They Shot Phar Lap Didn't They? Page 2

  Manchester Grove was not the usual way back to Joe Cripps’ stables, but Mr Telford had ordered a change of routine, which seemed like a good idea. There were some cars owned by racing people parked around the track entrance, then nothing for all of two furlongs until, up near the picture theatre on Glenhuntly Road, a vehicle was sitting out of place, all on its own. Had the morning been any darker, he mightn’t have seen it, but from this distance through the dawn he could make out enough to see it was flash and to believe it belonged to Al Capone himself.

  Over the previous year and a bit, Woodcock and his galloper had become as close as any pair in racing history. The horse’s stable name was ‘Bobby’ and Woodcock went everywhere with him. Back home in Sydney, when the two exercised around the streets of Kensington, near the famous Randwick racecourse, the locals often joked that it was the horse who took his strapper for a walk, rather than the other way round. But they were wrong. Woodcock’s thin build and almost angelic features belied a toughness that only came to light when he was asked to calm a headstrong racehorse. Now he held the reins as tight as he could and didn’t yell at the big chestnut, he whispered.

  ‘Whoa Bobby, settle. Easy, Bobby. Easy.’

  It’s amazing what your brain can do to you in the space of 400 yards. When Woodcock took Bobby out onto Manchester Grove, after the initial trepidation he was nearly able to convince himself that the car was just a classy vehicle parked in a spot where you wouldn’t usually see one at 10 to six in the morning. But with every crack of his horse’s hooves on the hard dirt road the situation grew more sinister. A furlong to go, Woodcock saw that there were two men in the car. Bizarrely, both were on the driver’s side. One in the front, one in the back. Each man seemed to be reading a newspaper, but if that’s what they were really doing, they were both very shortsighted. Woodcock searched for reinforcements. Back near the entrance to the track, one of the local trainers was urging his horses to behave. Maybe he should wait, or loiter, or call out, but to do so would be a sign of weakness — for every pessimist who’d said those bloody threats were real, there’d been five larrikins who laughed that he was just another shirker from Sydney. He pressed on.

  Too quickly, Woodcock drew just about level with the back of the car. A new Studebaker, blue, maybe green. The back number plate was scribbled in chalk. Woodcock thought it read ‘1556’, and felt as if he’d signed his own death warrant simply by trying to memorise it. The sound of the engine firing at that very second sent another, starker chill up the young strapper’s spine. The sideways glance he risked as he passed the car made matters even worse. The bloke in the back seat pulled his newspaper closer, masking his face. The man in the front had what might have been a handkerchief over his nose, across his mouth. This was something straight out of a Chicago gangster movie. Only this was real.

  Woodcock barely stopped to look for traffic. On the southern side of Glenhuntly Road, Manchester Grove becomes James Street, and three streets down James Street is Beverley Street, where he had to go but was too far away. He settled on a plan. Not a good one, he knew, but a plan nonetheless. ‘C’mon, Bobby,’ he called, ‘get o’er here.’ He tugged as hard as he dared, and convinced his mate to turn into Etna Street, first on the right, 75 yards south of Glenhuntly Road. Out of sight, he tried to open the gate into the backyard of the house on the corner, but it was locked shut. He looked across for a saviour, at least an ally, but saw only a paperboy, about the same height and build as himself but 10 or 12 years younger, cheerfully dragging his trolley along the other side of the street. The terror in Woodcock’s eyes was enough, and the paperboy lost his smile and froze. Then they heard the screech of tyres as the Studebaker’s engine roared, horn blaring as it bounced across the main road. Woodcock knew it was coming for him. All he could do was put Bobby between himself on his pony and the fence of the property he had just tried to enter. There was no point running. He was only 10 yards up Etna Street, a sitting duck.

  The Studebaker cut the corner as it bounced too quickly into Etna Street, and hardly slowed as it drew level with Woodcock. To his horror, the strapper saw that the man in the back now had in his hands not a newspaper but a double-barrelled shotgun, aimed straight at him. The gunman hesitated, perhaps hoping for a better angle, but then Bobby, frightened by the commotion, reared and twisted 180 degrees, stumbling back slightly so his hindquarters were exposed. Woodcock saw the danger and bravely dug his heels into the pony’s ribs, trying vainly to protect the big horse, but the pony jumped up rather than forward. The car was now maybe 20 yards away and on the paperboy’s side of the street when the shotgun exploded. Only once, but from that distance surely enough. The pony broke away, terrified, while Woodcock hung onto Bobby’s reins for grim death. The would-be assassins, meanwhile, were careering away, not brave or bothered enough to reflect on their crime, turning wildly right into Augusta Street, heading back towards Glenhuntly Road. They were hardly clinical. A few residents, roused by the mayhem, might have seen them go.

  Woodcock scarcely knew what had happened. ‘Whoa Bobby, whoa Bobby, whoa Bobby,’ he spluttered over and over. He was angry, scared and relieved, mostly angry, and as soon as he dared he started checking out the legs, the hindquarters, the rump. The horse seemed fine. By now, perhaps a dozen people had gathered, and Woodcock kept muttering, ‘He’s all right, he’s all right,’ as he kept being asked, ‘Is he okay? Is he okay?’ He continued to brush his hand over the horse’s hide, checking his joints, stroking his neck, seeking a wound that didn’t exist, as if he was searching for a speck of dust on a billiards table. As soon as he saw a face he recognised, one of the boys from Cripps’ stable, he asked quietly, ‘Can you please go to the course and tell Mr Telford?’

  The milkman, doing his rounds, had come across the pony and brought him back, as the crowd continued to build. A couple of blokes were already scouring the footpath for souvenirs, and by the way the people were talking and pointing, re-describing the atrocity as soon as anyone new arrived, Woodcock knew this was going to be one hell of a story. All he really wanted was to get home, so he dusted himself down, politely thanked all those who’d helped him, hopped back on the pony and the three of them were on their way. Only now did it occur to him that he’d been lucky.

  No sooner was he out of sight, safe at last, and a newspaper reporter was on the scene. Notepad and pen at the ready, the ‘journo’ looked around for likely suspects. ‘Did anyone see what happened?’ he asked hopefully. Someone pointed at the paperboy.

  At this stage, no one had thought to call the police.

  ON A RACECOURSE, THE one thing that travels faster than the horses is information. The scene at the corner of James and Etna might have been chaotic, and Woodcock might have not long asked someone to go and fetch his employer, but back at the track, the mood was serene. But not for much longer. The sun was peeping over the horizon; it seemed like it was going to be a beautiful Derby Day.

  Harry Telford was talking to his 16-year-old apprentice Bobby Parker, who’d just run the two-year-old filly Old Ming over five furlongs. Telford was a short, craggy-faced man with greying hair slicked back beneath a frayed old woollen cap, who looked every one of his 54 years. Some reckoned he was a difficult bloke, but he preferred to think he was simply reserved and told it as it was. He was all about loyalty — to its wife, his young son, those who worked for him and helped him, and most of all to his horses, the last of which had just finished its work, so now it was time to get back to Joe Cripps’ place. Telford had been in the racing game in some shape or form for all his life, been a ‘battling’ trainer in Sydney for the best part of a decade, until suddenly last year he found the one in a hundred million, a big chestnut horse who won the Sydney and Melbourne Derbies, started favourite in the Cup and even provoked comparisons with the immortal Carbine. This had been very exciting and very profitable, thank you, until it all went skewiff in just the last couple of weeks. For Harry Telford, the first Tuesday in November, the day they ran the Melbourne Cup, couldn
’t come quick enough.

  It’d started a couple of Mondays ago when he scratched his champion from the Caulfield Cup. It wasn’t the fact that he withdrew the horse that ignited the furore, but that he left it to the very last minute, causing — so the damn papers said — the ruination of Caulfield Cup–Melbourne Cup doubles betting. Telford had his own reasons for doing what he did, and they mightn’t have been what the reporters were writing, but he didn’t really give a hoot what anyone else thought. Then, though, the bloody phone calls started. What he had to do was get through today, make it to Tuesday, and maybe everything would be all right.

  Parker had nothing else to say, the mare’s work was good not great. So Telford gathered up his thoughts and things, and was ready to head home. Then he sensed something was wrong, and looked up to see a young apprentice jockey riding like the Man from Snowy River, urging his horse as fast as he dared up into a collection of trainers, stablehands and jockeys mingling near the centre of the course. ‘He knows he shouldn’t do that,’ one old trainer grizzled, but the desperate look on the young bloke’s face reflected the urgency of his mission. Telford was maybe 20 yards away. He hushed those around him, keen to hear what could possibly have happened. But the apprentice didn’t whisper, he shouted the news the whole world was about to hear:

  ‘Phar Lap’s been shot!’

  Harry Telford started running faster than he’d ever run in his life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT’S THE BOOKIES, MATE

  HARRY TELFORD DIDN’T CONTACT the police until 8am. By then the local constabulary were aware of the incident because the press had quickly informed them about it, but until they received a complaint from the aggrieved party they couldn’t really do much. Truth be told, Telford didn’t want to involve the cops at all, but eventually he realised he had to, because he needed them to help get Phar Lap to the track in the afternoon. So he got it over with.

  Ten minutes later, when Senior Constable Davis from Glenhuntly Police Station arrived at Joe Cripps’ place he didn’t exactly get the reception he was looking for. Mr Cripps’ greeting was polite enough, but Telford and Woodcock didn’t want to talk, while a third man, a short, squat individual dressed in a nice suit and wearing thick glasses, wanted to be noticed. This was David Davis, who introduced himself as an ‘owner’. He was keen to post a reward. Now.

  ‘Yes, Mr Davis, we can get to that,’ said Senior Constable Davis. ‘But first I’d like to talk to the lad.’

  The ‘lad’, of course, was Woodcock. As they sat around the kitchen table, the strapper mumbled his name; when asked to repeat it, he mumbled it once more. Consequently, a couple of hours later, when one of the detectives assigned to the case asked Senior Constable Davis for Woodcock’s first name, the young officer replied ‘Trevor’, and this was duly repeated in many of the papers that never actually got round to interviewing Tommy himself.

  For the record, he was Aaron Treve Woodcock, but known to all as ‘Tommy’. Senior Constable Davis realised that Woodcock was pretty shaken, but he also quickly concluded that the strapper had been briefed to say as little as possible, as if the incident was none of the police’s business. However, slowly, he discovered something like the whole story, from leaving the course to getting back to Beverley Street. No, Woodcock didn’t get a good view of their faces, because of the newspapers and because he didn’t want to look too closely at them.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Senior Constable Davis.

  ‘Because it wasn’t right. Just looking at them, I thought to myself, it’s on this morning,’ Woodcock replied.

  ‘What do you mean, “It’s on”?’

  Woodcock looked at Telford, who might have shaken his head. Something had been said that shouldn’t have been said.

  ‘Aw,’ Woodcock hesitated. ‘Mr Telford, he’s been getting some letters and phone calls. That’s why I used James Street to get to the track this morning, not Augusta Street like I had been. That’s why he got me a pony. I can get home quicker on a pony than what I can running with him.’

  ‘What kind of letters?’

  After a pause, Telford spoke up. ‘I’ve got a couple of letters and a few phone calls. People saying they’re gonna shoot the horse.’

  ‘Did you report them?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ The way Telford said it, Senior Constable Davis thought it best to move on. Davis knew that the detectives assigned to the case would be on the scene quick smart. If they wanted to pursue the matter, they were welcome.

  ‘Mr Woodcock, can you describe the men in the car?’

  ‘I dunno. Bloke in the back might’ve been 30.’

  ‘Clean shaven?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Thin or fat?’

  ‘Thin, I suppose.’

  ‘Fair or dark complexion?

  ‘Dark, maybe. Hard to tell.’

  ‘And the driver?’

  ‘Gee, maybe my age, something like that. You know, it’s funny, he was wearing a motor driver’s cap, like you see in the movies. He was holding a newspaper up close, and he had a handkerchief over his face, too, so it was hard to see.’

  ‘And there was definitely only a single shot?’

  ‘Only one. I did get the number of the car. Never forget it: 1556.’

  The manner in which the policeman reacted to getting this piece of information helped settle Woodcock a little, and gradually he was able to recount the whole diabolical story. Davis was just about satisfied when Telford interrupted. ‘I’m sorry constable, but we’ve got a filly in the second this afternoon. I’ve got to get her ready. Will that be all?’

  ‘For the moment, sir. I expect a detective will be contacting you shortly. A constable will stay here to help guard Phar Lap. I think they’ll be giving you an escort to the track.’

  ‘They’d better be,’ Telford responded. ‘We’re not going anywhere without you fellas.’

  They both chuckled slightly at that, but only for the moment, and then Telford and Woodcock were out the door. David Davis remained; at least he was keen to talk.

  BACK IN JANUARY 1928, Telford had convinced Davis, a brash American-born businessman, to bid sight unseen for a colt sired by the poorly performed English-bred stallion Night Raid out of a broken-down New Zealand mare named Entreaty, which was in the catalogue for the Trentham Thoroughbred Yearling Sales in New Zealand. Davis sent a representative to the sale and authorised him to bid no higher than 200 guineas, which proved more than enough, for the colt that would be named Phar Lap was knocked down for just 160 guineas. On the same day, a man representing the chairman of the Victoria Racing Club (VRC), Mr LKS Mackinnon, paid 2000 guineas for a colt to be named Carradale. Another colt, that would race as Honour, went for 2300 guineas.

  Only trouble was, when his new purchase arrived in Sydney after a gruelling voyage across the Tasman, Davis took one look and rejected him outright. Telford, who was taken by the colt’s breeding if not his appearance, came up with a compromise: he’d lease the horse for three years, covering all expenses and giving Davis one-third of any prizemoney. What prizemoney? It turned out to be the deal of a lifetime.

  ‘I want to offer £100 to find the people responsible for this,’ David Davis now told Senior Constable Davis. It probably didn’t occur to him that such a sum wasn’t much less than he’d paid for the horse in the first place.

  ‘I think you’ll have to do that down at the station. A detective should be here in a little while. I’m sure he’ll be able to help you.’

  ‘It’s the ante-post betting that’s responsible,’ Davis continued, hardly drawing breath.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The ante-post betting. The Cups double. The Caulfield and Melbourne Cups. If Phar Lap wins the Melbourne Cup, it’ll break the bookies. I know that for a fact. You talk to the bookies, you’ll find who tried to shoot my horse.’

  The policeman promised to follow that up. He had to get down to the crime scene, so he excused himself, went out the back to tell Telford
and Woodcock where he was going and tried not to worry that they didn’t seem to care. Out the gate, he walked down Beverley Street to James Street and then up to Etna Street. There he was met by a solitary constable talking to bystanders and a small posse of journalists, the most assertive of whom was a fellow from the Herald, which wasn’t surprising given that their first afternoon edition was due on the street at around 2pm. Senior Constable Davis was also aware of the paper’s reputation, built over the previous decade, of making the most out of stories. It wasn’t like the old days, when the papers used to just report what happened. Now they liked to ‘sensationalise’ things. A story like this, of gangsters brazenly trying to shoot the Cup favourite, would stay on the front page for days. Nothing surer.

  Davis’ job was to play along. Give the press what they want, no more, don’t get yourself in trouble, was what he’d learned in 25 years as a policeman. So he offered them Woodcock’s statement, pretty much word for word, told them about the likelihood of a reward, and then went looking for eyewitnesses.

  THE FIRST PERSON TO talk to was Ronald Taylor, the paperboy. The 14-year-old had a big toothy grin, but the only time Davis saw it was when the Herald photographer asked the kid to smile as he took his picture for the afternoon’s paper. Taylor explained how he saw Phar Lap and the man with him on the pony, how the man had brought Phar Lap round into Etna Street, and then the car came round, the gun went ‘bang!’ and then it sped off up the street, turned right and was gone. No, he hadn’t seen the gunman. He wasn’t sure what kind of car it was. He thought it was green, maybe blue.

  The Bayley family, who lived at 8 James Street, right on the corner, had heard a shot but saw nothing. ‘It was definitely a gun, not a car backfiring,’ stated Mr Fred Bayley, who had been lying in bed when the incident occurred. A few excitable types claimed to have witnessed much, but after hearing their conflicting stories, clearly they hadn’t seen a thing. Except Phar Lap in the flesh, which was thrilling enough. The reporters said that they’d found plenty of people who heard the gunfire and a few who’d eyeballed the car, and the general consensus was it was a Studebaker sedan, though a fellow from a nearby stable insisted it was a Buick.