‘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 and 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.
11
We sat down to lunch just before noon, by which time some other guests had arrived, making twenty of us in all in the box.
‘I’m sorry we have to eat so early,’ said Derrick, ushering everyone in from the balcony. ‘It’s high time they installed some floodlights at Sandown so that racing could be later in the day during the winter.’
We were seated at two round tables for ten and I found myself placed between Gay Smith and an attractive young woman in a smart tweed suit whom I had been spying from afar ever since she’d arrived.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘My name’s Henri, Henrietta Shawcross.’
‘Jeff Hinkley,’ I replied, shaking her hand.
‘Oh, I know who you are,’ Henri said. ‘I think everyone here does. You’re Derrick’s superhero.’
‘He exaggerates.’
‘How did you do it?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Save his horse.’
‘I merely uncovered a conspiracy to steal the horse and set a trap to catch the villains in the act. It was nothing very special.’
She looked disappointed. ‘It must have been a tiny bit exciting.’
I thought back. It had been far more worrying than exciting as I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure that it would happen and I’d mobilized the whole of the BHA integrity team plus several members of the Thames Valley Police Force.
We had secretly lain in wait outside the Ascot racecourse stables for nearly two hours and I was worried that I’d been wrong and would look foolish if nothing happened. But, thankfully, right on cue, the bad guys had turned up just as Secret Ways was being unloaded from the horsebox that had brought him to the racecourse.
One of them had managed to knock over the groom and even had his hand on the horse’s halter when the trap was sprung.
In truth, it had been very satisfying and, yes, rather exciting.
‘A tiny bit,’ I agreed with a smile. ‘What do you do?’
‘I work for a recruitment agency,’ she said. ‘We recruit chefs, waiters and waitresses for the catering business.’
‘And is that a tiny bit exciting?’ I asked.
‘Don’t poke fun at me,’ she said, slightly offended. ‘I work hard at my job and I enjoy it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’ Just funny. And it had backfired. ‘So how long have you known Derrick?’ I asked, trying to change the subject.
‘I met him for the first time today,’ she said. ‘I’m here with my uncle.’ She pointed at Sir Richard Reynard, who was sitting at the other table.
I must have involuntarily raised a questioning eyebrow.
She laughed. ‘No, really, he is my uncle. I promise you. He’s my mother’s elder brother. I’m only here because my aunt Mary couldn’t make it. She’s organizing a Christmas fair in their local church hall so Uncle Richard asked me to come with him instead.’
‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’
‘Shut up,’ she said, laughing and bashing me playfully on the arm. ‘It’s true, I tell you.’
‘OK, I believe you,’ I said between guffaws. ‘But countless others might not.’
‘What are you two laughing at?’ asked Gay Smith, turning towards us.
‘Miss Goody Two-shoes here is trying to tell me she came here with her uncle while I’m convinced he’s actually her sugar daddy.’
‘From what I’ve heard,’ Gay said, ‘Henrietta Shawcross doesn’t need a sugar daddy. And, yes, Sir Richard Reynard is indeed her uncle.’
That put me in my place.
‘Sorry,’ I said again.
‘Don’t be,’ Henri said. ‘That’s the best laugh I’ve had in ages.’
‘Do you know anyone else here?’ I asked her.
‘A few,’ she said.
I dropped my voice. ‘How about the suntanned couple at the other table. The wife is sitting next to your uncle.’
‘You mean Theresa and Martin.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Exactly.’
‘Martin’s my cousin. Uncle Richard is his father. Martin’s the one who’s mad keen on racing. He’s the real reason why we’re all here. Martin and Theresa want Uncle Richard to start owning racehorses. They’ve roped Derrick Smith in to help them convince him it’s a good idea.’
I nodded. ‘Your cousin and Derrick both have houses in the Cayman Islands,’ I said.
‘Yes. I’ve been there. It’s lovely.’
A waitress placed a potted shrimp starter in front of me. I wanted to go on talking to Henri about Martin Reynard but Gay put her hand on my arm as if to indicate she wanted my full attention.
‘So you work for the Jockey Club?’ she said, taking a mouthful of the shrimps.
‘Sort of,’ I replied. ‘Not actually for the Jockey Club, but I do work for the racing authorities. I’m an investigator.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought there was enough to investigate for it to be a full-time job.’
‘There’s plenty to keep me busy, believe me, and the other four investigators in my team. There is always someone trying to beat the system and, if it’s against the rules, our job is to stop them.’
‘Is it possible to beat the system without breaking the rules?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘And some trainers are very good at it.’
‘How?’ Gay asked.
‘It’s called beating the handicapper,’ I said. ‘Other than those just starting out on their racing careers, every horse in training in the UK is given an official handicap rating each Tuesday depending on how it has run and how those it has raced against have also performed. If a horse runs well compared to others, its rating will go up and, if it runs badly, the rating will go down. And the rating is used to determine the weight it has to carry in handicap races.’
‘So?’ she asked, puzzled.
‘For a horse to be officially rated it has to either win a race, or it has to have run in three races and be placed in the first six in at least one of them. Suppose a trainer has a horse that has been specifically bred to be good at middle and long distances. He runs it in three moderate sprints over just five furlongs as a young, green two-year-old and, predictably, it doesn’t do very well but it does manage to come in sixth in one of them, maybe out of only six or seven runners. So the horse gets an official rating that is very low but, crucially, it is now qualified to run in handicaps.
‘The trainer then doesn’t run the horse again until the following year, by which time it has fully developed and is ready to race over a much greater distance. The trainer now places it in a mile-and-a-half handicap for horses with similarly poor ratings and, not surprisingly, it wins easily. If the trainer goes on entering the horse in the right races, it can run up a whole series of wins against moderate opposition before the handicapper “catches up” and raises its rating to a more appropriate value.’