Under Orders

it.’ He certainly sounded defiant. ‘Come over and let’s talk it through.’

‘I can’t just come over, I live in London,’ I said.

‘Oh yeah, I forgot. Well, come tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I know, come and ride out for me in the morning.’

‘Do you mean it?’ I asked. I could still steer a straight course with one hand but invitations to ride out were rare.

‘Of course, I mean it. A one-handed Sid Halley is streaks better than most of my lads. But you’d better come tomorrow since there may not be any horses left by Thursday.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said.

‘I’m not.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’d love to.’

‘First lot goes out at seven thirty. Come at seven, or six thirty if you want a cup of coffee first.’

‘Right,’ I said, ‘I’ll be there at six thirty.’

‘Good. See you then.’ He disconnected.

I called Marina at work and asked her to buy a copy of The Pump on her way home.

I woke at four thirty the next morning, took extra care attaching my arm, and was on the road by a quarter past five.

‘Don’t break your neck,’ Marina had mumbled in my ear as I gave her a goodbye kiss.

‘Try not to.’

I enjoyed driving through the empty London streets at this early hour, rush-hour gridlock merely a memory. I whizzed down the Cromwell Road with every traffic light in my favour and was soon on the M4 with the dawn appearing brightly in my rear-view mirror.

I had brought the answering machine cassette tape with me to listen to in the car but I could glean nothing more from Huw’s messages. They were the pleadings of a frightened man, a man who had realised that he was in way over his head and that he couldn’t swim.

I also had a copy of the previous day’s Pump on the seat beside me, opened at Chris Beecher’s column.

It has now been four days since the murder of top jump jockey Huw Walker at Cheltenham last week and The Pump can exclusively reveal that the police have someone in custody. But who is it? The police aren’t telling but I can disclose that it’s a racing man, a trainer, and that he has also been arrested for race fixing. I can further assist any amateur sleuth in trying to determine who this chief suspect is. Try using a Candlestick to give you Leaded Light to show you the way.

As Bill had said, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to piece those clues together.

I made good time to Lambourn and pulled into Bill’s gateway at twenty-five past six. I was really excited by the prospect of being back in the saddle on a Thoroughbred doing what came naturally to both horse and rider, travelling at speed with the wind in my hair.

So I was rather disappointed to find that I wasn’t Bill’s first visitor of the day. There was a police car in the driveway, with its blue light flashing on the roof.

Bugger, I thought! They’ve come to take Bill back in for questioning. A dawn raid.

I climbed out of the car and was met by a wide-eyed Juliet Burns.

‘Bill’s killed himself,’ she said.

CHAPTER 8

I stared at Juliet in disbelief.

‘He can’t have,’ I said stupidly.

‘Well, he has,’ said Juliet. ‘He’s blown his brains out.’

‘What? When?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I found him in the den about half an hour ago and called the police. He usually comes into the yard to see me at a quarter to six. When he failed to turn up, I thought he might have overslept after all the excitement of the last two days.’

I didn’t exactly think that getting arrested constituted ‘excitement’.

‘I went up to his room but he wasn’t there and the bed was still made. So I looked for him in the office and then in the den.’ She shook her head. ‘Pretty bad. I could see straight away that he was dead. The back of his head is missing.’

Her matter-of-fact description made me feel quite queasy but Juliet seemed perfectly fine and she had actually seen the carnage. Shock affects people in different ways and I suspected that Juliet was currently shutting out the trauma. In time, she might need help to cope but not yet.

I took her arm and sat her down in the passenger seat of my car. Then I went to the back door of the house. A young uniformed policeman politely informed me that no one was allowed in. He said that his superiors were on their way, together with the Scene of Crime Officer, and nobody, not even his superiors, could enter the house before the SOCO arrived.

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘is it a crime scene then?’

‘Maybe,’ said the policeman. ‘All suspicious deaths are treated as if they are crimes until we know otherwise.’

‘Very wise,’ I said and retraced my steps to my car. I sat down in the driver’s seat.

‘Juliet,’ I asked, ‘is Bill still in the den?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. That policeman was here pretty quickly but no one else has arrived. I mean, there’s been no ambulance or anything.’

‘I expect the policeman will have called one.’

‘Suppose so.’ She appeared to be going into shock, staring straight ahead and hardly listening to what I said.

‘Juliet!’ I called loudly to her and she slowly turned her head. ‘Stay here in the car and I’ll be back in a minute and take you home.’ She nodded slightly.

I picked up my camera from the glove box, jumped out of the car and, avoiding the policeman by the back door, made my way round the house to one of the windows of the den and looked in.

Bill was indeed still there although I couldn’t see him very well as he was sitting in an armchair with its back towards the corner of the room between the two windows. I could, however, see his right hand hanging limply down. In the hand was a black revolver, now pointed harmlessly at the floor. I took some pictures.

I shifted round to the next window but it didn’t give me a much better view of Bill. However, it did allow me to see and photograph a large red stain on the wall above and behind his chair. The room was well lit by the early morning sunshine and I could see that the stain was dry and there were no shiny droplets in the rivulets running down the cream paint. Bill had killed himself some time ago.

But why? Why would he kill himself after all that he had said to me yesterday? He had seemed then to be so positive and determined. Had he been rejected by Kate? Did that tip him over the edge?

And where did he get the gun?

I went right round the outside of the house looking in all the ground-floor windows. Nothing seemed to be out of place or any different from what I remembered. Except, of course, everything in this house would now be different, the disaster in the den would see to that.

I stopped by the policeman standing guard at the back door and told him that I was taking Juliet Burns home and that his superiors could find her there.

‘Don’t know about that, sir,’ he said rather hesitantly. ‘I think she should stay here until the others arrive.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ I said. ‘She’s going into shock and needs a hot drink and a warmer place than sitting in my car.