Crisis

33

There was a shocked silence.

‘What rubbish,’ Tony said eventually. ‘What evidence have you got for such a wild accusation?’

None, I thought. At least, none that would stand up in court. But that wasn’t going to stop me.

‘Zoe came to see you on that Sunday afternoon, didn’t she?’ I said.

Tony said nothing.

‘Maybe she was looking for her mother, but Yvonne was staying with her sister in Ipswich, so it was you who answered the door.’

‘But she caught the train to Cambridge,’ Declan said.

‘Indeed, she did. But she didn’t get there, did she, Tony? The CCTV at Cambridge Station showed no sign of her and that’s because she got off at Dullingham, the only stop between Newmarket and Cambridge. From there she walked to Yvonne’s house. Isn’t that right, Tony?’

Tony was beginning to sweat.

‘What happened then, Tony?’ I asked. ‘Did she tell you that you were the father of her aborted child? Is that why you killed her? To keep it quiet?’

He sweated some more.

‘And then you took Zoe’s body to Castleton House Stables and set the place on fire to try to hide what you’d done.’

‘It’s not true,’ Tony shouted. ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’

He started to walk towards the door but Ryan stepped across in front of him.

‘Not so fast,’ he said. ‘I want to hear what you have to say.’

But Tony said nothing.

‘Did you kill the horses?’ Oliver asked.

‘Of course not,’ Tony protested. ‘Why would I do that when I was due to ride Prince of Troy in the Derby?’

‘But you weren’t,’ I said.

I put my hand into my trouser pocket and pulled out the piece I had torn out of the newspaper at breakfast, the piece with its ‘DERBY WIDE OPEN...’ headline.

‘Have you seen today’s Racing Post?’

I held it up so I could read, out loud, the last paragraph.

‘Champion jockey, Simon Varney, says he is still looking for a Derby ride after being previously engaged by Ryan Chadwick to ride Prince of Troy in the big race.’

‘Is that true, Ryan?’ Oliver asked. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

Ryan waved a dismissive hand as if to indicate that he’d been exercising his authority as the holder of the trainer’s licence, rather than referring every decision to his domineering father.

‘It is true, isn’t it, Ryan?’ I said. ‘Oliver kept going on to you about how Tony wasn’t up to riding the horse on the undulating track at Epsom, and you finally succumbed to the pressure to remove him. Janie Logan has confirmed it. You asked her to call Simon Varney on the Friday before the fire to confidentially offer him the ride on Prince of Troy in the Derby. And he accepted.’

I paused.

‘Ryan never told you, did he, Tony? He was probably worried about your reaction. And by the Monday it didn’t matter anymore — no one was going to ride Prince of Troy ever again. But you knew anyway, didn’t you, Tony? Because you and Simon Varney were riding together on the Saturday afternoon, sharing the same jockeys’ changing room at Ascot. I checked on the internet.’

I paused again.

‘Did Simon Varney ask you for advice on how to ride the horse? Or did he just gloat?’

Tony said nothing.

‘So you decided to get rid of Zoe’s body, and to take your revenge on your brother and father at the same time, by setting fire to Prince of Troy’s stable.’

Now who was the fucking idiot, I thought.

‘You bastard,’ Ryan said with feeling. ‘How could you have come into the house on the morning after the fire expressing your sorrow when, all along, it had been you that had started it?’

Tony just hung his head in shame.

‘Why did you kill Zoe?’ I asked.

He lifted his head a fraction and looked at me.

‘I didn’t mean to. She wouldn’t shut up. Kept going on and on at me about having to pay more or she’d go to the newspapers and destroy my career. I grabbed her by the throat to stop her and, before I knew it, she was dead.’

He started crying. Maybe for his career that would be destroyed now anyway, along with his life.

‘But why the horses?’ Oliver asked, the pain of their loss clearly greater in his voice than his grief for a dead daughter.

‘I panicked,’ Tony said. ‘I didn’t mean for them all to die.’

‘Just Prince of Troy?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘The fire took hold so fast.’

All that shredded paper bedding, I thought.

The five of us stood there like a silent tableau at the end of a play.

I reached carefully into my breast pocket for my phone.

‘Are you still there?’ I asked.

‘I certainly am,’ said DCI Eastwood.

‘Did you hear?’

‘Every word,’ he said. ‘Recorded it too. My sergeant’s already on his way.’