‘Good of you,’ Oliver said, hiding emotion behind his clipped martial manner.
‘Frankly,’ I said, ‘you’re more use to us salvaged than bust.’
He smiled wryly. ‘A banker to the last drop of blood.’
Because of stairs being difficult I slept on the sofa where Ginnie had dozed on her last afternoon, and I dreamed of her walking up a path towards me looking happy. Not a significant dream, but an awakening of fresh regret. I spent a good deal of the following day thinking of her instead of concentrating on profit and loss.
In the evening Ursula telephoned with triumph in her strong voice and also a continual undercurrent of amazement.
‘You won’t believe it,’ she said, ‘but I’ve already found three racing stables in Newmarket where he worked last summer and autumn, and in every case one of the horses in the yard fell sick!’
I hadn’t any trouble at all with belief and asked what sort of sickness.
‘They all had crystalluria. That’s crystals...’
‘I know what it is,’ I said.
‘And... it’s absolutely incredible... but all three were in stables which had in the past sent horses to Calder Jackson, and these were sent as well, and he cured them straight away. Two of the trainers said they would swear by Calder, he had cured horses for them for years.’
‘Was the lad called Shane?’ I asked.
‘No. Bret. Bret Williams. The same in all three places.’
She dictated the addresses of the stables, the names of the trainers, and the dates (approximate) when Shane — Jason — Bret had been in their yards.
‘These lads just come and go,’ she said. ‘He didn’t work for any of them for as long as a month. Just didn’t turn up one morning. It happens all the time.’
‘You’re marvellous,’ I said.
‘I have a feeling,’ she said with less excitement, ‘that what I’m telling you is what you expected to hear.’
‘Hoped.’
‘The implications are unbelievable.’
‘Believe them.’
‘But Calder,’ she protested. ‘He couldn’t...’
‘Shane worked for Calder,’ I said. ‘All the time. Permanently. Wherever he went, it was to manufacture patients tor Calder.’
She was silent so long that in the end I said ‘Ursula?’
‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to go on with the photos?’
‘Yes, if you would. To find him.’
‘Hanging’s too good for him,’ she said grimly. ‘I’ll do what I can.’
She disconnected, and I told Oliver what she’d said.
‘Bret Williams? He was Shane Williams here.’
‘How did you come to employ him?’ I asked.
Oliver frowned, looking back. ‘Good lads aren’t that easy to find, you know. You can advertise until you’re blue in the face and only get third- or fourth-rate applicants. But Nigel said Shane impressed him at the interview and that we should give him a month’s trial, and of course after that we kept him on, and took him back gladly this year when he telephoned asking, because he was quick and competent and knew the job backwards, and was polite and a good time-keeper...’
‘A paragon,’ I said dryly.
‘As lads go, yes.’
I nodded. He would have to have been good; to have taken pride in his deception, with the devotion of all traitors. I considered those fancy names and thought that he must have seen himself as a sort of macho hero, the great foreign agent playing out his fantasies in the day to day tasks, feeling superior to his employers while he tricked them with contempt.
He could have filled the hollowed cores of apples with capsules, and taken a bite or two round the outside to convince, and fed what looked like remainders to his victims. No one would ever have suspected, because suspicion was impossible.
I slept again on the sofa and the following morning Oliver telephoned to Detective Chief Inspector Wyfold and asked him to come to the farm. Wyfold needed persuading; reluctantly agreed; and nearly walked out in a U-turn when he saw me waiting in Oliver’s office.
‘No. Look,’ he protested, ‘Mr Ekaterin’s already approached me with his ideas and I simply haven’t time...’
Oliver interrupted. ‘We have a great deal more now. Please do listen. We quite understand that you are busy with all those other poor girls, but at the very least we can take Ginnie off that list for you.’
Wyfold finally consented to sit down and accept some coffee and listen to what we had to say: and as we told him in turns and in detail what had been happening his air of impatience dissipated and his natural sharpness took over.
We gave him copies of Pen’s analyses, the names of ‘Bret’s’ recent employers and the last ten photographs of Ricky. He glanced at them briefly and said, ‘We interviewed this groom, but...’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Oliver said. ‘The photo is of a boy who looks like him if you don’t know either of them well.’
Wyfold pursed his lips, but nodded. ‘Fair enough.’
‘We do think he may have killed Ginnie, even if you couldn’t prove it,’ Oliver said.
Wyfold began putting together the papers we’d given him. ‘We will certainly redirect our enquiries,’ he said, and giving me a dour look added, ‘If you had left it to the police to search Calder’s surgery, sir, Calder Jackson would not have had the opportunity of disposing of Ian Pargetter’s case and any other material evidence. These things are always mishandled by amateurs.’ He looked pointedly at my plaster jacket. ‘Better have left it to the professionals.’
I gave him an amused look but Oliver was gasping. ‘Left to you,’ he said, ‘there would have been no search at all... or certainly not in time to save my business.’
Wyfold’s expression said plainly that saving people’s businesses wasn’t his prime concern, but beyond mentioning that picking locks and stealing medicinal substances constituted a breach of the law he kept any further disapproval to himself.
He was on his feet ready to go when Ursula rang again, and he could almost hear every word she said because of her enthusiasm.
‘I’m in Gloucestershire,’ she shouted. ‘I thought I’d work from the other end, if you see what I mean. I remembered Calder had miraculously cured Binty Rockingham’s utterly brilliant three-day-eventer who was so weak he could hardly totter, so I came here to her house to ask her, and guess what?’
‘What?’ I asked obligingly.
‘That lad worked for her!’ The triumph exploded. ‘A good lad, she says, would you believe it? He called himself Clint. She can’t remember his last name, it was more than two years ago and he was only here a few weeks.’
‘Ask her if it was Williams,’ I said.
There was some murmuring at the other end and then Ursula’s voice back again, ‘She thinks so, yes.’
‘You’re a dear, Ursula,’ I said.
She gave an unembarrassed laugh. ‘Do you want me to go on down the road to Rube Golby’s place? He had a show pony Calder cured a fair time ago of a weeping wound that wouldn’t heal.’
‘Just one more, then, Ursula. It’s pretty conclusive already, I’d say.’
‘Best to be sure,’ she said cheerfully. ‘And I’m enjoying myself, actually, now I’m over the shock.’
I wrote down the details she gave me and when she’d gone off the line I handed the new information to Wyfold.
‘Clint,’ he said with disillusion. ‘Elvis next, I shouldn’t wonder.’
I shook my head. ‘A man of action, our Shane.’