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.
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘but the police are still likely to talk to you because you had seven horses in Bill Burton’s yard.’
He smiled, leaned back in his chair and spread his hands. ‘I know nothing.’
Here was a member of the House of Lords, the highest court in the land, intent on obstructing justice. But honesty and integrity have never been prerequisites to remaining in the House of Lords. A criminal conviction and prison sentence of twelve months or more results in expulsion from the House of Commons, but their Lordships remain immune to such inconveniences and can return to Her Majesty’s Parliament on release from any length of stay in Her prisons. And they do, often.
Even a conviction for high treason does not disqualify members, save actually during their imprisonment. In the past this was not a problem as there was little chance of a return from the block and the axe.
And then there was the case of the 7th Earl of Lucan. A coroner’s jury established that he had indeed battered his children’s nanny to death with a length of lead piping in 1974 before disappearing for good. Even when, twenty-five years later in 1999, the High Court made a ruling that, body or not, Lord Lucan was officially dead, his son and heir could not sit in the House as it was deemed by their Lordships that there was no ‘definite proof’ that his father would not suddenly walk out of the jungle and claim his rightful place on the red leather benches.
However, the House does have some standards. Undischarged bankrupts cannot take their seats.
Clearly, to a Lord, being broke is a greater crime than being a murderer.
Lord Enstone and I finished our lunch mostly in silence and I was content to pass again through the revolving time-portal and back to the present.
I walked down Victoria Street towards my flat, stopping twice on the journey. First, I went into an office equipment store to buy a new telephone answering machine. My trusty old one had served me well but had been overtaken by the electronics revolution. I decided on a fancy replacement that came complete with a vast number of megabytes in its digital memory, and one that could also tell me the dates and times when my messages were received. And, secondly, I popped into a betting shop.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. I hadn’t been in a betting shop for years, not since the law prevented them having any decent chairs or televisions, or any creature comforts like a coffee machine or a lavatory. Nothing that could persuade the itinerant gambler to linger.
Now we lived in more enlightened times when gambling was not seen as some shifty addiction of the low-life and was even to be encouraged in the form of the National Lottery, to ‘provide for good causes’. That some of the ‘good causes’ were a touch suspect and others were simply an excuse for underfunding in the public services did not seem to deter the millions whose hopes each week far exceeded their true expectations. A few big winners gave the multitude faith, so much so that nearly a fifth of the population was seriously relying on winning the lottery to provide for their old age.
