‘Why don’t you take the pills with a glass of brandy?’ I said. ‘Then you probably won’t feel sick in the first place.’
She laughed. ‘I can hardly have a glass of brandy to take pills when I wake up in the morning.’
‘Why not?’ I said. ‘It must be better than feeling ill all day.’
She laughed again. ‘Perhaps I’ll try it, though I’m not sure what Q would say.’
‘Tell him it’s medicinal.’
‘What’s medicinal?’ Quentin asked, coming into the kitchen.
‘Having brandy for breakfast,’ I said.
‘British soldiers in the First World War were given tots of rum for breakfast,’ Quentin said. ‘And most of the officers had cases of brandy sent out to them from home. Or whisky. Masses of it. It helped them cope.’
‘So were they all drunk when they went over the top?’
‘Absolutely,’ Quentin said. ‘A double ration of rum was issued to the men before the off. Otherwise they wouldn’t have gone.’
‘There you are,’ I said to Faye with a smile. ‘So you can have brandy for breakfast.’
‘To help me cope?’ She burst into tears.
It was a reminder of how close to the edge Faye’s life had become, always living in dread of a return of the cancer. Treatment was ever more effective and the statistics were steadily improving but, deep down, even those patients given the final all-clear from the disease lived with the fear that it would get them in the end. That it would only be a matter of time. This year, next year, sometime — but not never.
I waited a second for Quentin to move but, when he didn’t, I went over and put my arm round Faye’s shoulders.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. ‘Occasionally it all gets to be too much.’
‘You have nothing to be sorry about,’ I said. ‘It’s us who should be sorry for making light of something so serious.’
Faye took a deep breath. ‘I’m fine now,’ she said. ‘Now, what would you like for tea?’
The three of us ate hot buttered crumpets, washed down not with Earl Grey but with Sauvignon Blanc.
I felt the whole situation was unreal. Just six hours ago I had been fighting for my life and yet here I was genteelly eating crumpets in Richmond upon Thames.
‘Quentin,’ I said between mouthfuls, ‘what’s the maximum prison sentence for attempted murder?’
‘Life,’ he said confidently. ‘Attempted murder, by definition, indicates a conscious resolve to take someone’s life. In fact, tariffs can sometimes be longer for attempted murder than for murder itself. Some murder convictions occur when there was no desire to cause a death, for example when an accused only intends to injure, but the victim then dies. Intent to actually kill is crucial and is a requirement for an attempted murder conviction.’ Quentin never answered a question in five words if fifty could be used. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No real reason,’ I said. ‘It’s just something to do with a case I’m investigating for the BHA.’
He lost interest. Racing was not high on Quentin’s agenda, as he regularly told me. He considered all sport to be the recreation of the proletariat and not worthy of someone of his standing.
‘And how was your game of golf this morning?’ I asked pointedly.
‘Humph!’ he snorted. ‘What a waste of time.’
‘Did you win?’ I asked, enjoying his discomfort.
‘No,’ he said. ‘The Lord Chief Justice won, but only because I let him. I had no idea he was so bad at golf. I thought I was the world’s worst player, but even I had to four-putt from eight feet on the last green to ensure he won by a stroke.’
I laughed.
‘It’s not that funny,’ he said. ‘I was trying to get myself noticed.’
I actually thought that Quentin Calderfield, QC, couldn’t fail to get himself noticed. He was one of the most successful and flamboyant Queen’s Counsels around. QC, QC was how he was known by everyone at the Bar, but he was also renowned for some of his conservative opinions.
But what he really meant by getting himself noticed was that he was trying to get himself promoted to be a judge and, in his assessment, the promotion was well overdue. It seemed never to occur to him that some of his more old-fashioned views on modern life, in particular to do with sexuality and race, may have been a factor in his current omission from the bench.
‘And were you noticed?’ I asked.
Quentin clearly didn’t like the tone of my voice, which, in truth, was slightly mocking. ‘We will have to wait and see,’ he said, tight-lipped. He then excused himself and went back to his study.
‘I wish you two got on better,’ Faye said after he’d gone.
‘We get on all right,’ I said, although it wasn’t true. ‘And I’ll definitely call him if I ever need a lawyer.’
‘Do you think that you will need a lawyer?’ she asked.
‘Probably, one day.’
She pulled a face at me. She didn’t like my line of work.
‘Do you want to stay for supper?’
I knew that she was only asking because she felt sorry for me. Lydia’s departure had been almost as big a disappointment for Faye as it had been for me. She desperately wanted me to be happy and saw it as her job to get me married off before she succumbed to the cancer. In her eyes, Lydia would have made the perfect sister-in-law.
‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’d better get back.’
I wondered why I’d said that. My flat would be cold and lonely. I’d become used to domestic life as a couple and I missed the homely comforts of having a mate, especially one who enjoyed cooking as much as Lydia had.
‘You’re welcome to stay,’ Faye said. ‘We’re only having pasta and pesto. I can easily make enough for three.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Pasta and pesto would be lovely.’
Dave Swinton’s apparent suicide was the only topic of conversation at the BHA offices on Monday morning and there was genuine sadness amongst the staff.
Dave had been popular with everyone in racing, not least because of his famed good looks together with the humility that had accompanied his stunning ability on a horse. The previous December there had been a huge surge of support from the racing community to vote for him in the Sports Personality of the Year contest and it had carried him to an easy victory. It was something that had given the whole of racing a boost.
There was not only sorrow for his loss but also bewilderment that he could kill himself, and especially in such a horrendous fashion.
‘But why would he do such a thing?’ said one of the young female receptionists, who was in tears. ‘He surely had everything to live for.’
I decided not to enlighten her about Dave’s attempt to kill me. Not so much out of any sense of not wishing to speak ill of the dead or to add to her pain, but more because I doubted that she would believe me. In fact, I reckoned that no one would believe me, so I kept quiet.
While the collective grief caused others to spill out into corridors and stairwells to share their anguish, I shut myself away in my office and spent the morning studying the videos of all the races Dave Swinton had ridden in, but not won, during the preceding week.
I thought back to what he had said to me in his Jaguar at Newbury races: I had twenty-eight rides and ten winners last week, so I lost eighteen races.
Finding the eighteen races was easy using the BHA database and I watched the RaceTech video recordings of each of them.
Dave had finished second in six, third in four, and had been unplaced in the other eight, falling in two of them, once at the last fence when clear in front.
I watched all the available footage including the side and head-on angles but there was nothing I could see that indicated that a horse had been prevented from winning on purpose. But that was not to say it hadn’t happened. Dave Swinton was a genius in the saddle and, I was sure that if he had wanted to lose a race deliberately, he could have done so in such a manner that no one would have easily been able to spot.