‘He’s injured,’ said the doctor. ‘He won’t be able to speak to you.’
‘Why not?’ I said. ‘He’s broken his collarbone, not his jaw.’
‘Nevertheless, he might be in pain and he’s entitled to some privacy.’
Not if he’d been fixing races, I thought, but I didn’t say so.
If Bill McKenzie had been feeling rough on his way to the medical room, it was nothing to how he felt after he got there. I was the last person he wanted to see as he walked in from the ambulance, again supported by one of the paramedics.
‘Oh God!’ he said. ‘Leave me alone, will you? I’m bloody hurting.’
He sat down on the side of one of the two beds in the room.
‘The transport will be here shortly to take you to Kingston Hospital,’ the doctor said to him while giving me a disapproving stare. ‘You will need an X-ray of that shoulder.’
‘You seem to be making a habit of going to Kingston Hospital,’ I said, ignoring the doctor’s stare. ‘No confusion this time?’
‘What are you talking about?’ McKenzie said, but his eyes told me that he already knew.
The doctor gave me another stare but said nothing.
The ambulance to take him to hospital arrived, the two ambulance staff coming into the medical room with a narrow two-wheeled chair onto which they placed McKenzie.
I stood up as they began to wheel him out.
‘You can’t go with him,’ the doctor said firmly. ‘It’s in the BHA list of general instructions for racecourse medical services.’ He read from the manuaclass="underline" ‘Ambulances must not be used as a means of transport for any person other than the ambulance crew, injured Riders and an RMO treating an injured Rider.’
He looked very pleased with himself.
‘Unless permission is otherwise granted by the Authority,’ I added. ‘I act for the Authority and I’m giving permission. Anyway, I think you’ll find that regulation is for the racecourse ambulances, not those from elsewhere.’ I was also pleased with myself, but I didn’t show it. ‘Are you going with him?’
‘No,’ said the doctor. ‘I have to remain here.’
‘Then I will go as your representative,’ I said, smiling, ‘to ensure he gets the appropriate care.’
‘Are you medically trained?’
‘I was in Afghanistan with the army,’ I said. ‘All soldiers on operations have basic medical training. I certainly know enough to deliver a broken collarbone to hospital in an ambulance with two trained paramedics.’
I also knew how to stop someone bleeding to death when their foot was blown off by a landmine — I’d had to do that once too.
Bill McKenzie was far from happy when I climbed up into the ambulance after him.
‘Can’t you leave me alone?’ he whined.
The female paramedic in the back looked at me.
‘Ignore him,’ I said to her. ‘I’m here representing the British Horseracing Authority.’ I showed her my credentials.
‘Sit there,’ she said, pointing at a seat. So I did, as Bill McKenzie was transferred from the wheeled chair to a stretcher. Then the doors were closed, and off we went.
‘Don’t I get the bleeding bells and whistles?’ McKenzie said with disappointment as the ambulance turned silently into the traffic on Portsmouth Road.
The paramedic smiled at him. ‘It’s not an emergency,’ she said. ‘You’re not in any immediate danger of dying.’
He didn’t seem particularly reassured. With good reason.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘tell me about Wisden Wonder in yesterday’s novice hurdle.’
‘Bloody nag dumped me on the ground and kicked me, didn’t he? I’ve got a right sore head, I can tell you.’ He reached up with his right hand and touched behind his right ear.
‘You fell off,’ I said accusingly, hoping for a response.
‘You try staying on a bloody horse when it doesn’t even try to jump. Wisden Wonder was damn lucky not to fall proper and do himself some serious mischief.’
‘You didn’t give him any chance to jump,’ I said. ‘I’ve watched the videos over and over. You covered him up and made him run straight into that hurdle on purpose.’
‘Now, why would I do that?’ he asked. ‘Do you think I enjoy being thrown to the ground at thirty miles an hour and then kicked for my troubles? It bloody hurt.’
I feared I was getting nowhere. If he went on denying it, there would be little I could do. I couldn’t actually prove that he’d come off intentionally, although I was sure he had.
‘Do you know a racehorse owner called Leslie Morris?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Never heard of him.’
He tried his best to control his expression but there was a telltale widening of the pupils in his eyes and an involuntary slight flushing at the base of his neck. He knew Morris, all right.
‘How much did he pay you?’ I asked.
‘No one paid me anything.’
‘So why did you do it?’
‘I didn’t,’ he said, this time in more control. He leaned back onto the pillows and closed his eyes. ‘Can’t you get this thing to go any faster? My bloody shoulder’s killing me.’
‘Are you being blackmailed?’ I asked.
‘Blackmailed?’ he repeated with apparent surprise.
‘No more questions,’ said the paramedic bossily to me. She gave Bill a tube attached to a mouthpiece with which to suck in some painkilling gas.
I hoped it might also act as a truth drug.
13
I never did get back to Derrick and Gay Smith’s box for afternoon tea, as I spent the next three hours at Kingston Hospital with Bill McKenzie.
The X-ray confirmed that he had, indeed, broken his collarbone and I silently berated myself for not having fully believed it. Perhaps I would have been slightly more sympathetic if I had realized he wasn’t just trying to find another way of avoiding having to talk to me.
In fact, the break was pretty severe with the ends of the bones overlapping, so surgery was needed to realign them, and to have a plate and screws fitted to keep it that way.
I sat next to him as he lay on a trolley in a curtained-off emergency cubicle while we waited for the on-call orthopaedic surgeon to be roused from his Saturday-afternoon slumbers.
‘If you are not being blackmailed,’ I said, ‘why did you do it?’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said for the umpteenth time. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’
I still didn’t believe him.
‘The BHA will demand to see your phone records, you know. And those of Leslie Morris. If there’s been any contact between the two of you or the slightest bit of evidence that you’ve been lying to me, well... you can kiss goodbye to your career as a jockey. How old are you? Twenty-six?’ He nodded. ‘You’d be banned for so many years that you’d be far too old to come back.’ I paused. ‘You have a wife, don’t you?’
He nodded. ‘And a kid. Plus another one on the way.’
‘What will they do if you lose your livelihood?’
He looked miserable. ‘Why would I tell you anything even if I was up to no good? You’d ban me anyway. Do you think I’m stupid or something?’
‘Actually, yes, I do. Otherwise you would never have got mixed up with race fixing in the first place.’
He sighed deeply, which was clearly not a good move as the pain in his shoulder made him wince. ‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Try me,’ I said.
He started to cry.
While it was not the response I had been expecting, it was a change from the continual denials he had been spouting since we arrived.
Bill McKenzie was a competent and experienced jockey who was, perhaps, never going to reach the ‘superstar’ level, but he was doing all right. He was generally more at home on the small Midland courses where he rode frequently for a number of different trainers, although he had recently had rides at some of the bigger tracks as well. He was having his best ever season and currently stood tenth on the jockeys list with forty or so winners from about three hundred rides.