by Daisy White
I can remember being hit, and I have a flash of being carried on Barney’s back, bobbing around like a sack of feed. So if he had to carry me, we can’t be far from Tommy’s yard.
Barney is watching me uneasily as Sophie gathers up some paperwork, and places it into a brown leather bag. She keeps the gun in sight at all times, handling it like a professional.
“I’ll be back in an hour, and then we’ll get moving,” she tells Barney in a low voice. “You watch her and the horse, and make sure you’re ready.”
The horse? I stare at the heads hanging over the half doors. No way . . . And what is Sophie Harper doing mixed up in all this?
“Did you get the ferry tickets?” Barney asks.
“Of course. Let me handle the details, you just guard our goods. This is the final test, remember, so don’t screw anything up.” Sophie passes him the gun, and he places it carefully on a table heaped with grooming brushes and feed scoops. “Use it if you have to. Barney, are you listening?”
“Yes, yes I will.” He’s nodding, watching her like a scared puppy.
“Good.” She picks up her bag and stalks off, banging the door behind her.
“Barney, please could I have some water? I’m so thirsty.” I make my voice softer, watching him from under my lashes. If I’m going to escape, this could be my only chance. He has the gun, but I can tell by the way he set it gingerly down on the bench that he’s not familiar with firearms, maybe he’s even a little scared of it.
“No.”
“Please.”
“Alright.” He fills a tin cup from a rainwater bucket.
He holds it to my mouth, fingers touching my cheek, as I gulp and splutter. The water is earthy and gritty but I don’t care.
“Thank you.” I wriggle my wrists, rubbing them together, trying to judge how thick the rope is.
“I am sorry you got involved in this, Ruby, but if you just stay where you are, you won’t get hurt. And don’t bother shouting either, because we’re not near any houses.”
“Where are we?”
He snorts. “I’m not stupid, you know.”
As I’m tied up in a barn, I really can’t see what harm it would do to tell me, but the last thing I want is to annoy him. I wait, watching as he goes over to one of the stables and opens the half door. A moment later he reappears, leading a chestnut horse.
It’s a good-looking horse, but it walks with its head down, like it’s really tired, and can hardly put one foot in front of the other. It has a dull coat, with not a touch of white on its body. Barney offers the animal some water but it just snuffles disinterestedly. He gives it a quick brush and then starts bandaging its legs.
The horse is a chestnut colt. Surely not. “Barney, is that Pridey?”
He laughs, with a spice of mischief in his voice, “No. This is April’s Dream. Nice horse, isn’t he?”
“He looks half dead,” I tell him, carefully inching backwards until I can feel the flint wall of the barn at my back.
“He’ll be fine. It’s just the after-effects of the drug I had to give him to keep him quiet. When the police came down looking for Basil’s Pride, they took no notice of a dopey looking chestnut without any white markings. Idiots! Anyway, he’ll do well where he’s going.”
I have so many questions, but I try to keep my voice calm and even. The wall is rough against my bare arms, but unfortunately not rough enough to help saw through my ropes. I try to spread my fingers, feeling through the straw and chalk that makes up the floor. “What are you going to do with me?”
He shrugs, standing up to take another bandage. His eyes slide past mine, and rest on the gun for a moment. “You should have taken up my offer of a drink that time. I’m going to have a lot of money where I’m going.”
“Tell me what’s going on,” I coax him. “It can’t hurt. We might as well talk. I can’t escape, because I’m all tied up. What is really going on? Did Sophie force you to steal Pridey?”
“No!” It comes out sharp and high, and the horse in the nearest stable draws his ears back, and retreats into the safety of the shadows.
“What is going on then?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“I do. I thought we were friends, and I thought you told me you wanted to be a top jockey, and loved your horses. I can see you love them, Barney. It doesn’t make sense. Is it because you need the money to pay off your debts?”
“Yes. You talked to Alan, you know how much trouble I’m in. Look, Sophie offered me a way out, and I took it. There’s no going back now. Once Pridey is gone tonight, I’m going too. Someone will find you in the morning when they come and do the horses.”
At his words, relief floods my chest, but my eyes are still on the gun. He may not be going to kill me, but Sophie wouldn’t hesitate. I saw it in her eyes, that coldness, like a machine, without a trace of human emotion.
“How did you meet Sophie?”
He winds another bandage round the horse’s leg, from hoof to knee.
“Barney?”
“I killed Rita.”
“What?” The horse-stealing and the strange alliance of these two I could almost puzzle out, but not this.
“Yes, I killed her.” He straightens up, leaning against the horse’s hindquarters as if for support. “But I didn’t know who she was. She . . . she was just there, and I panicked.”
“You didn’t know who she was?” My head is throbbing again, and I have to shut my eyes for a moment until the barn stops spinning. “So why did you kill her?”
“Of course I didn’t bloody know it was her! Do you really think I would have killed Alan Stonehill’s daughter? I had a tip for the Derby Trial, and it seemed like a sure thing. You can’t get better than tips from the jockey, and he can swing the race if he needs to.” He scowls. “This chap has a history of doing just that. But it became obvious that this time he wasn’t going to. All that money, lost! I couldn’t let Basil’s Pride win. I was near the rails, so I just shoved the person in front of me. Hard. It was a crazy crowd, everyone jostling and shouting, arms in the air. She fell quicker and more easily than I thought, and it was so easy. I swear I never even noticed she was a girl, it just happened. Everyone was shoving, screaming at the horses, people all over the place . . .” He repeats this as though it excuses him from blame.
I can’t believe that after all this time, the person who killed Rita didn’t even know her. Fate stepped in and she was dead. I glare at Barney. “You killed her because you wanted to throw the race. That’s pathetic.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight. I told you, I saw the way it was going, and I just panicked. I didn’t know she would die. I never meant to kill anyone!”
“What about Sophie? What’s she doing mixed up in all this?”
For a second he hesitates. “She saw me push Rita. She was at the racecourse that day, taking photographs, maybe spying on her brother too. Sophie has some posh camera and her photographs showed Rita falling, and me right there behind her as she fell.”
“But there were people standing all around Rita. Just because she has a photo of you in the crowd, that doesn’t mean anything.” I’m bewildered.
“She showed me the photographs, and said she’d take them to the police. At best, they would have wanted to question me, and I couldn’t handle that. Sophie wouldn’t even have known me if her stupid brother hadn’t given Joey and me a ride back to the stables one day. He wanted to stop at his house for something. Anyway, she came out and started asking who we were. He was already gambling too much, so I suppose she was suspicious of us. Like idiots, just to be polite, we told her who we were and where we were from. Worst mistake of my life. When that photograph got developed, she knew exactly who I was and where to find me.”
I wriggle a bit more, until my back is jammed against the wall. If only I can find a nail or something. “So you know Roger Harper?”
“Yes. His aunt has some horses in training with us. He’s a nice chap, and we got talking when he came
up to watch them on the gallops. We found out we had Alan Stonehill in common, and it sort of went from there. We aren’t friends, obviously.”
“Was it Sophie’s idea to steal the horse?” My head is spinning, and not from the recent blow.
“It was all her idea. The papers got hold of the story about Rita and all her men, and Sophie saw that her brother was just one of a load of idiots. His name was really dragged through the mud, wasn’t it? She already hated him gambling, and he was burning through money. I mean, I thought I was in trouble, but the more money you have, the more you have to lose, right?”
“I suppose so. But what did she hope to achieve, doing all this?”
He smiles. “Revenge, I suppose. She thought racing had screwed up her brother and her family, so she wanted to create a bit of chaos, and ruin a few other lives. I told you before, I only pushed Rita, nothing else.”
“What about Simon?”
“He was in the way. I didn’t mean to kill him, but he was always trailing me. He saw me start the fire, the little tell-tale, and then pointed his gun at me.” Barney’s voice is bitter. “What else could I do? We fought and he got shot. It was an accident, really.”
“What about Ted and Alex?”
“Who?”
“The boys who got shot after that fight on the hill. Did you fire the gun then as well?”
“No, it was Sophie. She had Simon’s gun by then. I gave it to her after the fire, but she never said why she wanted it. I was at the Black Jug and then up on the Downs. I had nothing to do with the shooting, but afterwards she told me what she did, and said it was just like potting at rabbits.” He pauses, glancing at the door. “Sometimes she seems like she really is a bit mad.”
It is amazing how he can talk so cold-bloodedly about the murders, and dismiss them as accidents. I wonder if he has managed to convince himself he’s telling the truth. “I think you could be right. It seems to me like you got involved in all of this by accident. If you untie me, Barney, I’ll take the horse back to the stables. I’ll say I found him wandering loose. I don’t care what you do.”
For a moment, I’m almost convinced he is going to do as I’ve suggested, but then a devious look comes over his good-looking face. “No way, Ruby. I need to get my money first, and then I suppose someone will find you. I need to get away.”
Well, it was worth a shot. “If you sell a frigging racehorse, you’ll never get away. It’s Basil’s Pride, and he’s a bit hard to hide. I know I didn’t recognise him, or the police, but what about people who actually know about horses? You won’t be able to fool them with a bit of dye on his face.”
“He won’t be hidden. He’ll be racing, stupid. The people he’s going to, know all about things like that. We’ve got fake papers, and he’s ready to go.” He stops what he’s doing and looks at me. “I mean it, Ruby. We’re not going to kill you. We just need you kept quiet until we’ve got away.”
But I don’t believe him anymore. He’s told me too much, especially about the horse. The best way to silence someone is to kill them, isn’t it? I’ll just be another accident.
Barney throws a cotton rug over the horse and takes a bridle off the peg. Ready for his travels, the horse chews the bit, ears flickering. He raises his head, for the first time looking more like Basil’s Pride, the Derby favourite. “See? He’s more alert already. We can’t travel with him all doped up because he might hurt himself.”
I flinch when Barney picks up the gun, but he just slips it into his coat pocket, before approaching me. “I’m not going to hurt you, Ruby. I told you, we just need you out the way for a bit. Come on, Sophie’ll be back with the lorry soon. It’s better she doesn’t see you again, because like I said, I don’t want to hurt you, but she might.”
He’s strong for a slim boy, and he slips his arms around my waist and under my legs, lifting me up. I wriggle and squirm like a fish on a line, but for someone used to handling several tons of racehorse, I must be easy to contain.
His face is close to mine, and his breath is warm on my cheek. He glances down, holding me close, clearly indulging himself in the moment. His lips part in a smile.
“Please, Barney, just leave me in the barn. I won’t say anything.”
He sighs, and tightens his grip. “I’m not stupid, Ruby. You’re trouble and I can’t let you do anything to ruin our plans. Sophie thought we should kill you, but I said no. I saved your life, because we’re friends. We might have been more if you weren’t going out with that reporter.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he stops my words by dropping a kiss on my lips. Fighting my instinct to turn my head away and spit, I kiss him back. If I can just distract him with a bit of making out, maybe I can get the gun . . .
Eventually he laughs. “That was nice, Ruby, but I know you didn’t mean it. I’ll take it as a going away present. Now hold still, or this will hurt you a lot more than me.”
He carries me outside, into a dark yard. I pick out a stone trough, a square of long, low stables, and a large flint barn full of hay. Beyond these shadowy shapes there is nothing but darkness.
As far as I can see, there are definitely no houses nearby. I shout anyway, yelling for help and filling my lungs with the muggy night air, until he gets agitated. “Stop it, Ruby! I told you, there’s nobody here tonight. The cottage is empty.”
We’re approaching a darker square of blackness, and he kicks at it with his foot. I seize the chance to head butt him, but he moves his face away. He picks me up and throws me over his shoulder like a sack of corn, and then we are carefully descending a ladder. Panicking, I flail around wildly, but my limbs are tied too tightly to achieve anything.
“Barney, don’t be stupid. If you let me go we can work something out.” My breath, like his, is coming in gasps, and the darkness is all engulfing.
At the bottom of the ladder, he lowers me carefully to the ground, and drops a final kiss on my lips. “Goodbye, Ruby.”
I kick out at his legs, my back against the wall, trying to get some purchase, but only succeed in banging my head. A shout from above wipes the amusement off his face, and he starts to climb the ladder. He doesn’t look back. His movements are rapid, jerky.
I can hear other voices, Sophie’s sharp admonishments, and I yell as loudly as I can.
At the top, Barney yanks at the ladder, pulling it up beyond my reach, and there is a dragging sound as the cover is pulled back across. My prison is sealed.
I try to breathe slowly and deeply, inching my legs and arms outwards. I touch brick or stone pretty quickly, and there are rocks and bricks underneath me. Underground definitely, maybe an old storage place to keep grain. Being unable to see at all is daunting, but after a few minutes, no longer terrifying. As the pain in my head starts to ease again, I begin to search around with cautious fingertips.
The bricks are useless, crumbling objects, but before long my hand touches the smooth hardness of flint. The stone is slippery and for a few long frustrating minutes, I try to grasp the stone while every time it slips out of my fingers. My whole hand gets cramp and I cry out, heart pounding, panic rising. Ordering myself to calm down, I try a new tactic, pushing myself up against the wall, and then sliding the stone up the wall in my fingers. It drops once, but eventually I wriggle it into position between the wall and my bound wrists, and I start to rub painstakingly at the rope.
I’m sweating from my efforts, my breath loud, my movements rough and clumsy. There is no sound from outside, and I’m not sure if I’d hear anything anyway, so I continue. After a long time I sink down to rest, exhausted, my head pounding again. There is a sticky wetness on my shoulders that could be either blood or water, and my face itches with sweat and dirt.
I’m thirsty again too, but the smell deters me from licking the walls. Horrified by the thought that unless I can escape I might be driven to doing just that, I attack my bonds with renewed fervour, and eventually manage to free my hands. The ropes around my ankles are tighter, and momentarily defeat my shaking
hands. Standing cautiously, I raise both arms above my head, feeling for the ladder. At least he didn’t throw me down here, because then I’d have a few broken bones at the very least. I discover that if I stretch full length, my bound feet touch another pile of stones. Encouraged, I select a stone by touch, and start rubbing the sharp flint up and down the bonds around my ankles. I struggle, and after what seems like ages, I am free.
I inch around my prison, exploring foot by foot with my fingertips, up as far as I can reach, hoping for the ladder to be just within my grasp. It isn’t, so I reach down to the floor, running my hands over the brickwork. To prevent myself going round and round, I leave a shoe against the wall where I started, and when my foot knocks it again I know I’ve completed my journey. Nothing. Yet there could be another way up, inches from my groping fingers.
“Help!” My voice echoes around and around my prison. In the silence that follows, I think I can hear the rumbling of a lorry, or some kind of machinery. It isn’t just the noise, I can feel vibrations. They must be leaving with the horse.
Sinking back down onto my haunches, I lick the sweat from the corners of my mouth, but it’s salty and stale. I feel like letting my tongue hang out and panting like a dog. After another round of shouting I sit, cross-legged and momentarily defeated. The damp, sour smell is unpleasant but not enough to extinguish the stench of a farmyard.
We were heading downhill, towards . . . towards where? I remember driving past the gallops with Kenny the first time we went up to the stables. A glimmer of memory tells me that at some point somebody has mentioned a hacking stables down at the bottom of the hill, below Tegdown Stables. There was a tiny lane . . . . That would make sense because there were lots of horses in the barn, and even I could see they weren’t farm horses.
It would be a perfect place to hide a stolen racehorse. In plain sight, just a few miles from where he was stolen. The gall of it takes my breath away, but Sophie is clever. If she is behind this, then I have no doubt that Pridey will disappear for good, as will Barney, and Sophie will come back from university for the holidays, happy that she is a whole lot richer and that she has taken her revenge on the racing world.