He turned round and wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeve. ‘I tried to be as normal as possible, so I went to the races — it was Cheltenham, after all. I hoped Kate would come home while I was out. And I still didn’t really believe her about Huw Walker. I thought she had just said it to upset me.’
‘What changed your mind?’ I asked quietly.
‘I was about to give him a leg-up on to Candlestick in the first when he turned to me and said, “Kate called me. Sorry, mate.” I was stunned. I just stood there unable to feel my legs. Juliet, you know, Juliet Burns my assistant, she had to do everything. I stood in the paddock for the whole race.’ He laughed sardonically. ‘My first winner at the Festival and I never saw it.’ His laughter died. ‘I was still there when Candlestick returned to the winner’s enclosure. I hadn’t moved an inch. Juliet came and fetched me. Sort of woke me up. Then I lost it. God, I was so mad with that bastard! I could have killed him.’
The enormity of what he’d said hung in the silence.
He looked at me for several seconds that seemed much longer, then he looked down at his hands. ‘When I heard he was dead, I was glad. But now, well you know, I don’t really want that.’
But he is, I thought.
‘Who would want him dead?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know. I thought everyone loved him. Perhaps some jilted girl killed him.’
Unlikely, I thought. It was too clinical, too professional.
‘Did he win or lose to order?’ I asked.
Bill’s head came up fast. ‘My horses are always trying to win,’ he said, but he didn’t sound totally convincing.
‘Come on, Bill,’ I said. ‘Tell me the truth. Did Huw and you ever fix races?’
‘Candlestick was sent out to do his best and to win if he could.’
It wasn’t what I had asked.
‘The Stewards had me in after the race. They were furious that I had been shouting at Huw in the unsaddling enclosure.’ He laughed. ‘They were particularly annoyed that all my effing and blinding had gone out live on the television. Apparently there had been more replays of that than of the race. Bringing the sport into disrepute, they said. Stupid old farts. Anyway, they accused me of being angry with Huw for winning on Candlestick. I told them it wasn’t anything to do with that, it was a personal matter, but they insisted that I must not have wanted the horse to win. I told them that that wasn’t true and I’d had a big bet on him. Luckily I was able to prove it there and then.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘On their computer. I logged on to my on-line betting account and was able to show them the record of my big bet on Candlestick to win.’
‘How did they know that you hadn’t had another bet on him to lose?’
He grinned. ‘They didn’t.’
‘So had you?’
‘Only a small one to cover my stake.’
‘Explain,’ I said.
‘Well, I have an account with make-a-wager.com, the internet gambling site,’ he said.
I remembered my meeting with George Lochs at Cheltenham.
‘The site allows you to make bets or to lay, that is to take bets from other people. They’re known as the exchanges as they allow punters to exchange wagers.’ He was clearly excited. ‘So I can place a bet on a horse to win. Or I can stand a bet from someone else who wants to bet on the horse to win, which means I effectively bet on it to lose. The Triumph Hurdle — Candlestick’s race last Friday — is a race that you can gamble on ante-post, which means you can bet on the race for weeks or months ahead.’ I nodded; one didn’t need to be a gambler to know all about ante-post betting.
‘Because you lose your money if the horse doesn’t run, the odds are usually better. Prices are even better before the entries close because you’re also gambling that the connections will choose to enter the horse for the race in the first place. Then lots of the horses that are entered never actually run.’ He briefly drew breath. ‘The entries for the Triumph Hurdle close in January, but I put a monkey on Candlestick to win at 30 to 1 way back in November.’
‘So if he won, you’d win fifteen thousand,’ I said. A monkey is gambling slang for five hundred.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘but if he didn’t win I would have lost my five hundred. So on Thursday morning, I bet on him to lose to cover my stake.’
‘How exactly?’ I asked.
‘I took a bet of a monkey at sevens. So if the horse won I would win fifteen thousand minus the three and a half thousand I would have to pay on the other bet, and if he didn’t win I was even. I would have lost my win stake but made it back on the lay bet. Understand?’
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘You stood to win eleven and a half thousand against a zero stake.’ And win he had.
‘Piece of piss,’ he laughed. ‘Money for old rope. But you lose badly if the horse doesn’t run so I only tend to do it if I am pretty sure my horse will actually run and it has a reasonable chance, which means the starting price will be a lot shorter than the ante-post price. On Friday, Candlestick’s starting price was down to 6 to 1.’
‘Do you ever make money if the horse loses?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ he paused a moment as if deciding whether to continue. Discretion lost. ‘I suppose I do sometimes, when I know a horse isn’t too well or hasn’t been working very well. Occasionally I will run a horse I really shouldn’t. Say if it’s got a cold or a bit of a leg.’
I remembered an owner who was surprised to hear from his trainer that his horse had ‘a bit of a leg’ when he expected that it had four full ones. ‘A bit of a leg’ was a euphemism for heat in a tendon, a sure sign of a slight strain. To run a horse in such a condition was quite likely to cause the horse to ‘break down’, that is, to pull or tear the tendon completely, requiring many months of treatment and, at worst, the end of a racing career.
Bill would know, as I did, that the powers-that-be in racing, while allowing trainers to bet on their horses to win, forbid them to bet on them to lose.
‘So the Stewards only saw the win bet on your account?’ I said.
‘Bloody right,’ he said.
‘So how did you take the lose bet on Thursday?’
‘There are ways,’ he grinned again.
I wondered how big a step it was from running an under-the-weather horse that was likely to lose, to running a horse that was fit and well that would also lose because the jockey wasn’t trying. I was getting round to asking such a pivotal question when we were interrupted by the arrival of vehicles in the driveway, the gravel scrunching under their tyres.
‘Who the hell can that be at this time?’ said Bill, moving to look out of the window.
It was the police.
In particular, it was Chief Inspector Carlisle of Gloucestershire CID, together with several other policemen, four of them in uniform.
Bill went to meet them at the back door.
‘William George Burton?’ asked the Chief Inspector.
‘That’s me,’ said Bill.
‘I arrest you on suspicion of the murder of Huw Walker.’
CHAPTER 6
‘You must be having a joke,’ said Bill. But they weren’t.
The Chief Inspector continued, ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
Bill didn’t say anything but just stood there with his mouth open.
They weren’t finished.
One of the other plain-clothes policemen came up and arrested him again, this time on suspicion of race fixing. Same rights. Bill wasn’t listening. He went very pale and looked as though he might topple over. He was stopped from doing so by two of the uniformed officers who stood each side and held him by the arms as they led him to one of the cars.