pouring a preliminary shot and watching while Nico obediently drained the glass in one gulp. ‘We don’t usually see you in the dark days of winter.’
‘I’m on a bit of business. Thought you might be able to steer me in the right direction.’
‘Anything to oblige an old mate, Nico. Let’s go over there, where we can talk.’
Carrying the strangely shaped bottle with him, the Duke led Nico towards a table in a quiet booth.
An hour later Nico stumbled out into a rainy night, his head fuddled and spinning from the vodka. He meandered up to Broadwick Street in the hope of a taxi and stood on the curb shivering and peering up and down the street. One after another, black cabs sluiced past, not one of them with its yellow beacon lit. His hair, and the shoulders of his fair-weather suit, were soaked by the time a taxi pulled up.
The soaking and the cold had the effect of sobering Nico up a little. He concentrated on what the Duke had told him and tried to decipher the notes he’d written on the paper napkin as the cab passed under the street lights.
At the top of the napkin he’d scribbled:
The Partridge—Johnny the Fish.
Under that he’d written:
David Sinclair—bit of a chin—training plenty of winners. Posh.
At the bottom of the napkin was a third name:
Shug Shaunsheys—a few dodgy habits but sharp. Will find the goods.
Red was straight away in harmony with Tipper and making good progress, until the day she had to re-acquaint herself with the starting stalls. This is always an ordeal for temperamental animals. Each stall is fitted with two sets of gates. The back gates are shut individually behind the horses as the handlers load them; the ones in front are instantaneously flipped open by the starter, to release an explosion of horseflesh as the race begins. The practice drill should have involved Red merely walking up to, into and through the stalls, with both sets of gates open. It looked like a simple task, but it wasn’t for her. Tipper presented her to the stalls and a group of handlers—the same handlers that assist at every course on race day—crowded round her back end to heave her in, while one of them led her by a rope threaded through the bridle. They got her half way in and then she baulked.
‘Go gentle, go gentle lads!’ pleaded Tipper, perched up on her back.
Like hell they would. The handler at her head, Eamonn, yanked hard, while one of the others gave her a whack on the quarters. She immediately plunged backwards out of the stall, then reared, pulling the rope from Eamonn’s hand and almost flipping over backwards. Tipper slithered perilously to the ground beneath her. As he lay there, expecting any moment to be trodden on, he heard the men’s curses.
‘The dirty cow,’ snarled Eamonn. ‘Gimme that fuckin’ hood.’
Picking himself up, Tipper saw him brandishing the blindfold that would go over Red’s eyes, and prevent her from seeing where she was going.
‘Leave off that!’ Tipper yelled. ‘Let me do this. Give us some space, lads.’
When it came to dealing with Red, Tipper could assert himself in a way he would have never have done in any other situation. Momentarily abashed the men shuffled backwards and ducked under the rails that enclosed the loading area. Tipper removed Red’s bridle and took a length of leading-rope, which he looped around the horse’s neck. He attached this to the end of a ball of string he got out of his pocket. The handlers, leaning on the rails to watch, sniggered.
‘If this one gets loose, boy,’ called Eamonn, ‘you’ll be stacking fuckin’ shelves at the supermarket for the rest of your life.’
Tipper paid no heed. He allowed Red to go back as far away as she liked from the line of stalls. Then he went into one of them and knelt down. Oblivious to the derisive snorts of his audience, he reeled in the string and, slowly and hesitantly, Red began moving towards him. It was like that time in the barn at Fethard when he’d first won her confidence. A couple of times, as she got to within ten feet of him, she spun away in panic and he had to start all over again. The handlers grew bored with taking the piss. They left the rail and, sitting down in a ring on the turf, got a card school going.
Six hands of brag later, they didn’t notice that Red had found the courage to get her nose into the stall, where she was nibbling Tipper’s coat. Tipper now turned and carefully slid out of the front of the stall. He sat on his heels ten feet away, with his back to his filly. His eyes remained fixed on a spot down the track, where by the trick of perspective the two white rails seemed to intersect. But all the time his mind was on what Red was doing behind him. At first she did nothing. A long time passed. The laughter and curses of the card players drifted towards them on the wind. Then, infinitesimally at first, Tipper felt the horse’s warm breath on the nape of his neck, and the hesitant prod of her velvet nose.
Eamonn looked up from his hand of cards.
‘Christ Jesus, will you look at that, lads?’ he shouted. ‘The kid’s only bloody done it. She’s walked all the way through by herself.’
The others swung round to look.
‘It must be love,’ said one of the others.
‘Well if it is, that’s the only fuckin’ pull he’ll be making,’ Eamonn retorted.
But the second man might almost have been right. Red had done this difficult thing of her own free will, because she trusted Tipper, and she wanted to be with him.
When the time came to try her at last on the race track, Thaddeus Doyle was in a quandary. He wanted to put up his retained stable jockey, his son-in-law Dermot Quigley, who’d been champion jockey five times. Doyle had seen Stella Maris on the gallops, ridden by Tipper, make mincemeat of prized members of his string, and he asked himself what on earth she would do with a real jock on her back. In the event, he never found out. When they tried working Red with Quigley up, she carted him three times round the yard and threw him sprawling to the ground. As he picked himself up in front of Doyle’s staff Quigley tried to hide his humiliation with anger.
‘That one’s not temperamental. She’s mental. I’d rather ride a barrel over the Niagara bloody Falls.’
So it had to be Tipper on Stella Maris; no one else could get near her.
Shug Shaunsheys, bloodstock agent, was sitting in front of his computer screen, his watery eyes transfixed by what they saw. Every now and then, his long pink and grey tongue slid out to moisten his lips. Shaunsheys always licked his lips when he was surfing the net. He clicked the mouse to bring up a new picture. He lived alone. There was no one else in the flat to disturb him, no one to stop him enjoying himself. The prospect of a long, self gratifying evening stretched pleasantly ahead of him. Until his phone rang.
His ringtone was The Teddy Bears’ Picnic. With a muttered curse he groped for it, pressing the receive button and interrupting the tone as it got to ‘in for a big surprise’.
‘Shaunsheys,’ he grunted.
‘Shug. It’s Johnny the Fish. You busy?’
‘No. Just, erm, watching telly.’
‘Then I suggest you get your arse out to the Partridge double-quick. There’s someone important been asking for you.’
Shaunsheys was still distracted by the screen in front of him.
‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘What about?’
‘Horses, you mug. What else would it be about?’ Johnny said.
Shaunsheys