The account rang true. Diamond had listened with understanding – and it wasn’t just because Chaz was a brother officer. He had chastening memories of his own initiation into full sex as a teenager, woefully inept. But the empathy only went so far. All the elements for an unpremeditated killing were present here: the powerful youth, eager for sex without a thought of what it might cost him; the ex-prostitute desperate for a new start; and the domineering father terrifying the boy.
‘How did you deal with it?’ he asked, uncertain of what was to come.
‘Not well. I couldn’t just ask her to clear off. I played for time, telling her I’d try and work it with my dad if she’d come to Lambourn in a week or two. She got a bit stroppy, saying that was no bloody use because she didn’t have the money to get there and didn’t know where it was. She needed to meet my father now – the same evening. Time was going on and I was shit-scared he’d suddenly appear and find me with her in the cab. I told her I’d better go off and talk to him right away. She wanted to wait inside the cab, but I persuaded her that wasn’t a good idea. I locked everything up and left her waiting outside.’
‘You went back to the race meeting?’
‘The races were well over by then and it was getting dark. Most people were leaving. Dad was always one of the last to go home. He was still in the bar with a few of his cronies. He doesn’t actually drink much. It’s the shop-talk he likes. I wasn’t in any hurry to root him out of there.’
‘You had a problem on your hands.’
‘Did I just! I was hoping she’d get tired of waiting and simply walk away. A bit unrealistic.’
‘Totally, I’d say, knowing her situation. Did you go back to her?’
‘No.’
Diamond leaned closer. ‘Is that the truth, Chaz?’
‘Gospel. I hung about for almost another hour. Finally Dad came out and he was in quite a good mood.’
‘Did you tell him about Nadia?’
‘No chance. I was hoping she’d given up and left. If she hadn’t, I was counting on Dad to deal with her. He can shoot anyone down in flames. She might have decided she wouldn’t want to work for a mean sod like him.’
‘I doubt it. What happened next?’
Chaz shrugged. ‘You know, don’t you? Dad and I returned to the horsebox and found it broken into and Hang-glider gone. The sky fell in on us.’
‘Was Nadia there?’
He opened both hands. ‘Gone. I’ve never seen her since.’
Was it staged, or could he be believed? The gesture was a touch too contrived, Diamond thought, but then Chaz had no doubt been visualising the impression he would make.
‘Your father said you alerted racecourse security.’
‘Yes, it was mayhem. Cars, vans and horseboxes leaving. Searches at the exits. People getting angry, wanting to leave. Whoever had done it had got clean away before the search began. They should have contacted the police and made road blocks, but they didn’t. The racing world likes to handle its own wrongdoings.’
‘Do you think Nadia was in on it?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve thought about it many times. I was fearful that she’d tricked me. I can’t see how.’
‘Is it possible the box was broken into while the pair of you were making love in the cab?’
‘No. We’d have heard. You can hear any move the horse makes. Besides, I checked that the door was locked. I swear it. Even with the offer of sex I couldn’t forget I was responsible for Hang-glider.’ ‘And after? You didn’t unlock the box for any reason?’
He shook his head. ‘Everything was secure when I left Nadia there. Anyway, the door was forced by the robbers, which proves it had been locked.’
‘You know what really happened – that Nadia was murdered?’ He swallowed hard. ‘I do now.’
‘When did you find out?’
‘Only last night when I saw the poster of her. A batch of them were delivered to Bristol Central.’
‘Why didn’t you get in touch last night?’
He lowered his eyes and sighed. ‘I was shocked rigid. Scared, too. I’d kept this secret – about having sex with her – for all these years. I didn’t say anything about it to the security people. I couldn’t see how it affected the theft of the horse. Then, last night, this bombshell. My first instinct was to see if I could ride the storm like I had before. I was asking myself if anyone really needed to know. I decided to sleep on it and come to a decision today.’
This sounded credible, if reprehensible. People in a spot behave like that, trying to convince themselves nothing has changed. ‘Didn’t it occur to you when the skeleton was found on Lansdown that it might be Nadia?’
‘It crossed my mind, but I thought of all kinds of reasons why it could be someone else.’
‘As a serving police officer, you had a duty to speak out.’
‘I know. I should have reported what I knew in case it had a bearing. I’m a bloody disgrace.’
‘You worked with me on the Rupert Hope murder – briefly, I know, but you did.’
‘At the time, I couldn’t see any connection, and since then I’ve been running CID here, covering other cases.’
Diamond wasn’t dishing out blame. There was a bigger agenda here. ‘You heard that a horse rug was found with hairs attached to it that matched the single horse hair discovered with the skeleton? Rupert found this rug, an under-rug with the Phil Drake label. We don’t know where. Do you recall if Hang-glider had such a rug?’
Chaz looked up, his eyes brighter. ‘He did, yes. It was on his back in the horsebox. I put it on him myself. How the hell could it have turned up after all this time?’
‘That was my next question.’
‘God knows. I can’t begin to get my head round that.’
Diamond knew when a witness was going cold on him, and it wouldn’t be allowed to happen here. ‘I need your help on this. You’ve lived with this mystery longer than anyone in the police. What do you think happened that night?’
Chaz glanced towards the glittering expanse of water between the harbour walls. ‘Obviously it happened in that hour or so after I left Nadia standing by the horsebox and when I returned with my father. There must have been more than one person involved, but I doubt if she was part of it. I guess she was killed because she got in the way. They were there to steal a valuable horse and she would have been a witness.’
‘Physically, how do you think it was it done?’
‘The horse-thieves seem to have transferred Hang-glider to a trailer hitched to another vehicle, probably a four by four. There were tyre tracks found by the security team. That way, they would have got on the road before the mass of cars were leaving the racecourse. They could have gone anywhere.’
‘And Nadia?’
‘Must have been taken with them.’
‘She was found on the battlefield, buried,’ Diamond said, as the interrogation became more of a consultation. ‘They couldn’t have buried the horse there without a mechanical digger. Anyway, we’d have found evidence that the earth had been excavated. So the horse was taken elsewhere, sold on to breed secretly on some criminal stud farm, if Sir Colin Tipping’s theory is right. He was the owner. Did he hold you and your father responsible?’
‘He was gutted when Dad told him. He lost a million or more in stud fees. The deal with Sheikh Abdul was all agreed and wasn’t signed.’
‘Was it really worth as much as that?’
‘Dad swore it was. There was going to be money on signing and then a percentage of every stud fee the horse earned.’
‘Did your father take it out on you?’
‘Actually, no. He blamed himself for the lax security. I’d followed his instructions. Of course he knew nothing about Nadia.’
‘How long was it before you quit?’
‘A matter of months. I was through with being treated as a fourteen-year-old. I left home, dropped out for a while, did some part-time jobs and then joined the force. These have been good years. Now that I’ve messed up, I guess I ought to resign before they sack me.’ He was red-eyed.