Simon Brett - The Stabbing in the Stables

“Yes. You think it’s going to win, don’t you?”

“That’s hardly the point.”

“I’d have thought it was exactly the point.”

“Well, I’m not going to bet on it,” said Carole primly. “I didn’t spend all those years contributing to my pension so that I could fritter it all away on horses.”

“Okay. Your decision.” Overhead the tannoy crackled welcomes to the visitors and announced that the horses were coming out onto the course for the first race. “Come on, Carole, let’s get a good vantage point in the stands.”

At the narrow gate from the bookmakers’ area, a red-faced man in a blazer checked their day badges and let them through into the premier enclosure.

“There’s the winning post, you see,” said Jude. “If we get right up into the stands on a line with this, we’ll get a perfect view of the finish.”

Though the crowds were now starting to stream through from the other parts of the course, Carole and Jude were ahead of the rush and managed to secure a good vantage point on the highest of the cement steps overlooking the winning post.

“They start over there for this one.” Jude pointed to the farside of the course, where a blur of moving colours could just be discerned.

“You can see why people bring binoculars,” Carole observed.

“Don’t worry. There’ll be a running commentary while the race is on. There are whole areas of the course that are out of sight. In terms of seeing everything, you do better watching racing on television, but of course it’s more exciting when you’re actually here.”

“Are you telling me, Jude, that you sometimes watch horse racing on television?”

“Yes, of course I do. When I’m bored. But I don’t always have a bet.”

Deflated, Carole let the air puff out of her mouth, with the expression of a woman who had now heard everything.

The buzz of excitement around them grew as more and more people crammed into the stands. The grassy area below, near the winning post, was also filling up, and the level of decibels and excitement mounted as the start approached. Steam rose off the crowd in the March air and dissolved into the high roof of the stand.

Then, with their crackling pre-echoes, the loudspeakers announced the magic words, “They’re under starter’s orders. They’re off!”

As the commentary rumbled around the track, Carole found it difficult to pick out the individual words, but she kept hearing the name of Random Missile. From their vantage point, they could just about see the start, then the horses went almost out of sight down the bottom of the course, but became clearer as they entered the straight.

The commentary also seemed to become clearer at that point-or maybe Carole’s ears were just getting used to the strange sound quality-and there was no doubt from what was being said that Random Missile was way out ahead. Ten lengths, twelve lengths. To her surprise, Carole found herself clutching Jude’s arm. “Goodness,” she said, “yours is winning!”

“Yes, at the moment, but-”

“Ssh! He’s coming up to the finish!”

Random Missile, by now some twenty lengths ahead of his nearest rival, flashed past the post. Carole, uncharacteristically, found herself jumping in the air. “Jude!” she shrieked. “Random Missile’s won! You’ve won three hundred and thirty pounds!”

Perhaps it was the good-humoured laughter from the punters around them, or it could have been the fact that the horses all continued running that made Carole realise something was wrong. Crestfallen, she looked at her neighbour for an explanation.

“They’ve got two more circuits to go.” Jude was trying desperately hard not to sound patronising. “The one who wins will be the one who’s ahead the third time they pass the post.”

“Oh,” said Carole.

By the next time the horses passed the stands, Random Missile’s lead had been cut down to nothing, and as they climbed to the top of the course, he seemed to have found a reverse gear and was slipping back through the pack. Jude jutted out a rueful lower lip. “He never was going to stay in this going.”

Carole didn’t ask for a gloss on this; she got the gist.

The commentary continued, but on the final circuit the names had changed. The horses who had been leading for the first two went virtually unmentioned, though Random Missile did get a couple of name checks. They were: “Random Missile’s trailing the rest by a country mile” and “Random Missile’s pulled up.”

At this last, Jude pouted again, pulled her betting ticket out of her pocket and tore it in two.

“Why’re you doing that?”

“He’s pulled up. He’s not going to finish.”

Meanwhile, at the head of affairs, the race was being fought out by the two second favourites, who touched down together over the final fence. But only a couple of lengths behind them loomed the grey menace of Gerry’s Tyke. He was fresher and holding something back. He overtook the two tiring horses and vindicated the form book by winning by four lengths and easing up.

Carole Seddon could not suppress a smile of satisfaction.

“I don’t know why you’re looking so pleased with yourself. You picked the winner and you hadn’t got any money on it.”

“Oh, that’s true. How much would I have won?”

“Well, say you’d put on a tenner-”

“I’d never have put on that much.”

“It makes the sums easier. And say you’d got that seven to four, you would have won…seventeen pounds fifty.”

Carole looked disappointed. “Doesn’t compare very well to three hundred and thirty.”

“No, but the big difference is that Gerry’s Tyke actually won, whereas Random Missile pulled up. It was always going to be much more likely that Gerry’s Tyke won. That’s why it was favourite, and why Random Missile was at thirty-three to one.”

“It still doesn’t sound much of a return, though.”

“One hundred and seventy-five percent? That’s a lot better than a building society.”

“Yes. I suppose it is.” Carole looked thoughtful. “Shall we go and look at the horses in the parade ring?”

Jude smiled inwardly at her friend’s newfound enthusiasm. “They won’t actually be there yet. But we can wander round. Look at the unsaddling enclosure perhaps?”

“Why would we want to do that?”

“Well, it’s the kind of place where Donal Geraghty might well hang about. And trying to find him,” Jude reminded gently, “was why we came here this afternoon.”

“Oh yes. Yes, of course,” said Carole.

But there was no sign of the missing Irishman around the unsaddling enclosure. Nor around the parade ring, where the two women again assessed the horseflesh on offer. Jude liked the look of a short chestnut horse with a white blaze on it forehead, called Missie Massie. In spite of the fact that the race card said, “having fallen on her last three starts, makes little appeal here,” Jude was convinced she was worth an each-way gamble. Carole favoured the second favourite, a fastidiously high-stepping stallion called Becktrout (“likely to give a good account of himself,” according to the race card).

At the bookies, as her form might suggest, Missie Massie ranged between forty and sixty-six to one, while the best they could see for Becktrout, seesawing for favouritism with another horse, was five to two.

“Is there any other way of betting?” asked Carole.

“Why do you need one?”

“Well, what’s to stop one of these bookmakers just running away while the race is on?”

“Carole, you have got a rather outdated image of bookies. Maybe that occasionally used to happen. Now they’re regulated like any other professional body. Anyway, if they run away today with a hundred quid from Fontwell, how’re they going to turn up and continue to make their living tomorrow at Plumpton or Haydock or Uttoxeter or wherever it happens to be?”