'You've found something?'
'No, not really. It's only a statistical indication. But it's more than even money, I think, that the next horse will win a selling chase at Kelso, Sedgefield, Ludlow, Stafford or Haydock.' I explained my reasons for expecting this, and went on, 'It should be possible to arrange for wholesale saliva samples to be taken before all the selling chases on those particular tracks it can't be more than one race at each two-day meeting and they can throw the samples away without going to the expense of testing them if no... er... joker turns up in the pack.'
'It's a tall order,' he said slowly, 'but I don't see why it shouldn't be done, if it will prove anything.'
'The analysts might find something useful in the results.'
'Yes. And I suppose even if they didn't, it would be a great step forward for us to be able to be on the lookout for a joker, instead of just being mystified when one appeared. Why on earth,' he shook his head in exasperation, 'didn't we think of this months ago? It seems such an obvious way to approach the problem, now that you have done it.'
'I expect it is because I am the first person really to be given all the collected information all at once, and deliberately search for a connecting factor. All the other investigations seemed to have been done from the other end, so to speak, by trying to find out in each case separately who had access to the horse, who fed him, who saddled him, and so on.'
He nodded gloomily.
'There's one other thing,' I said. 'The lab chaps told you that as they couldn't find a dope you should look for something mechanical... do you know whether the horses' skins were investigated as closely as the jockeys and their kit? It occurred to me the other evening that I could throw a dart with an absolute certainty of hitting a horse's flank, and any good shot could plant a pellet in the same place. Things like that would sting like a hornet... enough to make any horse shift along faster.'
'As far as I know, none of the horses showed any signs of that sort of thing, but I'll make sure. And by the way, I asked the analysts whether horses' bodies could break drugs down into harmless substances, and they said it was impossible.'
'Well, that clears the decks a bit, if nothing else.'
'Yes.' He whistled to his dog, who was quartering the far side of the gully. 'After next week, when you'll be away at Burndale, we had better meet here at this time every Sunday afternoon to discuss progress. You will know if I'm away, because I won't be here for the Saturday gallops. Incidentally, your horsemanship stuck out a mile on Sparking Plug yesterday. And I thought we agreed that you had better not make too good an impression. On top of which,' he added, smiling faintly, 'Inskip says you are a quick and conscientious worker.'
'Heck... I'll be getting a good reference if I don't watch out.'
'Too right you will,' he agreed, copying my accent sardonically. 'How do you like being a stable lad?'
'It has its moments... Your daughters are very beautiful'
He grinned, 'Yes: and thank you for helping Elinor. She told me you were most obliging.'
'I did nothing.'
'Patty is a bit of a handful,' he said, reflectively, 'I wish she'd decide what sort of a job she'd like to do. She knows I don't want her to go on as she has during her season, never-ending parties and staying out till dawn... well, that's not your worry, Mr Roke.'
We shook hands as usual, and he trudged off up the hill. It was still drizzling mournfully as I went down.
Sparking Plug duly made the 250 mile journey south to Bristol, and I went with him. The racecourse was some way out of the city, and the horse box driver told me, when we stopped for a meal on the way, that the whole of the stable block had been newly rebuilt there after fire had gutted it.
Certainly the loose boxes were clean and snug, but it was the new sleeping quarters that the lads were in ecstasies about. The hostel was a surprise to me too. It consisted mainly of a recreation room and two long dormitories with about thirty beds in each, made up with clean sheets and fluffy blue blankets. There was a wall light over each bed, polyvinyl tiled flooring, under-floor heating, modern showers in the washroom and a hot room for drying wet clothes. The whole place was warm and light, with colour schemes which were clearly the work of a professional.
'Ye gods, we're in the ruddy Hilton,' said one cheerful boy, coming to a halt beside me just through the dormitory door and slinging his canvas grip on to an unoccupied bed.
'You haven't seen the half of it,' said a bony long-wristed boy in a shrunken blue jersey, 'up that end of the passage there's a ruddy great canteen with decent chairs and a telly and a ping pong table and all.'
'Other voices joined in.
'It's as good as Newbury.'
'Easily.'
'Better than Ascot, I'd say.'
Heads nodded.
'They have bunk beds at Ascot, not singles, like this.'
The hostels at Newbury and Ascot were, it appeared, the most comfortable in the country.
'Anyone would think the bosses had suddenly cottoned on to the fact that we're human,' said a sharp faced lad, in a belligerent, rabble-raising voice.
'It's a far cry from the bug-ridden doss houses of the old days,' nodded a desiccated, elderly little man with a face like a shrunken apple. 'But a fellow told me the lads have it good like this in America all the time.'
'They know if they don't start treating us decent they soon won't get anyone to do the dirty work,' said the rabble-raiser. 'Things are changing.'
'They treat us decent enough where I come from,' I said, putting my things on an empty bed next to his and nerving myself to be natural, casual, unremarkable. I felt much more self-conscious than I had at Slaw, where at least I knew the job inside out and had been able to feel my way cautiously into a normal relationship with the other lads. But here I had only two nights, and if I were to do any good at all I had got to direct the talk towards what I wanted to hear.
The form books were by now as clear to me as a primer, and for a fortnight I had listened acutely and concentrated on soaking in as much racing jargon as I could, but I was still doubtful whether I would understand everything I heard at Bristol and also afraid that I would make some utterly incongruous impossible mistake in what I said myself.
'And where do you come from?' asked the cheerful boy, giving me a cursory looking over.
'Lord October's,' I said.
'Oh yes, Inskip's, you mean? You're a long way from home...'
'Inskip's may be all right,' said the rabble-raiser, as if he regretted it. 'But there are some places where they still treat us like mats to wipe their feet on, and don't reckon that we've got a right to a bit of sun, same as everyone else.'
'Yeah,' said the raw-boned boy seriously. 'I heard that at one place they practically starve the lads and knock them about if they don't work hard enough, and they all have to do about four or five horses each because they can't keep anyone in the yard for more than five minutes!'
I said idly 'Where's that, just so I know where to avoid, if I ever move on from Inskip's?'
'Up your part of the country...' he said doubtfully. 'I think.'
'No, further north, in Durham...' another boy chimed in, a slender, pretty boy with soft down still growing on his cheeks.
'You know about it too, then?'
He nodded. 'Not that it matters, only a raving nit would take a job there. It's a blooming sweat shop, a hundred years out of date. All they get are riff-raff that no one else will have.'
'It wants exposing,' said the rabble-raiser belligerently. 'Who runs this place?'
'Bloke called Humber,' said the pretty boy, 'he couldn't train ivy up a wall... and he has about as many winners as tits on a billiard ball... You see his head travelling lad at the meetings sometimes, trying to pressgang people to go and work there, and getting the brush off, right and proper.'
'Someone ought to do something,' said the rabble-raiser automatically: and I guessed that this was his usual refrain: 'someone ought to do something'; but not, when it came to the point, himself.
There was a general drift into the canteen, where the food proved to be good, unlimited, and free. A proposal to move on to a pub came to nothing when it was discovered both that the nearest was nearly two (busless) miles away and that the bright warm canteen had some crates of beer under its counter.
It was easy enough to get the lads started on the subject of doping, and they seemed prepared to discuss it endlessly. None of the twenty odd there had ever, as far as they would admit, given 'anything' to a horse, but they all knew someone who knew someone who had. I drank my beer and listened and looked interested, which I was.
'... nobbled him with a squirt of acid as he walked out of the bleeding paddock...'
'... gave it such a whacking dollop of stopping powder that it died in its box in the morning...'
'Seven rubber bands came out in the droppings...'
'... overdosed him so much that he never even tried to jump the first fence: blind, he was, stone blind...'
'... gave him a bloody great bucket full of water half an hour before the race, and didn't need any dope to stop him with all that sloshing about inside his gut.'
'Poured half a bottle of whisky down his throat.'
'... used to tube horses which couldn't breathe properly on the morning of the race until they found it wasn't the extra fresh air that was making the horses win but the cocaine they stuffed them full of for the operation...'
'They caught him with a hollow apple packed with sleeping pills...'
'... dropped a syringe right in front of an effing steward.'
'I wonder if there's anything which hasn't been tried yet?' I said.
'Black magic. Not much else left,' said the pretty boy.
They all laughed.
'Someone might find something so good,' I pointed out casually, 'that it couldn't be detected, so the people who thought of it could go on with it for ever and never be found out.'
'Blimey,' exclaimed the cheerful lad, 'you're a comfort, aren't you? God help racing, if that happened. You'd never know where you were. The bookies would all be climbing the walls.' He grinned hugely.
The elderly little man was not so amused.
'It's been going on for years and years,' he said, nodding solemnly. 'Some trainers have got it to a fine art, you mark my words. Some trainers have been doping their horses regular, for years and years.'
But the other lads didn't agree. The dope tests had done for the dope-minded trainers of the past; they had lost their licences, and gone out of racing. The old rule had been a bit unfair on some, they allowed, when a trainer had been automatically disqualified if one of his horses had been doped. It wasn't always the trainer's fault, especially if the horse had been doped to lose. What trainer, they asked, would nobble a horse he'd spent months training to win? But they thought there was probably more more doping since that rule was changed, not less. doping since that rule was changed, not less.
'Stands to reason, a doper knows now he isn't ruining the trainer for life, just one horse for one race. Makes it sort of easier on his conscience, see? More lads, maybe, would take fifty quid for popping the odd aspirin into the feed if they knew the stable wouldn't be shut down and their jobs gone for a burton very soon afterwards.'
They talked on, thoughtful and ribald; but it was clear that they didn't know anything about the eleven horses I was concerned with. None of them, I knew, came from any of the stables involved, and obviously they had not read the speculative reports in the papers, or if they had, had read them separately over a period of eighteen months, and not in one solid, collected, intense bunch, as I had done.
The talk faltered and died into yawns, and we went chatting to bed, I sighing to myself with relief that I had gone through the evening without much notice having been taken of me.
By watching carefully what the other lads did, I survived the next day also without any curious stares. In the early afternoon I took Sparking Plug from the stables into the paddock, walked him round the parade ring, stood holding his head while he was saddled, led him round the parade ring again, held him while the jockey mounted, led him out on to the course, and went up into the little stand by the gate with the other lads to watch the race.
Sparking Plug won. I was delighted. I met him again at the gate and led him into the spacious winner's unsaddling enclosure.
Colonel Beckett was there, waiting, leaning on a stick. He patted the horse, congratulated the jockey, who unbuckled his saddle and departed into the weighing room, and said to me sardonically, 'That's a fraction of his purchase price back, anyway.'
'He's a good horse, and absolutely perfect for his purpose.'
'Good. Do you need anything else?'
'Yes. A lot more details about those eleven horses... where they were bred, what they ate, whether they had had any illnesses, what cafes their box drivers used, who made their bridles, whether they had racing plates fitted at the meetings, and by which blacksmiths... anything and everything.'
'Are you serious?'
'Yes.'
'But they had nothing in common except that they were doped.'
'As I see it, the question really is what was it that they had in common that made it possible possible for them to be doped.' I smoothed Sparking Plug's nose. He was restive and excited after his victory. Colonel Beckett looked at me with sober eyes. for them to be doped.' I smoothed Sparking Plug's nose. He was restive and excited after his victory. Colonel Beckett looked at me with sober eyes.
'Mr Roke, you shall have your information.'
I grinned at him. 'Thank you; and I'll take good care of Sparking Plug... he'll win you all the purchase price, before he's finished.'
'Horses away,' called an official: and with a weak-looking gesture of farewell from Colonel Beckett's limp hand, I took Sparking Plug back to the racecourse stables and walked him round until he had cooled off.
There were far more lads in the hostel that evening as it was the middle night of the two-day meeting, and this time, besides getting the talk round again to doping and listening attentively to everything that was said, I also tried to give the impression that I didn't think taking fifty quid to point out a certain horse's box in his home stable to anyone prepared to pay that much for the information was a proposition I could be relied on to turn down. I earned a good few disapproving looks for this, and also one sharply interested glance from a very short lad whose outsize nose sniffed monotonously.
In the washroom in the morning he used the basin next to me, and said out of the side of his mouth, 'Did you mean it, last night, that you'd take fifty quid to point out a box?'
I shrugged. 'I don't see why not.'
He looked round furtively. It made me want to laugh. 'I might be able to put you in touch with someone who'd be interested to hear that for fifty per cent cut.'
'You've got another think coming,' I said offensively. 'Fifty per cent... what the hell do you think I am?'
'Well... a fiver, then,' he sniffed, climbing down.
'I dunno...'
'I can't say fairer than that,' he muttered.
'It's a wicked thing, to point out a box,' I said virtuously, drying my face on a towel.
He stared at me in astonishment.
'And I couldn't do it for less than sixty, if you are taking a fiver out of it.'
He didn't know whether to laugh or spit. I left him to his indecision, and went off grinning to escort Sparking Plug back to Yorkshire.
Chapter 5.
Again on Friday evening I went down to the Slaw pub and exchanged bug-eyed looks with Soupy across the room.
On the Sunday half the lads had the afternoon off to go to Burndale for the football and darts matches, and we won both, which made for a certain amount of back slapping and beer drinking. But beyond remarking that I was new, and a blight on their chances in the darts league, the Burndale lads paid me little attention. There was no one like Soupy among them in spite of what October had said about the cases of doping in the village, and no one, as far as I could see, who cared if I were as crooked as a cork-screw.