wasn’t inside.’
‘Wasn’t there an alarm system?’
‘Neutralised. They knew what they were doing. We alerted secu-r ity and they checked the boxes that hadn’t been driven off already. He must have been moved to another box and transported that way. By this time it was dark, of course, over an hour since the last race, and most people had left.’
‘Did you tell Sir Colin?’
‘After he got home. He’d already left. He was shattered when I told him. That horse was worth well over a million to him in stud fees.’
‘I heard,’ Diamond said and moved on to a matter that had mystified him for some time. ‘What I can’t understand is why it didn’t become a police matter. I was on the stength then. To my recollection, CID had nothing to do with it.’
McDart gave a shrug. ‘Racing is like that. We have our own secu-r ity through the British Horseracing Authority. We’re pig-headed enough to think we know more about horses than you do, and if you think about it you’ll have to admit we’re right.’
‘I might – if your people had solved the mystery. What’s your theory about it?’
He expelled a long breath. ‘With this amount of money involved, there will always be criminals out to abuse the system for their own ends. Hang-glider was a valuable property as a stallion, even though his racing days were over.’
‘But you can’t breed with a stolen horse?’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s all about pedigrees, isn’t it? Anyone buying a foal wants to know who sired it.’
‘Speaking off the record, if I’m sent a foal that can run well, I won’t care what sired it. The paperwork can be forged to make it appear right. I’ve never got into anything like that myself, but fiddling registration papers must be easier than forging banknotes, mustn’t it?’
‘So could Hang-glider still be alive under some other name?’
‘At this distance in time? I very much doubt it.’ He stopped and shouted at one of the lads who had been silently going about their work, ‘You! You’re spilling feed all over the yard. Get a broom and clear up your bloody mess.’ Then he resumed with Diamond in a mild tone: ‘You still haven’t told me who was murdered and what the connection is.’
‘A young Ukrainian woman called Nadia. She was killed about the same time and buried on Lansdown Hill. She was in the area and she may have been seeking work with horses.’
He shook his head. ‘Means nothing to me. I don’t employ casuals on the racecourse. That’s an offence. I could lose my licence for that.’
‘I wonder if your son may have met her that evening.’
‘You can ask him,’ McDart said.
‘Is he about?’
He rocked with laughter. ‘No.’
‘What’s the joke?’
‘He could have had a good career with me, but he didn’t stick at it. He joined your lot.’
Diamond opened his eyes wide. ‘The police?’
‘Bristol CID. I hardly recognise him now. The silly mutt shaves his head, goes to the gym, wears an ear-ring. He doesn’t even use the name we gave him. Calls himself Chaz.’
‘I’ve worked with Chaz,’ Diamond told Paul Gilbert on the drive back. ‘He’s a good copper.’
I‘Disappointment to his father.’
‘I expect he got pissed off being shouted at.’
‘He’d get some of that in our job, too.’
‘But not from his old man. There’s a difference.’ He reached for his mobile phone. The thing had its uses after all. He might even get to like it one day. ‘Let’s see if he’s at work this morning.’ Getting through to Bristol Central meant first calling Septimus at Bath for the number: an opportunity to get another opinion on Sergeant Chaz McDart. Salt of the earth, Septimus affirmed, a good colleague and a man you could depend on.
‘Then why isn’t he in your team at Bath?’
‘Because I needed someone to look after the shop.’
The switchboard operator confirmed that Chaz was in and asked if Diamond wished to speak to him.
‘Not over the phone,’ he said. ‘Tell him him I’m on my way to see him.’
Up to now, Paul Gilbert had been a model of tolerance, driving at the slow speeds Diamond preferred and acting as the sounding board for the big man’s theories. Suddenly a manageable trip was being extended into a grand tour. ‘To Bristol? Now?’
‘Junction nineteen,’ Diamond said. ‘I didn’t fix a time. You don’t have to put your foot down.’
They were on the long stretch between 16 and 17. Gilbert gritted his teeth and said no more about it.
There wasn’t much for Diamond to see outside the window. Pleased that so much could achieved from inside a car, he continued to hold the mobile in his hand. He’d come a long way to mastering the little monster, dialling the numbers with his thumb, like the teenagers did. Soon he’d progress to texting… Soon? Who am I kidding? he thought. Eventually, perhaps. Toying with it, he pressed the menu key and found the phone book. Not many names were listed.
He’d try Ingeborg and see if she’d got to her event in good time. She’d almost certainly be waiting around for her two minutes of action.
He highlighted her name and pressed the key.
It rang a few times and a recorded voice, not Inge’s, asked him to leave a message.
‘Funny,’ he said to Gilbert. ‘I called Ingeborg and she isn’t answering.’
Gilbert gripped the wheel a little harder.
‘I said Ingeborg isn’t answering.’
‘She’s at the jousting, or whatever it’s called,’ Gilbert said. The longer this journey went on, the more this young man was sounding like one of the more cynical veterans of the murder squad.
‘Better not be jousting. I don’t want her knocked off the horse.’
‘She’s more likely to knock the other guy off.’
‘She’s just a recruit.’
‘They’ll go easy on her, then.’
‘I don’t know. Dave Barton is in charge. Not sure I trust him.’
‘The blacksmith who found the leg bone?’
‘He’s her commanding officer. I wonder why she doesn’t answer.’ He tried again, with the same result.
‘I expect she’s wearing gauntlet gloves,’ Gilbert said.
He had to think about that. ‘Difficult to use the phone. Good point.’
‘And she wouldn’t want her mobile going off. It’s not very Civil War, is it?’
That also made sense to Diamond. He told himself not to fret.
Another mile of green hills went by.
‘Which way is Farleigh Hungerford from here?’
‘Your side,’ Gilbert said. ‘Fifteen to twenty miles from the next exit. You’re not worried about her?’
‘Not in the least.’
‘Barton isn’t a serious suspect any more, is he?’
‘No. He’s in the clear.’ Shielding the phone from Gilbert’s view, he tried one more time, pretending he was adjusting the safety belt. Still the recorded message.
A disturbing thought was forming. All along, Septimus had clung to his theory that Dave Barton was the killer. Even after the interrogation, Septimus remained suspicious. The new witness, Bert Pope, the roundhead who had watched the lager being hidden and gone back and dug it up, had appeared to confirm Dave’s story and prove
