Bloodline

23

I hadn’t imagined there would be so many policemen. They stood in groups of two or three inside each of the racecourse entrances with clipboards asking everyone who came in if they had been there the previous Wednesday, the day of Toby Woodley’s murder.

I had arrived at Kempton really early in order to help set up the equipment but now I wasn’t at all sure if the whole thing hadn’t been a waste of time.

With all these coppers around, surely only a fool would attempt to collect blackmail money. But the blackmailer had been the one to specify the time and place, and you couldn’t actually see the police from the car park.

I’d telephoned Austin Reynolds earlier, just to check that he wasn’t getting cold feet and also to finalize when and where he was to park his car. I had to take a chance that the blackmailer wouldn’t be made suspicious by Austin parking close to where the RacingTV scanner would be situated.

‘Park close to the big blue television outside-broadcast vehicles that are at the far side of the car park, near the fence behind the saddling boxes.’

‘How can I do that?’ Austin had asked. ‘Don’t I have to go where I’m told by the car park attendants?’

‘There won’t be any attendants,’ I’d said. ‘They don’t have them for the night meetings because parking is free and the crowds are small. People park where they like, mostly as close as they can to the enclosure entrances. There are always plenty of spaces. Arrive at precisely half past four, and enter by the racecourse main gate on Staines Road. Drive round towards the television vehicles and try to choose a space that has an unoccupied one alongside on its right. I promise you, the car park will not be busy, especially over an hour before the first race.’

‘All right.’ He hadn’t sounded very confident.

‘Austin,’ I’d said. ‘This is all you have to do, so do it right.’

I wasn’t at all sure that he would even turn up at Kempton, but he did, and at precisely the right time, turning his large blue BMW through the main gate at exactly four thirty.

I had been waiting for him out on Staines Road in the rented Honda Civic, and I now pulled out into the traffic and followed him into the racecourse car park and round towards the TV vehicles.

Austin parked in a free space just three away from the end of the scanner and I pulled the Honda into the space on his right, immediately alongside him. Perfect, I thought. I couldn’t have positioned the two cars better if I’d painted white crosses on the tarmac.

I climbed out of the Honda and walked directly to the scanner without looking once at Austin or his car. One never knew who was watching.

‘Ideal,’ said Gareth, one of the bright young RacingTV technicians who had been as keen as mustard to help out. ‘Anything for some bleedin’ excitement.’

Gareth had spent the morning and afternoon setting up all the camera equipment around the racecourse, and he would take it all down again later, after the racing had finished. He was only there in between times in case any part of the system actually broke down, when his job was then to fix it. He always joked that he was the only member of the broadcast team who actively wanted something to go wrong in order to alleviate the mind-numbing boredom of the actual programme.

Gareth didn’t really like racing, but he absolutely loved television cameras.

‘Can it be done?’ I’d asked him.

‘Course it can, me old sugar,’ he’d replied in his strong London accent. ‘I can do bloody anything when it comes to cameras. Mr Bleedin’ Magic, I am.’

And he was.

He hadn’t even wanted to know why I needed a particular car to be kept under constant observation. To him, it was clearly just a game and the reasons for it didn’t matter. ‘Ask no bleedin’ questions,’ he’d said, ‘and I’ll be told no bleedin’ lies.’

He’d set up one of the small hand-held cameras in the back of the Honda so that it pointed out of the side window behind the rear door, and he’d shown me how to park the car for maximum coverage. We now sat together in the scanner looking at a monitor that showed the images received from the camera through a link Gareth had established between the roof of the Honda and the signals-relay vehicle.

‘Bleedin’ marvellous,’ Gareth exclaimed, staring closely at the monitor. ‘Crackin’ good picture too, considerin’ it only uses a normal internet wireless link.’

The wide-angle lens on the camera meant we could see all the way down the far side of Austin Reynolds’s car, and right down to ground level, with a particularly good shot of the offside rear wheel, behind which I could already see the corner of a brown envelope sticking out.

‘Can you run that back?’ I asked Gareth.

‘Sure,’ he said, and the image jerked slightly as he put the recording into reverse on the screen. Even played backwards, it was clear for us both to see Austin Reynolds as he’d got out of his car, opened the back door, removed his coat from the back seat, closed the door, put on the coat, and then leaned down to place a brown padded envelope behind the rear wheel, before walking off towards the entrance to the enclosures.

‘What’s in the envelope?’ Gareth asked, his inquisitiveness getting the better of him for a moment.

‘Just some stones,’ I said.

‘Diamonds?’ Gareth was suddenly quite interested.

‘No such luck,’ I said, laughing. ‘Just a few pieces of ordinary gravel to stop it blowing away.’

Gareth didn’t ask me why Austin was placing a worthless envelope behind his rear offside wheel, which I was then going to such trouble to watch — ask no bleedin’ questions, and he’d be told no bleedin’ lies.

‘How about the other camera?’ I asked.

‘No problem,’ he said, looking at another image on his monitor. ‘I’ll just go and make a small adjustment.’

He disappeared outside and I watched on the monitor as the picture moved slightly to the left and Austin’s car came clearly into view with the racecourse entrance beyond. This second camera was attached to the side of one of the receiving-dome frameworks on the roof of the signals-relay vehicle that was parked alongside the scanner.

Gareth returned and seemed satisfied with his handiwork.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘That should do it. Good job we’ve got no girls tonight or we’d be needin’ that camera.’

‘Girls’ in this instance did not refer necessarily to womankind. It was the nickname for any presenters, male or female, who sat in a glass-fronted box overlooking the parade ring to describe the horses before a race. Someone had once stated that they had chatted away to each other like a pair of schoolgirls, and the nickname had stuck.

The use of such paddock boxes used to be routine but they are now mostly seen at only the big meetings, when one of the small cameras would be employed to briefly show the ‘girls’, mostly men and usually sitting side by side wearing headphones.

No girls tonight.

Oh, God! Don’t remind me.

The blackmailer took the envelope at seven thirty-five, just as the seven runners for the fourth race were being mounted in the parade ring, and at the precise moment when Austin Reynolds was giving his jockey a leg-up into the saddle.

By that time it was dark and, just like the CCTV camera at the Hilton Hotel, Gareth’s two small cameras had automatically switched to infrared operation, both of them assisted by an infrared lamp positioned on the signals-relay vehicle that bathed the area in a radiation invisible to humans but clear as daylight to the cameras.

I nearly fell off my stool in the commentary box, from where I hadn’t moved since well before the first race. It was a good job that it didn’t happen actually during a race commentary, I thought, or I would have completely lost the plot.

Jack Laver had also worked his magic and had installed not one but three monitors in the commentary box, and the extra two showed the images from Gareth’s hidden cameras.

And there was the blackmailer, bold as brass, walking over to Austin’s car, bending down, removing the envelope, and stuffing it down his coat without stopping to open it to count his money — not that he’d find any money.

And just for good measure, as he had bent down, he had looked straight into the camera hidden in the Honda from a distance of just a couple of feet. The image may have been monochrome green, and he might have had zombie-like eyes, but his features were clear and distinct.

Almost before anyone would have had a chance to react, our man was up and gone, visible now only via the second camera, walking briskly back towards the racecourse entrance, once more to mingle with, and become anonymous amongst, the other racegoers and the attendant policemen.

The man’s head bobbed up and down slightly with each step, and I had seen that easy, large-stride, lolloping motion before in the video room at Charing Cross police station.

The man who collected Austin Reynolds’s envelope, with its filling of gravel, was the same man who had exited the Hilton Hotel just minutes after Clare had fallen to her death.

But this time, I’d seen his face. And, in spite of the greenness and the zombie eyes, I was certain I knew him.

I knew him very well indeed.

‘Got ’im,’ Gareth said excitedly, bursting into the commentary box. ‘Did you see? Bleedin’ marvellous.’

To him it was still only a game but, to be fair, that’s all that I’d implied it was.

‘Yes,’ I said, almost equally excited. ‘I did see.’

I was thinking fast.

‘Take this,’ I dug into my leather bag and gave him a plain, unmarked DVD. ‘I need you to do a bit of editing,’ I said, and I explained what I wanted him to do.

‘No probs,’ he said, taking the DVD. ‘Give me about ten to fifteen mins.’ He left as quickly as he’d arrived.

The horses were coming out onto the course for the fourth race, a six-furlong maiden stakes for two-year-olds with seven runners, one of whom, Spitfire Boy, had run at Lingfield in the race when Clare had ‘stopped’ Bangkok Flyer. That race had been over seven and a half furlongs and Spitfire Boy had faded badly in the last two hundred yards. Perhaps this shorter trip would suit him better.

I described the colours of the jockeys’ silks as the horses made their way to the start on the back straight, taking particular note of Ground Pepper, the young colt trained by Austin Reynolds.

I tried to concentrate on the horses but my heart was pounding.

If I was right, the man who had collected the envelope had murdered Toby Woodley. I should tell the police straight away.

Concentrate, I told myself. For God’s sake, concentrate on the racing!

Try as I might to learn the colours, visions of the man’s face with his zombie eyes kept crowding into my consciousness.

‘They’re loading,’ I said into my microphone as the horses began to be inserted into the starting stalls by the team of handlers.

I flicked my main monitor over to the current betting odds and gave the meagre crowd an update.

‘Spitfire Boy is favourite at three-to-one, Ground Pepper at fours, eleven-to-two bar those.’

I switched the monitor back to show the horses at the start.

‘Mark, coming to you in ten seconds,’ said Derek into my headphones, ‘nine, eight, seven...’

‘Just three to go in now,’ I said over the public address.

‘...six, five, four...’

‘Ground Pepper will be the last to load.’

‘...three, two, one...’

As always, I paused fractionally as the satellite viewers came online.

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘They’re all in. Ready.’ The stalls gates swung open. ‘They’re off, and racing.’

I thought I did pretty well, considering the minimal amount of time I had devoted to learning the colours.

I was helped by Spitfire Boy, who was a determined front-runner, taking the lead in the first few strides and setting a strong pace that spread the field round the far end of the course, making their identification easier.

As always, the horses bunched more as they turned into the straight and, on this occasion, their jockeys’ faces didn’t remind me of Clare. This time, they all appeared to me with green faces and zombie eyes, each of them full of murderous intent.

Spitfire Boy held on to win by a neck, with Ground Pepper fading to finish fourth of the seven.

As soon as the last horse crossed the line I grabbed my mobile and called the number of Superintendent Cullen’s sergeant. There was no answer. I tried it again. Still no answer, so I left a message asking him or his boss to call me back urgently.

What should I do now?

There were police downstairs by the entrances. Should I go down to one of them, or should I call 999?

Gareth’s voice came into my headphones. ‘Mark, I’ve done the edit. It runs for just thirty-eight seconds. I’ll send it through to your monitor.’

‘What the hell are you doing on the talk-back?’ I said. ‘Where’s Derek?’

‘They’ve all gone on a loo break. We’ve got ads for the next...’ He paused while he checked ‘...three mins and twenty. Do you want to see this or not?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Put it up.’

I watched as his handiwork came up on my main monitor.

The plain, unmarked DVD that I had given to Gareth was a copy that Detective Sergeant Sharp had given me of the Hilton Hotel CCTV footage as the man with the baseball cap and turned-up collar had come down in the lift, and then walked across the hotel lobby, including the view from behind.

Just as I had asked, Gareth had edited the CCTV footage together with that from the cameras tonight so that the images appeared side by side on a split screen, first with the close up of the man’s face alongside the shot of him in the lift, and then the two views of him walking away from the camera, one in the hotel and the other in the Kempton car park.

And it was those final fifteen or twenty seconds of walking that left no doubt whatsoever that the two men in the films were one and the same person.

I glanced out of the commentary box towards brightly lit bookmakers’ boards and the dark racecourse beyond, and was horrified by what I saw.

Gareth may have been Mr Bleedin’ Magic when it came to cameras, but he was Mr Blitherin’ Idiot when it came to acting as a producer.

The edited films were not just playing on my monitor but on the huge television screen set up in front of the grandstand.

‘For God’s sake, Gareth,’ I shouted through the talk-back. ‘It’s on the big screen.’

‘Bugger me. So it is. It’s bleedin’ everywhere.’

He thought it was funny.

Derek didn’t. In fact, he was furious.

‘Was this your doing? ’ he demanded loudly. ‘I go to the bloody toilet and the next thing I know we’re broadcasting God knows what to all the television sets right round the racecourse.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It was only meant to come to mine.’

‘Bloody amateurs.’

I heard him click off his microphone. No doubt young Gareth was getting his earful directly, without the aid of technology. I hope it didn’t result in either of us losing our jobs.

But Derek’s reprimand was not my main worry.

Had the blackmailer seen the film? And did he know it was me that had initiated it?

I’d find out soon enough.

I stayed in the commentary box for the rest of the evening, hiding myself away.

Twice more I tried to call Superintendent Cullen or his sergeant but to no avail. I even tried DS Sharp at Charing Cross but his phone, too, went to voicemail. Policing was obviously mostly a nine to five occupation.

The last two races seemed to go by in a blur but I must have been all right as, at least, Derek didn’t complain about my commentary. He did about almost everything else, though, and was even talking about having a bucket installed under the desk in the scanner so that he’d never have to go out to the lavatory again.

‘You seem to have caused a bit of a stir,’ he shouted into my ears. ‘The racecourse chairman has been only one of those we’ve had down here demanding to know what the bloody hell was going on.’

‘What did you tell them?’ I asked.

‘I told them they’d better speak to you.’

Oh, thanks, I thought.

I hoped that one of his visitors hadn’t been the man with the zombie eyes.

I hung around in the box for quite a while after the last race, hoping that everyone would go before I made my way down. For one thing, I didn’t want to have to explain myself to the racecourse chairman.

The door of the commentary box opened and I jumped.

‘Bye, Mark,’ said Terence Feynman, the judge, putting his head through the gap. ‘Will I see you here tomorrow night?’

‘Yes, Terence,’ I said. ‘That’s the plan. Bye now.’

Terence withdrew his head from the gap and closed the door.

Damn, I thought, a few moments later. I should have gone down to my car with him. Safety in numbers, and all that.

I quickly packed my computer, my binoculars and my coloured pens into my black leather bag and went after him out into the long corridor turning right towards the exit.

Terence had already disappeared but another man came round the corner into view, walking briskly towards me with his head bobbing up and down slightly due to his easy lolloping stride.

I stopped.

‘Hello, Mark,’ the man called down the corridor.

That heart of mine was thumping once more in my chest.

He was just fifteen or so yards away and closing rapidly.

‘Hello, Brendan,’ I said.

My cousin, Brendan Shillingford, smiled at me, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes, his zombie eyes.