Crisis Read online

  ‘Like Deepwater Horizon,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Deepwater Horizon was a BP oil-drilling rig that exploded in April 2010 causing an environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. BP bosses initially claimed it was only a small problem and that it was not their fault. For BP, the public relations disaster was almost as destructive as the physical one.

  ‘We sit on shoulders whispering advice into ears and hope it’s listened to – although, thankfully, we weren’t involved in that one.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘Okay what?’ ASW replied.

  ‘Okay, I’ll take the job.’

  So here I was seven years later, leaving through that same grey, grimy front door on my way to King’s Cross and then on to Newmarket.

  Horse racing! God help me.

  2

  I didn’t need to receive the brief to know what I was going to.

  ‘PRINCE OF TROY DEAD IN STABLE FIRE’, read all the headline banners at the newspaper stands in King’s Cross.

  Even I had heard of Prince of Troy. He was the current wonder racehorse, described by most as the best since Frankel. Some even said he was better.

  I picked up the early edition of the Evening Standard and scanned the front page with its large ‘PRINCE OF TROY DEAD’ headline. According to the report, the horse had been a sure thing for the Derby in just over two weeks’ time, having swept aside all other contenders with consummate ease in his eight previous races, including in the Two Thousand Guineas, the first Classic of the season, just nine days ago.

  But now he was gone, apparently roasted alive while standing in his stall. And, it seemed, he had not perished alone. The paper stated that six other top colts had died alongside him in the huge blaze that had rapidly engulfed a whole stable block overnight, fanned by a strong northerly wind coming straight off the Fens.

  ‘An immeasurable loss to racing,’ the paper went on, ‘and a personal tragedy for the trainer of the seven horses, Ryan Chadwick, and the whole of the Chadwick family.’

  I tucked the newspaper under my arm, bought myself a take-away coffee from Starbucks, and found a seat at a table on the next fast train to Cambridge.

  Wireless internet on trains was still pretty variable so Simpson White supplied all operatives with a ‘dongle’ that effectively turned a laptop computer into a large mobile telephone.

  I downloaded my emails, including the one from Georgina with the brief.

  Ryan Chadwick was not our client, as I had expected, nor indeed any of the Chadwick family. It was my old friend His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Karim bin Mohamed Al Hamadi, known universally as just Sheikh Karim, and he had been the owner of Prince of Troy.

  Ahmed Karim had been a vibrant, carefree Arab crown prince of twenty-two when his father, the ruling emir, had been assassinated by his generals for thwarting their attempts to go to war once again with a neighbouring state. The new young leader had purged the army of his father’s murderers, made lasting peace in the region, and had dragged his oil-rich nation out of the Middle Ages and into the twenty-first century. Just thirty years on, it was now one of the leading financial and tourist centres of the Middle East.

  But he hadn’t done so without the occasional crisis and challenge to his leadership. His rule was fair but firm, with firm being the appropriate word, and there had been a few scandals when overzealous officials in his administration had overstepped their authority, especially in dealing with tourists from more liberal European cultures. Hence, he and I had worked twice together before.

  The brief outlined how Sheikh Karim had steadily built up a string of top-rated racehorses and it was his intention to eventually rival other Arab royal owners. He had sent his first two-year-old to the trainer Oliver Chadwick only nine years previously and now had some twenty Thoroughbreds in training in several countries.

  His UK operation was still largely based at the Chadwicks’ Castleton House Stables on Bury Road in Newmarket and he had been anticipating his first ever Derby success with Prince of Troy.

  The brief made it clear that I was to act as Sheikh Karim’s representative and to liaise with Oliver Chadwick directly. He’d been told to expect me.

  Oliver, it seemed, was Ryan’s father and the current head of the Chadwick racing dynasty. Georgina had also added some basic background information on the Chadwicks, including a link to an article in the Racing Post written five years previously when Oliver had retired and Ryan had taken over as the trainer.

  Oliver Chadwick was himself the son of one Vincent Chadwick, who had bought Castleton House on Bury Road soon after the Second World War. He had built the first stable yard and started training racehorses in 1950.

  Oliver’s elder brother, James, had initially taken over the training licence when their father was killed in a car crash in the early 1970s, but it had passed to Oliver when James emigrated to South Africa only four years later.

  Over the next thirty years, it was Oliver who built the reputation of the business until it was considered that Castleton House Stables was one of the finest racehorse training establishments in the country, with a list of owners that included not just Sheikh Karim but also the great and the good of British racing.

  But Oliver had clearly been busy in other ways as well. The brief stated that he’d been married three times and he’d had two children with each of his first two wives – three sons and a daughter in all. Of the four, the three boys were still active participants in the racing industry.

  Ryan, the eldest at forty-two, had been a two-time former champion jockey who had ridden many of Oliver Chadwick’s greatest training triumphs, including winners of the Derby, Oaks, St Leger and the Breeders’ Cup, before retiring from the saddle through injury and taking over Castleton House Stables from his father.

  Declan, the second son by two years, had also been a very successful but not quite a champion jockey before following Ryan’s move into training. He currently ran a small yard on the outskirts of Newmarket and was just starting to make his mark as a possible star of the future.

  Next by age, at thirty-two, was Tony and he was the only one of Oliver Chadwick’s offspring who was not married. He was still riding as a jockey, although he had never reached the dizzy heights of either of his older brothers, although, according to my newspaper, he had been widely expected to partner Prince of Troy in the forthcoming Derby.

  The youngest, at twenty-nine, was Zoe, the only Chadwick daughter. Even though her married name was Robertson, she apparently sometimes referred to herself as Zoe Chadwick. She had moved away from Newmarket to London aged just eighteen, got married at twenty, and now lived with her husband and two young children close to South Ealing tube station.

  Georgina had made a note in the brief that Zoe’s husband was called Peter and he was believed to be an estate agent, but lack of time had prevented anything further from our in-house researchers.

  I leaned back in my train seat and watched the world rush by at a hundred miles per hour. I actually thought that the research team had done remarkably well in the very short period available, but what the brief failed to tell me was that inter-sibling civil war had broken out big time in the Chadwick family.

  I would only find that out when I arrived at Newmarket.

  Bury Road was closed in both directions, blocked by three large red fire engines from which snaked big fat hoses full of high-pressure water. In addition there were two television news vans with large satellite dishes open on their roofs. Camera crews and presenters milled around aimlessly, waiting, no doubt, for the next news bulletin and another report.

  The driver that Georgina had arranged to collect me from Cambridge Station dropped me as close as he could get to the gates of Castleton House Stables. He jumped out first and opened the rear door of his smart black Mercedes and waited for me to emerge.

  ‘I’ll try and wait for you here, sir,’ he said. ‘If they move me on, I’ll park somewhere close by.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. �
�Thank you. I’ll call you when I need you. But I have no idea how long I’ll be.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting,’ said the driver. ‘Be as long as you like. I’ve got a good book to read. You can leave your bag in the boot if you want.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  I picked up the newspaper, checked I had my mobile phone with me, and stepped out of the car.

  I was immediately struck by a strong smell of burning – not the sweet aroma of a garden bonfire but the acrid stench of burned flesh that bit painfully into my throat almost causing me to retch.

  I’d done fires before and I hated them.

  There was something indiscriminate and random about their nature, and so absolute in their destruction. In a flood, one can always dry out precious family photographs or works of art. Damaged they may be, but recognisable nevertheless. But in a fire, they are cruelly gone forever.

  And, mostly, fires are accidental or the result of acts of God – a lightning strike, an electrical malfunction or a spitting hearth. No one meant them to happen, yet the urge to blame someone for one’s misfortune is inbuilt in the human psyche. Why didn’t someone spot the flames sooner? Why didn’t the fire brigade get here quicker? Why did someone build a faulty heater? Why us? Why? Why? Why?

  It is no surprise that anger is the overriding emotion and victims lash out at any form of authority. The need to hold someone to account is very strong. Residents of fire-ravaged Grenfell Tower in west London loudly demanded justice, as if finding a scapegoat would somehow return their friends and relatives to life, restore their belongings and make everything well again.

  And I didn’t criticise them for doing so. I would have done exactly the same in their position.

  It is as if someone has burgled one’s house and removed all that one holds dear, except it is worse than that. At least after a burglary there is a focus for one’s anger, individuals to blame, and a forlorn hope that lost items may be recovered. After a fire there is nothing but total despair.

  Presuming, of course, that the fire was an accident.

  I walked in through the high gates of Castleton House Stables and was immediately confronted by a young uniformed policeman standing just inside.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m looking for Oliver Chadwick.’

  ‘Why? Are you press?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’m Harry Foster.’ I handed him one of my business cards. ‘I am expected.’

  ‘Wait here,’ he ordered, and then walked off towards a pair of uniformed senior police officers who were standing near the big house to my left.

  Even from this vantage point, it was easy to see from where the smell of burning emanated. Wisps of smoke were still rising from the burned-out remains of what had clearly once been a stable block identical to two others that were still standing, and all around me the ground was covered by a layer of ash like black snowflakes, blowing in the wind.

  The three blocks, together with the big house, had formed the four sides of a square around a central quadrangle. There was a wide walkway along the front of each building and an immaculately tended lawn in the middle, bordered by a row of bright spring flowers, their pinks, greens and reds in sharp contrast to the pristine white walls and grey slate roofs of the stable blocks.

  Beautiful.

  Except that, on the far side of the square from where I was standing, the white walls were now fire-blackened and the tile roof completely gone. One of the stable blocks was nothing more than a shell, a few remaining charred roof timbers pointing heavenwards as if in some form of accusation towards God for allowing such a tragedy to occur.

  To my right, sitting on the ground and leaning up against the wall of the nearest untouched block, were five firemen, their yellow helmets off and their heavy fireproof tunics open. I smiled down at them and received nothing but grimaces in reply. They were clearly exhausted, the sweat still standing out in huge droplets on their faces.

  ‘Well done,’ I said to them.

  ‘Those poor horses,’ one of them replied, shaking his head. ‘Nothing we could do.’

  ‘At least you saved the other stables,’ I said, pointing at the untouched buildings. ‘And the house.’

  Indeed, I could see other firemen still hosing down the side of the house to ensure it didn’t ignite from the heat even now radiating from the epicentre of the disaster.

  The young policeman returned, and, it seemed, he had been given the thumbs-up from his superiors for me to enter the premises.

  ‘They’re in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘That door there.’ He pointed.

  ‘Who are they?’ I asked.

  ‘The whole lot of them. The family, that is.’

  His tone implied he was not a fan but at least he kept his tongue civil.

  Georgina’s brief had indicated that, even though Ryan had taken over the training of the horses in the stables, his father still occupied the house, Ryan and his wife having remained in the modern home on the Fordham Road that they had built in the year he was first champion jockey.

  I stepped over the bulging hoses and walked towards the door that the policeman had indicated.

  I knocked.

  There was no answer, not least because those inside would have had great difficulty in hearing. Not only were there shouts from the firemen manning the hoses and the constant roar of the fire-engine pumps out on the road, but I could also hear raised voices from within.

  I stepped through the door to find that I was in an office with wooden desks against two walls, and two upright chairs, both in need of some reupholstery to their seats. On each desk there were computer monitors, switched off, and, above, rows of wooden pegs on which hung a mass of vibrantly coloured racing silks. The window next to the door would give someone sitting at the far desk a clear view out towards the stable yard.

  The raised voices were coming from deeper within, so I walked along a short passage from the office towards the kitchen where the door was slightly ajar.

  ‘Why the hell should you care anyway?’ I could clearly hear a loud angry male voice. ‘You’ve done your best to put a spanner in my works at every turn.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ countered a high-pitched female, emotion causing her voice to tremble somewhat. ‘It’s not Declan’s fault the Sheikh has decided to move the horses. He has always tried to help you.’

  ‘Ha! You call that help? You must be bloody joking. Stupid cow.’

  ‘Don’t speak to Bella like that.’ It was a second angry male voice. ‘If you have a problem with me, let’s go outside and sort it man to man.’

  ‘Stop it!’ shouted an older male voice. ‘We’re in enough trouble already without you two behaving like spoilt brats in the playground. Why can’t you all just get on?’

  I was holding back in the passage, and for two reasons. First, I didn’t want to embarrass the family by bursting in when they were in the middle of a slanging match, and secondly, I thought I might just learn something. One never knew when an overheard snippet could be useful.

  But there was a lull in the proceedings with just a general background hubbub, so I went up to the kitchen door and knocked loudly.

  Everyone inside went immediately silent.

  I waited.

  A few seconds later, I heard footsteps and the door was pulled wide open by a short elderly man with a full head of wavy grey hair.

  ‘Mr Chadwick?’ I asked. ‘Oliver Chadwick?’

  He nodded. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Harrison Foster,’ I said. ‘From Simpson White. I believe you’re expecting me.’ I handed him one of my business cards.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, not sounding very pleased about it. ‘Come on in.’

  There were seven of them altogether in the kitchen, four men and three women.

  ‘I’m Ryan Chadwick,’ said one of the men, confidently coming forward and offering his hand. ‘I’m the trainer here.’ He was obviously his father’s son, short and wiry with similar fe
atures and the same wavy hair, although his was mostly still dark with just a few grey streaks at the temples. ‘This is my wife, Susan.’

  Susan Chadwick was a petite brunette, and even a catastrophic fire at her husband’s workplace had not prevented her from dressing smartly and applying bright red lipstick.

  ‘Declan Chadwick,’ said another of the men, stepping forward to shake my hand. ‘Ryan’s brother. And my wife Arabella.’

  Arabella was a good three or four inches taller than her husband, with long blonde straight hair, centre-parted. She too had managed to apply her make-up, complete with mascara-lengthened lashes and rose eyeshadow.

  ‘And I’m Tony,’ said the fourth man, coming forward. ‘The runt of the Chadwick boys.’ He laughed but the others didn’t.

  Even though I knew that Tony was actually in his thirties, his lack of stature, slight build and fresh face made him look much younger. He wore tight skinny jeans over his tight skinny legs and I wondered if he’d bought them from the children’s department.

  That left just one other woman and there was an awkward pause before she stepped forward. ‘I’m Maria,’ she said. ‘Oliver’s wife.’

  She alone of the women gave the impression of having being roused rapidly from her bed by the fire – her long fair hair was straggly and tied back into a ponytail, and she was wearing a loose-fitting grey sweatshirt and joggers.

  According to Georgina’s brief, Maria was Oliver’s third wife, and clearly not the parent of either Ryan or Declan. For a start, she barely looked any older than them, and there was no acknowledgement from either as I shook her hand. Indeed, they turned the other way as if even looking at her was more than they could bear.

  The wicked stepmother, I thought. And clearly not in favour.

  ‘Is there somewhere we could speak privately?’ I said to Oliver.

  He looked at me, somewhat surprised. ‘There’s nothing you can’t say in front of my sons.’

  I would have preferred it otherwise but, if he was happy, so be it.

  I looked at each of them in turn. ‘My name is Harry Foster. I’m a lawyer and I am here as Sheikh Karim’s personal representative.’ I handed out more of my business cards. ‘The Sheikh is very keen to ensure that nothing is said or done that in any way reflects badly on him or his reputation. And that means he also has the wellbeing of you and your stables at heart. It must be clearly understood that nothing should be said by any of you to anyone, and specifically not to the press, without clearing it with me first, and I mean nothing. Not even ‘no comment’. That makes it look like you’re hiding something. Better to say nothing at all. Do you understand?’