Crisis

8

‘Was the human victim male or female?’ I asked.

‘I can’t tell you that at the present time,’ replied the man sitting in front of me wearing a rather crumpled grey suit.

‘Can’t or won’t?’ I said.

‘Both.’

I was sitting in an interview room in Newmarket Police Station, where a temporary incident centre had been set up following the events at Castleton House Stables. I had asked to speak to Superintendent Bennett but, according to the man on the other side of the table, he hadn’t been available.

‘You’ll have to make do with me,’ he’d said.

‘And you are?’

‘Detective Chief Inspector Eastwood,’ he’d replied. ‘I’m now leading the investigation into the fire at Castleton House Stables.’

At least I hadn’t been fobbed off with a junior. A DCI would do nicely.

‘Now, Mr Foster, what exactly is so important to have had me dragged out of a meeting with my staff?’

‘Zoe Robertson has gone missing from her home in Ealing,’ I said. ‘And she’s been missing since Sunday.’

There was a moment of silence while the detective absorbed the information.

‘And who is Zoe Robertson?’ he asked.

‘Robertson is her married name. She’s Oliver Chadwick’s daughter. Ryan’s sister.’

He nodded then sighed, as if there was something he wasn’t telling me.

‘Are you suggesting that she’s the victim of the fire?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I don’t like coincidences.’

‘Neither do I, but if I overreacted to every coincidence in my career, I’d still be a detective constable. What proof have you got?’

‘None. But I thought you should know.’

‘Yes, thank you. Has she been reported missing to her local police?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It seems it’s not the first time she has disappeared but her husband claims she’s never not phoned home for as long as this before.’

For some reason the policeman’s interest was waning fast, as if he didn’t really believe what I was telling him.

‘How did you come by this knowledge?’ he asked.

‘I was with Declan Chadwick when Peter Robertson called. Peter is Zoe’s husband.’

‘Does Mr Chadwick agree with you that his sister may be the victim of the fire?’

‘He didn’t say so,’ I said. ‘But, there again, I didn’t actually ask him that particular question.’

I hadn’t needed to.

Back in his yard office, Declan had taken quite a few minutes to recover from the shock of hearing that his sister was missing, the colour only returning to his face after he’d sat down and drunk a glass of water.

‘What on earth is wrong with you?’ Arabella had asked as her husband had slumped down on the chair.

‘Nothing,’ he had mumbled unconvincingly. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Does she often go missing?’ I had asked into the ensuing silence.

‘Regularly,’ Arabella had said, in a way that suggested that not only was there nothing to worry about but that the whole saga had become a bit of a bore. ‘Zoe has mental health problems. Postnatal depression that hasn’t gone away.’

But still, I thought, I didn’t like coincidences, so here I was an hour later with the police reporting the matter, and hoping to get something in return.

‘Have you yet discovered the cause of the fire?’ I asked the chief inspector.

He looked up at me from writing something in his notes.

‘And who are you exactly, Mr Foster?’

‘Harrison Foster,’ I said, handing over my business card. ‘I represent His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Karim bin Mohamed Al Hamadi. He was the owner of two of the horses killed in the fire, including Prince of Troy. He is keen to understand why his horses died.’

He studied my card.

‘Lawyer, are you?’ asked the policeman in a tone that implied he didn’t much like lawyers.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Simpson White,’ he read out loud from the card. ‘Not a law firm I’m familiar with in these parts.’

‘London firm,’ I said. ‘We specialise in crisis management.’

‘Is this really a crisis?’ he asked.

‘It is if you’re Ryan Chadwick. Or Sheikh Karim. The favourite for the Derby has just died in highly suspicious circumstances. I’d call that a crisis.’

‘Highly suspicious circumstances...’ The DCI repeated the words slowly. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Unknown human body found in a fire started at dead of night,’ I said. ‘I’d call that highly suspicious, wouldn’t you?’

‘Unexplained,’ he said.

‘So you’re telling me that you don’t know how it started.’

He couldn’t resist proving me wrong.

‘One of our lines of enquiry concerns the remnants of a cigarette lighter that has been found. The metal parts survived the inferno. We think it may have been used to start the fire, perhaps accidentally.’

Or perhaps intentionally, I thought.

‘Was it found close to the body?’ I asked.

‘Yes, right next to it, as if it had been in a pocket.’

I thought back to Ryan’s theory of the smoking homeless person.

‘Did you find any cigarette ends?’

‘No, but the intensity of the fire would have made that impossible, even if they had been present initially.’

‘How about a mobile phone?’ I asked.

He paused for a moment as if deciding whether to tell me any more.

‘None has been found as yet,’ he said finally.

‘Anything else?’

Another pause. He’d already told me more than I’d expected him to.

‘Not at present,’ he said. ‘Forensic tests still have to be carried out to determine if an accelerant was present — petrol, for example.’

‘You wouldn’t need petrol to start a fire in those stables, not with all that shredded paper on the floor.’

‘No, indeed not. But you are jumping to conclusions, Mr Foster. There is no evidence as yet that the fire was set deliberately.’

‘What else could it be?’

‘It may have been started accidentally by the victim, or maybe it was the result of an electrical fault, or some other reason. I am confident that our investigation will eventually determine the true cause.’

‘Has the post-mortem given you any clues?’ I asked.

‘I couldn’t give you that information even if I had it, which I don’t. Not before the coroner has been informed.’

‘But a post-mortem is being conducted?’

‘Certainly,’ said the detective. ‘As already reported in the press, the human remains were removed from the stables this morning and taken to Lowestoft Hospital for examination by a Home Office pathologist.’

‘One of your scene-of-crime officers told me that he thought there was enough of the body left to get a DNA profile. Will you check that against Zoe Robertson’s?’

The DCI pursed his lips as if he didn’t like the fact that the scene-of-crime officer had spoken to me. Or maybe it was because he didn’t appreciate me telling him his job.

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘And you’ll let me know the outcome?’

‘If it is found that the remains are indeed those of Zoe Robertson, her next of kin will be informed first, followed by a press release. You will find out the results from that.’ He collected his papers together. ‘Now,’ he said, standing up, ‘is there anything else I can help you with?’

‘How about the horses?’ I asked.

‘What about them?’

‘Are you carrying out DNA tests on their remains as well?’

‘Why would we?’

‘To ensure they are the horses they are claimed to be.’

The policeman laughed. ‘My, Mr Foster, you do have a suspicious mind.’

‘Acquired by experience,’ I assured him. ‘Well, are you?’

‘No, we aren’t, and we won’t be. It would be a waste of our limited resources. As I understand it, all racehorses are microchipped to confirm their identity. In this case, the microchips are unlikely to have survived the intensity of the heat but that’s no matter. If the horses had been switched, it would be to no avail as their microchips would prevent them being passed off as others anyway.’

‘How about at stud? Prince of Troy would make someone a fine stallion if he’d been spirited away prior to the fire.’

‘But not for producing racehorses,’ said DCI Eastwood. ‘And that’s only where any gain would come from. We had a case here a few years ago concerning the alleged mixing up of two valuable foals at the sale ring. One owner accused the other of theft. You get that sort of thing in these parts. But it was easily resolved as all Thoroughbred foals registered since 2001 have had their parentage verified by their DNA. You’d never be able to pass off a foal by Prince of Troy as being by another stallion. Its DNA simply wouldn’t fit.’

‘Oh,’ I said. So that was one wild theory I could disregard. ‘So what now happens to the remains?’

‘That will be up to Mr Chadwick. Once we have finished our examination of the scene, disposal and clean up of the site will be his problem, not ours, provided he does so in keeping with the law.’

The chief inspector opened the door and stood there waiting for me to go out. He was determined that the interview was over.

‘His Highness Sheikh Karim has instructed me to remain in Newmarket for as long as it takes to discover the reason for the death of his horses. He is concerned that his decision to move two fillies from Ryan to Declan Chadwick may have exacerbated the bad feeling between the brothers and that may have had some bearing on the circumstances of the fire.’

‘Mr Foster, please leave the detective work to us.’

‘But...’

‘No buts,’ interrupted the policeman. ‘I hear what you are saying. All scenarios will be considered, thank you. But I must now ask you to leave so that I can get back to examining the evidence.’

‘Anything to help,’ I said, walking out of the door. ‘You have my card. Call me if you need anything.’

I thought the chance of the detective ever calling me was slim to non-existent but I didn’t want to be accused of obstructing the police, and I had no intention of leaving Newmarket just yet.

‘Do whatever the Sheikh tells you. He’s paying us, and handsomely. If he wants you to stay in Newmarket, you stay there.’ ASW was in full flow down the phone line. ‘I’ll get Georgina to negotiate a better rate with the hotel for a long-term stay.’

‘I need some more information,’ I said.

‘Shoot.’

‘Further depth concerning the whole Chadwick family and in particular about the daughter, Zoe Robertson, and her husband, Peter.’

ASW didn’t ask me why I needed the information. If I’d asked for it, he assumed I must need it. That was enough.

‘I’ll get the research team on it straight away. Top priority. Something should be with you by the morning.’

The Simpson White Research Team was the rather grandiose name for two young men in the Motcomb Street office, only just old enough to be allowed out of school, who were absolute wizards on the internet and could seemingly discover everything there was to know about anyone. They bounced ideas off each other and could hack into almost anything digital.

No one’s secrets were safe from them.

Knowledge was power, ASW claimed, and his operatives were to have more knowledge than anyone else.

All we craved was the wisdom to use it properly.

‘Anything else?’ ASW asked.

‘You could always send Rufus up,’ I said. ‘He’s forgotten more about horses than I’ll ever know. He’d enjoy himself here.’

‘I’m sure he would, but he’s still in Italy. Seems the wine company’s complete year’s production is contaminated by lactic acid bacteria. The whole lot’s off, hundreds of thousands of bottles of the damn stuff already in stores all over Europe. And now they’ve gone and publicly denied it’s their fault. It’s another Perrier disaster and Rufus is trying to arrest the meltdown.’

Rather him than me, I thought.

The response to the discovery of toxic benzene in Perrier’s ‘naturally carbonated’ sparkling mineral water in the early 1990s remains one of the prime crisis-management examples of how not to handle a major problem. There was a lack of a coherent response from the French company, with confusion created by contradictory statements, and then the media was given incorrect information, in particular about the way the so-called ‘natural’ carbonation of the water was achieved. The resulting drop in public confidence and market share has never been reversed.

Perhaps being stuck in Newmarket with the horses wasn’t so bad after all.

‘Anything else?’ ASW asked again.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘A few tips might be handy. I might go to the races on Thursday for the very first time in my life.’

‘My only tip is to keep your money in your pocket,’ ASW said with certainty. ‘There’s no such thing as a poor bookmaker.’

‘I thought you liked to gamble,’ I said, surprised.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘But not on horses. My whole life’s been a gamble but I prefer it when the odds are stacked in my favour, not against them. If I were to gamble seriously, I’d have to be the bookmaker.’ He laughed. ‘Right, I’ll get those research results emailed to you as soon as possible.’

We disconnected.

What I would really like, I thought, was Zoe Robertson’s mobile phone records, but not even the Simpson White Research Team could get those, not without breaking the law, and that would open up a whole new can of worms. Information obtained illegally was not only rightly excluded from any court case, but the fact that it had been gathered in the first place tended to taint everything else, however clean and legitimate the rest might be.

At six o’clock I walked along from my room to the hotel bar and ordered a Newmarket Gin with tonic.

It was difficult to believe that it was still Tuesday and I’d been here for only thirty hours. It felt like so much longer.

After my meeting with DCI Eastwood, I had spent some of the afternoon walking through the town purchasing a few essential articles, like wellington boots, a pair of thick socks and a coat. Even in mid-May, it could be very cold in the mornings.

It was difficult, if not impossible, to get away from horses and horse racing in Newmarket and it was not for nothing that locals referred to it as ‘HQ’.

The red-brick Jockey Club headquarters building, with its life-size statue of the horse Hyperion on display outside, dominates the western end of the High Street. Nowadays, it is little more than a private club where one can rent out its grand rooms for weddings, but once this was where the power of British racing was housed and exercised, where the Stewards of the Jockey Club would sit round a horseshoe-shaped table and decide on the future of those suspected of misdemeanours in the sport of kings. Reputations and livelihoods were at stake as the accused were made to stand on a small piece of carpet between the jaws of the table to hear their fate, hence coining the phrase ‘to be carpeted’.

Such power had the members of the Jockey Club in the mid-nineteenth century that, with the coming of the railway, they insisted that a tunnel be bored to preserve the lower part of the Warren Hill training grounds. The kilometre-long Warren Hill Tunnel is still in use today and, despite its name, it’s probably the only rail tunnel in rural England built under a piece of totally flat land.

Newmarket, for all its racing grandeur, remains a small metropolis, with a human population of only some twenty thousand souls, yet it boasts no fewer than thirteen separate betting shops. But perhaps the most bizarre indication that this is a one-industry — if not a one-horse — town is that the local undertakers have a window display that not only features sober gravestones in black and white marble, but also a blue-painted jockey-sized coffin adorned all over with horse-racing scenes.

I took my drink and wandered round the hotel bar looking at the photographs and artwork hanging on the walls. As expected, nearly all were of sporting scenes but one chronicled the history of the hotel. It had initially been built as a hunting lodge in the eighteenth century, then converted to a racing stables in the nineteenth, before becoming a hotel and spa in the mid-twentieth.

‘Mr Foster?’ said a soft female voice, bringing me back to the here and now from the history lesson.

‘Yes?’ I said, looking down at two young women sitting at a corner table, empty champagne flutes in front of them.

‘Janie Logan,’ one of them said. ‘I work for Ryan Chadwick. I saw you at Castleton House Stables this morning.’

‘Of course,’ I said, remembering the head of tight red curls.

‘This is Catherine, my sister. It’s her birthday.’

‘Happy birthday,’ I said. ‘Can I get you both another drink?’

The two looked at each other and an unspoken message clearly passed between them.

‘Sure,’ Janie said. ‘We have time. Thank you.’

‘Champagne?’ I asked, looking at their empty glasses.

The women looked at each other again, then up at me.

‘That would be lovely.’

I put my own drink down on the table and took their empties to the bar.

‘Two more champagnes, please,’ I said to the barman.

‘They had Prosecco before,’ he replied drily, raising a questioning eyebrow.

In a flash, all my insecurities over women rose to the fore. Did I get them another Prosecco and perhaps be thought of as a cheapskate? Or did I buy the real McCoy and risk being considered too pretentious?

Decisions, decisions. Which way did I jump?

‘Champagne,’ I said. After all, that was what I’d offered them.

He poured the golden bubbles into two fresh glasses and I carried them over to the table.

‘Join us,’ Janie said, pulling up another chair.

‘Thank you. I will.’ I sat down and picked up my gin and tonic. ‘Cheers, and happy birthday, Catherine.’

We drank the toast.

‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ Catherine said after taking a sip. ‘A real treat. Thank you. And please call me Kate. Only our mum calls me Catherine, and also Janie when she’s being bossy.’

‘All right, Kate,’ I said. ‘I will.’

She looked deeply into my eyes and smiled.

It did nothing for my insecurity.

I was flustered. It was not a condition I was familiar with. In my work I was confident, assured and positive, some might even say arrogant, so why did the presence of a pretty girl smiling at me create such a quivering-jelly feeling in my stomach?

‘So, are you two off to a birthday party?’ I asked, then instantly regretted it, sure that they would think me too forward, as if I was asking myself to go with them.

‘Just a small dinner with friends and family,’ Kate said. ‘I’m too old now for parties.’

She looked about thirty.

‘What nonsense,’ I said. ‘My mother says there’s nothing like a good party and she’s in her sixties.’

What am I doing? I thought, in absolute horror.

Dating rule number one: Never ever talk about your mother.

Change the subject, and fast.

‘So, Janie,’ I said. ‘How long have you worked for Ryan Chadwick?’

‘Five years now with Mr Ryan,’ she said. ‘Since he took over. I came with the yard.’ She laughed. ‘I went to work for Mr Chadwick when I left school. There’s nothing I don’t know about the place.’

‘The fire must have come as a big shock,’ I said.

‘Massive. Those poor horses.’ There were now tears in Janie’s eyes. ‘I can’t bear to think how they suffered. Especially Prince of Troy. He was our great hope. Lovely horse.’ She took a tissue from her handbag and blew her nose.

‘Janie’s mad about horses,’ Kate said. ‘Always has been.’

‘Did you ever ride them?’ I asked.

‘Sure,’ Janie replied. ‘I worked there first as a stable lad. Did my two and rode them out every morning. Happy days.’

‘What changed?’ I asked.

‘She had a fall,’ Kate said, receiving a stern look from her sister. ‘Broke her leg badly.’

‘A fall from a horse?’

‘Of course from a horse,’ Janie said sharply. ‘Damn thing dumped me onto the concrete outside its box. Snapped both bones in my shin in multiple places. Three bloody months in plaster and four more in rehab. So I went into the office to help out with the paperwork and I’ve been in there ever since.’ She downed the rest of her drink and stood up. ‘Come on, Catherine, we have to go or we’ll be late.’

‘See what I mean?’ Catherine/Kate said with another killer smile in my direction. She stood up and looked at me with a mixture of sorrow and apology. ‘Perhaps we’ll meet again.’

‘You can count on it,’ I said.

I stood and watched as the two sisters walked towards the door. Kate turned round and waved.

Wow! I thought.

As Tom said in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral: ‘Thunderbolt City’.