I looked at him enquiringly, but he wasn’t finished, not by a long way.
‘But you’re going to need more than luck where you’re going.’
‘I didn’t do it,’ I said, but I could see from his expression that he didn’t believe me.
I nearly asked him for my tip back.
*
Douglas wasn’t at home. I knew he wouldn’t be. He’d left on Friday afternoon for a rare day’s partridge shooting in Somerset. He was staying down there with friends and not leaving until after lunch on Sunday.
He had offered not to go. He said he would remain in London and look after me, but I had insisted he went. I told him I’d be fine if I could stay in the house – ‘As long as you like, dear boy’ – and I knew how much he enjoyed his shooting.
It was partly why I’d gone to the races, as the hours until Douglas’s return seemed to stretch interminably ahead with nothing for me to do. The choice was either to sit in front of the television all day and get drunk, or go to the races and stay sober.
Now I wished I’d chosen the former.
But it was not too late.
I fetched a bottle of Merlot from the wine rack in the kitchen – not one of Douglas’s finest – and took it along to the sitting room.
I was still in time to watch the last three races from Ascot but I found myself mostly just staring at the screen without really taking in what was happening.
The short-priced favourite won the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, but it had been boxed in on the rail and appeared to barge its way through to get home by a neck. It would be something for George Longcross to sort out and, sure enough, a stewards’ enquiry was quickly announced.
I could imagine George and his fellow stewards studying the footage from the various cameras and interviewing the appropriate jockeys in the Stewards’ Room.
From what I could see from the head-on shot on the TV, the fast-finishing winner had taken a bit of a liberty by forcing himself through a gap that was hardly big enough in the first place while, at the same time, the horse in front, which had subsequently finished second, had begun to hang towards the rail, making the gap even smaller. Contact between the two had been inevitable.
It was a difficult call but I would have argued that, on balance, the fault was six by one, half a dozen by the other, and I would leave the placings unaltered.
But I wasn’t George Longcross.
To massive boos from the crowd, the horse that had been first past the post was demoted for causing interference and the race was awarded to the second. And then, to add insult to injury, it was announced that the jockey on the favourite had also been suspended for two days for careless riding.
A little while afterwards, the young man in question was interviewed by the TV presenter and he was not happy, and not particularly diplomatic either in his criticism of the stewards, something that might cause him more trouble later.
‘They didn’t consider the facts,’ he protested loudly. ‘It was as if they made up their minds without even bothering to look at the evidence. I’ve been unjustly accused of something I didn’t do.’
I knew exactly how he felt.
9
At eleven o’clock on Sunday morning I received an extremely irate and rambling call on my mobile from Mary Bradbury, Amelia’s mother.
‘You’re a horrid little man,’ she shouted down the line. ‘How could you have killed Amelia?’
‘I didn’t,’ I replied.
‘Ha!’ she squawked. ‘Joe told me that you’d deny it.’
‘I deny it because it isn’t true.’
‘Joe says it is.’
‘That’s because Joe is lying to you, as he’s lied to the police.’ And to everyone else. Some of the so-called exclusive revelations in the Sunday newspapers concerning Amelia’s history as a psychiatric in-patient had Joe Bradbury’s fingerprints all over them.
‘He says you killed her for her life insurance money.’
‘Mary,’ I said earnestly, ‘I didn’t kill her. I loved her, as you know all too well.’
‘Joe says—’
I interrupted her. ‘I don’t care what Joe says. He’s not telling you the truth.’
‘Why would he lie?’
Why indeed.
‘Why don’t you ask him what he was doing at our house when he found Amelia. He hasn’t been there for more than two years. He wasn’t welcome. Yet he appears on the very day Amelia died. Don’t you think that’s rather suspicious?’
‘You’re not seriously suggesting that Joe had something to do with Amelia’s death? Don’t be ridiculous, he’s her brother.’
‘But you think it’s not ridiculous that I did have something to do with it when I’m her husband?’ I asked with strong irony. ‘Come on, Mary, use some common sense.’
Common sense had always been something she was short of, and all the more so recently as her age-related confusion had grown.
‘But Joe is adamant that you killed her. He told me that he has proof you did it.’
‘Then he’s lying to you again,’ I said, but she wasn’t listening.
‘I just hope I live long enough to see you found guilty,’ she said. ‘It’s a real shame you won’t hang, if you ask me. Namby-pamby do-gooding abolitionists. Not like when I was a girl. Murderers got what was coming to them then – the long drop at the end of a rope. And good riddance. Prison’s too good for the likes of you.’
She was getting quite agitated and breathless.
‘I’m sure you’ll live for a long time yet, Mary,’ I said, ignoring her vitriol.
‘I will if this cancer doesn’t see me off.’
Cancer? What cancer? That was news to me.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mary,’ I said.
However hard I tried, I found I couldn’t be angry with the old witch. I’d loved her dearly for such a long time, as Amelia had done. It was not her fault that her shit of a son had taken advantage of her increasing impairment to brainwash her so completely.
‘In the pancreas, they say. Found out last week. Quite advanced, spread to my liver. Seems it could see me off at any time. They say I’m too ill for an operation – it would kill me. But the damn cancer will kill me too.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
In a strange way, I was pleased that Amelia had never known – at least I assumed she had never known because, if she had, she would have surely told me. She would have been devastated. In spite of everything that had gone on over the past three years between them, she had still loved her mother very deeply.
‘Well, dear, I must go now,’ Mary said, as if she had completely forgotten why she had phoned me in the first place. ‘It will be time for my lunch soon.’
Away with the fairies, but not so much that she couldn’t do me considerable harm if I wasn’t careful.
We disconnected but my phone rang again straight away. I thought it must be Mary calling back with more insults but I was wrong.
‘William!’ stated a humourless male voice loudly. ‘It’s your father.’
Oh, hell!
‘Hello, Pa,’ I said in my best try-not-to-antagonise-him tone. ‘How lovely to hear from you.’
‘Don’t give me that claptrap,’ he said. ‘Seems like you’re in a bit of bother.’ He coughed, as if there was more he wanted to say but didn’t. Then he got it out. ‘Not something you can handle on your own. Your mother wants you to come home here so we can help.’
I could have cried except that he wouldn’t have wanted that, or liked it.
‘Thank you, Pa,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll come tomorrow.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Mrs Jenkins to make up your room. Your mother and I would be pleased to see you.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, but he had already gone.
That was as near as he ever got to expressing his love for his sons.
I was my father’s son and, throughout my life, it had only been with Amelia that I had been able to express my true feelings ab
out anything.
And now, God help me, she was gone.
Another series of huge bouts of sobbing left me completely wrung out and by the time Douglas returned about eight in the evening, I was pretty much ready for bed.
‘Good weekend?’ I asked.
‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘Although I felt guilty at having left you alone the whole time. Especially with all that nonsense printed in the newspapers.’
I waved a dismissive hand as if I could handle all of that, even though I couldn’t.
‘Fancy a drink?’ he asked. ‘I had to refrain at lunch because I was driving. Bloody shame. Tony had a really nice magnum of Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2007 that I could have got deeply stuck into.’ He sighed.
‘I’d love a drink,’ I said, ‘but make it just a small one. I don’t feel much like celebrating.’
‘No,’ he agreed, and he poured two small glasses of a somewhat lesser-quality red wine than the Châteauneuf.
‘Pa called me,’ I said, taking a sip.
‘Oh.’ Douglas’s hand stopped abruptly as he raised his glass towards his lips. ‘How did that go?’
‘Pretty well,’ I said. ‘In fact, much better than I expected. He asked me to go home so he could help.’
‘Blimey!’ Douglas exclaimed. ‘But I bet he’s more concerned about you tarnishing the family name than your personal welfare.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But, strangely, he really did seem to care. I was quite moved. He mentioned Ma for a start. Said she’d be pleased to see me.’
‘He must be getting soft in his old age.’ Douglas laughed loudly.
‘I think I’ll go tomorrow, but just for a couple of nights. I need to be back by Wednesday as the police have informed me that Amelia’s inquest will be opening in Oxford that afternoon.’
‘But that will be just a formality at this stage,’ Douglas said. ‘The coroner will simply open the inquest, and then adjourn it.’
‘Yeah, but I think I should be there as her next of kin. Don’t you?’
‘Maybe,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t want you to get too upset by what you might hear.’
‘Like what?’ I said.
‘Preliminary results of the cause of death. Method of identification. Stuff like that. I’ve acted in several Coroners’ Courts. Usually after industrial accidents where a firm is worried about being tried for corporate manslaughter. It always seems to me that the deceased is rather dehumanised, just a “thing” rather than a person. It can be quite upsetting for the relatives.’
‘Everything is quite upsetting at the moment,’ I said, hanging my head. ‘I don’t really know where I am or what I should do. I’m only going home to see Ma and Pa because I can’t think of anything else to do. I don’t want to be in the house in Hanwell on my own, that’s for sure, even if the police do let me back in. And I can’t go on staying here for ever.’
‘Why not?’ Douglas said. ‘You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, meaning it. ‘But I think I’ll go to Wales. My life seems a bit lost at the moment, as if I were starring in a horror biopic without a screenplay, and no director. I feel I should be doing something but I have absolutely nothing to do. At least up there, I’ll be put to work on some project or other and I’ll feel useful.’
Our mother always had her pet projects on the go, to somehow improve the castle in her eyes. Such as tree planting or path laying, converting outhouses into craft workshops or organising local workers into chain gangs to confront the never-ending scourge of ivy before it could attack the ancient stonework.
I would simply get swept up by her enthusiasm and maybe, just maybe, the physical labour, even for a day or two, would enable me to forget briefly the agony that existed in my heart.
‘As you like,’ Douglas said. ‘But if I were you, I’d skip the inquest and stay longer at home. It will do you good.’
‘Won’t it look bad if I’m not present?’
‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Douglas said. ‘The way the press have been hounding you, it’s probably best to avoid them, and you can bet they’ll be there in force.’
I still didn’t like it. The media would accuse me of hiding, and not caring.
‘I’d go on your behalf,’ Douglas said, ‘but I’m busy with this trial at the Bailey. The judge is currently doing his summing-up and the whole thing should be through by the middle of the week, but one never knows how much time the jury will take. In my experience, juries are always a bit of a lottery. But here’s hoping this one makes the right decision.’
He lifted his glass.
‘Guilty, you mean.’
‘In this case, yes,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s a gay lovers’ tiff and the defendant is as guilty as hell.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ I asked.
‘His DNA was all over the murder scene for a start.’
‘So?’ I asked. ‘My DNA will be all over Amelia’s murder scene too. I live there. It doesn’t mean I killed her.’
‘Hmm. Good point,’ Douglas said. ‘But the defendant in this case maintains that he had an argument with his neighbour and killed him by mistake while defending himself with a fish-filleting knife. What complete nonsense. No one carries a knife like that unless they have the intention of using it. And he also claims that he’d never been in the victim’s flat before and that his DNA found all over the victim’s bed was planted there by the police.’
‘Are you sure it wasn’t?’
He looked at me strangely. ‘You don’t seem to have a very high regard for the Old Bill.’
‘Would you in my place?’ I replied. ‘They seem to take Joe Bradbury’s word for it that I killed Amelia without investigating him at all.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Don’t I?’ I said. ‘I’ve just received another of his diatribes by email. In it he continually mocks me as being the only suspect. Then he accuses me of being abusive and aggressive towards his mother on the telephone in spite of the fact that I wasn’t, and that it was she that called in the first place to abuse me. He also maintains that I’m a bully when it’s really he who’s done all the bullying. I’m totally fed up with him. Amelia and I were advised by Simon Bassett never to respond to Joe’s lies, but he’s sorely testing my patience at the moment. So it hasn’t been a great day, to say nothing of those damn newspaper headlines. They really hurt.’
‘Why did you look at them?’ Douglas asked.
‘It’s a bit difficult not to when you have them delivered and they were lying open on the doormat.’
‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘But they’re only delivered on Sundays, mind. You’ll be spared tomorrow.’
‘Surely by tomorrow they will have found something else to write about.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ Douglas said. ‘Felicity and Tony hosted a big Sunday lunch today for ten of their friends. In spite of them knowing that you’re my brother, it was all they talked about. I had to spend the whole time defending your character and reputation.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Don’t be.’ He smiled. ‘It was my pleasure. The damn media should be ashamed of the hatchet job they’ve done on you. I hope you sue.’
‘Douglas, you know as well as I do, in fact better, that suing newspapers is a mug’s game. They will have cleared everything through their lawyers before they printed it.’
‘Yeah, you’re right. The media are so careful these days. Especially after the BBC quite rightly got done for invading Cliff Richard’s privacy. And then there was that dreadful case in Bristol when the landlord was accused by the papers of murdering one of his female tenants.’
I looked at him blankly.
‘You must remember. They made a TV film about him and he was a star witness at the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics – not that that seems to have done any good, if this case is anything to go by. What the hell was his name?’
‘I can’t help you,’ I said.
�
��Jefferies!’ Douglas said, clapping his hands together in delight. ‘That was it. Christopher Jefferies.’
‘What about him?’
‘Turned out he was completely blameless, so he sued for libel. And he won, too. Received substantial damages from eight national newspapers, no less, two of which were later also found in contempt of court and heavily fined on top. The combined press had tried and convicted him in the eyes of the public without any evidence whatsoever. Assassinated his character just because he had long white hair and looked a bit odd. It was disgraceful.’
No more disgraceful than what they were now doing to me.
10
On Monday morning I packed up my meagre possessions and set off from Chester Square to Wales. But first I would have to collect my Jag from the pub in Hanwell village where I’d left it while in London, having taken a taxi to the station. Hence, I caught the train from London to Banbury.
While on the train, I called the number on the business card that Detective Chief Inspector Priestly had given me at our interview. A voice answered but it wasn’t the DCI.
‘DS Dowdeswell.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘You’ll do. This is Bill Russell.’
There was a pause while he worked it out.
‘Yes, Mr Gordon-Russell,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’d like access to my property. I need some clean clothes.’
There were some mumblings from the other end that I couldn’t really hear, as if the sergeant was speaking to someone else with his hand over the microphone. Then he came back to me.
‘That shouldn’t be a problem. We have finished our forensic examination of the murder scene.’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘I’m on my way there now.’
‘Then you will need the locks removed.’
‘What locks?’
‘We applied hasps and padlocks to the external doors to prevent anyone gaining access before we had completed our investigation.’
‘Me, you mean?’ I said cynically.
‘Well, yes,’ he agreed. ‘But there is also some damage to the external kitchen door, which needed securing.’
‘Damage?’
‘Yes,’ said the detective sergeant. ‘It was through the kitchen door that Mr Bradbury made his entrance when he saw Mrs Gordon-Russell lying on the floor. Basically, he kicked the door down.’
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