The man’s head bobbed up and down slightly with each step, and I had seen that easy, lolloping long stride before in the video room at Charing Cross police station.
The man who picked up Austin Reynolds’s envelope, with its filling of gravel, was the same man who had exited the Hilton Hotel just minutes after Clare had fallen to her death.
But this time I’d seen his face. And in spite of the greenness and the zombie eyes, I was certain I knew him.
I knew him very well indeed.
—
“GOT ’IM,” Gareth said excitedly, bursting into the commentary booth. “Did you see? Bleedin’ marvelous.”
To him it was still only a game, but, to be fair, that’s all that I’d implied it was.
“Yes,” I said almost equally excited, “I did see.”
I was thinking fast.
“Take this.” I dug into my leather bag and gave him an unmarked DVD. “I need you to do a bit of editing,” I said, and I explained what I wanted him to do.
“No prob,” he said, taking the DVD. “Give me about ten to fifteen mins.” He left as quickly as he’d arrived.
The horses were coming out onto the course for the fourth race, a three-quarter-mile maiden stakes for two-year-olds with seven runners, one of whom, Spitfire Boy, had run at Lingfield in the race when Clare had stopped Bangkok Flyer. That race had been over a mile, and Spitfire Boy had faded badly in the last two hundred yards. Perhaps this shorter trip would suit him better.
I described the colors of the jockeys’ silks as the horses made their way to the start on the back stretch, taking particular note of Ground Pepper, the young colt trained by Austin Reynolds.
I tried to concentrate on the horses but my heart was pounding.
If I was right, the man who had collected the envelope had murdered Toby Woodley. I should tell the police straightaway.
Concentrate, I told myself. For God’s sake, concentrate on the racing!
Try as I might to learn the colors, visions of the man’s face with his zombie eyes kept crowding my consciousness.
“They’re loading,” I said into my microphone as the horses began to be inserted into the starting gate by the team of handlers.
I flicked my main monitor over to the current betting odds and gave the meager crowd an update.
“Spitfire Boy is the favorite at three-to-one, Ground Pepper at fours, eleven-to-two bar those.”
I switched the monitor back to show the horses at the start.
“Mark, coming to you in ten seconds,” said Derek into my headphones, “nine, eight, seven . . .”
“Just three to go in now,” I said over the public address.
“. . . six, five, four . . .”
“Ground Pepper will be the last to load.”
“. . . three, two, one . . .”
As always, I paused fractionally as the satellite viewers came online.
“That’s it,” I said, “they’re all in. Ready.” The gate swung open. “They’re off, and racing.”
I thought I did pretty well, considering the minimal amount of time I had devoted to learning the colors.
I was helped by Spitfire Boy, who was a determined front-runner, taking the lead in the first few strides and setting a strong pace that spread the field around the far end of the course, making their identification easier.
As always, the horses bunched together more as they turned into the stretch, and, on this occasion, their jockeys’ faces didn’t remind me of Clare. This time they all appeared to have green faces and zombie eyes full of murderous intent.
Spitfire Boy held on to win by a neck, with Ground Pepper fading to finish fourth of the seven.
As soon as the last horse crossed the line I grabbed my cell phone and called the number of Superintendent Cullen’s sergeant. There was no answer. I tried it again. Still no answer, so I left a message asking him or his boss to call me back urgently.
What should I do now?
There were police downstairs by the entrances. Should I go down to one of them or should I call 999?
Gareth’s voice came over my headphones. “Mark, I’ve done the edit. It runs for just thirty-eight seconds. I’ll send it through to your monitor.”
“What the hell are you doing on the talk-back?” I said. “Where’s Derek?”
“They’ve all gone on a bathroom break. We’ve got commercials for the next . . .”—he paused while he checked—“. . . three mins and twenty. Do you want to see this or not?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “Put it on.”
I watched as his handiwork came up on my main monitor.
The unmarked DVD that I had given to Gareth was a copy that Detective Sergeant Sharp had given to me of the Hilton Hotel CCTV footage of the man with the baseball cap and turned-up collar coming down in the elevator and then walking across the hotel lobby, including the view from behind.
Just as I had asked, Gareth had edited the CCTV footage together with that from the cameras tonight so that the images appeared side by side on a split screen, first with the close-up of the man’s face alongside the shot of him in the elevator, then the two views of him walking away from the camera, one in the hotel, the other in the Kempton parking lot.
And it was those final fifteen or twenty seconds of walking that left no doubt whatsoever that the two men in the films were one and the same person.
I glanced out of the commentary booth toward brightly lit bookmakers’ boards and the dark racetrack beyond and was horrified by what I saw.
Gareth may have been Mr. Bleedin’ Magic when it came to cameras, but he was Mr. Blitherin’ Idiot when it came to acting as a producer.
The edited films were not just playing on my monitor but on the huge television screen set up in front of the grandstands.
“For God’s sake, Gareth,” I shouted through the talk-back, “it’s on the big screen.”
“Bugger me. So it is. It’s bleedin’ everywhere.”
He thought it was funny.
Derek didn’t. In fact, he was furious.
“Was this your doing?” he demanded loudly. “I go to the bloody toilet and the next thing I know we’re broadcasting God knows what to all the television sets right round the racetrack.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was only meant to come to mine.”
“Bloody amateurs.”
I heard him click off his microphone. No doubt young Gareth was getting his earful directly without the aid of technology. I hope it didn’t result in either of us losing our jobs.
But Derek’s reprimand was not my main worry.
Had the blackmailer seen the film? And did he know it was me that had initiated it?
I’d find out soon enough.
—
I STAYED in the commentary booth for the rest of the evening, hiding myself away.
Twice more I tried to call Superintendent Cullen or his sergeant, but to no avail. I even tried DS Sharp at Charing Cross, but his phone, too, went to voice mail. Policing was obviously mostly a nine-to-five occupation.
The last two races seemed to go by in a blur, but I must have been all right as Derek, at least, didn’t complain about my commentary. He did complain about almost everything else, though, and was even talking about having a bucket installed under the desk in the scanner so that he’d never have to go out to the bathroom again.
“You seem to have caused a bit of a stir!” he shouted into my ears. “The racetrack chairman has been only one of those we’ve had down here demanding to know what the bloody hell is going on.”
“What did you tell them?” I asked.
“I told them they’d better speak to you.”
Oh thanks, I thought.
I hoped that one of his visitors hadn’t been
the man with the zombie eyes.
I hung around in the commentary booth for quite a while after the last race, hoping that everyone would go before I made my way down. For one thing, I didn’t want to have to explain myself to the racetrack chairman.
The door of the booth opened and I jumped.
“Bye, Mark,” said Terence Feynman, the judge, putting his head through the gap. “Will I see you here tomorrow night?”
“Yes, Terence,” I said, “that’s the plan. Bye, now.”
Terence withdrew his head from the gap and closed the door.
Damn, I thought a few moments later. I should have gone down to my car with him. Safety in numbers and all that.
I quickly packed my computer, my binoculars, and my colored pens into my black leather bag and went out into the long corridor after him, turning right toward the exit.
Terence had already disappeared, but another man came around the corner into view, walking briskly toward me, his head bobbing up and down slightly due to his easy lolloping stride.
I stopped.
“Hello, Mark,” the man called down the corridor.
That heart of mine was thumping once more in my chest.
He was just fifteen or so yards away and closing in rapidly.
“Hello, Brendan,” I said.
My cousin, Brendan Shillingford, smiled at me, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes—his zombie eyes.
24
Run, my body told me, flooding adrenaline into my bloodstream, ready for flight. But where to? The only way out was past Brendan.
Or was it? I dragged some fragment of memory back into my mind.
Fire escape.
Hadn’t I once been told that there was a way out over the roof in case of a fire?
I turned and ran the other way, away from him, sprinting down to the far end of the corridor and up the metal staircase toward the photo-finish booth and the door to the roof, rummaging madly to get my cell phone out of my pocket.
I could hear Brendan coming after me.
I wondered if he’d have a knife. I didn’t want to look.
I fumbled with the door and finally turned the lock, tripped over the step, and fell out onto the grandstand roof, dropping my phone in the process. I searched madly for it with my hands, but it had fallen through the metal grille floor of the walkway and my fingers couldn’t reach it.
I now could hear Brendan on the stairs, so I moved quickly away from the door, down the walkway and toward the back of the roof, from where I had watched the horses the previous week. I looked down at the now deserted parade ring. Where was a policeman when you needed him most?
The sky above was pitch-black, but there was enough spillage from the racetrack floodlights for me to see across the roof quite well.
There was a junction in the walkway, and I had to make a decision. Which way was the fire escape?
Surely, I thought, there should have been a sign.
I went right but quickly learned that was wrong. The walkway came to an abrupt end after about fifteen yards, next to an electrical junction box.
I turned around and came face-to-face with Brendan.
He was standing about ten or so paces away and looking pretty pleased with himself. Something flashed in his right hand.
“Is that the same knife you used to kill Toby Woodley?” I had to shout over the continuous whirr of the air conditioners.
If he was surprised by the question, he didn’t show it.
He took a step toward me.
“And did you murder Clare too?” I shouted.
He took another step forward.
I threw my black leather bag at him, then ducked under the walkway’s railing and ran over the corrugated-steel roof.
Brendan followed.
The grandstand roof wasn’t flat, and I don’t mean just the corrugations.
It sloped up at the front like a giant ramp. And there was a gantry, an enormous structure extending some twenty feet out and up from the front of the roof, that held several banks of floodlights.
I clambered through the main supporting spar that ran right across the middle of the roof. I was trying to double back to the fire escape or return to the door, but Brendan cut me off and drove me on toward the front of the grandstand, toward the sloping part of the roof.
Twice he got so close that I could feel him grabbing for the collar of my coat, but each time I managed to pull myself away.
I was thirty-one and Brendan was nearly ten years older, but I was hampered by my broken ribs that made scrambling over the large steel pipes of the support spars exceedingly painful. He, meanwhile, seemed to skip over them with ease.
I reached one of the walkways, rolled myself through the railing, stood up, and ran.
But still it wasn’t the right way for the fire escape.
The walkway ended next to another junction box.
Dammit.
I turned around, kicking something loose on the floor. I looked down. There were several poles, like ones used for scaffolding but smaller in diameter. They appeared to be the same as that used to make the railings of the walkways, probably left behind after construction.
I quickly bent down and picked up one that was about six feet in length.
Brendan was facing me on the walkway.
I jabbed the end of the pole toward him and he stepped back a stride, so I did it again.
We stood like that for what seemed an age, but it was probably only a few seconds.
It was a standoff—me with the pole and him with the knife.
I advanced a stride, jabbing the pole forward. He retreated slightly.
“What are you doing?” I shouted at him. “I’m your cousin.”
He didn’t reply. He just stared at me with no emotion visible on his face.
“Did you kill Toby Woodley?”
No reply.
“How about Clare?” I shouted. “Did you kill her too?”
“I loved Clare,” Brendan said. “And she loved me.”
The mystery boyfriend, I thought. The wonderful lover who had made her happy.
Her own cousin.
My cousin.
My married cousin with two teenage children.
“What happened in that hotel room?” I shouted at him.
He said nothing.
“Did you push her off the balcony?”
He continued to stare at me, but in spite of the dim light I thought I could read some pain in his eyes.
“Did you know she was pregnant?” I shouted.
He went on staring at me.
“She was six or seven weeks pregnant.”
Still nothing. He had known.
“Was it yours?”
It had to be, but he went on saying nothing.
“Was that why you killed her? Did she want an abortion?”
His head came up a bit. “Shut up.”
“So was that it?” I said. “You wanted the child and she didn’t?”
He slowly shook his head. “It was the other way round.” He spoke quietly, and I had to strain to hear him. “She did it on purpose, to trap me.”
It was not an excuse. There can be no excuse for murder.
I thought I could see tears on his face. Crocodile tears.
“It’s no good crying now,” I shouted at him. “You shouldn’t have killed her.”
“It was an accident,” he shouted back.
“Oh yeah?” I said, mocking him. “Just like it was an accident in the pub parking lot on Sunday? You killed Clare, just like you killed Emily. And you nearly killed me, twice. Why don’t you admit it, you bastard?”
“I told you,” he screamed at me, “it was an accident! I just pushed her away, a
nd she . . .” He tailed off. “She tripped. I didn’t mean for her to fall.”
He was mad with anger, and with grief.
That made two of us.
“Did you make her write the note?” I shouted.
“What note?”
“The suicide note.”
“There was no note. I told you, it was a bloody accident.”
“And was sticking a knife into Toby Woodley’s back also a bloody accident?”
“He deserved it,” Brendan said with real menace in his voice. “The bastard was blackmailing me.”
“He was blackmailing everyone,” I said, “but no one else killed him.”
“He knew about Clare and me. He said he’d put it in the paper.”
I wondered whether Toby had really known or had just been guessing. Perhaps a blackmail note had given him the true answer. It had certainly condemned him to death.
“But you blackmailed people too,” I said. I thought back to the handwritten zeros added to the amounts. “And you were much greedier than Toby.”
“It seemed like an opportunity not to be missed.” He was suddenly smiling as if pleased with himself. I couldn’t think why. To continue the blackmail had been stupid and far too risky, and it had finally given him away.
“And what about me?” I said. “Why did you try to kill me?”
“You said at the funeral that you were going to see the video from the hotel.”
“And you thought I’d recognize you?”
He nodded.
He’d almost been right.
He suddenly lunged forward and grabbed the end of the pole with his left hand, pulling it sharply toward him, and me along with it.
He slashed at my hands with the knife, and I had to let go or else I’d have lost my fingers.
Now the tables were turned, and he jabbed the end of the pole toward my face, forcing me to duck wildly sideways.
This really isn’t funny, I thought, and maybe for the first time I was scared, very scared.
I tried to reach down to pick up another of the poles, but Brendan swung the one he had in a great arc, bringing it down heavily on my back between the shoulder blades. It would have landed on my head and killed me if I hadn’t seen it at the last second and ducked.
Dick Francis's Bloodline (9781101600931) Page 29