Felix Francis - Triple Crown

I would have loved to remove one of the straws for testing but, with only three there, I was worried it would be missed. But, if I couldn’t take the chance of taking a whole straw, how about if I took just a bit of one? Or would it then stand out as being shorter than the other two?

I went back into the feed store. Hanging on a hook were a pair of scissors used to open the feed bags. I fetched them and cut about half an inch off the bottom of each of the straws, making sure that the bits contained some of the frozen material. I carefully placed them into one of the red-capped Vacutainer test tubes, which I then slipped into my pocket.

5.23.

Time to go.

I returned the three straws to the metal cup, lowered it back into the liquid nitrogen and re-clipped it to the rim as before. Then I secured the lid, returned the saddle pad and restacked the cardboard boxes. I spent a moment checking they were back exactly as I had found them.

5.25.

Satisfied, I relocked the drug store, silently let myself out into the shedrow and went quickly back to the office.

The ten runners were at the start, still having their girths checked. The Man o’War Stakes was run on the turf course that sits inside the main dirt track. The race was over a mile and three furlongs so the starting gate was in front of the grandstand.

With one eye on the TV screen, and with the outer office door shut and locked, I used the picks to let myself into Keith’s bedroom. Maybe I was just naturally inquisitive, but it seemed a shame not to have a quick look in there while I had the opportunity. I might not get the chance again.

Not that there was much to see.

Keith appeared to have very few clothes, hardly enough to fill even half the available locker space. Indeed, he had more well-thumbed copies of hardcore girlie magazines than anything else, mostly spread across the floor under his bed.

Each to their own.

I went back into the office, locking the door to Keith’s bedroom behind me.

‘They’re in the gate,’ called the track announcer through the TV. ‘And they’re off and running in the Man o’War Stakes.’

Neither of the Raworth horses won the race. One finished a creditable third but the other was always well off the pace, trailing in last of the ten, some twenty lengths behind the winner.

The mood in the camp when everyone returned to the barn couldn’t have been more in contrast to that of the previous day after Teetotal Tiger’s triumph.

George Raworth was spitting feathers in anger, in particular over the horse that had brought up the rear of the field.

‘That damned jockey,’ he kept saying over and over to Charlie Hern. ‘He never gave the horse a chance.’

I’d watched the race pretty closely on the TV and, in my opinion, a combined reincarnation of both Fred Archer and Willie Shoemaker wouldn’t have managed to get the horse any closer. It was sometimes easier for a trainer to blame the pilot than to accept the fact that the horse was simply not good enough.

I slid away from the inquest.

Just as I had been happy to hang around during the good times of yesterday, I was eager to be away from the doom and gloom of today. I wanted to be perceived as a lucky omen, not a portent of failure.

Instead, I found a quiet spot away from listening ears to call Tony.

‘A cryogenic flask?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s hidden away under boxes in the drug store. There are three straws of material kept in it, frozen solid in liquid nitrogen.’

‘Liquid nitrogen?’ Tony said. ‘Is that toxic?’

‘No,’ I said, laughing. ‘Eighty per cent of the air we breathe is nitrogen.’

‘But that’s not a liquid.’

‘Liquid nitrogen is just like the nitrogen in the air,’ I said, ‘but it has been made so cold that it liquefies.’

‘But how do you get it?’

‘It’s created as a by-product when air is liquefied to produce oxygen, you know, for medical use and such. Anyone can buy liquid nitrogen from an industrial gas producer. It’s storing it that’s the problem. You need what is called a Dewar — a bit like a big thermos. That’s what a cryogenic flask is.’

‘But what’s the liquid nitrogen for?’ Tony asked.

‘To keep the material inside deep frozen.’

‘But what is this “material”?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, ‘but I have acquired some. It is in a test tube in my pocket. It’s no longer frozen but we could still get it analysed.’

‘How did you acquire it?’ Tony asked somewhat sarcastically, as if he could already guess.

‘You don’t want to know.’

He laughed down the line. ‘Do you want me to arrange a pickup?’

‘Yes, please,’ I said.

‘We have a FACSA office in New York. They deal mostly with boxing. I’ll get the station chief to collect it himself. His name is Jim Bradley. No one at the racing section will know anything about it.’

I still didn’t like it. It would mean someone else would then know that I was not who I said I was.

Tony seemed to sense my hesitation.

‘I’ve known Jim Bradley since we joined the NYPD together as cadets some forty years ago. I’d trust him to hell and back. If I tell him it is hush-hush, he’ll not tell anyone, I promise.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Where and when?’

‘It’s Saturday. I’ll try Jim at home. Call me back in half an hour.’

I used the time to have my supper at the track kitchen, exchanging a plastic token with Bert Squab for a plate of highly spiced chilli con carne with rice.

Fortunately, there was no sign of Diego or his chums as I sat down to eat. I could do without that distraction at the moment.

I called Tony on the stroke of the half-hour.

‘Jim says pass it through the chain-link fence on Plainfield Avenue, which runs up the east side of the barn area. Jim drives a black Ford Bronco SUV and he knows the area well. He’ll park up exactly opposite the high-school sports field at eight-thirty sharp. It will be dark by then.’

I looked at my cheap watch. It read 6.46 p.m. I had an hour and three-quarters to wait.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there.’

‘Do you need him to get anything for you?’

How about a cricket box?

I was next to the chain-link fence opposite the high school sports field at least fifteen minutes before the allotted time, mostly obscured from the barns by a line of trees and some bushes.

The streetlights out on Plainfield Avenue, and the other lights on poles around the barns, did nothing more than throw deep shadows beneath the trees within which it was easy for me to remain hidden.

I crouched, stock still, facing inwards towards the barns, searching for any telltale movement that might indicate the presence of other eyes, there to watch me.

There was nothing. Not even a rabbit or a squirrel.

I waited.

Jim Bradley arrived in the black Ford Bronco right on cue at eight-thirty exactly, and the handover of the Vacutainer test tube through the fence took only a few seconds.

I was already well on my way back to the bunkhouse before the Bronco had even turned the corner at the end of the street.

‘It’s semen.’

‘What?’

‘Semen. Probably equine semen but more tests are needed to confirm it.’

‘But that’s ridiculous,’ I said.

‘Quite so,’ Tony agreed. ‘But that’s what it is, nevertheless. I dug a biochemistry professor at Columbia University out of bed early on Sunday morning to test it. He swears to me that the stuff you gave to Jim Bradley was semen. Some of the sperm in it were still swimming.’

It didn’t make any sense.

‘Why would a training stable need frozen semen?’ I said. ‘Artificial insemination is not even permissible in Thoroughbreds. All mating has to be done by live cover — the stallion has to physically mount the mare.’