by Joe McNally
‘And Alan Harle?’ He didn’t answer. ‘And now Kruger?’
McCarthy shrugged. ‘No matter, Eddie, you’ll have to stay. It’s not fair-’
‘Not fair! Mac, grow up! Have you forgotten Detective Sergeant Cranley and what he thinks of me? Just tell the cops you’d arranged to meet Kruger here to get information on something you were working on. What the hell difference does it make if I’m here? Kruger’s dead, he won’t care!’
‘All the same-’
‘All the same nothing, Mac! If I’m here when the police arrive, Cranley will lock me up for a month just for questioning! I’m sick and tired of the bastard who’s doing this and I’m going to find him and kick the fucking shit out of him!’
‘You’re shouting, Eddie.’
‘Who cares!’
‘Now look-’
‘You look, McCarthy! Look at me leaving. You tell the police what you like when they get here but don’t mention my name! I’m off. I am going to get whoever is doing this and the next call you get from me will be to tell you I’m holding the bastard by the balls!’
I ran, got in my car and drove home at high speed.
I spent the rest of a long day knowing it must be Stoke. He had to be the top man. Skinner and Greene had been in terror of him, he’d engineered Greene’s death and probably ordered Harle’s. The only one I couldn’t positively tie him to was Roscoe but I was certain he was involved with whatever was going on at Roscoe’s yard.
I had to keep control of my rage until I’d got some evidence. Surely, Charmain would know something? And surely, if she was fully aware just how evil he was, she wouldn’t protect him?
I’d have to get into that house and see her. Stoke would probably leave for York on Monday. This was only Saturday morning…Jeez, how was I supposed to hold out?
The anger bubbled and fuelled frustration and when Jackie rang, full of hope and excitement, I was sharp with her and we had a row. In the end, she hung up. Disgusted with myself I sat down and tried to get drunk. Half a bottle of whiskey later I was still sober, angry and bitter.
I went to bed and lay in the darkness regretting the argument with Jackie and thinking how happy we’d been last night on the phone when I’d told her we were going to meet Kruger.
Coldness descended on me…I’d told her who and I’d told her where. I thought back again to my suspicions of her when Harle’s body was dumped on me at Kempton, and the coldness turned to nausea as I faced the logical conclusion – she was working for Stoke and Roscoe.
I lay awake for hours trying to talk myself out of it but the rationale was undeniable. I should have guessed on the very first day. Why had she appeared out of the blue at the cottage?
After less than half an hour, she’d launched a deliberate seduction, which I was vain enough and stupid enough to be flattered by. And how hard she had tried to get me to pull out completely, to go with her to Ireland…
My last thoughts before sleep were that I deserved everything I’d got.
57
Next morning, I rang McCarthy to warn him about Jackie. I expected an argument first over me running out on him yesterday, but he was calm, ‘What are you going to do about her?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe we can use this to our advantage.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ll have to think. I’m heading for Suffolk tomorrow to try to see Stoke’s wife. We’ll just have to wait and see how things play out after that.’
‘How will you get to see her with Stoke around?’
‘I’m counting on him leaving for York tomorrow. He should be away for at least three days.’
‘What are you hoping to get out of her?’
‘She’s an old girlfriend of mine, leave it to me.’
‘You’re the original eternal optimist, Eddie.’
‘Show me someone in racing who isn’t an optimist?’
‘True. Maybe I should have said delusional.’
‘Listen, I know one thing now that Kruger’s dead, there’s no chance of getting my licence back. But promise me a half-hour interview with that senior steward when this over. At least I can tell him what I think of him.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘What did the police say about Kruger?’
‘What do you think? That it looked like a suicide was what they said.’
‘But you told them otherwise?’
‘I told them he had a criminal record and it might not be as straightforward as it seemed.’
‘Let’s hope they value your opinion more than they do mine,’
‘We’ll see.’
’Sounds like you had calmed down anyway by the time they arrived.’
‘Well, after you’d gone, I began to see things more from your perspective. You were right, I was at no disadvantage without you.’
’See? Sometimes it’s better to act on instinct.’
‘You’re never too old to learn, I suppose. Let me know the outcome of your visit to Stoke’s house. And please be careful, Eddie.’
‘Aren’t I always?’
I moped around for the rest of the day knowing Jackie would phone at her usual time. When she did, I’d have to apologize for last night’s argument and I’d have to sweet talk her, to keep her believing I suspected nothing.
That would stick in my throat but it was necessary if I wanted to turn her treachery to my advantage at some point. She rang at five to ten and I managed to hide the bitterness in my voice and play the part well.
Before she hung up, she told me she loved me. Like Judas loved Jesus, I thought, and went miserably to bed.
58
Across the flat fenland, I saw the trees when I was still miles away, the long rows of trunks curving when they reached the big house, enveloping it. Scrawled on the sky above them was the silver swelling vapour trail of a jet.
It was just before three o’clock when I turned out of the sunshine into that dark avenue. Stopping about thirty yards before the road curved round to the driveway of the house, I got out and locked the car.
Skirting the edge of the dense wood, I jogged to the main gates. All looked quiet around the house.
The gates were about twelve feet high, the bars ornately plaited, topped by black spikes. No padlocks, just large keyholes: one in the centre, one at the bottom. I reached for the lock-picks in my jacket and went to work on the higher lock. Three minutes later, I was still fiddling with it and getting anxious. Had Stoke put in some special mechanism?
I was as comfortably dressed as a man can be for climbing gates: cords, a loose cotton shirt and strong, stiff-soled shoes. Up to the centre column where the gates met, there were enough footholds to reach the top.
Crossing the spikes was the tricky part but I couldn’t afford more time working the locks.
I began climbing and halfway up had the sudden thought someone might be watching from the house two hundred yards beyond. I glanced across. The view was partly blocked by the big, silent, waterless fountain in the middle of the lawn and I felt a bit more secure.
The prospect of climbing this side as a stallion and ending up on the other as a gelding made me very careful as I reached the top and stepped across the spikes onto the bar welded to the inside. Foot-room was two inches and bringing all my weight down I swung my left leg over, uttering a short prayer that the welder had been a time-served tradesman with a pride in his work.
As my right leg cleared the spikes, I pushed off, twisted in mid-air and landed with everything intact.
Away from the trees, I felt very exposed on this long tarmac drive. I wondered about servants. The place was big enough to need a gardener and a maid, at least. But there were no signs of life, the only sounds distant birdsong and the gravel dust crunching beneath my shoes.
The double doors at the front of the house were closed. The two door knockers were of the same dark metal, and I picked up the one on the right. It clattered down, sending an echo into the hall then out toward the dry fountain behin
d me.
I waited a minute before trying again. The same clatter, the echo seemed quieter. Nothing. No footsteps in the hallway, no turning of handles.
I walked backwards and looked up at the windows: three rows of four on each side of the doors. All the curtains were the same shade of pea-green, a distinctive colour that scratched at my memory. I saw nothing in the windows but reflections of white drifting clouds. I wondered if Stoke had taken Charmain with him.
I went round the back to look for a tradesman’s entrance, and found the tidiness and uniformity of the front giving way to a paved yard of broken flagstones with high weeds flourishing in the cracks. A stable block had both half-doors of the end box lying open. The bottom door of the centre box had a deep semicircular gap where a crib-biting horse had gnawed the wood. There were no other signs of horses, not even a strand of straw.
Beside the stables was an electric mower, big and shiny, the blades clogged with dried cuttings.
Against the handle of the mower, a pitchfork rested and, on the ground, spikes up, was a rake.
The windows had net curtains that needed cleaning, or maybe the glass was dirty. There was only one narrow single door, stark black against the once-white walls.
I lifted the metal knocker but it was stiff and useless. I banged four times with my hand. No answer.
Another four thumps, this time I thought I heard a noise. Standing close I put my ear against the wooden panel…silence. I listened hard, taking half a lungful of air and holding it to stop the sound of my breathing.
I heard something.
The hairs on the back of my neck began pricking. I could feel them almost as if they were rising one at a time, stiffening from the nerve ends at the sound.
The noise had not come from the house.
There it was again.
Behind me.
Very close behind me. From low in the throat of what sounded like a large, fiercely hostile animal.
Slowly I turned, bringing my weight square onto my heels. Before I could see what it was and where it was, it growled again, longer this time, deeper, more drawn out, more savage. I finished turning. My back was touching the door, hands by my side, head motionless on a rigid neck.
Only my eyes moved. They scanned down and to the right and focused ten feet away on the beast watching me, on the blackness of it, broken by the tan-coloured right leg. A creature I’d last seen bounding into a lime-green Renault. Skinner’s car…Skinner’s dog…Skinner’s big bloody Rottweiler.
59
We looked at each other, no doubt in either of our minds who was more afraid. His growl grew constant. The dark eyes sparkled and narrowed. The fleshy lips drew back. His teeth shone so white I could have believed they were false. If only. If only a swift kick would knock the whole set from his mouth onto the cracked paving.
The growl grew louder and the dog began crouching, slowly shifting weight to his haunches, gradually coiling. My brain searched crazily for a way out and suggested I start talking softly to him. But I rejected it, convinced that the slightest sound or movement would trip the switch and set him at my throat.
The dog was ready, fully coiled, the growl steady and loud. I realized my left wrist was resting against the door handle. Slowly, I raised my hand, clasped the handle and turned it…a click, and the door opened.
The relief trickled out silently through my nostrils with the breath I’d been holding.
I considered turning quickly and pushing through, but I couldn’t be sure I’d be inside before he caught me. If I could just ease it open a few inches at a time until it was wide enough to slip through…I started. One inch…two inches…the growl deepened…three inches…it barked and snarled…four inches…a noise from behind me, close to my left ear, metal on metal, the terrible spirit-sapping sound which meant there would be no five-inch opening…the sound of a security chain taking up the slack links, tightening, closing off my escape route.
The dog was ready.
One chance. I stepped away from the door, turned and slammed my shoulder against it, high up, as close to the chain as possible. The door held. I bounced and turned as the dog sprang.
I dodged, twisting to my left. His head loomed, jaws open, and he tried to snap them shut on the junction of my chest and shoulder at my right armpit. My body was still turning and the jaws closed on fresh air leaving the arm of my shirt wet with slavering mucus.
When the dog landed, he lost his balance and rolled over.
I ran.
The stable block was ten long strides away. I hoped to dive into the middle box through the gap left by the open half-door at the top.
The snarl of rage and the rough pads of his feet and claws scraping the concrete in pursuit spurred me.
About three yards from my take-off point, he caught me and bit deep into my left leg and along with the pain I felt the corduroy binding tight at the front as he gathered the loose material in his jaws. He let go my leg to rip free the rest of the cloth.
I heard it tearing as the tightness gave way to flap loosely and I waited to feel the teeth again in my bare flesh. I stumbled, nearly went down, tried to catch my balance by grabbing at the handle of the mower, missed it and caught the wooden shaft of the thing leaning against it, the pitchfork.
I couldn’t stay upright, but kept hold of the pitchfork and pulled it out to the side as I automatically tucked my head in and rolled as I landed. I whirled the pitchfork at about two feet above ground level.
Somewhere in the swinging arc the dog should be.
I heard the thud as the shaft hit him, and the snarl of pain and anger. I came to rest sitting in a cloud of dust. The blow knocked the dog over but he was up again and running at me. No time to get to my feet. I swung the fork again and cracked him hard on the side of the head. He yelped this time, almost like a pup, and broke off to the side to recover. I rose. He stared at me, warier now.
Dazed, I backed toward the open box at the end of the stable block, limping badly, blood cold on my leg as the air reached it through the torn hole.
I retreated slowly. His growl was guttural now, drawn out. He crouched again, low, stalking. I held the pitchfork straight out, the spikes about four feet from his open jaws. I reached the box, backed in and, raising the fork about the height of the half-door, kept him at bay while I dragged the bottom half of the door closed.
It was almost five feet high with a big thick safe bolt at the top. I pushed the bolt well home then continued, for some reason, moving backwards until the rear wall of the box stopped me. With my back against it I slid down, all my energy draining as I did so. Sitting on the floor, knees bent to keep the wound off the dirt, I felt exhausted. My hands barely had the strength to shake.
I stood the pitchfork against the wall...rested my head against it...tried to calm myself. The box was dark and empty. Some bundled old newspapers lay heaped in a corner. Nothing else. Nothing but daylight coming through the top half of the door.
The sun’s rays warmed me and I almost smiled. Then a big black shape blocked the light as the dog cleared the bolted door and I nearly died.
From somewhere another surge of strength came, and I was on my feet as he landed. For a few moments, he didn’t seem to focus on me, a couple of seconds’ adjustment from daylight to half-darkness. I was only going to get this chance. Grabbing the pitchfork and throwing all my weight on my good leg, I turned, bringing the sharp prongs round and upwards in a scooping motion.
The points pierced the black hair under his big ribcage, and he yelped again and snarled as he tried to turn and bite at the wooden shaft of this thing stabbing his guts. I bent low to keep the fork in him and drove, stumbling and crying with exertion and fear, into the corner of the box. His head met one wall and his tail the other and his body curved in the middle as I forced the tines in all the way to the U shape until his ribs cracked and gave way. I knew I would never forget his dying howl.
The certainty of safety came with the points sticking into the wood as they b
roke through the other side of his body. I held him there impaled until I was sure his breathing had stopped. Even then, I left the fork in him, pinning him to the wall. I was panting hard, as much from nervous reaction as exhaustion. I released my grip on the fork and turned away toward the door, sickened but safe.
I heard a crack behind me and the terror surged back. I turned. It was the pitchfork handle hitting the floor as the weight of the corpse pulled the tines from the timber. I limped from the box and, to be doubly sure, bolted the door.
Outside again in the sunlight I breathed deep and long and leaned heavily on the mower. The dog’s howl and the cracking of his ribs echoed in my head.
I was parched, and couldn’t raise spit as I hobbled to the door of the house.
As I lay against it, more through weakness than anything else, it opened as far as the chain would allow. Resting my head on the black wood, I closed my eyes against the sunlight. Through the gap, from somewhere inside the house, I heard a call for help.
60
The call came again, faint, but very real. I turned, weight on my good leg, and examined the security chain.
The plea echoed, louder this time.
Three yards along was a window at ground-floor level. I hobbled across to get the rake and smash the glass.
My leg was stiffening badly. I couldn’t straighten it without stifling a cry of pain. Using the rake for support, I made my way to the window.
Holding the rake like a rifle, I was about to smash a pane of glass low down when it occurred to me to try opening the window first. It shuddered stiffly up for the first eighteen inches then smoothly till it slotted under the upper sash. The gap was big and the ledge low enough to sit on and swing my legs through.
I was in a kitchen.
Crossing the threadbare rug, I opened a door into a narrow corridor. I stopped, my hand on the cool wall, and listened…the cry came again. I started moving and heard the sticky pull of my shoe on the linoleum. Blood rimmed the outer heel leaving a horseshoe of red. I wouldn’t be hard to track.