Bloodline

Epilogue

Two months later, on a bright cold morning just two days before Christmas, a thanksgiving service was held for Clare in Ely Cathedral and, this time, I organized everything myself.

The original plan had been to hold it at St Mary’s parish church in Newmarket but, such had been the demand for tickets, somewhere larger had to be found and Ely Cathedral, just half an hour up the road, was perfect.

There is something very grand about our great churches and Ely Cathedral is certainly no exception, sitting as it does on a small mound surrounded by the flatlands of the Fens.

The service matched the surroundings, and, unlike at her funeral, there was lots of live music, with the cathedral choir adding to the splendour.

Geoff Grubb read a lesson, as did James and Stephen, while Angela and I both gave eulogies.

Indeed, the Shillingford family had turned out in force.

Even Joshua, Brendan’s younger brother, was present although Gillian, Brendan’s widow, and their boys were not.

Life for them had been far from easy.

Not only had their father died that night at Kempton, but he had been shown to be a murderer, and the press had not been kind to him.

Toby Woodley may not have been the most popular member of the press, but he was still one of their brotherhood, and the others had devoured his killer like a pack of hungry dogs.

‘You can’t libel the dead,’ Toby had said to me at Stratford races.

So right he was.

Jim Metcalf and his fellow journalists had taken full advantage of that fact, dismantling any semblance of good reputation that Brendan had built up over his years as a trainer.

It had even been widely reported by some that Brendan had been the trainer who had layed his horses to lose, the trainer about whom Toby Woodley had written in the Daily Gazette the previous May.

That, I was sure, had come as a great relief to Austin Reynolds, although both he and I knew it wasn’t true.

The service concluded with a five-minute tribute film to Clare that was shown on big screens set up on either side of the altar, and also on a number of televisions placed down the nave.

The previous week I had spent a whole day in RacingTV’s edit suite in Oxford putting the film together. It started with a montage of photographs of Clare from throughout her life together with some home movies of her riding her pony as a child. Then there was footage of her riding career, including big-race victories intercut with snippets of interviews and celebrations. And, for the soundtrack, I had appropriately chosen the song ‘The Winner Takes It All’ by ABBA.

When I had first played the finished film through to myself it had made me cry, and now, as the music echoed around the arches and vaulted roof of the Norman cathedral, there were many more tears all around me.

But the film wasn’t all doom and gloom. Quite the contrary.

There was laughter too, and spontaneous applause when it finished with a still image of Clare, standing high in her stirrup irons, all smiles and happiness, punching the air having just won a race at Royal Ascot.

I stood under the West Tower shaking hands as the huge congregation spilled out past me through the West Door onto Palace Green.

I suppose I had initially chosen a day when there was no racing in the hope that enough people would come to fill St Mary’s Church in Newmarket. Now it seemed that absolutely everyone I knew in racing, and many more that I didn’t, had turned up at Ely, and soon my right hand was aching from so much shaking.

It was a good job that it wasn’t my left hand.

That was only just out of a cast after eight weeks.

Brendan had fractured my wrist in six places when he’d hit me with the pole and it had been almost more than I could manage to get myself off the floodlight framework and back onto the grandstand roof without going the same way he had.

Detective Sergeant Sharp and Detective Chief Inspector Coaker came out of the cathedral together.

‘Lovely service,’ they both said in unison. ‘Very moving.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘Any news?’

‘Mr Brendan Shillingford’s car has now been confirmed as the one that hit you and Mrs Lowther at the pub in Madingley,’ DCI Coaker said. ‘It had been repaired by a garage in Bury St Edmunds. Mr Shillingford apparently told them that he’d hit a deer in Thetford Forest. But we’ve been able to extract a sample of Mrs Lowther’s DNA from blood found on the underside of the vehicle.’

I suppose I was pleased.

‘How about the knife?’ I asked.

‘According to Superintendent Cullen at Surrey, the knife found on Mr Shillingford was consistent with that used to kill Mr Woodley, although they were unable to find any trace of his blood on it.’

‘Will there be a trial?’ I asked.

‘Only the remaining inquests,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘There’d be no point in a criminal trial.’

‘Will the inquests name Brendan as the murderer?’

‘That doesn’t happen any more. I expect the coroners to record verdicts of unlawful killing in the case of Toby Woodley and Emily Lowther, but there will be little doubt about who was responsible. Mr Shillingford’s verdict will probably be misadventure.’

Brendan’s misadventure.

The policemen moved away through the door and outside into the pale December sunshine.

I turned to see who was next in the line.

‘Hello, Mark,’ said Sarah Stacey.

I anxiously looked around behind her.

‘Mitchell’s not here,’ she said. ‘I’ve left him.’

I stared at her. ‘When?’

‘About six weeks ago.’

‘Why didn’t you call me?’ I asked.

‘Because I didn’t leave Mitchell for you,’ she said with determination. ‘I just left him. Time will tell what happens from now on.’

‘But where are you living?’

‘With my sister,’ she said.

I hadn’t even known she’d had a sister. ‘What about the prenup?’ I asked.

‘My lawyer says it’s not enforceable. Not after fourteen years of marriage.’

‘I hope he’s right.’

‘Call me sometime,’ she said, and then she turned and walked away, out of the cathedral. Was it also out of my life?

I watched her go. Maybe I would call her, or maybe I wouldn’t. As she had said, time would tell.

Harry Jacobs came bounding up to me.

‘A fitting tribute,’ he said. ‘Well done. Clare would have been proud of you.’

‘Thanks, Harry,’ I said shaking his hand.

He smiled at me warmly and moved away. Nothing more needed to be said, not today.

In November, I had visited Harry’s impressive country mansion near Stratford-upon-Avon to give him the good news that both of his blackmailers were dead and that his guilty secret had died with them.

I certainly wasn’t going to say anything to anyone about any blackmail.

We had sat in his conservatory looking out over the rolling Warwickshire countryside and his relief had been almost palpable.

‘I want to close that offshore bank account,’ he had said, ‘but there’s more than twenty-five thousand pounds in it and I can hardly bring that back into my regular accounts without my accountant or tax lawyer asking where it came from.’

‘Then give it to charity,’ I’d told him. ‘Send it anonymously to the Injured Jockeys Fund.’

And that was precisely what he’d done, right there and then, using his computer and internet banking.

‘Tell me, Harry,’ I had asked him as I was leaving, ‘where does all your money come from?’

‘Don’t you know?’ he’d asked slightly amused. ‘When I was young and extremely foolish, I managed to borrow an obscene amount of money from a bank to buy fifty acres of industrial wasteland. It was contaminated with all sorts of toxins and heavy metals. Dreadful place. I almost cried when I saw it after I’d bought it.’

‘Surely you saw it beforehand?’

‘I went to the auction to buy something else but that sold for far too much. The next lot was the fifty acres, and the price seemed too good to be true. So I bought it, completely unseen. I’d thought I must be on a winner, whatever it was like.’

‘And were you?’

‘I didn’t think so just then. In fact, I tried to sell it immediately for less than I’d paid for it, but there were no takers.’

‘So where was the land?’ I had asked him.

‘Somewhere called the West India Dock,’ he had replied, beaming broadly. ‘East London. It’s now part of Canary Wharf and there’s over two million square feet of offices on my land alone.’ He had laughed. ‘The bank I originally borrowed the money from now pay me a fortune each year in ground rent for their headquarters building. Money for old rope.’

One of the other advantages of having the service on a non-race day was that all my colleagues from RacingTV were able to attend. More than that, Gareth had set up his cameras in the cathedral to record everything for posterity, and I’d even seen Iain Ferguson doing a piece to camera outside as everyone had arrived.

That should have been my job.

‘Hi, Mark,’ Nicholas said, walking over and shaking me warmly by the hand. ‘Lovely service.’

‘Thanks, Nick,’ I said, meaning it. ‘And Angela was great, too.’

‘Yes, she was rather good.’ His tone almost implied surprise.

‘How are things?’ I asked.

‘Pretty good, at the moment,’ he said. ‘The bank has realized it can’t do without me. Thank God.’ He smiled broadly. ‘It seems there was almost a riot amongst the senior management when it was mooted by the chairman that I should be let go. I’d never realized how much I was appreciated. Perhaps I’ll ask for a pay rise next.’ He laughed. ‘How about you?’

‘I’m finally moving house,’ I said. ‘I’ve bought a place in Oxfordshire and I move in after the New Year.’

‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘Although I think it’s a bit extreme to go to all that trouble just to get away from your dad.’

We both laughed.

‘He’s not been so bad recently,’ I said. ‘Almost human.’

I looked across to where my father was standing with my mother on the other side of the West Door, also talking to people as they left the cathedral. As I was watching, he glanced in my direction and smiled at me, a genuine smile that reached all the way into his eyes.

I smiled back. ‘I think he’s been better since the conclusion of Clare’s inquest.’

Not that the verdict had been quite the one we would have wanted.

The coroner had recorded an open verdict in spite of my assurances that Brendan had as good as admitted to me that he’d been responsible for her death, accident or otherwise. Not that I’d been able to properly get my head round the fact that Brendan and Clare had been lovers, and that she had been pregnant with his child.

But at least the verdict hadn’t been suicide, even though the coroner had still placed great emphasis on the existence of the note addressed to me.

I had tried to explain that I believed it was a letter Clare had been writing to me, after we had rowed at dinner, because she couldn’t reach me on the telephone. It was nothing to do with her death and it had probably been half-written, as it had been found, when Brendan had first arrived in her room.

But the coroner had not been convinced, and he had stubbornly maintained that it was, in fact, strong evidence of her suicide although, as he’d said, no one could be sure of what had happened in the hotel room that night.

But I knew.

I was certain of it, and that was enough.

Whatever anyone else might think was irrelevant.