Felix Francis - Triple Crown

‘What was he told?’ I asked with trepidation.

There was a slight pause as if Tony was preparing me for bad news. My heart dropped.

‘He was told it was Debenture,’ he said miserably.

‘How could such a thing happen?’ I said angrily, hissing the words down the line. ‘Surely they should have checked who was asking. It could have been a journalist for all they knew.’

‘Apparently the man used my name and he was very persuasive, telling the PA that he had spoken to the commissioner last week, who had told him the name of the horse but had since mislaid the piece of paper on which he’d written it down. The PA knew the information was highly confidential. She had even been instructed by the commissioner not to tell anyone else in their own organisation, not even his deputy. It was partly because of the confidentiality that she assumed it had to be me calling as no one else knew anything about it.’

‘What time did you call Norman Gibson to tell him about the test result?’

There was another pause. More bad news?

‘I didn’t call him,’ Tony said. ‘I sent him an email.’

My heart sank again.

‘From your private account or from the FACSA one?’

‘The FACSA account, obviously,’ he said, somewhat affronted. ‘All FACSA emails are encrypted. They’re meant to be totally secure between sender and recipient. The mole shouldn’t be able to read them.’

Not unless he had access to your work computer and your password, I thought wryly. Or if the mole was Norman Gibson himself.

‘When did you send it?’

‘Late yesterday afternoon,’ he said, ‘after we spoke.’

‘So how did you find out that someone had called the commissioner?’

‘When he arrived for work at nine this morning, he called me only to make sure I had been given the right name. I knew nothing about it, of course.’

It had been a huge risk for the mole, but it had narrowed our search.

‘At least we now know that our mole is a man,’ I said. ‘That reduces the field somewhat.’

‘What are we going to do?’ Tony asked.

‘How quickly could you arrange a search of Raworth’s barn if you had to?’

‘It would probably take us at FACSA at least twenty-four hours to put everything in place but, if it was really urgent, I could call in the FBI or, better still, the local Nassau County Police Department. They could be on site almost immediately. Getting a warrant would mean finding a judge but they usually have one of those on standby. I might even make some calls now and get a warrant issued in case we need it.’

‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘Do that. But, for now, we do nothing. We sit tight, while I watch and listen. If things start to happen, I’ll call you straight away.’

‘Just like in England,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘That day back in England,’ Tony said, ‘when we set that trap by the road. You didn’t call in the police until well after I would have done. As I remember saying then, you have nerves of steel.’

‘Do you want to find your mole or not?’ I asked.

‘I’ll make those calls.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But don’t send any emails.’

Tony didn’t laugh.

I made it to the track kitchen for lunch just as the clock in the dining hall moved on to two minutes past two.

Bert Squab was already closing up.

I hadn’t eaten anything since my lunch the previous day, having missed supper due to Diego and his chums, and then breakfast because of the rain.

My stomach was beginning to think my throat had been cut.

‘I’m shut,’ Bert announced, spreading his considerable bulk as wide as possible and folding him arms in front of him, so that they rested on his protruding belly. ‘You’re too late.’

I could see several steaming dishes of food behind him.

‘Come on, Bert,’ I said imploringly, holding out one of the plastic meal tokens. ‘Give me a break. It’s only two minutes past.’

‘Two o’clock is the cut-off time for the groom meal scheme,’ Bert said adamantly as the clock clicked over to three minutes past. ‘You can still buy some lunch if you want it — for cash.’

He smiled at me.

Bastard, I thought.

Capitalism was alive and well, and living at Belmont Park.

For many people, and Bert was clearly among them, making a bit of extra money on the side was more important than making friends, even if the first actively hindered the second.

I’d done my utmost to be sociable towards him in the past but, far from being a friend, Bert Squab was now my sworn enemy.

Could I last until supper with no food?

I’d have to. I was damned if I was going to give anything extra to this obstinate oaf for food that was already there and paid for. And I knew for sure that any cash I handed over would go straight into his own pocket.

‘I’ll have to have words with my guv’nor,’ I said, turning away and walking towards the exit.

I hadn’t really said it as a threat, but I had quite expected Bert to soften and apologise, and then call me back to eat, but he didn’t.

It was only food, I told myself. Some people in the world regularly go without food for days on end. I could surely manage it for another four hours.

I went back to Raworth’s barn and hung around there, keeping my eyes and ears open for any unusual activity.

The storm of the morning had completely cleared away and the sun was now shining brightly in a near cloudless sky. I sat down on an upturned bucket at the end of the barn and watched as the puddles outside slowly evaporated away and the thick mud turned back into dry earth.

What should I do?

Tony had said that I had nerves of steel but it didn’t feel like it at the moment.

What was the worst thing that could happen?

Even if Raworth were to get away scot-free for infecting his rivals and the FACSA mole remained undiscovered, it wouldn’t be the end of the world as I knew it.

Sending in the Nassau County Police with a search warrant might secure the first objective but would, pretty much, rule out the second, at least for now, and that’s the one I wanted the more of the two.

So much more.

That was the reason I had been living like this for these three long weeks, busting my arse by day, sleeping in a lookalike prison cell with a flatulent Mexican by night, and sharing a bathroom, not only with the other eight human occupants of the building but also, it seemed, with half the cockroach population of North America.

I surprised myself by how badly I wanted to catch this mole.

In fact, I decided that I’d stop at nothing to get him.

I stood up and walked a little distance from the barn to call Tony.

‘Send an email to your predecessor friend telling him that you may have a lead on one of Adam Mitchell’s former grooms who, you understand, knows how Mitchell was tipped off about the raid last October and is prepared to talk about it. Make a joke of the fact that you have found out partly by accident because it appears that the groom in question now looks after a horse that tested positive for cobalt at Pimlico on Preakness Day. But don’t tell him the name of the horse is Debenture. We don’t want to make it too obvious.’

‘Don’t you look after Debenture?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘It could be dangerous.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I can’t see any other way of getting our mole to show himself, and certainly not by this coming Friday. He may not buy it, of course. It is rather like waving a scarlet cape at a bull. Maybe he will charge, or maybe he won’t. But surely it is worth a try.’

And as the matador, would I get gored by his horns, or could I deliver la estocada , the final coup de grâce?

‘I thought male moles were called boars, not bulls,’ Tony said.