Quite apart from the five horses, there was a mass of other stuff to go — feed, tack, buckets, blankets, bedding, pitchforks and brooms — not to mention our own personal effects.
There had been a few murmurings from Raworth’s other grooms, but not because I had been chosen to go to Pimlico ahead of them, rather for the reason their individual workloads would increase here due to me being away.
Charlie Hern told them to shut up and get on with it, or leave. ‘There are plenty of others wanting your jobs,’ he warned them. In my opinion, it wasn’t the best example of how to conduct relations with one’s labour force, but I didn’t say so. I just got on with the loading.
Diego was a pain. Twice he purposely knocked things out of my hands as I was carrying them to the vehicle.
‘Estúpido gringo,’ he said each time. But he was the stupid one, I thought. I wouldn’t fancy a year on Rikers Island for any money.
George Raworth drove a white Jeep Cherokee four-by-four right up inside the barn at the far end from the office, next to the drug store.
Charlie Hern had been in there for a while busily filling boxes with pills, potions and other paraphernalia, and these were now put into the Jeep, along with the CryoBank flask.
George and Charlie carried the heavy white metal cylinder out of the drug store together, each holding one of the handles, and then they lifted it into the vehicle, placing it upright behind the front passenger seat. They did it when they thought all the grooms were otherwise engaged and wouldn’t notice. But I’d been keeping a special eye out to see if they would take it.
But I still had no idea why.
Finally, when everything else was packed, the five horses were loaded into the trailer.
I led Debenture out from Stall 2, patting him all the while on the neck to keep him calm. Horses generally don’t like any changes to their routine. It can make them nervous, and half a ton of skittish horseflesh can cause a lot of damage both to themselves and anyone close by. That’s partly why the five-year-old gelding went in first. He was the old man of the five, the other four being three-year-olds, and his presence on board should help settle the younger horses.
Next, Ladybird, the filly, was loaded, going into a stall at the rear of the trailer behind a solid partition. It was not ideal to take colts and a filly on the same transport, as the very presence of the filly could make the colts become excited. Hence the use of a solid partition and the placing of the filly at the rear so that, as the vehicle moved, the airflow prevented the colts from smelling her. I knew of one transport operator in England who sometimes resorted to smearing Vicks VapoRub into the colts’ nostrils to overpower the smell of fillies travelling in the same horsebox.
Fire Point was the last of the horses to be loaded.
He appeared to be in perfect condition, the muscles in his neck standing out sharply and those in his flanks rippling gently under his short summer chestnut coat. Keith coaxed him up the ramp and into his travelling stall in the trailer. All the horses had thick bandages wrapped around their legs and rubber boots on their hooves to reduce the chance of injury caused by a bump or kick, but Fire Point went in without anything more than a shake of his narrow head, as if he already knew he was the star of the show.
Keith and I rode in the back with the horses while Diego and Maria were up front in the cab with the driver. It was an arrangement with which I was very happy. I didn’t have to keep my eyes on Diego to prevent him niggling me, or worse, and I didn’t have to fight off Maria’s sexual advances. Not that I really wanted to, but the fallout from Diego wasn’t worth the reward.
Our route went right through New York City and I was able to glimpse some of the iconic sights of Manhattan, including the Empire State Building, before it all disappeared from view as we descended into the Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River, and on into New Jersey.
Keith lay down on some bales of straw and went to sleep, while I counted the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, as in the Simon and Garfunkel song.
Was I looking for America?
No, I didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. True, I was enjoying the challenge of working undercover again, but my life seemed to be drifting by.
During my time with the army in Afghanistan I’d felt there was a purpose, a goal, even if that goal now appeared somewhat blurred since the British forces had pulled out and everything had started to return to how it was before.
Then, when I joined the BHA, I believed I had enlisted in a righteous crusade to weed out corruption and wrongdoing. I was the standard bearer — prepared to do almost anything in the fight for justice. But, over the years, the shine on my shield had dulled as I became increasingly snowed under with procedures and paperwork.
Even my love life was in tatters.
At twenty-three, and as the youngest captain in the Intelligence Corps, I had felt like a sexual god, an Adonis, with a string of gorgeous young women hanging on my every word and deed. Between operational tours overseas, I had fully satisfied my desires, running up a reputation as a bit of a Casanova.
But, aged twenty-six, I had bucked the trend of my army colleagues by abandoning the exploits of the past, leaving the service and settling down with a steady girlfriend.
I hadn’t regretted either at the time, happy to have some stability in my life while leaving behind the fear and danger of an intelligence officer in war-torn Afghanistan. Among other things, my role had been to determine if the locals in Helmand Province were on our side or not, without getting myself killed in the process.
However, recently, I had begun to crave once more the ‘high’ generated when terror grips one’s stomach and adrenalin surges through the body.
On the lover front, things had also gone somewhat pear-shaped. More than a year ago now, the steady girlfriend had left me for another man who had a ‘safer’ job, the irony being that my own work had been getting less dangerous.
I’d had one serious romance since then, with Henrietta, but it hadn’t worked out.
So here I was, thirty-three years old, single and rudderless.
This American sojourn had been a distraction and I was delighted to be able to extend it. It meant I didn’t have to face the realities of my future for a while longer yet.
The truck continued on its steady way southwestward on the interstate highways while I checked the horses.
All of them seemed to be taking the journey in their stride. Fire Point in particular was unperturbed by the noise of the engine and the continuous swaying of the vehicle. But he’d been used to flying so this was a ‘walk in the park’.
After a couple of hours, we pulled over into a rest area east of Philadelphia to give the driver a meal break, and us a chance to stretch our legs.
‘Leave the horses on board,’ Keith said. ‘It’s more than my life’s worth to have Fire Point loose on the highway. They’ll be fine until we get to Pimlico.’
We went over to the rest-area café and Keith paid for the four of us to have a burger each with fries.
‘Mr Raworth said food only,’ he explained. ‘Buy your own soda if you want one. The driver has to have a half-hour break, so be back at the vehicle in good time. I’ll eat mine while keeping an eye on the horses.’
He went out and walked back towards the truck while the three of us sat down at one of the Formica-topped tables.
‘Want a drink?’ I said to Maria.
She glanced at Diego. ‘Water,’ she said.