Peter Temple: Bad Debts

I bought a race card and wandered into the huge barn of a betting ring. Most of the city bookmakers were fielding, trying to keep afloat until the Spring Carnival could rescue them. It was five minutes before the second race and there was a fair amount of action by country standards. I went out onto the grandstand. Over to the right, the members were snug behind glass. Out here it was all streaming eyes and snuffling noses.

The second looked a mediocre affair on paper and it proved to be one of those races where it’s a pity something has to win. Or come second. Or third.

‘Not much pace in that,’ said the caller.

‘Putting it bloody mildly,’ said the man next to me. ‘First time I’ve seen the whole field trying to throw a race.’

I went back through the betting ring to the mounting yard.

Cam was near the hot dog vendor, eating something wrapped in paper. As I looked around, Harry rounded the corner of the stalls. The small man stopped and patted his raincoat pockets, looking down.

When he looked up, he nodded briskly to himself, as if he’d found what he was looking for. Then he set off in the direction of the carpark.

Cam crumpled up the greaseproof paper and shot the ball into a bin a good three metres away. He set off for the betting ring. As he entered the large opening, he patted a thickset man in a greasy anorak on the arm.

I didn’t waste any time checking the odds. Topspin Winder was showing 40-1 with the book nearest the entrance and I took it. I invested a modest $50, not enough to scare anybody. By the time I’d finished my circuit, Cam’s team of punters had struck terror into the numbers men: Topspin was down to 15-1.

Then the second wave hit the bookies-a panic rush of Topspin’s connections, caught napping by Cam’s troops and now jostling with the dumb money that was always on the alert for a plunge. The market went into freefall, ending up on 6-1.

On my way to have a look at the beast concerned, I passed Cam, leaning against the mounting yard fence. He was smoking a little cigar and reading the card. Nothing in that Aboriginal/Scottish/Italian face suggested anything other than mild boredom.

Topspin was equally impassive. I’d seen her at her previous three appearances and had grown rather fond of her. She was small, calm, unprepossessing. Her form to date had not prepossessed the racing press either; in the Age that morning, Ron Pevsner assessed her odds at 50-1 and Bart Grantley gave her a rating of two out of ten.

Topspin Winder had come to Harry’s attention in her first outing, over 1600 metres in pouring rain at Moe. The small horse missed the start completely, then appeared to stumble about ten metres out. By the time the jockey got things organised, the closest horse was twelve lengths away, vanishing into the mist. Cam was out on the fence and for some reason he put the watch on Topspin at the 200-metre mark. About 500 metres out, there was a bad fall, two horses going down in the mud. Topspin was too far back to be affected and ran seventh out of the remaining thirteen, about eight lengths behind the winner. What interested Harry was Cam’s estimate that she took under 60 seconds to cover the 1000 metres to the 1200 mark. And that in the excitement over the fall, no-one said anything about it.

We hadn’t seen that speed again. In her next three races, all 1600s, Topspin was ridden by another jockey, a leather-faced veteran of the inland circuit called Marty Bacquie. The horse seemed to be trying but she kept getting caught in the middle of the herd, boxed in half a dozen lengths off the pace, and flagging badly over the last two hundred or so. At her last appearance, at Pakenham, I filmed Bacquie talking to the trainer after the race and Harry brought in his trusted lip-reader to look at the video. The trainer was saying nice things to Marty. And that was why we were in Ballarat.

There were twelve horses in race three, 1200 metres. The best performed, Quigley’s Pride, had one win and nine places from nineteen starts. Second best was Extension Date with one win from five. After that it was winter. There were no more than a hundred people on the grandstand. I took my usual place out on the eastern edge. Harry was down in the front row, undistinguished in his elderly raincoat and hat. No sign of Cam.

They came out of the gate in a good line. Topspin had a new jockey today, Lance Wallace, a New Zealander in his second season in the big time, rider of several upsets in the past year.

A horse called Denaderise took the front and opened up a two-length lead. I knew Denaderise. This was her role in life. She had about 500 metres in her.

At the 600, Quigley’s Pride, specialist placegetter, was a length off Denaderise. There was no pace in it. Topspin was lying well back, perhaps eighth or ninth, nothing outside her.

At the 700, Wallace moved the horse further out, almost to the centre of the track. Denaderise was gone, slipping backwards. Extension Date took over the lead, on the rails, moving well. Quigley’s tucked in behind, losing a little ground as they approached the 800. Outside them a horse called Under the Gun, a 15-1 shot, came into contention.

With 200 metres to go, Under the Gun’s jockey used the whip and the animal surged past Extension Date, seeming to draw Quigley’s Pride along. At the 150, Under the Gun was the winner, stride lengthening, towing Quigley’s Pride away from Extension Date.

The race caller was saying, ‘It’s Under the Gun now coming away, Quigley’s Pride hasn’t got the finish to stay with him, Extension Date being left…’

Something had gone badly wrong in our calculations. And, presumably, in the connections’ calculations, too.

And then, very smoothly, no whip, hands and heels, Lance Wallace and Topspin Winder began their run down the outside. The little horse gave no great impression of speed; the other horses seemed to slow down.

The caller went into overdrive, ‘Down the outside Topspin Winder, she’s mowed down Extension Date, fifty metres to go she goes up to Quigley’s Pride, no resistance there for the plunge horse. It’s Under the Gun and Topspin Winder, Under the Gun Topspin Winder, metres to go it’s Topspin Winder pulling away, Topspin Winder by three-quarters of a length…’

I looked across at Harry. He was having a little swig of Glenmorangie from the flat silver flask he took to the races on cold days.

I filmed the fourth race, a Class 1 handicap over 1600 metres. This was the second reason we were in Ballarat. My attention was on Red Line Value, a new object of Harry’s attention. It went well early, weakened and finished in the middle of the field, making a little ground in the closing stages.

Cam and Harry were in the BMW when I got there. Harry gave me a small smile. ‘I think we might have a look at the Dom when we get home,’ he said.

We parked a block away from the Peter Lalor Hotel in the middle of Ballarat. Cam went off. He had a date with the commission agent who had organised the team of punters.

‘Collectin’ can be the hardest part,’ Harry said. ‘Still, the boy’s got a look about him keeps the buggers honest. They know a bare-knuckle man when they see one. What’d ya make of that Red Line?’

Cam was back inside fifteen minutes. On Harry’s orders, we stopped at McDonald’s on the way out. Harry ordered two Big Macs.

‘Take over the helm,’ he said to Cam. ‘Got to get outside these snacks. Man gets weak up here in the glaciers.’

The second hamburger didn’t make it to the city limits. ‘Now that’s what I call food,’ Harry said. ‘Not a word to the wife. She reckons you eat the stuff, you end up needin one of them coronary overpasses or whatever.’

He found a Willie Nelson tape and pushed it into the system. ‘Give us the sums, Cam,’ he said, tilting his seat back. ‘Moonlight in Vermont’ flooded the car.