FRIDAY WAS ANOTHER bright summer morning, but this particular day was special. Nineteen years ago, our much-loved daughter had arrived in the world at twenty past two in the morning.
Georgina and I had desperately wanted a daughter to complete our family, but we had no idea what sex the baby would be until she had popped out after a relatively easy labour—much easier than that for James two years previously.
Mother and baby had spent three nights in hospital as little Amanda had developed postnatal jaundice and she had needed to be kept in an incubator under a special lamp, so I, as the proud dad, had taken toddler James in to meet his little sister.
I remembered it as being a very happy time.
My new Victrix Racing business had been expanding rapidly, and we’d had more than our fair share of initial success, while Georgina and I had begun the search for our new forever home. But here and now, nineteen years later, those happy days seemed to have deserted us.
When I had finished speaking to the trainers at ten o’clock, there had still not been a birthday telephone call or a text message from Amanda to her mother, and we still had no idea of her new number. Needless to say, Darren was not answering our calls.
“We must go and see her,” Georgina said tearfully when I went back into the kitchen.
“No, we must not,” I replied firmly. “You heard what Amanda said the other night. We would only make things worse.”
Georgina looked at me. “How could things get worse than this?”
Little did she know.
I hadn’t originally planned to go to Lingfield races on Saturday evening, expecting to spend the afternoon at Haydock watching one of Victrix’s northern trained horses run in the Group 3 John of Gaunt Stakes, but events changed all that.
The post in our village normally didn’t arrive until well into the afternoon, and Friday’s was no exception. I was in the kitchen making myself a cheese sandwich for a late lunch when I heard the letters drop through the slot in the front door.
I went to collect them.
As always there was the usual unsolicited junk mail offering a free gift if I were to visit a newly constructed local retirement home, some clothes catalogues for Georgina, and a couple of utility bills. There were also three envelopes addressed to Amanda that I assumed were birthday cards, but it was the plain white envelope with my name and address written on it in bold, black, capital letters that particularly caught my eye.
I used a knife from the cutlery drawer to slit open the end of the envelope, and then I withdrew the single sheet of paper from inside. Written on it in the same bold, black, capital letters were just two lines:
DREAM FILLER WILL LOSE
I KNOW WHERE SHE IS HIDING
I studied the front of the envelope. A single first-class stamp had been franked with three wavy lines alongside some printed words that showed that it had been through a sorting machine at the Royal Mail Swindon Mail Centre at precisely 16:19 and 50 seconds the previous afternoon.
There was nothing else to show where it had been posted, or by whom.
I stuffed the paper and the envelope into my trouser pocket.
Who could be doing this? Did I really believe his threats?
But could I afford not to?
So, on Saturday morning, I called the northern trainer of my Haydock runner and apologised for not being able to be there for the John of Gaunt Stakes after all, and set off southeast for Lingfield in Surrey instead.
The one-mile Class 6 Handicap for three-year-olds was the first race on the card, due off at 5.35, and I wanted to be there a good hour and a half beforehand, even though I had little idea of what I was going to do, if anything.
I had some mad idea of perhaps claiming in the parade ring that Dream Filler was lame and shouldn’t be allowed to race. Being withdrawn was not what Squeaky Voice had said he wanted—he’d said the horse should run—but it might be better for him than the horse winning.
The traffic on the M25 was lighter than normal, and I arrived at Lingfield Park Racecourse at quarter past three, more than two hours before the first race. I parked in the car park across the road from the main entrance, and I was so early that I had to wait fifteen minutes before the gates were opened.
Lingfield Park had always been one of my favourite racecourses, and I could well remember being brought here as a child by my father.
That had been before the installation of the first British all-weather racetrack at Lingfield in the late 1980s. Since then the building of a new grandstand, a hotel complex, and other developments have transformed the racecourse into one of the most popular in the country, with some sixty-seven race days throughout the year.
Many of the summer evening fixtures had music acts playing after racing on a stage set up on the paddock lawn, and I noticed from the racecard that today would be one of those, with a well-known band performing. It was the racecourse’s way of attracting more people through the turnstiles, especially the young, who would come by train from London to Lingfield station, conveniently positioned adjacent to the racecourse.
I had called Owen Reynolds before I left home, to tell him I was coming and that I would meet him in the saddling boxes before the first race. In the meantime, I wandered around, enjoying the June afternoon sunshine.
As always when at the races, I was wearing a jacket and tie, this time a lightweight, blue-checked sports coat and a yellow tie, but it was so hot that I took the jacket off and slung it over my shoulder.
I may have looked to anyone else as if I was relaxed and enjoying myself, but my mind was spinning as I tried to work out if there was anything I could do to stop Dream Filler from winning.
I convinced myself there was nothing.
I could hardly offer Tim Westlake, Dream Filler’s jockey, a backhander to lose the race on purpose—he would simply report me to the authorities, and then my world would begin to crumble around my ears. The penalties for attempting to fix a race, whether successful or not, were intentionally severe to deter anyone from trying it.
Never mind the potential criminal fraud conviction and likely prison sentence that would follow, the worldwide racing authorities would almost certainly ban me for life from being a syndicate manager and from ever setting foot on a racecourse or in a registered training stable anywhere in the world. Any mitigating pleas of threats or coercion would simply be swept aside.
No, I would just have to hope for the best that, on this occasion, Dream Filler would be one of the two-thirds of favourites that didn’t win.
But what about next time?
About forty minutes before the first race, Dream Filler was led into the pre-parade ring.
He had probably been at the racecourse for at least a couple of hours and would have been settled into the racecourse stables to recover from the journey from East Ilsley. On arrival, the horse’s identity would have been checked by a racecourse official by taking a scan of the microchip embedded in his neck—to ensure he was actually the horse the trainer claimed him to be, and not an imposter.
I leaned on the white rail of the pre-parade ring and watched him being walked round, led by one of Owen’s stable staff. He looked sound, well, and eager for the race. Some horses just knew what being at a racecourse meant, and Dream Filler was clearly one of those, looking around him and savouring the building atmosphere as more and more racegoers arrived.
Owen showed up carrying Tim Westlake’s saddle, saddle pad, and weight cloth. They would have been weighed, along with Tim himself, to check that together they matched the nine stone and seven pounds as decreed by the handicapper, plus the three-pound allowance given for the jockey’s safety vest.
The safety vest, or back protector, is mandatory for all jockeys to wear under their silks, so it is weighed, whereas an approved racing helmet, known as a skull cap, is also compulsory equipment but is not weighed.
Owen would have collected the saddle and other things from Tim in the weighing room in order to put them on the horse. Now he walked over to one of the vacant saddling boxes and waved for the stable lad to bring the horse over.
I went over to join them.
“Do you think he looks a bit lame?” I asked. “Front nearside leg?”
“Really?” Owen said. “I thought he was fine. We’d better check.”
He put the saddle and associated equipment over the half-height wooden partition between the saddling boxes and told the lad to take the horse back out to the pre-parade ring. I slung my jacket over the partition next to the saddle and followed them.
Owen and I watched as the lad led him around a couple more circuits.
“He looks absolutely fine to me,” Owen said.
And he did.
“I still think we should get a vet to check him over,” I said. “Just to be sure. He looks all right now, but I still feel he was favouring that leg earlier.”
Owen sucked air through his teeth in frustration, but I suspect he felt that if I was concerned, then perhaps he should do as I’d asked. After all, I was the syndicate manager for by far the best horse in his stable yard, and he surely wouldn’t want to rock that particular boat.
He would also know that if something were to happen to the horse in the race, after a vet had cleared him to run, he, Owen, couldn’t be held responsible.
“If you insist,” he said with clear irritation. He turned to the stable lad. “Keep him walking round. I’ll fetch the parade-ring vet to have a look at him.”
Every racecourse has a designated veterinary surgeon standing by for any such eventuality, and Owen went rushing off towards the weighing room to find him or her.
I went back into the saddling box and waited.
Presently, Owen returned with a man in a green uniform with “Racecourse Veterinary Surgeon” embroidered in yellow on his left breast. I went to join them. Together we watched as Dream Filler was led first towards us and then away again. The vet then felt all four legs of the horse, running his hand down the back, over the tendons, checking to see if there was any heat in them, which might indicate an injury.
“Nothing,” announced the vet, standing up straight. “He’s as sound as a bell. Clearly fit to race.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s much better to be safe than sorry.”
“Absolutely,” said the vet. “No problem.” And with that, he walked away towards the weighing room.
Owen resisted the temptation to say, “I told you so.”
“Right,” he said instead. “Let’s get this horse saddled before I’m fined for him being late into the parade ring.”
We all hurried back to the saddling box, and Owen busied himself with applying the tack while I collected my jacket. Finally all was ready, and the stable lad took the horse through into the main parade ring. Owen and I followed on behind, to meet up with the syndicate members.
“Sorry about that,” I said to Owen as we walked side by side. “I’m glad he’s fine.”
“As you said,” he replied, “it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
But nevertheless, I could tell he wasn’t very happy at my insistence on having a vet check the horse in spite of his own expert opinion that all was well.
To be fair, neither was I.
The syndicate members went to watch the race from the section on the grandstand steps reserved for owners and trainers while Owen and I remained in the parade ring to follow it on the nearby big-screen TV.
“I think we’ll have this,” Owen said to me with a smile. “I reckoned that Ferguson colt was the only other real danger to us, but he’s been sweating up badly in the ring, with bulging eyes, as if he was having a panic attack. That will drain a lot of his energy. I now think he has no chance against us.”
And the bookmakers clearly agreed with him. They all made Dream Filler the clear favourite, and he was quoted on some boards as short as two-to-one to be the winner.
I felt sick.
Today at Lingfield was what the racecourse described as a “mixed” meeting, insofar that some races were run on the all-weather artificial surface and others on the lush, green, grassy turf.
The opening three races were to be run on the all-weather track, and for this first one, the starting stalls were positioned at the one-mile start, which was at the beginning of the back straight.
I watched on the screen as the nine horses were each loaded into their allocated stall.
“They’re off!” called the racecourse commentator as the gates flew open.
Tim Westlake tucked Dream Filler in behind the two early leaders, up against the inside running rail, and he was still third as the field made its way around the long bottom turn into the finishing straight.
Now he eased the horse out slightly wider to give him a clear view ahead. Very smoothly, Dream Filler drifted up alongside the other two and then seemed to have a fresh turn of foot to leave them in his wake, while the Ferguson colt was going nowhere.
Dream Filler won the race by three lengths from his nearest challenger, without ever truly exerting himself, and part of me wondered if the Class 5 race would have been the better option after all.
“Dream Filler will lose. I know where she is hiding.”
Oh God!