Bloodline

It wasn’t my commentary. I hadn’t confused the horses or called the wrong horse home as the winner — something that every race caller had done at some time in his life. It was the race itself that hadn’t been quite right.

‘Thanks, Mark. Great job,’ said a voice in my headphones. ‘And well done mentioning every horse and thanks for the finish order.’

‘No problem, Derek,’ I said.

Derek was a producer for RacingTV, the satellite broadcaster that was showing the racing live. He would be sitting in the scanner, a large blacked-out truck somewhere behind the racecourse stables with a bank of television images in front of him, one for each of the half a dozen or so cameras, and it was he who decided what pictures the people at home or in the betting shops would see. The TV company didn’t have their own commentator so they took the course commentary — me. But they liked it if all the horses were mentioned at least once and they were pretty insistent on the full finishing order being given. It was fine with twelve runners but not so easy when there were thirty or more, especially in a sprint like this when the whole thing was over in less than a minute and a half.

‘Derek?’ I said, pushing a button on the control box.

‘Go ahead,’ he replied into my ears.

‘Could you make me a DVD of that race? To take home. Every angle.’

‘But she didn’t win.’

‘I still want it,’ I said.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’ll be ready.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll collect it after the last.’

‘We’ll still be here.’

There was a click and my headphones went silent once more.

‘But she didn’t win,’ Derek had said.

‘She’ was my sister — my twin sister, to be precise. Clare Shillingford — top jockey with more than six hundred winners to her name.

But that race had not been one of them. She’d just come second by a neck on Bangkok Flyer, and, I thought, it was her riding that hadn’t been right.

I looked at my watch. There were at least twenty minutes before I needed to be back here in the commentary box for the next race so I skipped down the five flights of stairs to ground level and made my way round behind the grandstand to the weighing room.

I put my head through the open doorway of the racecourse broadcast centre, a small room just off the main weighing room that was half-filled with a bank of electronic equipment all down one wall.

‘Afternoon, Jack,’ I said to the back of a man standing there.

‘Hi, Mark,’ said the man, turning round and rubbing his hands on a green sweater that appeared to have more holes in it than wool. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Fine,’ I replied.

Jack Laver was the technician for the on-course broadcasting service that relayed the closed-circuit pictures to the many television sets all around the racecourse, including the monitor in the commentary box. His dress sense might have been suspect but he was an absolute wizard with electronics.

‘Fancy a cuppa?’ he asked.

‘Love one,’ I said and he disappeared into an alcove, re-emerging with two white plastic beakers of steaming brown liquid.

‘Sugar?’

‘No thanks,’ I said, taking one of the beakers.

Weighing-room tea would never have won any prizes for its taste, but it was hot and wet, and both were good for my voice. A race caller with a sore throat, or — worse — laryngitis, was no good for anything. Peter Bromley, the legendary BBC commentator, always carried with him a bottle of his special balm — a secret home-made concoction containing honey and whisky. He would take a small swig before every race to lubricate the throat.

I was never as organized as that, but I did like to have a bottle of water always close to hand. And tea was a bonus.

‘Jack, can you show me a replay of that last race? Just the last couple of furlongs will do.’

‘Sure,’ he said, moving towards the electronics. ‘Did you get something wrong?’ he asked, glancing over his shoulder at me with a huge grin.

‘Get stuffed,’ I said. ‘And, no, I didn’t.’

‘You’d never admit it, anyway. You bloody commentators, you’re all the same.’

‘Perfect, you mean.’

‘Ha! Don’t make me laugh.’

He fiddled with some of the controls and the previous race appeared on one of the tiny screens on the front of his equipment.

‘Just the last two furlongs, you say?’

‘Yes, please.’

He used a large ball-type mouse to fast-forward the race, the horses moving comically along the track at break-neck speed.

‘There you are,’ said Jack, slowing the runners to a normal pace.

I leaned forward to get a closer look.

I hoped I was wrong. In fact, I wanted desperately to be wrong.

‘Can you show me that again?’ I asked Jack.

He used the ball to rewind the recording to the two-furlong pole.

I watched it once more, and there was no mistake.