For Kicks - Страница 11

"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 Bumdale, 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 the 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, poly vinyl-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 class 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, farther 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 riffraff 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 press gang 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 that the nearest was nearly two bus less 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.

'. nob bled him with a squirt of acid as he walked out of the bleeding paddock. "

'. gave him such a whacking dollop of stopping powder that he died in his 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 bucketful 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. "