Longshot

Chapter 9

Tremayne told me that the only place that he couldn’t take me on Windsor racecourse was into the Holy of Holies, the weighing room. Everywhere else, he said, I should stay by his side. He wouldn’t forever be looking back to make sure I was with him: I was to provide my own glue.

Accordingly I followed him doggedly, at times at a run. Where he paused briefly to talk to other people he introduced me as a friend, John Kendall, not as Boswell. He left me to sort out for myself the information bombarding me from all sides, rarely offering explanations, and I could see that explanations would have been a burden for him when he was so busy. His four runners, as it happened, were in four consecutive races. He took me for a quick sandwich and a drink soon after our arrival on the racecourse and from then on began a darting progress: into the weighing room to fetch his jockey’s saddle and weight cloth containing the correct amount of lead; off at a trot to the saddling boxes to do up the girths himself and straighten the tack to send the horse out looking good; into the parade ring to join the owners and give last-minute orders to the jockey; off up to the stands to watch the horse run; down again to the unsaddling areas, hoping to greet a winner, otherwise to listen to the why-not story from the jockey, and then off to the weighing room to pick up another saddle and weight cloth to start all over again.

Nolan was there, anxiously asking if Tremayne had received any thumbs-down from the Jockey Club.

‘No,’ Tremayne said. ‘Have you?’

‘Not an effing peep.’

‘You ride, then,’ Tremayne said. ‘And don’t ask questions. Don’t invite a no. They’ll tell you quickly enough if they want you off. Apply your mind to winning. Telebiddy’s owners are here with their betting money burning holes in their pockets, so deliver the goods, eh?’

‘Tell them I want a better effing present than last time.’

‘Win the race first,’ Tremayne said.

He made one of his dives into the weighing room, leaving me outside with Nolan who had come dressed to stifle criticism. All the same he complained to me bitterly that the effing media had snapped him coming through the main gate and he could do without their sodding attentions, the obscene so and sos.

The filth of Nolan’s language tended to wash over one, I found: the brain tended finally to filter it out.

Much the same could be said about Sam Yaeger who slouched up beside us and annoyed Nolan by patting him on the back. Sam, too, was transformed by tidiness and I gradually observed that several of the jockeys arrived and departed from the racecourse dressed for the boardroom. Their working clothes might be pink, purple and the stuff of fantasy but they were saying they were businessmen first.

The physical impact of each of Nolan and Sam was diluted and dissipated by the open air that incidentally was still as cold as their relationship.

‘Go easy on Bluecheesecake,’ Nolan said. ‘I don’t want him effing loused up before the Kim Muir at Cheltenham.’

Sam answered, ‘I’m not nannying any sodding amateur.’

‘The Kim Muir is his main effing target.’

‘Eff his sodding target.’

Did anyone ever grow up, I wondered. The school playground had a lot to answer for.

Away from each other, as I discovered during the afternoon, they were assured, sensible and supremely expert.

Sam made no concessions on Bluecheesecake. Through a spare pair of Tremayne’s binoculars I watched his gold cap from start to finish, seeing the smooth pattern of his progress along the rails, staying in third or fourth place while others surged forward and fell back on his outside.

The steeplechase course at Windsor proved to be a winding figure-of-eight, which meant that tactics were important. At times one saw the runners from head-on; difficult to tell who was actually in front. Coming round the last of several bends Bluecheesecake made a mess of one head-on-view fence, his nose going down to the ground, Sam’s back wholly visible from shoulders down to bottom up. Tremayne beside me let go of a Nolan-strength curse, but both horse and jockey righted themselves miraculously without falling and lost, Sam said afterwards, no more than three or four lengths.

Perhaps because of having to make up for those lengths in limited time before the winning post, Sam, having given his mount precious extra seconds for recovery of balance, rode over the last two fences with what even I could see was total disregard for his own safety and pressed Bluecheesecake unceremoniously for every ounce of effort.

Tremayne put down his glasses and watched the rocketing finish almost impassively, giving no more than a satisfied grunt when in the last few strides Bluecheesecake’s nose showed decisively in front.

Before the cheers had died Tremayne had set off at a run to the winners’ enclosure with me in pursuit, and after he’d received his due congratulations, inspected his excited, sweating, breathless charge for cuts and damage (none), and talked briefly to the press he followed Sam into the weighing room to fetch the saddle again for Just The Thing.

When he came out he was escorted by Nolan who fell into step beside him complaining ferociously that Sam had given Bluecheesecake a viciously hard race and spoiled his, Nolan’s, chances at Cheltenham.

‘Cheltenham is six weeks off,’ Tremayne said calmly. ‘Plenty of time.’

Nolan repeated his gripe.

Tremayne said with amazing patience, ‘Sam did exactly right. Go and do the same on Telebiddy.’

Nolan stalked away still looking more furious than was sensible in his position and Tremayne allowed himself a sigh but no comment. He took a lot more from Nolan, I reflected, than he would allow from Sam, even though it seemed to me that he liked Sam better. A lot of things were involved there: status, accent, connections; all the signal flags of class.

Sam rode Just The Thing in the next event, a hurdle race, with inconspicuous gallantry, providing the green mare with a clear view of the jumps and urging her on at the end to give her a good idea of what was expected. She finished a respectable third to Tremayne’s almost tangible pleasure: and it was fascinating to me to have heard the plans beforehand and see them put into exact effect.

While Tremayne was on his way from weighing room to saddling boxes for Telebiddy in the next race he handed me an envelope and asked me to put the contents for him on the Tote; Telebiddy, all to win.

‘I don’t like people to see me bet,’ he said, ‘because for one thing it shows them I’m pretty confident, so they put their money on too and it shortens the odds. I usually bet by phone with a bookmaker, but today I wanted to judge the state of the ground first. It can be treacherous, after snow. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Not at all.’

He nodded and hurried off, and I made my way to the Tote windows and disposed of enough to keep me in food for a year. Small, as in Tremayne’s ‘small bet’, was a relative term, I saw.

I joined him in the parade ring and asked if he wanted the tickets.

‘No. If he wins, collect for me, will you?’

‘OK.’

Nolan was talking to the owners, exercising his best charm and moderating his language. In jockey’s clothes he still looked chunky, strong and powerfully arrogant, but the swagger seemed to stop the moment he sat on the horse. Then professionalism took over and he was concentrated, quiet and neat in the saddle.

I tagged along behind Tremayne and the owners and, from the stands, watched Nolan give a display of razor-sharp competence that made most of the other amateurs look like Sunday drivers.

He saved countable seconds over the fences, his mount gaining lengths by always seeming to take off at the right spot. Judgment, not luck. The courage that Mackie loved was still there, unmistakable.

The owners, mother and daughter, were tremblers. They weren’t entirely white and near to dying, but from what they said the betting money was out of their pockets and on the horse in a big way and there was a good deal of lip- and knuckle-biting from off to finish.

Nolan, as if determined to outride Sam Yaeger, hurled himself over the last three fences and won by ten lengths pulling up. Tremayne let out a deep breath and the owners hugged each other, hugged Tremayne and stopped shaking.

‘You could give Nolan a good cash present for that,’ Tremayne said bluntly.

The owners thought Nolan would be embarrassed if they gave him such a present.

‘Give it to me, to give to him. No embarrassment.’

The owners said they’d better run down and lead in their winner, which they did.

‘Stingy cats,’ Tremayne said in my ear as we watched them fuss over the horse and have their picture taken.

‘Won’t they really give Nolan anything?’ I asked.

‘It’s against the rules, and they know it. Amateurs aren’t supposed to be given money for winning. Nolan will have backed the horse anyway, he always does with a hot chance like this. And I get one hundred per cent commitment from my jockey.’ His voice was dry with humour. ‘I often think the Jockey Club has it wrong, not letting professional jockeys bet on their own mounts.’

He returned to the weighing room to fetch Sam’s saddle and weight cloth for Cashless, and I went off to the Tote and collected his Telebiddy winnings, which approximately equalled his stake. Nolan, it appeared, had been riding the hot favourite.

When I commented on it to Tremayne in the parade ring as we watched Cashless being led round, he told me that Nolan’s presence on any horse shortened its odds, and Telebiddy had won twice for him already this season. It was a wonder, Tremayne said, that the Tote had paid evens: he’d expected less of a return. I would do him a favour, he added, if I would give him his winnings on the way home, not in public, so I walked around with a small fortune I had no hope of repaying if I lost it, keeping it clutched in my left-hand trouser pocket.

We went up to the stands for the race and watched Cashless set off in front as expected, a position he easily held until right where it mattered, the last fifty yards. Then three jockeys who had been waiting behind him stepped on the accelerator, and although Cashless didn’t in any way give up, the three others passed him.

Tremayne shrugged. ‘Too bad.’

‘Will you run him in front again next time?’ I asked, as we went down off the stands.

‘I expect so. We’ve tried keeping him back and he runs worse. He’s one-paced in a finish, that’s his trouble. He’s game enough, but it’s hard to find races he can win.’

We reached the parade ring where the unsuccessful runners were being unsaddled. Sam, looping girths over his arm, gave Tremayne a rueful smile and said Cashless had done his best.

‘I saw,’ Tremayne agreed. ‘Can’t be helped.’ We watched Sam walk off towards the weighing room and Tremayne remarked thoughtfully that he might try Cashless in an amateur race, and see what Nolan could do.

‘Do you play them off against each other on purpose?’ I asked.

Tremayne gave me a flickering glance. ‘I do the best for my owners,’ he said. ‘Like a drink?’

It appeared he had arranged to meet the owners of Telebiddy in the Club bar and when we arrived they were already celebrating with a bottle of champagne. Nolan, too, was there, being incredibly nice to them but without financial results.

When the two women had left in a state of euphoria, Nolan asked belligerently whether Tremayne had told them to give him a present.

‘I suggested it,’ Tremayne said calmly, ‘but you’ll be lucky. Better settle for what you took from the bookmakers yourself

‘Damn little,’ Nolan said, or words to that effect, ‘and the bloodsucking lawyers will get the lot.’ He shouldered his way out of the bar in self-righteous outrage, which seemed to be his uppermost state of mind oftener than not.

With non-committal half-lowered eyelids Tremayne watched him go, then transferred his gaze to me.

‘Well,’ he asked, ‘what have you learned?’

‘What you intended me to, I expect.’

He smiled. ‘And a bit more than I intended. I’ve noticed you do that all the time.’ With a contented sigh he put down his empty glass. ‘Two winners,’ he said. ‘A better than average day at the races. Let’s go home.’

At about the time we were driving home with Tremayne’s winnings safely stowed in his own pockets, not mine, Detective Chief Inspector Doone was poring over the increased pickings from the woodland.

The Detective Chief Inspector could be said to be purring. Among some insignificant long-rusted detritus lay the star of the whole collection, a woman’s handbag. Total satisfaction had been denied him, as the prize had been torn open on one side, probably by a dog, whose toothmarks still showed, so that most of the contents had been lost. All the same, he was left with a shoulder strap, a corroded buckle and at least half of a brown plastic school-style bag which still held, in an intact inner zipped pocket, a small mirror and a folded photograph frame.

With careful movements Doone opened the frame and found inside, water-stained along one edge but otherwise sharply clear, a coloured snapshot of a man standing beside a horse.

Disappointed that there was still no easy identification of the handbag’s past owner, Doone took a telephone call from the pathologist.

‘You were asking about teeth,’ the pathologist said. ‘The dental records you gave me are definitely not those of our bones. Our girl had good teeth. One or two missing, but no fillings. Sorry.’

Doone’s disappointment deepened. The politician’s daughter had just been ruled out. He mentally reviewed his list again, skipped the prostitutes and provisionally paused on Angela Brickell, stable lad. Angela Brickell... horse.

The bombshell burst on Shellerton on Thursday.

Tremayne was upstairs showering and dressing before going to Towcester races when the doorbell rang. Dee-Dee went to answer it and presently came into the dining-room looking mystified.

‘It’s two men,’ she said. ‘They say they’re policemen. They flashed some sort of identity cards, but they won’t say what they want. I’ve put them in the family room until Tremayne comes down. Go and keep an eye on them, would you mind?

‘Sure,’ I said, already on the move.

‘Thanks,’ she said, returning to the office. ‘Whatever they want, it looks boring.’

I could see why she thought so. The two men might have invented the word grey, so characterless did they appear at first sight. Ultimate plain clothes, I thought.

‘Can I help you?’ I said.

‘Are you Tremayne Vickers?’ one of them asked.

‘No. He’ll be down soon. Can I help?’

‘No, thank you, sir. Can you fetch him?’

‘He’s in the shower.’

The policeman raised his eyebrows. Trainers, however, didn’t shower before morning exercise, they showered after, before going racing. That was Tremayne’s habit, anyway. Dee-Dee had told me.

‘He’s been up since six,’ I said.

The policeman’s eyes widened, as if I’d read his mind.

‘I am Detective Chief Inspector Doone, Thames Valley Police,’ he said. ‘This is Detective Constable Rich.’

‘How do you do,’ I said politely. ‘I’m John Kendall. Would you care to sit down?’

They perched gingerly on chairs and said no to an offer of coffee.

‘Will he be long, sir?’ Doone asked. ‘We must see him soon.’

‘No, not long.’

Doone, on further inspection, appeared to be about fifty, with grey-dusted light brown hair and a heavy medium-brown moustache. He had light brown eyes, big bony hands and, as we all slowly discovered, a habit of talking a lot in a light Berkshire accent.

This chattiness wasn’t at all apparent in the first ten minutes before Tremayne came downstairs buttoning the blue and white striped cuffs of his shirt and carrying his jacket gripped between forearm and chest.

‘Hello,’ he said, ‘who’s this?’

Dee-Dee appeared behind him, apparently to tell him, but Doone introduced himself before either she or I could do so.

‘Police?’ Tremayne said, unworried. ‘What about?’

‘We’d like to speak to you alone, sir.’

‘What? Oh, very well.’

He asked me with his eyes to leave with Dee-Dee, shutting the door behind us. I returned to the dining-room but presently heard the family room door open and Tremayne’s voice calling.

‘John, come back here, would you?’

I went back. Doone was protesting about my presence, saying it was unnecessary and inadvisable.

Tremayne said stubbornly, ‘I want him to hear it. Will you repeat what you said?’

Doone shrugged. ‘I came to inform Mr Vickers that some remains have been found which may prove to be those of a young woman who was once employed here.’

‘Angela Brickell,’ Tremayne said resignedly.

‘Oh.’

‘What does “Oh” mean, sir?’ Doone enquired sharply.

‘It means just Oh,’ I said. ‘Poor girl. Everyone thought she’d just done a bunk.’

‘They have a photograph,’ Tremayne said. ‘They’re trying to identify the man.’ He turned to Doone. ‘Show it to him.’ He nodded in my direction. ‘Don’t take my word for it.’

Unwillingly Doone handed me a photograph enclosed in a plastic holder.

‘Do you know this man, sir?’ he asked.

I glanced at Tremayne who was not looking concerned.

‘You may as well tell him,’ he said. ‘Harry Goodhaven?’

Tremayne nodded. ‘That’s Fiona’s horse, Chickweed, the one they said was doped.’

‘How can you recognise a horse?’ Doone asked.

Tremayne stared at him. ‘Horses have faces, like people. I’d know Chickweed anywhere. He’s still here, out in the yard.’

‘Who is this man, this Harry Goodhaven?’ Doone demanded.

‘The husband of the owner of the horse.’

‘Why would Angela Brickell be carrying his photograph?’

‘She wasn’t.’ Tremayne said. ‘Well, I suppose she was, but it was the horse’s photograph she was carrying. She looked after it.’

Doone looked completely unconvinced. ‘To a lad,’ I said, ‘the horses they look after are like children. They love them. They defend them. It makes sense that she carried Chickweed’s picture.’

Tremayne glanced at me with half-stifled surprise, but I’d been listening to the lads for a week.

‘What John says,’ Tremayne nodded, ‘is absolutely true.’

The attendant policeman, Constable Rich, was all the time taking notes, though not at high speed: not shorthand.

Doone said, ‘Sir, can you give me the address of this Harry Goodhaven?’

With slight irritation Tremayne answered, ‘This Harry Goodhaven, as you call him, is Mr Henry Goodhaven who owns the Manor House, Shellerton.’

Doone very nearly said ‘Oh’ in his turn, and made a visible readjustment in his mind.

‘I’m already running late,’ Tremayne said, making moves to leave.

‘But, sir...’

‘Stay as long as you like,’ Tremayne said, going. ‘Talk to John, talk to my secretary, talk to whoever you want.’

‘I don’t think you understand, sir,’ Doone said with a touch of desperation. ‘Angela Brickell was strangled.’

‘What?’ Tremayne stopped dead, stunned. ‘I thought you said...’

‘I said we’d found some remains. Now that you’ve recognised the... er... horse, sir, we’re pretty sure of her identity. Everything else fits; height, age, possible time of death. And, sir...’ he hesitated briefly as if to summon courage, ‘only last week, sir, we had a Crown Court case about another young woman who was strangled... strangled here in this house.’

There was silence.

Tremayne said finally, ‘There can’t be any connection. The death that occurred in this house was an accident, whatever the jury thought.’

Doone said doggedly, ‘Did Mr Nolan Everard have any connections with Angela Brickell?’

‘Yes, of course he did. He rides Chickweed, the horse in that photograph. He saw Angela Brickell quite often in the course of her work.’ He paused for thought. ‘Where did you say her... remains... were found?’

‘I don’t think I said, sir.’

‘Well, where?’

Doone said, ‘All in good time, sir,’ a shade uncomfortably, and it occurred to me that he was hoping someone would know, and anyone who knew would very likely have strangled her.

‘Poor girl,’ Tremayne said. ‘But all the same, Chief Inspector, I do now have to go to the races. Stay as long as you like, ask whatever you want. John here will explain to my assistant and head lad. John, tell Mackie and Bob what’s happened, will you? Phone the car if you need me. Right, I’m off.’

He continued purposefully and at good speed on his way and one could see and hear the Volvo start up and depart. In some bemusement Doone watched him go: his first taste of the difficulty of deflecting Tremayne from a chosen course.

‘Well, Chief Inspector,’ I said neutrally, ‘where do you want to begin?’

‘Your name, sir?’

I gave it. He was a good deal more confident with me, I noticed: I didn’t have a personality that overshadowed his own.

‘And your... er... position here?’

‘I’m writing a history of the stables.’

He seemed vaguely surprised that someone should be engaged on such an enterprise and said lamely, ‘Very interesting, I’m sure.’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘And... er... did you know the deceased?’

‘Angela Brickell? No, I didn’t. She vanished last summer, I believe, and I’ve been here only a short time, roughly ten days.’

‘But you knew about her, sir,’ he said shrewdly.

‘Let me show you how I knew,’ I said. ‘Come and look.’

I led him into the dining-room and showed him the piles of clippings, explaining they were the raw materials of my future book.

‘This is my workroom,’ I said. ‘Somewhere in that pile of cuttings,’ I pointed, ‘is an account of Angela Brickell’s disappearance. That’s how I know about her, and that’s all I know. No one has mentioned her outside of this room since I’ve been here.’

He looked through the past year’s cuttings and found the pieces about the girl. He nodded a few times and laid them back carefully where he’d found them, and seemed reassured about me personally. I got the first hint of the garrulity to come.

‘Well, sir,’ he said, relaxing, ‘you can start introducing me to all the people here and explain why I’m asking questions and, as I’ve found on other cases when only remains are found that people tend to think the worst and imagine all sorts of horrors so that it makes them feel sick and wastes a good deal of time altogether, I’ll tell you, sir, and you can pass it on, that what was found was bones, sir, quite clean and no smell, nothing horrible, you can assure people of that.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, a shade numbly.

‘Animals and insects had cleaned her, you see.’

‘Don’t you think that fact alone will make people feel sick?’

‘Then don’t stress it, sir.’

‘No.’

‘We have her clothes and shoes and her handbag and lipstick back at the police station... they were scattered around her and I’ve had my men searching...’ He stopped, not telling me then where the search had occurred; except that if she’d been scavenged it had to have been out of doors. Which for a stable girl, in a way, made sense.

‘And, if you don’t mind, sir, will you please just tell everyone she’s been found, not that she was strangled.’

‘How do you know that she was strangled, if there’s nothing much left?’

‘The hyoid bone, sir. In the throat. Fractured. Only a direct blow or manual pressure does that. Fingers, usually, from behind.’

‘Oh, I see. All right, I’ll leave it to you. We’d better start with Mr Vickers’ secretary, Dee-Dee.’

I steered him into the office and introduced him. Detective Constable Rich followed everywhere like a shadow, a non-speaking taker of notes. I explained to Dee-Dee that Angela Brickell had probably been found.

‘Oh good,’ she said spontaneously, and then, seeing it wasn’t good at all, ‘Oh dear.’

Doone asked to use the telephone, Dee-Dee at once assenting. Doone called his people back at base.

‘Mr Vickers identified the horse as one that Angela Brickell tended in his stable, and the man as the owner of the horse, or rather the owner’s husband. I’d say it’s fairly sure we have Angela Brickell in the mortuary. Can you arrange to send round a WPC to her parents? They live out Wokingham way. The address is in my office. Do it pronto. We don’t want anyone from Shellerton upsetting them first. Break it to them kindly, see? Ask if they could recognise any clothes of hers, or handbag. Ask Mollie to go to them, if she’s on duty. She makes it more bearable for people. She mops up their grief. Get Mollie. Tell her to take another constable with her, if she wants.’

He listened for a moment or two and put down the receiver.

‘The poor lass has been dead six months or more,’ he said to Dee-Dee. ‘All that’s left is sweet clean bones.’

Dee-Dee looked as if that thought were sick-making enough, but I could see that Doone’s rough humanity would comfort in the end. He was like a stubby-fingered surgeon, I thought: delicate in his handiwork against the odds.

He asked Dee-Dee if she knew of any reason for Angela Brickell’s disappearance. Had the girl been unhappy? Having rows with a boyfriend?

‘I’ve no idea. We didn’t find out until after she’d gone that she must have given chocolate to Chickweed. Stupid thing to do.’

Doone looked lost. I explained about the theobromine. ‘That’s in those clippings, too,’ I said.

‘We found some chocolate bar wrappers with the lass,’ Doone said. ‘No chocolate. Is that what was meant in our notes by “possibly doped a horse in her charge”?’

‘Spot on,’ I said.

‘Chocolate!’ he said disgustedly. ‘Not worth dying for.’

I said, enlightened, ‘Were you looking for a big conspiracy? A doping ring?’

‘Have to consider everything.’

Dee-Dee said positively, ‘Angela Brickell wouldn’t have been in a doping ring. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Doone didn’t pursue it but said he’d like to talk to the rest of the stable staff, asking Dee-Dee meanwhile not to break the news to anyone else as he would prefer to do it himself. Also he didn’t want anyone springing the tragedy prematurely onto the poor parents.

‘Surely I can tell Fiona,’ she protested.

‘Who’s Fiona?’ He frowned, perhaps trying to remember.

‘Fiona Goodhaven, who owns Chickweed.’

‘Oh, yes. Well, not her either. Especially not her. I like to get people’s first thoughts, first impressions, not hear what they think after they’ve spent hours discussing something with all their friends. First thoughts are clearer and more valuable, I’ve found.’

He said it with more persuasion than command, with the result that Dee-Dee agreed to stay off the grapevine. She didn’t ask how the girl had died. If she realised Doone’s remarks best fitted a murder scenario, she didn’t say so. Perhaps she simply shied away from having to know.

Doone asked to be taken out to the stables. On the way I asked him to remember, if he met Mackie, Tremayne’s daughter-in-law and assistant trainer, that she was newly pregnant.

He gave me a sharp glance.

‘You’re considerate,’ I said mildly. ‘I thought you might want to modify the shocks.’

He looked disconcerted but made no promise either way and, as it happened, by the time we reached the yard, Mackie had gone home and Bob Watson was alone there, beavering away with saw, hammer and nails, making a new saddle-horse to hold the saddles in the tack room. We found him outside the tack-room door, not too pleased to be interrupted.

I introduced Bob to Doone, Doone to Bob. Doone told him that some human remains discovered by chance were thought to be those of Angela Brickell.

‘No!’ Bob said. ‘Straight up? Poor little bitch. What did she do, fall down a quarry?’ He looked absent-mindedly at a piece of wood he held as if he’d temporarily forgotten its purpose.

‘Why should you say that, sir?’ Doone asked attentively.

‘Manner of speaking,’ Bob said, shrugging. ‘I always thought she’d just scarpered. The guv’nor swore she’d given Chickweed chocolate, but I reckon she didn’t. I mean, we all know you mustn’t. Anyway, who found her? Where did she go?’

‘She was found by chance,’ Doone said again. ‘Was she unhappy over a boyfriend?’

‘Not that I know of. But there’s twenty lads and girls here, and they come and go all the time. Truth to tell, I can’t remember much about her, except she was sexy. Ask Mrs Goodhaven, she was always kind to her. Ask the other girls here, some of them lived in a hostel with her. Why did you want to know about a boyfriend? She didn’t take a high jump, did she? Is that what she did?’

Doone didn’t say yes or no, and I understood what he’d meant by preferring to listen to unadulterated first thoughts, to the first pictures and conclusions that minds leaped to when questioned.

He talked to Bob for a while longer but as far as I could see learned nothing much.

‘You want to see Mackie,’ Bob said in the end. ‘That’s young Mrs Vickers. The girls tell her things they’d never tell me.’

Doone nodded and I led him and the ubiquitous Rich round the house to Mackie and Perkin’s entrance, ringing the bell. It was Perkin himself who came to the door, appearing in khaki overalls, looking wholly artisan and smelling, fascinatingly, of wood and linseed oil.

‘Hello,’ he said, surprised to see me. ‘Mackie’s in the shower.’

Doone took it in his stride this time, introducing himself formally.

‘I came to let Mrs Vickers know that Angela Brickell’s been found,’ he said.

‘Who?’ Perkin said blankly. ‘I didn’t know anyone was lost. I don’t know any Angela... Angela who did you say?’

Doone patiently explained she’d been lost for seven or more months. Angela Brickell.

‘Good Lord. Really? Who is she?’ A thought struck him. ‘I say, is she the stable girl who buggered off sometime last year? I remember a bit of a fuss.’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Good then, my wife will be glad she’s found. I’ll give her the message.’

He made as if to close the door but Doone said he would like to see Mrs Vickers himself.

‘Oh? All right. You’d better come in and wait. John? Come in?’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

He led the way into a kitchen-dining room where I hadn’t been before and offered us rattan armchairs round a table made of a circular slab of glass resting on three gothic plaster pillars. The curtains and chair covers were bright turquoise overprinted with blowsy grey, black and white flowers, and all the kitchen fitments were faced with grey-white streaked Formica; thoroughly modern.

Perkin watched my surprise with irony and said, ‘Mackie chose everything in a revolt against good taste.’

‘It’s happy,’ I said. ‘Light-hearted.’

The remark seemed somehow to disturb him, but Mackie herself arrived with damp hair at that point looking refreshed and pleased with life. Her reaction to Doone’s first cautious words was the same as everyone else’s. ‘Great. Where is she?’

The gradual realisation of the true facts drained the contentment and the colour from her face. She listened to his questions and answered them, and faced the implications squarely.

‘You’re telling us, aren’t you,’ she said flatly, ‘that either she killed herself... or somebody killed her?’

‘I didn’t say that, madam.’

‘As good as.’ She sighed desolately. ‘All these questions about doping rings... and boyfriends. Oh God.’ She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them to look at Doone and me.

‘We’ve just had months and months of trouble and anxiety over Olympia and Nolan, we’ve had the TV people and reporters in droves, driving us mad with their questions, we’re only just beginning to feel free of it all... and I can’t bear it... I can’t bear it... it’s starting all over again.’