robbed of a reasonable-sized fortune.
I removed from the top drawer of my desk the photocopies of the horse passports I had found in my father’s rucksack. One of them was for a bay horse with the name Oriental Suite. I looked up Oriental Suite on the Racing Post website. In his short life, he had won nearly two hundred thousand pounds in prize money. No wonder he’d been well insured.
But why would anyone want to effectively kill off his potential champion steeplechaser? Many owners spent their whole lives, and often most of their wealth, trying to find themselves a champion horse. Perhaps it was all down to cash flow, or maybe the owner believed he could have his cake and eat it too-collect both a big insurance payout and still have the horse go on to be a champion under a different name.
“What are you up to?” Sophie asked, coming in and standing behind me, stroking my back.
“Just researching the runners for the coming week,” I said.
Bookmakers, as well as regular punters, needed to keep abreast of all the winners and losers if they were to make a living from other people’s folly.
“Do you want a coffee?” Sophie asked. “That is if Miss Ugly Sister down there will let me into my own kitchen.”
“Now, now, Cinders,” I said, laughing. “If Alice was one of the Ugly Sisters, she wouldn’t let you leave the kitchen, not keep you out of it.”
“I know you’re right, dearest Buttons,” she sighed. “But she’s beginning to drive me nuts.”
We looked at each other in surprise and then both burst out laughing at what Sophie had said. Did it prove she wasn’t nuts anymore?
“I’ll have a word with her, if you like,” I said.
“No, no, don’t do that,” she said. “I know she means well, but she’s so… intense. I feel I have to be so careful not to upset her while she is trying so hard not to upset me.”
“Go and tell her that,” I said. “She’ll understand.”
“I’ll try,” she said, and went out.
I went back to using the Internet and did some more research, including, amongst other things, looking up the declared runners for the coming week. I also used it to try to look up anything about valuable horses that had recently died in unusual or mysterious circumstances. But there was precious little information to be found.
In spite of being strong and physically fit, Thoroughbred racehorses were actually quite delicate creatures, and, sadly, many of them died unexpectedly from injury or disease. Such events, while often being disasters for the horse’s owner and trainer, were unlikely to be newsworthy unless it was the death of a potential champion such as Oriental Suite.
After twenty minutes or so, I began to wonder whether or not my cup of coffee was coming, so I went down the stairs to find out. As always, I carefully avoided treading on step three.
Alice and Sophie were both in tears, sitting at one end of the kitchen table, hugging each other. My mug of coffee stood alone at the other end, getting cold. I said nothing but walked over, picked it up and drank down some of the lukewarm brown liquid.
“Oh,” said Sophie, dabbing her eyes with a tissue, “I’m so sorry.” She was more laughing than crying. “I forgot. Alice and I have been talking.”
“So I see,” I said, smiling at them both.
“We’ve been talking about Mum and Dad,” said Sophie. “They want to come over and see us.”
I stopped smiling. I hadn’t spoken to Sophie’s parents in nearly ten years, and I had no wish to start doing so again now. They had been so hurtful towards me when Sophie had first fallen sick, accusing me of bringing on the mania by acts of cruelty towards the wife I adored. Her father even told me that Sophie’s illness was God’s punishment for me being a bookmaker.
I had walked out of their house on that day and had never been back. And, as far as I was aware, they had never set foot in my house, and I had no intention of inviting them to do so now.
“You can go and see them if you really want to,” I said. “But count me out.”
Sophie gave me a pained look.
I knew that Sophie had seen her parents at various times throughout the previous ten years, but we never spoke about it. I knew only because she was always agitated after the visits and I didn’t like it. Once or twice, those agitations had led to full-blown mania and subsequent depression. And on at least one occasion I was sure of, an argument between Sophie and her stubborn, ill-tempered and self-righteous father had resulted in her early return to the hospital.
“You know it’s not a good idea,” I said to her gently. “It always ends in a row of one sort or another, and rows are not good for you.”
“It’s different this time,” she said.
That is what she always said. Of course, I lived in the hope that it would be different this time, but, inside, I had to assume it wouldn’t be. I would be unable to endure the future disappointment if I placed too great an expectation on her present progress only for my optimism to be dashed.
I could hardly tell her not to see her own parents, and she would probably ignore me if I did. But I felt quite strongly about it. However, I didn’t want her going secretly behind my back, knowingly against my wishes. And, most of all, I didn’t want to argue with her.
What was I to say?
“What do you think Sophie should do,Alice?” I said, sidestepping the problem and placing it on another’s shoulders.
“I know Mum is very keen to see her,” she said.
“Then why didn’t she visit her in the hospital?” I asked. But I knew the answer.
“The hospital is so upsetting for them both,” said Alice.
It hadn’t been a barrel of laughs for the rest of us, but we had still gone. The truth was, I thought, that neither of Sophie’s parents could bear to admit that their precious elder daughter was mentally ill, and, provided they didn’t actually see her in an institution, they could go on fooling themselves that she was fine and well.
However, they didn’t fool me or, indeed, Alice, who had been painstaking and diligent in visiting her sister almost every other day. Even her two brothers had visited Sophie at least twice during her recent five-month stay. But of her parents, there had been not a sign.
“You must do what you think is best,” I said to Sophie. “But I would prefer it if they didn’t come here. So go and see them at their place, if you like. I won’t come, but, if you do go, I think it would be a good idea for you to go with Alice.”
“To dilute them, you mean,” Sophie said.
“Yes,” I said. “And to try and prevent a row.”
“Fine by me,” said Alice. “If Dad starts being a pain, I’ll kick him.”
She and Sophie laughed, their heads close together in sisterly conspiracy.
She’d better take steel-toe-capped boots, I thought.
18
The first race at Towcester’s late-June evening meetingstarted at six p.m. I have always liked to be set up at least an hour before the first in order to capture the early punters, and also to give time for us to sort out any problems we might have with our equipment, in particular flat batteries and poor wireless Internet signal. Consequently, I drove in through the racetrack-entrance archway a little before five and parked in the shade of a large oak tree in the center of the parking lot.
I have always enjoyed going to Towcester Races, and not only because most of their meetings have no admission charge for the public and hence none for the bookies. I also loved the parkland course set on the rolling countryside of the Easton Neston estate, and their recent investments in new facilities that made it an attractive venue for both bookies and punters alike.
As the racetrack was approximately midway between our homes in Kenilworth and High Wycombe, Luca and I had agreed to meet there, traveling in our separate cars, so I unloaded everything myself and pulled it on our trolley
