Desperately winded, Gideon lay where he had fallen, face down, his ears ringing and the taste of blood in his mouth. Behind his closed eyelids was imprinted the last image he had seen, the black silhouette of a man against a billowing wall of flame.
Gradually the sound of falling debris died away, and the searing heat retreated. Gideon opened his eyes almost reluctantly, rolled on to his side and propped himself up on one elbow, still finding breathing difficult.
What was left of Roly French's cottage stood starkly against the starlit sky, lit here and there by small flickering flames in its depths, but Gideon hardly gave it a glance.
On the path in front of the devastated building, some six or eight feet away, lay a body. Gideon struggled on to his hands and knees and moved closer.
Within moments he could see that it was Tom Collins, and he didn't need a doctor to tell him that the stud owner was very dead.
TWELVE
The day of Tom Collins' funeral was wet and cold. Sleety rain blew lazily but relentlessly down from a slate-grey sky, obscuring the horizons behind a misty curtain. A few early daffodils bobbed and curtsied in the churchyard, determinedly cheerful but almost out of place, as if someone had had the bad taste to turn up in a party dress.
Gideon stood respectfully among the mourners, rain dripping off his hair and the end of his nose, and best shoes sodden in the rough, hastily cut grass.
The service had been fairly long; the church was packed and several people had wished to say their piece. Tom Collins had been generally liked and respected, it seemed. A rough diamond but a reliable friend in need. As an epitaph it was all one could ask really, Gideon reflected, and he wouldn't have hesitated to agree with it a few short days before. But now he had the uneasy feeling that there might have been a little more to Tom Collins than met the eye.
The body was committed to the earth and the necessary words spoken in what just stopped short of being unseemly haste, but none of the mourners, red-nosed and shivering in the misery of the drizzle, looked as though they were about to complain. Indeed, Mary, leaning on the arm of her son, looked as though she wished it was all over. Her eyes dark-ringed and swollen in her pale face, she kept her head bowed and held a handkerchief almost constantly to her nose and mouth. Beside her, Anthony held himself rigid and expressionless as he had throughout the proceedings.
Gideon felt for them both.
On the other side of Mary, and holding a large black umbrella over the three of them, was a plumply pretty blonde girl whom Gideon remembered as being Annabel, the daughter currently studying at university. She wore Doc Marten's and an assortment of black garments that none but a student would even contemplate wearing together, topped off by a multitude of earrings and a nose stud.
. Gideon followed the assorted friends and family as they filed thankfully through the lych-gate and away to their cars, each stopping briefly under the tiled roof to offer their sympathy to Mary and the children. In his turn, Gideon shook hands with Anthony and Annabel and hugged their mother warmly, intending nevertheless to make his excuses and slip away without going back to the wake at the farm.
`You will come back with us, won't you?' Mary said, keeping hold of his hands.
`Well . . .' Gideon hesitated, his heart sinking.
`Please.' She drew him closer, adding in a low voice, `I need to talk to you. It's important.'
'Of course I will,' Gideon heard himself say, resigned to the prospect of at least an hour, if not two, of polite small talk with people he'd never seen before and would probably never see again.
`Thank you.' Mary squeezed his hands tightly before letting go and Gideon felt slightly ashamed. After all, what was an hour or two in the grand scheme of things?
It was in fact over three hours before the company at the farm had thinned out enough to allow Mary to devote much time to Gideon. Grief had not dimmed her hospitality and she'd prepared a huge spread. Few of the assembled mourners allowed their distress to stand noticeably in the way of their appetite.
Gideon watched Mary bustling about carrying plates of nibbles, replenishing wine glasses and mopping up the occasional spillage with seemingly indomitable energy. His first thought was that it was wrong that she should have to work so hard on such an occasion but he quickly realised the non-stop activity was her way of coping. It left her less time to talk; less time to have to endure the well-meant but emotionally torturing sympathy of others.
Gideon had counted Tom amongst his friends but he'd always been closer to Mary, and in that sense the tragedy was in a way at second-hand to him. After the initial shock of Tom's violent death, his first thoughts had been for her. For as long as he'd known her, her family had been her world. How would she cope?
Most of the rest of that tragic evening had faded into a blur. He recalled his relief at finding the stud owner's mobile phone in the Range Rover; the irritation of having to keep at bay the halfdozen or so voyeurs drawn by the noise and glow of the explosion; and the eventual arrival of the emergency services, including the blessedly capable Logan.
Nothing, though, would ever erase from his mind's eye the heart-wrenching sight of Mary's face as she opened the door that night, expecting it to be Tom, surprised but pleased to see Gideon, and finally taking in the significance of Logan behind him, showing his warrant card as identification. Her eyes had searched Gideon's, urgently beseeching him to deny what she instinctively knew. The moment when the light went out of them had haunted his waking moments ever since.
The police surgeon had given Mary a sedative and Gideon had offered to stay with her at least until Anthony returned from his evening class.
In the end he'd stayed all night. Although Anthony had received the shocking news of his father's death with characteristic courage, it seemed hard to leave a seventeen year old to look after his widowed mother in such circumstances.
Suddenly, Mary was there beside Gideon, taking his arm and apologising profusely.
`I'm so sorry, Gideon. I'd no idea everyone would stay so long. If I had known I'd never have asked you to hang on.'
`It's not a problem,' he assured her. `But are you sure it can't wait? You look worn out. Has anyone been looking after you?' `Anthony's just making me a cup of tea,' Mary said, waving the matter away with a dismissive hand. `No, I have to tell someone and you were the only person I could think of. You see, it's been worrying me ever since I found it - I didn't sleep a wink last night. I just need someone to tell me what I should do.'
Gideon frowned. `I'm happy to help you, Mary, if you think I can, but what about your family? Isn't there someone ... ?'
She shook her head, hanging on to his arm as if to physically stop him from leaving. `Nobody really. We're not that close, and this is so . . .'
Her voice shook and Gideon put his hand over hers, squeezing gently. `It's all right.'
Mary took a deep breath and smiled bravely as Anthony appeared with the promised cup of tea. `He's been so good,' she told Gideon, as her son walked away to help his sister gather discarded plates and glasses. `He's so steady, such a comfort. His father would have been so proud of him.'
Tears stood in her eyes and the teacup rattled in its saucer. `Come on. Sit down and tell me what's worrying you.'
`No, I think I'd better show you. Come upstairs and see what you make of it.'
Gideon followed her up the narrow staircase with some reluctance. He hoped he wasn't going to be required to untangle some kind of legal muddle because, if that were the case, Mary would very likely find her faith in his abilities misplaced. In his limited experience, papers drawn up by a solicitor were usually only comprehensible to another solicitor. It was as if they wanted to keep it in the family, so to speak. And they probably did.
As it turned out, the papers Mary produced had not been issued by a solicitor, but were no less legally binding for all that.
She led Gideon into a small room at the back of the house that had obviously been her husband's office-cum-study. Untidy bookcases cove
red one wall, stuffed partly with books on animal husbandry and farm management, and partly with folders and files. A filing cabinet stood in one corner, its top drawer so full that it wouldn't shut, and in front of the black square of the window a desk overflowed with letters, invoices, advertising literature, endless official-looking forms and other assorted paperwork. Amongst this muddle of ongoing business, a computer and monitor sat almost self-consciously, offering the possibility of order amongst the chaos.
Mary beckoned Gideon in and shut the door behind them, removing a telephone from the seat of a shabby leather wing-chair and inviting him to sit down.
`I was going through his papers looking for something the bank wanted. Tom would never let me touch this sort of thing; he said he'd take care of it and that I wasn't to worry. I wish he had let me. It's all such a muddle! He may have known where to find things but it's a nightmare for me.' She drew the curtains as she spoke, shutting out the lonely, rain-filled darkness, then picked up a brown envelope she'd put to one side. `Anyway, I found this. It isn't marked, so I opened it to see and - well, you read it.'
With a sense of deep foreboding, Gideon took the envelope from her and removed its contents. It was a typewritten document, couched in simple but unequivocal terms, and signed and dated by the three parties involved. It was an agreement to divide in equal shares the ownership and stud proceeds of the stallion Popsox, presently standing at Winterbourne Shires. It was signed by Tom Collins, Sean Rosetti and Royston Slade, and was dated nearly three years previously.
Gideon re-read the document slowly, trying to take it in. Slade?
How on earth had Tom got himself mixed up with Slade of all people? He looked at Mary, not knowing quite what to say. The document was clearly above board and legal. If she'd been hoping he'd tell her it wasn't, she was going to be disappointed.
`I didn't know,' she said, shaking her head helplessly. `I don't even know who this Slade is. Why would Tom do such a thing and not tell me?'
She was evidently totally bewildered and Gideon felt a wealth of pity for her. Hard enough to lose her husband in such a way, without coming so quickly upon evidence that he'd withheld part of his life from her. He hesitated to tell her what he knew of Slade, little though it was. Besides, it was just possible it was another, completely different, Slade.
Possible, but realistically Gideon recognised it as a forlorn hope. `He must have run into financial difficulties, I suppose, and didn't want to worry you with it,' Gideon said, knowing this would be no great comfort.
Mary rubbed a hand across her eyes. `But we often had hard times, that's the nature of farming. Tom never tried to conceal it from me before. He always used to moan and go round like a bear with a sore head for a few days and then we'd start to work round it. He knew I understood. I was a farmer's daughter before I became a farmer's wife, after all.'
`Can you remember what was happening about then?' Gideon prompted. `That would have been the year Sox had his accident, wouldn't it?'
`He had the accident in the autumn - the previous autumn that would have been. What's the date on that thing? July? He was over the worst of it by then, as you know, because you were here just after Christmas, weren't you? Sox even served a few mares that summer and we'd just started advertising him for stud the following year. I remember I thought we'd pitched the fee far too high but Tom said people would pay almost anything to have a foal by a celebrity like Sox. And he was right, too. We were oversubscribed and had to turn people away.'
`I suppose the insurance paid for the vet's bills?'
`Yes, most of them. I don't understand it. That horse is the apple of his eye! Was,' she amended, swallowing hard. She smiled shakily at Gideon. `I'm sorry. I still forget sometimes. It makes it worse, because then you have to remember all over again.'
`Don't apologise,' he said softly. `You're doing incredibly well.' `It's just . . . I can't believe that he'd sell any part of Sox, let alone two-thirds of him. Sean - I can maybe understand, we see so much of him he's like a family friend now, but this Royston Slade - whoever he is ... It doesn't make sense. And why didn't he tell me?'
`I don't know, Mary. Have you mentioned this to Rosetti?' She shook her head. `I only found it last night. I had hoped Sean would come today but he rang this morning to say he had an emergency operation - colic, I think. Anyway, he couldn't make it.'
Gideon tried to think. Presumably Rosetti had met Slade, as coowners of the horse, but then again, maybe not. It was hard to imagine Slade and the vet dealing together. It was hard to imagine Slade and Tom dealing together either. Slade and anyone, come to that. But how well was it ever possible to know anybody? Maybe Rosetti had brought Slade to the deal, rather than Tom. But the question remained: why should Tom be in a position to have to sell? As Mary said, it didn't make sense. The horse was about to become a mini-gold mine for them. Why make someone else rich? If Slade was a friend of Rosetti's ...
Mary was watching him anxiously.
`Would you like me to ask Sean about it?' he asked. `Oh, would you?'
`Sure. And - um - have you said anything about it to Anthony?' `Oh, no. I don't want to worry him. He's got enough to cope with.'
`You're probably right. He might be able to help you with some of this, though,' Gideon suggested, gesturing at the jumble of papers on the desk. `Just to sort through it a bit. He told me he's
doing business studies and he's got a good head on his shoulders. Put it to him.'
`I will. Thank you, Gideon. And thank you for everything you did last week. I don't know how we would have coped without you.'
`You'd have managed. You're a stronger person than you give yourself credit for,' he told her. `But you're welcome anyway.'
`I'm just so glad you weren't both caught in the blast,' Mary said. `One tragedy's bad enough, but if it had been both of you . . .' Her voice caught in her throat and she paused, fighting to keep control. `They say he wouldn't have felt anything. Wouldn't even have known.'
`No, he wouldn't have. Something like that is instantaneous.' `What makes it so hard is that I feel almost responsible. But then if it hadn't been Tom it would have been you and that would have been just as awful.'
Gideon was bewildered. `Why should you feel responsible? Wasn't it his idea to go to the cottage that evening.'
`Yes, it was, originally, but he was dragging his feet and I got cross with him. It was ten to seven and I said, "Gideon will think you're not coming," and he said, "Maybe I'm not." I'm afraid I lost my temper then,' she admitted. `I said, "You may treat me like dirt, Tom Collins, but I'll not have you treating Gideon that way. He's been a good friend to us. Look at all the time he spent here with Sox." Perhaps I should have flared up at him before. He said, "I know, damn it! Don't you think I know that?" And that's when he left.'
`He didn't say anything else?'
`No. Only-' Her voice wobbled under the strain. `Just as he got to the door he said, "I do love you, Mary Lou." It used to be his pet name for me. He hadn't used it for years.' The emotion proved too much and she buried her face in her handkerchief.
Gideon put his arm round her shoulders and waited, frowning slightly. It sounded as though Tom had hoped to avoid meeting
him that evening, which pointed to his having something to hide. But what?
`Mary? When you told Tom I was coming to see him at the cottage, did he say anything then?'
She sniffed and mopped her eyes. `Um ... he asked what you wanted to see him for, and I said I didn't know, you hadn't said.' `How did he seem?'
`He was cross. Kind of agitated. He said I should have asked him before making arrangements. He left his meal unfinished and came up here. I didn't take much notice, to be honest. I've not been able to do anything right for a long time. Although I was a bit surprised because he's always liked you.' She turned to look at Gideon, her eyes red and swollen. `What did you want to see him about? You hadn't quarrelled, had you? He seemed all right with you earlier.'
`Yes, he was fine,' Gideon said
, not answering the question. How could he answer? `I'm sorry, Mary. I shouldn't have reminded you. Forgive me.' He gave her shoulders a squeeze. `Look, I shall have to go soon but is there anything I can do for you first - anything at all?'
She blew her nose determinedly and smiled shakily at him. `No, I don't think so, Gideon. But thank you.'
`Well, if there is anything, you will call me, won't you?' Mary assured him that she would.
`What will happen here now? About the farm and the stud, I mean? It'll be too much for you on your own.'
`It's not up to me,' she said. `It's held in trust for Anthony, until he's twenty-one. I can't do anything without the permission of the trustees, and then only on Anthony's say-so. The farm will be okay, we've got a farm manager, and the stud almost runs itself until the season starts. Then, well, I don't know . . .'
Gideon hesitated. `I suppose it's not possible that you could get Roly French to come back?'
`I was thinking about that this morning,' Mary admitted. `Though I felt awful about it. It feels almost like going behind Tom's back - silly, I know - but I would feel much happier if Roly were here. He knew all there was to know about running this place. Whether he'd come, though . . .'
Gideon shrugged. `Whatever Tom's quarrel with him was, it was none of your doing. Try him and see. And don't feel guilty. Hard though it is, Tom's gone now and it's you who have to make this place work. You must do what's best for you and for Anthony.'
Mary pursed her lips. `Yes, you're right. I'll ask around and see if I can track him down. After all, Anthony's schooling's the most important thing now. He must finish that.' She put her hand over Gideon's. `Thank you, Gideon. Thank you for everything.'
After leaving Winterbourne Shires, Gideon drove a short way in the hectic, rush-hour traffic, then pulled into a side road, stopped, and keyed in a number on his replacement mobile phone. Logan answered fairly promptly but when Gideon asked if anything more had come to light regarding the explosion, said he was busy and would ring back shortly.
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