I looked down the course in horror, but without the benefit of Ewen’s multi-magnification, I was unable to see exactly what was going on. I took a large gulp of my champagne. I should have asked Jackson for a whisky.
“Good. They’ve caught him,” Ewen said, putting down his glasses. “No real harm done.”
“So what will happen now?” I asked, trying hard to keep my voice as normal as possible. “Will Scientific be withdrawn?”
“Oh no, he’ll run, all right, no problem. They’ll just fit a new bridle on him down at the start,” Ewen said. “The starter always has a spare, just in case something breaks. Indeed, just for situations like this. Most unlike your mother to have a tack malfunction.” He almost laughed.
I felt sick. All that hard work with the scalpel, to say nothing about the expenditure of so much nervous energy since, and for what? Nothing. The horse would now run with perfect, uncut, unbreakable reins.
“That’s good,” I said, not actually thinking it was good for a second.
What, I wondered, would the blackmailer do if Scientific won?
I was doubly glad that I wasn’t standing next to my mother on the owners’ and trainers’ stand. By now she would have become more of a head case than was usual. I just hoped she wasn’t planning an Emily Davison suffragette-style dash out in front of her horse during the race to prevent it from winning. But in her present state of mind, I’d not put anything past her.
“They’re off!” announced the public-address system, and all twelve runners moved away slowly, not one of the jockeys eager to set the early pace. They jumped the first fence without even breaking into a proper gallop, and only then did the horses gather pace and the race was on.
Even though I wanted to, I couldn’t take my eyes off Scientific.
I suppose I was hoping he might have crossfired and cut into himself, but the horse appeared to gallop along easily, without any problems. Perhaps he would make an error, I thought, peck badly on landing, and unseat his rider.
But he didn’t.
My mother had said that Scientific was a good novice but that the Game Spirit Steeplechase was a considerable step up in class. It didn’t show. The horse jumped all the way around without putting a hoof wrong, and he was well placed in the leading trio as they turned into the finishing straight for the second and final time. The other two contenders were, as my mother had predicted they would be, Newark Hall and Sovereign Owner.
The three horses jumped the last fence abreast and battled together all the way to the finish line with the crowd cheering them on. Even the quiet, reserved Rebecca Garraway was jumping up and down, screaming encouragement, urging Newark Hall to summon up one last ounce of energy.
“Photograph, photograph!” announced the judge as the horses flashed past the winning post, each of them striving to get his nose in front.
No one in the box was sure which of the three had won.
Ewen Yorke and the Garraways rushed out to get to the winner’s enclosure, confident that their horse had done enough, and Jackson went with them, leaving me in the box alone with Isabella and Julie.
“Do you think we won?” Julie asked, without much enthusiasm.
I was about to say that I had no idea when the public address announced, “Here is the result of the photograph. First number ten, second number six, third number eleven.”
Number ten, the winner, was
Scientific
. He’d won by a short head from Newark Hall. Sovereign Owner had been third, another nose behind.
Oh shit, I thought.
“Oh, well,” said Julie, shrugging her shoulders. “There’s always next time. But Ewen will be like a caged tiger tonight, he hates so much to lose.” She smiled at me again and raised her eyebrows in a seductive and questioning manner.
It wasn’t Ewen, I thought, who was the caged tiger, it was his wife. And I had no desire to release her.
I watched on the television in the corner of the box as my mother greeted her winner, a genuine smile of triumph on her face. In the euphoria of victory, in the moment of ecstasy of beating Ewen Yorke, she had clearly forgotten that she had disobeyed the instructions of the man who might hold the keys to her prison cell.
It was too late to change anything now, I thought, so she might as well enjoy it while she could. Perhaps the stewards would find that Scientific had bumped into or somehow impeded one of the other horses.
But, of course, they didn’t. And there were no objections, other than mine, and that wouldn’t carry much authority with the stewards.
Scientific had won against the orders.
Only time would tell what the blackmailer thought.
10
W
hat the bloody hell is going on?” Ian Norland stood full square in the middle of the Kauri House kitchen, shouting at my mother and me. He had thrown the bridle with the broken reins onto the bleached pine table.
“Ian, please don’t shout at me,” my mother said. “And what’s the problem anyway? Scientific won, didn’t he?”
“More by luck than judgment,” Ian almost shouted at her. “It was just fortunate that the reins parted on the way to the start rather than in the race itself.”
Or unfortunate, I thought.
“Why?” Ian said in exasperation. “Just tell me why.”
“Why what?” I asked.
“Why did you made the reins break?”
“Are you accusing us of deliberately sabotaging the reins?” my mother asked in her most pompous manner.
“Yes,” he said flatly. “I am. There’s no other explanation. This bridle was brand-new. I put the Australian noseband on it myself just a few days ago.”
“Perhaps there was a fault in its manufacture,” I said.
He looked at me with contempt. “Do you take me for an idiot or something?”
I assumed it was a rhetorical question, and so I kept quiet.
“If I don’t get some answers,” he said, “then I’m leaving here tonight for good, and I will take this to the racing authorities on Monday morning.” He picked up the bridle in his hand.
I wondered if it was worth pointing out to him that the bridle was not actually his to take away.
“But why?” my mother said. “Nothing happened. Scientific won the race.”
“But you tried to make him lose it,” Ian said, his voice again rising in volume towards a shout.
“What on earth makes you think we had anything to do with the reins breaking?” I asked him, all innocently.
He again gave me his contemptuous look. “Because you’ve been so bloody interested in the racing tack all week, asking questions and all. What else am I going to think?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said my mother.
“And how about the others?” he said.
“What others?” my mother asked rather carelessly.
“Pharmacist last week and Oregon the week before. Did you stop them from winning too?”
“No, of course not.” My mother sounded affronted.
“Why should I believe you?” Ian said.
“Because, Ian,” I said, in my best voice-of-command, “you must.” He turned to look at me with fire in his eyes. I ignored him. “Of course you can go to the authorities if that is what you want. But what would you tell them? That you suspect your employer of stopping her horses. But why? And how? By cutting the reins? But it would not have been the first time that reins have broken on a racetrack, now, would it?”
“But—” Ian started.
“But nothing,” I replied, cutting him off. “If you choose to leave here now, then I will have to insist that you do not take any of my mother’s property with you, and that includes that bridle.” I held out my hand towards him with the palm uppermost and curled my fingers back and forth. Reluctantly, he passed the bridle over to me.
“Good,” I said. “Now let us understand each other. My mother’s horses are always doing their best to win, and the stable is committed to winning on every occasion the horses run. My mother will not tolerate any of her employees who might suggest otherwise. She expects complete loyalty from her staff, and if you are not able to guarantee such loyalty, then indeed, you had better leave here this evening. Do I make myself clear?”
He looked at me in mild surprise.
“I suppose so,” he said. “But you have to promise me that the horses will always be doing their best to win, and that there will be no more of this.” He pointed to the bridle.
“I do promise,” I said. There was no way I would be trying this cutting-the-reins malarkey again, I thought, and the horses would be doing their best even if they might be somewhat hampered by feeling ill. “Does that mean you’re staying?”
“Maybe,” he said slowly. “I’ll decide in the morning.”
“OK,” I said. “We’ll see you in the morning, then.” I said it by way of dismissal, and he reluctantly turned away.
“I’ll put the bridle back in the tack room for repair,” he said, turning back and reaching out for it.
“No,” I said, keeping a tight hold of the leather. “Leave it here.”
He looked at me with displeasure, but there was absolutely no way I was going to let Ian leave the kitchen with the sabotaged bridle. Without it, he had nothing to show the authorities, even though, to my eyes, the ends of the stitches that I had cut with the scalpel looked identical to the few I had left intact, and which had then broken on the way to the start.
Ian must have seen the determination with which I was holding on to the bridle, and short of fighting me for it, he had to realize he wasn’t going anywhere with it. But still he didn’t leave.
“Thank you, Ian,” my mother said firmly. “That will be all.”
“Right, then,” he said. “I’ll see you both in the morning.”
He slammed the door in frustration on his way out. I went over to the kitchen window and watched as he crunched across the gravel in the direction of his flat.
“How good a head lad is he?” I asked, without turning around.
“What do you mean?” my mother said.
“Can you afford to lose him?”
“No one is indispensable,” she said, rather arrogantly.
I turned to face her. “Not even you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said again.
“I’m not,” I said.
D
inner on Saturday night was a grim affair. Had it really been only one week since my arrival at Kauri House? It felt more like a month.
As before, the three of us sat at the kitchen table, eating a casserole that had been slow-cooking in the Aga while we had been at the races. I think on this occasion it was beef, but I didn’t really care, and the conversation was equally unappetizing.
“So what do we do now?” I asked into the silence.
“What do you mean?” my stepfather said.
“Do we just sit and wait for the blackmailer to come a-calling?”
“What else do you suggest?” my mother asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said in frustration. “I just feel it’s time for us to start controlling him, not the other way round.”
We sat there in silence for a while.
“Have you paid him this week?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” my stepfather replied.
“So how did you pay?”
“In cash,” he said.
“Yes, but how did you give him the cash?”
“The same way as always.”
“And that is?” I asked. Why was extracting answers from him always such hard work?
“By post.”
“But to what address?” I asked patiently.
“Somewhere in Newbury,” he said.
“And how did you get the address in the first place?”
“It was included with the first blackmail note.”
“And when did that arrive?”
“In July last year.”
When Roderick Ward had his accident.
“And the address has been the same since the beginning?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “I have to place two thousand pounds in fifty-pound notes in a padded envelope and post it by first-class mail each Thursday.”
I thought back to the blackmail note that I had found on my mother’s desk. “What happened that time to make you late with the payment?”
“I got stuck in traffic, and I didn’t get to the bank in time to draw out the money before they shut.”
“Couldn’t you use a debit card in a cash machine?”
“It would only give me two hundred and fifty.”
“Can you get me the address?” I asked.
As he stood up to fetch it, the telephone rang. As one, we all looked at the kitchen clock. It was exactly nine o’clock.
“Oh God,” my mother said.
“Let me answer it,” I said, standing up and striding across the kitchen.
“No,” my mother shouted, jumping up. But I ignored her.
“Hello,” I said into the phone.
There was silence from the other end.
“Hello,” I said again. “Who is this?”
Again nothing.
“Who is this?” I repeated.
There was a click on the line and then a single tone. The person at the other end had hung up.
I replaced the receiver back on its cradle.
“Talkative, isn’t he?” I said, smiling at my mother.
She was cross. “Why did you do that?” she demanded.
“Because he has to learn that we aren’t going to just roll over and do everything he says.”
“But it’s not you that would go to prison,” my stepfather said angrily.
“No,” I said. “But I thought we’d agreed that we can’t go on paying the blackmailer forever. Something has to be done to resolve the VAT situation, and the first thing I need to know is who the blackmailer is. I need to force him into a mistake. I want him to put his head up above the parapet, just for a second, so I can see him.”
Or better still, I thought, so I can shoot him.
The phone rang again.
My mother stepped forward, but I beat her to it.
“Hello,” I said. “Kauri House Stables.”
There was silence again.