Whip Hand

'Yes,' I said. 'Thanks.'

Chico pulled the car door shut, and we drove away towards the town.

'Bad hearts,' he said.

'Bad hearts.'

'Proper epidemic, isn't it?'

'Let's ask Brothersmith the vet.'

Chico read out the address, in Middleton Road.

'Yes, I know it. It was old Pollen's place. He was our old vet, still alive when I was here.'

Chico grinned. 'Funny somehow to think of you being a snotty little apprentice with the head lad chasing you.'

'And chilblains.'

'Makes you seem almost human.'

I had spent five years in Newmarket, from sixteen to twenty-one. Learning to ride, learning to race, learning to live. My old guv'nor had been a good one, and because I saw every day his wife, his lifestyle, and his administrative ability, I'd slowly changed from a boy from the backstreets into something more cosmopolitan. He had shown me how to manage the money I'd begun earning in large quantities, and how not to be corrupted by it; and when he turned me loose I found he'd given me the status that went with having been taught in his stable. I'd been lucky in my guv'nor, and lucky to be for a long time at the top of the career I loved; and if one day the luck had run out it was too damned bad.

'Takes you back, does it?' Chico said.

'Yeah.'

We drove across the wide Heath and past the racecourse towards the town. There weren't many horses about: a late morning string, in the distance, going home. I swung the car round familiar corners and pulled up outside the vet's.

Mr Brothersmith was out.

If it was urgent, Mr Brothersmith could be found seeing to a horse in a stable along Bury Road. Otherwise he would be home to his lunch, probably, in half an hour. We said thank you, and sat in the car, and waited.

'We've got another job,' I said. 'Checking on syndicates.'

'I thought the Jockey Club always did it themselves.'

'Yes, they do. The job we've got is to check on the man from the Jockey Club who checks on the syndicates.'

Chico digested it. 'Tricky, that.'

'Without him knowing.'

'Oh yes?'

I nodded. 'Ex-Superintendent Eddy Keith.' Chico 's mouth fell open. 'You're joking.'

'No.'

'But he's the fuzz. The Jockey Club fuzz.'

I passed on Lucas Wainwright's doubts, and Chico said Lucas Wainwright must have got it wrong. The job, I pointed out mildly, was to find out whether he had or not.

'And how do we do that?'

'I don't know. What do you think?'

'It's you that's supposed to be the brains of this outfit.'

A muddy Range Rover came along Middleton Road and turned into Brothersmith's entrance. As one, Chico and I removed ourselves from the Scimitar, and went towards the tweed-jacketed man jumping down from his buggy.

'Mr Brothersmith?'

'Yes? What's the trouble?' He was young and harassed, and kept looking over his shoulder, as if something was chasing him. Time, perhaps, I thought. Or lack of it.

'Could you spare us a few minutes?' I said. 'This is Chico Barnes, and I'm Sid Halley. It's just a few questions…'

His brain took in the name and his gaze switched immediately towards my hands, fastening finally on the left. 'Aren't you the man with the myoelectric prosthesis?'

'Er… yes.' I said.

'Come in, then. Can I look at it?'

He turned away and strode purposefully towards the side door of the house. I stood still and wished we were anywhere else.

'Come on, Sid,' Chico said, following him. He looked back and stopped. 'Give the man what he wants, Sid, and maybe he'll do the same for us.'

Payment in kind, I thought: and I didn't like the price. Unwillingly I followed Chico into what turned out to be Brothersmith's surgery.

He asked a lot of questions in a fairly clinical manner, and I answered him in impersonal tones learned from the limb centre. 'Can you rotate the wrist?' he said at length.

'Yes, a little.' I showed him. 'There's a sort of cup inside there which fits over the end of my arm, with another electrode to pick up the impulses for turning.'

I knew he wanted me to take the arm off and show him properly, but I wouldn't have done it, and perhaps he saw there was no point in asking.

'It fits very tightly over your elbow,' he said, delicately feeling round the gripping edges.

'So as not to fall off.' He nodded intently. 'Is it easy to put on and remove?'

'Talcum powder,' I said economically. Chico 's mouth opened, and shut again as he caught my don't-say-it stare, and he didn't tell Brothersmith that removal was often a distinct bore.

'Thinking of fitting one to a horse?' Chico said.

Brothersmith raised his still-harassed face and answered him seriously. 'Technically it looks perfectly possible, but it's doubtful if one could train a horse to activate the electrodes, and it would be difficult to justify the expense.'

'It was only a joke,' Chico said faintly.

'Oh? Oh, I see. But it isn't unknown, you know, for a horse to have a false foot fitted. I was reading the other day about a successful prosthesis fitted to the fore-limb of a valuable broodmare. She was subsequently covered, and produced a live foal.'

'Ah,' Chico said. 'Now that's what we've come about. A broodmare. Only this one died.'

Brothersmith detached his attention reluctantly from false limbs and transferred it to horses with bad hearts.

' Bethesda,' I said, rolling down my sleeve and buttoning the cuff.

' Bethesda?' He wrinkled his forehead and turned the harassed look into one of anxiety. 'I'm sorry. I can't recall…'

'She was a filly with George Caspar,' I said. 'Beat everything as a two-year-old, and couldn't run at three because of a heart murmur. She was sent to stud, but her heart packed up when she was foaling.'

'Oh dear,' he said, adding sorrow to the anxiety. 'What a pity. But I say, I'm so sorry, but I treat so many horses, and I often don't know their names. Is there a question of insurance in this, or negligence, even? Because I assure you…'

'No,' I said reassuringly, 'nothing like that. Can you remember, then, treating Gleaner and Zingaloo?'

'Yes, of course. Those two. Wretched shame for George Caspar. So disappointing.'

'Tell us about them.' 'Nothing much to tell, really. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that they were both so good as two-year-olds. Probably that was the cause of their troubles, if the truth were told.'

'How do you mean?'

I said. His nervous tensions escaped in small jerks of his head as he brought forth some unflattering opinions. 'Well, one hesitates to say so, of course, to top trainers like Caspar, but it is all too easy to strain a two-year-old's heart, and if they are good two-year-olds they run in top races, and the pressure to win may be terrific, because of stud values and everything, and a jockey, riding strictly to orders, mind you, may press a game youngster so hard that although it wins it is also more or less ruined for the future.'

'Gleaner won the Doncaster Futurity in the mud,' I said thoughtfully.

'I saw it. It was a very hard race.'

'That's right,' Brothersmith said. 'I checked him thoroughly afterwards, though. The trouble didn't start at once. In fact, it didn't show at all, until he ran in the Guineas. He came in from that in a state of complete exhaustion. First of all we thought it was the virus but then after a few days we got this very irregular heart beat, and then it was obvious what was the matter.'

'What virus?' I said.

'Let's see… The evening of the Guineas he had a very slight fever, as if he were in for equine 'flu, or some such. But it didn't develop. So it wasn't that. It was his heart, all right. But we couldn't have foreseen it.'

'What percentage of horses develop bad hearts?' I said.

Some of the chronic anxiety state diminished as he moved confidently onto neutral ground.

'Perhaps ten per cent have irregular heart beats. It doesn't alway mean anything. Owners don't like to buy horses which have them, but look at Night Nurse which won the Champion Hurdle, that had a heart murmur.'