Felix Francis - Crisis

A car went by on the road, hooting its horn at her. Maria pulled the dressing gown back round her tightly and waved a two-fingered response in its direction.

‘Well?’ she said to me, leaning back suggestively on the doorframe, ‘are you coming in or not?’

‘Not,’ I said firmly. ‘Which way is it to Warren Hill?’

I walked down Bury Road, past the Severals trotting circles, towards the town centre.

I’d been told in the hotel bar the previous evening that Newmarket was unique in England in having almost as many horse walks as roads, and that it was possible to ride from one side of the town to the other without ever having to walk on the tarmac.

This wasn’t quite true as there were intersections where the equine traffic had to cross the mechanical variety, and one of these was at the end of Bury Road, where a line of cars was building up as string after string made their way to and from the training grounds.

‘How do I get to Warren Hill?’ I shouted to one of the mounted young men as he waited to cross the road. He was wearing a dark-blue puffer jacket and black riding helmet surmounted by a bright yellow cap adorned with a black pom-pom on the top, identical to all the others in the string.

‘That way,’ he said, pointing behind him. ‘Beyond Long Hill. We’ve just been there.’

‘I’m looking for Ryan Chadwick’s horses,’ I said.

‘Poor Ryan,’ he said with genuine distress. ‘What a damn shame about Prince of Troy.’

‘Any idea where I’ll find him?’

‘At the polytrack. His lads have light-blue caps and red pom-poms.’

The cars stopped and he trotted his horse across and then down the horsewalk on the far side. I waved a thanks at him and looked around me. Sure enough, the strings of horses all had, within them, riders with the same cap colours, and each string was different from the others.

As I walked towards Warren Hill, I seemed to be completely surrounded by horses, some on their way to their exercise and others on the way home again afterwards.

Now the coloured caps and pom-poms made sense.

With reportedly more than sixty racehorse trainers situated in and around Newmarket all using the same gallops, I would have never found Ryan Chadwick’s string without them.

Horses have been trained on Newmarket Heath since at least the 1100s but it was the Stuart Kings of England in the seventeenth century that placed the town firmly on the map as the headquarters of the Thoroughbred racing and breeding industry.

I’d looked up Newmarket on the internet.

Exploits on the turf were not the only notable events in the history of the town. A royal palace once stood on what is now Newmarket High Street and, in March 1642, it was here that Charles I angrily rebuffed a deputation sent from Parliament demanding that he relinquish command of the country’s armed forces, an episode that effectively started the English Civil War and ultimately led to the king losing his head.

That palace was torn down during the Cromwell years and, in keeping with the puritanical nature of the period, horse racing was banned as being ungodly.

But, fortunately for the town, Charles II had inherited a love of the horse from his father and, when the monarchy was re-established in 1660, the king built a new palace and made Newmarket his second home, even installing Nell Gwynne, his mistress, in her own cottage that was supposedly connected directly to the King’s quarters via a secret underground passage. The cottage still stands on Palace Street although, sadly, the secret passage has long gone.

Indeed, it was Charles II who instituted the first official races on the Heath, and Newmarket racecourse is today called the Rowley Mile in honour of the king’s own nickname, Old Rowley, taken from his favourite horse.

However, none of this interesting but useless information made it any easier for me to find Ryan and Oliver Chadwick among the abundance of horseflesh at morning exercise on Warren Hill. Perhaps I should have waited at Castleton House Stables for the horses to come back.

I was also beginning to wish that I’d brought my wellington boots rather than only my highly polished black leather shoes.

It was while I was scraping another clod of heavy Heath mud from my instep that I noticed half a dozen light-blue caps with red pom-poms going past.

‘Ryan Chadwick?’ I asked one of them.

‘Up there,’ he replied, pointing up at Warren Hill where I could see a couple of figures standing to one side, about two-thirds of the way. ‘We’re just going to do one more canter past them and then we’re done. There’s another group behind us.’

Sure enough, six more horses topped with light-blue capped and red pom-pommed riders were walking round in a tight circle to my right, waiting for their turn.

One of the two men on the hill waved an arm above his head and the first six started their run up towards them. I followed more slowly, walking on the grass alongside the railed gallop.

By the time I reached Ryan and Oliver, both sets of horses had gone past and the two men were packing away pairs of binoculars into brown leather cases.

‘Morning!’ I shouted as I approached.

‘Hello, Harry,’ said Oliver, waving a hand but not really in a welcoming manner. However, he was happier to see me than his son, who just made a reluctant grunt as an acknowledgement of my presence.

‘I thought the horses would go faster,’ I said.

‘Just gentle canters today,’ said Oliver. ‘To maintain condition. We only do fast gallops twice a week — Wednesdays and Saturdays are the work days, unless they’re racing, of course. We aim to get the horses to peak fitness when they arrive on the racecourse. They’d never win a race if we tire them too much on the Heath.’

I realised how little I knew about training athletes of any species and, it seemed, especially horses. I’d imagined they would run flat-out every day to build up their stamina.

‘Right,’ said Oliver decisively, clapping his hands together. ‘Time for breakfast. Are you coming?’

He turned and marched off across the grass towards a Land Rover parked alongside the nearby road.

‘I actually wanted to have a private word with Ryan,’ I called after him.

He stopped and came back to face me, his angry jutting jaw only about two feet away from mine. Ryan, meanwhile, just stood and stared at me in silence.

‘What about?’ Oliver demanded.

‘I spoke with the Sheikh this morning,’ I said.

There was a visible drooping of Ryan’s shoulders as if he assumed it was more bad news. Things were clearly far from rosy in Ryan Chadwick’s world. And I reckoned it wasn’t only because of the fire.

‘So tell us what the Sheikh said,’ urged Oliver, clearly still agitated and apprehensive.

I had tried once again to speak with Ryan alone but Oliver was having none of it, claiming strongly that he was as much a part of the business as his son and therefore had every right to know what the Sheikh had said.

Hence, the three of us were sitting together round the kitchen table in Oliver’s house, drinking coffee and eating our way through a minor mountain of toast that had been left to keep warm on the side of the Aga, presumably by Maria, although there was no sign of her.

I’d had a quick hotel breakfast at seven-thirty but I still managed to scoff down another couple of slices, with lashings of butter and marmalade. I was surprised how a morning on the gallops could give one an appetite. No wonder the Chadwicks ate afterwards rather than before.

‘The Sheikh sends his condolences to you both,’ I said.

‘What else?’ asked Ryan impatiently.

‘He wants to know why his horses died.’

‘We all bloody well want to know that,’ Oliver said, clearly irritated. ‘What else did he say? What about his other horses?’