From my vantage point, I watched as a black van with ‘County Coroner’s Office’ painted in white lettering on its side arrived and drove up to the barn.
A little while later, the van departed, carrying, I presumed, the mortal remains of Hayden Ryder.
Soon after that the three veterinary technicians were called forward to collect blood samples from the horses.
That left me alone on the bus. Even the driver had deserted me and I hadn’t seen Tony since before the raid had gone in.
Meanwhile, life on the Churchill Downs backside went on as usual with horses being prepared from the other barns for their daily workout on the track.
True, there were more members of the media on site than might be normally expected three days before a big race, and the crews were from the TV news networks rather than from the sports channels, but the welfare and training of the horses still had to go on. It seemed it would take more than the shooting of a trainer to derail the Kentucky Derby juggernaut.
With over 170,000 spectators expected for the main event, some having paid in excess of $6,000 for a single ticket, it was the big annual occasion for Louisville. Every hotel room was full for a hundred miles around, and you had more chance of walking on water than getting a dinner reservation in a city-centre restaurant.
But only for the first Saturday in May.
For the rest of the year, Louisville returned to its regular, sleepy existence where the tourist highlights included an educational visit to the Louisville Slugger baseball-bat factory, or nostalgic trips to the birthplace and grave of Muhammad Ali.
Eventually Norman returned. He came up the steps into the bus and sat down on the seat opposite me.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked.
‘You know who I am,’ I replied. ‘Jeff Hinkley, from the BHA in London.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m on the international exchange scheme.’
‘Don’t give me that bullshit. I reckon you’re here to spy on us. I just don’t know yet who sent you.’
He’d clearly been a pretty good detective.
‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ I said, trying my best to control my voice and be all innocent.
‘You know things you shouldn’t, and you also do things you shouldn’t.’
‘Like what?’ I asked.
‘Like how did you get here from DC?’ he said. ‘Every single seat was taken on the direct flights. I know because I was trying to use my position at FACSA to get more without any success. The airlines told me they were already oversold, yet you made it here easily.’
‘I must have been lucky.’
‘I don’t believe in luck.’ He said it without a trace of humour in his voice. ‘But, most of all, how did you know it was Hayden Ryder who was shot?’
‘I told you,’ I said. ‘I recognised him.’
‘How?’
‘I’d researched him on the Internet.’
‘Why?’ he said slowly. ‘You shouldn’t have known anything about this raid. You certainly shouldn’t have known we were after Hayden Ryder.’
That had been careless of me.
I stared at him.
‘Who told you?’
‘I think you had better speak to the Deputy Director.’
‘I’m speaking to you.’ He said it with some real menace in his voice. ‘Who told you?’ he asked again.
I didn’t answer.
He removed his Glock 22C from its holster, cocked the mechanism, and pointed it right at me, somewhere between my eyes, from a distance of only a few inches.
‘I’ll not ask you again,’ he said calmly.
Was this really happening?
My head told me that he wouldn’t possibly pull the trigger, but my head hadn’t informed my heart, which was pounding away so fast that it felt in danger of bursting out of my chest altogether.
I’d had loaded guns pointed at me before but I’d never seen the business end of one quite so close up. I almost had to cross my eyes to focus on the.40-calibre black hole at the end of the barrel.
My mind started playing silly tricks, like wondering if I would have time to actually see the expanding bullet appearing before it took off the back of my head.
I decided it was time to come clean.
‘I was asked to find a mole in your organisation, someone who has been leaking confidential information to those you were meant to be investigating.’
The Glock 22C didn’t move a fraction of a millimetre.
For a moment I was worried that it was Norman who was the mole, and I had just signed my own death warrant.
‘So who told you about the raid?’
‘Tony Andretti,’ I said. ‘He gave me the details after your meeting in the offices on Monday.’
He dropped the gun down onto his lap and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
‘I wondered why he let you come on the bus when he knew it wasn’t a rehearsal.’
‘It was my idea to bring the operation forward to this morning. To reduce the chance that the information would leak or, at least, to reduce the time any leak could be acted upon.’
‘Why wasn’t I told?’ Norman said, but he was smart enough to work out the answer. I just looked at him.
After a few seconds, he nodded. It didn’t seem to make him any happier.
‘So who is the mole?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’
‘Will you go on looking?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. If I’m asked to.’
But I was now a little worried. It had been my carelessness that had allowed Norman to work out that I’d been highly economical with the truth.
I wondered who else might have come to the same conclusion.
By the time Norman finally allowed me off the bus, Tony had been summoned to Louisville City Hall to explain to the mayor why one of FACSA’s special agents had shot dead a prominent Kentucky racehorse trainer on his patch. And in the week of the Derby, too, when the entire world’s horseracing media was focused on Churchill Downs. It was the wrong kind of publicity, and most unwelcome.
My release from the bus, however, did not provide me with access to the barn at the centre of the action. That was still cordoned off by the yellow tape and the local police were proving far too vigilant at keeping me out.
Hence I was still standing close to the bus when a huge eighteen-wheel truck and trailer pulled up alongside.
‘Which one is Hayden Ryder’s barn?’ the driver called, leaning out of the window towards me.
‘The one behind the police tape,’ I said. ‘You can’t get there at the moment.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Someone got shot,’ I said.
The driver didn’t seem unduly surprised or worried. Shootings were commonplace.
‘I’ve come to pick up Ryder’s horses.’
That was quick, I thought. Hayden Ryder hadn’t yet been dead for four hours and someone was already here to take away his horses.
‘Where are you taking them?’ I asked.
‘Chattanooga.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Tennessee,’ said the driver. ‘Three hundred miles south.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Is this going to last long? I’ll have to get going by midday at the latest, or I’m stuck here overnight. I’d be out of hours.’
I looked at the side of his truck. ‘CHATTANOOGA HORSE TRANSPORT’ was painted in large black letters on the white side of the trailer.
‘Have you come from Chattanooga this morning?’ I asked him.
‘Sure have,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on the road since five.’
‘Five this morning?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Made really good time up I-65 from Nashville.’
‘How many horses are you collecting?’