Hands down, p.8
Hands Down, page 8
My mind drifted to Marina. When her father died, would she want to remain in Fryslân to be nearer to her mother?
‘I’ll arrange for the constable to take you back to your car, but no more standing on ancient monuments and causing a breach of the peace. Do you understand, Mr Halley?’
‘Yes, okay,’ I replied, but I actually intended to do a lot more than just make a little noise in the street.
* * *
The same policeman took me back to Middleham town centre in the back of his patrol car.
‘I wonder where he got the rope?’ I asked casually on the way.
‘Oh, he didn’t use a rope,’ the constable replied, lacking the reserve and confidentiality of his chief inspector. ‘He hanged himself with his belt.’
Poor Gary, I thought.
But how did anyone hang someone else with a belt if the victim wasn’t a willing participant? Human beings are heavy and lifting one high enough to get a suspended belt round the neck was difficult for just one other person, if not totally impossible. Especially if the belt was fairly short, as would have been the case with Gary, because he hadn’t put on a huge amount of weight since his riding days.
Did that mean that there had to have been more than one assassin?
But I also knew that some suicides hang themselves without being totally suspended. Serial killer Fred West had killed himself in his prison cell by simply putting a makeshift blanket-strip ligature round his neck, attaching it to a window catchment and sinking to his knees. And the actor and comedian Robin Williams had been found hanging in a seated position with his legs firmly on the floor. He had also used his belt, wedging the far end of it between the door and the frame of his wardrobe.
‘Had Mr Bremner been standing on a chair?’ I asked, nonchalantly. ‘One that he then kicked over?’
The policeman looked at me briefly via his rear-view mirror and, like many people, he couldn’t resist telling something that he knew and I didn’t.
‘He hadn’t been standing on anything. He was just slumped face down with the belt tight around his neck. The other end was attached to a tree.’
So Gary could have been strangled first by a third party, who then just hung his body half up by his belt round his neck to make it look like suicide. Surely the police wouldn’t be fooled by that. But would they? For my money, they seemed to be giving far too much credence to the existence of the suspect suicide note.
We arrived at my blue Discovery and I extricated myself from the back seat of the constable’s car.
‘And keep off the Swine Cross,’ he ordered.
‘I know. Your boss already told me.’
The policeman indicated that I should climb back into my Discovery and drive away. But I decided not to.
‘I’m going to visit the castle,’ I told him, and I walked off in that direction.
* * *
In the fifteenth century, Middleham Castle had been one of the most palatial residences in England but centuries of neglect have left it as just a shell of its former glory – not that the ruins themselves are not still impressive, now under the protection of English Heritage.
I paid my entrance money and spent half an hour wandering around trying to imagine what the place had looked like in its heyday, when grand royal banquets had been prepared in the huge ground-floor kitchen for service in the great hall above.
The massive castle keep, the central stronghold, was thirty-five yards long by twenty-six wide, with its imposing walls still standing to over sixty feet above the surrounding grass apron. That, in turn, had originally been enclosed on all four sides by high outer curtain walls, against which had once been built accommodations, stores, ovens, guardrooms and a chapel. Nowadays, these outer walls remained intact only on the north, west and south sides, having collapsed along half the castle’s length on the east.
However, the structure I found most intriguing was the latrine tower set into the centre of the western outer wall, where the several primitive medieval toilet cubicles had once included special chutes to send the human waste out through the wall into the dry moat beyond.
Finally, I took the steep internal stone spiral staircase to the high observation point at the top of the south-east corner of the keep and, sure enough, there was a good view down into Simon Paulson’s training yard.
Above me, the sky was darkening with threatening rain clouds so I quickly descended and made my way back to the Discovery.
The policeman had gone but, even so, I decided not to clamber again onto the Swine Cross. Most of the horses were now safely back in their stables anyway, after their morning exertions on the gallops.
I climbed into the vehicle and drove off.
Only as it started to rain and the Land Rover’s automatic system turned on the windscreen wipers, did I notice that there was a small piece of yellow paper stuck under the driver’s side blade.
I pulled over in at the marketplace to remove it.
The paper was about two inches by one and it had a telephone number scribbled on it in black ink.
I dialled the number. It was answered at the first ring as if someone had been waiting for my call.
‘Hello,’ said a young male voice.
‘I’m Sid Halley,’ I said. ‘Who is this?’
‘You don’t need to know that,’ came the reply.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but why did you want me to call you?’
‘I hear that you are looking for Anton Valance?’
‘Indeed I am.’
‘Why do you want him?’
‘You don’t need to know that,’ I said, echoing his earlier reply to me. ‘Not unless you are, indeed, Anton Valance.’
‘I am not.’
‘So how do I find him?’ I asked.
‘You don’t need to. He’ll find you. He knows you’re looking for him.’
‘How does he know that?’
‘Because I told him. I heard you shouting it earlier in the town.’
‘So if you’ve already told him that I’m looking for him, why did you then bother to leave your telephone number under my windscreen wiper?’
There was a slight pause from the other end as if the caller was now sorry he had.
‘I just felt I should tell you, that’s all.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Look, I don’t want to get involved,’ he said with obvious concern.
‘But you are already involved. You gave me your number.’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done. I was only trying to warn you.’
‘Why do I need to be warned?’
‘Because Mr Valance is not a very nice man.’
‘Well, thank you for the warning but I’m a big boy now,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I can look after myself.’
‘Maybe that’s what Gary Bremner also thought,’ the young man said, then he hung up.
10
I sat staring at my phone for quite a long while after the man had hung up. If I had his number, surely, even with GDPR and the other privacy regulations, I should be able to find out his name from somewhere.
If he had really wanted to remain anonymous, he had simply to not give me his number in the first place. But he had, and he had been trying to warn me. I wondered if my mystery man was up to his neck in trouble but fundamentally on the side of the angels.
What did I do next?
I had dropped Rosie off at Charles’s place at Aynsford at a quarter to six this morning and, even though it felt to me like the majority of the day had already passed, the clock on the Discovery’s dash stubbornly showed it was only five to eleven. More than an hour, even, to midday.
I checked the horse-racing fixtures app I had on my phone. There were three meetings scheduled for this particular Tuesday: jumping at Fontwell Park near the South Coast, close to Bognor Regis; an evening floodlit meeting on the all-weather flat track at Wolverhampton; and, finally, an afternoon of jump racing at Catterick Bridge racecourse, just fourteen miles down the road from Middleham, and the first race was due off at 1.50pm.
Perfect.
I decided I would go to the races at Catterick, and make some more waves.
* * *
‘Hello, Mr Halley,’ said the man on the gate to the car park reserved for owners, trainers and jockeys. ‘Long time no see.’
I racked my brain to try and remember where I’d seen him before, and what the hell was his name?
‘Hello,’ I said, failing badly in both departments. ‘Please can I come in here?’
‘Do you have a pass?’ he asked.
‘Sorry, no. I forgot it.’
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Always loved your riding back in the day.’ He fleetingly looked over both his shoulders. ‘If you promise not to tell, I’ll let you in.’
I put a finger to my lips. ‘Thanks.’
‘And my name’s Fred,’ he said as I passed him. ‘Used to be at Haydock.’
‘Thanks, Fred,’ I shouted out the window, laughing. He had been so far ahead of me.
There has been horse racing at Catterick since 1783 and it is one of the busiest racecourses in North Yorkshire, with twenty-seven jump and flat meetings spread throughout the year. The first grandstand was built here in 1906 and the same basic structure remains, albeit with considerable modern improvements made within. The old wooden stand roof, with its many gables and painted edge decoration, reminiscent of that used on old railway stations, gives the place a cosy feel and it is no surprise that this course is well renowned for its friendly atmosphere.
I rode at Catterick only twice in my riding career as I was mostly based in the South, but I have happy memories of snatching a last-gasp victory in the North Yorkshire Grand National Chase here on a bitterly cold Thursday in January. Thankfully, the weather on this particular day was considerably warmer and the earlier cloud and rain were giving way to brighter skies and even some watery sunshine.
I parked the car and decided to spend the £15 entry money rather than trying to rely on my old battered jockey’s badge, which I had simply kept when I’d retired. At almost fifty, who would I be kidding?
Frankie Dettori may still be racing in his fifties, and Lester Piggott famously rode his last winner in his sixtieth year, but those two, and the other older professional jockeys, tend to ride on the flat where crushing falls week-in week-out are less likely than for their jump-racing counterparts. AP McCoy, champion jump jockey on an unprecedented twenty consecutive occasions, was forty when he finally hung up his racing saddle, and he was considered to be a very senior statesman at the time.
I bought a racecard and studied the horses that would be racing later, taking particular notice of their trainers and declared jockeys. As I had expected, most of the trainers were based in the North with quite a few from Middleham. Indeed, Simon Paulson, the trainer I had been to see on Sunday afternoon, had two runners, one in the first race and another in the fifth.
I don’t suppose he, for one, would be pleased to see me.
Tough.
I wandered over towards the weighing room on the end of the grandstand, close to the parade ring. Every trainer and jockey would have to come here at one time or another, the jockeys to change and weigh out for the races, and the trainers to collect their saddles, once weighed, to put on the horses.
The whole place has much changed since my riding days, with a new and larger parade ring, a reconfigured winner’s enclosure, and a totally refurbished weighing room with a wide glass frontage so racegoers could actually see the jockeys standing on the scales.
‘Nice,’ I said to the official at the door, indicating towards the new fancy glass.
‘Treated like royalty now, them jockeys are,’ he announced with a certain degree of envy detectable in his tone. ‘Spanking-new changing rooms with individual power showers, warm-up area, physio room, free café, relaxing area, the lot.’
Not like when I’d started riding, I thought. Back in those days, at some courses, you were lucky if you found an old wooden chair in the changing room to put your day clothes on. The communal showers had been uniformly stark with aged cracked and rust-stained white tiling, while the hot water emanating from them would often only last for the first few races. Refreshments had consisted solely of a drinking-water tap in the gents’ loos and a tray of fruitcake squares, universally known as weighing-room cake, put out on a table at the end of the day.
Not that I begrudged the modern jockeys their creature comforts. They put their lives on the line every time they went out to race so why shouldn’t they have a comfortable relaxing area and a free café, if and when they got back alive?
It was still nearly an hour and a half until the first race so I leaned on the rail by the new unsaddling area and waited for the participants to arrive.
Just like the trainers, most of the jockeys riding here today were those who worked mainly at the northern English tracks or those in Scotland, and I knew very few of them by sight. It also didn’t help that some of the young men riding now hadn’t even been born when I’d been forced to retire. The racecard helped a little by having a tiny photograph of each rider printed in it next to the horse they were to ride but, even so, I thought I might have a problem identifying any of them.
When I’d first started riding, jockeys had always travelled to and from the races wearing a suit and tie, to impress their employers – the trainers and the owners. Indeed, the majority of racegoers were also attired in a similar fashion, just like audiences at the London theatres. But, as in so many situations in the twenty-first century, casual and comfortable was now the norm for all, but the jockeys were still fairly easy to spot. For a start, they were generally smaller than the population as a whole, and they mostly carried a holdall slung over their shoulders containing their riding kit, often with their whip sticking out the top.
As the first few early birds started arriving, I stood by the glass door of the weighing room and asked each one in turn if they were represented by Anton Valance. Most just shook their heads and pushed past me into the sanctuary of the changing rooms. One young man, however, stopped and stared at me.
‘Weren’t you once Sid Halley?’ he said.
I smiled. ‘I still am.’
‘Yeah, of course,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I just meant—’
‘I know. That I was once the jockey Sid Halley.’
‘The champion jockey Sid Halley,’ he corrected. ‘When I was a boy, my father was always talking about you as being the best ever. So I wanted to be you. Except for…’
He tailed off and glanced down at my left hand.
‘And now you are being me,’ I said, trying to be upbeat and not too conceited.
‘I’m not yet the champion,’ he said, looking back at my face. ‘But I’m doing my best.’
‘Well done. I’ll look out for you later. What’s your name?’
‘Peter Minter. But everybody calls me Minty.’
‘Well, Minty, how many rides do you have today?’
‘Two. One in the first and another in the bumper.’
A bumper was the National Hunt Flat Race, always the last on the card.
‘Who booked them for you?’ I asked.
‘Do you mean the trainers?’
I shook my head. ‘No. Who’s your agent?’
‘Dale Wroxton. From Leeds. He looks after quite a few of us from round here.’
‘Not Anton Valance?’
He looked at me quite sharply. ‘No.’
‘Why not? I hear he’s very good.’
‘Very good at poaching, you mean.’
‘Poaching?’
‘He’s very good at getting some jocks, especially the younger ones, to switch from whoever acts for them to him. He charges only eight per cent while Dale charges me ten, and some agents even charge twelve.’
Anton Valance could afford to take less from the jockeys, I thought, if he was also charging a 10 per cent trainers’ premium.
‘Has he tried to poach you?’ I asked.
‘Several times,’ said Minty. ‘He works for a company called The Jockeys Stable and they’re always leaving leaflets in the jockeys’ car park, you know, stuck under the wipers. They also keep sending me emails promising to get me two or three times as many rides, and for all the top trainers. But as my dad always says: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Anyway, I’m happy with Dale. He knows where I prefer to go and is happy for me to ride for the people I like.’
Good for you, I thought. But it might not make you the champion.
‘But the other jockeys,’ I said, ‘those he does sign, do they seem happy with him?’
‘Suppose so. Not my business. You’d better ask them. I have to go now or I’ll be late for the first.’ And, with that, he disappeared into the changing rooms.
I remained standing there and used my phone to look up The Jockeys Stable on the internet. Sure enough, it was there, but there was still no mention anywhere of someone called Anton Valance.
No wonder I was having so much trouble finding him.
Even on the Companies House website, the name Valance was not listed among the officers of the company, nor among the persons of significant control. My suspicious mind wondered if that was because he preferred to remain in the shadows, like a puppet-master, controlling everyone else with invisible strings.
The next person to arrive was Simon Paulson and, as I had predicted, he wasn’t happy to see me. There was a distinct falter in his stride when he realized it was me, but he wasn’t alone and, short of veering off at a tangent, he had no choice but to continue towards me.
‘Hello, Simon,’ I said all cheerily. ‘Nice to see you again.’
‘Yes, hello, Sid,’ he replied somewhat hesitantly. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Only about forty-eight hours, I thought, but decided not to push the point. Instead I stared at the person Simon was with, a tall man in his mid-seventies, wearing a camel-coloured overcoat, brown leather gloves and a slightly battered brown trilby. Eventually, the message got through.
‘Oh yes, sorry,’ Simon said, slightly flustered. ‘Henry Asquith, this is Sid Halley.’
‘I’ll arrange for the constable to take you back to your car, but no more standing on ancient monuments and causing a breach of the peace. Do you understand, Mr Halley?’
‘Yes, okay,’ I replied, but I actually intended to do a lot more than just make a little noise in the street.
* * *
The same policeman took me back to Middleham town centre in the back of his patrol car.
‘I wonder where he got the rope?’ I asked casually on the way.
‘Oh, he didn’t use a rope,’ the constable replied, lacking the reserve and confidentiality of his chief inspector. ‘He hanged himself with his belt.’
Poor Gary, I thought.
But how did anyone hang someone else with a belt if the victim wasn’t a willing participant? Human beings are heavy and lifting one high enough to get a suspended belt round the neck was difficult for just one other person, if not totally impossible. Especially if the belt was fairly short, as would have been the case with Gary, because he hadn’t put on a huge amount of weight since his riding days.
Did that mean that there had to have been more than one assassin?
But I also knew that some suicides hang themselves without being totally suspended. Serial killer Fred West had killed himself in his prison cell by simply putting a makeshift blanket-strip ligature round his neck, attaching it to a window catchment and sinking to his knees. And the actor and comedian Robin Williams had been found hanging in a seated position with his legs firmly on the floor. He had also used his belt, wedging the far end of it between the door and the frame of his wardrobe.
‘Had Mr Bremner been standing on a chair?’ I asked, nonchalantly. ‘One that he then kicked over?’
The policeman looked at me briefly via his rear-view mirror and, like many people, he couldn’t resist telling something that he knew and I didn’t.
‘He hadn’t been standing on anything. He was just slumped face down with the belt tight around his neck. The other end was attached to a tree.’
So Gary could have been strangled first by a third party, who then just hung his body half up by his belt round his neck to make it look like suicide. Surely the police wouldn’t be fooled by that. But would they? For my money, they seemed to be giving far too much credence to the existence of the suspect suicide note.
We arrived at my blue Discovery and I extricated myself from the back seat of the constable’s car.
‘And keep off the Swine Cross,’ he ordered.
‘I know. Your boss already told me.’
The policeman indicated that I should climb back into my Discovery and drive away. But I decided not to.
‘I’m going to visit the castle,’ I told him, and I walked off in that direction.
* * *
In the fifteenth century, Middleham Castle had been one of the most palatial residences in England but centuries of neglect have left it as just a shell of its former glory – not that the ruins themselves are not still impressive, now under the protection of English Heritage.
I paid my entrance money and spent half an hour wandering around trying to imagine what the place had looked like in its heyday, when grand royal banquets had been prepared in the huge ground-floor kitchen for service in the great hall above.
The massive castle keep, the central stronghold, was thirty-five yards long by twenty-six wide, with its imposing walls still standing to over sixty feet above the surrounding grass apron. That, in turn, had originally been enclosed on all four sides by high outer curtain walls, against which had once been built accommodations, stores, ovens, guardrooms and a chapel. Nowadays, these outer walls remained intact only on the north, west and south sides, having collapsed along half the castle’s length on the east.
However, the structure I found most intriguing was the latrine tower set into the centre of the western outer wall, where the several primitive medieval toilet cubicles had once included special chutes to send the human waste out through the wall into the dry moat beyond.
Finally, I took the steep internal stone spiral staircase to the high observation point at the top of the south-east corner of the keep and, sure enough, there was a good view down into Simon Paulson’s training yard.
Above me, the sky was darkening with threatening rain clouds so I quickly descended and made my way back to the Discovery.
The policeman had gone but, even so, I decided not to clamber again onto the Swine Cross. Most of the horses were now safely back in their stables anyway, after their morning exertions on the gallops.
I climbed into the vehicle and drove off.
Only as it started to rain and the Land Rover’s automatic system turned on the windscreen wipers, did I notice that there was a small piece of yellow paper stuck under the driver’s side blade.
I pulled over in at the marketplace to remove it.
The paper was about two inches by one and it had a telephone number scribbled on it in black ink.
I dialled the number. It was answered at the first ring as if someone had been waiting for my call.
‘Hello,’ said a young male voice.
‘I’m Sid Halley,’ I said. ‘Who is this?’
‘You don’t need to know that,’ came the reply.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but why did you want me to call you?’
‘I hear that you are looking for Anton Valance?’
‘Indeed I am.’
‘Why do you want him?’
‘You don’t need to know that,’ I said, echoing his earlier reply to me. ‘Not unless you are, indeed, Anton Valance.’
‘I am not.’
‘So how do I find him?’ I asked.
‘You don’t need to. He’ll find you. He knows you’re looking for him.’
‘How does he know that?’
‘Because I told him. I heard you shouting it earlier in the town.’
‘So if you’ve already told him that I’m looking for him, why did you then bother to leave your telephone number under my windscreen wiper?’
There was a slight pause from the other end as if the caller was now sorry he had.
‘I just felt I should tell you, that’s all.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Look, I don’t want to get involved,’ he said with obvious concern.
‘But you are already involved. You gave me your number.’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done. I was only trying to warn you.’
‘Why do I need to be warned?’
‘Because Mr Valance is not a very nice man.’
‘Well, thank you for the warning but I’m a big boy now,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I can look after myself.’
‘Maybe that’s what Gary Bremner also thought,’ the young man said, then he hung up.
10
I sat staring at my phone for quite a long while after the man had hung up. If I had his number, surely, even with GDPR and the other privacy regulations, I should be able to find out his name from somewhere.
If he had really wanted to remain anonymous, he had simply to not give me his number in the first place. But he had, and he had been trying to warn me. I wondered if my mystery man was up to his neck in trouble but fundamentally on the side of the angels.
What did I do next?
I had dropped Rosie off at Charles’s place at Aynsford at a quarter to six this morning and, even though it felt to me like the majority of the day had already passed, the clock on the Discovery’s dash stubbornly showed it was only five to eleven. More than an hour, even, to midday.
I checked the horse-racing fixtures app I had on my phone. There were three meetings scheduled for this particular Tuesday: jumping at Fontwell Park near the South Coast, close to Bognor Regis; an evening floodlit meeting on the all-weather flat track at Wolverhampton; and, finally, an afternoon of jump racing at Catterick Bridge racecourse, just fourteen miles down the road from Middleham, and the first race was due off at 1.50pm.
Perfect.
I decided I would go to the races at Catterick, and make some more waves.
* * *
‘Hello, Mr Halley,’ said the man on the gate to the car park reserved for owners, trainers and jockeys. ‘Long time no see.’
I racked my brain to try and remember where I’d seen him before, and what the hell was his name?
‘Hello,’ I said, failing badly in both departments. ‘Please can I come in here?’
‘Do you have a pass?’ he asked.
‘Sorry, no. I forgot it.’
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Always loved your riding back in the day.’ He fleetingly looked over both his shoulders. ‘If you promise not to tell, I’ll let you in.’
I put a finger to my lips. ‘Thanks.’
‘And my name’s Fred,’ he said as I passed him. ‘Used to be at Haydock.’
‘Thanks, Fred,’ I shouted out the window, laughing. He had been so far ahead of me.
There has been horse racing at Catterick since 1783 and it is one of the busiest racecourses in North Yorkshire, with twenty-seven jump and flat meetings spread throughout the year. The first grandstand was built here in 1906 and the same basic structure remains, albeit with considerable modern improvements made within. The old wooden stand roof, with its many gables and painted edge decoration, reminiscent of that used on old railway stations, gives the place a cosy feel and it is no surprise that this course is well renowned for its friendly atmosphere.
I rode at Catterick only twice in my riding career as I was mostly based in the South, but I have happy memories of snatching a last-gasp victory in the North Yorkshire Grand National Chase here on a bitterly cold Thursday in January. Thankfully, the weather on this particular day was considerably warmer and the earlier cloud and rain were giving way to brighter skies and even some watery sunshine.
I parked the car and decided to spend the £15 entry money rather than trying to rely on my old battered jockey’s badge, which I had simply kept when I’d retired. At almost fifty, who would I be kidding?
Frankie Dettori may still be racing in his fifties, and Lester Piggott famously rode his last winner in his sixtieth year, but those two, and the other older professional jockeys, tend to ride on the flat where crushing falls week-in week-out are less likely than for their jump-racing counterparts. AP McCoy, champion jump jockey on an unprecedented twenty consecutive occasions, was forty when he finally hung up his racing saddle, and he was considered to be a very senior statesman at the time.
I bought a racecard and studied the horses that would be racing later, taking particular notice of their trainers and declared jockeys. As I had expected, most of the trainers were based in the North with quite a few from Middleham. Indeed, Simon Paulson, the trainer I had been to see on Sunday afternoon, had two runners, one in the first race and another in the fifth.
I don’t suppose he, for one, would be pleased to see me.
Tough.
I wandered over towards the weighing room on the end of the grandstand, close to the parade ring. Every trainer and jockey would have to come here at one time or another, the jockeys to change and weigh out for the races, and the trainers to collect their saddles, once weighed, to put on the horses.
The whole place has much changed since my riding days, with a new and larger parade ring, a reconfigured winner’s enclosure, and a totally refurbished weighing room with a wide glass frontage so racegoers could actually see the jockeys standing on the scales.
‘Nice,’ I said to the official at the door, indicating towards the new fancy glass.
‘Treated like royalty now, them jockeys are,’ he announced with a certain degree of envy detectable in his tone. ‘Spanking-new changing rooms with individual power showers, warm-up area, physio room, free café, relaxing area, the lot.’
Not like when I’d started riding, I thought. Back in those days, at some courses, you were lucky if you found an old wooden chair in the changing room to put your day clothes on. The communal showers had been uniformly stark with aged cracked and rust-stained white tiling, while the hot water emanating from them would often only last for the first few races. Refreshments had consisted solely of a drinking-water tap in the gents’ loos and a tray of fruitcake squares, universally known as weighing-room cake, put out on a table at the end of the day.
Not that I begrudged the modern jockeys their creature comforts. They put their lives on the line every time they went out to race so why shouldn’t they have a comfortable relaxing area and a free café, if and when they got back alive?
It was still nearly an hour and a half until the first race so I leaned on the rail by the new unsaddling area and waited for the participants to arrive.
Just like the trainers, most of the jockeys riding here today were those who worked mainly at the northern English tracks or those in Scotland, and I knew very few of them by sight. It also didn’t help that some of the young men riding now hadn’t even been born when I’d been forced to retire. The racecard helped a little by having a tiny photograph of each rider printed in it next to the horse they were to ride but, even so, I thought I might have a problem identifying any of them.
When I’d first started riding, jockeys had always travelled to and from the races wearing a suit and tie, to impress their employers – the trainers and the owners. Indeed, the majority of racegoers were also attired in a similar fashion, just like audiences at the London theatres. But, as in so many situations in the twenty-first century, casual and comfortable was now the norm for all, but the jockeys were still fairly easy to spot. For a start, they were generally smaller than the population as a whole, and they mostly carried a holdall slung over their shoulders containing their riding kit, often with their whip sticking out the top.
As the first few early birds started arriving, I stood by the glass door of the weighing room and asked each one in turn if they were represented by Anton Valance. Most just shook their heads and pushed past me into the sanctuary of the changing rooms. One young man, however, stopped and stared at me.
‘Weren’t you once Sid Halley?’ he said.
I smiled. ‘I still am.’
‘Yeah, of course,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I just meant—’
‘I know. That I was once the jockey Sid Halley.’
‘The champion jockey Sid Halley,’ he corrected. ‘When I was a boy, my father was always talking about you as being the best ever. So I wanted to be you. Except for…’
He tailed off and glanced down at my left hand.
‘And now you are being me,’ I said, trying to be upbeat and not too conceited.
‘I’m not yet the champion,’ he said, looking back at my face. ‘But I’m doing my best.’
‘Well done. I’ll look out for you later. What’s your name?’
‘Peter Minter. But everybody calls me Minty.’
‘Well, Minty, how many rides do you have today?’
‘Two. One in the first and another in the bumper.’
A bumper was the National Hunt Flat Race, always the last on the card.
‘Who booked them for you?’ I asked.
‘Do you mean the trainers?’
I shook my head. ‘No. Who’s your agent?’
‘Dale Wroxton. From Leeds. He looks after quite a few of us from round here.’
‘Not Anton Valance?’
He looked at me quite sharply. ‘No.’
‘Why not? I hear he’s very good.’
‘Very good at poaching, you mean.’
‘Poaching?’
‘He’s very good at getting some jocks, especially the younger ones, to switch from whoever acts for them to him. He charges only eight per cent while Dale charges me ten, and some agents even charge twelve.’
Anton Valance could afford to take less from the jockeys, I thought, if he was also charging a 10 per cent trainers’ premium.
‘Has he tried to poach you?’ I asked.
‘Several times,’ said Minty. ‘He works for a company called The Jockeys Stable and they’re always leaving leaflets in the jockeys’ car park, you know, stuck under the wipers. They also keep sending me emails promising to get me two or three times as many rides, and for all the top trainers. But as my dad always says: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Anyway, I’m happy with Dale. He knows where I prefer to go and is happy for me to ride for the people I like.’
Good for you, I thought. But it might not make you the champion.
‘But the other jockeys,’ I said, ‘those he does sign, do they seem happy with him?’
‘Suppose so. Not my business. You’d better ask them. I have to go now or I’ll be late for the first.’ And, with that, he disappeared into the changing rooms.
I remained standing there and used my phone to look up The Jockeys Stable on the internet. Sure enough, it was there, but there was still no mention anywhere of someone called Anton Valance.
No wonder I was having so much trouble finding him.
Even on the Companies House website, the name Valance was not listed among the officers of the company, nor among the persons of significant control. My suspicious mind wondered if that was because he preferred to remain in the shadows, like a puppet-master, controlling everyone else with invisible strings.
The next person to arrive was Simon Paulson and, as I had predicted, he wasn’t happy to see me. There was a distinct falter in his stride when he realized it was me, but he wasn’t alone and, short of veering off at a tangent, he had no choice but to continue towards me.
‘Hello, Simon,’ I said all cheerily. ‘Nice to see you again.’
‘Yes, hello, Sid,’ he replied somewhat hesitantly. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Only about forty-eight hours, I thought, but decided not to push the point. Instead I stared at the person Simon was with, a tall man in his mid-seventies, wearing a camel-coloured overcoat, brown leather gloves and a slightly battered brown trilby. Eventually, the message got through.
‘Oh yes, sorry,’ Simon said, slightly flustered. ‘Henry Asquith, this is Sid Halley.’
