Come to Grief (11 page)

“Through the yard with all the trash cans?” I asked.

He was comically astounded. I didn’t explain that his aunt had taken me out that way. I said, “Couldn’t it have been a rambler’s Land-Rover?”

He said sullenly, “I don’t know why I bothered to tell you.”

I asked, “What else did you notice about the Land-Rover, except for its color?”

“Nothing. I told you, I was more interested in getting back into the house without anyone spotting me.” .

I thought a bit and said, “How close did you get to it?”

“I touched it. I didn’t see it until I was almost on top of it. Like I told you, I was running along the lane. I was mostly looking at the ground, and it was still almost dark.”

“Was it facing you, or did you run into the back of it?”

“Facing. There was still enough moonlight to reflect off the windshield. That’s what I saw first, the reflection.”

“What part of it did you touch?”

“The hood.” Then he added, as if surprised by the extent of his memory, “It was quite hot.”

“Did you see a number plate?”

“Not a chance. I wasn’t hanging about for things like that.”

“What else did you see?”

“Nothing.”

“How did you know there was no one in the cab? There might have been a couple lying in there snog ging.”

“Well, there wasn’t. I looked through the window.”

“Open or shut window?”

“Open.” He surprised himself again. “I looked in fast, on the way past. No people, just a load of machinery behind the front seats.”

“What sort of machinery?”

“How the eff do I know? It had handles sticking up. Like a lawn mower. I didn’t look. I was in a hurry. I didn’t want to be seen.”

“No,” I agreed. “How about an ignition key?”

“Hey?” It was a protest of hurt feelings. “I didn’t drive it away.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t take every car I see. Not alone, ever.”

“There’s no fun in it if you’re alone?”

“Not so much.”

“So there
was
a key in the ignition?”

“I suppose so. Yeah.”

“Was there one key, or a bunch?”

“Don’t know.”

“Was there a key ring?”

“You don’t ask much!”

“Think, then.”

He said unwillingly, “See, I
notice
ignition keys.”

“Yes.”

“It was a bunch of keys, then. They had a silver horseshoe dangling from them on a little chain. A little horseshoe. Just an ordinary key ring.”

We stared at each other briefly.

He said, “I didn’t think anything of it.”

“No,” I agreed. “You wouldn’t. Well, go back a bit. When you put your hand on the hood, were you looking at the windshield?”

“I must have been.”

“What was on it?”

“Nothing. What do you mean?”

“Did it have a tax disk?”

“It must have done, mustn’t it?” he said.

“Well... did it have anything else? Like, say, a sticker saying ‘Save the Tigers’?”

“No, it didn’t.”

“Shut your eyes and think,” I urged him. “You’re running. You don’t want to be seen. You nearly collide with a Land-Rover. Your face is quite near the windshield—”

“There was a red dragon,” he interrupted. “A red circle with a dragon thing in it. Not very big. One of those sort of transparent transfers that stick to glass.”

“Great,” I said. “Anything else?”

For the first time he gave it concentrated thought, but came up with nothing more.

“I’m nothing to do with the police,” I said, “and I won’t spoil your probation and I won’t give you away to your aunt, but I’d like to write down what you’ve told me, and if you agree that I’ve got it right, will you sign it?”

“Hey. I don’t know. I don’t know why I told you.”

“It might matter a lot. It might not matter at all. But I’d like to find this bugger....” God help me, I thought. I have to.

“So would I.” He meant it. Perhaps there was hope for him yet.

He turned on his heel and went rapidly alone into the house, not wanting to be seen in even semi-reputable company, I assumed. I followed more slowly. Jonathan had not returned to the drawing room, where the tenants still sat stolidly, the difficult old aunt complained about being woken early, the deaf husband said, “Eh?” mechanically at frequent intervals and Betty Bracken sat looking into space. Only the three dogs, now lying down and resting their heads on their front paws, seemed fully sane.

I said to Mrs. Bracken, “Do you by any chance have a typewriter?”

She said incuriously, “There’s one in the office.”

“Er . . .”

“I’ll show you.” She rose and led me to a small, tidy back room containing the bones of communication but an impression of under-use.

“I don’t know how anything works,” Betty Bracken said frankly. “We have a part-time secretary, once a week. Help yourself.”

She left, nodding, and I thanked her, and I found an electric typewriter under a fitted dust cover, plugged ready into the current.

I wrote:

Under another fitted cover I located a copier, so I left the little office with three sheets of paper and went in search of Jonathan, running him to earth eating a haphazard breakfast in the kitchen. He paused over his cereal, spoon in air, while he read what I’d written. Wordlessly, I produced a ball-point pen and held it out to him.

He hesitated, shrugged and signed the first of the papers with loops and a flourish.

“Why
three?”
he asked suspiciously, pushing the copies away.

“One for you,” I said calmly. “One for my records. One for the on-going file of bits and pieces which may eventually catch our villain.”

“Oh.” He considered. “All right, then.” He signed the other two sheets and I gave him one to keep. He seemed quite pleased with his civic-mindedness. He was rereading his edited deposition over his flakes as I left.

Back in the drawing room, looking for her, I asked where Mrs. Bracken had gone. The aunt, the tenants and the deaf husband made no reply.

Negotiating the hinterland passage and the dustbin yard again, I arrived back at the field to see Mrs. Bracken herself, the fence-leaners, the Scots vet and her brother watching the horse ambulance drive into the field and draw up conveniently close to the colt.

The horse ambulance consisted of a narrow, low-slung trailer pulled by a Land-Rover. There was a driver and a groom used to handling sick and injured horses and, with crooning noises from the solicitous Eva, the poor young colt made a painful-looking, head-bobbing stagger up a gentle ramp into the waiting stall.

“Oh
dear,
oh
dear,”
Mrs. Bracken whispered beside me. “My dear, dear young fellow ... how
could
they?”

I shook my head. Rachel Ferns’s pony and four prized colts ... How could
anyone?

The colt was shut into the trailer, the bucket containing the foot was loaded, and the pathetic twelve-mile journey to Lambourn began.

The Scots vet patted Betty Bracken sympathetically on the arm, gave her his best wishes for the colt, claimed his car from the line of vehicles in the lane and drove away.

I unclipped my mobile phone and got through to
The Pump,
who forwarded my call to an irate newspaperman at his home in Surrey.

Kevin Mills yelled, “Where the hell are you? They say all anyone gets on the hotline now is your answering machine, saying you’ call back. About fifty people have phoned. They’re all rambling.”

“Ramblers,” I said.

“What?”

I explained.

“It’s supposed to be my day off,” he grumbled. “Can you meet me in the pub? What time? Five o‘clock?”

“Make it seven,” I suggested.

“It’s no longer a
Pump
exclusive, I suppose you realize?” he demanded. “But save yourself for me alone, will you, buddy? Give me the inside edge?”

“It’s yours.”.

I closed my phone and warned Betty Bracken to expect the media on her doorstep.

“Oh, no!”

“Your colt is one too many.”

“Archie!” She turned to her brother for help with a beseeching gesture of the hand and, as if for the thousandth time in their lives, he responded with comfort and competent solutions.

“My dear Betty,” he said, “if you can’t bear to face the press, simply don’t be here.”

“But . . . ,” she wavered.

“I shouldn’t waste time,” I said.

The brother gave me an appraising glance. He himself was of medium height, lean of body, gray in color, a man to get lost in a crowd. His eyes alone were notable: brown, bright and
aware.
I had an uncomfortable feeling that, far beyond having his sister phone me, he knew a good deal about me.

“We haven’t actually met,” he said to me civilly. “I’m Betty’s brother. I’m Archie Kirk.”

I said, “How do you do,” and I shook his hand.

Betty Bracken, Archie Kirk and I returned to the house, again circumnavigating the trash cans. Archie Kirk’s car was parked outside the manor’s front door, not far from my own.

The lady of the manor refusing to leave without her husband, the uncomprehending old man, still saying “Eh?” was helped with great solicitude across the hall, through the front door and into an ancient Daimler, an Establishment-type conservative-minded political statement if ever I saw one.

My own Mercedes, milk-coffee colored, stood beyond: and what, I thought astringently, was it saying about
me?
Rich enough, sober enough, preferring reliability to flash? All spot on, particularly the last. And speed, of course.

Betty spooned her beloved into the back seat of the Daimler and folded herself in beside him, patting him gently. Touch, I supposed, had replaced speech as their means of communication. Archie Kirk took his place behind the wheel as natural commander-in-chief and drove away, leaving for me the single short parting remark, “Let me know.”

I nodded automatically. Let him know
what?
Whatever I learned, I presumed.

I returned to the drawing room. The stolid tenants, on their feet, were deciding to return to their own wing of the house. The dogs snoozed. The cross aunt crossly demanded Esther’s presence. Esther, on duty at eight and not a moment before, come ramblers, police or whatever, appeared forbiddingly in the doorway, a small, frizzy-haired worker, clear about her “rights.”

I left the two quarrelsome women pitching into each other and went in search of Jonathan. What a household! The media were welcome to it. I looked but couldn’t find Jonathan, so I just had to trust that his boorishness would keep him well away from inquisitive reporters with microphones. The Land-Rover he’d seen might have brought the machete to the colt, and I wanted, if I could, to find it before its driver learned there was a need for rapid concealment.

The first thing in my mind was the colt himself. I started the car and set off north to Lambourn, driving thoughtfully, wondering what was best to do concerning the police. I had had varying experiences with the force, some good, some rotten. They did not, in general, approve of freelance investigators like myself, and could be downright obstructive if I appeared to be working on something they felt belonged to them alone. Sometimes, though, I’d found them willing to take over if I’d come across criminal activity that couldn’t go unprosecuted. I stepped gingerly around their sensitive areas, and also those of racing’s own security services run by the Jockey Club and the British Horseracing Board. I was careful always not to claim credit for clearing up three-pipe problems. Not even one-pipe problems, hardly worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

Where the Jockey Club itself was concerned, I fluctuated in their view between flavor of the month. and anathema, according as to who currently reigned as Senior Steward. With the police, collaboration depended very much on which individual policeman I reached and his private-life stress level at the moment of contact.

The rules governing evidence, moreover, were growing ever stickier. Juries no longer without question believed the police. For an object to be admitted for consideration in a trial it had to be ticketed, docketed and continuously accounted for. One couldn‘t, for instance, flourish a machete and say, “I found it in X’s Land-Rover, therefore it was X who cut off a colt’s foot.” To get even within miles of conviction one needed a specific search warrant before one could even
look
in the Land-Rover for a machete, and search warrants weren’t granted to Sid Halleys, and sometimes not to the police.

The police force as a whole was divided into autonomous districts, like the Thames Valley Police, who solved crimes in their own area but might not take much notice outside. A maimed colt in Lancashire might not have been heard of in Yorkshire. Serial rapists had gone for years uncaught because of the slow flow of information. A serial horse maimer might have no central file.

Dawdling along up the last hill before Lambourn, I became aware of a knocking in the car and pulled over to the side with gloomy thoughts of broken shock absorbers and misplaced trust in reliability, but after the car stopped the knocking continued. With awakening awareness, I climbed out, went around to the back and with difficulty opened the trunk. There was something wrong with the lock.