Felix Francis - Triple Crown

He’d clearly been a pretty good detective.

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ I said, trying my best to control my voice and be all innocent.

‘You know things you shouldn’t, and you also do things you shouldn’t.’

‘Like what?’ I asked.

‘Like how did you get here from DC?’ he said. ‘Every single seat was taken on the direct flights. I know because I was trying to use my position at FACSA to get more without any success. The airlines told me they were already oversold, yet you made it here easily.’

‘I must have been lucky.’

‘I don’t believe in luck.’ He said it without a trace of humour in his voice. ‘But, most of all, how did you know it was Hayden Ryder who was shot?’

‘I told you,’ I said. ‘I recognised him.’

‘How?’

‘I’d researched him on the Internet.’

‘Why?’ he said slowly. ‘You shouldn’t have known anything about this raid. You certainly shouldn’t have known we were after Hayden Ryder.’

That had been careless of me.

I stared at him.

‘Who told you?’

‘I think you had better speak to the Deputy Director.’

‘I’m speaking to you .’ He said it with some real menace in his voice. ‘Who told you?’ he asked again.

I didn’t answer.

He removed his Glock 22C from its holster, cocked the mechanism, and pointed it right at me, somewhere between my eyes, from a distance of only a few inches.

‘I’ll not ask you again,’ he said calmly.

Was this really happening?

My head told me that he wouldn’t possibly pull the trigger, but my head hadn’t informed my heart, which was pounding away so fast that it felt in danger of bursting out of my chest altogether.

I’d had loaded guns pointed at me before but I’d never seen the business end of one quite so close up. I almost had to cross my eyes to focus on the.40-calibre black hole at the end of the barrel.

My mind started playing silly tricks, like wondering if I would have time to actually see the expanding bullet appearing before it took off the back of my head.

I decided it was time to come clean.

‘I was asked to find a mole in your organisation, someone who has been leaking confidential information to those you were meant to be investigating.’

The Glock 22C didn’t move a fraction of a millimetre.

For a moment I was worried that it was Norman who was the mole, and I had just signed my own death warrant.

‘So who told you about the raid?’

‘Tony Andretti,’ I said. ‘He gave me the details after your meeting in the offices on Monday.’

He dropped the gun down onto his lap and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

‘I wondered why he let you come on the bus when he knew it wasn’t a rehearsal.’

‘It was my idea to bring the operation forward to this morning. To reduce the chance that the information would leak or, at least, to reduce the time any leak could be acted upon.’

‘Why wasn’t I told?’ Norman said, but he was smart enough to work out the answer. I just looked at him.

After a few seconds, he nodded. It didn’t seem to make him any happier.

‘So who is the mole?’

‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’

‘Will you go on looking?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. If I’m asked to.’

But I was now a little worried. It had been my carelessness that had allowed Norman to work out that I’d been highly economical with the truth.

I wondered who else might have come to the same conclusion.

By the time Norman finally allowed me off the bus, Tony had been summoned to Louisville City Hall to explain to the mayor why one of FACSA’s special agents had shot dead a prominent Kentucky racehorse trainer on his patch. And in the week of the Derby, too, when the entire world’s horseracing media was focused on Churchill Downs. It was the wrong kind of publicity, and most unwelcome.

My release from the bus, however, did not provide me with access to the barn at the centre of the action. That was still cordoned off by the yellow tape and the local police were proving far too vigilant at keeping me out.

Hence I was still standing close to the bus when a huge eighteen-wheel truck and trailer pulled up alongside.

‘Which one is Hayden Ryder’s barn?’ the driver called, leaning out of the window towards me.

‘The one behind the police tape,’ I said. ‘You can’t get there at the moment.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Someone got shot,’ I said.

The driver didn’t seem unduly surprised or worried. Shootings were commonplace.

‘I’ve come to pick up Ryder’s horses.’

That was quick, I thought. Hayden Ryder hadn’t yet been dead for four hours and someone was already here to take away his horses.

‘Where are you taking them?’ I asked.

‘Chattanooga.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Tennessee,’ said the driver. ‘Three hundred miles south.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Is this going to last long? I’ll have to get going by midday at the latest, or I’m stuck here overnight. I’d be out of hours.’

I looked at the side of his truck. ‘CHATTANOOGA HORSE TRANSPORT’ was painted in large black letters on the white side of the trailer.

‘Have you come from Chattanooga this morning?’ I asked him.

‘Sure have,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on the road since five.’

‘Five this morning?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Made really good time up I-65 from Nashville.’

‘How many horses are you collecting?’

‘A full load,’ he said. ‘Fifteen for me. There’s another truck behind me for another nine.’

All twenty-four horses.

Hayden Ryder’s whole barn of Thoroughbreds would have been shipped out of Churchill Downs 300 miles south to Chattanooga only three days before the planned FACSA raid.

Could that be a coincidence?

I didn’t like coincidences.

‘When were you booked for this trip?’ I asked the driver.

‘Yesterday,’ he said. ‘Rush job. I’ve had to postpone a trip down to Tampa to fit it in.’

‘Which racetrack are you taking the horses to?’

‘It’s not a racetrack — there’s no horseracing at all in Tennessee. They’re going to Jasper, west of Chattanooga. To a horse farm.’

No horseracing in Tennessee.

How convenient, I thought.

There would be no state racing commission to authorise any testing. And Jasper might be far enough away not to bother to send someone from Louisville.

‘Do you have a name?’ I asked the driver.

‘Elvis,’ he said.

I laughed.

‘It’s true. Elvis O’Mally. My dad came over to Tennessee from Ireland as a boy. He was a huge fan of the King.’

‘Well, Elvis,’ I said, ‘you wait here. I’ll try and find out when you can get the horses.’

I wandered a little away from his listening ears and called Tony on the non-smart phone.

‘I can’t talk,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m in a meeting with the mayor.’

‘Don’t hang up,’ I replied quickly. ‘Listen. Two horse trailers have arrived here to collect all Hayden Ryder’s horses and take them to Tennessee. The trailers left Chattanooga at five o’clock this morning. They were booked yesterday.’

I allowed time for the significance of the information to sink in.

‘And another thing,’ I said. ‘Norman knows.’

‘Knows what?’ Tony said.

‘He knows the real reason why I’m here. I had to tell him or I’d have been arrested.’

Or shot.

‘I’ll get back there as soon as I can,’ Tony said.

He hung up.

I walked back to Elvis the driver, who had climbed down from his cab.

‘You’ll have to wait,’ I said.

‘For how long?’

Good question.