really. Racing can afford it. According to your own figures, the racing industry is worth three and a half billion a year.
You will not contact the police or I will destroy all confidencein racing. The betting public will desert you in droves and British Racing will go out of business. So remember, NO POLICE.
Send your acceptance via the personal column in The Times . Place the following announcement in the paper and you will then be sent further details: Van Gogh accepts Leonardoâs generous offer of marriage.
âDonât tell me this is the original letter,â I said with a degree of exasperation.
He looked at me guiltily.
âAnd youâve passed it round this table?â
He nodded
âYouâre mad,â I said. âYou will have destroyed any chance of getting any useful fingerprints from it. Whereâs the envelope? Can we test that?â
âWe are not involving the police.â Roger Vincent was adamant. âWe canât take the risk.â
âThey may have to be involved eventually,â I said. And as far as I was concerned, the sooner the better.
âAs may be, but we want you to carry out an investigation first, quietly and effectively, to ascertain who wrote this letter and how he doped so many horses at Cheltenham. In the meantime, we will place the announcement in
The Times
.â
âBut surely youâre not going to pay this man.â I looked around the table at the glum faces. Most of the eyes avoided meeting mine. âThereâs no guarantee that he wonât ask for more money next year, next month or even next week. What will you do then?â
âWe feel we have no alternative,â Howard Lever said with a sigh.
âOf course you have,â I said forcibly. âIgnore him or tell himto take a jump. You must call in the police so they can find out who it is and throw him in jail.â
âBut what about racing?â Howard Lever said. âThings are financially precarious enough with all the Internet gambling sites now basing themselves offshore to avoid the betting levy. The Board feels that a scandal of this magnitude could bring us down permanently like a house of cards in a wind.â
Everyone knew that things werenât great money-wise in racing, but I had no idea they were that bad.
âSo youâre going to try and keep this all hush-hush?â
âThatâs the plan,â said Ian Tulloch from the far end.
âWell, I think youâre all crazy,â I said, taking a liberty way beyond my station. âFor a start, shutting down all communications and removing every cell phone at the office front door was as good as broadcasting long and loud that something was seriously wrong. Out there in the office itâs like speculation city. What are you going to tell the staff?â I looked around at the other members of the Board. âMr. Pottinger,â I went on. âYouâre a public relations man. Surely this could all blow up in our faces.â
Piers Pottinger was a PR heavyweight with a special connection with the media, gaming and horseracing industries. He was a past and present owner of racehorses and had the distinction of owning the oldest horse ever to win a race at Royal Ascot when Caracciola came home to win the Queen Alexandra Stakes at age twelve.
âThe PR position is very delicate,â he said. âConfidence is everything in this industry. As I see it, as long as the public has confidence in us, there is no problem. But when that confidence drains away . . . well, so would racingâs betting revenue. And pretty quickly too.â He paused for effect. âEither course of action clearly has some risk. If we say nothing to the police, andprovided the matter is resolved without any media coverage, all remains fine in the eyes of the public. However, if the story leaks, then even if we resolve the matter successfully, confidence may have been eroded
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