Silks

by Dick Francis

  I didn’t answer. ‘Did you know Scot Barlow had a sister?’ I asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Should I?’

  ‘Seems she killed herself last June,’ I said. He didn’t look any the wiser. ‘During a big party in Lambourn.’

  ‘What? Not that girl vet?’ he said.

  ‘One and the same,’ I said. ‘Millie Barlow.’

  ‘Blimey,’ he said. ‘That was big news in these parts.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked him.

  ‘Speculation, I suppose,’ he said. ‘And all those celebrities at that party being held by the police.’

  ‘What sort of speculation?’

  ‘Drugs,’ he said. ‘Lots of cocaine sniffing, apparently. Always the way with celebs. It was initially thought the vet had died of an overdose of it, but it turned out to be horse anaesthetic and it seems she did it on purpose.’

  ‘Do you know or are you guessing?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s what everyone says,’ he replied. ‘Seems she left a note or something.’

  ‘Seems a strange place to do it,’ I said.

  ‘Suicides do strange things,’ he said. ‘There was that one near here who drove his car onto the railway line and waited for it to get hit by a train. Stupid sod killed six more with him and injured hundreds of others. Why didn’t he just shut himself into his garage and quietly leave the engine running?’

  ‘Yeah, but ruining a party seems a bit…’ I tailed off.

  ‘Perhaps she had a grudge against the party giver, and she was extracting revenge. I once had a client whose ex-wife killed herself right outside the registry office as he was getting remarried inside.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘Walked out under a lorry. Just like that. The poor driver had no chance.’

  ‘Bet that went down well with the wedding guests,’ I said.

  ‘I actually think my client was delighted,’ he said, grinning. ‘Saved him a fortune in alimony.’ We both laughed.

  I was growing to like Bruce, and his confidence was growing too.

  ‘So tell me, what are we looking for at Barlow’s place?’ he said, changing the subject.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I always try to visit scenes of crime if I’m acting in a case. It helps me when it comes to questions in court. Also, it often gives some insight into the victim.’

  ‘So are you now acting in this case?’ he asked me.

  ‘Temporarily,’ I said, smiling at him. But was I acting for the prosecution or the defence?

  We finished our lunch and Bruce drove us the few hundred yards to Church Street, leaving my hired Mondeo in the pub car park. Honeysuckle Cottage was a beautiful old stone building set back from the road amongst a copse of tall horse-chestnut trees, their branches now bare of the leaves that lay deep and uncollected on the driveway. I couldn’t actually see or smell any of the honeysuckle after which the cottage had been named, but it was hardly the right season.

  The place was surrounded on all sides by grand houses with large gardens, mostly invisible behind tall evergreen hedges or high stone walls. Not much chance here, I thought, of a nosey neighbour witnessing the comings and goings at the Barlow residence.

  There were already two cars parked in front of a modern ugly concrete-block garage that had been built alongside the cottage with no respect for its surroundings. The driver’s door of one of the cars opened and a young man got out as we pulled up behind him.

  ‘Mr Lygon?’ he asked, approaching.

  ‘That’s me,’ said Bruce, advancing and holding out his hand.

  ‘Detective Constable Hillier,’ said the young man, shaking it.

  ‘And this is Geoffrey Mason,’ said Bruce, indicating me. ‘Barrister in the case.’

  DC Hillier looked me up and down and he, too, clearly thought I was under-dressed for the occasion. We shook hands, nevertheless.

  ‘This will have to be a quick visit, I’m afraid. I can give you no more than half an hour,’ said the policeman. ‘And we are not alone.’

  ‘Who else?’ I asked.

  ‘Barlow’s parents,’ he said. ‘Took a coach down from Glasgow. They’re inside at the moment.’ He nodded towards the house.

  Oh bugger, I thought, this could be a more emotional encounter than I had expected.

  And so it turned out.

  DC Hillier introduced us to Mr and Mrs Barlow in the hallway of the cottage.

  ‘They are lawyers in the case,’ he said. Mr Barlow looked at us in disgust, he clearly didn’t like lawyers. ‘They are acting for Mr Mitchell,’ the policeman went on, rather unnecessarily, I thought.

  Mr Barlow’s demeanour changed from disgust to pure hatred, as if it were we who had killed his son.

  ‘May you all burn in Hell for eternity,’ he said with venom. He had a broad Scottish accent and the word ‘burn’ sounded like it could be spelt as ‘berrrrn’. Bruce seemed rather taken aback by this outburst.

  ‘We’re only doing our job,’ he said, defending himself.

  ‘But why?’ Mr Barlow said. ‘Why are ye givin’ that man any assistance? He is sent from the Devil, that one.’

  ‘Now, now, dear,’ said Mrs Barlow laying a hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Remember what the doctor said. Do not stress yourself.’

  Barlow relaxed a fraction. He was a big tall man with heavy jowls and bushy eyebrows and he was wearing an ill-fitting dark suit with no tie. Mrs Barlow, in contrast, had a slight frame, was a good eight inches shorter than her husband and had a head of tightly curled grey hair. She wore an inappropriately cheerful flowery dress that appeared to be at least two sizes too big for her, and which hung on her like a sack.

  ‘Aye, woman,’ he said, irritated. He flicked his wife’s hand from his sleeve. ‘But he is still an evil one, that Mitchell.’

  ‘He hasn’t actually been convicted yet,’ I said. It was a mistake. His doctor wouldn’t have thanked me.

  ‘I tell you,’ Mr Barlow almost shouted, jabbing his right index finger towards me. ‘That man is guilty and he shall have to answer to our Lord. And it’s not just Hamish that he killed, but both of our bairns.’

  ‘Who’s Hamish?’ I said. Another mistake.

  ‘Hamish, man,’ bellowed Barlow in a full rage. ‘My son.’

  Bruce Lygon grabbed my arm and spoke quickly into my ear. ‘Scot Barlow’s real name was Hamish.’ I felt a fool. How could I have not known? On the racecourse, Barlow was always referred to as Scot, but, I now realized, that must have been only because he was one.

  ‘But what did you mean about Mitchell killing both your children?’ I asked him, recovering my position a little.

  ‘He killed our Millie,’ said Mrs Barlow quickly in a quiet, mellow tone that hung in the air.

  ‘I thought she killed herself,’ I said as gently as possible.

  ‘Aye, but that man was still responsible,’ said Mr Barlow.

  ‘How so?’ I said pressing the point.

  ‘He was fornicating with my daughter,’ said Mr Barlow, his voice rising in both tone and volume. I considered it a strange turn of phrase. And, surely, I thought, it takes two to fornicate, like to tango.

  ‘How does that make him responsible for her death?’ I asked.

  ‘Because,’ said Mrs Barlow in her gentle tone, ‘he dumped her for someone else on the day she died.’

  I wondered again why Steve Mitchell hadn’t thought it was important enough to tell me that. And what was more, if what the Barlows said was true, then he had lied to me more than I thought, and I still didn’t like being lied to by my clients. I didn’t like it one little bit.

  CHAPTER 6

  Mr and Mrs Barlow hovered around us as Bruce and I made an inspection of the rest of their son’s house. Everywhere we went they followed and watched. Everything I picked up to look at they took back from me and replaced exactly as it had been.

  The police forensic team had previously moved through the house covering every shiny surface with a fine silvery powder, fingerprint powder, hopi
ng, no doubt, to display some of Steve Mitchell’s dabs. In due course, at pre-trial disclosure, we would find out how successful they had been.

  According to the television reports Scot, or Hamish, had been found lying on his kitchen floor in a pool of blood with the pitchfork stuck in his chest. If there actually had been a pool of blood, someone must have since cleaned it up. However, the floor and the cupboard doors were covered with numerous little yellow labels with numbers written on them, which, I knew from experience, were to show positions where blood spots had been discovered. Unlike on some old American TV murder stories, there was no convenient white outline drawn on the floor to show the position where the body had been found.

  Lying face down on the kitchen table was a broken photo frame, its glass badly cracked but still held in place by the silver surround. But there was no photograph in the frame and the back of it was hanging off. As with everything else, it was covered with the slimy fingerprint powder.

  ‘I wonder what was in here,’ I said to Bruce, holding up the frame to show him.

  ‘It was a picture of our Millie,’ said Mrs Barlow from the doorway.

  ‘Do you have it?’ I asked her.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He must have taken it.’

  The emphasis she placed on the word ‘he’ left me in no doubt that she meant Steve Mitchell. But why would he take it? I wondered if the police had found the photograph at Mitchell’s house, but, surely, even the most stupid of murderers wouldn’t take such a clue home with them from the scene of the crime, although I knew some did, like keeping a souvenir, or a trophy.

  ‘Was it a portrait picture?’ I asked her.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It was taken when she was at work in the equine hospital. It showed her with a horse. It used to be hers but Hamish had it when…’ She couldn’t finish. Tears began to well up in her eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Barlow,’ I said. I knew only too well the despair that grief can engender.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, dabbing her face with a white handkerchief that she had deftly removed from the sleeve of her dress. I imagined that she must have shed many a tear over her dead children.

  ‘But it must have been a fairly significant photograph to have been in a silver frame,’ I said. ‘Do you remember which horse Millie was with?’ I looked at Mrs Barlow.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ she said. ‘We lost touch with them both really, when they moved to England.’ She made it sound like England was half-way round the world from Glasgow. ‘But I recall seeing the picture in her room after she died. Hamish said he wanted it. To remember her by.’

  ‘Where did she live?’ I asked.

  ‘What? When she wasn’t living with that man?’ she said with unexpected anger. She quickly composed herself. ‘She had a flat at the equine hospital. She shared it with another vet.’

  ‘Do you know who?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t remember her name,’ she replied.

  ‘But you are sure it was a female vet?’

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ she said. ‘At least I always thought it was a woman. She wouldn’t have shared a flat with a man. Not my Millie.’ But her Millie had shared a bed with Steve Mitchell.

  DC Hillier had listened to most of the exchanges between the Barlows and me but he seemed unconcerned and disinterested. He had been too busy looking at his watch.

  ‘Have you seen all you want?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got to go now and I need to lock up.’

  Bruce held the Barlows at bay in the hallway while I had a quick peep at the bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs. There was nothing unusual or unexpected. There were no giveaway signs of a permanent female presence, like tampons in the medicine cabinet or a lady’s smalls in the airing cupboard. Overall there was not much to see. Hamish Barlow had been a tidy man with a wardrobe of smart designer clothes and two cupboards on his landing full of racing-related memorabilia like piles of race cards, bundled copies of the Racing Post and numerous horse-related magazines and books. But there were no skeletons with them for me to find. And no other photo frames, with or without photos. Nothing at all that seemed to me to be in any way abnormal.

  The policeman ushered us all out of the house, and then he padlocked the clasp on the front door and invited us all to leave the premises. I would have liked to have had a little longer to look around the garden and the garage. Maybe next time. Oh God, I thought. Next time.

  A cold sweat broke out briefly on my forehead and I felt foolish in spinning through 360 degrees just to ensure that Julian Trent was not creeping up behind me. He wasn’t. Of course, he wasn’t. Calm down, I told myself, and my heartbeat slowly returned to normal.

  ‘Do you have a telephone number where my solicitor could contact you?’ I asked the Barlows as they were getting into their car.

  Mr Barlow, who had been mostly quiet after his earlier outburst, suddenly turned to me and said, ‘Why would he want to contact us?’

  ‘In case he has any more questions for you,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t want to answer any more of your questions,’ he said.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I know you don’t want to help me, but I am as interested as you are in finding out who killed your son.’

  ‘Mitchell killed him,’ said Mr Barlow emphatically.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ I asked him.

  ‘Because Hamish used to say that, one day, Mitchell would kill him as sure as he killed his sister. And now he has. I hope he rots in hell.’

  There wasn’t much answer to that. I stood and watched them drive away. There were other ways of finding their telephone number if I needed it.

  ‘Mr Barlow seems a bit too keen on hell and damnation, if you ask me,’ said Bruce as he reversed his car back onto the road.

  ‘He’s a good Scottish Presbyterian, I expect,’ I said.

  ‘Bit too dour for my liking,’ said Bruce. ‘And I wouldn’t want to cross him in a dark alley.’

  ‘He’s all talk,’ I said. ‘He’s far too God fearing to actually break the law. That’s God’s law, of course. Ten Commandments and all that. All Presbyterians love their Bible.’

  ‘Not really my scene,’ said Bruce.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Nor mine either.’ Except that English law owed much to the principles of the Ten Commandments, especially that one about bearing false witness against one’s neighbour. Who, I wondered, was bearing false witness against Steve Mitchell?

  Bruce dropped me back at the Swan Inn to collect my rental car, before making his apologies and rushing off for a meeting with another client. Meanwhile I decided, as I was almost there, to go and revive some memories by driving around Lambourn, and also to take the opportunity to see Steve Mitchell’s place, at least from the outside.

  It had been nearly fifteen years since I had lived in Lambourn and I had only been back there a couple of times in the interim, but nothing much had changed, except that there were now many more houses on the outskirts of the village and some of the shops had different names. The place felt the same. Just being here rekindled that feeling of excitement that had gripped me as a twenty-one-year-old starting an adventure, chasing a dream.

  I stopped the car on the road opposite the end of the driveway belonging to the trainer for whom I had worked as an unpaid assistant all those years ago. Nicholas Osbourne still trained at the same establishment and I was tempted to drive up to his yard but, in truth, and for reasons I couldn’t really understand, our relationship had not been great since my departure. It was why, one day, I had suddenly transferred my horses from him to Paul Newington, and that hadn’t helped Nick’s feelings either. So I now moved on and went in search of Steve Mitchell’s house.

  He lived in a modern red-brick detached monstrosity on the edge of the village set back from the Wantage Road. Behind the house was a small stable yard of half a dozen boxes with a small feed store and tack room. It wasn’t yet big enough to be a full commercial racehorse training concern but there was plenty of room for expansion on the grass
y field behind. I imagined that Steve had built the place himself with a view to turning to training after retiring from the saddle.

  Everywhere was quiet and deserted so I wandered around the empty yard and looked into the six stable boxes. Two of them showed evidence of recent equine habitation with brown peat horse bedding still down on the concrete floor and water in the troughs in the corners. Two of the others had an assortment of contents ranging from some wooden garden furniture put away for the winter and an old push-along mower in one, to an old disconnected central-heating boiler and a stack of large cardboard boxes in the other, the latter obviously still unpacked from some past house move.

  The last two stables in the line were empty, as was the tack room, save for a couple of horse rugs bundled in a corner. The feed store contained a small stack of hay and several bags of horse nuts, together with four bales of the brown horse bedding, one of them broken open and half used. Leaning up against the far end wall of the store were two long-handled, double-pronged pitchforks, identical, I imagined, to the one found embedded in Scot Barlow’s chest on Monday afternoon.

  The house was not so conveniently open as the stable block so I walked round the outside, looking in turn into each of the plentiful ground-floor windows. The daylight was beginning to fade fast before I had made my way completely round the house and I might have missed something, but there was absolutely nothing I could see to help me either way. So dark had it become by the time I had finished that several of the security lights were switched on by their movement sensors as I made my way back to the Hertz Mondeo and drove away.

  I looked at the car clock. It told me that it was almost five o’clock. Five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. The start of the weekend. Funny, I thought, I hadn’t liked weekends much since Angela had died. Occasionally I went racing and, more occasionally, I actually rode in a race, but overall I found the break from chambers life rather lonely.

  I drove back into the centre of Lambourn, to the equine hospital on Upper Lambourn Road, and explained to the receptionist through a sliding glass panel that I was looking for someone who had shared a room with Millie Barlow before last June.