Hobbling into the smaller bar and lounge with the aid of his stick, Matt saw Doogie McKenzie seated at a circular table, attended by a group of mainly older men and women. When he caught sight of Matt, he stood up and waved, his weather-beaten face splitting into a huge smile.
‘Matt! You made it! Come over here, lad,’ he called, in his broad Scottish tones, and Matt saw, with amusement, that he had come to the party in a kilt with a tartan tam o’ shanter atop his shock of unruly white hair.
As he approached the table, the other guests shifted up to clear a space for him on the red leatherette corner seat.
Doogie accepted Matt’s bottle-shaped gift bag with thanks and waved a hand to a hovering member of staff.
‘Can we have some more drinks over here? What’ll it be, Matt? Don’t tell me Diet Coke â this is a celebration! Have some champagne!’
Matt smiled, easing himself gratefully into the waiting space. His ankle was beginning to protest strongly, in spite of the painkillers he’d dosed himself with.
‘Thanks. Just one, though. I’m driving.’
‘So what’s the damage?’ Doogie asked, gesturing at Matt’s foot, then, before he had time to answer, turning to the other guests and saying, ‘Matt used to ride for me, you know. You could say I discovered him. Best bloody rider I ever saw â even at sixteen! Ran away from school and turned up on my doorstep, he did. Knew what he wanted and went for it â a man after my own heart!’
Matt smiled faintly at the polite murmurs of interest from those closest, most of whom would have heard the story many times before, and let the trainer get on with it. It was his birthday, after all.
After a couple of hours in the company of Doogie and his friends, trying not to look at the well-laden buffet table from which most of the guests were helping themselves at regular intervals, Matt felt he’d done his duty and was only waiting for the right moment to make his apologies and leave. His head was still aching and he had, for at least half of that time, been politely but firmly repelling the advances of a not so young redhead who became more amorously inclined with each glass of wine. The cottage and his bed had never seemed more desirable.
‘Think I’ll make a move now,’ he told Doogie, as soon as the chance arose.
‘Feeling a bit sore?’ the elderly trainer asked, bushy white brows drawing down over eyes that were chips of brilliant blue. ‘I’m not surprised. Looked a bit nasty, that fall. Thanks for coming â I’m sure you didn’t feel like it.’
Matt shrugged. ‘Oh, I’m OK. And I certainly wasn’t going to miss your birthday bash. But I must admit I’ll be thankful to get this shoe off and put my feet up.’ He stood up, hopping a little as he took the bulk of his weight on his right foot.
‘Oh, you’re not going already?’ The redhead rose with him, making a moue with lips from which scarlet was beginning to bleed into the surrounding lines. ‘The party’s only just started. Stay with me and I’ll make you forget all your troubles …’
‘Ah, sorry. Another time, perhaps.’ With his free hand, Matt lifted her arm off his shoulders and draped it, instead, over Doogie’s.
‘Thanks, pal,’ the older man muttered, and Matt was chuckling as he turned away.
In the main function room the music was still as thumpingly loud, and the track, from Matt’s point of view, was indistinguishable from whichever one had been playing when he first arrived. He glanced round for Jamie, even though they had already arranged that Matt should take the car when he was ready to go; Jamie would probably get a taxi home from Sophie’s flat sometime the next day.
Suddenly, to Matt’s right, there was a ripple of movement in the crowd by the bar, and, at its centre, he saw Sophie’s blonde head forging through towards the dance floor with Jamie hot on her heels. Seconds later, Jamie caught up with her, grabbed her arm, and pulled her round to face him.
Whatever passed between them was lost in the unremitting pounding of the music, but the result was plain for all to see. With an ugly expression twisting her carefully made-up features, Sophie swung her arm and slapped Jamie hard across the face, rocking him back on his heels. Wrenching her arm free, she turned away, but Matt could see that Jamie wasn’t going to let the matter rest and, sure enough, he recovered his balance and headed after her.
Matt groaned inwardly. Jamie had a quick temper at the best of times, something that had undoubtedly hindered his career once or twice in the past, and alcohol and high emotion were a combustible combination. He watched helplessly, too far away â even without the handicap of his injured ankle â to intercept his friend before he reached the girl again.
The altercation hadn’t gone unnoticed by the club’s security, however, and, to Matt’s relief, a burly figure stepped into Jamie’s path, halting his forward progress in the nick of time by dint of placing a meaty hand on each of the young man’s shoulders.
Jamie didn’t take kindly to the intervention and made that abundantly clear, but, as combatants, they were woefully ill-matched. In the absence of a sling and pebbles, the smaller man took the only course available to him and swung a punch at the face some eight inches above his own.
The bouncer swayed back in a way that suggested time spent in the boxing ring, fielded the flying fist, and twisted it up behind Jamie’s back. Shaking his head with grim amusement, the bouncer then steered him, with no further ado, towards the exit.
Matt let out breath he hadn’t been aware of holding. He turned to follow and almost walked into a corpulent figure with sparse grey hair arranged over a shiny brown pate and weak eyes behind bottle-glass spectacles.
‘Ah, Matt! Just the chap I was looking for!’ the man exclaimed triumphantly. ‘Didn’t think I’d see you after that nasty-looking fall, but Doogie said you were here. No wonder they call you India Rubber Man!’
Matt paused, producing a smile. Roy Emmett, Tortellini’s owner, was a kindly and generous man, but one infamous for never making do with half a dozen words where twenty or thirty would do. He was also â although Matt personally had no problem with it â what Kendra’s father disgustedly termed a ‘Raving Poofter’. With a glance at the door through which Jamie and the bouncer had just disappeared, Matt resigned himself to at least twenty minutes’ delay.
‘Hi, Roy. How are you? And how’s that horse of yours?’
Emmett beamed. ‘He’s well, Matt â very well. That’s what I wanted to talk about …’
Twenty minutes turned out to be a conservative estimate; it was, in fact, nearly forty before Matt managed to get away, and then only by taking advantage of the distraction offered by the appearance of Emmett’s partner.
Pleading weariness, he made his excuses and left the party behind, making as much haste as was politely and physically possible. He emerged into the car park and looked round without much hope for Jamie. A light high on the side of the building illuminated the immediate vicinity, revealing one or two snogging couples, and a dozen or more smokers, braving a blustery wind to get their fix. Jamie was not amongst them.
Matt approached the nearest group, one of whom was a young jockey he vaguely recognised.
‘Hi. I’m looking for a friend …’
‘Well, try Internet dating,’ one of them suggested, and the whole group fell about laughing.
Matt smiled. ‘Very good. No, this guy came out maybe half an hour ago. He was, er … shown out by the bouncer.’
‘Oh, Jamie Mullin?’ a girl in an eight-inch skirt and hooped earrings said, sobering up. ‘Yeah, I saw him. He, like, hung around for a while and tried to get back in, but the bouncer was, like, waiting for him? Then he wanders off.’
‘Did you see which way he went?’
‘Nah, sorry.’ She chewed gum and looked Matt up and down appraisingly. ‘I could help you look, if you like.’
‘Thanks, I’ll manage,’ Matt said.
‘Suit yourself. I think he went that way.’ She waved a hand in the general direction of the car park and road out before losing interest. A
s Matt turned away, he saw her remove a cigarette from the lips of the boy next to her and slip it between her own, drawing in a deep lungful of pollution with evident enjoyment.
Matt made his way to the corner of the building and stood, taking most of his weight on his good foot, scanning the rows of cars and the exit road. As far as he could see, there was no one in sight. If Jamie had gone that way, he was long gone.
Taking his mobile from his pocket, Matt keyed in Jamie’s number, but the network’s answering service cut in immediately. He left a message for Jamie to call back and returned the phone to his pocket. The only sensible course of action seemed to be for him to collect the car and head for home, keeping an eye open for Jamie as he went.
Sighing, Matt did just that, checking the vicinity of the parked car before he left. Unsure of how much his friend had had to drink, he felt it was just possible that he could have sat down to wait for him and fallen asleep, but he wasn’t there.
Driving slowly, Matt scanned each side of the road all the way down to the junction with the highway. Here he paused for a moment, the engine idling. The road he was joining had originally been the main one into Charlborough from the south until a road-straightening project had cut this section out and left it almost redundant, serving only a garden centre, the cattle market, and a newly built business park some half a mile further on. Consequently, at this time of night, it was deserted, the businesses shut and the businessmen gone home.
It seemed most likely that Jamie had either decided to walk to Charlborough or called a taxi to take him there and, irritated that he hadn’t thought to let him know, Matt pushed the gear lever into Drive and turned left towards the town. As he pulled onto the open road, he became aware of just how much the wind had strengthened since the afternoon, the trees on the edge of the wood bowing and waving, and a few early fallen leaves scurrying along the kerb line towards him. Fifty yards or so from the junction there was a lonely bus stop followed by a stone bridge over a stream, and then the pavement came to an end, leaving any walkers to take to the road or stumble along the grass verge.
Even with his lights on main beam, Matt might easily have missed the flash of white in the trees at the side of the road, had he not been keeping an eye open for just such a thing. He pulled in with two wheels on the grass about a car’s length beyond the bridge and, retrieving the stick from the passenger-seat footwell and a torch from the glove compartment, got out and made his way back.
The white turned out to be not Jamie’s shirt with Jamie inside it â as he’d half hoped â but a piece of white satiny material with a fringe: a lady’s evening wrap caught on a branch in the shrubby undergrowth at the side of the road. The fringed edge of the shawl was decorated with something that sparkled in the light; someone would undoubtedly be upset at having lost it.
Shrugging, Matt disentangled it from the bush it had caught on and turned back to his car. As he crossed the bridge, he could hear the rush of a fair amount of water and, drawn by it, shone the torch over the parapet into the darkness below.
He could see the river maybe fifteen or twenty feet down, foaming as it tumbled over a lip of stone under the bridge. On each bank vegetation crowded darkly and Matt would have turned away had the torch beam not sparkled on something at the edge of the water. He leant over the wall, holding the torch at arm’s length, wishing the bulb had more power.
There it was again â a bright glint, as of light reflecting from the multifaceted surface of a jewel. Moving the torch from side to side, Matt scanned the surrounding area.
And froze in shock.
The beam, suddenly less than steady, had found the unmistakable outline of a woman’s stiletto-heeled evening sandal and, just visible amongst the tangle of plant growth, the long smooth shape of a leg.
‘Christ!’
Matt propped the hospital’s walking stick against the parapet of the bridge and, using his free hand, retrieved his mobile from an inner pocket and dialled three nines while he flashed the torch to and fro over the side, seeking a way down.
By the time the emergency operator answered, Matt had decided that the left-hand side, with a scattering of saplings to hold onto, looked the better bet.
Cutting through her attempts to follow procedure, Matt gave the operator his location and requested an ambulance before returning the phone to his pocket and beginning the descent.
Climbing over three strands of wire and negotiating a steep slope, thick with vegetation, wouldn’t have been easy in daylight and full fitness, but, with an injured ankle and a torch in one hand, it was going to be touch and go whether he reached the bottom on his feet or his backside.
Tripping and scrambling, covered in nettle stings, and with bramble-torn clothes and skin, he did indeed lose his footing, and slid the last three or four feet to land knee-deep in the edge of the river, swearing vociferously as the action jarred his swollen ankle.
The route Matt had chosen landed him on the opposite bank to where the woman was lying, so it was now a case of wading across the remaining six or eight feet of water and climbing out. This, in itself, presented a challenge. In the centre, where the current was relatively strong, the streambed was stony, but Matt dreaded to think what the consultant at the hospital would have said if he’d been witness to the spectacle of his patient plunging his handiwork into the thick, stinking silt near the banks.
Shining the torch into the reeds and brambles ahead of him, Matt scrambled out onto the marshy margin of the river. From here he could see both of the woman’s legs, one outstretched, one bent at the knee, and the hem of a dress or skirt riding high over her hips. Chivalrous instinct bade him pull the material down to hide the skimpy white underwear that left little to the imagination, but he resisted the urge, knowing that, if she were dead, and her death was in any way suspicious, the police wouldn’t be happy to find that he had tampered with their crime scene.
Treading carefully, he approached, directing the torchlight over the woman’s body toward her head. She was lying on her back, with one arm outflung and the other twisted under her, a long glittering earring trailing over her neck and into her blonde hair. A dark smudge of dirt or blood discoloured the skin of her cheek and, catching the light, her eyes gleamed half-open and still. With a sense of disbelief and a sinking heart, Matt recognised her.
It was Jamie’s girlfriend, Sophie.
2
Steeling himself, Matt moved forward until he was close enough to reach down and press two shaky fingers against the cool skin under the girl’s jawbone. There was no detectable pulse and, with rising dread, he noticed a thin trickle of blood running blackly from her ear. It brought back painful memories of the death of a fellow jockey, kicked in the head in a horrific fall. No breath issued from her slightly parted lips to warm the back of his hand and, feeling nauseous and a little panicky, he straightened up and reached into his pocket for his mobile phone. He wanted a paramedic â someone, anyone â who could tell him what to do.
The phone lit up in his trembling hand as he slid it open but could find no signal in the gully by the river. Matt cursed under his breath and forced himself to think rationally.
By his reckoning, it was getting on for ten minutes since he’d stopped the car by the bridge, so Sophie must have been lying at the bottom of the bank for at least a quarter of an hour. There had been no discernable warmth in her skin, but he didn’t know how significant that was. It was a cold, windy night, and he had a fair idea that his own skin would have felt cool to the touch if he’d lain in this damp hollow for that long. Even so, there was no doubt in his mind that the girl was dead.
He shone the fading torch on her face once more. It was criss-crossed with bramble scratches, as were her arms and bare legs. How had she come to be there? Although it was just conceivable that someone looking over the bridge parapet might have overbalanced, surely then they would have fallen into the river? From the position of her body, the possibility that Sophie’s death had been accidenta
l began to look exceedingly remote.
Matt turned and regarded the bank up to the road, noticing for the first time a narrow path of smooth earth winding steeply upward through the tangle of briars and nettles. As he began the ascent, gritting his teeth against the pain in his ankle, he could hear the first sounds of a siren in the far distance.
To Matt, who hadn’t started it in very good shape, the night seemed to stretch on interminably.
The first of the emergency services arrived, in the shape of a paramedic in a fast-response car, just as he scrambled up the last few feet of the slope and squeezed through the wire fence. Its occupant asked a few brief questions and made a call on his mobile phone before disappearing into the darkness at the side of the bridge, shining a powerful torch ahead of him.
Feeling cold and shaky, Matt went to wait in Kendra’s car, and he was there when, some minutes later, a bevy of sirens and flashing blue lights heralded the advent of two police cars closely followed by an ambulance.
Suddenly the lonely spot was buzzing with activity, as the police officers donned their fluorescent-banded Day-Glo jackets and swung into action.
Matt was approached by a young WPC who, after establishing the essentials, took him to sit in one of the police cars whilst she and her partner held a conversation over the parapet with the paramedic down below. A third officer secured the scene, reeling out a quantity of orange-striped tape around the bridge area and placing cones in the road. The ambulance crew, after consultation with the police, climbed back into their vehicle and drove away, their departure confirming Sophie’s demise.
In due course, someone produced wire-cutters and made an opening in the fence beside the bridge, whilst another began rigging up lighting to illuminate the scene.
A passing car slowed to view the spectacle, the driver winding down his window to call a query, only to be moved on by an officer who then took up traffic duty.
Cocooned in the police car, with the multiple flashing lights having an almost hypnotic effect, Matt had a strange sensation of detachment, as if he were watching it all on TV.
Murder in Mind Page 2