Murder in Mind

by Lyndon Stacey

  The picture conjured up a mix of emotions in Matt: white-hot fury at the bastard who had caused her distress; frustration with his own inability to protect her; and – running through it all – a kind of dazed bewilderment at the speed with which his life seemed to be disintegrating around him.

  Three weeks ago his most pressing concern had been how to keep up with the escalating demand for his services as a jockey in the coming season; now, that flood of demand had ebbed to a trickle, he’d been beaten up, threatened, had got on the wrong side of the police and the racing authorities, and his personal life was in crisis.

  Oh God – Kendra …

  The rest he could deal with, but the thought that he’d let Kendra down – that she’d felt the need to run to her family for comfort and reassurance – was something that seared through his mind like a physical pain. If only he could have seen it coming, he would have …

  Here his self-chastisement ground to a halt. Just what would he have done? Abandoned Jamie to his fate? It wasn’t in his nature to turn his back on a friend who so plainly needed him, but, on the other hand, had he really helped Jamie at all? He hadn’t been able to stop the Irishman’s career from going down the pan, and, as far as he knew, Jamie was still the prime suspect for the murder of Sophie Bradford.

  Whichever way he looked at it, his actions – well meant though they undoubtedly had been – had achieved nothing of value, and the repercussions looked set to leave his life in tatters.

  Out of the shower and wrapped in his bathrobe, the idea of an empty bed held no allure whatsoever, and Matt trudged back downstairs, to the delight of the three dogs who had settled down for the night. He found himself looking round for the fourth and swore under his breath; he was even missing Taffy, so much a part of his life had she become.

  Out of habit, he filled the kettle and switched it on, then, moments later, switched it off again. His current mindset wasn’t going to be remedied by a mug of tea or coffee. Somewhere, he knew, there was a bottle of whisky, given to him by a grateful owner at the Cheltenham Festival. Neither he nor Kendra drank spirits, as a rule, but he remembered having it in his coffee the evening he was attacked, and just now the enticing warmth and haziness it promised sent him hunting through the kitchen cupboards, banging doors and swearing when he couldn’t immediately find it.

  The bottle of Famous Grouse was finally run to ground in a cupboard in the sitting room and, retrieving a tumbler from the draining rack in the kitchen, Matt poured himself a generous measure, took a gulp and then, shadowed by the dogs and still carrying the bottle, went back and threw himself down on the sofa.

  As the first mouthful of liquid burned a comforting trail down his throat and into the very core of his body, he took another, closed his eyes, and leaned back against the cushions, rolling the unfamiliar taste round his tongue.

  A moment later, hearing a whine, he opened his eyes. Sky, the German shepherd, was sitting close, her head tilted to one side, watching him.

  ‘What are you – my conscience?’ he demanded. ‘Go and lie down. I know what I’m doing.’

  Sky flattened her ears uncertainly, but didn’t move.

  ‘What? I’m all right. Go and lie down!’

  The dog obeyed the second part of the command, but not the first, curling up at the side of the sofa with her chin resting on the edge of the cushion.

  Matt took a third mouthful and closed his eyes again, but he could still feel Sky’s gaze upon him, making him feel unreasonably guilty. Why the hell shouldn’t he get drunk? Didn’t he have every excuse? Jamie had gone out on a bender, hadn’t he?

  Yeah, and what good had it done him? his logical self argued. Landed him in more grief, in fact. And who had it been who’d pointed out the error of his ways? Did that make Matt the sort of person he’d always despised? One of those who could dish out advice but not live by it themselves?

  Stubbornly, he took another gulp, wishing he liked the spirit better. He craved oblivion. What was the point of thinking, when his thoughts just went round in circles and fetched up at the realisation that he’d made a total balls-up of everything and Kendra had left him?

  Left him?

  The idea caused a stab of panic. Had she left him? He didn’t know. With his career on the skids, what could he offer her? Charlie had never really thought Matt good enough for his daughter. In her father’s house, would she come under pressure to make the split permanent? Surely not, with a baby on the way …

  Ignoring Sky’s worried brown eyes, Matt drained the glass and refilled it.

  Matt awoke stiff and cold, with a thumping headache. Opening his eyes, he couldn’t, at first, make sense of the pattern of black and white stripes that crossed his field of vision, but they presently resolved themselves into the black beams on the sitting-room ceiling. He was still on the couch, still cradling the bottle of Famous Grouse, and an exploratory hand found the soft fur of the German shepherd, who had apparently not left his side.

  With a groan, he sat up. On the sofa beside him the tumbler lay empty, a stain on the upholstery showing where it had overturned, and the discovery that the bottle remained four-fifths full meant he couldn’t blame an excess of alcohol for his sore head. The mundane truth was that the intention to drown his grievances had been defeated by plain old-fashioned fatigue.

  ‘Oh, God – look at me! Can’t even get drunk properly,’ Matt told the dog, in disgust. Sky stood up and wagged her tail happily.

  The room was in that kind of half-light that results from drawn curtains in the daytime, the two shaded wall lights adding their golden pools to the total, and a glance at his watch showed that it was nearly half past eight. He’d missed riding work, then, even if he’d been expected, which – after Leonard’s message – he doubted.

  Standing the bottle on the coffee table, Matt got to his feet, stretching the kinks out of his muscles. Trying to keep his mind in neutral, he switched the lights off and drew the curtains back, then went into the kitchen to put the kettle on and feed the dogs, before heading upstairs for another shower.

  While he was trying to summon up the enthusiasm to get something to eat, Leonard rang, wanting to know if he was all right to ride Mr Monkey that afternoon.

  ‘I tried to ring earlier, but the line was busy …’

  ‘It was off the hook,’ Matt said, without apology.

  ‘Er … I gather you and Kendra had a bit of bother yesterday,’ Leonard ventured cautiously. ‘The Guv said something about it. Everything OK?’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Matt said.

  ‘Good, good …’ Leonard hesitated. ‘Look, Matt, I’m really sorry …’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ He well understood the trainer’s predicament, but still couldn’t find it within him to utter the words of forgiveness Leonard wanted to hear. Give it a day or two, maybe. ‘See you later,’ he said, and put the phone down.

  Almost immediately, it began to ring again.

  ‘Matt?’ It was Casey.

  With a rush of guilt, he realised that he’d never got round to ringing her the night before.

  ‘Hi. Has Bartholomew been onto you?’

  ‘No.’ She sounded surprised. ‘Why?’

  Briefly, Matt explained.

  ‘I meant to warn you not to mention the numberplate,’ he finished. ‘In case you got your contact in trouble.’

  ‘Well, actually, it’s the numberplate I’m ringing about. I’ve done a little digging on our Mr Bryan, and guess what?’

  ‘Hang on, you’ve lost me already. Am I supposed to know who Mr Bryan is?’

  ‘Steve Bryan,’ Casey enunciated, with exaggerated care – as to one deficient in understanding. ‘The man who owns the van, remember?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. But you said it was reported stolen.’

  ‘It was, but I’ve been thinking about that; I mean, what’s to stop him using it to set up the ambush on you and then dumping it somewhere and reporting it stolen. I told you it wasn’t reported until lat
er that evening, didn’t I? But, anyway, the really interesting thing about Steve Bryan is that, until a year or two ago, he was in the army – and so was his brother! And guess who has army connections …’

  ‘Who?’ Matt’s brain was lagging behind somewhat.

  ‘Kenning, of course! Don’t you remember? Father was a brigadier.’

  ‘Yeah, but just because the morons that jumped me were wearing combat gear doesn’t mean they were necessarily ex-army,’ Matt contested. ‘You can buy that stuff anywhere.’

  ‘I know that. But it seems a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? And they had all the moves. I mean, if you were out to hire muscle, army types would be the obvious choice, wouldn’t they?’

  Matt supposed she was right.

  ‘OK,’ he allowed. ‘So, what do you propose we do about it? We’ll have to tell Bartholomew now.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got Bryan’s address. We could always go see if we can get a look at him. See if you recognise him.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Matt said, without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I’m not going anywhere near Mr Bryan or his brother – and neither are you! Look, Bartholomew is certain to catch up with you today sometime – I think you should give him the registration number and let him draw his own conclusions. Let him think you haven’t got anywhere with it. In fact, I should just give him the partial plate you got on Saturday and tell him I knew nothing about it. That way, you won’t get into so much trouble for not reporting it straight away and I won’t get into trouble for not telling him last night.’

  ‘That seems a bit tame,’ Casey complained. ‘I thought you’d want to see it through yourself.’

  ‘Well, I don’t. All I ever wanted was to get the heat off Jamie – it was you who built it all up with that rubbish about the jockey turned sleuth, and look where it’s got me. And don’t go thinking you’ll do this on your own, because, if it was this Bryan character who threatened Kendra yesterday, he probably wouldn’t think twice about tracking you down too, and being a girl isn’t going to save you.’

  ‘He doesn’t know who I am.’

  ‘It wouldn’t take an Einstein to work it out,’ Matt told her, dryly. ‘No, turn it over to Bartholomew and let him deal with it. Perhaps then I can start to concentrate on putting my life back together.’

  In spite of adjuring Casey to leave the matter to the professionals, Matt found he couldn’t stop himself turning the new information over in his mind as he drove to the racecourse later in the day.

  The murder of Sophie Bradford had seemed, on the face of it, to be an unpremeditated attack – a spur of the moment thing. Somehow it didn’t tally with the kind of organised retaliation of which he’d been on the receiving end. Was there more to it than met the eye? Or had the murder been committed in a flash of drunken temper by someone who, now he’d sobered up, was mounting a careful cover-up operation?

  If that was the case, he’d jumped the gun, because, as far as Matt was aware, he’d been nowhere near discovering the murderer’s identity, and, in hiring muscle to scare Matt off, the man had potentially increased his own risk of being found.

  Ex-army. Even though he’d debated its relevance with Casey, he couldn’t stop his thoughts from returning to the fact, over and over again. It was quite possible that Kenning would still have contacts in the forces – in fact, hadn’t Casey said something about his involvement in a charity for ex-servicemen? Could he really be behind all this? Matt’s mind began to race. He returned to the idea he’d fleetingly considered, that Sophie had been blackmailing the peer in some way. From what he knew of her, it certainly wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility. Kenning hadn’t been at the party, but then, if he had wanted her out of the way, it was difficult to imagine him dirtying his own hands …

  But would he really employ someone else to kill for him? Matt found it hard to believe. Surely that would just lay him open to yet more serious blackmail.

  Well, then, maybe murder hadn’t been intended. What if the attack on Sophie had been intended as a frightener – along the lines of what Matt had been subjected to – but had got out of hand?

  ‘For God’s sake, Shepherd!’

  Absorbed in the possibilities, Matt had almost collided with the object of his thoughts in the doorway of The Scales. He glanced up and, with a muttered apology, stepped aside.

  ‘Mind still not on the job?’ the peer queried, tutting his disapproval.

  To retain at least some hope of salvaging his career, Matt stifled the urge to plant a fist in Kenning’s aristocratic face and went on into the weighing room, where he found that the tale of his demotion had preceded him. It was not hard to see why – some five pegs down from his, Ray Landon stood, tucking the shirt-tails of Brewer’s distinctive colours into the waistband of his breeches. He glanced in Matt’s direction and then looked away, clearly feeling the awkwardness of his situation.

  Returning the greetings of a couple of his closest colleagues, Matt dumped his kitbag on the bench and, taking a physical and mental deep breath, went over to Landon and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘All right, mate? You want to watch Trestle Table in the second. If you let him get too close to the wings, he’ll sometimes duck out on you. Did it to me the first time I rode him.’

  Landon turned a wary face in Matt’s direction and the noise level in the changing room dropped a decibel or two as those nearest strained to hear what was said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Landon said, after a moment. ‘Look – I know you must feel like –’

  ‘Forget it,’ Matt cut in, shortly. ‘If it wasn’t you, it’d be someone else. Just don’t get too comfortable in my shoes, OK?’

  With a final slap on the other jockey’s shoulder, he turned back to his own peg to get changed for Mr Monkey.

  ‘That was nice,’ a voice said softly in his ear, and Matt found Rollo beside him.

  He shrugged.

  ‘No sense in getting mad at him. Someone has to ride the horses.’

  ‘Even so …’ Rollo hesitated. ‘Look, there’s a rumour going round that you and Kendra are having a spot of bother – is everything all right?’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Matt exclaimed, explosively. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I overheard some of the lads talking about it. Don’t know where they heard. She hasn’t really left you, has she? You two always seemed so tight.’

  ‘No, she hasn’t.’ Matt gave Rollo the gist of what had happened. ‘We thought it was safer if she stayed at her father’s until this thing’s sorted out, that’s all,’ he finished, praying that it was true. ‘And I’d be obliged if you’d put the guys straight if there’s anymore talk. Just as if it was any of their bloody business in the first place.’

  ‘Hey, look – most of them are on your side, Matt. They think what Brewer’s doing sucks. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a case against him – I mean, you’ve done nothing wrong. Why don’t you get onto the JAGB?’

  Matt pulled a face. The Jockey’s Association was the closest thing they had to a union, and a great place to turn to in trouble, but, just at the moment, he was keen to keep his dispute with Kendra’s father as low-key as possible.

  ‘Excuse me – Matt?’ Jim Steady, the valet, interrupted his thoughts. ‘Mr McKenzie would like a word, when you have a moment.’

  ‘Right-oh, thanks.’

  Matt found Doogie McKenzie waiting just outside the building, his cloud of white hair billowing in the stiff breeze. It seemed he too had heard of the growing rift between Matt and Charlie Brewer, and, although he expressed what Matt felt sure was genuine sympathy for his former protégé, it appeared it had come at a providential time for Doogie. Apparently his own regular jockey had broken his wrist in an accident on the gallops the day before, leaving Doogie in the lurch.

  ‘Tried to ring you yesterday, but I couldn’t get through,’ he told Matt. ‘But your agent said you’d be here, and would most likely be grateful for the rides, so I took a chanc
e and left it. Can you help me out?’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Matt told him truthfully. And what better way to show Brewer that, in cutting his stable jockey loose, he was hurting no one but himself?

  ‘They’re not world-beaters, but neither are they without a chance,’ Doogie said. ‘Sage Counsel tends to give up when he’s passed, but he’s wearing blinkers today, so we’ll see if that helps, and Delta Tango is a real honest stayer.’

  ‘Delta Tango? Owner got army connections?’ Matt queried, and then a thought struck him. ‘Not another of Kenning’s, is it?’

  ‘Now, would I do that to you?’ Doogie demanded reproachfully, bushy brows drawing down over his sharp blue eyes.

  ‘Sorry. I’ve just had my fill of nasty surprises lately.’

  ‘Actually the horse is owned by a retired army captain and his wife. You’ll no doubt meet them later. Ex-SAS, I believe – but nothing to do with your friend Kenning.’

  ‘SAS?’ Matt frowned, wondering why that had set a bell tinkling somewhere in the recesses of his mind.

  ‘That’s right,’ Doogie confirmed. ‘I tried out for the SAS once – did I ever tell you?’

  ‘Many times,’ Matt said dryly. It was one of the Scot’s favourite drinking tales, and the ordeal he claimed to have endured grew more impossibly arduous with every telling.

  ‘OK, well, I’ll let you get on, lad. And thanks for stepping in. I never thought Charlie Brewer would be such a complete pillock, but he’s done me a favour, so I’m not about to complain!’

  With a wave of his hand, Matt went back to weigh out for his ride on Mr Monkey, feeling that at least something was working in his favour that day, even if at the cost of some other poor soul.

  In the paddock he found Harry deputising for his father, who was on the other side of the central lawn, supervising Landon’s debut as Rockfield’s first jockey.

  Matt wasn’t sorry. He couldn’t really justify the resentment he felt towards John Leonard, but, on the other hand, he wasn’t ready to face him with a smile. For now, it was easier not to deal with him at all.