been shackled, dungeon-like, to some police cell wall.
‘I’ll be doing the round tonight,’ Juliet went on. ‘Measure out the feed as usual, Fred.’ He nodded and slipped away into the darkness.
She turned to me. ‘Would you like to come with me?’
‘Yes, indeed I would,’ I said.
So we went round the whole yard, all fifty-two horses, with Fred fussing over each one like a loving uncle. Candlestick was there and looking none the worse for his exertions of the previous week. He lifted his head, gave us a brief glance, then concentrated again on his evening meal of oats and bran deep in his manger.
Fred went off to reprimand one of the lads he’d caught smoking near the wooden stables.
‘Fire is one of the great nightmares for trainers,’ said Juliet. ‘Horses panic near flames and will often refuse to come out of their boxes even if some brave soul has opened the door. We have signs everywhere to remind the lads not to smoke in the yard and stacks of fire-fighting equipment just in case.’ She pointed at the bright red extinguishers and sand-filled fire buckets in each corner of the yard. ‘But there are always those who ignore the warnings and some silly buggers have even been known to court disaster by stealing a quick fag in the hay store. I ask you. Stupid or what?’
I was only half-listening. I was wondering if Bill Burton could have fixed races without the knowledge of his staff. In Fred’s absence, I asked Juliet casually whether it was a surprise to her that Bill had been arrested for race-fixing.
‘What do you think?’ she replied. ‘I’m astounded.’
She didn’t sound very astounded and I wondered if loyalty to Bill was such that she wouldn’t have told me if she’d seen him stick syringes in their bottoms, tie their legs up with hobbles, and give their jockeys wads of used twenties after losing.
‘Can you remember rather too many short-priced losers?’ I asked. It was the classic sign of malpractice.
‘No,’ she replied almost too quickly. ‘Lots of favourites don’t win, you know that. If they all did then the bookies would be out of business. Have you ever met a poor bookmaker?’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Not just short-priced losers but horses which occasionally didn’t run as well as expected and lost when they should have won.’
‘That happens all the time. Doesn’t mean the race was fixed. Horses aren’t machines, you know. They have off days, too.’ She was getting quite stirred up. ‘Look, what do you want me to say: “Bill and I worked out which horse would win and which would lose”? Don’t be bloody daft. Bill’s as straight as an arrow.’
I wondered if she believed it. I didn’t.
It was past six by the time I left Juliet still arguing with Chief Inspector Carlisle.
‘How am I to know which horse is running where tomorrow if you’ve taken the computers and the entries record?’ she had demanded at full volume.
‘That’s not my problem, miss,’ Carlisle had replied.
I left them to it. Carlisle looked likely to lose the battle and I thought he would find the situation easier to handle without me there. By then the police had removed so much material from Bill’s house and office that they were running out of space in their cars.
I drove up the M4 towards London against the rush-hour traffic, the never-ending stream of headlamps giving me a headache.
So what next?
Jonny Enstone had asked me to investigate the running of his horses. The obvious place to start was to interview his jockey and trainer. But now one of them had been murdered and the other had been locked up on suspicion of having done it, and all before I could ask them the relevant questions.
I decided to go and see Lord Enstone himself.
‘Delighted, Sid,’ he said, when I called him using my natty new voice recognition dialling system in the car. With only one hand, it was prudent to keep it firmly on the steering wheel. In an emergency I could steer quite well with my knee but it wasn’t to be recommended at high speeds on the motorway.
‘Come to lunch tomorrow,’ Enstone said. ‘Meet me at the Peers’ Entrance at one.’
‘The peers’ entrance?’ I asked.
‘At the House,’ he replied.
Ah, I realised, at the ‘House’ meant the House of Lords.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow, one o’clock.’ I disconnected, again by voice command.
Marina was busy in the kitchen when I got home and I was firmly told to ‘go away’ when I tried to nibble her
