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.
Chapter 5
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.
Jonathan lay curled in the space for luggage. He had one shoe off, with which he was assaulting my milk-coffee bodywork. When I lifted the lid he stopped banging and looked at me challengingly.
‘What the hell are you doing there?’ I demanded.
Silly question. He looked at his shoe. I rephrased it. ‘Get out.’
He maneuvered himself out onto the road and calmly replaced his shoe with no attempt at apology. I slammed the trunk lid shut at the second try and returned to the driver’s seat. He walked to the passenger side, found the door there locked and tapped on the window to draw my attention to it. I started the engine, lowered the electrically controlled window a little and shouted to him, ‘It’s only three miles to Lambourn.’
‘No. Hey! You can’t leave me here!’
Want to bet, I thought, and set off along the deserted downland road. I saw him, in the rear-view mirror, running after me determinedly. I drove slowly, but faster than he could run. He went on running, nevertheless.
After nearly a mile a curve in the road took me out of his sight. I braked and stopped. He came around the bend, saw my car and put on a spurt, racing this time up to the driver’s side. I’d locked the door but lowered the window three or four inches.