The Grave Maurice

FIFTY-NINE

Roy Diamond was riding his favorite mount, Havoc, around his mile-and-a-quarter training course, trying to beat yesterday’s record time. Roy didn’t know it but he had four very bad moments coming his way.

He didn’t see the horse and rider streaking across his paddock where a few of his horses grazed, and he didn’t see it had taken the last wall as if the wall were made of Devon cream. He didn’t see this because he was galloping round the track and his peripheral vision lied: he took movement over that way to be the movements of his own horses.

Coming around the turn he realized this wasn’t at all the case and when Aqueduct jumped the fence that enclosed the course, Roy felt fear, a thing he rarely felt because he always considered himself to be in command of any situation. Fear was a negligible, chaffy emotion wasted on Roy. Since the death of his daughter, most emotions were.

She was holding a whip up, clearly with the intention of bringing it down. Nell Ryder, as with her legendary uncle, Dan, never took a whip to a horse. He knew if she slowed she’d be on him with that whip, but what was much worse, with that horse. Nell talked to horses. Roy could see happening to him the same thing that had happened to Dan Ryder.

His jacket was lying over the fence and as he galloped round the track with her in pursuit he knew he had to get hold of the jacket. He saw that part of the fence coming up, reined in Havoc and reeled off the horse, snatched his coat and grabbed the gun from the pocket.

Roy was that popular: he always carried a gun.

Now the next bad moment happened: a cherry-red Aston-Martin was coming at full throttle toward the training track. Between the road and the track were two white fences. The Aston-Martin couldn’t jump the fences, so it did the next best thing: went straight through them.

At the same moment Roy caught a glimpse of yet another horse racing across the field a hundred feet away, just as Aqueduct appeared about to fall on Roy like a wall of bricks.

Roy fired. In that split second between intent and execution, Nell vaulted from the horse, and like a kid playing leapfrog, slid over Aqueduct’s head and down in front of him. The first shot caught her on the way down, the second as she hit the ground.

Then Roy got off two shots at the driver-was he seeing right?-of the Aston-Martin. Danny Ryder was out of the car and running toward them; Criminal Type jumped the wooden fence around the course and without even slowing, Vernon sprang from the saddle and fell on Roy Diamond, yelling.

Fear is no match for fury in a fight. Vernon wrenched the gun away and pushed it against Roy’s temple. Whether he would have fired or not was a moot question as he didn’t get the chance. Danny Ryder slid across the track, grabbed the gun-holding hand and knocked the gun from Vernon’s grip. Then he tossed it-at the ground, the sky, the past-while Vernon was up and running to where Nell lay as if Aqueduct had thrown her. The horse stood with neck bent, its muzzle wandering over her.

Carefully, Vernon wedged his arm behind her and lifted her as if she were a bunch of broken lily stalks-that pale hair, that translucent face. His hand on her ribs felt the soaking wetness of blood. “Nellie!”

She gazed at him and managed two syllables: “Remem-?”

It was then that Roy Diamond’s fourth bad moment arrived full force. Too late for Nell but in plenty of time to see Roy in hell, the four men piled out of the police car and the Bentley and made a rush toward the others. Seeing Dan Ryder, Arthur and Roger stopped dead. Danny looked and turned away in tears.

Jury and Wiggins ran to where Roy Diamond, who clearly saw the vanity of mounting his horse and trying to run, stood with his back to Nell. “Oh, no,” whispered Wiggins.

Jury knelt by Vernon and put two useless fingers against what should have been the pulse in her neck. Then he rose and moved like a glacier to where Diamond was standing.

Roy said, broken-voiced but in fear, not sorrow: “I wasn’t aiming at her!”

Jury grabbed one arm in a vise, scooped the gun from the dirt and pulled Roy away toward the house. Wiggins gripped the other arm, and between them, they pulled the man along. Roy wasn’t helping the process.

“I was only trying to keep the damned horse from stomping me; I can’t help it if she threw herself in front of the goddamned horse.”

They were going through the back door of the house. Melrose and Danny Ryder were keeping up.

“Why’d she do that?” yelled Roy. “Why would she throw herself-my God, man, it was only a horse!”

That was simply too much for Wiggins, who kicked the door shut in Melrose’s face, brought his raised knee around and shoved it into Roy Diamond’s front, pushing out what sounded-uph-like the last breath of the man’s life.

“Wiggins,” said Jury.

Wiggins took the ballast of his knee away and Roy slid down the wall.

Jury grabbed Roy by his shirt collar and pulled him back to his feet. He slammed Roy against the wall.

“Sir-” said Wiggins.

“You had your turn,” Jury said over his shoulder. Then he shoved his face into Roy’s. They could have breathed with each other’s breath. “Now, you listen to me, you hopeless piece of shit-”

“Sir-”

“-it would take me one second to crush you a lot harder than that horse.” To demonstrate, Jury pulled Roy’s head away from the wall and slammed it back hard enough to crack plaster. “I’m an off-duty cop and this is a personal dispute, see, and it would take no effort at all for me to drop you where you stand-”

Wiggins gripped Jury’s arm. “Sir! You can’t-”

Jury shook off Wiggins’s hand and continued what he was saying in a sibilant whisper as he shoved the muzzle of Roy’s gun against his temple. “My sergeant here is worried about police procedure, but me, I don’t give a flying fuck for procedure.” He pulled Roy away from the wall again and banged him back again. “Do you know what keeps me from blowing you away, Roy? I mean, right now, Roy? Your daughter. That’s all. Your dead daughter.” Then Jury pulled him away from the wall and nearly threw him at Wiggins. “Charge him and take him to the car.”

“Which charge?” Wiggins called to Jury’s retreating back.

“Resisting arrest.”

As Jury walked out of the house, he heard the double note of a police vehicle in the distance. Someone had had the presence of mind, probably Melrose Plant, to call Cambridge.

The others seemed to have scattered to the winds, as if they crewed a little boat that was rudderless or no longer anchored. Melrose Plant leaned against a tree, smoking and looking at Jury. Danny Ryder leaned against his car. When Jury walked up to him, all Danny could do was shake his head and say, “Christ, but I’m sorry. Sara told me about Maurice this morning; I jumped in my car and drove without stopping. When I got to Dad’s, Neil Epp told me what had happened, how all of you had raced over here. I knew it was bad news. I knew it had to be this fucker, Diamond, you were looking for.” He ran the side of his hand over his eyes. “One minute, two-if I could’ve made it a minute sooner-”

“It’s always a minute, Danny. There was nothing you could do. But you saved Vernon Rice from blowing that bastard’s bloody head off.”

Then he walked over to the course where Arthur and Roger Ryder were leaning against the fence, staring at the ground where a dozen feet away, Vernon was still holding Nell. The depth of their despair was so awful it paralyzed them; they seemed unable to go to where Nell was. Jury couldn’t think of a thing to say. Not a word. He searched his mind for some words of consolation and couldn’t find one. What bloody good was language when it failed you at every important juncture? Looking over at Aqueduct, who stood stock-still by the fence, he thought, It’s as hard for me as it is for you, boy.

He walked over to where Nell lay and knelt down and put his hand on Vernon’s shoulder. Vernon looked at him out of eyes that looked gutted by fire.

The sirens were close now, and there was more than one.

Vernon swallowed hard. “All she tried to say was, ‘Remember.’ ”

That, thought Jury, was the word.

SIXTY

Still with his coat on, Jury stood against the wall in one of the interview rooms of the Cambridge station, looking at Roy Diamond. DCI Greene sat at the table across from Diamond.

“Six witnesses. We have you for both murder and attempted murder. You’ll never talk your way out of this; it just won’t happen.”

Diamond had regained his cool manner, and said, “If that’s the case, why are we talking?”

Greene tipped his chair back, looked at Jury. He had told Jury he was welcome to sit in on the questioning of Roy Diamond. Diamond’s smooth manner grated on Jury’s nerves, but he said nothing.

“I can tell you one thing, Inspector,” said Diamond. “I’m putting in a complaint to the chief constable about being roughed up.” He nodded his head toward Jury.

“Pity,” said Greene, tonelessly.

“And the commissioner,” Diamond added, “is a friend of mine.”

Jury thought that if the bastard was playing the friends-in-high-places card, Diamond wasn’t as sure of his “self-defense” defense as he wanted them to think. He came away from the wall and moved closer to the table. Diamond inadvertently tilted backward.

“Why are we talking? That was your question, wasn’t it?” Jury put his hands on the table, leaned toward Diamond and said, in a voice he managed to keep soft, “We’re talking because we want to know the rest of it.”

Roy Diamond’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “All I know is what I’ve already told you. All I know is what happened two hours ago: Nell Ryder jumped her horse over the fence at my training track and launched herself at me. That horse came toward me like an express train. Then the car comes at me, then the second horse. What choice did I have? I can only say I’m lucky to have had the hand-gun with me. It was clearly self-defense.”

Jury’s laugh was a bark. Of course, Diamond’s solicitor would take that tack, unless he flew a kite of diminished responsibility.

Greene said, “We’ve got Billy Finn in another room, Roy. We’ll have the motive sorted, no sweat.”

Diamond said, “Well, you can ascribe any motive you want to what I’ve allegedly done; the trouble is that you don’t have any evidence”-he leaned over the table-“because there isn’t any.”

“There will be,” said Jury. “And another thing, what about this sideline of yours, the mares Valerie Hobbs kept on her farm? That is your operation, isn’t it?”

“Yes. The operation is not illegal, as you very well know. Those mares belong to me, Superintendent. They’re my property.”

“Not any longer, they’re not. You’ll be compensated, not to worry. But I’d really like to know where you were going with this. Because it’s my understanding an American pharmaceutical company named Wyeth has a patent on this mare’s-urine estrogen drug.”

“They won’t have it forever. The patent is going to run out some time around the turn of the century, 2001 or 2. No, my operation is by way of being experimental. I want to see if a drug can be produced that doesn’t have to go through a hundred steps to get that end product. Be cheaper to market it.”

“How? How are you-or were you-going to see this?”

“I’ve several chemists working for me. I’ve a small plant in the Marquesas. It’s temporary, of course. But I have three chemists, an accountant, an investment banker and a lawyer assigned exclusively to this operation. To actually grab some of the market we’d need thousands of horses, such as are on those farms in Canada. And I could hardly organize that in this country, could I? Not on my land, certainly. No place secluded enough.”

“Accountant, banker, lawyer. Sounds like paradise, take away the island,” said Barry Greene.

“What the hell are you holding over these people’s heads, Roy? What do you know about Valerie Hobbs to have made her implicate herself?”

Roy expelled a narrow stream of smoke. “Enough.”

Wiggins had been dispatched in the company of the crime-scene fingerprint expert to examine the room at the top of the stairs used by Nell Ryder.

“They covered all that pretty thoroughly,” said Wiggins, “when they took Valerie Hobbs into custody. Certainly went over it for prints.”

“I know,” said Jury. “I’ve seen the results. But I’m especially interested in the bed. They lifted prints from the bed frame and the head. But since it’s an old brass bed, it has metal bars. I don’t think they lifted any from the bars. It’s those I’m interested in, not just the single print, either; there should be an entire set”-Jury’s fingers moved as if they were locking around a bar-“and I think you’ll find them.”

That had been an hour ago.

Jury wished he had a cigarette; all he had was a pack of gum. He was standing with his back against the wall again (and recognizing the aptness of that metaphor), listening to Roy Diamond smoothly answering the questions of Barry Greene. Where was the man’s lawyer? Hadn’t Diamond said he wouldn’t answer any more questions without the solicitor’s being present? The man was so sure he could sidestep any trap that the police might set that he kept right on going.

“Billy Finn doesn’t know anything. He’s my best jockey. What has he allegedly done?”

“Allegedly,” said Greene, “abducted Nell Ryder twenty months ago and dropped her off at Hobbs stud.”

Diamond snorted. “That’s ridiculous.”

Jury excused himself.

Roy Diamond said again he would answer no more questions.

Detective Sergeant Styles, marginally less frosty toward Jury given the events of that afternoon, in response to Jury’s asking if he could speak to Billy Finn, turned up his hands and said, “If Greene says yes, be my guest. I’m getting sod-all from him. I’m going for a cuppa, me.” He left.

Jury had watched Billy Finn when they brought him in on the heels of Roy Diamond. He’d heard Billy being questioned. He did not himself think Billy had been the one to take Nell from the stable that May night.

Since he had no cigarettes, Jury offered Billy Finn a stick of gum. Billy took it.

“Look, Billy, no one in bloody hell could remember where he was on a night in May twenty months ago. I’m not setting any store by an alibi. The reason for pulling you in is that shirt, the silks, the colors of Diamond’s stables. Your silks being what Nell Ryder took a knife to.”

Billy half rose in protest. Jury waved him down. “I know-there are a half dozen jockeys who might have worn those colors over the time they rode for Diamond. It’s not necessarily the shirt itself. It’s the pattern, Billy. The diamond pattern that sent Nell ballistic. That must be what she remembered, what suddenly came into her mind. Now, there were two things she was sure of: that the person who took her was small and that he took her by way of those walls. You’re a flat racer, aren’t you, Billy?”

Billy nodded, intrigued in spite of himself, Jury’s manner having enough of a calming effect that he could forget why he was there long enough to be interested in the story.

“I think what we’re looking for is a jump jockey. Those walls aren’t easy; I don’t think a rider would choose those walls to get himself over unless he knew he was a damned good jumper.

“Strictly speaking, of course, the fellow doesn’t even have to be someone who rides for Diamond. It just seems more likely that it would be. To narrow it down even more, someone who is enough of a low-life to abduct a girl for pay, or someone who’s into Roy Diamond for a lot. Someone who owes him. You know what I mean.”

Billy nodded, chewing the gum furiously. “There’s a guy, a jockey, Trevor-what’s his last name? Trevor-bloody damn-he rode Dusty Answer in the Grand National last year. Trevor Gwyne, that’s it, Trevor Gwyne. Never did like him. He’s known for trying to unseat other riders; I think he was up before the Jockey Club a couple times and got suspended for a year. Anyway, I know Gwyne’s a gambler and I know Roy’s bailed him out a couple times. For big money. You may want to talk to him, right?”

Jury had been sitting on the table, close to Billy, and got up. “Absolutely. Thanks, Billy.”

“Listen, do I get to leave? Tonight, I mean?”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. I’ll have a word.”

At that, Billy almost relaxed.

Jury left the room and saw Wiggins coming down the hall. When he saw Jury, he waved whatever he was holding in his hand. “You were right.”

“In here, Wiggins.” They went into an empty room furnished like the others with table and folding chairs. Wiggins put down the fingerprint cards. “You were right; they hadn’t tried to lift prints from the metal bars. Here, these are Roy Diamond’s prints, and the configuration pretty obviously shows he grabbed on to the bar. Well, you can see here-” Wiggins pointed them out, though they needed no pointing, the prints of four fingers, the fourth, the pinky, slightly smudged. One under the other, clearly indicating the hand had been wrapped round the bar. The second shot was from a slightly different angle.

“They’re his, all right.”

There was no thumb print, but that was probably because the thumb would have overlapped the index finger when the hand wrapped the bar.

“This is good, Wiggins, very good.”

Barry Greene was coming out of the room where Roy Diamond still sat, telling the constable to go in. He then walked to where Jury stood. “Right bastard, that one is.”

Jury showed him the photos.

“Excellent. Of course you know what his solicitor will make of this lot.”

“Well, he’s not here yet and Diamond is so bloody sure of himself-it’s worth a try.”

They entered the room again and Greene told the PC he could leave. Then Greene spread the photos in front of Diamond. “It would appear, Roy, that you’d been getting up to something in this bed. Nell Ryder’s bed, I mean. But you remember, you must. In the throes of passion you grabbed on to the bars, apparently.”

Roy Diamond looked at the fingerprint cards and his complexion changed to mottled red, which slowly leaked out, leaving his face almost sheet white.

Gotcha! thought Jury.

Roy opened his mouth to say something just as the door seemed to spring open in its hurry to indulge the hand that pushed it.

A voice behind Jury said, “That’s all, folks. One more word and I’ll do my Woody Woodpecker impersonation.”

Roy Diamond’s solicitor came through the door looking as accommodating as razor wire.

Jury knew that voice. He turned to its source. It was Charly Moss. No!

Yes. “Superintendent Richard Jury! See? I remember.” The hand she held out to shake his was crisp and cold.

He took it in his warmer one. “Hello, Charly.”

“It’s been a long time. It’s been since that trial in Lincolnshire. Remember?”

As if he could forget.

But she looked at him as if he must have. “So.” Charly Moss slung her briefcase on the table, perhaps announcing her confidence in the knowledge that whatever she had was better than whatever they had. “Now.” She literally rolled up the sleeves of her copper-brown sweater, the exact shade of her hair. “How much to-and-froing has been going on here since my client requested an attorney?”

Greene said, “Very little.”

“That’s good. That means there’ll be very little which will be inadmissible as evidence, right?” She looked down. “Ah! Fingerprints! How unappreciated they will be.”

“But they’re-”

“Be quiet, Roy.” She gestured toward the pictures, cocked her head with a “please explain” expression.

“Your client,” said Barry Greene, “is being accused of kidnapping, rape and murder-just to name a few things.” He tapped one of the photos. “These belong to the rape charge.”

“I see.” Charly, who was still standing, bent over the picture. “Hm. The fatal bed, is that it?”

Jury said, trying to control his anger, “She would have found it so.” He shoved the photo of a dead Nell Ryder directly under her eyes and looked stonily at Charly Moss.

“This is terrible. The poor girl,” Charly said, looking downcast.

Jury knew there was no reason to question her sincerity, but sincerity didn’t mix with the evidence in the case.

“Only, it doesn’t mean that Mr. Diamond here shared the bed. At least not with Nell Ryder. I can give you a couple of alternatives off the top of my head: he was in the bed at some point, perhaps by himself, perhaps with”-Charly pressed on the briefcase’s silver catches and it opened like a trap sprung. She pulled out a notebook and ran her finger down one page-“with the attractive Valerie Hobbs-”

Charly Moss had not breezed in unprepared.

“-or he could have been looking for something that dropped behind the mattress or the bed, reaching down-” She held one arm up, hand grabbing at an imaginary bar. “I could go on…”

Please don’t, thought Jury. A cold finger touched his spine.

Charly looked from Greene to Jury. “Is this your evidence, then?”

“Thus far, yes.” Greene said coolly. “We’re still gathering it. We have witnesses to this shooting, of course.”

“Of course. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to my client.” She smiled.

Jury had been a sucker for that smile the first time he’d met her. One of his favorite memories was of Charly and Melrose sitting on stools in that pub in Lincoln singing a drunken duet. He himself hadn’t been in a good mood.

“I’ll be talking to you, then,” said Greene.

Jury said nothing.

Outside, Greene asked about her. He said, “She seemed to make you nervous, and I suspect that’s hard to do. Have you seen her in action, then?”

“To tell the truth, Barry, it’s not Charly Moss that worries me-not that she’s not capable of blindsiding us. What worries me is who she’s briefing.”

Barry Greene frowned: “The barrister, you mean?” Jury nodded.

Melrose was at first delighted. “Charly Moss! How-” The smile faded. “Oh, God. She’s not briefing Pete Apted, is she?”

They were sitting in the Bentley; Jury slid down in the seat. “I was afraid to ask.”

“It could be someone else, you know. It could be she’s taking this on her own. More and more solicitors are doing that these days. She’s certainly good enough.”

Jury shook his head.

“But look at it another way: you don’t know Apted would take the case. Indeed, you don’t even know she’ll recommend it. Lawyers aren’t all without conscience.”

“They aren’t?”

Melrose laughed and aimed the Bentley into the night traffic.

SIXTY-ONE

They buried her next to Maurice in a small churchyard a mile from the stud farm. Very few people attended beyond the family-George Davison, Neil Epp and several stable lads.

The funeral took place five days after Maurice’s and a week after Nell died, the delay caused by the autopsy required in the case of a violent death, or an unexplained death or a death by misadventure. Nell’s had certainly been by misadventure. Jury couldn’t abide the thought of the Ryder family having to wait longer than that, as if they would for days be staring down into an unfilled grave, existing in that limbo of grief that has no end in sight. The end of grief would always be out of sight, but at least the ritual would help to confine it.

The problem was that the police pathologist simply had too much on his plate to do the postmortem immediately. Jury asked Barry Greene if he could possibly allow him to bring in someone he knew from the MPD and Greene got that permission for him.

When Jury rang Dr. Nancy and explained the problem, he said, “Listen, I know it’s what you hear once a day-it’s too hard on the deceased’s relations to have to wait…”

“You’re right there, except I hear it twice a day.” She paused. Then she said, “With good cause.” She paused again. “I can be there tomorrow afternoon, say around four. Okay?”

“I can’t thank you enough-”

“It’s all right, Richard. I’m not all that busy.”

Which he knew was a total lie.

“But you can buy me a drink after.”

“Phyllis, I’ll buy you the pub.”

“Oh, good. I can quit my day job.”

Dr. Nancy arrived exactly when she said she would-four p.m. the next day. Phyllis Nancy was legendary for (among other things, such as her fiery hair) her promptness, a quality hard to find in the Met, simply because time couldn’t be dealt out the way it could in other walks of life. If Dr. Nancy said four, she was there by four. In the field of police work, understandably chaotic, she offered a sense of respite, even of sanctuary. She had once told Jury that years before she had shown up an hour late at a crime scene. The detective in charge had told her, when she was apologizing, “Hell, that’s all right, Doc. The dead can wait.” She had told him, “How would you know?”

They gathered-Jury, Barry Greene and Phyllis Nancy-in the cool room with its permanent smell of blood that couldn’t be washed or mopped away, where a mortician stood over the plastic-sheeted body of Nell Ryder. Wearing a lab coat and a plastic apron, Dr. Nancy looked down and shook her head. “Poor child. What a dreadful waste.” Then she turned on the recording device supplied her into which she would speak her findings.

DCI Greene stayed; Jury left. He had observed a number of postmortems before, but they couldn’t have paid or promised him enough to stay and watch this one. He waited outside in the silent corridor. It was less than an hour later when Phyllis Nancy called him back. Barry Greene smiled ruefully and looked a bit bilious and left. Dr. Nancy told Jury she’d found nothing that would come as a surprise. One bullet had entered the abdomen, gone through the liver, ricocheted off the pelvic bone, gone through the stomach, hit a vertebra and lodged in an abdominal muscle. The course of the second bullet was less complicated; it had entered the chest wall, gone through the lung, nicked the esophagus and gone out the back.

“She would have died instantly,” she said. “The bullet-.38 caliber, but you know that-messed up everything in its path.”

Jury said nothing.

“I’m sorry, Richard.” She seemed to think a greater show of concern was necessary and went on. “The trajectory was upward. The girl was on a horse, you said, and moving, which might account for the erratic path of the bullet. Was the horse running, or something?”

“No. Not at that point.”

“But she was moving.”

“Yes.”

“Jumping off?”

“Yes.”

Phyllis Nancy frowned. “I wouldn’t think a movement to the side-you know, as happens when one dismounts-would account for the path of the shot.”

“Nell didn’t exactly dismount. She pretty much vaulted over the horse’s head.”

“But that would have put her directly in the path of the bullet and given the shooter a straight-on target.”

“If she hadn’t done, the bullet would have hit the horse, probably killed him.”

Dr. Nancy just looked at him.

“His name is Aqueduct.”

It sounded so much like an introduction, Phyllis smiled. “Aqueduct is one lucky horse.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

Taking off her apron, much like any woman who’d finished up in the kitchen, she said, “Where’s this pub you’re buying me? I’d like to hear the half of it.”

They walked down the street to the Cricketer’s Arms.

Jury told her the all of it.

They had watched the coffin lowered into the ground beneath a sky that should have looked like lead, heavy enough to fall and kill; instead it was a piercing, traitorous blue. When the short service was over, people dispersed, wandered off in different directions to their cars.

Wiggins said he’d wait in the car for him, then changed his mind and decided to go in for the cup of tea Arthur Ryder had insisted he have. Jury saw Vernon Rice head in the direction of the meadow, probably to oversee the mares.

Jury started to follow him, but stopped at the stables when he saw Danny Ryder.

Danny was standing by Beautiful Dreamer’s stall. “I went to see Sara. She’s not in a good way.”

“I wouldn’t be either, Danny, if I were looking at a twenty-year sentence.”

There had been a plea bargain. Crime passionale had been put forth briefly by the defense and just as briefly considered. Second-degree murder had been found to be slightly more acceptable, and it had in this case carried a twenty-year price tag. It was a gift, considering the shooting of Simone Ryder had been a perfectly cold-blooded and planned-however briefly-murder.

“Remind me to get her lawyer if I ever go that route,” Danny said, with an acidic laugh.

Jury smiled slightly. They had moved down the line to Criminal Type’s stall. Jury wondered if the horses, in Danny’s line of work, provided a comfort. “What route are you going to go, short of that?”

Since the insurance firm hadn’t had to pay out the whopping sum, he hadn’t been charged with fraud. “What with me being alive, and all.” Danny’s solicitor had come up with a partial amnesia (“First time I ever heard that one”) and the firm was perfectly happy to let it lie.

He said to Jury, “What in hell Simone was visiting Dad for, I can’t imagine. But that’s where she was going when she left the pub, to hire a car and go to Cambridgeshire, and she hoped she could find the stud farm. There were so many, weren’t there? So Sara said she wouldn’t mind seeing Arthur Ryder, too. It had been so long. And she knew where the place was.”

Jury asked, “Was it the same gun, the same.22 you were making a display of?”

“Sorry about that, but yes.” He looked sheepish. “There’s an old road, just before you get to the main drive, and strangers sometimes think it is, then find it dead-ends on the field not far from the training track.”

“Leaving out the question, Why would Sara kill her? Why would Sara kill her there?”

“Well, she couldn’t do it in the Grave Maurice, could she? Anyway, I expect she shot her on the track out of pure malice. Malice, I mean, toward the Ryders. They snubbed her, she claimed. Sara is extremely sensitive to that sort of thing. In other words, she’s completely paranoid. And she thought it was a message to me-you know, since I died at the Auteuil racetrack.”

“Simone-could Simone have been going there to introduce herself? They’d never met.”

“Could be. Except she wasn’t known for her family feeling. There were times I thought she forgot I wasn’t dead.” Danny turned to Jury and looked him squarely, if sadly, in the eye. “Nell dies and I’m by way of being resurrected. Not much of a swap, is it?”

“You tried to save her life, Danny.”

“Tried to just doesn’t cut it, does it?”

It sounded, oddly, like something Nell herself might say. That one could never do enough.

“It does if that’s as close as you can get.”

Danny sighed. “I’ll go in and see Dad and Rog. They’ve had their share of shocks in the last two weeks, I’d say.” He paused. “You asked me what I planned to do next. Well, I mean to get back into racing if I can convince the Board and the Jockey Club I’ve just come out of a two-year-long coma. Maybe I can borrow the ‘partial amnesia’ defense. The last two years haven’t been happy ones. Except for the time I was in the States.” He smiled. “I couldn’t hang around Paris very easily and didn’t much care to go to Dubai. But I’d always wanted to go to Kentucky, Florida-the Derby, the Preakness-the Triple Crown. I love racing over there.” The smile evaporated.

“I’m truly sorry about Maurice, Danny. I really am.”

Danny looked off across the courtyard and up into the impossibly endless blue sky and shook his head. He brought two fingers to his forehead in a small salute. Then he left.

Maurice. That his death was completely accidental Jury believed less and less, especially after Barry Greene brought in Trevor Gwyne. Jury had thought the jockey would have had enough of a fright to go to ground after Roy Diamond had been gathered up by Cambridge police. But apparently, Greene found him in his London house sitting down to a meal.

When Greene had the tape running in the interrogation room, Jury was once again holding up the wall.

Trevor Gwyne, who had either more sense than most or none at all, decided that cooperation would get him further than proclaiming his innocence. This surprised Jury, as the only people who could testify to his guilt were Roy Diamond and Valerie Hobbs and it wasn’t bloody likely they’d be saying anything soon. So it must have been owing to the persuasive powers of Barry Greene that Trevor saw the light. A deal could probably be struck (“Trev”), Barry had said, with the prosecution if Trev helped them out with Roy Diamond.

“Because what I think, Trev,” said Greene, in the softest voice, “I think that the defense could show how Roy Diamond manipulated you because he was holding something over your head. He wasn’t paying you to do this; he blackmailed you into abducting Nell Ryder.”

Trevor said, “Well, but it wasn’t even a proper kidnapping, was it?”

Jury loved that.

“I mean, Roy told me he wanted to talk to her. Nothing else. He said to spray this stuff in her eyes so she wouldn’t see me. She was too surprised even to fight it. Well, she’d just woke up, hadn’t she? I expect I gave her a bit of a fright.”

To say the least. Jury pushed himself away from the wall. All he wanted to do was give this plonker a couple of whacks up the side of the head. But he didn’t. He was here at Greene’s pleasure. And Barry was good, very good.

Barry Greene gave Trevor a sour smile. “Do we have to abduct everyone we just ‘want to talk to’?” No answer. “You’re a jump jockey, aren’t you, Trev?”

Trevor nodded. “You talking about those walls that went across the fields? For me, they weren’t all that bad. I’ve seen worse at Cheltenham. But with that horse, that Aqueduct, those walls were nothing. It was that easy, it really was. He’s one hell of a horse.”

Greene went on. “Why did Valerie Hobbs agree to have Nell Ryder there? That puts the Hobbs woman squarely in the middle of a conspiracy.”

Trevor shrugged. “Don’t know, guv. But I’ll tell you what I think: it’s that Roy Diamond had something on her, just like he had on me. That’s how he works. I tol’ you.” Here Trevor’s hand crept toward Greene’s pack of Marlboros. Greene told him, sure, go ahead. Then he glanced over at Jury, raising his eyebrows in an invitation to ask questions.

Jury said, “Maurice, Trevor. Tell me what he had to do with all this.”

“Poor kid. I swear I’d hate to think-”

Trevor flushed with something Jury imagined was shame-as well he might. But for all of the man’s bad judgment, weakness, selfishness or whatever, that rush of blood to his face set him apart from Roy Diamond. Jury said to him, “Afraid you’ll have to think it, Trevor, hate to or not. I’m almost certain Maurice’s being the delivery boy, in a manner of speaking, had a lot to do with his death. It certainly had everything to do with his guilt. He loved Nell Ryder. He’d never have done anything to harm her. There’s only one person he’d have done something like this for-his father.”

Trevor nodded, took another deep drag of his cigarette. “You’re right there. I told the lad it’s his father that wanted to see Nell, but it couldn’t be there, not at his own place.”

“The thing is, no one knew Dan Ryder was still alive.”

“Roy knew it.”

Jury pulled out a chair and sat down, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “Go on.”

Trevor said, “Let me correct that: it was either Dan or his twin.”

“What was?”

“In the snapshot. An American friend of Roy’s sent him a couple dozen snapshots taken at a racecourse in the States. Florida, Hialeah Park it was. Three of them showed Dan standing at the fence, watching.”

Jury sat back. “A picture can be taken anytime.” “Yeah, right, except Danny’d never been to Florida. But that’s not it; the picture’s dated clear as a pane of glass.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was the race itself, see. You know what a walkover is?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

Trevor seemed by now to have forgotten the fix he was in and was enjoying educating these two cloth-eared coppers in the ways of the racing world. “A walkover is a one-horse race. It only happens when a horse is considered unbeatable by the trainers, so no other horses compete.” Trevor smiled broadly. “Now, how often do you bug-I mean, you police detectives-”

(Jury preferred “buggers.”)

“-think that happens? Not bloody often, I can tell you. But it did a little less than two years ago at Hialeah, with a horse called Affirmation. Probably wanted to make the punters think of Affirmed, and I guess it did. It must have been something to see.” Trevor’s eyes actually filmed over. “A real thrill, that would be. Better than a flying finish. To see a horse that good go round the track by itself with all of that crowd cheering. Anyway, that was the race. First walkover I heard of since Spectacular Bid, back in the eighties. That’s what dated the snapshot; that race was run three months after Danny was supposed to have died.”

“And Roy Diamond knew all of this, that’s what you’re saying? He knew about it for two years and did nothing?”

“What’s to do that would work to Roy’s benefit? Report it to you lot? Sooner tell it to me old gran. No, he had a bargaining point in those pictures.”

“You showed one to Maurice.”

“Two of them. Roy wouldn’t let all three out of his hands. It was just a few days before I took the girl. Early morning, Maurice is at the training track; he always had a gallop after dawn, Roy said. I showed up, watched for a while through my binoculars. He was up on that great horse Samarkand. I wish I’d been around to ride him a decade ago. When Maurice stopped and dismounted and came over to the fence, I told him his father needed to see Nell. Of course, he didn’t believe me, thought I was bonkers. He got pretty mad until I showed him the snapshots.”

“He believed you?”

“Well, he would’ve done, wouldn’t he? He wanted to believe me. There were the snapshots that showed the horse going round the Hialeah course and there was his dad, right by the fence.”

Yes, Jury thought, standing now in the stable, Maurice would have wanted to believe Trevor Gwyne. And when Nell disappeared that night, Maurice knew that something had gone horribly wrong and it could be down to him. The next few days must have been agonizing. For all he knew, Nell might be dead.

Jury remained standing by Criminal Type’s stall, stroking the black face. Blacker than black. Probably the way Maurice had felt. Was Maurice one of those people who feed on guilt, like some mythological prince forced to eat his own heart?

For some reason, Jury thought then of the boy on the train from Cardiff. The winter angel. Maurice’s polar opposite, who could wrap his music round his shoulders like a cloak.

Jury reached into his coat pocket where a few sugar cubes remained from the Little Chef raid. He unwrapped them and held them out to the horse. Criminal Type was not as polite as Aggrieved. He nearly got Jury’s hand into the bargain. But that was the way when you were mobbed up: eat first, ask questions later. Jury smiled and left the stables.

Vernon had gathered thirty of the mares in the meadow and stood watching them, leaning against a post-and-rail fence, his foot hooked on the bottom rail.

He said, when Jury came up to him, “I thought I’d have to round them up, cowboy style, but they just seemed willing to follow one another out to the field.” He pointed at one. “That’s Daisy and Daisy’s foal. Nellie said”-he stopped and cleared his throat-“Nell said that Daisy was a kind of leader. But look at them. They just stand there.” He turned to look at Jury. “Do you think it’s from being tethered in those narrow stalls for so long? But shouldn’t they remember their lives before…?”

His voice trailed off.

The mares were standing in a crescent, a head occasionally bent to look for graze, or a mother nudging at a foal-there were three foals now-but aside from that they stood quite still in that strange half-circle as if indeed they had been lined up there and tied.

“Probably they need a little time to get used to freedom,” said Vernon.

He appeared to Jury to be almost desperate to explain their eerie stillness. Jury said, “Freedom can be hard to get used to, you’re right.”

“And the sky,” said Vernon, looking upward, “is so blue.”

As if the day were a perfect setting for the horses to break away for a gallop, or perhaps as if nature had broken a bargain.

They stood side by side in silence for a long time, not speaking. Then Jury saw one of the foals leave the line and run for several yards, then another foal, and then one of the mares. And after that it was like an ice slide, ice calving, glaciers tumbling into the sea.

At least it seemed to Jury as extraordinary as that. As if someone had actually waved a wand and broken the spell and raised them from their sad and anxious sleep; first one, then another and another of the mares were running, manes and tails flying, running for what was surely joy, pushing the race to its limits.

There would always be a filly like Go for Wand, thought Jury; there would always be a girl to ride her.

Together, they would wire the field.

SIXTY-TWO

The door of Tynedale Lodge was opened by the pretty maid Sarah, whose eyes widened even more when she saw him standing there. His image reflected in her eyes; he could almost see himself shaping up as a hero, which only made him feel more of an idiot. What had he done, after all, for the Tynedales?

“Hello, Sarah. This isn’t an official visit; I came to see how Gemma’s doing. Is she about?”

Sarah’s hand fell away from her hair. “Oh, why, yessir. I mean, I expect she is. I expect she’s out in the garden.”

“Thanks. I’ll just have a look.”

He made his way through the dining room to the study and the French doors that opened off Ian Tynedale’s study. Outside to the left of the patio was a long colonnade, a walk flanked by white pillars. He saw her, as he had seen her before, on the same walk across the garden in which a marble figure stood in a marble pool, pouring water from a marble jug. The path she was on ran parallel to his. A line of tall cypresses bordered it. As they both walked, he felt as he had the first time, that they were somehow woven together. There was a poignant sense of belonging: everything that was there-man, child, statue, pillars, trees-was rightly there.

When they came to the end of their paths and she still didn’t see him, he called, “Gemma!”

She didn’t so much turn as swerve toward him, as a car might do, hoping to ward off a collision. She stood transfixed, as if she were the marble figure in the fountain.

“Gemma-” He walked toward her and then knelt down and kissed her cheek.

She held her doll in one hand and put her other hand on the spot. “You got shot.”

“I did.”

“You didn’t die.”

“No. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

She shook her head.

“Did you think I had?”

Very slowly, still holding her hand against her face, she nodded.

“Come on, let’s sit down.”

Seated with her (the doll Richard between them), Jury thought it was hard to believe no one had told her he was all right. Was it because she hadn’t asked? For Gemma wouldn’t, one of those children who felt so dangerously deeply they could only survive by pretending indifference.

She was feigning it now, adjusting the doll’s bonnet as if that, not Jury’s life or death, was the issue.

He said, “What happened to Richard’s black clothes? I thought he looked quite smart in that coat and hat.”

“He’s being punished!” Her voice went up a decibel, nervously loud.

“He is? But what did he do?”

“He kicked you and yelled at you. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes.”

It was Gemma herself who had used Richard as a club to give Jury several whacks because he’d left her in danger.

“Well, if he hadn’t done that, you probably wouldn’t’ve got shot.”

Jury looked at her solemn, remorseful face, which now gave tremulous signs of dissolving into tears, as if a pebble had been tossed into a pool. No little girl, he thought, should have to exert so much effort in trying not to cry. But from Gemma’s point of view, strong emotion can kill. She had displayed it once-she had cried and yelled-and look at the result: Jury had nearly died.

Jury thought for a moment, then picked up the doll and sighed deeply. “Poor Richard,” he said. “No one understood, did they?”

Her face free of incipient tears, now completely forestalled by this surprising new development, Gemma put her hand on Jury’s arm. “Understood what?”

“Well, Richard helped save me, didn’t he?”

“What? He wasn’t even there.” Remorse was fast giving way to testiness.

“Not the night I was, no. But he’d been there before, when he and Sparky saved you.”

This wasn’t going down a treat. “I did most of the work!”

“I know, but, see, Sparky went back the second time-”

“Christmas night.”

“-because he had found you and Richard there once, he knew it was a place that needed watching. Richard understood that.”

Her frown was deep: a dog and a doll. Jury could almost hear the words chasing around in her mind. Were a dog and a doll enough to keep a person from getting shot? If it was not so, if she had really saved herself, then why hadn’t she saved Jury?

Nope: go with the dog and the doll. “Well, I guess he could have helped even if he wasn’t there. He could’ve been sending messages to Sparky, too. It’s not like us.”

Isn’t it? Jury smiled.

Gemma said to the doll Richard, “I’m sorry. I should’ve understood.” Then she yanked the bonnet down over the doll’s eyes, not altogether pleased with Jury’s solution, as it put her at least a little in the wrong. But in another instant, her face cleared completely.

Jury asked, “Are you going to put his black clothes back on him?”

“Yes.” She sighed. “He gets so bossy when he’s wearing them, though.” Rearranging the bonnet so the doll could see again, she hesitated. “Your name is Richard, too,” wanting to clear this up about the two Richards. “You’re not bossy at all. I wish he was more like you.” She flicked a glance Jury’s way to see if he liked hearing this.

“Thank you. I try not to be. But if I had a set of new black clothes to wear, I might be pretty bossy.”

“No, you wouldn’t. I’ll bet you don’t even boss around the criminals you catch. Probably, you didn’t even boss them.”

He knew who she meant by “them” and tried to track emotion across her face, but it was free of fear, yet not so much she would name their names. “I don’t remember if I did or not. Probably not. I was too upset by what happened to you and Benny.”

“Benny? Nothing happened to Benny!” Not about to share the limelight with Benny, she got annoyed and stood the doll on his head. “Anyway, I’m sorry you got upset over me.”

She said this in the most self-satisfied tone that Jury had ever heard, her mouth crimped like an old lady’s, as she righted Richard and adjusted his gown.

A voice called her: “Gemma!”

Gemma slid off the seat and grabbed Richard. “It’s time for me to read to Mr. Tynedale. You can come.”

“I’d like to, but I’ve got to be getting back.”

“To the Yard?”

“Yes, the Yard.”

“I’m glad you came,” she said before she scooted off.

And then she turned and ran back. She put her hand on the cheek Jury had kissed, removed it and placed it against Jury’s own cheek. It was, he guessed, about as close as she dared come to a kiss. “Bye!”

He stood up and watched her run and skip, skip and run, her black hair gleaming in the frosty winter light. Then he watched the space now empty of her.

Because she almost made me wish she’d disappear, so I could find her.

She was gone. In a moment, so was he.