Score!

56

‘Jesus, Sarge!’ Karen was jumping up and down in excitement as they emerged out of the dark panelled hall into the lavender, yellow roses and falling sunlight of the forecourt. ‘Hadn’t we better tip off Gerry and go and nail Rupert?’

‘Too early, he’s at Newmarket, and we’ll need far more evidence than a crazy ex-wife’s terrified impressions in a pitch-dark wood. She may well have wanted it to be Rupert.’

‘Do you think she hates him enough to shop him?’

‘Possibly. I think she’s pathological where he and Tab are concerned, particularly now she knows Rannaldini raped Tab. I certainly wouldn’t rule her out as the killer. Let’s go and talk to another side of the triangle, Isaac Lovell, who hates Rupert even more than she does.’

‘I’m expecting Isa within the hour,’ Janice, the head groom, told Karen and Gablecross when they walked into Rannaldini’s yard.

Slim, foxy, knowing, a goer in the sack, Janice was soon confiding that she would happily have murdered her late boss for the way he treated his horses.

‘That was his torture chamber,’ she added, pointing the yard brush at the indoor school. ‘He used to lock himself in with a green young horse, and do terrible things to make them go the way he wanted.’

She had stayed with Rannaldini, she said, because she was so sorry for the horses, and as Gablecross stretched out a hand towards the heads hanging out of the boxes, they all flinched away — except for The Prince of Darkness who, safely muzzled, scraped angrily at his half-door.

‘He’ll get you with his feet, or crush you against a wall, if he can’t use his teeth,’ said Janice.

For Sunday night, she had the perfect alibi: a skittle contest, between nine thirty and midnight at the Pearly Gates.

‘I was choked when Isa turned up at the yard at eight thirty — I wasn’t expecting him. He always slides in, well, like a cobra, never giving you any time to tart up. He’s gorgeous, the bastard,’ she added to Karen.

‘I was dying to get away, but he insisted on looking at every horse, in case they’d lost condition in the drought. We’re turning them out just at night because of the flies.’

‘How did Isa get on with Rannaldini?’

‘Worse and worse. No-one pushes horses harder than Isa. It’s an insult to his genius to expect him to flog them home, but Rannaldini wanted more winners. He went berserk when Peppy won the Derby. Last week.’ Janice glanced round the yard in terror. ‘I can’t believe he’s not here any more, he threatened to jock Isa off and drop Jake as trainer. That’s like an ad agency losing the Coca-Cola account. It would ruin Jake.’

‘Was Isa upset?’

‘Not outwardly — that’s what makes him so attractive, never shows what he’s thinking.’

‘Not a lot probably — except about horses,’ said Gablecross, noticing an empty box with stickers on the green half-doors, saying, ‘Champion’ and ‘World Beater’ and ‘The Engineer’ painted in blue letters above them. The damsel in distress, and now her charger, had fled.

‘Rupert Campbell-Black’s groom, Dizzy, collected Engie this morning,’ explained Janice. ‘Good thing Rupert didn’t come. There’d have been bloodshed if he’d seen Isa.’

In the tack room, she handed out chipped mugs of orange squash, and settled down to clean a bridle.

‘Isa was paranoid about his private life staying private,’ she went on, ‘I’m sure Rannaldini hoped to share groupies and experience but Isa wouldn’t play ball. He’s a terrific stud, but he likes to poach under cover of dark, like a gypsy. He was well pissed off on Sunday night. His mobile rang — it must have been around nine thirty because the stable clock was striking — and he couldn’t walk out of earshot because he and I were both in The Prince’s box. So he pressed the receiver to his mouth, and muttered that he wasn’t going to be able to make it, then he switched off his mobile and said he was off to Magpie Cottage. “You’d better keep it switched off, Casanova,” I said to him, “in case any of your ladies ring when Tab’s there.” He threw me such a filthy look I went cold. He can put the evil eye on you. By the time I’d turned out The Prince, he was gone.’

‘What d’you reckon to his marriage?’ asked Karen, who was busy taking goosegrass out of the stable cat’s tail.

‘Pretends he doesn’t give a stuff. She’s a madam but you can’t help loving her and she doesn’t deserve a pig like Isa — any more than her stupid, neurotic mother deserved Rannaldini. I heard Rannaldini and Isa rowing again last week, just before he left for Australia. “I’m taking my horses away because you haven’t made my poor stepdaughter very happy,” Rannaldini was saying, in his oiliest voice, and Isa hissed back, “That’s because you want her yourself, you fucker. Well, stay away from her.”’

‘Perhaps he loves her,’ sighed Karen romantically.

‘It sounds really weird,’ Janice dug her sponge into the saddle soap, ‘but because of the blood feud between the Campbell-Blacks and the Lovells, I think Isa feels bitterly ashamed about wanting Tab so much, almost like a paedophile fighting to stop himself jumping on a little kid. So he rejects her. Does that make sense?’

‘Utterly.’ Karen nodded wisely as the stable cat settled, purring happily, between her luscious thighs. ‘A Puritan conscience coupled with an over-aberrant libido seldom leads to an easy love life.’

Gablecross gave her an old-fashioned look.

‘Did you see anything unusual on your way to the Pearly Gates?’ he asked Janice.

‘Only Tristan de Montigny screeching down the drive in that fuck-off car, nearly running me down. Here’s Isa! Please don’t tell him I’ve been gossiping — I might want a reference.’

Gablecross had long hero-worshipped Jake Lovell, as a show-jumper then a trainer, and no jockey had captured the public’s imagination more than his son. Other riders feared Isa, whispering of the risks he took, how he slithered through gaps of which no-one else was capable, how he hurtled past uttering gypsy curses, turning dark evil eyes on the opposition until it melted away.

But as he got out of a second-hand Merc, chewing gum and dressed in patched black jeans and a nettle-green shirt, dark glasses hiding the evil eyes, he looked harmless enough. About five foot eight, the same height as Rannaldini but half the width, he stood watching them, as narrow and dark as a cypress at noon.

Having taken in Karen’s beauty, he ignored her, addressing all his remarks to Gablecross, who immediately softened him up by congratulating him on winning the Grand Annual in Australia last week. Gablecross then displayed so much knowledge about The Prince’s form last winter that Isa took him over to be introduced.

Having ruffled The Prince’s mane and scratched him behind his ears, Isa removed his muzzle before giving him a Polo. But as Gablecross approached, his equine hero darted huge teeth at him with a furious squeal.

‘Shurrup.’ Isa cuffed The Prince affectionately on his black nose. In his soft Birmingham accent, he confirmed Janice’s statement that he’d dropped in on Sunday night to check the horses and his wife, who he hadn’t seen since his return from Australia in June.

‘Long time to leave such a beautiful young woman,’ chided Karen.

‘Times are hard for jump jockeys,’ snapped Isa. ‘You go where the work is.’

At first he flatly denied taking any calls at the yard.

‘We have evidence’, Gablecross flipped back through Karen’s notebook, ‘that your mobile rang around nine thirty, and you cancelled an arrangement to meet someone because the coast wasn’t clear.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Isa was feeling The Prince’s legs for swelling. He had a bad habit of galloping round on this hard ground. ‘People seem to know more about my life than I do.’

‘Who were you talking to?’

There was a pause.

‘I don’t remember, my mobile rings all day — probably my father, and me telling him Rannaldini was at home and we couldn’t remove a horse.’

‘Which horse?’

‘Sparkling — that grey on the left. Rannaldini had a bee in his bonnet the horse wasn’t doing well enough, wanted to give it a blood transfusion before its next race in the autumn. Sometimes it peps them up, more often it wrecks them.’

‘Can we have your father’s number, so we can check on the time?’ said Karen.

Creating a convenient diversion The Prince lunged at Karen’s notebook, sending her scuttling across the yard.

‘He’s ex-directory. I’ll get him to call you.’

‘How was Mrs Lovell when you got back?’ asked Gablecross idly.

‘I missed her. She left a message on my machine saying she was going back to Penscombe because Rannaldini’d found her stepmother’s dog and she’d be back around midnight.’

‘Have you got the tape?’

‘Yes, but the message will have been wiped by now.’

‘You must have been disappointed.’

Isa didn’t answer. His hands tested The Prince’s back.

‘Your cleaner’, Karen peered at her notebook, ‘said there was evidence that Mrs Lovell had been, er, dolling herself up, make-up unscrewed, powder spilt on the dressing-table, place reeking of perfume, new dress, packaging and labels on the floor,’ Karen was taunting Isa now, ‘and, more unusual, the bed was made.’

‘First time since we were married,’ said Isa.

‘Why d’you think she made it?’

‘Turning over a new leaf, perhaps. She wasn’t domesticated.’ He took another piece of green chewing-gum out of his hip pocket.

‘Or expecting someone else? What did you do while you were at the cottage?’

‘Opened a can of Diet Coke, ate a chicken leg, fed Sharon, read my mail and the racing pages of the Sundays — there was a good piece on the Grand Annual in the Sunday Express.’

He bolted The Prince’s door and moved on to the grey, Sparkling, who greeted him with evident pleasure.

‘I also picked up my washing,’ he added bitchily, ‘which my wife hadn’t touched since before I left for Oz, and took it home to my mother.’

He had been spending most of his time over at Jake’s yard because of his father’s deteriorating strength.

‘He can’t look after thirty horses on his own. Baby’s horses are here,’ he pointed to a bay, and two chestnuts down the row, ‘but I’m thinking of taking them back to Warwickshire. The grass is better there.’

‘Friend of Baby’s, are you?’

‘I find horses and ride for him.’

‘No idea who he might have been meeting at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons on Sunday night?’

‘None,’ said Isa flatly. ‘Our relationship is strictly business.’

‘How did you get on with Rannaldini?’

‘He was an owner. They’re always easier when you win for them.’

‘Did you argue a lot?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did anyone see you leave Magpie Cottage on Sunday?’

‘No, but I was back in Warwickshire by midnight.’

‘So you had plenty of time to murder Rannaldini.’

‘Why take out my most important owner?’

‘Because he was intending to take all his horses away.’

‘He wasn’t. If you’ve been on this case since Sunday, Sergeant, you must realize Rannaldini was a control freak who tested everyone.’

‘Who owns his horses now he’s dead?’

‘Imagine it’s his son Wolfgang, not my greatest fan. He’s got a stupid public-school crush on Tab, so that wouldn’t be a motive to kill his father, would it?’

‘Did you know his last will cut out both your mother-in-law and Tab, so you don’t stand to gain a penny?’

‘So I was much better off with him alive, wasn’t I?’

‘Did you know your wife’s claiming that Rannaldini raped her on Sunday night, and there are traces of lipstick, perfume and powder on his dressing-gown and his body?’

Isa’s face was expressionless, but Sparkling jumped away with a snort of pain, as his fingers tightened on her foreleg.

‘I didn’t. Rannaldini always had the hots for her.’

‘People said she’d never looked more beautiful or excited as she ran towards the watch-tower. Odd she should tart up like that to pick up a dog.’

‘She had opened a new perfume called Quercus,’ added Karen.

‘I gave it to her,’ said Isa roughly. ‘She knew I was coming round. Has it entered your thick heads that she was tarting up for me, when the loss of her parents’ dog put everything out of her head?’

‘Did she tell you Rannaldini’d raped her?’ asked Gablecross, then swore as they heard Janice calling from the tack room.

‘Sorry to bother you,’ she smirked. ‘But it’s Cecilia Rannaldini returning your call.’

For once, Isa had the grace to blush.

‘Why’s he talking to her?’ hissed Karen.

Gablecross shrugged.

‘Presumably, as the chief inheritor of Rannaldini’s estate, she’s his new boss.’

‘Quite capable of murdering anyone,’ fumed Karen as they left the yard. ‘I wonder if that was his chewing-gum found near the body?’