Billy Searle was taken to the Great Western Hospital in Swindon from the scene of a horrific incident in Baydon, near Lambourn, early yesterday morning when it appears he was deliberately knocked from his bicycle. Doctors at the hospital state that Searle’s condition is critical, with a broken leg and serious head injuries.
Foxton was arrested yesterday at 2:25 p.m. on suspicion of attempted murder at the Lombard Street offices of City financial services firm Lyall & Black, and he is currently being held for questioning at the Paddington Green Police Station.
Remarkably accurate, I thought, except for the bit about currently being held at the Paddington Green Police Station, and that had been right until about twenty minutes ago. Beside the article was another picture of Billy Searle, this time all smiles and wearing a business suit, and a photograph of the cordoned-off village of Baydon. Overlying the top right-hand corner of this photo was a smaller head-and-shoulders shot of me, positioned, to my eye, as if implying that I had been present in Baydon High Street.
Gregory was going to have a field day in the morning. It wouldn’t just be my head he would have on a stick, it would be my career as well. Who would trust a financial adviser who was on the front page of a national newspaper having been arrested for attempted murder?
Not me, for one.
I climbed back into the cab with the papers and showed the Racing Post to Claudia.
“It so bloody unfair,” she said, reading the headline. “How can they mention your name when you haven’t even been charged? You should sue.”
“Over what?” I asked. “They haven’t said anything that wasn’t true.”
“But why do the police give out names before they charge someone?”
I suspected that the information had not come from the police but from a source much closer to home. The time and place of the arrest were too precise and too accurate. The police would have only said something like “A twenty-nine-year-old man has been arrested and is helping with our inquiries.”
My money would be on Rory to be the office mole, although what he hoped to gain by it was anyone’s idea. He couldn’t have my job without passing his IFA exams first, and even I didn’t believe he would have murdered Herb for the cubicle close to the window. It would have been Diana’s anyway.
I looked at the newspapers before I went to bed and all of them had front- or back-page reports about the attack on Billy Searle. None of them had the full facts, but each still managed to mention me by name and imply my guilt.
Oh God, I thought, my mother would see them in the morning.
I switched on the television and watched the latest news on one of the twenty-four-hour news channels. They had a report live from Baydon.
“It appears,” said the reporter, “that the jockey Billy Searle was leaving his home to ride his bicycle to Lambourn, as he did every morning. He was due to ride horses at morning exercise. He was being waved away by his girlfriend when a car, which had seemingly been waiting in the street, suddenly accelerated into the bicycle, knocking Searle violently to the ground, before being driven away at speed. Billy Searle was taken to the hospital in Swindon, where he is in a critical but stable condition with head and leg injuries. Police are asking anyone who may have any information concerning the incident to come forward. A man who we believe to be the ex-jockey Nicholas Foxton was arrested in connection with the attack, but he has since been released without charge.”
“Well, at least they said you’d been released,” said Claudia.
“I’d rather they hadn’t mentioned my name at all,” I said. “You watch. Most people will think I’m guilty. They will already all have me tried and convicted in their minds. Being released will make no difference, not until after the police have caught the real attacker and he’s confessed.”
“It’s so unfair,” Claudia said again.
Indeed it was, but complaining about it wasn’t going to help. I just hoped that they arrested the real attacker soon.
Claudia and I went upstairs to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake in the darkness, going over and over everything in my head.
Last Saturday morning my life had been so settled and predictable and my career path mapped out to success and riches, even if it was a little boring. But the last five days had seen so much change. I had witnessed one murder at close range and been arrested for attempting another; I’d begun to doubt my relationship with Claudia, even suspecting that she might be having an affair with someone else; and I’d gone behind the back of my superior at work to access his personal e-mails to try to determine if he was complicit in a multimillion-pound fraud.
Not to mention becoming the executor and beneficiary of someone that I hardly knew who then turned out to have a twin sister. And then, to top it all, I’d been propositioned for sex by a woman nearly twenty years older than me, and I’d also discovered the real heartbreaking reason for my parents’ unhappy marriage.
It was enough to keep even the most tired of men from sleeping. I lay awake in the dark wondering what I should do next and also whether I would still have a job to go to in the morning.
I woke late after a restless night, the space in the bed next to me already empty and cold.
I rolled over and looked at the bedside clock. It was gone eight o’clock, and I was usually on the Tube by now.
The phone rang. I decided I didn’t want to talk to anyone so I didn’t pick it up. However, it stopped ringing when Claudia answered it downstairs.
I turned on the television for the news. Billy Searle’s attempted murder had been downgraded from the top story by a government U-turn on schools’ policy, but it still warranted a report from Baydon village, and they still managed to mention me by name and show my picture in spite of my release.
At this rate the whole bloody world would believe me guilty.
Claudia came into the room. “It’s your mother,” she said.
I picked up the phone. “Hello, Mum,” I said.
“Darling,” she said. “What the hell’s going on? You’re in all the papers and on the TV.” She sounded very upset, as if she was in tears.
“It’s all right, Mum,” I said. “Calm down. I didn’t do anything, and the police know it. Otherwise they wouldn’t have released me. I promise you, all is fine.”
It took me about five minutes to calm my mother down completely. I knew when I’d succeeded because she told me to get up and have a good breakfast. Eventually I put the phone down and laid my head back on the pillow.
“Aren’t you going to the office today?” Claudia asked, coming back into the bedroom carrying two cups of steaming coffee.
It was an innocent enough question, so why did I straightaway wonder if she was checking on my movements in order to plan her own?
“I don’t know,” I said, taking one of the cups from her. “What do you think?”
“Things could be worse,” she said. “You could still be in that police station, or in court. Let’s look on the bright side.”
“What plans do you have?” I asked.
“Nothing much,” she said. “I might go shopping later.”
“For food?”
“No,” she said. “I need a new dress for the show next week.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’d forgotten about that.”
The thought of attending the opening night of a new West End musical with all the associated press coverage did not now fill me with great joy. Claudia and I had accepted an invitation from Jan Setter to join her at the star-studded event, and at the after-show party. I wondered if, after my clumsy brush-off at Cheltenham, Jan would now be so keen for me to be there, to say nothing of my subsequent arrest.