Triple Crown by Felix Francis Page B

fair share of killings during my time with the army in Afghanistan but nothing really prepares you for the sudden finality of violent death, the instant wiping out of
an active, vivid and cognisant existence, to be replaced by . . . nothing. Nothing more than a useless rotting corpse.
    ‘What will you do now?’ Tony asked.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay on here for the Derby. I wouldn’t want to miss that, but I feel I’m approaching the problem from the wrong
end.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘These guys are smart – they don’t get to be federal special agents if they’re not. I can’t hang around forever on the off-chance that our friend will make a
mistake. He won’t. And I’ll have wasted my time, and yours. I feel we have to tackle things from the opposite direction.’
    ‘Explain.’
    ‘I work best undercover but I’m not using those skills here. Everyone at the agency knows who I am and that severely limits my scope.’
    I took a deep breath. In for a penny . . .
    ‘I need to get a job on a track backside, maybe as a groom or something, with one of the trainers. FACSA then has to plan a raid on that trainer for some reason and hope our friend somehow
tips him off.’
    ‘Would the trainer be made aware of your existence?’ Tony asked.
    ‘Best not, at least to start with. I know from experience that being undercover is fraught with danger. It is ten times worse when somebody is aware of the truth. Body language can be a
real giveaway.’
    ‘But how would you know if the trainer had been forewarned about a raid?’ Tony asked.
    ‘Hayden Ryder couldn’t have packed up the whole of his stable dispensary and arranged to ship out his horses without the help of his staff. Racehorses have to have grooms
accompanying them – they would hardly walk onto a truck on their own. Ryder’s whole team had to be involved in the preparations even if they didn’t know the reasons
why.’
    ‘But how will you get a job? Do you have any experience working with horses?’
    ‘Loads,’ I said. In truth, I’d only had a little. But I was confident around racehorses and that was half the battle.
    ‘And you’re hardly the right size,’ Tony said.
    I was five feet ten inches in my socks, but I was lean and fit. Maybe I was a bit tall and perhaps a tad too heavy to ride young Thoroughbreds, but not to work as a groom.
    One thing I had discovered while I’d been waiting at Churchill Downs all day was that, unlike in the UK, the grooms did not ride the horses. That was the preserve of the exercise riders,
up-and-coming riders or retired jockeys who would often move from barn to barn, exploiting their skills for more than one trainer.
    The grooms were simply there to, well, groom the horses, to muck out their stalls, and to fetch and carry their feed and water. On race days they might get to lead one of their charges over to
the saddling boxes and the mounting yard but, in truth, the life of a backside groom was far from glamorous.
    Tony wasn’t finished. ‘Most grooms are Latino or African-Americans. An Englishman would surely stick out like a sore thumb.’
    He was right.
    ‘How about an Irishman?’ I said.
    I had always been good at speaking with an Irish accent. While at school, I had entertained my classmates by mimicking our headmaster, who had come from County Cork.
    ‘I can easily pass as an Irishmen,’ I said. ‘I’ve done it before, and I know you have Irish grooms over here. I’ve heard their banter.’
    ‘Will you try to work at Churchill Downs?’ Tony asked.
    ‘That might be a bit of a risk. Almost all of the Churchill Downs backside staff came over to Ryder’s barn to have a look at the action at one time or another today and many of them
asked me what was going on.’
    ‘Where then?’
    ‘How about at Pimlico?’ I said. ‘Isn’t the Preakness run there in two weeks?’
    ‘It sure is,’ said Tony. ‘But Pimlico isn’t used any more as a regular training