Crisis

25

‘It wasn’t my doing,’ Oliver protested. ‘I had no idea you were in there.’

I thought back to his look of surprise on opening the stable door. That had appeared genuine, but it might have been because he was surprised I was still alive and actually riding the horse, both of which were surprises to me too.

I was sitting at the kitchen table in Oliver’s house as Kate tended to the cut on my ear.

‘This really needs a stitch or two,’ she said, washing away the dried blood. ‘How did you do it?’

I explained to her that Momentum had kicked me and it didn’t take her long to realise how close I had come to having something far more serious than a cut ear.

‘Why did you get on him?’ Oliver asked.

‘Self-preservation,’ I said. ‘It was the only place he couldn’t kick or bite me.’

I recounted the entire saga to them from the time I’d received the message in the hotel until the moment they had found me.

Kate’s eyes grew wider and wider as I described my attempts to get up on Momentum’s back.

‘But I didn’t send you any message,’ Oliver moaned.

‘Somebody did,’ Kate said.

I smiled at her. ‘So what brought you here?’

‘I tried to call you to say goodnight but you weren’t answering your phone, in spite of the fact that I knew it was ringing because it didn’t go straight to voicemail. So I called you on the hotel landline but you didn’t answer that either.’

She smiled. ‘I was worried, so I badgered the hotel’s night receptionist into going to your room to check you were still alive. I had visions of you having slipped in the shower and lying injured on the bathroom floor desperate for help.’

I squeezed her hand.

‘Anyway, the receptionist called me back from your room to say you weren’t there but your phone was. And there was also a message lying on the bed from someone called Oliver asking you to go immediately to the old yard. So I called Mr Chadwick.’

‘I told her I had no idea what she was talking about,’ Oliver said, looking rather sheepish. ‘In fact, I may have been a bit rude to her. Sorry about that. But it was well past my bedtime. I told her to stop fussing and go to sleep.’

‘Which, of course, I didn’t,’ Kate said proudly. ‘In the end I drove over here and banged on Oliver’s door until he answered. Then I insisted we take a look.’

I checked my watch.

It was past midnight. I’d been in that stable with the mad horse for almost two hours.

‘Thank you,’ I said, meaning it. ‘You probably saved my life.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Oliver with a laugh. ‘Momentum’s an old softy, really.’

I stared at him.

Had he really done it after all? Just to frighten me?

At Kate’s insistence, we spent the next couple of hours in the Casualty department of Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge for me to have my right ear stitched.

‘I’m sure it doesn’t need it,’ I’d said to her but, as Oliver had discovered earlier, there were times when Kate wouldn’t take no for an answer.

She drove me to the hospital in her Mini.

‘Aren’t you going to call the police?’ she said on the way. ‘This must constitute assault at the very least.’

‘Probably attempted murder.’

‘Well then. Shouldn’t you tell someone?’

I’d already thought about that.

It wasn’t as if I’d been badly hurt, so how much effort would the police actually take in trying to find out who had done it? I’d also have to admit to them that I’d been foolish enough to walk straight into a trap.

But it did clearly show one thing.

Someone thought that I was getting a bit too close to the truth for comfort.

‘How did this happen?’ the doctor at the hospital asked as he picked and prodded at my ear, making it even more sore than it had been before.

‘I was kicked by a horse,’ I said, although I don’t think he really believed me.

‘What were you doing?’ he asked. ‘Lying down?’

‘Something like that,’ I said, without going into details.

In the end, he put four small stitches in my ear lobe, an anti-tetanus jab in my arm, a couple of painkiller tablets in my stomach, and told me to be more careful in future around horses.

I assured him that I would.

Next Kate drove us to Six Mile Bottom and I stayed with her after all, getting to bed just before three in the morning. But, unlike my host, I didn’t go straight to sleep.

For a start, my ear throbbed badly in spite of the painkillers, but mostly it was because I carried on with the mental exercise that I had been engaged in when on the horse in the stable, which had been interrupted by my rescue.

I went through the rest of the week piece by piece, trying to find the elusive missing clue to what the hell was going on.

It had to be there somewhere.

Kate dropped me at the Bedford Lodge at eight-thirty on her way into work.

‘Now be careful,’ she said as I climbed out of the Mini. ‘No more visiting lonely stables at night.’

I laughed and promised to be more vigilant. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

She drove away and I watched her go with what was becoming an all too familiar ache in my heart.

Pull yourself together, I said to myself. You’ll be seeing her again later.

As I walked into the hotel, the receptionist gave me a very strange look before rushing towards me from behind her desk.

‘Ah, Mr Foster,’ she said almost breathlessly. ‘There you are. We’ve been so worried about you. Very worried indeed.’

‘Have you?’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘Because you didn’t return last night. Someone called us last evening and was very insistent that something terrible must have happened to you.’

That would have been Kate.

Perhaps we should have rung the hotel to let them know that all was well.

‘The night staff were most concerned. When you hadn’t come back by six o’clock this morning, I’m afraid they called the police,’ she said. ‘In fact, a detective is in your room right now. He arrived here about ten minutes ago.’ She suddenly looked troubled. ‘I hope it’s all right that I let him in.’

‘Perfectly fine,’ I said, smiling at her. If Kate hadn’t been so determined, even to the point of driving over at midnight and banging on Oliver’s front door, I might have still been in the stable with Momentum. It was good to know that there was someone else looking out for me as well.

To my surprise, the detective searching my room was DCI Eastwood.

He seemed quite surprised to see me too, or maybe he was just cross at having had his limited resources wasted, yet again.

‘I didn’t realise that chief inspectors investigated missing persons,’ I said.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked accusingly, sounding awfully like my father.

‘Six Mile Bottom.’ I said it with a smile. I still found the name funny.

‘But you were checked in here.’

‘So,’ I said. ‘Is there a law that says you have to sleep in a hotel room just because you’re paying for it?’

‘Don’t play silly games with me, Mr Foster,’ he said. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I told you. I was in Six Mile Bottom.’

‘You check in to this hotel at 10 p. m. Then, five minutes later, you walk out alone — no phone, no coat, no bag. A hysterical female then calls here saying you have gone missing and she is so seriously concerned for your welfare that she convinces the hotel to mount an unsuccessful search not only of your bedroom but also of the rest of the building. You do not return all night and the staff are so worried that they finally call the police. And now, you claim you spent the night safe and well in Six Mile Bottom with no washbag, no change of clothes, nothing?’

‘Yes,’ I said. Although safe and well was a relative term — my ear was still throbbing rather badly.

‘So how did you get there?’ he asked.

‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

‘Try me,’ he said.

‘Have you ever ridden a horse, Chief Inspector?’ I asked.

The DCI shook his head.

‘Neither had I until last night.’

‘Don’t tell me you rode a bloody horse all the way to Six Mile Bottom.’

‘No,’ I said, laughing. ‘But I rode one nevertheless.’

In the end I told him everything. Perhaps I should have done so right from the start.

‘Why didn’t you call the police last night?’ he asked.

‘For what?’ I said. ‘To report a cut ear?’

‘Imprisonment is a serious offence.’

‘So is attempted murder,’ I said. ‘But you know as well as I do that Suffolk Constabulary would have been unlikely to come hotfoot at midnight to Castleton House Stables after the event. I would simply have been told to report it in the morning, as I am now doing.’

He didn’t deny it.

‘Do you believe someone was really trying to kill you?’

‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘They couldn’t know I’d leave my mobile in the hotel. That was just their good luck.’ And my bad, I thought. ‘If whoever it was had truly wanted me dead, he could have easily hit me over the head instead of on the shoulders. A couple of good clouts with a metal muck shovel would have done the trick. Why leave it to chance that the horse would do the deed for him? After all, no one could think I’d wandered in there by accident, especially with the door bolted from the outside.’

‘So why?’ he asked.

‘Maybe just to frighten me enough to scare me off.’

‘Scare you off from what?’

‘Ah, Detective Chief Inspector, that is the question,’ I said. ‘If only I knew the answer.’

I stared at him, and he back at me, in silence.

‘Do you fancy some breakfast?’ I said. ‘I’m starving and I want to ask you a favour.’

We sat in the hotel dining room and I had a full English, while the chief inspector ordered just a coffee.

‘I’m buying,’ I said. Or, rather, Simpson White was.

‘I had my breakfast earlier,’ said the DCI, but he still ate a slice of my toast when it came, together with some thickly spread butter and orange marmalade. ‘Now, what’s this favour you want?’ he asked with his mouth full.

‘It’s actually two favours,’ I said. ‘I want the Robertsons’ bank statements and Zoe Robertson’s medical records.’

‘What for?’ he asked in true police style.

‘My client has been arrested for murder and, even though released from custody, he is still under investigation. Hence I continue to work on his defence.’

‘So you don’t think he did it?’ the DCI asked.

‘As you know, what I think is irrelevant. But, since you ask, no, I don’t think he did it. Neither do you, otherwise you’d have charged him by now.’

He didn’t rise to my bait, so I went on.

‘I need Zoe’s medical records to determine the state of her health at the time of death, so I can assess whether she might have died of natural causes prior to the fire starting.’

At least, that was my excuse.

He looked at me cynically. ‘Grasping at straws, are we?’

‘I know it’s a long shot but I need to cover every eventuality, however remote.’

‘And the bank statements?’ he said.

‘My client claims that his sister came to see him demanding money. Hence I would like to establish the state of her finances.’

I could tell he didn’t like it. Not one bit. The police were always reticent to give away any information, even when they were required to do so by the law.

‘Call it disclosure of evidence to the defence,’ I said. ‘You will have to give them to me eventually if Declan is charged. Having them now might just save you some embarrassment in the long run.’

It was a tenuous argument, but it seemed to work.

‘Okay,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I’ll see what I can do with the medical records. That shouldn’t be a problem — we’ve already got those from her doctor. The bank statements, however, will be a bit more difficult, especially if the Robertsons had a joint account. Peter Robertson is still living and data protection would still apply. I wouldn’t count your chickens on that score.’

He said it in a tone that implied he didn’t think much of the data protection laws.

‘Please do your best,’ I said. ‘And send over the medical records as soon as possible.’

I took another mouthful of my bacon and eggs while the DCI wrote a note in his ever-present notebook.

‘How are you getting on, anyway?’ I asked. ‘Any more suspects?’

‘Not as yet,’ he said.

‘No dodgy alibis overturned by new evidence?’

‘None of the Chadwick family seem to have an alibi for last Sunday night anyway, other than Arabella Chadwick, who we know was with friends in Great Yarmouth. And she’s now dead.’

‘Anything further on that?’ I asked, without mentioning the suicide note I’d seen on the fridge.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘The initial post-mortem results are consistent with death by hanging.’

‘So you’re treating it as suicide?’

‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘There is nothing to indicate otherwise.’

‘The back door wasn’t locked,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think that could be suspicious?’

‘We are satisfied that Arabella Chadwick’s death was a suicide,’ the DCI said with certainty, clearly wanting to end discussion on that matter. I wondered why he didn’t just tell me that she’d left a note. But, in my limited experience with the police, they always loved to keep something back. Perhaps the DCI, like ASW, imagined that greater knowledge somehow gave him greater power. Or maybe the chief inspector just enjoyed believing he knew something I didn’t.

But I did know it, and I quite enjoyed that too.

My boss would be proud of me.

‘Did you say just now that Ryan Chadwick also doesn’t have an alibi for Sunday night?’ I asked. ‘Wasn’t he with his wife?’

‘His wife was in Ely. She took their children over to see her mother for Sunday lunch and then stayed over with her. So Mr Ryan Chadwick was home alone on Sunday night. As was Mr Tony Chadwick, as his mother was visiting her sister in Ipswich.’

‘So Susan Chadwick, then, has an alibi,’ I said.

‘Ah, well, no. Not exactly,’ the DCI replied. ‘She claims that, with her mother acting as babysitter, she took the opportunity to go to the cinema.’

‘Alone?’

‘She says so, but I’m not convinced. I’m not even sure she went to the cinema at all.’ He left his suspicions hanging in the air.

‘Another man?’ I asked.

‘Quite possibly. But I’m not pushing her too hard on that at present. Unlike in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, or even in half of the United States, cheating on your husband is no longer a criminal offence in this country, and there’s nothing to suggest that she was involved in the fire.’

‘She was certainly at Castleton House Stables with her husband and the others when I arrived there at lunchtime on Monday,’ I said. I remembered back to the smart clothes and the bright red lipstick.

‘Mr Ryan Chadwick says he telephoned his wife early on Monday morning to tell her of the fire.’

‘How early?’

Before the DCI had a chance to answer, my phone rang and I recognised the number on the screen. It was Kate.

‘Hello, my love,’ I said.

‘Oh, Harry, it’s so awful.’ She was sobbing uncontrollably. ‘What a bastard.’

‘What’s awful?’ I asked with trepidation. ‘Who’s a bastard?’

‘Ryan Chadwick,’ she said. ‘He’s just fired Janie.’