‘I’ve heard that before. You couldn’t bring a horsebox up here.’
‘It’s the direct route for us.’
Sure enough, it opened into a wider, better maintained road and only a short way along they had to pull in for a string of horses on their way to the gallops. Gilbert pulled down his window to ask and the leading rider pointed behind him.
In two minutes they were driving towards a complex of stables and outbuildings. Security, Diamond noted, was all around them: CCTV, high walls topped with razor wire, double sets of gates. They had to speak into an entry-phone to gain admission.
‘They call this a yard?’ Gilbert said, marvelling.
‘A yard and then some. It’s a multimillion business.’
Inside, they drew up outside the brick-built admin section, two storeys high. Mr McDart, they learned from a high-heeled, white-suited receptionist, was at the main stable block.
‘Mucking out, I expect,’ Diamond said to Gilbert.
His eyes widened. ‘Do you think so?’
‘No.’
Even so, they found the trainer seated on a bale of hay at one end of the block, short, silver-haired and in a padded waistcoat and flat cap. His brown eyes assessed them as they approached. The hay was his throne and they were expected to show deference, if not actually to bow.
‘You must be the long arm of the law.’
‘Something like that,’ Diamond said, showing his ID.
‘Is this another complaint about my horses holding up the traffic?’
‘Actually, no. It’s about Hang-glider.’ Diamond watched for the reaction.
It wasn’t panic. Not even concern. Expectation best described it. ‘Have you found him after all these years?’
‘Unfortunately, no,’ Diamond said. ‘But we want the facts about his disappearance. It’s possible a murder was committed at the same time.’
‘Murder? I know nothing about that.’ McDart was still in control, unfazed, heels kicking idly against the hay.
‘But you were there for the races?’
‘I was. Hang-glider wasn’t. He’d popped a tendon and retired. He was the star guest, making a final appearance in front of his fans. They regarded him as a local. He had his first outing on Lansdown.’
‘Trained here?’
‘From the beginning. The owner, Sir Colin Tipping, paid a small fortune for him as a yearling. That’s a gamble, you know. Some of them never race, they’re so useless. This colt was the real deal from the start. Full of pluck and class.’ He looked away, remembering, and there was pride in his voice. ‘In his short career, he was ahead of everything. He took the Irish 2000 Guineas by four lengths and the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and he could have done much, much more.’ He gave Diamond another gimlet gaze with the brown eyes. ‘Murder, you said?’
‘That’s our suspicion. Would you mind telling us your mem-or ies of that day?’
‘Nothing I can say. I didn’t see anything. I drove the horse here myself with my son Charles, who was learning the business in those days, as a stable lad, like I did.’
‘You drove what – a horsebox?’
‘You drove what He nodded.
‘Was that safe – driving an injured horse?’
A frown. ‘What are you suggesting? He was three months over the injury. He’d had ultrasound. You wouldn’t have known there was anything amiss except that he’d have torn it again if he was raced. All we did that evening was walk him in front of the grandstands.’
‘You said “we”.’
‘Charles, actually. I watched from a box in the stands with the owner. It was rather moving. Cheering all the way.’
‘So did your son return the horse to the box?’
‘That’s right. Locked him in securely and joined some of his friends.’
‘Where was the box parked? Among all the others?’
‘No, that’s a secure area for the racing. We were away from them. As he wasn’t racing, we asked for a different spot near the premier enclosure.’
‘When did you find out that the horse was stolen?’
‘The end of the evening. I was among the last to leave, yarning with a couple of other trainers. Charles came to collect me and we went back to the box. I saw straight away that the doors had been forced and Hang-glider wasn’t inside.’
‘Wasn’t there an alarm system?’
‘Neutralised. They knew what they were doing. We alerted secu-r ity and they checked the boxes that hadn’t been driven off already. He must have been moved to another box and transported that way. By this time it was dark, of course, over an hour since the last race, and most people had left.’
‘Did you tell Sir Colin?’
‘After he got home. He’d already left. He was shattered when I told him. That horse was worth well over a million to him in stud fees.’
‘I heard,’ Diamond said and moved on to a matter that had mystified him for some time. ‘What I can’t understand is why it didn’t become a police matter. I was on the stength then. To my recollection, CID had nothing to do with it.’
McDart gave a shrug. ‘Racing is like that. We have our own secu-r ity through the British Horseracing Authority. We’re pig-headed enough to think we know more about horses than you do, and if you think about it you’ll have to admit we’re right.’
‘I might – if your people had solved the mystery. What’s your theory about it?’
He expelled a long breath. ‘With this amount of money involved, there will always be criminals out to abuse the system for their own ends. Hang-glider was a valuable property as a stallion, even though his racing days were over.’
‘But you can’t breed with a stolen horse?’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s all about pedigrees, isn’t it? Anyone buying a foal wants to know who sired it.’
‘Speaking off the record, if I’m sent a foal that can run well, I won’t care what sired it. The paperwork can be forged to make it appear right. I’ve never got into anything like that myself, but fiddling registration papers must be easier than forging banknotes, mustn’t it?’
‘So could Hang-glider still be alive under some other name?’
‘At this distance in time? I very much doubt it.’ He stopped and shouted at one of the lads who had been silently going about their work, ‘You! You’re spilling feed all over the yard. Get a broom and clear up your bloody mess.’ Then he resumed with Diamond in a mild tone: ‘You still haven’t told me who was murdered and what the connection is.’
‘A young Ukrainian woman called Nadia. She was killed about the same time and buried on Lansdown Hill. She was in the area and she may have been seeking work with horses.’
He shook his head. ‘Means nothing to me. I don’t employ casuals on the racecourse. That’s an offence. I could lose my licence for that.’
‘I wonder if your son may have met her that evening.’
‘You can ask him,’ McDart said.
‘Is he about?’
He rocked with laughter. ‘No.’
‘What’s the joke?’
‘He could have had a good career with me, but he didn’t stick at it. He joined your lot.’
Diamond opened his eyes wide. ‘The police?’
‘Bristol CID. I hardly recognise him now. The silly mutt shaves his head, goes to the gym, wears an ear-ring. He doesn’t even use the name we gave him. Calls himself Chaz.’
‘I’ve worked with Chaz,’ Diamond told Paul Gilbert on the drive back. ‘He’s a good copper.’
I‘Disappointment to his father.’
‘I expect he got pissed off being shouted at.’
‘He’d get some of that in our job, too.’
‘But not from his old man. There’s a difference.’ He reached for his mobile phone. The thing had its uses after all. He might even get to like it one day. ‘Let’s see if he’s at work this morning.’ Getting through to Bristol Central meant first calling Septimus at Bath for the number: an opportunity to get another opinion on Sergeant Chaz McDart. Salt of the earth, Septimus affirmed, a good colleague and a man you could depend on.