Triple Crown (2 page)

‘Over seventy thousand will be here today,’ I’d said, as Tony had shaken his head in disbelief, ‘with tens of millions more watching live on television.’

And the Grand National itself had certainly lived up to all the hype with the eight-to-one favourite catching the long-time leader on the line to win by a nose in a photo finish.

‘Amazing,’ Tony had said repeatedly, as the victor was loudly cheered all the way to the winner’s circle, flanked by two police horses. ‘Is all your jump racing like
this?’

‘No,’ I’d said, laughing. ‘You should try a wet winter Wednesday at Hexham. Two men and a dog if you’re lucky.’

I had gone to the National not for any specific reason but simply to watch and listen, to gather intelligence and, maybe, to defuse any trouble before it started. At least that’s what
I’d told myself, although I had mostly wanted to show off one of the great showpieces of British racing to my American guest.

He had not been disappointed.

Back in the lay-by, a police van arrived with a pair of vicious-looking German shepherds barking loudly through the rear windows.

Nigel, Tony and I stood watching as the excited, snarling dogs were removed from the vehicle by their handler, a mountain of a man with hands as large as any I had ever seen. He crouched down to
cuddle each dog in turn, allowing them to nuzzle their snouts into his neck, sharp teeth and all.

Rather him than me, I thought.

After this moment of tenderness, it was time for work.

The dogs were first taken over to the car that belonged to the fugitive and given a few moments to register his scent. Then they were off into the woods, the strain on their leads almost pulling
over the handler. A smaller man would have had no chance.

‘I’m glad I’m not the one they’re chasing,’ Nigel said. ‘Did you see those bloody fangs?’

We all laughed but with a slight nervousness – it was really not a joking matter.

‘I’ll miss all this excitement,’ Tony said to us with a smile as we climbed into Nigel’s car. ‘I’m back to being stuck at my boring desk from next
Monday.’

‘Don’t you get out into the field at all?’ I asked.

‘Not much any more. I’m getting too old. And too fat.’ He guffawed loudly and clasped his hands round his substantial midriff. ‘Nowadays I have a team of young pups like
you to do all my legwork.’

He remained unusually quiet and pensive all the way back to London, a smile never leaving his face. He didn’t elaborate on what was occupying his mind and I didn’t press him. He
would tell me if he wanted to.

He didn’t. Not then, anyhow.

‘Diuretics!’

‘Yup. Mostly diuretics together with a few laxatives.’

‘No cocaine?’

‘Not even a dusting.’

‘Amphetamines? Or ecstasy?’

‘Nope. Nothing.’

‘Bugger!’

It was the following morning in my office at BHA headquarters in Central London. Nigel was giving Tony and me the bad news about the contents of the handed-over package.

‘The cops aren’t very happy about it either, I can tell you,’ Nigel said. ‘My contact says they’ve dropped the investigation and released Jimmy Robinson with no
charges and an abject apology. The chief superintendent is really angry and intends to call Paul Maldini to give him what for.’ Paul Maldini was Head of Operations at the BHA – our
boss. ‘He claims we’ve made them look like foolish amateurs.’

To be fair, I suppose we had. But we had also made fools out of ourselves.

Nigel had received a tip-off from one of his regular cluster of covert informants that Jimmy Robinson was again dealing in drugs. Perhaps I had been naïve or careless in assuming that the
drugs in question were unlawful, but Jimmy had previous form in that respect. I had called in the police and, with much pushing on my part, the matter had eventually gone right to the top with the
Director General of the National Crime Agency applying to the Home Secretary for a communication intercept warrant on Robinson’s mobile telephone. That’s how we knew where and when to
wait for the hand-over.

‘Couldn’t they indict Robinson for
anything
?’ Tony asked.

‘Purchasing medicines without a prescription?’ Nigel raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s hardly grand theft auto. You or I could do the same on the Internet.’

‘Then why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff in some deserted lay-by?’ I asked. But I already knew the answer. Whereas the drugs purchased may have not been illegal according to the
Misuse of Drugs Act, both diuretics and laxatives were banned substances for jockeys under the Rules of Racing.

‘Does Jimmy Robinson have trouble with his weight?’ I asked.

‘Doesn’t every jockey?’ Nigel replied.

It was true.

Rises in racing weights had never kept up with the increasing height and bulk of the population as a whole. Before diuretics were added to the list of banned substances in 1999, their use had
been widespread by jockeys of all abilities to control their weight.

One former champion jockey once joked to me about taking a handful of pee-pills every day as his only breakfast. ‘The trouble was,’ he said, ‘they made me so dehydrated I got
dreadful cramps. On one occasion I remember being given a leg-up in the paddock and being unable to get my left foot into the iron because of it. Had to bump-trot the horse all the way to the start
before it eased.’

Another told me he regularly used laxatives, taking them by the packet-full. ‘Explosive decompression,’ he’d said with a laugh. ‘I’d pebbledash the ceiling if I
wasn’t careful.’

I’d asked him what the jockeys did now that those drugs had all been banned. ‘Fingers down the throat, mate,’ he’d said. ‘Eat to ease the hunger pain then throw it
all back up again so as not to put on any weight. Not clever really.’

‘Can’t do much for their teeth.’

‘Teeth?’ He’d laughed again. ‘Bugger the teeth. Most of those get knocked out in falls anyway.’

I dragged my mind back to the matter in hand.

‘Surely Jimmy would know we would test him for diuretics,’ I said.

‘The police lab says this is something new. Still a thiazide, whatever that means, but a synthetic version. Perhaps Jimmy thought it wouldn’t show up in a test. And maybe he’s
right.’

‘Why do these bloody drug firms keep muddying the water with new compounds?’ I sighed. ‘Don’t they realise we’re trying to stop the cheats?’

‘Apparently millions of people take diuretics every day for heart problems and high blood pressure.’

‘I’m one of those,’ Tony said meekly, tapping his jacket pocket.

I suppose I couldn’t realistically blame the drug companies for making our life difficult, not if they were doing good for millions.

I sighed again. ‘So why did the supplier run? And why pull a knife?’

‘He claims he didn’t know what was in the packet,’ Nigel said.

‘So they caught him then?’

‘My police contact said the man walked out of the woods with his arms in the air when he heard the dogs coming. He’d got rid of the knife by then, of course, and the cops
weren’t about to launch a massive search for a weapon that hadn’t been used. The man claimed he was only an intermediary, delivering a sealed package for a friend.’

‘So why did he run?’

‘He says that he was told the package contained drugs and he’d assumed they were illegal.’

He hadn’t been the only one.

I was now even more relieved that Tony hadn’t had a ‘piece’ in the lay-by. I could imagine the furore that would have followed the shooting of a man who was supplying perfectly
legal medication.

‘It seems odd to me that he just happened to have a knife in his pocket. Surely that’s not normal.’

Tony waved a dismissive hand as if to say that it was quite normal where he came from.

The man’s car had been removed to a forensic laboratory to be searched and, according to Nigel’s police chum, no illegal substances had been found. The man was free to pick it up
whenever he wanted to.

The phone on my desk rang. I answered it.

‘Jeff, it’s Paul Maldini,’ said a voice down the line. ‘I need you in my office, right away.’

Oh God, I thought. The chief superintendent must have called.

‘On my way,’ I said.

‘And Jeff, bring Tony with you.’

‘And Nigel?’ I asked.

‘No. Only you and Tony.’

How odd, I thought. It had been Nigel and me who had been responsible for setting up this sorry affair, not Tony. He had simply been an innocent observer to the disaster. It didn’t seem
fair that he should be facing the firing squad alongside me.

Tony and I made our way along the corridor to Paul’s office. It felt to me like we were two miscreant schoolboys who had been summoned to the headmaster’s study after having been
caught smoking behind the bike sheds – hugely apprehensive and not a little frightened.

‘Ah, come in, come in, both of you,’ Paul said as I knocked and opened his door. ‘Sit down.’ He waved at the two chairs in front of his desk.

I thought the condemned always had to stand to receive their punishment.

Tony and I sat down.

‘Now, Jeff,’ Paul said, smiling and nodding at Tony, ‘Tony here has something to ask you.’

‘Eh?’ I was unsure what was going on.

‘I’d like you to come to the States,’ Tony said, half turning towards me.

‘Eh?’ I said again. ‘Isn’t this about the Jimmy Robinson affair?’

‘No,’ Paul said. ‘It is not.’

‘Didn’t the police chief superintendent call you?’ I asked.

‘As a matter of fact, he did,’ Paul replied. ‘And quite cross he was too. So I reminded him of all the things we had done right in the past and that we had acted in good faith
in asking for their help in this case. I told him we had nothing to apologise for.’

‘What did he say to that?’ I asked.

‘Not much.’ Paul laughed as if amused by the memory. ‘I suspect they might not be so helpful in future, but we can live with that. Now, let’s move on. Tony spoke to me
last evening and I’ve just had a meeting with the chief executive and the chairman and they have given their approval for his proposal.’

‘What proposal?’ I asked, confused.

I felt like I was living in a parallel universe. I had been expecting to get a severe telling-off and yet here was Paul Maldini, a man with an infamous temper, smiling and joking as if I was
flavour of the month.

‘I would like you to come and work for me,’ Tony said.

I turned in my chair and stared at him.

‘Permanently?’

‘For as long as it takes,’ he replied.

‘For as long as what takes?’

‘Let me start from the beginning,’ Tony said. ‘But what I’m about to tell you is highly confidential and cannot be discussed outside the three of us. Not even the BHA
chairman and chief executive have the full picture. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said, even though I thought he was being rather melodramatic. As an ex-army intelligence officer, one thing I
did
know was how to keep a secret.

‘You are aware that I am Deputy Director at FACSA, an agency dedicated to preventing corruption in sport.’ He pronounced it ‘Facsa’, as a word rather than speaking out
each of the letters in turn.

I nodded.

‘We have the particular task of keeping US horseracing free of organised crime. As you may know, unlike here in the UK with the BHA, there is no national racing authority in the US. Each
of our states has its own rules and is responsible for enforcing them. My federal agency was set up to provide a nationwide focus on anti-corruption, and the Thoroughbred horse industry, both
racing and breeding, represents a significant part of our efforts. We even have a special section dedicated to it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I knew most of this from discussions Tony and I had had during the last fourteen days. ‘But where do I fit in?’

Tony looked around him as if making sure no one was lurking and listening. He also lowered his voice.

‘For some time I have had my suspicions that we have an informant in our ranks.’

‘Mmm,’ I mused. ‘Corruption within the anti-corruption agency. Not good.’

‘Indeed not,’ Tony said.

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

‘I don’t
know
,’ Tony said. ‘I only have suspicions. My racing team have initiated several operations only to discover that the target has got rid of the evidence
just before we turn up. At first I thought it was bad luck, but it has happened too often.’

‘What sort of operations?’ I asked.

‘We recently raided the barns of a trainer who we believed was employing illegal immigrants as grooms, mostly Mexicans, paying them well under the minimum wage and in cash to avoid federal
payroll taxes and Social Security dues. We had done our homework and were pretty sure we had the trainer dead to rights. All we needed was to catch the illegals in the act.’

‘But you found none?’ I said.

‘Not one. Vanished like mist in the morning sunshine.’ Tony held his hands out, palms uppermost. ‘On another occasion we received a tip from a disgruntled ex-employee that a
Maryland horse farm was using an unlicensed antibiotic together with equine growth hormone on a newly born foal in order to determine if they made the foal grow faster and larger. This practice
would be unlawful under the US Animal Welfare Act, but we were involved because it would also constitute a fraud on the future buyer of the foal. So the team arrived one day at dawn to search the
premises and take blood samples for analysis.’

‘What did they find?’ I asked.

‘That the foal had been euthanised and the carcass cremated.’

‘Did the farm give a reason?’

‘They tried. Some hooey about the animal kicking out and breaking its leg. But the pit was still red-hot from the fire. They must have incinerated the poor thing through the
night.’

‘It could have been a coincidence,’ I said. ‘They do sometimes happen.’

‘If it were only those two I might agree but there have been more, like a fire that conveniently destroyed all the computers in the office of an illegal bookmaker hours before they were to
be seized.’

‘Arson?’

Tony rolled his eyes. ‘Not that anyone could prove.’ ‘Have you had a leak inquiry?’ I asked.