scheme started in America, in which prisoners looked after retired or rescued racehorses, restoring them to health, so these horses could hopefully move on to other careers such as polo, eventing, dressage or as hunters or hacks.
Rafiq had ridden all his life in a terrain where horses were often the quickest way to travel. Not uncalculating, he also adhered to the Muslim proverb, ‘Believe in God, but tether your camel.’
Although Sergeant Macnab, the prison officer who ran the stables, was a notorious bully, Rafiq initially saw working there as an opportunity to escape. Egged on by Hengist, he offered his services.
On the first day down at the yard, however, Rafiq saw the happiness on the face of a sullen old murderer who’d bonded with a tricky bay mare. Each had at last found something to love and be loved by. All the twenty prisoners enjoyed looking after their charges and the horses were thriving. Rafiq was allotted a trouble-maker called Furious.
Furious had been found in a roofless stable, suffering from rain scald, a skin disease in which scabs form and pustulate because of the acidity of the rain. Hair then comes off, exposing bare skin and lesions, and birds sit on the lesions and attack them. Furious had become so hungry he’d eaten half the wood partition between his and the next-door stable, in which another horse had already died.
By this time Furious had radiator ribs rising to a razor-sharp backbone and long untrimmed hooves. He was a walking skeleton, covered in skin smeared with dung and sweat marks, and completely lacking in flesh and muscle.
The policeman who found him was all for putting him out of his misery.
‘Why shoot him?’ said the ILPH inspector. ‘If we do, we’ll lose the evidence. We’re going to rebuild him.’
The trainer, who’d gone bankrupt, was tracked down and sent to prison. After six months of loving care Furious came together, but as he grew well he became increasingly tricky and literally fighting fit.
Rafiq, who loved horses, soon won Furious’s trust and a few weeks later proudly paraded the glossy, gleaming chestnut before Hengist and the prison governor. He showed how biddable Furious had become by adjusting the horse’s noseband so it most flattered his face and kissing him on the white star on his forehead.
‘Don’t turn him into a woofter like yourself, Khan,’ mocked Sergeant Macnab, who was hovering in the background.
It was a prison rule that because of the insurance, none of the inmates were allowed to ride their charges, only look after them. Rafiq, however, was so incensed by Macnab’s insult, he vaulted on to Furious and took off over the six-foot prison wall, hurtling across the fields, jumping every fence and disappearing into the hills.
‘Bloody hell,’ said the prison governor to Hengist, ‘that’s the last we’ll see of him.’
Just as they were sending out a search party to trail Rafiq in the hope he might lead them to a terrorist cell or even his wicked cousin Ibrahim, Rafiq came galloping back, jumping the last two fences, soaring over the prison wall, pulling up a docile, delighted Furious.
‘This is a great horse. He must go back into training,’ Rafiq announced haughtily. But as the prison governor moved forward to make much of Furious, the horse flattened his ears and tried to bite him. ‘But only with me to look after him. Muslims, contrary to propaganda, love animals,’ went on Rafiq. ‘Saladin better man than your St Francis. When they meet, St Francis offer to walk on hot coals, just to prove his love for God. Saladin just smile gently and say, “My God doesn’t need me to prove my love.”’
After Hengist left prison, Rafiq continued to look after the prison horses for another eighteen months. He learnt almost as much from a friendship he forged with an inmate called Jimmy Wade, who had worked for Harvey-Holden. Jimmy had been imprisoned for passing on information for reward and deliberately pulling several favourites. During their long conversations, Jimmy admitted he had broken the law because stable lads’ wages, particularly those paid by H-H, were so lousy, he couldn’t keep up his mortgage.
Both he and Rafiq had followed Mrs Wilkinson’s court case. During their conversation, Jimmy had confided that he knew the dreadful fate of Usurper before she became Mrs Wilkinson and the unimaginably cruel way she had been treated.
‘They torture Muslims like that in detention camps,’ shuddered Rafiq, ‘They slash you with razors and rub in salt. They cut off your penis so