Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Front Runner

The pace began to quicken as the horses ran downhill away from the grandstand, all of them safely negotiating the first three flights of hurdles although the two outsiders came under pressure early, their jockeys pushing hard and giving their mounts a few ‘hurry-up’ slaps with their whips, but without any great response.

However, at the last hurdle on the far side, Wisden Wonder, the favourite, hardly jumped at all, crashing through the obstacle and unseating his rider, much to the displeasure of the crowd, which groaned loudly en masse.

By the time they turned for home around the bottom end of the course, the remaining seven were well spaced out. One of them pulled up before the last two hurdles and the other six finished in line astern, with the winner returned at a starting price of five-to-one.

Leslie Morris had not cheered the winner home, nor had he moved a muscle when the favourite had come to grief. Now he merely stood in the grandstand sorting out his betting slips before moving back to the lines of bookmakers to collect his winnings, making notes all the time in his red notebook.

And the winnings were considerable.

By the time he had collected from eight different bookmakers, Morris had two large bundles of banknotes in his coat pockets. But he didn’t hang around to reinvest any of the winnings on the remaining races. Instead, he walked quickly out through the grandstand to the main foyer and exited the racecourse.

I followed him out to the owners and trainers’ car park and watched as he climbed into a silver Audi A4 and drove rapidly away. He had departed so quickly that even if I’d wanted to stop him, I doubt that I would have been successful. And he would probably have thought I was trying to rob him.

He’d have been right.

I particularly wanted to get my hands on that red notebook.

My questioning of bookmakers about the bets they have taken and paid out on is a delicate area.

Racecourse bookmakers are not registered or licensed by the BHA in spite of the fact that they ply their trade on BHA-licensed property. Rather, they hold operating licences from the Gambling Commission.

Hence my authority is severely restricted and not helped by the fact that many bookmakers consider the BHA to be obstructive in not allowing jockeys and trainers to discuss openly with them the prospects of their horses.

In spite of all that, I went back to the betting ring and went up to one of the bookies who had paid out to Mr Morris.

‘How much did the man in the blue fedora win?’ I asked.

‘Who wants to know?’ he replied in a less-than-friendly manner.

I showed him my BHA credentials with the word ‘investigator’ and he then looked up at my face. ‘Was it fixed?’ he asked.

‘Was what fixed?’

‘The race.’

Good question.

‘Not that I’m aware of,’ I said nonchalantly. ‘I’m only interested in how much you paid the man in the blue fedora.’

‘Three grand,’ said the bookie. ‘He’d a monkey on at fives.’

A ‘monkey’ was betting slang for five hundred pounds. At odds of five-to-one the winnings would be two thousand five hundred pounds. Add back the stake money and the payout was three thousand.

I went to each of the seven other bookmakers Leslie Morris had collected from. Three wouldn’t tell me but four confirmed that he’d had a bet of five hundred pounds at five-to-one. If all eight bets had each paid out three thousand pounds then Mr Morris had left the racecourse with twenty-four thousand pounds in cash in his coat pockets.

But how much had he started with?

I went down the line of bookmakers speaking to each of those I could remember Morris betting with but not winning. I asked them how much the man in the blue fedora had wagered and on which horse but none of them could really remember. The eight he had collected from had only remembered him because a three-thousand-pound cash payout was a little unusual.

I asked them all if they had taken many bets of five hundred pounds from Morris but it seemed that he had bet varying amounts on the different horses.

One bookmaker told me he knew he’d taken a monkey on the fifteen-to-one shot but couldn’t be sure it was from a man in a blue hat. ‘Punters are punters,’ he said. ‘I’m too busy checking for counterfeit notes to worry about what they’re wearing.’ He was also far too busy taking bets for the fourth race to give me any more of his time.

‘Come back after the last,’ he said, but, if he couldn’t remember now, he would have even less chance in a couple of hours’ time.

I asked all the bookies if they’d taken any bets on Wisden Wonder from the man in the blue fedora. None of them thought so, and I certainly hadn’t heard him placing one. They all said they’d taken lots of big bets on the favourite from other punters and they were very grateful not to have had to pay out.

I walked back through the grandstand to the weighing room and into the broadcast centre, the room from where all the racecourse public address and closed-circuit television coverage was transmitted.

‘Can I help you?’ asked the technician in charge.

I showed him my BHA credentials.

‘I’d like to see the video of the third race.’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But not just at the moment. The fourth is about to start and I need to concentrate.’

I sat on a stool next to him and together we watched on a screen as the fourth race unfolded.

‘We have Channel 4 here today,’ he said. ‘They do all the TV production but I have to be sure that the racecourse closed-circuit systems are all working and tied in to their output. And we have our own commentary team separate from them to pipe through the on-course speakers.’

I sat patiently as he nervously monitored the bank of electronic equipment but all seemed to be working well and he relaxed as the race came to a conclusion.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘how can I help?’

‘Video of the third,’ I said.

‘No problem. Just let me make a copy of that race to give to the winning owner.’

He put a blank DVD into his recorder and burned the copy before handing it to a waiting official.

‘Now,’ he said, pushing buttons on the equipment, ‘do you want to see the whole race?’

‘Just the last hurdle in the back straight second time,’ I said. ‘Where Wisden Wonder was unseated.’

I watched the incident from two different camera angles, in full speed and in slow motion.

The horse had hit the hurdle hard and had pecked on landing, stumbling badly and almost going down on its knees. Bill McKenzie, the jockey, had little chance of remaining in the saddle and had gone past the horse’s head onto the turf. He’d even received a kick or two for his trouble.

But I was more interested in what had happened in the run-up to the jump.

Wisden Wonder had been lying fifth of the eight runners at the time and had been closely following the two right in front of him who were side by side. Wisden Wonder had seemingly not even seen the obstacle until he was upon it. If he’d been given any warning by McKenzie to jump, he had failed to act.

‘Is there a problem?’ asked the technician.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No problem.’

‘The stewards had a look at the same incident after the race but they didn’t seem that bothered. They only watched it once.’

‘Do you know if they interviewed the jockey?’ I asked.

‘I doubt it. I think he went straight off to hospital.’

I’d been so engaged watching Leslie Morris collect his winnings that I hadn’t noticed what had happened to the jockey.

‘I’ll take a look at the stewards’ report,’ I said, standing up. ‘Thanks.’

‘Anytime.’

I left him to his electronics and walked across the weighing room to the medical room.