“Do you know if he’s got any financial troubles?” I asked her.
“How would I know anything about his finances?” she said. “You’re the specialist in that department.”
True, I thought, but he wasn’t my client, and I could hardly ask Gregory.
We watched the fourth race on a television in the bar, the winner again coming in exhausted and smothered in thick mud.
“They ought to do something when the going’s as heavy as this,” Jan said.
“Do what?” Claudia asked.
“Make the races shorter or reduce the weights.”
“You can’t realistically reduce the weights,” I said. “Half of them are carrying overweight already.” Most amateur jockeys were taller and heavier than the professionals.
“The races should be made shorter, then. Most of these poor horses are finishing half dead. Three and a half miles is too far in this mud.”
She was right, of course, but how could the clerk of the course predict the course conditions when planning the races several months in advance?
“Right,” said Jan decisively, finishing her drink, “I’ve had enough of this misery. I’m going home.”
“Can’t we go too?” Claudia asked, shivering.
“Not yet,” I said. “I’ve still got to talk to Viscount Shenington.”
Claudia looked far from happy.
“I’m sure Jan would take you back to Mum’s place, if you’d like,” I said. “It’s only a mile or so down the road from here.”
“No problem,” said Jan.
“Here,” I said, taking my mother’s house key from my pocket. “I’ll be back by ten, and I’ll collect Mum from Joan’s on the way.”
Claudia took the key but slowly, as if nervous.
“Jan will see you into the cottage,” I said, trying to be reassuring. “Then lock yourself in, and open the door only for me.”
Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure about going back to the cottage on her own, but I could see that she was very cold, and she was also not yet fully recovered from her operation. Truth be told, I would be much happier if she went with Jan as I could then concentrate on what I had to ask Shenington, and be quick about it.
“OK,” she said. “But please don’t be long.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I promise.”
Shenington’s box was much emptier when I went back up there before the fifth race, and there was no sign of Ben.
“He’s had to go back to Oxford,” explained his father as I removed my Barbour and hung it on a hook by the door, the rainwater running down the waxed material and dripping off the sleeves onto the carpet. “He said to say good-bye.”
“Thank you,” I said. “He’s a very nice young man. You should be proud of him.”
“Yes, thank you,” he replied. “But he can also be a bit idealistic at times.”
“Isn’t that a good thing in the young?” I said.
“Not always,” he replied, staring at the wall above my head. “We all have to live in the real world. To Ben, everything is either right or wrong, black or white. There’s no middle ground, no compromise, and little or no tolerance of other people’s failings.”
It was quite a statement, I thought, and one clearly born out of a certain degree of conflict between father and son. Perhaps Ben didn’t easily tolerate his father’s addiction to gambling.
Shenington seemed to almost snap out of a trance.
“Where’s your lady?” he asked, looking around.
“She was cold,” I said. “A friend has given her a lift to my mother’s house. I’ll pick her up later. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t blame her,” he said. “It’s a cold night, and many of my guests have already gone. The rest will probably go before the last race.”
I ventured out onto the balcony and peered through the gloom as yet another long-distance hunter chase became a test of stamina for the tired and dirty participants. At least this one promised to give the crowd an exciting finish, that was until one of the two leaders slipped while landing over the last fence and deposited its hapless rider onto the grass with a sickening thump. I watched as the miserable jockey sat up holding his arm in the classic brokencollarbone pose, the bane of every rider’s life.
I realized that it was at a point not very far from where the jockey was sitting that my own life had changed forever some eight years previously. How different things might have been if I’d landed on my outstretched arm that day, as he had just done, and not on my head, if I’d only broken my collarbone instead of my neck.
As Shenington had predicted, almost all his remaining guests departed after the race, saying their good-byes and preparing for the dash to their cars in the rain.
Finally, there was just Viscount Shenington, myself, and two men in rather drab suits remaining. Even the catering staff seemed to have disappeared.
Suddenly, I felt uneasy.
But my concern was far too late.
One of the two men stood by the door to ensure no one could come in while the other advanced towards me. And he had a gun in his gloved hand, together with the ubiquitous silencer.
“Mr. Foxton, you are an extraordinarily difficult man to kill,” Shenington said, smiling slightly. “You usually don’t turn up when you’re expected and yet you came here so sweetly, like a lamb to the slaughter.”
He almost laughed.
I didn’t.
I’d been bloody careless.
20
What do you want?” I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.
“I want you dead,” Viscount Shenington said.
“So you can stop spreading your silly rumor that my brother was murdered.”
“But he was, wasn’t he?” I said.
“That is something you are not going to have to worry about anymore,” Shenington said.
“How could you have killed your own brother?” I asked. “And for what? Money?”
“My brother had no idea what it was like to be desperate for money. He was always so bloody self- righteous.”
“Honest, you mean.”
“Don’t give me all that claptrap,” he said. “Everyone’s on the make. I just want my share.”
“And is your share a hundred million euros?” I asked.
“Shut up,” he said loudly.
Why should I? Maybe I should shout as loudly as I could, to attract attention.
I took a deep breath, and the cry for help began in my throat. But that was as far as it got. The man with the gun punched me very hard in my lower abdomen, driving the air from my lungs and leaving me lying in a heap on the floor, gasping for breath. And then, just for good measure, the same man kicked me in the face, splitting my lip and sending my blood in a fine spray onto the carpet.
“Not in here, you fool,” Shenington said to him sharply.
That was slightly encouraging, I thought, through the haze in my brain. At least they weren’t going to kill me here. It might have been rather incriminating to leave a dead body in the corner of the box amongst the empty champagne bottles.
“It won’t do you any good,” I said through my bleeding mouth, my own voice sounding strange even to me.
