Chapter 7
The week got worse, slightly alleviated only by a letter from Linda on Thursday morning. Variably slanting handwriting. Jerky. A personality torn this way and that.
Dear Sid,
I’m sorry I talked to you the way I did. I still cannot believe that Ellis Quint would cut off Silverboy’s foot, but I remember thinking when he came here to do the TV program that he already knew a lot about what had happened. I mean things that hadn’t been in the papers, like Silverboy liking horse nuts, which we never gave him, so how did he know, we didn’t know ourselves, and I did wonder who had told him, but of course Joe asked Ellis who to buy a pony from, so of course I thought Ellis knew things about him from way back, like Silverboy being fed on horse nuts before he came to us.
Anyway, I can see how you got it wrong about Ellis, and it was very nice of you to bring the fish tank for Rachel, I can’t tear her away from it. She keeps asking when you will come back and I don’t like to tell her you won’t, not as things are, so if you’ll visit us again I will not say any more about your being wrong about Ellis. I ask you for Rachel.
We are both glad Ellis wasn’t hurt today by that horrid bus.
Yours sincerely,
I wrote, back thanking her for her letter, accepting her invitation and saying I would phone her soon.
On Tuesday Ellis was charged with ‘actual bodily harm’ for having inadvertently and without intention pushed ‘an assailant’ into the path of potential danger (under the wheels of a speeding motor) and was set free ‘pending inquiries.’
Norman Picton disillusionedly reported, ‘The only approximately good thing is that they confiscated his passport. His lawyers are pointing their fingers up any police nose they can confront, screeching that it’s a scandal.’
‘Where’s Ellis now?’
‘Look to your back. Your report is with the Crown Prosecution Service, along with mine.’
‘Do you mean you don’t know where he is?’
‘He’s probably in Britain or anywhere he can get to where he doesn’t need a passport. He told the magistrates in court that he’d decided to do a sports program in Australia, and he had to have his passport with him because he needed it to get a visa for Australia.’
‘Never underestimate his wits,’ I said.
‘And he’d better look out for yours.’
‘He and I know each other too well.’
On Wednesday afternoon Ellis turned up at his regular television studio as if life were entirely normal and, on completion of an audience-attended recording of a sports quiz, was quietly arrested by three uniformed police officers. Ellis spent the night in custody, and on Thursday morning was charged with severing the foot of a colt: to be exact, the off-fore foot of an expensive two-year-old thoroughbred owned by Mrs Elizabeth Bracken of Combe Bassett Manor, Berkshire. To the vociferous fury of most of the nation, the magistrates remanded him in custody for another seven days, a preliminary precaution usually applied to those accused of murder.
Norman Picton phoned me privately on my home number.
‘I’m not telling you this,’ he said. ‘Understand?’
‘I’ve got cloth ears.’
‘It would mean my job.’
‘I hear you,’ I said. ‘I won’t talk.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘that, I believe.’
‘Norman?’
‘Word gets around. I looked up the transcript of the trial of that man that smashed off your hand. You didn’t tell him what he wanted to know, did you?’
‘No… well… everyone’s a fool sometimes.’
‘Some fool. Anyway, pin back the cloth ears. The reason why Ellis Quint is remanded for seven days is because after his arrest he tried to hang himself in his cell with his tie.’
‘He didn’t!’
‘No one took his belt or tie away, because of who he was. No one in the station believed in the charge. There’s all hell going on now. The top brass are passing the parcel like a children’s party. No one’s telling anyone outside anything on pain of death, so, Sid…’
‘I promise,’ I said.
‘They’ll remand him next week for another. seven days, partly to stop him committing suicide and partly because…’ He faltered on the brink of utter trust, his whole career at risk.
‘I promise,’ I said again. ‘And if I know what it is you want kept quiet, then I’ll know what not to guess at publicly, won’t I?’
‘God,’ he said, half the anxiety evaporating, ‘then… there’s horse blood in the hinges of the shears, and horse blood and hairs on the oily rag, and horse blood and hairs in the sacking. They’ve taken samples from the colt in the hospital at Lambourn, and everything’s gone away for DNA testing. The results will be back next week.’
‘Does Ellis know?’
‘I imagine that’s why he tried the quick way out. It was a Hermès tie, incidentally, with a design of horseshoes. The simple knot he tied slid undone because the tie was pure smooth silk.’
‘For God’s sake…’
‘I keep forgetting he’s your friend. Anyway, his lawyers have got to him. They’re six deep. He’s now playing the lighthearted celebrity, and he’s sorrowful about you, Sid, for having got him all wrong. His lawyers are demanding proof that Ellis himself was ever at Combe Bassett by night, and we are asking for proof that he wasn’t. His lawyers know we would have to drop the case if they can come up with a trustable alibi for any of the other amputations, but so far they haven’t managed it. It’s early days, though. They’ll dig and dig, you can bet on it.’
‘Yeah.’
‘None of the Land-Rover evidence will get into the papers because the sub judice rule kicked in the minute they remanded him. Mostly that helps us, but you, as Sid Halley, won’t be able to justify yourself in print until after the trial.’
‘Even if I can then.’
‘Juries are unpredictable.’
‘And the law is, frequently, an ass.’
‘People in the force are already saying you’re off your rocker. They say Ellis is too well known. They say that wherever he went he would be recognized, therefore if no one recognized him, that in itself is proof he wasn’t there.’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Do you have time off at the weekend?’
‘Not this weekend, no. Monday do you?’
‘I’ll see if I can fix something up with Archie… and Jonathan.’
‘And there’s another thing,’ Norman said, ‘the Land-Rover’s presence at Combe Bassett is solid in itself, but Jonathan, if he gets as far as the witness box, will be a meal for Ellis’s lawyers. On probation for stealing cars! What sort of a witness is that?’
‘I understood the jury isn’t allowed to know anything about a witness. I was at a trial once in the Central Law Courts — the Old Bailey — when a beautifully dressed and blow-dried twenty-six-year-old glamour boy gave evidence — all lies — and the jury weren’t allowed to know that he was already serving a sentence for confidence tricks and had come to court straight from jail, via the barber and the wardrobe room. The jury thought him a lovely young man. So much for juries.’
‘Don’t you believe in the jury system?’
‘I would believe in it if they were told more. How can a jury come to a prison-or-freedom decision if half the facts are withheld? There should be no inadmissible evidence.’
‘You’re naive.’
‘I’m Sid Public, remember? The law bends over backwards to give the accused the benefit of the slightest doubt. The victim of murder is never there to give evidence. The colt in Lambourn can’t talk. It’s safer to kill animals. I’m sorry, but I can’t stand what Ellis has become.’