Front Runner (7 page)

The horse had hit the hurdle hard and had pitched forward on
landing, stumbling badly and almost going down on its knees. Bill McKenzie, the jockey, had had little chance of remaining in the saddle and had gone past the horse's head onto the turf. He'd even received a kick or two for his trouble.

But I was more interested in what had happened in the run-up to the jump.

Wisden Wonder had been lying fifth of the eight runners at the time and had been closely following the two right in front of him, who were side by side. Wisden Wonder had seemingly not even seen the obstacle until he was upon it. If he'd been given any warning by McKenzie to jump, he had failed to act.

“Is there a problem?” asked the technician.

“No,” I said. “No problem.”

“The stewards had a look at the same incident after the race, but they didn't seem that bothered. They only watched it once.”

“Do you know if they interviewed the jockey?” I asked.

“I doubt it. I think he went straight off to the hospital.”

I'd been so engaged watching Leslie Morris collect his winnings that I hadn't noticed what had happened to the jockey.

“I'll take a look at the stewards' report,” I said, standing up. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

I left him to his electronics and walked across the weighing room to the medical room.

“Bill McKenzie?” I asked one of the nursing staff, showing her my ID card.

“He's gone to Kingston Hospital,” she said. “Possible concussion after a fall.”

“How was he when he left here?”

“Conscious,” she said, “but confused. The doctor did some concussion tests that all showed negative, but he was still slightly
worried about the apparent confusion so he sent him for a CT scan of his head just to be on the safe side. You can't be too sure with head injuries.”

“Did he go in an ambulance?” I asked.

She shook her head. “In a car, with my colleague.”

Why did I think that it was rather convenient for him not to have to answer any difficult questions about his fall?

S
o do you think he fell off deliberately?”

“I'm not sure that he intended coming right off. Maybe he just wanted Wisden Wonder to blunder badly and lose interest in the race. But I do think it is something worth looking at again.”

I was speaking on the phone to Paul Maldini on Saturday morning.

“Are you going back to Sandown again today?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I thought I might.”

I actually had an invitation to lunch in a private box, but I wasn't going to tell Paul that. He'd want to know who with, and why, and I didn't want to tell him. He may not have approved.

“Is McKenzie riding at Sandown today?” Paul asked.

“That depends on whether the scans showed anything. He's still down in the
Racing Post
to ride, but he won't be if he was concussed yesterday.”

All jockeys are stood down from riding for at least a week with concussion, often longer.

“Will you speak to him if he's there?”

“That's up to you,” I said. “I'm not sure that I should. If there
was
something dodgy about that race, do we want to show our hand just yet or do we want to investigate further on the quiet? McKenzie will know immediately that something's up if I question him and he would most likely then tell Morris. At the moment, I think we can assume that neither of them believes we are suspicious about that race and I'd really like to keep it that way.”

“Why is that so important?” Paul would have gone straight in and questioned Leslie Morris and Bill McKenzie, maybe even calling them in to a disciplinary panel in the offices at High Holborn.

“The tip-off we received stated only that Morris was placing bets for a friend who was excluded. We don't know who his friend is. If we alert Morris now, it becomes far more difficult for me to find out. He would simply go to ground and cover his tracks. We would have no case.”

“But he might do it again,” Paul said. “The BHA can't be seen to be allowing something that's against the Rules of Racing to happen for a second time, not when we know already it's happened before.”

“Then I'd better catch him quickly.”

“OK,” he said slowly, as if not fully convinced. “You do as you think best for the moment. And keep me informed.”

“Will do.”

“And you also believe the betting on the race was suspect?”

“I certainly do,” I said. “As far as I can tell, Morris backed every horse in the race except Wisden Wonder, which was the six-to-four favorite.”

“Mmm, that does sound rather dubious.”

“I think it sounds considerably more than rather dubious,” I said. “It sounds positively dishonest.”

“Do we need to send in the police?”

“No,” I said quickly, “not yet. We need to be sure before we do anything.” Paul was again for jumping in with both feet. “If we call in the police, I won't be able to investigate anything further—they wouldn't allow it. And we don't want another high-profile race-fixing trial to collapse from lack of evidence. I'm not even a hundred percent sure that Morris did back everything except Wisden Wonder. The bookies were not that helpful.”

“They never are.”

Paul didn't like bookmakers, although he had to admit that without any betting racing would surely die.

It was the gambling public that ultimately delivered the revenue on which the sport depended. Everyone was trying to back a winner, but it was the losers we relied on.

The only sure way of backing a winner was to bet on
every
horse running in the race and that approach was unlikely to make you any profit.

Suppose you want to end up with a return of a hundred pounds.

On a horse quoted at four-to-one, you would win four pounds for each one you stake, provided the horse won the race. So if you bet twenty pounds with a bookmaker, you would win eighty. You would also get back your stake of twenty, hence the bookmaker would pay out one hundred pounds.

If the horse was at nine-to-one, you would need to bet ten pounds on it so that if it comes in first you win ninety pounds, plus your stake of ten, giving you the hundred you want. For a horse at odds of six-to-four, you would win six pounds for every four pounds you bet, so if you staked forty pounds and won you
would win sixty. Add back your stake of forty and you would have your return of a hundred.

In this way, you can calculate how much you would need to bet on each horse to have one hundred pounds in your hand after the race.

It sounds simple.

However, there is a major snag.

In order to be sure of having a hundred pounds after the race, you would have to bet more than a hundred pounds in the first place. You would always back the winner but you would lose money each time. In fact, you would have to bet, on average, about a hundred and ten pounds on each race to receive back just a hundred.

That is how bookmakers make their money. Provided they have done their sums right and posted odds in the correct ratios to encourage an even spread of bets on all the horses, they will take in a hundred and ten pounds for every hundred they have to pay out.

This is why the odds can change as the betting continues in the minutes before the race. If a bookmaker is taking too much money on a certain horse and not enough on another, he will shorten the odds on the first horse to deter further bets and lengthen them on the second horse to encourage bets.

No one in their right mind would stake a hundred and ten pounds on a race to get back only a hundred, but if you knew for sure that the six-to-four shot was
not going to win
, you wouldn't have to bet the forty pounds on that horse. You would only have to stake seventy pounds to be certain of winning a hundred, irrespective of which of the other horses won.

That looks like a good bet—in fact, it's a surefire winner.

If that is what had been going on in the race at Sandown, then to end up with twenty-four thousand pounds in his coat pockets Morris had needed to stake sixteen thousand eight hundred pounds. That gave him a tidy profit of over seven thousand pounds on just the one race—a return on his investment of over forty percent at a time when bank interest rates were at an historic low—and with absolutely no risk of losing his money.

No risk, that was, unless an undercover investigator like me had spotted what was going on.

—

S
ANDOWN
P
ARK
racetrack on the first Saturday afternoon in December was heaving with people, all of them in great spirits under a sunny sky.

Tingle Creek day had finally arrived and there was huge excitement as the country's leading two-mile chasers were set to go head-to-head. In addition, there were numerous Christmas-themed stalls and festive music provided by a band of badly dressed elves, together with a scruffy Santa.

On this day, I was here as myself, having put the wig, beanie and glasses back in the closet, along with the khaki chinos and the olive green anorak. Instead, I was trying to be respectable in a suit and tie for my lunch engagement in Derrick Smith's private box.

I arrived at the racetrack early, having again taken a train from Willesden Junction to Esher via Clapham Junction. It was highly unusual for me to have such an exciting invitation and I didn't want to be late.

Having arrived early, I used the time to wander around the enclosures, soaking up the atmosphere while also keeping my
eyes open for any wrongdoing. Fortunately, there was none I could spot that would keep me from my lunch, so I presented myself as requested at the box at half past eleven.

“My dear boy, come in, come in,” welcomed Mr. Smith at the door, extending his hand once again and shaking mine vigorously. “So glad you could make it. Here, have some champagne.”

He passed me a glass full of the sparkling golden liquid from a tray being held by one of the waiters.

“Thank you,” I said. “It is lovely to be here. You are very kind.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “It is
I
who should be grateful to you.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Come and meet my wife.”

He guided me out to the balcony, where there were already more than a dozen people holding drinks and chatting among themselves.

“Gaysie, darling,” Derrick said loudly, causing all the conversations to stop. “Can I introduce Jeff Hinkley? He's the young man who prevented Secret Ways from being stolen at Ascot in June.”

All the heads turned toward me.

I wished he hadn't broadcast the fact so openly. It had been an undercover operation, and even those arrested still had no idea that it had been me who had caused their downfall. Without my knowledge or agreement, the BHA chairman had taken it upon himself to inform the horse's owner of all the details, albeit supposedly in strict confidence.

“It's all meant to be hush-hush,” I said quietly to Derrick.

“Nonsense,” he said. “Give credit where credit's due. Secret Ways went on to win the Coventry Stakes and he's favorite for
next year's Guineas. Without you, young Jeff, he'd have ended up as dog meat.” He slapped me on the back, smiling broadly.

A slight, very attractive blonde-haired woman came over from one of the groups.

“Mr. Hinkley,” she said. “I'm Gay Smith, Derrick's wife.”

“I'm delighted to meet you,” I said, shaking the offered hand. “It is very kind of you to invite me.”

“Derrick was very taken with the idea,” she said, smiling at her husband. “He's been singing your praises to anyone who'll listen.”

I was beginning to think that accepting his invitation to lunch had been a mistake. I had only done so out of self-indulgence and vanity.

“It was just part of my job,” I said.

“And a job well done,” Derrick said. “Come on and meet the others.”

He introduced me to another of his guests before disappearing off to greet some new arrivals.

“I hear you're Derrick's personal James Bond,” said a laughing Alfie Hart, one of the country's top trainers, who I knew by reputation but had never actually met before. “All that cloak-and-dagger stuff must be exciting.”

“Not at all,” I said. “I'd hardly describe lying in wet ditches or picking through someone's smelly garbage as particularly exciting. Certainly not as exciting as training a Breeders' Cup winner.”

He smiled at me and I smiled back. Alfie Hart had trained the winner of the previous October's Breeders' Cup Mile and I could tell he was pleased that I knew.

“I'm surprised to see you at a jumps meeting,” I said to him. “I thought you trained exclusively on the flat.”

“I do,” he said. He looked about him and lowered his voice. “But one never says no to Derrick.”

“No,” I agreed. And not, I thought, when Derrick has more than a dozen seriously good horses in one's stable.

Alfie went back inside the box to get himself a refill of champagne, but I was not alone for long. Derrick returned with the tall gray-haired man I'd seen with him the previous week.

“This is Sir Richard Reynard,” Derrick said.

“We met at Newbury.”

“Yes, of course you did. Sir Richard is fairly new to racing and I'm trying to convince him to buy a horse.”

“Derrick's just been telling me about your exploits at Ascot,” Sir Richard said. “I'm very impressed.”

“Thank you,” I said, “I was only doing my job.”

“And what job is that?” he asked.

“I'm an investigator for the British Horseracing Authority,” I said.

“Is there much in horseracing to investigate?”

“Some,” I said. “Maybe not as much as some people would have you believe, but enough to keep me occupied.”

He smiled. “So is it safe enough for me to invest in a horse?”

“It depends on what you mean by
safe
,” I said. “Very few racehorse owners make a positive return on their investment. Most do it for the love of the sport and the thrill of winning races—even if the prize money doesn't usually cover the training fees, let alone the capital outlay.”

I could tell he didn't think much of that.

“But Derrick says there are fortunes to be made from breeding.”

“Only if you are lucky enough, like him, to have owned a Derby winner,” I said. “Almost all male horses in the jumping game are geldings.”

“I wasn't considering the jumping game,” he said, staring into space.

From the look on his face, I imagined he was visualizing himself leading the winner into the famous Derby unsaddling circles at Epsom or Churchill Downs. It was a fantasy that most owners entertained at some point in their lives yet only a handful of them ever fulfilled it in reality.

“Jeff,” said Gay Smith, taking my arm. “Come and meet some friends of ours from the Cayman Islands.”

She guided me to the other end of the balcony, where a smartly dressed suntanned couple were standing together holding half-full glasses of champagne. I would have put them both in their early to mid-forties.

“Theresa and Martin,” Gay called to them, “meet Jeff Hinkley.”

We shook hands.

“Gay says you live in the Cayman Islands,” I said.

“That's right,” said Theresa. “We have a house on Seven Mile Beach not that far from Gay and Derrick's place.”

“Have you been there long?” I asked.

“Ten years now,” Theresa replied. “We love it there, don't we, Martin?”

Martin didn't say anything, but I was used to him not replying.

Martin was the man who had turned away from me on the balcony of the hospitality room at Newbury on Hennessy Gold Cup day. The man who was then being told that he was a total fucking idiot.