He remained edgy. ‘It’s one of those things you can’t prove. He comes across as an okay guy.’
‘Inge agrees with you. He’s her cavalry officer.’
Septimus blinked and drew himself up. ‘That didn’t come out at the interview.’
‘If I recall it right, when you asked if he was a regular pikeman, he said not always, or something similar.’
‘Evasive.’
‘Perhaps he’d been demoted for some misdemeanour. He’s a captain of horse according to Ingeborg.’
‘That makes sense now. When I asked him about the cavalryman who saw him burying the lager, he said he’d know the horse if he saw it again.’
Diamond nodded. ‘A white stallion.’
‘A pale horse.’
‘Same thing.’
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Septimus gave him a gaze burnished with zeal. ‘The Book of Revelation. “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death.”’
For much of the trip along the motorway, those words resonated in Diamond’s head. The Bible wasn’t often quoted in Bath CID. Was it stereotyping to suppose Septimus, as a member of the black community, was a churchgoer, used to hearing high-flown texts from the pulpit? Some of the Pentecostal churches in Bristol were well known for the power of their preachers and the involvement of their congregations. He could picture Septimus, a man with a solemn presence, letting go as he joined in the responses. Had the phrase about the pale horse come to him automatically, or did it give voice to a genuine apprehension?
To do the man justice, he had been consistent in his suspicion of Dave Barton. He’d worked out that ingenious theory that it had been Rupert who had hidden the six-pack, chancing on the very place where Dave (the supposed killer of Nadia) had buried the body all those years before. Dave (the theory went) had been compelled to silence Rupert by murdering him. The tough interrogation, when Dave had brought along his lawyer, Miss Tower, had been insisted on and carried out by Septimus. The truth should have emerged. Either Dave was very smart or Septimus was barking up the wrong tree. Nothing conclusive had come from it.
And now new witness Bert Pope had torpedoed the theory. Dave had been seen in the act of burying the lager. His story was corroborated.
Septimus was reduced to quoting doom-laden stuff from the Bible.
Unsettling, even so.
Paul Gilbert said suddenly, ‘If you don’t mind me asking, guv, I’m not too clear how this racehorse trainer fits in.’
‘Right. I’ll tell you.’ It was a relief to talk about something else. He hadn’t briefed the team since his meeting with Tipping and his daughter. Taking his time, he told Gilbert precisely why it had become necessary to get the trainer’s version of what had happened the evening Hang-glider had been stolen.
Before he’d finished, they ended the steady climb into the Cotswolds and joined the motorway. Stone buildings gave way to vast stretches of pasture covering Wiltshire’s chalk downs. Nowhere in the south offered longer views, or such a sense of the past. Gilbert was driving at a speed Diamond approved, content to use the slow lane along with the Saturday traffic of caravans and campers returning from holidays in Cornwall.
It wasn’t long before they passed Swindon and started looking for their exit. Gilbert had the Sat-Nav working – just one more gadget Diamond had resolved he didn’t need in his own car.
‘We’re close now,’ Gilbert said as they made the fourth prompted turn in under a minute and started up a narrow lane rutted with mud and cow manure.
‘I’ve heard that before. You couldn’t bring a horsebox up here.’
‘It’s the direct route for us.’
Sure enough, it opened into a wider, better maintained road and only a short way along they had to pull in for a string of horses on their way to the gallops. Gilbert pulled down his window to ask and the leading rider pointed behind him.
In two minutes they were driving towards a complex of stables and outbuildings. Security, Diamond noted, was all around them: CCTV, high walls topped with razor wire, double sets of gates. They had to speak into an entry- phone to gain admission.
‘They call this a yard?’ Gilbert said, marvelling.
‘A yard and then some. It’s a multimillion business.’
Inside, they drew up outside the brick-built admin section, two storeys high. Mr McDart, they learned from a high-heeled, white-suited receptionist, was at the main stable block.
‘Mucking out, I expect,’ Diamond said to Gilbert.
His eyes widened. ‘Do you think so?’
‘No.’
Even so, they found the trainer seated on a bale of hay at one end of the block, short, silver-haired and in a padded waistcoat and flat cap. His brown eyes assessed them as they approached. The hay was his throne and they were expected to show deference, if not actually to bow.
‘You must be the long arm of the law.’
‘Something like that,’ Diamond said, showing his ID.
‘Is this another complaint about my horses holding up the traffic?’
‘Actually, no. It’s about Hang-glider.’ Diamond watched for the reaction.
It wasn’t panic. Not even concern. Expectation best described it. ‘Have you found him after all these years?’
‘Unfortunately, no,’ Diamond said. ‘But we want the facts about his disappearance. It’s possible a murder was committed at the same time.’
‘Murder? I know nothing about that.’ McDart was still in control, unfazed, heels kicking idly against the hay.
‘But you were there for the races?’
‘I was. Hang-glider wasn’t. He’d popped a tendon and retired. He was the star guest, making a final appearance in front of his fans. They regarded him as a local. He had his first outing on Lansdown.’
‘Trained here?’
‘From the beginning. The owner, Sir Colin Tipping, paid a small fortune for him as a yearling. That’s a gamble, you know. Some of them never race, they’re so useless. This colt was the real deal from the start. Full of pluck and class.’ He looked away, remembering, and there was pride in his voice. ‘In his short career, he was ahead of everything. He took the Irish 2000 Guineas by four lengths and the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and he could have done much, much more.’ He gave Diamond another gimlet gaze with the brown eyes. ‘Murder, you said?’
‘That’s our suspicion. Would you mind telling us your mem-or ies of that day?’
‘Nothing I can say. I didn’t see anything. I drove the horse here myself with my son Charles, who was learning the business in those days, as a stable lad, like I did.’
‘You drove what – a horsebox?’
‘You drove what He nodded.
‘Was that safe – driving an injured horse?’
A frown. ‘What are you suggesting? He was three months over the injury. He’d had ultrasound. You wouldn’t have known there was anything amiss except that he’d have torn it again if he was raced. All we did that evening was walk him in front of the grandstands.’
‘You said “we”.’
‘Charles, actually. I watched from a box in the stands with the owner. It was rather moving. Cheering all the way.’
‘So did your son return the horse to the box?’
‘That’s right. Locked him in securely and joined some of his friends.’
‘Where was the box parked? Among all the others?’
‘No, that’s a secure area for the racing. We were away from them. As he wasn’t racing, we asked for a different spot near the premier enclosure.’
‘When did you find out that the horse was stolen?’
‘The end of the evening. I was among the last to leave, yarning with a couple of other trainers. Charles came to collect me and we went back to the box. I saw straight away that the doors had been forced and Hang-glider
