Crisis

22

Michelle and Mike Morris went off to drown their sorrows in the owners’ bar while I hung around outside the weighing room waiting for Tony.

According to the racecard, he had no further rides that afternoon, but it still wasn’t until after the fourth race that he finally appeared.

In the meantime, one of Declan’s horses won the second, which would probably do nothing for Ryan’s demeanour. I watched as Joe led the horse into the space reserved for the winner and he even had a bit of a smile on his face. Miracles will never cease.

Tony came out of the weighing room wearing a green polo shirt and light-coloured chinos and made a beeline for the exit and the jockeys’ car park. If I hadn’t been on my toes, I’d have missed him completely.

‘Tony,’ I called loudly after him.

He slowed and turned but I could tell he wasn’t keen to stop and talk so I hurried along beside him.

‘Shame about Momentum,’ I said. ‘Your father is very upset.’

‘My father is always upset these days,’ he said. ‘He should never have retired so soon. Harry Wragg was almost eighty before he passed his stable over to his son. Dad should have done the same.’

‘But he still seems to be very involved,’ I said.

‘Too involved, if you ask me. He should just let Ryan get on with it, let him sink or swim on his own. Sink, probably, the way things are going at the moment. Prince of Troy was his only hope, and now he’s gone.’

‘It must be very difficult for your father to let go when he lives on site and still owns the stables.’

‘That was his big mistake. He should have sold it. Caused all sorts of resentment when he just seemed to hand it all to Ryan.’

‘Resentment from whom?’ I asked.

‘Declan, for a start.’

‘And you?’

He suddenly stopped and looked at me.

‘Why are you asking me all these questions?’

‘I’m trying to find out why Prince of Troy died.’

‘And what has that to do with my father passing his stable to Ryan?’

Everything, I thought.

‘I’m just trying to understand the Chadwick family dynamic.’

‘Snoop, more like. I have to go.’

He turned on his heel and walked away.

‘I have one more question,’ I said, but he just waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder and kept on walking. So I shouted after him, ‘Why did Ryan break Declan’s nose at Doncaster?’

He stopped and walked back towards me.

‘Be careful,’ he said menacingly. ‘For your own good, there are some things you shouldn’t ask.’

‘Are you threatening me, Tony?’

‘No, I’m just warning you. Don’t ask that again.’

‘I won’t,’ I assured him. ‘That is, I won’t if you tell me the answer now.’

He simply stared at me.

‘What is it that no one is talking about?’

‘None of your business.’

He turned again and jogged away out of the racecourse exit.

It will all come out. I can’t stand the shame.

It must be something big, I thought, to unite this family together when everything else was tearing them apart.

I was waiting at reception when Mrs Williams arrived at the Bedford Lodge Hotel just before six o’clock, still wearing her Tattersalls uniform but carrying an overnight bag.

‘I brought it with me this morning,’ she said with a smile. ‘Saves me having to go home to change. Everyone asked me at work where I was going.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I told them I was going away for the weekend to stay with a friend. But I think they all knew it was you.’

‘Was it that obvious?’

‘I think it was last night at the races,’ she said. ‘And you were a huge hit with the girls up at Park Paddocks this morning.’

She was pleased, and so was I, for her benefit.

‘Would you like a drink at the bar?’ I asked.

‘I think I’ll change first,’ she said. ‘We’re not really supposed to drink in public wearing our uniforms.’

‘You did the other night,’ I said.

‘I know, but that was last-minute and unexpected. Also, there might be people staying here tonight for the races who are our customers.’

So we went to my room, hand in hand, with me carrying her suitcase.

‘Do you want me to go?’ I asked, conscious that she might not want an audience while she changed.

‘No, it’s fine. I’ll change in the bathroom.’

She went in and closed the door and, while I waited, I flicked on the TV to watch the six o’clock news. However, as I thought was so often the case, the ‘news’ was largely BBC opinion served up as fact. I turned it off again.

‘How are you doing?’ I called out to Kate.

‘Just coming,’ she shouted back.

The bathroom door opened and she emerged, but she was clearly not yet properly dressed for a drink at the bar.

She was wearing only a hotel bathrobe, and it hung open at the front revealing all the splendours within.

‘Wow!’ I said.

About an hour and a half later we walked along to the hotel bar for that drink.

Sex between us had been a combination of a journey of discovery and primal human eagerness. We puffed and panted a lot, but we also laughed and, when it was over, we lay entwined together, sweaty and naked on the bed in happy satisfaction.

‘God, I needed that,’ Kate said. ‘It’s been a long time.’

‘For me too,’ I agreed.

Neither of us asked the other how long exactly. It wasn’t important.

‘I should have ordered champagne and strawberries,’ I said.

‘Why strawberries?’

‘Well, according to Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, it brings out the flavour of the champagne.’

‘I absolutely adore that film,’ Kate said, rolling over onto her elbows. ‘Especially that bit when Julia Roberts goes back into the shop where the two bitches have been so nasty to her and then holds up all her shopping bags: “You work on commission, right? Mistake. Big mistake. Huge!” ’

We spent a while arguing over which bit of the film was the best and agreed, in the end, that we both loved the scene at the end when the knight (Edward) arrives on his white horse (standing up through the sunroof of a white stretch limo) with his drawn sword (umbrella) to climb up a rope (fire escape) to rescue the princess (Vivian) from the wicked queen’s tower (apartment block).

What a pair of right softies, we were. And we loved it.

‘Champagne?’ asked the barman. He was the same one as had been on duty on Wednesday evening.

‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘And some strawberries.’

Kate started giggling and that set me off too.

We sat in the bar and consumed a bottle of champagne and a whole punnet of strawberries, and then decided against having room service after all, opting for dinner à deux in Squires Restaurant.

We took our time, enjoying each other’s company and the wine, in the sure knowledge of what we would be having for dessert.

‘What did you do at the races today?’ Kate asked over the main course.

I told her about the mad Momentum’s race and my various interactions with Oliver, Ryan and Tony.

‘Poor Janie,’ Kate said. ‘She hasn’t had the best of times there since Ryan took over. And I know both the fire and Zoe’s death have hit her badly.’

‘Does she have a theory of who started it?’ I asked.

‘I think she’s trying to blot it out of her thinking completely. She was so upset about the poor horses dying and then to learn that Zoe was in there as well has just about finished her off.’

I remembered back how my just mentioning the fire to her had caused the tears to flow.

‘She knew Zoe quite well then?’

‘I wouldn’t say well, not in recent years, anyway. She knew her a bit better at school. Janie was like a big sister to her at one point. I think Janie was sorry for her, but she also upset her.’

‘How?’

‘Zoe was quite disturbed. She made things up about people. She also used to cut herself, you know, on the arms and such with a razor blade. She used to tell Janie that her brothers did it but once she told a teacher that it had been Janie’s doing. We had the child-protection lot around to our house fast as lightning. I think that caused the end of their friendship.’

‘I’m going to see Zoe’s husband tomorrow,’ I said.

‘Are you indeed. What about?’

‘I’m not really sure. I just feel he must know something. I want to see how he reacts when I get there.’

‘Where’s there?’

‘Ealing,’ I said.

‘Does he know you’re coming?’

‘No.’ I smiled. ‘I’m going to just try my luck and see if he’s in.’

‘And what if he isn’t?’

‘Then I will have wasted my journey,’ I said. ‘But I want to go to my flat anyway to collect a few things, more clothes, for example. I also thought I might stay over Saturday night just to let the neighbours realise that I haven’t scarpered altogether.’

‘Can I come with you?’ she asked eagerly.

My first instinct was to say no, and for two reasons. First, I didn’t really want to involve her directly in what I was doing as I feared it might all result in some damaging fallout. And secondly, I wasn’t sure in what state I’d left my flat. Usually, it was not good, especially on a Monday morning, which is when I’d last been there.

‘I could look after his kids while you talk to Peter Robertson.’

‘Haven’t you got plans for the weekend?’

‘Nothing that can’t be changed. And I’d love a night in London. Perhaps we could see a show.’

She was so excited. How could I say no?

‘All right, you can come,’ I said. ‘Which show do you fancy?’

‘A musical. Absolutely love them.’

There followed a lengthy discussion on which was the best musical we had ever seen, and we finally left the dining room with her singing ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ to try to prove to me that it was the best song ever written.

I tried hard to ignore her.

That was, until we arrived at my bedroom, then the opposite was true.

Lovemaking the second time around was more relaxed, slower, and more passionate. The need was still there but the hunger was less desperate.

I ran my fingertips over her bare skin, making her shiver with excitement and anticipation, and then I hugged her close to me, wanting to feel as one with another human being like I had never felt before.

The emotion was so powerful, and that, as much as the physical exertion, left me drained and exhausted.

‘That was wonderful,’ Kate said.

It certainly was.

We lay together on our backs, holding hands in the darkness. Eventually I drifted off to sleep, at ease, happy and fulfilled.

On Saturday morning, Kate and I caught the 10.47 train from Cambridge to London.

I checked out of the hotel in spite of the receptionist informing me that my booking had been made until the end of the following week, and those were the terms on which the room-rate discount had been agreed.

Good old Georgina, I thought.

‘I might be back again tomorrow,’ I told the receptionist, ‘but I have to go away tonight and it seems an unnecessary extravagance to keep my room when no one is sleeping in it.’

I paid the hotel bill, discount applied, with the Simpson White credit card, and promised to let them know as soon as possible if I were returning.

‘I can’t guarantee that you’ll have the same room,’ the receptionist said.

Shame, I thought. I’d suddenly become quite attached to it.

My driver followed in his Mercedes as Kate drove us in her Mini convertible to Six Mile Bottom. She turned into the driveway of a Victorian red-brick property set back from the main road.

‘It used to be a gamekeeper’s cottage,’ she said. ‘It was converted into two separate homes sometime in the 1970s. And I love it.’

I had a quick look round Kate’s half while she exchanged the Tatts uniform in her suitcase for what she called her glad rags.

‘I can’t go to the theatre looking like some country bumpkin, now can I?’ she said.

She looked anything but a country bumpkin to me, I thought, in a tight-fitting navy-blue roll-neck sweater and white trousers.

The driver dropped us both at Cambridge Station and, on the train, I logged on to the internet using my dongle. There was an email from ASW with Peter Robertson’s latest known address and another from the research team with what they had discovered about the Robertsons’ bank account, which was precious little. Indeed, the only thing of interest they had managed to unearth was a memo from a credit reference agency that had given them a rating of ‘adequate’ when they had recently applied to Ealing Council housing department to move into a larger property.

The wizards didn’t say how they came by this information, which was just as well as it was probably illegal.

‘Adequate’ was a credit rating that indicated that the Robertsons had no significant debt problems and mostly paid their bills on time. I wondered how that was for someone who Oliver described as a drug addict and the worst estate agent in the world.

There was also a note from the wizards about that, too. They had asked round some estate-agent connections in west London and had learned that Peter Robertson was seemingly not connected to a mainstream agency but acted alone. They had been unable to find any details of properties that he had sold. Remarkably, it appears that no professional qualifications are needed to call oneself an estate agent.

I also used the dongle to log on to a West End ticket agency.

‘They’ve got two returned house seats for Phantom of the Opera,’ I said. ‘Row F in the middle of the stalls. Any good?’

‘I’ve seen it before,’ Kate said.

‘So have I. But not for a while. What do you say?’

‘Yes,’ she said decisively. ‘I love a good love story. Especially at the moment.’

I booked the seats and decided not to bring up the fact that the Phantom’s love for Christine was unrequited.

The train pulled into King’s Cross Station at half past eleven and we took the Tube to Neasden, walking the last couple of hundred yards to my flat in a nondescript four-storey block on Bermans Way.

‘I ought to warn you,’ I said as I put the key in the lock. ‘It’s not very tidy.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Kate said. ‘I’m sure it’s fine.’

But nevertheless, she tut-tutted slightly over the stack of dirty plates in the kitchen sink, some of which were developing a fine coating of green mould.

‘Take-away vindaloo from last Sunday night,’ I explained. ‘I hadn’t expected to be away for the rest of the week.’

‘Always expect the unexpected,’ she said, sounding far too like ASW for my liking.

I washed the dishes while Kate went on a tour of inspection of the flat, something that took her precisely thirty seconds. Then she came back to the kitchen, which was really nothing more than an alcove off the sitting room.

‘Nice,’ she said. ‘Do you own it?’

‘No. Rent. But I’m thinking of finding somewhere of my own. Getting on the property ladder at last. Should have done it years ago. When I first moved in here seven years ago, I thought it would be temporary, but I’ve just stayed. Lazy, I suppose.’

‘But it’s fine for a single man.’

‘That’s why I should move. I don’t want to remain a single man.’

She looked at me. ‘Good.’