‘Ignore them,’ I said.
Paul downed the rest of his Diet Coke. ‘I’d better be getting back. Thanks for the drink. And the encouragement.’
He turned with a slight wave and walked out of the pub.
In the five years I had worked at the BHA, that had been the longest and most civil conversation between us. He had constantly treated me as a naughty schoolboy and I had always thought of him as a bit of an idiot.
Perhaps it would be the start of an improved working relationship.
I passed that evening in much the same way as I now spent almost every other evening, sitting in an armchair in my kitchen-cum-sitting room, eating a microwaved ready meal off my knees and watching television.
What had happened to me?
I’d never before been one for sitting around doing nothing. I’d been a get-up-and-go person who had purposely chosen a path through life that had been interesting and exciting, even dangerous.
I’d joined the army straight out of school as an eager eighteen-year-old officer cadet at Sandhurst Military Academy, and had spent the next forty-four weeks without a single glimpse of a television set. I’d completed three six-month tours of Afghanistan as an intelligence officer and had survived some scary scraps when only my quick wits and good luck had kept me alive. Even my initial work at the BHA had been challenging, working mostly undercover amongst the criminal underbelly of racing.
But my promotion to ‘senior’ investigator status had changed much of that. I’d been given my own office and greater responsibility, but I now had far less freedom to push the boundaries of the law in order to get results. These days I was far more likely to interview possible miscreants as ‘myself’ than I was to follow them home in disguise and rummage through their rubbish bins at dead of night.
I was becoming respectable and I wasn’t sure I liked it.
And Lydia’s sudden exodus hadn’t helped.
It had always been me who had been keen to go out, to do something other than sitting at home in front of the television. But when she’d departed, my eagerness for the London nightlife had faded away as well.
If I went out to a bar on my own, I found that I resented the happy couples that surrounded me. And on the few occasions I’d been alone to the cinema, I missed the discussion about the film with a companion over a late-night drink or a pizza.
It was a catch-22 situation: I didn’t go out because I didn’t have anyone to go with, but I didn’t meet anyone because I didn’t go out.
I resolved to break free from this vicious circle of depression.
I would go out.
Maybe tomorrow, or the next day.
9
I spent Thursday cooped up in my office catching up on neglected paperwork but, on Friday, I escaped to Sandown Park for the first day of the Tingle Creek Christmas Festival meeting, named after the popular horse of the 1970s that had been a Sandown specialist.
These two days of racing were always very popular with the public and I was joined by many others as I walked the mile or so from Esher railway station to the racecourse entrance, some of them wearing bright red Christmas hats in true festive spirit.
I was there specifically to further a separate ongoing investigation into the conduct of a Mr Leslie Morris, who, according to an anonymous source, had been placing suspicious bets with racecourse bookmakers on behalf of a friend who was an excluded person. The source had also stated that Mr Morris would be at Sandown that afternoon to do it again.
An ‘excluded person’ was exactly that — excluded from any BHA licensed premises, which includes all racing stables, training gallops, equine pools and, in particular, anywhere on a British racecourse.
Sadly, there was nothing in the Rules of Racing that prevented an excluded person from placing bets, either on an internet betting site or in a high-street betting shop, but neither of those methods was very anonymous. The internet sites kept computer records and needed the account holder’s credit card details, while all betting shops were now equipped with closed-circuit television that recorded every transaction over the counter.
Until they also started introducing personal CCTV, only the racecourse bookmakers provided a suitable opportunity for someone to place untraceable bets. And it was not uncommon for a single bet of a thousand pounds or more to be made in cash with the racecourse bookies, especially at the big meetings like the Tingle Creek Festival.
Mr Leslie Morris was a BHA-registered racehorse owner and, as such, was subject to Rule (A)30.3, which states that a registered person must not associate with a person who is excluded in connection with horseracing in Great Britain unless he obtains the prior permission of the Authority.
Placing bets on behalf of an excluded person was definitely an association in connection with horseracing, and no such prior permission had been granted.
I waited for Leslie Morris near the entrance to the racecourse enclosures.
I knew what he looked like because I had studied the pictures of him in BHA files, but I was sure he wouldn’t recognize me even if he had known me beforehand. I had resurrected one of my favourite disguises, long dark wig under a brown beanie plus a goatee beard stuck to my face with latex-based glue. For good measure I had added a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.
I also wore an unremarkable olive-green anorak over an open-necked blue shirt and khaki chinos, the perfect gear for spending time in the betting ring.
I was beginning to worry that I might have missed him when he appeared in a full-length dark grey overcoat, brown leather gloves and a blue felt fedora covering his white hair. I smiled to myself. He couldn’t have worn something easier for me to follow if he’d tried.
But I had to do more than simply follow him. I had to get close enough to observe which horses he backed and how much he staked.
I followed him in through the main entrance foyer, where he used his racehorse owners’ pass to gain entry.
He turned right and went into the gents, so I hung around outside until he reappeared. I suppose he might have gone in there to meet someone but I would have been taking too much of a chance to follow him into such a small space and then to be very close to him later in the betting ring.
I kept about ten to fifteen yards behind him as he made his way towards the owners and trainers’ facility next to the weighing room, where there was complimentary food on offer and a cash bar.
The first race was about to start and I walked over to lean on the white rail around the unsaddling enclosure in front of the weighing room, as if waiting for the horses to return, but all the while keeping an eye on the door to the bar.
Leslie Morris remained inside the owners and trainers’ bar throughout both the first and second races and appeared again only as the runners for the third were being saddled and taken to the parade ring.
By this stage, I had shifted my position over to the far side of the weighing room to be less conspicuous and, from there, I was able to observe as he made his way over to the paddock rail and stood close to the point where the horses would leave to go out to the track.
Once the horses had all passed him, he walked through the grandstand and out to the betting ring beyond, with me in close formation behind him.
There were more than fifty bookmakers located in three rows, with more on the rail between the ring and the premier enclosure.
‘Come on. Let’s be having you,’ shouted one of the bookies as I walked nearby. ‘Best value here. Six-to-four the field.’
I looked up at his board with the horse names and the odds brightly lit up in yellow and red lights. There were eight runners in the race and the prices varied from the favourite at six-to-four to a couple of rank outsiders quoted at fifty- and hundred-to-one respectively.