Crisis

24

Phantom of the Opera was all I remembered it to be — all I hoped it could be.

From the cymbal-clapping monkey automaton at the beginning to the dramatic denouement in the Phantom’s subterranean labyrinth at the end, Kate and I were spellbound, and when Raoul and Christine together sang ‘All I Ask of You’, I felt as if they were singing it just for us:

Get a grip, I told myself. Everyone knows you’re in deep trouble when you start believing the lyrics of love songs!

We went to dinner afterwards at The Ivy in Covent Garden, sitting at a corner table, still humming the show tunes and basking in the warmth of having just seen a great performance.

‘That was fabulous,’ Kate said. ‘So much better than I remembered. Difficult to believe it’s been on at that same theatre since I was only three.’

‘It’s timeless,’ I agreed.

Kate ordered the steamed sea bass, while I opted for the tiger prawn curry.

‘Did you know,’ Kate said, ‘you can tell a lot about someone by what they choose from a menu.’

‘What nonsense,’ I said.

‘It’s true, I tell you. I read it in a health magazine. It was proper research, done by a doctor.’

‘And you reckon that makes it true?’ I said with irony.

She ignored me. ‘As we all know, you are what you eat, right? Well, surely then what you are must also determine what you eat.’

‘So what am I?’ I asked.

‘You obviously like spicy food. You’ve gone for the prawn curry here and you had a take-away Indian last Sunday.’

‘At least that bit’s true. I love a hot curry.’

‘Well, according to the research, people who prefer spicy foods are known to be risk-takers and thrill-seekers.’

I’ll take that, I thought.

‘How about you, then?’ I asked. ‘What does choosing sea bass mean?’

‘It means I’m bloody hungry and I adore sea bass.’

We both laughed, but she wasn’t finished.

‘Your personality also affects the way you eat. Slow and methodical eating means you’re stubborn, while fast and furious indicates you don’t have any balance when it comes to life’s priorities.’

‘What a load of baloney,’ I said.

But when our food did arrive, I was very careful not to eat it either too slowly or too quickly and, when we later took a minicab back to my flat in Neasden, I was definitely seeking a thrill.

We took the train back to Cambridge on Sunday evening.

‘You can come and stay with me, if you like?’ Kate said hesitantly as the Hertfordshire fields sped past the windows.

‘I would like,’ I said. ‘Very much. But I’m working. My boss wouldn’t think I was concentrating on the job if I was staying at your place, and he’d be right. I need to be on the scene in Newmarket, so I will go back to the hotel, but perhaps you could come and join me there for a night or two.’

‘Every night, if you’ll have me,’ she said, taking my hand in hers. ‘I’m terrified that you’ll go away and forget me.’

‘I won’t go away,’ I said. ‘And I won’t forget you.’ But I could see in her face that she wasn’t convinced.

The driver and Mercedes picked us up from Cambridge Station at eight-fifty, just as the sun was going down.

‘I actually think I’d better stay at home tonight,’ Kate said. ‘I have some washing to do, and some ironing.’ She pulled a face. ‘My uniform is creased.’

So the driver took us first to Six Mile Bottom, before continuing on with me alone to the Bedford Lodge.

I was surprised how much I hated leaving her, and I was sorely tempted to ask the driver to take me back, but I also had things to do, not least catching up with my report-writing for Simpson White. And I had phoned the hotel from the train to tell them I was returning tonight.

‘Welcome back, Mr Foster,’ said the same receptionist when I checked in. ‘Fortunately we still have the same room available for you.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘And you have a message waiting.’ She handed me an envelope. ‘It’s only just come in. I told the person who called that you’d be back soon.’

I took my luggage, and the envelope, along to my room and opened it there. The message consisted of just a couple of typed lines on a single sheet of the hotel’s headed notepaper.

I looked at my watch. It was already ten o’clock. I was tired. Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow? But I thought about how much fun I was having with Kate, much of it at Simpson White’s expense, and decided that another late-night excursion was the least I could pay, especially as Kate wasn’t even here this evening.

I walked out of the hotel, along the Bury Road, and in through the gates I had first used on my arrival last Monday. On that occasion the ground had been covered with fire hoses, but they had long gone, together with the remains of the burned-out stable block. I could see the lights of the new yard through the space it once occupied.

The remaining two stable blocks of the old yard were in darkness, save for one stable at the far end where the door was slightly open, and the light from within spilled out across the concrete.

‘Oliver?’ I called as I walked towards the light. ‘It’s Harry. What do you want?’

I reached the stable door and looked in.

I wasn’t really expecting some great revelation from Oliver concerning their family secret but, there again, I also wasn’t expecting to be struck heavily across my shoulders from behind, and pushed headlong through the doorway.

I was sent sprawling onto the floor as the door behind me was slammed shut. I could hear as the bolts were slid across on the outside, locking me in.

Damn it, I thought. That was bloody careless.

And I was not alone in the stable.

The other occupant had four legs, a tail and a mane, and I’m not sure which one of us was the more scared.

Me probably, especially when I realised I had seen this horse before. It had a small white star in the middle of its forehead, such that it fleetingly appeared to have three eyes.

Momentum. The crazy horse that Oliver called just skittish. The horse he wanted to calm down by gelding but the owner wouldn’t hear of it. Damn Michelle Morris. Give me a knife and I’d happily do the job right now.

Momentum curled his upper lip, baring a large row of off-white tombstone teeth. Then he pawed at the ground with one of his front hooves, and opened his two real eyes very wide, clearly exposing the whites around the huge pupils.

He obviously didn’t take kindly to having his space invaded, and there was little doubt about his intentions, all the more so when he kicked backwards violently against the wall, leaving a deep scar in the wooden cladding.

‘There’s a good boy,’ I said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the terror out of my voice. Where had I read that a horse can smell human fear? I could almost smell it myself.

Momentum began to circle towards me so, like a dance, I circled away from him.

‘Oliver!’ I shouted. ‘Let me out.’

There was no reply, nor any reassuring sliding open of the door bolts. Instead, my raised voice seemed to make the horse even more agitated, so I kept quiet.

I reached into my pocket for my phone but I knew it wasn’t there. I’d put it on charge as soon as I’d gone into my hotel room.

Damn, and double damn. How could I have been so stupid?

Then the overhead light went out.

If I had hoped that the darkness would pacify Momentum, I was out of luck. And he could obviously see me better in the dark than I could him.

What had Oliver told me? Horses were originally prey animals. Millions of years of evolution had clearly given them excellent night vision, no doubt to keep them one step ahead of their predators.

Twice Momentum bit me before I even realised he was close, first on the shoulder and then on the left forearm. And both of them bloody hurt.

The second time, I slapped him hard on the side of the head, making him neigh loudly in fright, the sound reverberating noisily off the walls of the enclosed space.

Would anyone hear that? I wondered. And would they then take any notice in a town packed full of horses?

What was going on here?

Was Oliver really trying to kill me, or just to frighten me? If it was the latter, he was succeeding admirably.

Surely, another dead body turning up in a Chadwick stable would raise more than a few eyebrows, especially with the door bolted from the outside.

Or did Oliver intend setting this block on fire as well?

That thought made me very scared. At least Zoe had been already dead when the flames consumed her. Would I be so lucky?

Maybe I would, if Momentum got his way.

The horse and I continued our circulating ballet for what seemed like an age, but it was probably for only about ten minutes. Sadly, he seemed not to lose interest in trying to bite me, but even the bites were preferable to the threat from his flailing hooves further back. And I felt it was only a matter of time before he hit me with one of those.

I have a friend who often defined a horse as something that is dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle.

Perhaps I should try the middle, I thought. After all, Momentum had calmed down a lot when Tony got up onto him at the racecourse.

But that was easier said than done.

I’d never been on a horse before in my life and, if it hadn’t been for these strange and exceptional circumstances, I’d have been quite happy for it to have remained that way.

I planned my moment of approach.

The stable had a small window. Although I had already discovered that it was heavily barred on the inside and gave no hope of escape, there was just enough outside night-time illumination to make the window appear slightly lighter than the blackness of the surrounding walls.

Hence, as the horse and I circled, there was one point in the revolution when I could see his bulk as he moved past the window.

My first attempt was an abject failure. It was also nearly my last.

As Momentum moved across the window, I ran at the horse and threw myself up with my right leg leading, trying to straddle the animal in the manner I had seen done by Indian braves in many an old Western movie.

However, it didn’t work.

I had totally misjudged in the dark how tall the horse was. I simply didn’t jump high enough, bouncing off his flank and falling hopelessly to the floor. I found myself being trampled under-hoof, so I curled up tight to make myself as small a target as possible. Nevertheless, Momentum let fly with a murderous kick that just clipped me on the right ear as it thudded into the wall right next to my head.

My ear hurt like hell and I could feel the warmth of blood as it ran down my neck. But I was alive. Just.

Too close, I thought. Much too close.

I was quickly on my feet and received another nip on the hand from the tombstones as I again circled round in front of the beast. More blood.

My second try was wholly more successful although, this time, having slightly overcompensated from my previous effort, I nearly jumped clean across the horse and only the wall on the far side stopped me falling off.

I clung on tight, grasping hold of his mane with my fingers.

Not that that stopped him from turning his head and trying to bite my legs. I leaned myself forwards, so that my upper body was almost lying flat, and I stretched my legs out further back so he couldn’t reach them.

Initially, he tried to throw me off by tossing his head up and down, but I wrapped my arms round his neck and hung on as if my life depended on it, which it probably did. Slowly, as I’d hoped, he began to calm down.

Momentum eventually stopped pacing round and round, and stood still in the darkness. He was now calm and his breathing was even and slow. I’d read somewhere that horses could sleep standing up and I wondered if Momentum had done just that.

I almost went to sleep myself at one point, and I woke up with a start when I felt myself slipping.

How long could I stay like this? I wondered. The stable lads wouldn’t be back until six in the morning. Could I stay awake that long so I didn’t fall off?

I’d have to.

So I started playing mind games to keep me awake. I tried mental arithmetic, reciting in my head the seventeen times table. One seventeen is seventeen, two seventeens are thirty-four, three seventeens are fifty-one... and so on, right up to seventeen seventeens are... the cogs moved slowly... two hundred and eighty-nine.

Next I tried the twenty-three times table, but I found that it was sending me to sleep more than keeping me awake.

Do something different.

So I started going over in my head everything that had happened over the past week, starting with Zoe being collected by Declan from Cambridge Station last Sunday morning, right up until the moment I found myself in this current predicament.

Had I missed something?

Had someone said something that, at the time, had seemed quite innocent but now was more incriminating?

I’d got as far as Wednesday night, to the point where Declan had been arrested for murder, when, unbelievably, I heard talking close by outside.

‘This is all a complete waste of time,’ said a man’s voice crossly. ‘I can assure you, there’s no one here.’

‘Yes, there is,’ I shouted. ‘In here. Help! Help!’

But my shouting did nothing for the calmness of Momentum. If he had been asleep before, he certainly wasn’t any longer, and he returned to trying to dislodge me from his back, bashing my right leg repeatedly against the wall.

The light went on, blinding me for a moment, and further irritating my mount, which started tossing his head up and down violently. I was beginning to lose my grip round his neck.

I heard the bolts being slid across and then the stable door opened.

Still sitting on the horse, I looked across at the doorway.

Oliver stood there, his mouth hanging open in surprise, and just behind him was Kate.

‘There,’ she said to Oliver with satisfaction. ‘I told you he’d be here somewhere.’