Felix Francis - Triple Crown

Victor Gomez had been right.

Ladybird was good. Very good.

She led from start to finish, holding off a late challenge to win by a neck.

Understandably, George Raworth was delighted, coming out onto the track with me to lead the horse into the winner’s circle.

I could see both Bob Wade and Steffi Dean standing by the rail. I pulled the peak of my cap lower and kept my eyes down but I think the special agents were more interested in each other than in anyone else.

I had realised that being a groom was, in fact, a very good undercover persona. Grooms were invisible, even more so than waiters in restaurants. Anyone looking my way was staring into the eyes of the horse rather than into those of the man leading it.

I knew of one trainer in England who could readily identify every horse in his hundred-strong yard just by looking at it, even in the rain, but he couldn’t tell his stable staff apart, one from another. Irrespective of their real names, he simply called all his lads ‘John’.

While Ladybird’s owner, trainer and jockey were receiving their trophies from the star of a TV soap opera, Maria and I walked the horse from the winner’s circle to the post-race testing barn.

Here we waited with the horse for almost an hour, whistling and pouring water until Ladybird finally acquiesced and supplied the urine sample the testers required.

Maria was not her usual ebullient self, not speaking to me once during the wait.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ I said, but she didn’t understand the idiom. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked slowly instead.

She nodded. ‘OK.’

‘Then why don’t you say something?’

This time she shook her head. ‘No talk.’

I thought she almost seemed frightened.

‘What has Diego said to you?’ I asked.

‘No talk,’ she repeated. ‘Diego, he say no talk.’

‘Or what?’ I asked.

She definitely appeared frightened this time. She looked all around her with wide eyes and then whispered. ‘Diego say he cut me if I talk to you.’ She traced a fingernail down her cheek from a tearful right eye all the way to her chin.

Diego was getting to be more than just a nuisance. He had clearly decided that it was easier to intimidate his cousin than me, and he was probably right. The sooner he was dragged off in chains to Rikers Island the better.

George Raworth came into Ladybird’s stall when I was still brushing her down after washing away the sweat of her exertions.

‘Well done, my girl,’ George said, patting the horse on the neck in love and gratitude. ‘Great job, Paddy. Now for the Preakness tomorrow.’

He even patted me on the back as well.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Let’s hope so.’

‘Hope doesn’t come into it,’ George said with a laugh. ‘I believe Fire Point is a sure thing.’

He should know, I thought.

‘The professor thinks the semen is probably from an American Quarter Horse,’ Tony Andretti said when I called him at eight o’clock on Friday evening. ‘The DNA doesn’t match that of any known stallion held by the National Quarter Horse Registry but it closely resembles other Quarter Horse DNA records that are available, as if the source was possibly related.’

‘Quarter Horse semen?’ I said. ‘Why on earth would anyone want that around a Thoroughbred?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

A notion was stirring in my mind. Something I’d read was hovering somewhere just beneath my consciousness.

Was it to do with Quarter Horses?

Suddenly, like a switch being turned on, I remembered what it was.

George Raworth had grown up on a ranch in Texas that bred Quarter Horses. It was still run by two of his cousins.

Was that where the semen had come from?

Other things also floated to the surface.

‘Tony?’ I said. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Sure am,’ he replied.

‘Could you ask your professor if he can do one more test for me?’

‘He says he can’t do any more than he’s already done. If the DNA of the semen doesn’t match anything that’s registered, then there’s no way of telling exactly which horse it came from.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m happy with that. The test is for something else.’

‘What?’

‘EVA,’ I said ‘Equine viral arteritis.’

There was a long pause from the other end.

‘What are you implying?’ Tony said eventually.

‘Nothing,’ I lied. ‘I’d just like to know if the EVA virus exists in the semen sample. I read on the Internet that stallions that have been infected shed the EVA virus in their semen for the rest of their lives. Could you also ask your professor if freezing infected semen would kill the virus or does it preserve it in the same way it preserves the sperm?’

‘I’ll ask him,’ Tony said. ‘But I can’t think why. The infected horses at Churchill Downs were all colts. Surely infected semen would only infect mares during mating.’

I thought back to the sound of the air being expelled from the air duster, the sound that had come twice from the Preakness Barn on Wednesday night.

‘How about if you squirted it up a colt’s nostrils?’ I said.

‘But why would you?’ Tony said. ‘Semen up the nose wouldn’t do any good.’

I laughed. ‘Not for reproduction, I’ll grant you, but EVA is primarily a respiratory disease. Ask your prof if inhaling EVA-infected semen would make a horse sick.’

‘I’ll call him straight away,’ Tony said.

‘Good. I’ll call you back in an hour.’

We disconnected.

If I was right, and it was a big if , then Crackshot should also come down with EVA in the days ahead. And if that occurred, George Raworth might have some difficult explaining to do.

For the time being we had to sit tight and wait.

‘The professor will do the EVA test tomorrow,’ Tony said when I called him back. ‘He wanted to leave it until Monday but I convinced him otherwise. In fact, I asked him to go into the lab to do it tonight but he’s hosting a birthday dinner for his daughter.’

‘Tomorrow will do fine,’ I said. ‘Did you ask him the other things?’

He laughed. ‘The professor says that he doesn’t know. It seems that no one has ever done any research that involves squirting EVA-infected semen up a horse’s nose. But he did say that some sexually transmitted diseases in humans could be caught if infected semen gets into the eyes, so he doesn’t see why not, especially as EVA is a respiratory illness. And he also says that, if the semen does contain EVA, freezing it would not kill the virus. It would still be active when thawed.’ He paused. ‘But are you seriously suggesting that the three colts that became ill with EVA at Churchill Downs had been purposefully infected by squirting semen up their noses?’

Was I?

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am.’

‘By whom?’

‘George Raworth,’ I said. ‘And I think he’s done it again here at Pimlico to a horse called Crackshot.’

‘That’s quite an accusation,’ Tony said. ‘Are you sure?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure, but everything seems to fit, at least it will if the professor finds EVA virus tomorrow.’

I now wished I had taken the air duster from the Jeep. I could have had it tested for traces of semen. But it would have been a huge risk. George Raworth might have seen me next to the vehicle, and what would I have said if he had discovered the air duster was missing, only for it to reappear from my pocket during a search.

‘So what do we do about it?’ Tony said. ‘Should we arrest Raworth?’

‘We can’t. You and I may believe it is true but, at the moment, it’s all speculation and circumstantial. Raworth would deny it, cover his tracks, and there would be nothing we could do. We need proof.’