I gaze out of the window across the lakes to the snow-covered mountains on the far side, but I am not really concentrating on the view. My mind is racing with what lies ahead and the strategy I must employ to uncover the answers I seek. And the first question I want answered is who put a bag of cement on the Cresta for me to run into, and why.
The St Moritz police officer had visited me once more just as I was preparing to leave the Gasthaus that morning for the train station.
‘What news?’ I’d asked, without any great expectation.
‘Our enquiries are ongoing,’ he had said unhelpfully.
‘So you don’t have any suspects.’
‘No,’ he’d agreed. ‘We have very little to go on unless you’ve remembered something since yesterday that could assist us. That’s what I’ve come here to ask.’
I’d shaken my head. ‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’
He’d pursed his lips. ‘We’ve searched for fingerprints on the bag but the assailant must have been wearing gloves, probably against the cold. And CCTV from the Cresta Run itself and from nearby buildings shows nothing more than a distant blurry figure on the bridge. So far, we have been unable to find any witnesses or dashcam footage from the few vehicles that crossed the bridge close to the time. Indeed, it would seem that no one saw anything.’
‘How about distinctive footprints in the snow?’ I had asked.
Now it had been his turn to shake his head. ‘The last fall of fresh snow in St Moritz was nearly two weeks ago and far too many people have walked across that bridge since then for anything useful to be found.’
‘So what now?’
‘We will continue to appeal for witnesses, but things don’t look very promising. If someone hasn’t come forward by this stage with all the publicity that’s being generated, it is doubtful that they ever will.’
‘Do you have any theories?’
‘It looks increasingly likely that it may have been a random act of vandalism after all, carried out by someone who perhaps didn’t realise the danger they were posing. You were just the unlucky person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
And travelling at eighty miles per hour.
I didn’t believe that for a second.
31
On Friday morning, four days after seeing the psychiatrist at the Royal Berkshire, I went back to riding the horses, at least at exercise, and it was a huge relief to finally get out of the house and into the fresh air up on the Downs.
Not that I was yet able to go where I pleased.
Sabrina had made it very clear that she did not want to find that I had been sneaking off to the village shop to buy booze and, to ensure that I didn’t, she even came down the path from the house to the stable yard to watch me leave in the string of horses, and was waiting there when I got back. Short of taking my mount on a detour away from the others, there was no chance.
‘You’re doing so well,’ she said. ‘You’ve hardly had any alcohol for nearly two weeks. It would be such a shame to go back to your old habits.’
Would it?
It’s our habits that make us happy.
It is how our brains are wired. Our lives are mostly dictated not by threats or ideals, but by our habits. We expect to do what we have done before, to exist in familiarity, and habits are the manifestation of mostly unconscious, involuntary actions. Even if our habits are not always in our best interests, like smoking, or drinking and eating to excess, we do them anyway out of comfort and because it makes our lives easier if we don’t have to change, or to stop.
Habits override good intentions. It is why all New Year resolutions that involve an alteration in our behaviour are so hard to keep. Unlearning old habits and relearning new ones is hard – not impossible, just hard – and it needs constant concentration and vigilance, as well as a strong desire. Forget or weaken for just a moment and it is all too easy to find yourself lighting up a cigarette, knocking back some vodka shots, or eating a whole packet of chocolate biscuits. And being happy as a result, at least for a short while, until the self-recrimination sets in.
‘I’m only trying to help you get better,’ Sabrina said.
‘I know,’ I replied. ‘But it’s difficult.’
‘But it will be worth it in the end.’ She smiled. ‘You’ll see.’
Jerry, meanwhile, was not as understanding as his wife.
‘Bloody waste of money,’ he’d mumbled under his breath over breakfast on Thursday. ‘Paying good money for no work.’
I presumed he meant my salary as a conditional jockey, but I tactfully didn’t ask. Instead I’d suggested that I should start riding out again the following morning, and he’d agreed.
‘How about racing?’ he had asked.
‘That’s surely up to you,’ I’d replied.
Part of me was keen to get back to race riding but the thought of being a failure once again filled me with huge trepidation.
‘Best not to be too hasty,’ Sabrina had interjected.
‘OK. We’ll give it a bit longer. There’s not many jump meetings on this week anyway, not with the St Leger meeting on at Doncaster. Just Uttoxeter. And Perth, of course, but I can’t be bothered to send any runners all the way up there this time. Not for the meagre prizes they’re offering.’
So it was decided that I would ride out for a week and then we’d see how things were, and the first day had gone pretty well as far as I was concerned. I hadn’t fallen off or been made to look foolish by being run away with, and even Jerry seemed reasonably satisfied.
At lunchtime, after getting back from the gallops, I went up to my room and phoned Rachel Valentine.
‘Hiya,’ she said with a wonderful lightness in her tone as if she had been hoping I would call. ‘How did the psychiatrist go?’
‘OK, I think. I don’t feel any different, but he wants to see me again next week.’
‘Well, that’s good. Recovery from mental health problems is always a slow process, mostly achieved by exploration of events through conversation and dialogue between patient and doctor. That’s why it’s called the talking cure. There is no such thing as a sticking plaster for the mind.’
I laughed. ‘So speaks someone who’s training to be a psychiatric nurse. How’s that going?’
‘Pretty well. I’ve got some exams coming up in two weeks and, if I pass them, I’ll then just have my practical skills to complete and I’ll be done with that bit. But it’s only the next step. I want to be a clinical psychologist eventually.’
‘Do you fancy having your own pet patient to practise on?’
‘Are you offering yourself?’
‘I certainly am.’
There was a long silence from her end and I wondered if I’d made a huge misjudgement. Had I sounded too eager to her ears, as I had to mine? Far too eager.
‘It wouldn’t work,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m in Lincoln and you’re in Lambourn. It’s too far.’
‘We could try and make it work. What are you doing tomorrow afternoon?’
Not that I knew how I could even get there tomorrow afternoon. I was all too aware that trains to and from Lincoln were a nightmare at the weekends, so I’d need to find a car, and I also had my jailer to consider.
I decided that, if necessary, I’d just have to take Sabrina with me.
‘I’m meant to be going into the city centre to go shopping with my sister,’ Rachel said. ‘She’s trying to find a birthday present for her husband and he’s totally impossible to buy for. I said I’d go with her to help with the kids. Two under-fives are not easy.’
‘Can’t she leave the kids at home, or buy him something from Amazon?’
‘Typical man.’ Rachel laughed. ‘She can hardly leave the kids at home on their own and her husband will be at the football, as always. And she plans to buy him a cashmere sweater, so she needs to see it first, and she wants my advice.’
‘Then can I come and help? I’ll be the model.’
‘Her husband’s six-foot-two a
nd seventeen stone.’
‘Ah.’
‘But I’ll have a word with her.’ That sounded more promising. ‘I’ll call you back.’
And she did, ten minutes later.
‘My sister says she can cope without me.’
‘That’s great,’ I said with real joy. ‘Where shall we meet? I finish work around ten so could be with you any time after two-thirty.’
I hope. I wasn’t sure yet of the logistics but I would make it work somehow. I had to.
‘How well do you know Lincoln?’
‘I’ve only ever been to the railway station and the hospital, and then just the once on the night I met you.’
‘The station will do. I’ll meet you there at two-thirty tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Sounds wonderful.’
We disconnected and I went to look for Sabrina. She was in the kitchen.
‘Do you know how my car’s doing?’ I asked her.
‘Remarkably well, considering. My friend says that, apart from a few dents on the nearside wing and the broken driver’s window, it’s perfectly fine.’
‘How about the electrics?’ I asked.
‘Nothing wrong. The bump apparently caused one of the leads to detach from the battery. As soon as his man put it back on again everything worked.’
‘Good. I need it tomorrow. I’m going to Lincoln.’
Sabrina wasn’t happy. She raised the question with Jerry over supper.
‘Lincoln?’ he said. ‘What’s at Lincoln?’
‘I’m going to see someone,’ I said.
‘Who?’ he asked.
‘A psychotherapist.’
‘On a Saturday? Doing overtime, is he?’
‘It’s a she, actually. She was the person who looked after me that night I had the attack in Newark. She asked me to go back and see her.’
He wasn’t to know it was the other way round.
‘He wants to drive,’ Sabrina said, the disapproval clear in her voice.
‘It’s his life,’ Jerry said, waving a hand. ‘But we’re not bailing him out of another ditch, that’s for sure.’
I turned to Sabrina. ‘I’ve already said that you can come with me if you’d like.’
‘I haven’t got the time to go gallivanting all over the country with you. It’s more than three hours’ drive to Lincoln. I know. I went there, remember.’
‘We can’t watch him every minute for ever,’ Jerry said. ‘He’s a grown man.’
‘But it’s not safe.’
‘It’s perfectly safe,’ I said. ‘I won’t do anything you wouldn’t approve of.’
We ate in silence.
I didn’t like upsetting Sabrina. I knew I needed her. So I thought seriously about saying that I wouldn’t go. Perhaps I should just call Rachel and tell her that she should go shopping with her sister after all. But part of me was longing to go because I desperately needed something to raise my mood, and I had this crazy idea that Rachel was the one to do it.
But what if I went all that way, only for her to tell me again that Lincoln to Lambourn was too far, or worse, that she was waiting for me at Lincoln railway station with her boyfriend?
How would I feel then?
But I hadn’t detected those sorts of vibes during our telephone call.
If she didn’t want to see me, wouldn’t she have simply called back and told me that her sister needed her after all?
And she hadn’t.
The same questions went round and round in my head and, with them, my confidence diminished by the minute until I didn’t know what to think, or do.
‘All right,’ Sabrina said, finally breaking the silence. ‘You can go, but no drinking.’ She pointed her fork at me to emphasise the instruction.
‘No drinking,’ I agreed. ‘I promise.’
* * *
I woke early on Saturday morning and was already up and dressed by the time Sabrina arrived to unlock my bedroom door. Her permission to go to Lincoln might have been one thing, but she was still not allowing me overnight access to her drinks trolley.
I had a strange feeling about what lay ahead, a mixture of excitement and dread. Would this be a day to remember for good reasons or for bad? For expectations fulfilled or hopes dashed?
One minute I could imagine this being the first day of the rest of my life, and then, the next minute, the end of everything.
I tried my best not to be too hopeful in fear of grim disappointment, but it did little to reduce my eagerness to get going.
By the time I had ridden three horses for Jerry on the gallops, showered, changed, collected and then set off in my Golf, I was as nervous as on that first day at Duncombe Park point-to-point. And, the closer I got to Lincoln, the more nervous I became.
Thankfully, the weather was fairly typical for early September, with blue skies and warm temperatures, so it was not too onerous having no glass in the driver’s door window, although the wind noise was tiresome on the motorway.
I arrived ten minutes early, parked in the pay-and-display station car park, and walked over to the main building not so much with butterflies in my stomach, more like fully grown eagles.
My palms were sweating.
It was almost five weeks since I’d seen her. Would I even recognise her? Wasn’t I just being fanciful and stupid?
I could feel myself losing my nerve. Perhaps it would be better to get straight back in the car and drive away now, rather than stay and have my dreams crushed, as I felt they surely would be.
I was on the point of bottling out and leaving when—
‘Miles,’ she shouted, waving an arm at me from the far side of the car park.
My heart leapt.
‘Rachel,’ I shouted back, returning her wave.
She ran over towards me and, of course, I recognised her, even though her hair was down and not in the ponytail as it had been before.
There was an awkward moment when neither of us appeared to know how we should greet each other – shaking hands didn’t seem right, but neither did a hug. I held her upper arms and gave her a slight peck on the cheek. It seemed to fulfil the requirement for both of us.
‘How lovely to see you again,’ I said, while wishing I had brought her something – chocolates or red roses?
‘And you,’ she said with the smile that I remembered so well.
‘What would you like to do?’ I asked.
‘How about a coffee?’
‘Perfect.’
‘I know just the place. Come on.’
She took my arm and pulled me after her, back across the car park, over the road and into the pedestrianised high street. After a couple of minutes we came to Stokes High Bridge Café.
‘So, where’s the high bridge?’ I asked, looking at the higgledy-piggledy black-beam and white-plaster Tudor building set tight between Marks and Spencer on one side and a mobile phone shop on the other.
‘The building is the bridge. The river passes right underneath.’
We sat at a table outside in the sunshine and ordered two coffees.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ Rachel asked. ‘I’m starving.’
So was I, but that was my usual state of affairs.
‘Why not?’ I said. After all, I didn’t have any lightweight rides on the horizon.
So we ordered a late lunch, she choosing scampi and chips while I opted for a ham and cheese toastie.
‘I suppose you have to watch what you eat,’ Rachel said.
‘All the time. It’s very boring. I shouldn’t really be having cheese – far too many calories – but I love it.’
‘I shouldn’t be having scampi either, and especially not with chips. What am I thinking of? But Saturdays are always a strange day for me. On Thursdays and Fridays I get back to going to bed at a normal time but then, on Saturdays, I have to start preparing for a night shift on Sunday. I normally try to sleep in late and then stay up until two or three in the morning.’
‘Your body clock must be all over the place.�
�
She sighed. ‘You get used to it.’
You can get used to anything, I thought. That’s what First World War soldiers in the trenches had said, and the surviving inmates of Auschwitz.
We sat there together in easy companionship, drinking our coffee and eating our food, learning much about each other. I felt she was enjoying it.
Why had I been so worried?
‘Have you always lived in Lincoln?’ I asked.
‘Born and bred,’ she said, clearly proud of the fact.
‘Is it a good place to live?’ I asked.
‘The greatest. We have the best-preserved castle in England, after Windsor, and a fabulous cathedral that was the tallest building in the world for over two hundred years.’ She smiled that smile at me, and my heart flipped. ‘Do you know that there was also a racecourse in Lincoln? It’s been closed for donkey’s years, but the grandstand’s still there.’
‘A grandstand but no racecourse. That’s novel.’
She playfully punched my arm. ‘Don’t make fun of me. It’s true, I tell you. It’s a listed building so they can’t pull it down. My grandad is always telling me about going to the races when he was a boy to watch Sir Gordon Richards win the Lincolnshire Handicap. And Lincoln also has one of the only four remaining originals of the Magna Carta. It’s on display at the castle.’
‘You should be a tour guide.’
She laughed. ‘I was. Five years ago. Between leaving school and starting my nursing degree. I did it for a whole summer. American tourists, mostly. If you need to know anything about Lincoln, I’m your man or, rather, your woman.’
‘OK,’ I said, taking a deep breath for courage. ‘Where’s the best place in Lincoln to take someone I’m falling in love with?’
32
‘I’ve entered Gasfitter in a two-mile handicap hurdle at Worcester next Monday,’ Jerry said over supper the following Wednesday evening. ‘You’ll be riding him. Two miles is a bit short for him but the horse needs to regain his confidence after falling at Newton Abbot.’
He wasn’t the only one.
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