Chapter 1
One year later
A loud, rhythmic banging noise shattered the glorious dream of his past Olympic glory, and Michael slowly woke and made the agonizing transition from perfect bliss to cold, stark reality. An earsplitting voice invaded his foggy, alcohol-dazed state “Oy! Mike! I know you’re in there, man. Open up!”
“Bloody hell!” Michael groaned, as his head throbbed in pain. “Stop that pounding, I’m coming, I’m coming.” Michael pulled himself up off the overstuffed leather sofa upon which he had apparently crashed sometime in the early morning hours after finishing off his last bottle of scotch. His mouth felt like it was lined with cotton, and his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. His head was pounding in time with the beat of his heart, and his walk was unsteady as he took the first few steps toward the door.
The clock on the wall showed it was ten o’clock. Even the slow, steady ticking away of the seconds was painful to his head this morning. He gradually made his way to the door as he tried to mentally bring himself into the present. Now, a year later, Michael was living in the refurbished manor house on the farm in Surrey that he had purchased with the money he had earned as a result of his Olympic success. He had turned the small farm into a dressage training yard and boarding stable and christened it Stafford Oaks Farm. It was what he and Emma had dreamed of that night, the best night of his life. So much had happened since then.
As he moved toward the door, Michael scanned the compact living area that had once been the family parlor and noticed piles of dirty clothes and dishes strewn about the room. He hastily tried to move some of the worst of it out of the way. He gingerly opened the curtains of the window closest to his front door and squinted into the late morning sun to see who had so rudely awakened him. Lionel Hayes, his best friend for nearly twenty years and a fellow dressage rider, stood outside and peered back, motioning to the door. “Do you mind?”
Michael opened the door. “Lionel, you sod, what the hell are doing here?”
Lionel pushed his way into the room. He was a bit taller than Michael, but much thinner, almost gaunt in appearance. His blond hair and blue eyes were stereotypically British as was his long, thin nose, and prominent square chin. “I tried to call you on your cell phone an hour ago and you didn’t call me back. I got worried. What in God’s name have you been doing?” Lionel grimaced as he looked around at what had once been a neat and tastefully decorated manor. He wrinkled his nose “This is disgusting.” Then Lionel noticed the empty bottle of Scotch on Michael’s coffee table. “Now I know what you’ve been up to, trying to drown your sorrows in drink yet again. Well, my friend, it’s not going to work, and I’m here to make sure you don’t end up in the hospital with liver failure.”
Lionel walked around Michael’s home, opening curtains and cranking open several windows to allow a cool morning breeze to circulate through what had been a hot, stuffy home filled with dirty laundry and dishes and smelled like a cross between a men’s locker room and a garbage dump.
“Look, Lionel, I think I’m entitled to an occasional drinking binge considering everything that’s happened to me in the past year.” Michael’s mind immediately flashed back over the year that had passed since he had experienced the best day of his life: winning a gold medal at the Olympic Games held in his home country. Since that day, his life had been nothing but a series of setbacks and disappointment. First, the owners of Romeo, the gifted stallion he rode to a gold medal in the Olympics, decided to take the horse out of competition immediately after the Games to make a tidy profit breeding him. Without Romeo, Michael wasn’t able to continue to compete internationally, and was having a great deal of trouble finding another horse as talented to ride in Romeo’s stead. Without the public exposure competition gleaned for him, his Olympic fame began to fade. His fiancée, Emma, who had enjoyed the glitter and attention he drew immediately following the Olympic Games, became bored with their lives after Michael moved out of the spotlight. It wasn’t long before she began acting suspicious of his relationships with other women, accusing him of being unfaithful to her. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and he had tried to explain to Emma that he had to travel to teach clinics and market his skills as a trainer, but all she seemed to be able to see were the many women who clamored to meet him and get close to him. Her suspicions baffled him, because he took great pains never to be alone with any of the women he met through his clinics and loved Emma too much to cheat on her with any other woman.
Michael still wasn’t sure exactly what had happened between them, but everything seemed to fall apart right after the Olympic Games. Before the Games, he and Emma were on top of the world, looking forward to a life together living on his training yard in the country outside London, where he would raise and train horses for himself and others in dressage, and she would continue working in the city for a prestigious law firm. He was certain they loved each other unconditionally, although he must admit in hindsight that their relationship wasn’t perfect. Still, he felt betrayed, and had vowed to himself never to give his heart so foolishly ever again.
Michael picked up the tabloid from his coffee table and showed it to Lionel. On the cover was a picture of Emma with a one of Britain’s most famous footballers. She was laughing and looking at him adoringly, and he seemed to enjoy her attention, smiling down and holding her close, with his arm around her waist. “I can’t go anywhere without some reminder of Emma. While standing in line at the grocery store buying food for the week, I saw this in a rack next to the checkout line.” He pointed to the photo on the cover. “It seems she has a penchant for rich and famous men,” he said bitterly. “She used to look at me like that,” Michael fumed. “Just wait until you get injured or retire, friend” he told the man in the photos, “she’ll drop you like a rock.” Unfortunately, although his head told him he had escaped a bad situation and should be grateful, his heart was still engaged, and he had tried last night to dull the pain with Scotch.
“Look, man.” Lionel threw the tabloid back on the table. “You’ve got to let her go and get on with your life. You can’t let her be your ruin.”
Michael knew Lionel was right. His career and his life had gone seriously downhill since Emma left. While he had once been scrupulous about his preparation for public appearances and had always been punctual for clinics and lessons, he was now either late or, even worse, a last-minute cancel or no-show for fully booked weekend clinics for which he had already been paid half up front. He had also started to be chronically late for lesson clients, and one of his two working students had left him in frustration. As a result, the invitations to do clinics stopped coming, and many of his lesson clients moved on to other trainers. The agent he hired after the Olympic Games eventually dropped him. He had barely any income except for some horse boarding clients at his stable, and a couple of training clients who were also good friends and understood why he was acting out of character. Even those clients, though, were losing patience. As a result, he was becoming alarmingly close to financial ruin. He was barely able to make the monthly mortgage payments on his farm, and had been forced to live a very austere existence, the occasional drinking binge notwithstanding.
As Lionel moved a pile of clothes out of the way so he could sit down on the sofa, Michael’s phone started ringing.
“Good God!” Michael groaned, as his head throbbed in pain. “What now?”
He picked up the phone. “Yes, what is it?” Michael growled into the receiver.
“Mr. Michael Stafford?” The clipped, and very formal male voice on the other line responded.
“Yes. This is Michael Stafford. Who is this?”
“This is Constable Eric Madden of the Surrey police. We have your brother Ian Stafford in custody here at the station.”
Michael’s heart sank, and he raked his fingers through his hair. “What has my brother done, Constable Madden? Why is he in custody?”
“Last night, your brother started a fight, and stabbed one of the patrons of the Rusty Nail Pub in Woking. The pub owner called us for assistance, and when two constables arrived in response to the Pub owner’s call, he resisted arrest. He punched one of our officers before we were able to subdue him. He also had been drinking excessively according to witnesses at the scene. We have him in custody. Unfortunately, the man your brother stabbed died at the hospital two hours later, so Mr. Stafford has officially been charged with manslaughter.”
Michael’s heart sank. “My God!” he exclaimed. “That’s simply not possible. Ian would never purposely hurt anyone unless he was defending himself.” Something must be seriously wrong if Ian had gotten himself into this kind of trouble. “How is he, Constable?”
“He has a few bruises from the fight, and he has a pretty powerful hangover, but otherwise, he seems to be physically all right, and no one else was seriously injured,” the constable replied. “He’s asked me to contact you. He wants to see you.”
“Certainly, Constable Madden. I’ll be right there.”
“Mr. Stafford, if I may, your brother has refused to speak with us about exactly what happened last night, and he has also not requested a solicitor to assist with his defense. I suggest you engage a solicitor to represent him at your earliest convenience. These charges are serious, and he may be facing life in prison if found guilty.”
“Thank you, Constable. That’s good advice. I’ll get on it right away.” Michael hung up the phone and looked at Lionel.
“I’m sorry Li, I have to go to the police station. It appears my brother Ian has gotten himself arrested, and could be in some serious trouble.”
“Do you want me to come along? It might be nice to have some moral support.”
“No, but thanks for the offer. This is family business, and I don’t want you to get entangled in this mess. At least not until I get to the bottom of this.”
“At least let me fix you something to eat while you shower and change. There’s no way you want to go to the police station looking like you do right now.” Lionel opened the refrigerator and searched for something he might be able to cook. “Do you have any eggs or milk?”
Michael shuddered at the thought of solid food hitting his much-abused stomach, but he knew Lionel was right. He needed nourishment, and scrambled eggs would work as well as anything.
“I do. If you look a bit, there should be both in there. Thanks, man.” With Lionel now occupied in the kitchen, Michael turned and went into the bathroom. After Michael left the room, Lionel could no longer suppress the malicious grin he had been hiding since he arrived at Michael’s home. His plan was working. He was, slowly and surely, ruining Michael Stafford’s life.
Michael deserved it, of course. He had ruined Lionel’s life during the British Olympic trials a year ago. Michael and Lionel had been friends since they were boys, both having a love of horses, and sharing that love by working odd jobs for Michael’s uncle, who was a thoroughbred race horse trainer.
Although they went their separate ways after graduating Secondary school, they met again at the British Olympic Team trials. Both of them had competitive horses, and it looked to be a challenging competition. Lionel’s horse was a talented off-the-track thoroughbred named Accolade he had trained with the help of his partner, Nigel. Accolade was great, but after a few less than stellar training sessions, Lionel believed his horse was exhibiting some residual lameness in his left front leg that wasn’t responding to the approved methods of treating inflammation, so Lionel re-connected with one of his race track contacts and procured a corticosteroid currently on the banned substance list, to use on his horse. Lionel had gone out to the stabling area ostensibly to check on his horse, but instead was injecting Accolade with the steroid when Michael appeared and saw what he was doing. Lionel remembered the exchange like it was yesterday.
“Lionel, what the hell are you doing?” Michael demanded.
“Nothing. Accolade seemed to be a bit off this afternoon in training, and I just came by to give him an anti-inflammatory.”
“There are very few anti-inflammatories that aren’t banned for international competition. What is it you’re using?”
“Never mind, it’s something my home vet recommended for inflammation.”
“You need to clear anything like that with the Team vet, you know that. I’ll call him right away. You don’t want to get in trouble for something like this.”
“No, Michael, please.” Desperation and fear were clearly evident in Lionel’s voice.
“I don’t know what you’re up to, Lionel, but you jeopardize all our chances if you make the Team and you’re doing something illegal. I’ve got to call the vet.”
Michael did just that, and Lionel was ejected from the trials and any hope of competing in the Olympic Games. He left the Olympic trials in very public disgrace. Word of his disgrace made it to the press, of course, and headlines all over the country trumpeted his willingness to break the rules in order to succeed. Lionel’s reputation was ruined. As a direct result of all the negative publicity, Lionel and his partner and lover Nigel Crawford’s business suffered, and it became a chore just keeping their heads above water.
The reduction in income had seriously drained the couple’s finances, and the stress took a heavy toll on Nigel’s already ailing heart. Lionel watched helplessly as Nigel’s health steadily declined. Lionel had taken him to specialists in an attempt to stop the decline, but it hadn’t done any good. The only solution the doctors could offer was to find a way to reduce Nigel’s stress, and Lionel was helpless to do anything in that regard. The reduction in income had seriously drained the couple’s finances, and the constant stress caused by the relentless calls from creditors took a heavy toll on Nigel. One day, Lionel awoke to find Nigel’s lifeless body next to him in their bed. He had died from a massive heart attack.
To add insult to injury, Michael had the nerve to attend Nigel’s funeral. Their conversation that day was burned into Lionel’s memory.
“Lionel, I’m so sorry for your loss,” Michael had said, extending his hand.
Lionel had been tempted not to shake it, but decided that the others, who had been watching their exchange with interest, would have interpreted his gesture as petty and grasped Michael’s hand in his own. “Thank you, Michael. Frankly, I’m surprised you came. You weren’t particularly close to Nigel.”
“I know how important Nigel was to you. Lionel, and I wanted to be here to support you in your grief.”
Not knowing how to respond to that statement without cursing, Lionel quickly changed the subject. “Congratulations, by the way on your success at the Games. You deserve all the acclaim you’ve been getting. You should be very proud.”
“About that,” Michael replied. “I’m also here to ask for your understanding and even your forgiveness for what happened at the Trials.”
“Understand? Forgive?” Lionel barely contained his rage. However, he was again very conscious that the two of them had an audience. He ruthlessly schooled his features to mask his inner turmoil. Nevertheless, his voice was strained. “Your actions in turning me in to the authorities ruined my life, and I’m not exaggerating. I’m an outcast, a pariah in my own country, forever marked as a cheater and a fraud. It will be some time before I ever even consider forgiving you, much less understanding your actions. We were friends, Michael. Did that mean nothing to you? You could have easily looked the other way, and no one would have been the wiser.”
“If you believe that, you’re incredibly naïve. The drug testing used by the authorities nowadays is so sophisticated that I have no doubt they would have found out about your drugging Accolade. You would never have gotten away with it, and when they eventually discovered that I knew and didn’t turn you in, your actions would have brought me down, too. And what if you had felt you had to do the same thing at the Olympic Games? Discovery there would have led to not only your own disqualification, but also the disqualification of the entire team. You must see that I couldn’t allow that to happen.”
Lionel refused to accept Michael’s excuse, and turned to leave. “If you’ll excuse me, I have other guests to attend to. Goodbye Michael.”
Lionel watched from the corner of eye as Michael, evidently disappointed by Lionel’s response, left. Still appalled that Stafford had the nerve to even be here when his actions had been the cause of Nigel’s death, it was then that Lionel made up his mind. Without Michael’s interference, Lionel was sure he would have made the British Olympic Team, and have the medal that Michael now possessed, as well as all the fame, fortune and acceptance that went with it. As far as Lionel was concerned, the blame for Lionel’s disgrace, his failing business, and Nigel’s tragic death fell squarely on the shoulders of Michael Stafford.
From that day forward, Lionel plotted his revenge. The first step had been to contact Michael two weeks after Nigel’s funeral to offer his apology for his behavior at the funeral, and to offer Michael his forgiveness and make an offer to renew their friendship. Michael accepted him with open arms.