Crossfire

EPILOGUE

Three weeks later, Pharmacist, this time with no green potato peel-induced tummy ache, romped up the finishing hill to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup by a neck. It was the second Kauri House Stables success of the afternoon, after Oregon had justified his favoritism to win the Triumph Hurdle. My mother positively glowed.

In the post-Gold Cup press conference, she stunned the massed ranks of reporters, as well as the wider public watching on television, by announcing her retirement from the sport with immediate effect.

"I'm going out on a huge high," she told them, beaming from ear to ear. "I'm handing over the reins to the next generation."

I stood at the back of the room, watching her answer all the journalists' questions with ease, making them laugh with her. Here was the Josephine Kauri that everyone knew and expected: confident and in control of the situation, in keeping with her status as National Woman of the Year.

I believed that she was as happy that day as I had ever seen her. It had been a somewhat different matter when I had returned to her hiding place that night at Greystone Stables to find her frightened, exhausted, bedraggled and to the point of complete mental and physical collapse.

But much had changed since that dreadful night, not least the removal of the imminent threat of public disgrace, and the prospect of being arrested for tax evasion. Not that the senior inspector from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs hadn't been pretty cross. He had. But nowhere near as cross as he would surely have been if we hadn't arrived to see him with a check for all the back tax.

Martin Toleron had worked some magic, producing a team of accountants to sift through the shambles and to bring some order and transparency to my mother's business accounts. It had been quite an undertaking.

"It's the least I can do," Martin had said, happily agreeing also to pay the accountant's bill.

So the previous Monday, my mother, Derek and I had arrived by appointment at the tax office in Newbury, not only with a check made out for well over a million pounds of back tax, but with a set of up-to-date business accounts and a series of signed and sworn affidavits as to how and why the tax had not been paid at the correct time.

We had sat in the senior inspector's office for more than an hour as he had silently scrutinized our documents, never once putting down the check, which he held between the index finger and thumb of his left hand.

"Most unusual," he'd said at some length. "Most unusual, indeed."

Then he had returned to his reading for another hour, still clutching the check.

I didn't really think the inspector knew what to say. The accountants had calculated not only the tax that was overdue but also the amount of interest that should have been levied for its late arrival.

The amount on the check had taken all of the million dollars that had been returned from Gibraltar, together with every penny that the three of us had been able to muster, including Derek's ISAs, another mortgage on the house and the proceeds from some sales of my mother's favorite antique furniture, as well as all my savings, including the injury-compensation payout that had arrived from the Ministry of Defense.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Martin Toleron had asked me when I'd offered it.

"No," I had said. "In fact, I'm damned sure that it's not wise. But what else can I do?"

"You can come and help buy me some racehorses," he'd replied.

"Now, are you sure that's wise?"

We had laughed, but he'd been entirely serious, and he had already engaged the services of a bloodstock agent to find him a top young steeplechaser.

"I have to spend the money on something," Martin had said. "I don't want to leave it all to my bone-idle children. So I might as well enjoy spending it, and trips to the races will sure as hell beat going to Harrods every week with my wife."

My mother, Derek and I had sat in the tax inspector's office for nearly three hours in total while he had read through everything twice, and then while he had gone to consult someone at tax HQ, wherever that might be.

"Now I have to tell you, Mrs. Kauri," he'd said to my mother on his return from the consultation, "we at the Revenue take a very dim view of people who don't pay their taxes on time." I thought that he'd been about to wag his finger at her. "In the light of these affidavits and the payment of the back tax due, we have decided to take no action against you at this point. However, we will be carrying out our own audit of your tax affairs to ensure that you have given us a full and frank disclosure of the situation before we can close the matter entirely."

"Of course," my mother had replied, stony-faced.

"And finally," the inspector had said, standing up and now with a smile, "it is such an honor to meet you. I'm a great admirer, and over the years, I've backed lots of your winners."

So it was official, some tax men could be human after all.

The post-race press conference was still in full swing, and my mother appeared to be absolutely loving it.

"No, of course I'm not ill," she said, putting Gordon Rambler from the Racing Post in his place with a stare. "I'm retiring, not dying." She laughed, and the throng laughed with her.

No, I thought, my mother wasn't dying, but Isabella had, snuffed out in the prime of her life. The paramedics had tried to revive her, but she had lost far too much blood, to say nothing of the gaping hole that Jackson had made in her side. There had never been any hope with a shot from such close range.

Strangely, in spite of everything, I grieved for Isabella. I hadn't been wrong when I'd told her, aged ten, that I loved her. I still did. But now there would be no bonus, nor even the prospect of one. Isabella, my sweetheart, who had unknowingly helped in her own downfall by acting as my driver the day we had been to Old Man Sutton's house in Hungerford.

Needless to say, the Thames Valley Constabulary had not been greatly impressed by all the nocturnal activity that had been going on at Greystone Stables. I had called them using my cell phone as soon as Isabella had been hit, and they had subsequently arrived in convoy with an ambulance, and had promptly arrested everyone.

"You should have called us immediately if someone had been kidnapped," they said later at Newbury police station, their ill-disguised anger clearly directed at me for having taken things into my own hands.

"But we couldn't," my stepfather had said with conviction, coming to my defense. "The kidnappers told me that they would kill Josephine if the police were involved."

The police, of course, thought that was an insufficient reason for not involving them, especially, as they had pointed out, I appeared to know exactly where the kidnappers had taken their hostage.

Alex Reece had apparently wanted nothing to do with Warren and Garraway's plan to recover the money, and had decided that flight would be a much better policy. He had consequently boarded a British Airways jumbo from Heathrow to New York just a few hours before the shootout at the Greystone Stables corral began.

Somewhat carelessly, however, he had failed to clean out his suitcase properly and had been apprehended by a sniffer dog from the U.S. customs on his arrival at Kennedy Airport. He had subsequently been charged with importing cocaine into the United States, and was presently languishing in jail on Rikers Island in New York, waiting to be served with extradition papers by the government of Gibraltar on fraud charges.

Garraway, meanwhile, had been singing like a canary and blaming everything on Jackson Warren, so much so that his lawyers had successfully persuaded a judge to grant him bail on the kidnapping and false-imprisonment charges. However, the judge had ordered that Garraway's passport be confiscated, and as I heard unofficially from the tax inspector, the Revenue were greatly looking forwards to the day, very soon, when Peter Garraway's enforced extended stay in the United Kingdom would automatically make him resident here for tax purposes. The inspector had smiled broadly and rubbed his hands together. "We've been trying to get him for years," he'd said. "And now we will."

So who is taking over the training license?" It was Gordon Rambler who asked my mother the inevitable question. "And what will happen to the horses?"

"The horses will all be staying at Kauri House Stables," she said. "I spoke with all my owners yesterday, and they are all supportive."

That wasn't entirely true, and some of her owners were decidedly unsupportive, but they had all been convinced, out of loyalty to her, to stay on board, at least for the immediate future. And Martin Toleron had helped here too, vocally pledging his support, and his future horses, to the new training regime.

"So who is it?" Rambler was becoming impatient. "Who's taking over?"

They were all expecting one of the sport's up-and-coming young trainers to be moving into the big league.

"My son," she said with a flourish. "My son, Thomas Forsyth, will henceforth be training the horses at Kauri Stables."

I think it would be fair to say that there was a slight intake of breath, even amongst the most hardened of the racing journalists.

"And," my mother went on, into the silence, "he will be assisted by Ian Norland, my previous head lad, who has been promoted to assistant trainer."

"Can we all assume," Gordon Rambler said, recovering his composure, "that you will still be round to guide and advise them when necessary?"

"Of course," she said, smiling broadly.

But one should never assume anything.