Bloodline

22

I arrived back home at five past ten and it was as lonely and cold as I had feared, and it was starting to rain.

Ever since leaving Newmarket I’d kept a keen eye on the Honda’s rear-view mirror to ensure I wasn’t being followed but, nevertheless, I was very wary when I parked the car on the street outside my flat and walked quickly to the front door.

I let myself in and put my Chinese take-away supper in the oven to keep warm while I collected the rest of the things from the car.

Street lighting in my part of Edenbridge could hardly be described as comprehensive. There was a lamppost about twenty yards away in each direction up and down the road, but their meagre glow hardly made it to my door. Consequently I was spooked by every shadow, seeing in my mind a potential murderer behind every bush.

My ribs were too painful to carry much at once, so it took me six separate damp trips to bring in the boxes of Clare’s paperwork, plus the other things like the racing trophies and some of the stuff that Angela had sorted from the kitchen.

With the help of one of Geoff Grubb’s stable staff, Clare’s clothes and shoes had been packed into my rented Honda, and I’d driven them to a charity shop in Newmarket High Street. There had been great excitement and giggling amongst the three middle-aged women who ran it when they’d unpacked the bag overflowing with the black lace undies.

‘We don’t normally resell people’s underwear,’ one of them had said, chuckling and holding up a pair, ‘but these are beautiful and I think we’ll make an exception. Once they’ve been washed, of course.’ The woman had giggled again and I rather wished I’d just thrown them all away.

I was very glad when everything from the car was finally in the flat and I was able to lock my front door, with me safely on the inside. Not that I considered this particular home to be much of a castle. It had taken Austin Reynolds six mighty blows with a sledgehammer to break into Clare’s cottage. Looking at the simple latch lock on my own front door, I thought a well-placed kick might be enough to gain entry. I’d never considered it much of an issue as I had precious little that anyone would want to steal. But was it enough to keep out a murderer while I was sleeping?

I propped one of my two kitchen chairs against the door, tucking the back of it under the doorknob. It probably wouldn’t be enough to keep out an averagely determined child but at least it might give me a few moments’ warning of their arrival.

I then sat on my other kitchen chair at the table to eat chicken chop suey and egg fried rice that I’d collected from a local Chinese restaurant in Edenbridge. It was not especially tasty but I was hungry as I hadn’t eaten anything since my bland hospital breakfast at seven o’clock that morning.

Had that really been only this morning? So much had happened since then.

I pushed the empty plate away and leaned back in the chair.

Where did I go from here, I wondered, and I didn’t only mean physically.

I cracked open the fortune cookie that Mr Woo at the Forbidden City restaurant had kindly put in the brown bag with the rice and chop suey.

Use your talents wisely. That’s why you have them.

I read and re-read the little strip of paper with its Chinese proverb.

What particular talents did I have that I should use wisely?

I didn’t sleep very well. Partly due to the pain in my side but mostly because of overlapping and disturbing dreams involving both Clare and Emily.

I lay awake in the darkness, trying to think what I should do.

‘Can you positively identify that man?’ Detective Sergeant Sharp had asked me in the Charing Cross police video room.

‘What do you mean by positively identify?’ I’d asked him back.

‘Could you stand up in a court of law and swear to his identity?’

‘No,’ I’d said. ‘Of course I couldn’t. I just think he walks a bit like someone I know.’

The policeman had shaken his head. ‘I’d need much more than that to interview anyone. Lots of people walk like that. And, anyway, there’s no law against walking out of a hotel with your collar up and your head down, even if there is someone dead on the pavement outside.’

‘But he might have been in the room when Clare fell.’

‘That doesn’t mean there was a crime,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll grant you, if there was someone in the room when she fell it would almost certainly be relevant to the coroner and the inquest. The man would be able to testify as to what exactly had happened, but there is no evidence that he was involved in any criminal activity, so I can hardly arrest him. And then there’s the suicide note.’

‘I’m not so sure it’s a suicide note,’ I’d said. ‘It’s not very specific.’

‘It’s a good deal more specific than some others I’ve seen.’ I’d waited while he’d fetched a photocopy of the note from his office. He’d then read the last two sentences to me out loud. ‘Please don’t think badly of me. I am so sorry.’ He’d put the note down on the desk in front of me. ‘I’m afraid, Mr Shillingford, that it looks very much like a suicide note to me.’

Oh, Clare, how could you?

I tossed and turned some more, albeit gingerly, and finally got up to go to the bathroom just before seven, with the coming of the morning light.

I felt dreadful and my reflection in the mirror showed me as grey-skinned with dark circles under my eyes. I’d probably overdone the amount of carrying that I should have attempted with broken ribs.

My side was very sore but my breathing seemed fine so I swallowed a couple of heavy-duty painkillers and went back to lie on my bed until they worked.

The phone vibrated on my bedside table.

‘Hello,’ I said, noting the Newmarket number.

‘This is Austin Reynolds. I’ve received the payment instructions in this morning’s post.’

‘Yes?’ I said, encouraging him to continue.

‘Just as before,’ he said. ‘I have to leave the money in a brown envelope under my car in a racecourse car park.’

‘Where?’ I asked. ‘And when?’

‘Kempton. Tomorrow night.’

‘What does it say exactly?’ I asked.

I could hear him nervously rustling the paper. ‘Put the cash in used fifties in a brown padded envelope and leave it up against the inside of the offside rear wheel of your car when you arrive at Kempton races tomorrow night. Park in the car park then walk away into the racecourse. Don’t look back.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Do you have anything declared for tomorrow night?’

‘One,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a new London owner who wants his horse to run. It’s in the fourth. What should I do?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just go to the races and walk away from your car. And don’t leave the ten thousand.’

‘I haven’t got that sort of cash anyway.’

‘What car will you be driving?’

‘My dark blue BMW.’ He gave me the registration.

‘Will it start?’ I asked, remembering the previous Saturday morning.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a new battery fitted.’

‘Remember,’ I said. ‘Just park it and then walk away.’

‘Shouldn’t I at least bend down as if I was putting something by the back wheel?’

‘If you like,’ I said. ‘Yes, perhaps that will be good, just in case our man is watching you arrive. In fact, place a padded envelope there. It doesn’t matter if it’s empty.’

‘I’ll put a few stones from my driveway in it to prevent it blowing away.’

I hadn’t quite worked out yet how I would keep an eye on Austin’s car at Kempton the following evening, especially as I was due to be commentating there.

‘I don’t like it,’ Austin said. ‘I don’t like it one bit. What if he goes to the racing authorities?’

‘So would you rather pay him the ten thousand?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said miserably. ‘I can’t.’

It wasn’t the only thing he was going to be miserable about.

I changed the subject. ‘Did you enjoy the Injured Jockeys Fund event at the London Hilton?’

‘What?’ he asked. ‘But that was weeks ago.’

‘Less than three weeks,’ I said. Although it certainly felt like longer. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d been up to see Clare after the dinner?’

There was silence from the other end of the line.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, or at least tell the police?’

‘I was frightened,’ Austin said. ‘People might have thought I had something to do with her death.’

‘And did you?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he answered quickly. ‘She was alive when I left her.’

‘I know.’

‘How could you know?’ he asked.

‘The hotel CCTV cameras picked you up leaving half an hour before she fell.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Good.’

Even down the telephone line, I could hear the relief in his voice.

‘So why did you go up to her room?’ I asked, not wanting his relief to be too long lasting. ‘And how did you know she was even there?’

‘She texted me,’ he said. ‘It was rather embarrassing, actually. It was during the speeches. I’d forgotten to turn my phone off.’

‘What exactly did she text?’

‘She said she had to talk to me about Bangkok Flyer’s race that afternoon and that it might be a problem.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Hold on, I’ll get my mobile.’

I could hear him moving in the background.

‘Half past nine,’ he said. ‘Nine twenty-seven, to be precise.’

About ten to fifteen minutes after she’d left me at Haxted Mill.

‘She said she was coming straight to see me in Newmarket, but I texted back to say I wasn’t at home, I was at that dinner at the Hilton. She then said she’d come to the hotel.’

She must have been really worried.

But she wouldn’t have checked into a room just to see Austin. She could have spoken to him in the lobby, or in the bar. She must have checked in to stay the night with the other man, her mystery lover.

‘How did you know which room she was in?’

‘She texted me again later saying she was there, giving me the room number.’

‘So you went up to see her?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘as soon as the dinner was over. But I only stayed in her room about ten or so minutes, then I left and went home. I caught the eleven-thirty train from King’s Cross. My wife picked me up from Cambridge station. She doesn’t really like going to those big events in London.’

‘What did you and Clare talk about?’ I asked.

‘Not much, really,’ he said. ‘I remember that most of the time I was there she was arguing with one of the hotel security men about unlocking the balcony door. What’s the point, she was saying, of having a balcony room if the balcony is locked? Anyway, the man unlocked it when I was there. I’m not really sure what it was about, but Clare kept calling me darling and pretending to the man that she and I were going to spend the night there together and therefore the door could be opened.’

The ‘two in a room’ rule, I thought.

‘So what did Clare say after the man had gone?’

‘She said that someone knew about her riding Bangkok Flyer to lose. She seemed quite worried about it. I asked her who it was but she wouldn’t tell me.’

‘It was me,’ I said.

‘I know that now,’ Austin replied curtly.

‘So what was so urgent that she had needed to see you that night?’ I asked. ‘Why couldn’t it wait until the morning?’

He didn’t reply.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Why was it so urgent?’

‘Because we had planned to do it again the next day, in the last race at Newmarket, and she knew that I would lay the horse on the internet early on Saturday morning. But she didn’t want to go through with it. In fact, she said she’d never ever do it again. From now on, she was always going to ride to win.’

I sat there holding the phone with tears streaming down my cheeks.

‘Did she say anything about killing herself?’ I asked, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘She seemed happy, almost as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. That’s why I couldn’t believe it when I heard on the Morning Line the next day that she was dead.’

‘Did she say anything to you about writing a suicide note?’

‘No, of course not,’ Austin said. ‘I told you, I don’t think she was planning to kill herself when I left her.’

What on earth had happened in the subsequent half hour?

Almost as soon as I had put my phone down, it rang again, and this time it was my father. What the hell did he want at this time of the morning?

‘Hello, Dad,’ I said as enthusiastically as I could manage. ‘How are you?’

‘What’s all this bloody nonsense in the newspaper?’ he replied, as always ignoring the normal niceties of polite conversation.

‘Which newspaper?’ I asked.

‘UK Today.’

Jim Metcalf, I thought. ‘What does it say?’

‘Something about you being strangled last week.’ I could tell from his tone that he didn’t believe it.

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘That was why I crashed my car into Angela and Nicholas’s gatepost on Friday night.’

‘What nonsense,’ he said. ‘You were drunk. I heard one of those policemen say so. He said you must have been blind drunk to hit that post so hard.’

‘Dad, I was not drunk. Someone was trying to kill me.’

‘Hmph.’ He clearly still didn’t believe me.

‘And whoever it was tried to murder me again on Sunday night.’

‘But why would anyone want to murder you?’ He said it in a manner that I felt was rather belittling, as if I wasn’t worthy of being murdered.

But it was still a good question.

I’d been asking myself the same thing for almost thirty-six hours, since the disaster in the Three Horseshoes car park.

And I hadn’t yet come up with a credible answer.

‘I don’t know, Dad,’ I said. ‘But I intend finding out.’

‘And how are you going to do that?’ he asked, his voice again full of doubt that I could do anything. Our little moment of mutual understanding that had existed at Clare’s funeral had clearly evaporated.

I decided to ignore him. He had considered my whole life a disaster from the moment I’d told him, aged seventeen, that I wasn’t going to university. In his narrow opinion, not getting a degree was tantamount to failure, and the fact that I now earned at least twice what he ever had was completely immaterial.

Use your talents wisely. That’s why you have them.

I did have talents and I suddenly realized how I could use them to unravel this mystery. I just hoped it was wise to do so.

I drove my rented Honda to Brighton races, checking frequently that I was not being followed.

I arrived early, well before the racing was due to start, as there were people I needed to see.

‘No problem,’ said Derek, the RacingTV producer, when I asked him about my plans for the following evening at Kempton. ‘Night racing is always less frenetic than the afternoons because there’s only ever a single meeting, so we’ll have a full half an hour between races. Masses of time.’

‘Dead easy,’ said Jack Laver, the technician who ran the racecourse broadcast centre.

More of the easy, I thought, and less of the dead.

I always liked racing at Brighton. It is one of the more unusual of the British racecourses in so far as, like Epsom and Newmarket, it is not a complete loop but a long curving mile-and-a-half horseshoe-shaped track that runs along the undulating ridge of Race Hill, part of the South Downs range of chalk hills, two miles to the east of the city centre.

The view from the top of the grandstand on that particular October Tuesday was magnificent. The Indian summer of the past weeks had been swept away by a series of Atlantic weather fronts that had finally cleared through overnight, leaving cool, crisp conditions with spectacular visibility.

Away to my right, the bright sunlight reflected with a million flashes off the surface of the sea and, in the far distance, I could see a line of shipping making its way eastward towards the Straits of Dover.

To my left, I looked out across the roofs of the housing estate in the valley below towards where the stalls were being towed into position at the one-mile start, ready for the first race.

It was a truly beautiful day, the light azure sky contrasting with the lush dark green of the turf and the deep blues of the English Channel.

I sat on the chair in the commentary box and badly missed Clare. She used to ride frequently at Brighton, often staying the night before or after racing with our parents at Oxted. She had last been here for the racing festival in August and I could still remember her delight at riding three winners on the opening day while I’d been commentating.

I smiled at the memory.

There had been nothing strange or unusual about her riding on that occasion, just magnificent judgement and timing as she had swept up the hill to win the Brighton Mile Challenge Trophy, the big race of the day, by the shortest of short-heads.

Commentators were expected to be unbiased and objective, but there had been nothing impartial and balanced about my words that day as I had cheered with delight as she had pulled off the last-gasp victory.

Now it seemed such a long time ago, and I grieved for the loss of any more such joyous days.

I went down to the Press Room to find myself a bite to eat and a cup of coffee.

Jim Metcalf was there ahead of me and he’d already eaten all the ham and mustard sandwiches from the selection provided.

‘Did you see my piece today about you?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I’ve heard about it from my father. He says it’s a load of rubbish.’

Jim tossed a copy of it to me across the room. ‘It’s only what was in that statement of yours.’

‘Yeah, but UK Today must be desperately short of news to have run that today when it happened last Friday,’ I said. ‘And, anyway, you’ve completely missed the real story.’

‘What real story?’ he asked, slightly concerned.

‘Whoever it was trying to kill me had another go on Sunday night and they killed a friend of mine instead.’

He stared at me. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said.

‘Which friend?’

‘Someone called Emily Lowther.’

He was already typing her name into his laptop.

‘The Three Horseshoes, Madingley,’ he said, reading from the screen.

‘Very impressive,’ I said. ‘How do you do that?’

‘Coroners’ database of reports for the Department of Justice. It records every case referred to a coroner in England and Wales. If this Emily Lowther was killed in Madingley on Sunday night then the coroner for the area would have been informed of her death, probably yesterday, or this morning at the very latest. Either way it’s now been entered on the database.’

‘Is it legal for you to have access to it?’

‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘So I don’t ask.’ He read the details on his screen. ‘This entry doesn’t say anything about you.’

‘That’s probably because I didn’t die,’ I said. ‘Not quite.’

‘So who was Emily Lowther?’ he asked.

‘Just a friend.’

‘Was she that flash bird I saw you with at Newmarket last Saturday?’

‘Do you spy on me all the time?’ I asked.

‘No, not always, but it was a bit difficult not to notice.’ He laughed. ‘Not the way you were pawing each other all afternoon.’

‘Yeah, well.’ I sighed deeply, trying hard not to lose my composure. ‘It was her who was killed, but I think it was really me who was the target.’

‘Why do you think that?’ he said.

‘I just do.’ Although I remembered what Angela had said about Emily’s husband having a motive to kill in order to inherit her house.

‘How was she killed?’ Jim asked.

‘Run down by a car with no lights in the pub car park. I went over the top, she went under the wheels. I lived, she died.’

‘Do you want me to write about this as well?’

‘Not really,’ I said.

‘Then why are you telling me?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said with another heavy sigh. ‘I just needed to tell someone. I seem to be living a nightmare at the moment. First Clare, and now Emily, and the police don’t seem to be getting anywhere. They’re even suggesting that it might have been a hit-and-run accident in the pub car park, when I’m quite sure it was premeditated murder. And I’ve got the broken ribs to prove it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

I deduced from his tone of voice that Jim must also believe that the car hitting us was probably an accident. The alternative just seemed too far-fetched.

‘Jim,’ I said. ‘Can I tell you something off the record?’

‘Not if it’s a news story,’ he said.

‘It’s about Toby Woodley.’

‘What about him?’

‘You know you said he had an uncanny knack of sniffing out real stories amongst all the gossip. Well, I think I know how he did it.’

‘Tell all,’ Jim said, his journalistic antennae starting to quiver madly.

‘I’m not certain, but I think that if Toby Woodley had even the slightest thought that someone had been up to no good, he would send them a blackmail note asking for a paltry sum like two hundred pounds or he would go to the authorities.’

‘So?’ said Jim.

‘If they paid then he knew he’d been right.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Jim suddenly shouted. ‘The bastard did it to me.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘I got this note last year from someone saying that they knew I’d used phone hacking to get a certain story and, if I didn’t pay them two hundred quid, they would go to the press complaints people and report me.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Well, as it happens, I hadn’t used hacking to get that particular story so I ignored it. But, I remember being really worried. I had used some information obtained from hacking to get another story around the same time, so I very nearly paid just to shut him up.’

‘But you didn’t?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I was even told where and when to leave the money but, in the end, I decided not to pay, and I never heard another thing. I’d all but forgotten about it.’

‘I think Woodley did it to everyone and, when someone took his bait, he then demanded more, writing a story in his paper that was close to the truth but without mentioning anyone by name. I believe the stories were solely designed to give his victims the incentive to pay him the new, larger amounts.’

‘And do you think that’s what got him murdered?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’

‘The little creep,’ Jim said with feeling. ‘Got what he deserved, if you ask me.’

‘But there’s someone else,’ I said.

‘Someone else what?’ he asked.

‘Toby Woodley was murdered last Wednesday evening at Kempton, and I know of two people who have received blackmail demands that must have been posted after he died.’

‘Who?’ he asked eagerly.

‘Ah, no,’ I said. ‘I’m not telling you that, on the record or off it. Suffice to say, they are both reliable sources.’

‘So who is this someone else?’ Jim asked.

‘I don’t know, but I think it must be someone who was themselves being blackmailed because they seem to know Toby Woodley’s payment method, and I also think it’s the same person who killed him.’

‘Why couldn’t he simply be his accomplice who’s taken over?’

‘Partly because I don’t think that Toby was the sort of man to have an accomplice, and also because of the missing briefcase.’

‘The famous Woodley briefcase.’

‘Infamous, more like,’ I said. ‘I’d like to bet that, far from just containing his sandwiches, that briefcase held his blackmail notes and the details of all his victims. That’s why he was always so protective of it. And someone else is now using what they found to go on with the blackmail.’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Jim asked. ‘Go to the police?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But that would almost definitely involve breaking confidences.’ I laughed. ‘Perhaps I’ll just catch the murdering bastard myself.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Jim sarcastically, ‘you and whose army?’