riding whips have not always been employed solely to strike the horses but have left their mark on jockeys too. On one famous occasion at Deauville in France, Lester Piggott, having dropped his own whip, took one from one of the other jockeys during the race, to help him ride a tight finish.
But once the race is run, whatever the result, there exists a camaraderie between these men and women who risk their lives five or six times an afternoon for the entertainment of others. And they look after their own.
Such it was with me.
My erstwhile opponents who, during my riding days, would have happily seen me dumped onto the turf if it meant that they could win a race, were the first to express their concern and support when I’d been injured.
When I had been forced to retire at the ripe old age of twentyone, it had been a handful of my fellow jocks who had arranged a testimonial day for me at Sandown Park to raise the funds needed to pay my university tuition fees. And it had been the same individuals who had clamored to become my first clients when I’d qualified as an IFA.
Since then I had acquired a bit of a reputation as horse racing’s very own financial adviser. Nearly all my clients had some connection with racing, and I had a near monopoly within the jockeys’ Changing Room that I believed had much to do with a shared view of risk and reward.
So I now regularly spent a couple of days a week at one racetrack or another, all with Patrick and Gregory’s blessing, making appointments to see my clients before or after, and occasionally during, the racing.
Cheltenham in April has a touch of “after the Lord Mayor’s Show” about it-rather an anticlimax following the heady excitement of the four Steeplechasing Festival days in March. Gone were the temporary grandstands and the acres of tented hospitality village. Gone too was the nervous energy and high anticipation of seventy thousand expectant spectators waiting to cheer home their new heroes.
This April meeting may have been a more sedate affair in the enclosures, but it was no less competitive on the track with two of the top jockeys still vying to be crowned as the champion for the current season that concluded at the end of the month. Both were my clients, and I had arranged to meet one of them, Billy Searle, after racing.
Part of the government’s anti-money-laundering requirements was that financial advisers had to know their clients, and Lyall & Black, as a firm, reckoned that a face-to-face meeting with every client should occur at least annually, in addition to our regular three-monthly written communications and twice-yearly valuations of their investments.
I had long ago decided that expecting racing folk to come to a meeting in the London offices was a complete waste of time. If I wanted them as clients-and I did-then I would have to come to see them, not vice versa. And I had found that seeing them at their place of work, the racetracks, was easier than chasing them down at home.
I had also discovered that being regularly seen at the races was the best way to recruit new clients, which was why I was currently standing on the terrace in front of the Weighing Room, warming myself in the midday April sunshine, more than ninety minutes before the first race.
“Hi, Foxy. Penny for your thoughts? What a lovely day, eh? Did you see the National yesterday?” Martin Gifford was a large, jovial, middle-ranking racehorse trainer who always joked that he had never made it as a jockey due to his large feet. The fact that he stood more than six feet tall and had a waist measurement that a sumo wrestler would have been proud of seemed to have escaped him.
“No,” I said, “I missed it. I was stuck in the office all day. I just saw the short report on the television news. But I’d been at Aintree on Saturday.”
“Bloody rum business, that was,” Martin said. “Fancy postponing the Grand National just because some bastard got themselves killed.”
He had obviously been reading the papers.
“How do you know he was a bastard?” I asked.
Martin looked at me strangely. “Because it said so in the paper.”
“I thought you knew better than to believe what you read in the papers.” I paused, deciding whether to go on. “The person murdered was a friend of mine. I was standing right next to him when he was shot.”
“Bloody hell!” shouted Martin. “God, I’m sorry. Trust me to jump in with both feet.”
Trust him, indeed. “It’s OK,” I said. “Forget it.”
I was suddenly cross with myself for even mentioning it to him. Why hadn’t I just kept quiet? Everyone in racing knew that Martin Gifford was a five-star gossip. In an industry where there were many who believed that there was no such thing as a private conversation or a secret, Martin was the past master. He seemed to have a talent for knowing other people’s private business and passing it on to anyone who would listen. Telling Martin that the murder victim had been a friend of mine was akin to placing a full-page spread in the
“So was the National a good race?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“I suppose so,” he said. “Diplomatic Leak won easily in the end, but he made a right hash of the Canal Turn first time round. Nearly ended up in the canal.”
“Were there many people there?” I asked.
“Looked pretty full to me,” he said. “But I watched it on the television.”
“No runners?” I asked, but I knew he hadn’t any.
“I haven’t had a National horse for years,” he said. “Not since Frosty Branch in the nineties, and it was the death of him, poor fellow.”
“Any runners today?” I asked.
“Fallen Leaf in the first and Yellow Digger in the three-mile chase.”
“Good luck,” I said.
“Yeah. We’ll need it,” he said. “Fallen Leaf probably wouldn’t win if he started now, and I don’t rate Yellow Digger very highly at all. He has no chance.” He paused. “So who was this friend of yours who got killed?”
Dammit, I thought. I’d hoped he would leave it, but I should have known better. Martin Gifford hadn’t earned his reputation for nothing.
“He was just a work colleague, really,” I said, trying to sound indifferent.
“What was his name?”
I wondered if I should I tell him. But why not? It had been in all of yesterday’s papers.
“Herbert Kovak.”
“And why was he killed?” Martin demanded.
“I’ve no idea,” I said. “As I told you, he was only a work colleague.”
“Come on, Foxy,” Martin said in an inviting tone. “You must have some inkling.”
“No. None. Nothing.”
He looked disappointed, like a child told he can’t have any sweets.
“Go on,” he implored once more. “I know you’re holding something back. You can tell me.”
And half the world, I thought.
“Honestly, Martin,” I said. “I have absolutely no idea why he was killed or who did it. And if I did, I’d be telling the police, not you.”
Martin shrugged his shoulders as if to imply he didn’t fully believe me. Too bad, I thought. It was true.
I was saved from further inquisition by another trainer, Jan Setter, who was everything that Martin Gifford wasn’t-short, slim, attractive and fun. She grabbed my arm and turned me around, away from Martin.
“Hello, lover boy,” she whispered in my ear while giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Fancy a dirty weekend away?”
“I’m ready when you are,” I whispered back. “Just name your hotel.”
She pulled back and laughed.
“Oh, you’re such a tease,” she said, looking up at me beguilingly from beneath her heavily mascaraed eyelids.
But it was she who was the tease, and she’d been doing it since we had first met more than ten years ago. Back then I had been an impressionable eighteen-year-old, just starting out, and she was an established trainer for whom I was riding. I hadn’t really known how to react, whether to be flattered or frightened. Apart from anything else, she’d been a married woman at the time.
Nowadays, she was a mid- to late-forties divorcee who seemed intent on enjoying life. Not that she didn’t work
