‘Isn’t it lovely the crowd love her so much?’ laughed Tommy, wiping her eyes. ‘You’ll soon have a statue and a bar here named after you, Wilkie.’
But though she smiled, Tommy still fretted about the shaven whiskers. Like a cat, Wilkie used them to check a gap was wide enough for her to push through. CCTV in the stables would have captured the theft. Pray God it wasn’t Rafiq.
Furious, after a whisk round the parade ring, had been allowed to miss the parade and go straight down to the start, which proved counterproductive as he ran slap into a large crowd gathered to catch a glimpse of Mrs Wilkinson. Despite his halfclipped coat, he was shivering, sweating up and looked a shaggy and unplaited mess.
He had tugged off Trixie’s bandanna that morning and eaten it, her arms beneath her purple and green jacket were covered in bruises, but he had started knuckering whenever she arrived in the morning, and she could see why an equally shivering, sweating Rafiq loved him so much.
‘What’s that?’ demanded Rafiq as they splashed round to keep warm while they waited for the other runners.
‘The Pakistani flag for you to wear round your shoulders when you win.’
‘Don’t count your hens,’ growled Rafiq.
He had been thankful to miss the parade as the Mafia had threatened him with another hideous call last night. But his resolve had hardened. He had bottled out as a suicide bomber, thank God, and he was not going to pull Furious today. Last night Valent had texted him, countering Marius’s instructions: ‘Don’t hold him up. Give him his head. Let him enjoy himself.’ Rafiq was touched that both Hengist Brett-Taylor and sarcastic Sergeant Gibson, who’d run the prison stables, were in the crowd but he couldn’t stop shaking.
‘Get off and let me give you a hug to calm you down,’ begged Trixie.
‘Any hug from you would make me anything but calm. You are so pretty, you rocket my blood pressure,’ said Rafiq, but at least he smiled.
126
Cheltenham was also on edge. A hundred million pounds had been bet on the race. Too many horses had died in jump racing recently. Animal Rights were threatening reprisals. On the big screen the horses were circling, dwarfing Mrs Wilkinson.
‘I can’t see her,’ wailed Etta.
‘Napoleon liked small horses,’ said Alban.
Killer O’Kagan was keeping up his barracking.
‘That horse has shrunk even more,’ he sneered at Amber.
‘Shut up,’ snapped Rogue, putting a hand on Amber’s trembling shoulders. ‘Good luck, angel …’
‘Our Father, which art in heaven,’ said Awesome through chattering teeth. The Irish jockeys crossed themselves. The starter had mounted his rostrum, shouting, ‘Settle down, settle down,’ in a high Dalek voice at the jockeys, all desperate to get in front through the gate and not waste any more time.
Etta wished she could have watched with Valent. She needed his big, warm, reassuring hand holding hers so badly.
‘Where the hell’s my wife?’ grumbled Toby.
‘Shopping,’ said Shagger. ‘They’ll never get back through the crowd now.’
‘At least we won’t have to give Phoebe a running commentary,’ muttered Seth.
The tapes flew and like a tidal wave dragging down the shingle of the world there followed the Cheltenham roar, enough to unsettle any horse, particularly Furious, who shot to the front.
‘Bloody, bloody fool,’ groaned Marius.
Harvey-Holden had put in Voltaire Scott, another really fast pacemaker from the flat, to exhaust Mrs Wilkinson but he was no match for Furious, who’d taken off like a superjet.
‘I hate it when they’re so far ahead at the start,’ moaned Dora, who’d joined Tommy in the stable lads’ stand where the chute joins the course.
Amber had never known anything so terrifying, the great stiff fences of unrelentingly massed birch twigs racing up to meet her, crashing against Wilkie’s belly, the thunder of hooves, the huge horses blotting out the light on all sides, the crash of landing, the jockeys howling at each other, turning the dull grey sky blue with their language.
She was lying tenth, keeping quiet except that Harvey-Holden’s third horse, Last Quango, was sitting on her tail, like a driver in a narrow lane pushing her into error. Then Cosmo Rannaldini’s Wriggoletto cut in front of her trying to seize the inner, kicking a lump of mud into Wilkie’s eye.
Drawn into a barging match, Wilkie couldn’t see and panicked. Ahead on the rails Voltaire Scott was being deliberately held up by Johnnie Brutus. Amber was forced to pull out to overtake them but as she passed, Johnnie swung right, knocking Wilkie off course. Instantly Last Quango