'When the starter let the field go the attendant still held grimly on to the horse,'' the apprentice explained to those connected with the horse Scottish Soldier after a slow start, which didn't stop him from winning. The attendant would have had a better result hanging on tighter for longer. He ended up with his throat slit.
''I have drawn alongside Manion and I'll do anything I can to get him beaten,'' said Doug Black, a rival jockey. Black was after $10,000 for the dirty deed but settled for $8000 upon a successful conclusion. ''I don't care if you pull him off,'' the villain said.
Again the rort came unstuck. Fortunately for Black, the evil mastermind was apprehended before retribution could be taken.
Thus the action flows on the turf as well as blood, booze and sex in Scottish Soldier (Zeus Publications), the second book by John Higgins, the former battling jockey and long-time track rider.
The late Dick Francis is perhaps the best-known author of racing fiction. Francis had made his name as a National Hunt jockey, particularly on Devon Loch, which sensationally sprawled when near to winning the 1956 Grand National. Francis rode for the Queen Mother, Higgins for Jack Denham, to whom he has dedicated Scottish Soldier. Despite selling millions, Francis's style was stiff-upper-lip without much raunch. Not so Higgins.
''J.J. did not mind being beaten, but not by that bastard. He was sure he'd used a jigger or electrical device; he hit the horse with a bolt of electricity that would make anyone go quicker … on the way back J.J. watched as Jack gave the device back to Marina. It was no bigger than a cigarette lighter and unless you looked you would not notice what had taken place … the jigger in Killen's hand didn't show, so he had beaten J.J. again,'' Higgins wrote in his first book, A Ride With Crime (Eloquent Books). Marina is the clerk of the course. Folklore has it that palming a jigger in this direction is not unknown.
Some of the characters from his first book reappear in Scottish Soldier: J.J. Manion, the hero jockey, who does more mounting outside racing, and the copper John Rankin, prone to the double malt and laid-back. Jack Killen looms large again as a rival scoundrel hoop and Gordon Somersby, a big bookmaker and race-fixer, is still looking for an edge.
Unsurprisingly, the good guys have a Scottish background. Higgins was born in Neilston, Scotland, and came to Australia in his early teens.
Experience in racing and life in general have contributed to his novels. Some would say he has suffered from hardship in both fields. ''It's nine years since I got me legs back,'' Higgins said, with a hint of Scottish brogue. ''I was riding in Adelaide at the time. I smashed me legs pretty bad in a fall. I decided to get me school certificate. It was the hardest part. You are talking about a guy going back to school at 40.
''Later, I did a journalism course on the internet and then decided to write a book. I hit a lot of hurdles. It took me two years. I couldn't get it published here, so it went to New York.''
Higgins doesn't whinge about his struggles. Many riders with his type of medical record would have long ago quit the saddle.
''Breaks? Fourteen. Falls never worried me. A lot of people get a bit frightened. I never had a lot of fear,'' he said. No wonder he can write with authority regarding ambulance procedure and hospital emergency. ''The officers examined his injuries, gave him painkillers and put him on oxygen,'' he wrote in A Ride with Crime. ''They called the hospital to tell them they would bring him in with a suspected broken right femur and possible head injuries … on arrival the doctor said, 'I will be inserting a three-inch pin and a steel plate to hold it together.'''
Conceding he was only an ordinary jockey, Higgins reckons ''as a horseman, I think I'm around the best you can get. Riding in races is entirely different from riding on the track''.
For about 13 years Higgins has been at Rosehill with the Denhams, first Jack and now Allan.
''Jack was the hardest man I've ever ridden for, but we [had] a terrific work relationship,'' he said. ''He was an absolute genius and being such a hard man it was a bit of a shock when he turned his toes up.''
Like the Queen Mother, Denham had a ''throne'', a special seat at Rosehill. ''You know his seat at the track is still there,'' Higgins said. ''Nobody sits on it.''
Scottish Soldier is selling well but Higgins isn't giving up his day job, riding six mornings a week for Allan Denham with a 4am start. ''I get home about 7.30am and after a few hours' sleep I write for four or five hours,'' he said. ''I also run seven kilometres four days a week.''
Readers will be trying to match his characters, but the books are works of fiction and resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. So what about Ken Maxwell? ''He was once a racing journalist,'' Rankin says in the novel. ''What I heard was The Sun newspaper (my former stable) sacked him, he wrote too much on race-fixing. F- wanker.''
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