Bloodline

12

On Friday morning I packed a suitcase and drove myself to Newmarket.

My original plan had been to come to Newmarket after racing at Warwick the previous day and stay for a couple of nights with Clare. But that plan had changed even before Clare’s death. About a month ago we had both sort of decided during a phone call that two nights was one night too many in the current belligerent atmosphere that had existed between us.

But Clare had then laughed and promised to hide all the kitchen knives during my stay. At least, I thought, we hadn’t gone too far down an irreversible path that we were unable to see the funny side and laugh at ourselves. But then the disastrous event in Park Lane had overtaken us.

Oh, how I longed again for her still to be alive. It was like an ache that wouldn’t go away. Painkillers had absolutely no effect. I’d tried.

I parked next to Clare’s cottage and collected the key from Geoff Grubb’s stable-yard office. There must have been another key in Clare’s handbag, and I presumed the police had that. I would have to ask Detective Sergeant Sharp for it on Monday. Would they also have her car? I would ask the detective about that as well.

The rent’s paid for the rest of the month, Geoff had said to me at Windsor races when I’d seen him just two days after Clare had died. Well, today was the last day of the month, so I had better get on and do something about clearing her stuff.

I let myself in and stood in her sitting room. It was only eight days since I’d last been there but so much seemed to have happened since. Somehow, though, I felt it was a little easier being here this time.

I took my things up the narrow staircase to the spare bedroom, hanging my dinner jacket in the wardrobe.

Clare and I had planned to go to Tatiana’s eighteenth birthday party together, and I did have a slight emotional wobble as I recalled Clare’s surprise at being asked.

‘I hardly know the girl,’ she had said. ‘You’re her godparent, not me.’

‘But you can’t really blame her. If you had a celebrity aunt you’d also invite her to your party.’

‘Celebrity, my arse,’ she’d replied with a laugh. ‘You’re the celebrity. That’s what being on TV does for you.’

But Clare had indeed been quite a celebrity, as the abundant column inches of obituary that had appeared in The Times and the Daily Telegraph had proved. All the more reason why I should endeavour to defend her reputation from the slurs in the Daily Gazette. And, I thought, all the more reason for ensuring that I told no one of her irregular riding practices on Bangkok Flyer and the like.

I sighed. I didn’t feel like going to an eighteenth birthday party. I could have done without all that noise for a start, not to mention a late night before I was due to appear on the Morning Line for Channel 4. But I had agreed ages ago to make the birthday speech so I had to be there. And I wanted to support Nicholas, my brother-in-law, who was still worrying himself sick over whether or not he should have postponed the whole thing.

He and Angela had asked me if I would like to be Tatiana’s godfather when I’d been only fourteen. I’d been really flattered but, to be honest, I probably hadn’t been the most conscientious of godfathers. I had no idea about her faith, but I’d always sent Christmas and birthday presents, which is what I reckoned were my main duties.

Nicholas and Angela lived near Royston, about twenty miles southwest of Newmarket and the party was in a marquee in their garden. According to the invitation, it started at eight o’clock so I decided that I should leave at about seven forty-five in order to arrive suitably early but without appearing to be too prompt. I reckoned that if I was there pretty much at the beginning, I could get away well before the end.

I looked at my watch. It was just after twelve midday. So I had nearly seven hours for sorting and packing before I needed to get ready. But where did I start? I wasn’t even sure how much of the furniture had belonged to Clare and how much had been rented with the cottage.

I decided to deal with Clare’s clothes first. I went out to my car to collect some large blue bags and some cardboard boxes that I had brought with me just for the purpose.

I started with the over-full drawers of frilly black-lace underwear, which filled up one of the large blue bags to overflowing. It made me sad that Clare had invested so much in something that almost no one saw. But I suppose it must have given her pleasure.

I managed to pack the rest of her clothes into four more of the blue bags, with shoes and boots filling two of the cardboard boxes. I took the bags and boxes down and stacked them in the space under the stairs.

Next I turned my attention to the desk in the corner of the sitting room. Her mobile phone bill was where I’d put it down and then forgotten to collect it last time. I now folded it carefully and put it in my pocket.

I sat down on the chair and started to look through Clare’s papers. I wasn’t sure what I was really looking for, if anything, but I couldn’t just throw stuff away without going through it first. There might be share certificates or other important documents. I hoped there might even have been a will.

The desk had three drawers each side of a central knee hole, and the top two drawers on the left-hand side were full to overflowing with payment advice slips from Weatherbys, the company that administers racing’s finances. They detailed all of Clare’s rides, showing the riding fees paid to her bank account along with any prize money percentage she’d been entitled to, and she had clearly been stuffing them into the drawers for some time.

The bottom drawer on the left contained her bank statements and these were in better order. I picked up the top one, which was for the previous month.

I thought it unlikely that Clare had killed herself due to any money worries. According to the statement, just two and a half weeks before she died, her current account balance had been on the plus side of twenty thousand pounds.

I skimmed through the credits for the previous four months. Almost all were direct transfers from Weatherbys with only a couple of small amounts paid in by cheques. There were certainly no unexplained credits that matched the dates of the seven definites and four possibles, although any payment for her riding of Bangkok Flyer would not yet have appeared on a statement.

I filled another cardboard box with the bank statements and the payment advice slips and turned my attention to the drawers on the right.

The top one contained all her office supplies: a stapler, pens, notepads, stamps and paper clips. There were also several chequebook stubs, held together with a red rubber band, and two pairs of sunglasses, one with a broken arm.

In the second drawer there were various documents including Clare’s birth certificate, her passport, her jockey’s licence and a stack of investment portfolio valuations, all of which showed that Clare had been sensibly providing for her future after riding. A future that would now never materialize.

At the very back of the drawer, behind the investment valuations, I found a sealed white envelope.

I opened it.

The envelope contained two thousand pounds in cash, all of it in twenty-pound notes in packs of a thousand, each pack held together with an inch wide paper band.

I didn’t immediately assume that the cash was in any way sinister or irregular. Lots of people I knew kept a supply of cash in case of emergencies, although two thousand pounds was rather on the high side. However, the thing that did raise some doubts in my mind was that the bands around the cash had Barclays Bank printed on them, while I knew from her bank statements that Clare banked with HSBC. It was not easy to get that amount of cash from a bank where you didn’t have an account.

And my suspicions were raised a further fifty or so notches by what was written on the front of the envelope in capital letters: AS AGREED, A.

Had Clare been paid a couple of thousand pounds for not winning? And who was A?

I leaned back in her chair and wondered if she had fully understood what she had become involved in. It wasn’t just a game, it was a full-blown criminal fraud for gain, and discovery would have resulted in not just the loss of her career but also in the likely loss of her freedom.

I was suddenly very angry with her.

How could she have been so stupid?

And why had she told me it was all about power and control when, at the same time, she was accepting a couple of grand from someone? It didn’t make sense. All I could think was that she hadn’t thought the money important. After all, her bank balance and her investment portfolios were very healthy, and the cash had still been in a sealed envelope as if she hadn’t even bothered to count it.

I wondered if there were any fingerprints on the envelope, fingerprints that might help identify who had given it to Clare. Or maybe some DNA if someone had licked the envelope to stick it shut. The problem, however, was that I would have to go to the police with my suspicions in order for them to find out, and did I really want to do that? Yes, I did, if it was pertinent to Clare’s death, but not otherwise. The difficulty was knowing which was the case.

I placed the cash back in the envelope, being careful to hold it only by the edges, and then I put it into a cardboard box along with the other stuff.

That left only the bottom drawer on the right and that was full of press cuttings. I looked through the lot. All but two of them were about Clare herself, stretching back over four years. I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the other two was about me, a racing background piece done by a national daily a year or so previously. But it was the final cutting that was the most intriguing.

It was the two-page spread run in the Daily Gazette the previous May about race fixing, and it had been written by Toby Woodley.

I had heard of the story at the time but I hadn’t actually seen the original article, so I now read through it from start to finish. There was no mention of Clare, or of any of the horses she had later ridden in any of my eleven suspect races. The piece was actually more speculative than factual, as was usually the case with the Daily Gazette, but it did seem to firmly imply that a well-known trainer was betting to lose on his horses.

Betting to lose was strictly against the Rules of Racing for certain individuals, in particular the owner and trainer of the horse. And not only were they banned from doing it directly, they were also banned from instructing others to do it on their behalf, and from receiving any proceeds from such activity.

But Toby Woodley had stated categorically that he knew of a racehorse trainer who regularly ‘layed’ his horses on the internet, and then ensured that the horses didn’t win. Needless to say, he hadn’t mentioned the trainer by name.

I was intrigued not so much by the article’s content, which I only half believed anyway, but why Clare had chosen to keep the cutting with all the others.

Perhaps she had known it was true.

I arrived at Tatiana’s party at twenty past eight to find that I was one of the last to get there. The young nowadays, it seemed, arrived at parties bang on time, just as soon as the caterers started pouring the drinks.

Getting ready in Clare’s cottage as the day had faded into night had been very difficult. Evenings had always been the best times at Stable Cottage with lots of parties and dinners. Even on quiet nights, there had always been open bottles of Pinot Grigio and Cabernet Sauvignon, even though Clare herself rarely had more than a single glass.

The whole place had seemed very quiet and lonely as I had showered and dressed in my dinner jacket so much so that I realized I’d made a big mistake in staying there. I should have accepted one of the other offers of a bed that I’d received from Newmarket friends. I wasn’t particularly relishing the thought of going back to Stable Cottage alone later, but it was too late now.

‘Hello, Mark.’ Angela greeted me at their front door. ‘Coat in the dining room, then go on through. We’re in a marquee in the garden. Nick’s out there with Brendan.’

I did as I was told, placing my overcoat on the pile in the dining room and then walking through the sitting room, out of the French doors, straight into the marquee.

I was astonished at how big it was. Even though I’d been here quite a few times before, I was amazed that the garden was large enough to hold such a structure.

‘Incredible isn’t it?’ Brendan said, standing just inside the marquee with a glass of red wine in his hand. ‘It apparently occupies the whole place. The guy-ropes are even secured over the fence in the neighbours’ gardens.’

I could see that there were flower beds down each side and a small tree appeared to grow right through the middle of the black and white dance floor.

‘Amazing,’ I agreed.

‘Had any luck with finding out what happened at the hotel on the night Clare died?’ Brendan asked.

‘None,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe the police. Someone goes away on holiday for a week and the whole investigation comes to a complete halt. It’s bloody ridiculous. Thankfully the detective is back on Monday.’

‘Let me know how you get on,’ he said, draining his glass. ‘I’m off to find a refill.’

Brendan went over towards a waiter holding a tray just as Nicholas walked over to greet me.

‘It’s fabulous,’ I said to him. ‘Absolutely fabulous.’

He beamed at me. ‘Yes, it is rather good, isn’t it?’

We stood for a moment surveying the scene.

‘So where’s the birthday girl?’ I asked.

‘Over there somewhere,’ Nicholas said, pointing at a large crowd of youngsters propping up the bar at the far end of the marquee. ‘She’s eighteen and exercising her legal right to drink alcohol.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Not that she hasn’t been drinking alcohol for ages. I know she has. They all do. And I fear I’m going to be the villain tonight by closing the bar every so often to give them a rest. I don’t want them all to get so drunk they ruin everything, not until after dinner and the speeches anyway. I’ve taken two bottles of vodka off a girl who I happen to know is only seventeen, and her breath smelled like she’d already drunk a third. And Brendan’s boys are hitting it pretty bad behind their mother’s back, and Patrick’s not even fourteen until Sunday.’

‘At least they are their parents’ responsibility, not yours.’

He laughed. ‘Brendan and Gillian seem to be well ahead of them. They’ve been here since seven as they’re staying the night with us and Brendan, in particular, is getting stuck into the red wine.’

‘I’ve seen,’ I said.

Nick waved his hand towards the group of scantily dressed girls at the bar. ‘But it’s these other young things I’m really worried about. They seem determined to get hammered, and quickly. And they are my responsibility.’

‘Good luck,’ I said with a laugh.

‘I’m going to need it,’ he said. ‘Especially when your mum and dad get here.’

‘They are coming, then?’ I was surprised.

‘They said so, but they aren’t here yet, which is slightly ominous. They only finally agreed to come yesterday, and that was thanks to you.’

‘Don’t thank me just yet,’ I said with a laugh. ‘You know how Dad can be a nightmare.’

‘To tell you the truth, I was half hoping they wouldn’t come but Angie is delighted that they are, so I’m trying to be pleased.’

As if on cue, Angela came through the French doors of the sitting room into the marquee with our mother and father.

‘Hi, Mum,’ I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. ‘Lovely isn’t it?’

She looked around her as if in a bit of a daze. ‘I wish Clare had been here to see it.’ I could tell that she was very close to tears.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re right, Mum. So do I. But tonight is Tatiana’s big moment and we have to be happy for her.’

My mother smiled at me wanly. ‘Yes, Mark,’ she said. ‘I know. I’ll be fine.’

‘Evening, Mark,’ my father said brusquely.

I had been quite forceful in telling him that Nicholas and Angela couldn’t afford to postpone Tatiana’s party and that he should give his blessing for it to proceed. But I hadn’t expected him actually to attend the event and, unless he cheered up a bit, it might have been better if he hadn’t.

‘Evening, Dad,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t it all look wonderful?’

‘I suppose so,’ he grunted, but the marquee did look wonderful with a dozen round tables set for dinner and surrounded by white ladder-backed chairs.

‘Let me get you all a drink,’ Nicholas said, sensing the tension. He waved vigorously at one of the waiters, who brought over a tray of glasses.

I took an orange juice from the tray and Nicholas raised his eyebrows.

‘I’ve a speech to make,’ I said. ‘And I’m driving. I might have a glass of wine with dinner.’

‘You’re making the toast, remember, and we have champagne for that.’

‘I won’t forget,’ I assured him.

I went over to the bar area to give Tatiana a kiss and wish her a happy birthday.

‘You look gorgeous, darling,’ I said to her. Although, in truth, I thought her skirt was six inches too short and her heels were four inches too high.

‘Your speech is not going to be too embarrassing, is it?’ she asked.

‘Probably,’ I said.

‘Oh, God. It’s bad enough with Mum insisting on putting these dreadful pictures on all the tables. They’re so crass.’

I looked at the one nearest to me. It showed Tatiana as a baby, sitting naked in the bath. I could understand how she felt uncomfortable having a picture of herself like that for all her school friends to see. But, equally, I could appreciate how Angela would have found it rather amusing.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I won’t be as embarrassing as that.’

She smiled at me. ‘I’m so glad. Now come and meet my friends.’

At dinner, I found myself sitting between Angela and a girl called Emily Lowther. I say a girl, but she was about my age, dark haired, beautiful and slim. She was wearing a low cut black dress that displayed just the right amount of bosom, and almost the first thing she told me was that she was a childless divorcée and one of Angela’s best friends from the local gym.

I detected a barefaced attempt by my sister to match-make, and I told her so in a fierce whisper.

‘So what?’ Angela said, unabashed. ‘Emily needs a husband, and you need a wife. And she is gorgeous, isn’t she? And frighteningly bright as well.’

She certainly was gorgeous, but did I really need a wife? Was I not happy enough as a bachelor?

It was certainly true that the ending of my affair with Sarah had made me rather glum, but I’d been so depressed anyway because of Clare that a little more misery didn’t seem to matter much.

And I kept telling myself that I missed Sarah only because some of the excitement had gone out of my life rather than for the loss of any undying love I might have had for her. In fact, I wondered if the possibility of being found out had been the most arousing aspect of our affair. So would I find the same thrill in a relationship that I could be open and honest about?

‘What happened to her husband?’ I asked Angela quietly as Emily talked to my father, who was sitting on her other side.

‘Stupid man decided after four years of marriage that he preferred boys. I ask you. Left our gorgeous Emily for some French male hairdresser called Pierre. The man must be a raving lunatic.’

Emily put her hand on my arm. ‘Mark, I’m so sorry about Clare.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, turning towards her but not removing her hand. ‘It has been a very difficult couple of weeks.’

Was it really only two weeks? How the time had dragged.

‘It must have been,’ Emily said. She moved her hand forward and placed it on the back of mine, squeezing it a little. ‘Do say if there’s anything I can do to help you, anything at all.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, looking her directly in the eyes. ‘I will.’

Was I mistaken, or had I just been propositioned for sex?