Under Orders Read Free

had employed staff to do the selling whilst he busied himself with the writing.
    He had for years been the keeper of his own unofficial racing archive when, with due reverence from the Jockey Club, the post had been made official and he had been invited to coordinate all the material and documents held in various racing museums around the country. But it was the histories that were his fortune. The slim, cheaply produced black-and-white booklets had given way to glossy colour, a new edition every month. Leather-bound holders for the booklets were a must-buy present for every racing enthusiast each December.
    Paddy was a mine of both useful and useless information and, since I had taken up investigating as a career, I had frequently referred to him for some fact or other. In racing terms, Paddy could out-Google Google. He was the best search engine around.
    ‘What chance do you think Candlestick has in the first?’ I asked him casually.
    ‘Could win. It depends…’ He stopped.
    ‘On what?’ I prompted.
    ‘Whether it’s trying.’ He paused. ‘Why do you ask?’
    ‘I thought I might have a bet.’ I tried to make it sound normal.
    ‘Bejesus! Now did ya hear dat!’ He addressed no one in particular. ‘Sid Halley’s having a bet. And pigs may fly, I s’pose.’ He laughed. ‘Now if you told me dat you were having a third eye up ya arse, I might more believe ya.’
    ‘OK, Paddy, enough,’ I said.
    ‘Now don’t be telling ya Uncle Paddy lies, Sid. Now, why
did
ya ask about Candlestick?’
    ‘What makes you think it may not be trying?’ I asked instead of answering.
    ‘I didn’t say dat,’ he said. ‘I merely said dat it could win
if
it was trying.’
    ‘But you must think it may not be, else why say it?’
    ‘Rumours, rumours, that’s all,’ he said. ‘The grapevine says dat Burton’s horses are not always doing their best.’
    It was at this point that the first of the day’s deaths occurred.
    At Cheltenham, one end of the parade ring doubles as the winner’s unsaddling enclosure and there is a natural amphitheatre created by a rise in the ground. A semicircular concrete-and-brick stepped viewing area rises up from the rail around the parade ring. Later in the day, this area would be packed with a cheering crowd as the winner of the Gold Cup returned triumphantly to be unsaddled. This early on a wet afternoon a few hardy folk stood under umbrellas watching the comings and goings at the weighing room and waiting for the sports to begin.
    ‘Help! Help! Somebody help me!’
    A middle-aged woman, wearing an opened waxed jacket over a green tweed suit, was screaming from the bottom of the stepped area.
    All eyes swivelled in her direction.
    She continued to scream. ‘For God’s sake, someone help me!’
    Paddy and I ran over to the rail on the inside of the parade ring from where we immediately could see that it was not the woman but the man she was with who was in trouble. He had collapsed and was lying at her feet up against the four-foot highchain-link wire fence that kept the crowd away from the horses. More people had moved to help on her side of the fence and someone was calling for a doctor.
    The racecourse doctor, more used here to treating injured jockeys, ran from the weighing room, speaking rapidly into his walkie-talkie.
    There is nothing like a medical crisis to bring the great British public to stand and watch. The viewing area was filling fast as two green-clad paramedics came hurrying into the parade ring, carrying large red backpacks. The chain-link fence was in their way so, against the advice of the doctor, an enterprising group lifted the poor man over the top of it. He was laid on the closely mown grass, exactly where the afternoon’s winners would later be.
    The doctor and the paramedics set to work but quite soon it became clear that they were fighting a losing battle. The doctor put his mouth over the man’s and breathed into his lungs. What trust, I thought. Would I put my