Bloodline

21

‘What did you say?’ I asked him in astonishment.

‘I said there was nothing else, other than her being pregnant.’

‘Pregnant?’ I almost shouted it into the phone.

‘I assumed you knew,’ DS Sharp said. ‘Miss Shillingford was six or seven weeks pregnant when she died.’

I was flabbergasted. I sat there staring at the wall above the desk not really knowing what to think.

‘But surely you might have thought that being pregnant could have been pertinent to her death,’ I said.

‘In what way?’ he asked.

‘Well, for a start, it might have affected her state of mind, to say nothing of the hormone changes that must accompany pregnancy.’

He said nothing.

‘And,’ I went on, ‘it would have been nice to have known at her funeral. Prayers could have been said for the unborn child.’

‘As I said, I assumed you knew. Your father had been informed.’

Bloody hell, I thought.

Why hadn’t the stupid old bastard said something? Probably because he was embarrassed by the fact that his unmarried daughter was pregnant.

God save me from my parents, and their old-fashioned opinions.

‘I’m sorry,’ DS Sharp said finally. ‘I should have told you.’

‘Yes, you should,’ I said. ‘But at least you’re telling me now. And there is something else I’d like to know.’

‘Fire away,’ he said, clearly relieved that I hadn’t shouted at him more.

‘Is there any CCTV footage from the hotel? Maybe for when Clare arrived and checked in? I’ve been to the hotel lobby and there are cameras all over the place, and also some in the lifts. She must have been filmed by lots of them.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have copies of all the hotel’s CCTV recordings for that evening. I suppose you want to see them?’

‘You suppose correctly,’ I said. ‘Where are they?’

‘At Charing Cross police station.’

‘Can I come and have a look?’ I asked.

‘I can’t think that it will do any good,’ he said, ‘but, I suppose so.’

‘Later this afternoon?’

‘I’ll be here until about six,’ he said. ‘Come to the main entrance on Agar Street and ask for me.’

I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to one and it would take me a good two hours to get there, especially as I had to go via Cambridge to collect my bag.

And there were a couple of other things I had to do first.

‘I’ll try and be there by five.’

The man from the builder’s arrived soon after one o’clock, followed closely by a woman from the car-hire company with a shiny new navy-blue Honda Civic.

Suddenly I felt I was back in business. I could now leave the cottage secure and also get around.

I left the builder’s man tut-tutting about the state of the door and how he would need to replace some of the framing as well as the lock, which was bent beyond repair, and I drove the Honda out of Newmarket along the Bury Road and into Austin Reynolds’s driveway.

I didn’t bother with his front door, which I assumed would be locked. Instead I drove the Honda down the side of the house to his office, and then simply walked in.

There was racing that Monday at Pontefract in the north, and Windsor in the south, and Austin Reynolds didn’t have any runners at either meeting. I’d checked in the Racing Post when I’d been in Geoff Grubb’s stable office collecting the inventory for the cottage.

And, just to make sure he was at home, I’d earlier called his house and he’d answered, although I’d hung up without speaking.

I hoped he might be in his office and I was right. He was sitting in a leather armchair watching RacingTV’s coverage from Windsor.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ he blustered, standing up. ‘Walking in like this without so much as a “by your leave”?’

‘At least your door was unlocked,’ I said. ‘So I didn’t need to use a sledgehammer.’

That shut him up, and he sat down again.

Austin Reynolds would have made the world’s worst poker player. Every thought and emotion was readable in his face. And he was suddenly scared, shrinking back into the armchair like a small child caught with his hand in the sweetie jar.

I shouted at him. ‘Do you think I’m an idiot or something?’

He shook his head slightly, although I did think that it had been pretty stupid of me to leave the money and the blackmail note in the cottage.

‘Where is it?’ I asked, drawing myself up to my full six foot two inches and purposefully standing over him in a menacing manner.

‘Where is what?’ he asked me back.

‘The blackmail note you took from Clare’s cottage.’

‘I burned it,’ he said with an air of triumph in his voice. ‘In the fireplace in the drawing room, along with the other one.’

I bet he hadn’t burned the money, but I did expect that the envelope had gone the same way. Without the envelope, and the words written on it, the money was meaningless.

‘So what are you going to do now?’ I asked him, reducing my apparent threat by moving away to his right and perching on the corner of his desk.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you going to pay?’ I asked.

‘Er... I haven’t decided yet.’

‘Ten thousand is a lot of money,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he agreed.

‘And you’ve just burned the things I’d hoped to use to catch the bastard.’

‘I have to protect myself first.’ He said it in a way that made me think he had rehearsed that line many times before in his head.

‘By breaking into other people’s houses?’

‘If necessary, yes.’

‘Have you received the payment instructions?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Let me know when you do.’

‘Why should I?’ he asked.

‘Because, if you don’t, we won’t be able to catch him and he’ll simply ask for more next time.’

Austin shivered.

‘And my advice,’ I said, ‘would be not to pay him this time, either.’

‘But he could tell the authorities about me laying the horse.’

‘Indeed, he could,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe he has any evidence to back up his claims.’ I thought about Toby Woodley’s stolen briefcase. ‘In fact, I don’t really believe that the person who sent you the note last week has the faintest idea what he’s blackmailing you over. I think he’s just an opportunist who’s taking advantage of something he found.’

And, I thought, he’s being far too greedy. If he’d asked Austin Reynolds and Harry Jacobs for a thousand or two, they would have probably just paid and would never have said anything about it to me, or to anyone else. It had been the size of the most recent demand that had been the all-consuming factor in their behaviour.

‘Are you certain about that?’ Austin asked.

‘No,’ I replied, ‘I’m not, but I am certain about something else. If you pay the ten thousand, the next demand will be for even more.’

He looked absolutely miserable.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked pitifully.

‘I want you to pass the payment instructions to me as soon as you get them, and then do nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ he said. ‘How about the money?’

‘There will be no money,’ I said. ‘You’re not paying.’

‘But... what if you’re wrong? What if he has got the evidence?’

‘What evidence could he have anyway?’ I asked. ‘How did you lay the horse in the first place?’

‘I used my wife’s credit card account. It’s still in her maiden name.’

‘But isn’t her billing address the same as yours?’

He said nothing but just looked down at his feet.

How stupid could you get? I thought.

The bloody man deserved to be blackmailed.

Next I went into Newmarket, to the offices of the Injured Jockeys Fund in Victoria Way. I’d already called them and spoken to Mrs Green, the lady who had organized the dinner at the Hilton Hotel on the night that Clare had died.

‘Did you have a nice holiday?’ I’d asked her.

‘Oh, yes, wonderful, thank you,’ Mrs Green had replied. ‘The weather in Portugal was fantastic, just like high summer here.’

‘Good,’ I’d said, laying on the charm.

‘But I was so sorry to hear about your dear sister. It was a real shock, especially as I was quite used to seeing her around the town. I live down near Mr Grubb’s stables. She was always so lovely.’

‘Thank you,’ I’d said to her, meaning it. ‘But the reason I called was that I was hoping you might be able to help me.’

‘Of course.’

‘I’m trying to obtain the guest list for your charity night at the Hilton.’

‘Oh.’ There had been a slight pause. ‘I suppose it would be all right to give it to you. The seating plan was on display on the night so it can hardly be confidential, can it? One has to be so careful these days with that damned Data Protection Act. I wouldn’t be able to give you their addresses.’

‘Just the names will be great.’

‘I’d rather not e-mail it to you, if you don’t mind.’ Mrs Green had clearly not been completely convinced that she wasn’t breaking some rule or other. ‘But I could print out another copy of the seating plan, if you’d like. After all, we never had them back at the end of the evening and you could’ve just taken it off one of the boards in the hotel.’

‘Indeed, I could have,’ I’d said, playing along with her game.

I had arranged to collect it from the charity’s offices, and it was waiting for me at the reception desk, sealed in one of those ubiquitous white envelopes.

I sat outside in the car and opened it.

I didn’t really know what I was looking for, so I wasn’t too disappointed that nothing leapt out at me from the sheet of paper.

Not that I didn’t recognize most of the names. I did.

They included many of the great and the good of British racing, coming together to support one of the sport’s major charities.

Mr and Mrs Mitchell Stacey were listed, as expected, but the other guests at their table were not, at least not by name, simply being denoted as (+10) after the Staceys.

And that was true for lots of the tables, many of which had been taken by the evening’s sponsors or by other companies, with only the company name shown.

I went back inside the offices to ask Mrs Green if she had a complete list of everyone who had attended the event.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘The seating plan is all I have. The table hosts put their own name-place cards out.’

I thanked her anyway, and drove the Honda back to Clare’s cottage to find that the man from the builder’s was just finishing the repair to the front door.

‘It looks great,’ I said, inspecting his handiwork. ‘Thank you.’

‘Where shall I send the bill?’

‘Send it to Austin Reynolds.’ I started to give him the address but he already knew it.

‘Yeah, we do lots of work for Mr Reynolds,’ he said, packing up his tools. ‘The firm is currently building some new stables at his yard.’

I wondered whether Austin would keep his trainer’s licence long enough to use them.

‘Well?’ said DS Sharp. ‘Do you recognize anyone?’

‘Quite a few,’ I said.

We were in a darkened video viewing studio at Charing Cross police station and we’d spent over an hour looking through the CCTV footage from the hotel lobby for the night Clare had died.

‘While I was driving down here,’ I said, ‘I wondered if someone had been trying to kill me in order to stop me seeing these films.’

‘Kill you?’ he said, surprised.

‘Yes. There have been two attempts on my life this last week and I’ve been trying to work out why.’

I described the two incidents to him, including the murder of Emily, and he suddenly became more interested.

‘Have you spoken to Cambridgeshire Police about the CCTV?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nor to the Surrey lot. I only thought that it might be the reason on the way here from Newmarket this afternoon.’

‘So?’ he said eagerly. ‘Is there anything on the films that was worth killing to prevent you seeing?’

‘Nothing that’s very obvious,’ I said.

It had been very strange, and somewhat emotional, to see the silent images of Clare walking into the hotel lobby and up to the reception desk. I’d seen it from about four different angles but none of them had shown a close-up of her face or given any indication of her state of mind.

The hotel lobby had been relatively empty as she had checked in but later, as the Injured Jockeys dinner had evidently finished in the ballroom upstairs, large groups of dinner-jacketed guests could be seen making their way through to the hotel exit, and it was many of these that I recognized.

Mitchell and Sarah Stacey had been in one of the groups, obviously saying their goodbyes to their owners as they all collected coats from the cloakroom.

One of the cameras even covered the area outside the hotel’s front door and it had clearly shown people queuing for taxis in a rather strange, silent, green-tinged world.

‘That camera works on infrared after dark,’ DS Sharp had said, ‘hence the greeny pictures and the rather zombie-like eyes.’

I sat looking once more at the moving images and thought about what had been going on exactly fifteen floors above them.

‘Did it capture Clare?’ I asked.

We both knew what I meant. Did it capture the impact of Clare’s body on the pavement?

‘Yes, it did,’ he said. ‘But that has been cropped from this copy.’

I was relieved. I didn’t have to take the decision to stop watching, or not.

I looked up at the clock on the wall. ‘I thought you were leaving at six.’

‘I was,’ he said. ‘But I’ve nothing to go home to except an empty, cold flat so I’m quite happy to stay here as long as you want.’

I, too, had nothing to go home to but an empty, cold flat.

An empty, cold life.

A wave of pain and grief washed over me. Hold on, I told myself sharply, this was not the time or the place. I needed to make the most of this opportunity.

‘How about the cameras in the lifts?’ I asked.

‘They’re not very good,’ he said.

‘In what way?’

‘They don’t really show people’s faces. It’s all rather top down.’

He pushed some buttons on the machines and, in turn, we watched the recordings from each of the four cameras.

As he’d said, the results weren’t great. The images were a bit like those filmed for a ‘spot the mystery guest’ slot on television quiz shows, giving only tantalizingly brief glimpses of people’s faces, and from unusual angles.

At least we could tell which way the lift was going as the cameras just captured the lit-up ‘down’ arrows in the top corner of the image whenever the lifts were going down.

‘I think this one is your sister,’ said DS Sharp. ‘The timing is right.’

I watched as a young woman in jeans, pink shirt, and blue baseball cap entered the lift and turned round, leaning up against the back wall. After a while she was seen to leave the lift. She was alone throughout.

‘I timed the lifts,’ DS Sharp said. ‘It takes precisely that long to get from the lobby to the fifteenth floor.’

‘It certainly looked like Clare,’ I said, ‘but it’s not easy to be absolutely sure with that cap.’

‘It’s also not helped by the poor resolution of the cameras,’ he said. ‘They have such small lenses and that tends to distort the images.’

So, assuming it had been Clare in the film, she had gone up to the room on her own.

‘According to Carlos Luis Sanchez, one of the hotel porters, she was followed up to her room by two men, one after the other, and the first one was wearing a bow tie.’

DS Sharp raised his eyebrows in my direction.

‘Been busy, have we?’ he said.

‘I went there primarily to see where Clare died,’ I said. ‘But, while I was there, I asked some questions.’

‘Is this Carlos Sanchez the one who says there was someone in your sister’s room when she fell?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That was his friend Mario.’

‘Mario?’ I could tell from his tone that he was somewhat sceptical.

‘Yes, Mario,’ I said, ignoring him. ‘Apparently Mario is one of the night porters. According to Carlos, Mario saw the man leave the hotel after Clare had died.’

While we had been talking the CCTV footage from the lifts had continued to play on the screens, and I suddenly saw a face that I recognized.

‘Stop!’ I said loudly. ‘Can you play that again?’

He pushed some buttons on the desk in front of him and the images went slowly backwards.

‘There,’ I said. ‘Stop.’

There were three people in the lift. A young man and a woman who were too intent on fondling each other to notice anything going on around them, and a second, older man wearing a dinner jacket and a black bow tie. This second man glanced ever so briefly up at the camera fixed above the kissing heads, allowing it to catch an image of him, full face.

‘Do you know that man?’ DS Sharp asked.

‘Yes, I do,’ I said, continuing to stare straight into the man’s eyes on the screen. ‘It’s a racehorse trainer called Austin Reynolds.’

‘Can you tell which floor he got out on?’ I asked.

There was a time code superimposed across the top of all the video footage and DS Sharp inched forward the images frame by frame, measuring the time between Austin entering the lift and him leaving.

‘Assuming the lift is going up, it is about right for the fifteenth floor but it’s impossible to say exactly. The camera position doesn’t allow us to see the doors so we can’t be sure how long the lift was actually moving.’

‘What time did he get into the lift?’

He wound the video back to the exact moment.

‘Twenty-two thirty-one and seventeen seconds.’

Just after half past ten. Ten minutes after Clare had checked in.

Was that a coincidence? As Lisa, the Morning Line producer, had said, coincidences did happen. But was this really one of them?

‘Do you have a list of those staying at the hotel that night?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid not. But we could find out from the hotel.’

‘Let’s check first to see if he leaves.’

We went on watching the video recordings.

‘Is that him?’ I suddenly asked, seeing someone that resembled Austin enter the lift. I shouted at the image. ‘Dammit man, look up at the camera!’

He didn’t, of course, and I wasn’t very certain it had been him.

‘Can you check the lobby films for that precise time?’

DS Sharp again pressed his buttons and the wide view of the lobby reappeared on one of the screens. He wound the recording on until the time code was the same as for the shot in the lift. He then let it run.

Austin Reynolds was clearly visible walking from the direction of the lifts to the main exit.

Without being asked, DS Sharp pulled up the shot from outside with its zombie-like eyes. Austin Reynolds had to wait about four minutes in a queue before he climbed into a taxi and was driven away.

‘Twenty-two fifty-eight,’ DS Sharp said, reading the time code off the screen. ‘Mr Reynolds left the hotel more than half an hour before your sister died.’

Surely no one would kill to prevent me seeing that.

‘Unless he came back,’ I said. But, even I knew that was unlikely. ‘Carlos said there was a second man, so let’s keep looking.’

We spent another twenty minutes looking at the videos from the lifts but there was no one who I even remotely recognized getting into any of them.

‘According to Mario, the second man left the hotel during the commotion that followed Clare’s fall.’

DS Sharp moved the recordings forward to twenty-three thirty on the time code.

I never realized how busy hotel lifts could be. Hardly a second went past without each of the four having people in it moving in one direction or the other as the hotel guests came back from the theatre, or diners from the high-level restaurant and bar descended to their rooms, or to the street-level exits.

But still there was no one I recognized.

At precisely twenty-three thirty-two and fifteen seconds on the clock, a man wearing a dark overcoat and a blue baseball cap entered a lift already half-full with other people, going down. He didn’t look up at the camera, in fact he seemed to be purposefully looking away from it, and also from the other people.

‘Is that the same baseball cap that Clare had on when she checked in?’ I asked.

DS Sharp stopped and re-ran the film.

‘It might be.’

‘Did you find the cap in Clare’s room?’ I asked. ‘Or was she wearing it when she fell?’

The detective sergeant didn’t answer.

‘Where are her things?’ I asked him. ‘Even if she didn’t have a handbag, she must have had her car keys.’

‘There was nothing left in the room except the note.’

‘How about her car? Where’s that?’

No answer.

‘And her phone?’ I asked. ‘Where did that go? And did she call anyone before she died?’

Anyone other than me.

‘I’ll have to investigate,’ DS Sharp said, clearly uncomfortable.

Past time for that, I thought. Well past. He had obviously been so convinced by the note that it was straightforward suicide that he really hadn’t bothered looking for anything else.

I watched on the screen as the lift emptied, presumably at ground level.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Can you find that man in the lobby?’

He fiddled with the equipment and a wide shot of the lobby appeared on a screen.

‘There,’ I said, pointing.

We watched as the man walked briskly across the lobby.

Lots of other people were running towards the main doors, and one or two were staggering back inside with wide eyes, holding their heads or hugging one another. I didn’t want to think about what they had just witnessed on the pavement outside.

The man appeared to be ignoring the disturbance just to his right, marching straight on towards the left-hand side of the main exit.

‘Can’t you zoom in?’ I asked.

DS Sharp tried but the image became very fuzzy and indistinct.

‘I think he’s got his collar turned up,’ the sergeant said. ‘And maybe a scarf around his face as well.’

Why would anyone wear a coat with the collar turned up and a scarf when that particular September evening had been so warm? Was he trying to hide his face from the CCTV cameras?

‘Try another angle,’ I said.

He brought up the image from the camera near the lifts. It showed the man clearly from behind as he walked away. There was no chance of seeing his face from that direction.

DS Sharp went through every camera position in turn but there was no clear image of the man’s features.

‘How about the one outside?’ I asked, realizing as I said it that any images from out there would also show Clare’s body on the ground.

‘Are you sure?’ the sergeant asked. ‘I’ll have to get the original recording rather than the copy.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t. If the man took such efforts inside the hotel not to be seen, he’d hardly let it happen once he was outside. He’d have just gone on walking with his head down.’

‘I can get it if you want,’ he said. ‘We only made the copy without the last bit because we didn’t want some unscrupulous idiot uploading it on YouTube. The original is securely locked in my office safe.’

I could feel my heart beating.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it wouldn’t show anything we can’t already see.’

‘Maybe I’ll look at it later,’ he said. ‘Just to be sure.’

‘Right.’ I breathed deeply and was reminded of my broken ribs by a sharp stabbing pain in my left side. But it was in my head that a bell was ringing.

‘Could you please show me that shot again of the man walking away from the camera?’

DS Sharp pulled up the images onto the screen.

There was something about the way the man moved — an easy, large-stride, lolloping motion, with his head bobbing up and down slightly with each step.

Maybe I didn’t need to see the man’s face in order to recognize him.