Comeback (16 page)

She gave me much the same stare that she’d bestowed on her mother.

“I wanted what was best for him,” she said.

And to prove your judgment superior, I thought, but knew better than to say it.

She changed the subject as if to defend her self-esteem from more analysis, and said, “We all want to know who that weird-looking woman is you’ve been talking to all afternoon.”

“We all” being Belinda’s euphemism for “I am consumed by curiosity,” Greg and Vicky looked mystified. They hadn’t noticed Annabel, obviously.

“What woman?” Vicky in fact asked artlessly.

“She works for the Jockey Club,” I said. “She escorts foreign official visitors. Today the visitors are Japanese. I helped her with translation, that’s all.”

“Oh.” Belinda shrugged. “Extraordinary of the Jockey Club to employ someone who dresses like that at the races.”

“Do point her out to me,” Vicky said.

Annabel however stayed out of sight until after the last race, when she came down from above and shepherded her charges towards the exit. She saw me hovering there (I was already keeping Ken and the others waiting) and came to my side with a small-mouthed grin.

“Ronnie Upjohn is that man there ahead of us, the one with the woman in the orange coat.” We walked on together out into the car park, followed by the two Japanese. “I couldn’t talk to him much, he was in and out all the time, and I was stuck with our friends, but he seems fairly ordinary. Dogmatic, of course. He thinks jockeys get away with murder, but who doesn’t?”

“Who doesn’t get away with murder, or who doesn’t think jockeys do?”

“Take your pick.”

We arrived at a big car with a chauffeur waiting to carry away the very important Japanese. I bowed in farewell to the two men, keeping an eye on the departing orange coat.

“Go chase him,” Annabel said, “if you must.”

I smiled at her blue eyes. “I’ll phone you,” I said.

“Do that.”

She followed her charges into the car and closed the door, and without delay I hurried after the orange coat as fast as I could without drawing stares.

The coat stopped beside a large gray car and the man, Ronnie Upjohn, unlocked the car doors. He then opened the trunk, took off his hat, binocular case and overcoat and laid them inside. The orange coat, removed, followed. I had time to arrive and see Upjohn clearly before he folded himself into the car, and when he did, it was into the front passenger seat, not behind the wheel. The orange-coat lady, now in gray with pearls, was the driver.

Ronnie Upjohn was sixtyish and basically unremarkable. I had to tick off features mentally to have any chance of knowing him elsewhere. Hair, gray. Forehead, medium height, lined. Eyebrows, medium bushy. Eyes, slightly drooping at outside edges, lids folded from age. Nose, large, a bit bulbous. Moustache, medium size, brownish. Mouth, firm. Jaw ... I gave up. There wasn’t anything memorable about his jaw. Moreover, he was by then inside the car and could be seen only through glass.

I turned away and started walking towards Ken’s car across the main car park and found him standing with his arms folded, leaning on the car’s roof and watching my antics with astonishment.

“Did you know who you were following?” he asked incredulously. “That was Ronnie Upjohn.”

“I certainly hope so,” I said.

“But why?”

“I wanted to put a face to the name.” I paused. “Apart from acting as a steward, what does he do?”

“Owns a few horses.” Ken thought it over. “He’s something in finance. In an office. I don’t exactly know. He’s semi-retired, I think. No lack of money. Probably inherited money: he has that feel. He’s not overshrewd, I wouldn’t say.”

“He’s doing you no good just now,” I said.

Ken sighed. “No one is.” He stood upright and prepared to get into the car. “And I gave Belinda a right bollocking, and it wasn’t as if I even knew the name of number eight, let alone believed it would win, and I upset her something dreadful and now I’m in the shit.”

I shook my head. “Not really. All you have to do is pat her knee.”

I’d grown accustomed to him looking at me as if I’d taken leave of my senses, but on the drive home he did in fact wordlessly pat Belinda’s knee, and she burst into tears, which resolved the quarrel instantly.

 

 

THAT EVENING, WHEN they’d all gone out, I ate cheese on toast and drank some wine and telephoned my mother.

My parents had long ago set up a system for my calls to them from round the world which was, basically, if I would call, they would pay. I had myself only to get through and give them the number I was speaking from, and they would then call back. That way, I had to pay only for a maximum of three minutes though we might talk for an hour. My father had dryly remarked that it was the only way for them to make sure I was alive.

I counted out the money for three minutes to Mexico City and left it in an envelope by the phone in Thetford Cottage, and in short order, striking lucky, was talking to my mum.

I pictured her on the other end of the line, as beautiful as ever. She’d always had what I had grown to recognize as style, an inborn quality that had made the transition from efficient secretary to ambassador’s wife look simple, a deserved progression. I listened with a familiar sense of security to her light voice, elegant and very young, ageless.

“Wynn Lees?” she repeated in disbelief after she’d phoned back. “Why on earth do you want to know about Wynn Lees?”

Explaining took a fair amount of her money and left her both amused and alarmed.

“It’s fascinating you’ve got to know Ken McClure, but you seriously don’t want to get mixed up with Wynn Lees, darling. He won’t have changed his spots.”

“Yes, but
why?”
I asked. “What did he do that was so awful?”

“Heavens, it was all so long ago.”

“But you used to tell me that if I didn’t mend my ways I’d grow up like Wynn Lees, as if it was the worst fate in the world, and all I can dredge up about him is a vague impression that he went to prison.”

“Yes, he certainly did.”

“Well, what for?”

“For cruelty to horses.”

“For
what?”
I was stunned.

“The first time, it was for cruelty to horses. It happened long before you were born, when Wynn Lees was about twenty, I suppose. He and another youth cut off a horse’s tongue. I think they did it about six times before they were caught. I didn’t know about it until we moved to Cheltenham, and by that time Wynn Lees was over thirty and had been to prison again, but the second time was for fighting. Good heavens, I haven’t thought about this for years. He was a horrible man. He used to come to the office sometimes because at that time he lived on the far side of the racecourse, though he went off to somewhere like Australia afterwards. He used to complain about the boundary fencing and I couldn’t stand him. He’d be talking about wire and all I could think about were those horses dying because they’d had their tongues cut out. People used to say he’d paid for it and it was wild oats and all in the past, but I think people’s pasts are
them,
and if it was in him to do that at twenty it’s still in him at fifty or sixty, even if he wouldn’t actually do it now, if you see what I mean. So if he’s back in England, don’t cross him, darling, just don’t.”

“I’ll try not to,” I promised. “Who did he fight?”

“What? Oh . . . gracious ... I can’t remember. He’d not long come out of prison when we arrived in Cheltenham. You couldn’t work on the racecourse without hearing about him all the time. Let me think ... Oh yes!” She chuckled suddenly. “It wasn’t just for fighting. He’d attacked some man with a rivet gun and shot staples into him through his jeans. Stapled the jeans to the man. It sounds funny now but I think he’d accused the man of laying his girlfriend behind his back and he was making sure he wouldn’t be able to take his trousers down again.”

“For God’s sake!”

“Mm. I do remember now. The man with the staples in him had to go to hospital to get them taken out and they were mostly in the most painful of places, it was said, and touch and go whether he’d ever lay anyone again, let alone Wynn Lees’s girlfriend.”

“Why didn’t I ever hear about this?”

“Well, darling, you may have done but not from me. I wouldn’t have told you. You were a baby at the time of the stapling. I can tell you though that you didn’t like Wynn Lees at all. You used to hide if he came into the office if you were there. It was absolutely instinctive. You couldn’t bear him. So I used him as a bogey-man without frightening you with what he’d actually done. I thought that the cutting off of horses’ tongues would give you nightmares. I certainly wouldn’t tell any child something like that even now, though no child grows up these days without knowing the world is full of horrors.”

“Thank you for not telling me,” I said. “I’d have hated it.”

“You’re a fairly rewarding child, now and then.”

Pat pat on the back. And why not? We’d always been friends.

“OK,” I said, “let me try you with some more names. How about Ronnie Upjohn?”

“Upjohn . . .” Her voice was negative, without recognition.

“Upjohn and Travers,” I said. “Who were Upjohn and Travers?”

“My darling, I haven’t a clue. You were at school with a boy called Travers. That’s what you used to call him, Travers, which was his surname. He used to come and play with you sometimes. His mother bred Siamese cats.”

“I don’t remember him.”

“It’s a long time ago. A world away.”

“I’m here in it now, in that world.”

“So you are. Isn’t it odd?”

“Yes,” I agreed slowly. “It is.”

“Who else have you met? Anyone else?”

“J. Rolls Eaglewood. The same man, but old and with a walking stick.”

“J. Rolls!” She laughed. “I don’t suppose you remember Russet.”

“No panties,” I said.

“That’s just the sort of thing you would remember.”

“I remember Jimmy being killed.”

“Poor boy. A nice kid.”

“J. Rolls has a touch of the tyrants,” I said.

“Always had. Ruled his yard like iron, and our village too. So the old monster’s still training.... He would never hear a word against Russet. He sacked his jockey just for laughing at a joke someone made about her. There was the heck of a fuss. What happened to Russet?”

“I don’t know yet. There’s a granddaughter now, called Izzy. She was Ken McClure’s girlfriend for a while.” I paused. “Mum, did you ever know why Kenny McClure killed himself?”

After a brief silence she said, “Depression, I suppose. It was a dreadful shock at the time. He was always popular. He used to take you round the course in his jeep. I never believed the rumors.”

“What rumors?”

“Something to do with drugs. With ordering the wrong drugs. Some dreadful drug. That’s all it was, a rumor. People trying to explain why he would kill himself when he was so well liked, and a good vet. It was really upsetting.”

“How did he kill himself?”

“Shotgun. Blew his head to pieces. Darling, don’t make me remember, it made me feel ill for days at the time. Just thinking about it now brings it all back.”

“Sorry.”

The strength of her reaction surprised me. I’d never speculated about her love life because as far as I knew it was nonexistent between husbands. But at twenty-something, a widow and as striking as her photos bore witness, she must, as I now saw, have been at least ready and available for love. She’d been actively waiting, I thought, for a John Darwin.

Always alarmingly able to interpret my silences, my perceptive mother said, “Kenny was married. It wasn’t right for him to leave his wife and children. We both agreed on that. So it didn’t last very long. It was over years before he killed himself. I saw him often, but we were just friends. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“I think so, yes.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t tell your friend Ken.”

I smiled down the wire. “OK, I won’t.”

“He was a nice man, darling.”

“I trust your judgment.”

“You know,” she said tentatively, “if you can help Ken in his troubles, it would be sort of fitting. Don’t let him do what his father did. I would have given anything to know what was troubling Kenny ... to have stopped him. But he never told me . . . we were no longer so close ... so help his son for me and Kenny, will you?”

I was extraordinarily moved. Parents were full of the most amazing surprises.

“I will help him,” I promised, “if I can.”

 

 

I WENT ALONG to the hospital at eight the next day determined to dig everything I could out of Ken, but instead of a quiet private chat early on a Sunday morning I found the whole place seething with activity.

A police barrier denied entry to the rear car park, which was itself full of police cars, with and without flashing lights.

An arm of the law also prevented my entry on foot. Across the tarmac I could see Carey Hewett in his by-now familiar state of distress. I’d never seen him otherwise. Ken, in the same group, showed strain in every muscle.

“You can’t go in, sir,” the law said.

I shouted “Ken!” which he heard. He lifted his head, waved and walked over.

“God knows what’s happening,” he said. “The fire service were apparently here all day yesterday with the insurance people, sifting through the mess looking for absolute proof of arson.”

“And did they find it?”

“They didn’t say. But what they did find was a
body.”

 

 

 

 

W
hose body?” I asked automatically.

“No one knows,” Ken said. “Carey’s just got here, a minute after I did.”

We talked across the barrier, the policeman saying that I, as an unauthorized person, couldn’t be let in.