Longshot (19 page)

While Tremayne was on his way from weighing room to saddling boxes for Telebiddy in the next race he handed me an envelope and asked me to put the contents for him on the Tote; Telebiddy, all to win.

“I don’t like people to see me bet,” he said, “because for one thing it shows them I’m pretty confident, so they put their money on too, and it shortens the odds. I usually bet by phone with a bookmaker, but today I wanted to judge the state of the ground first. It can be treacherous, after snow. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not at all.”

He nodded and hurried off, and I made my way to the Tote windows and disposed of enough to keep me in food for a year. Small, as in Tremayne’s “small bet,” was a relative term, I saw.

I joined him in the parade ring and asked if he wanted the tickets.

“No. If he wins, collect for me, will you?”

“OK.”

Nolan was talking to the owners, exercising his best charm and moderating his language. In jockey’s clothes he still looked chunky, strong and powerfully arrogant, but the swagger seemed to stop the moment he sat on the horse. Then professionalism took over and he was concentrated, quiet and neat in the saddle.

I tagged along behind Tremayne and the owners and from the stands watched Nolan give a display of razor-sharp competence that made most of the other amateurs look like Sunday drivers.

He saved countable seconds over the fences, his mount gaining lengths by always seeming to take off at the right spot. Judgment, not luck. The courage that Mackie loved was still there, unmistakable.

The owners, mother and daughter, were tremblers. They weren’t entirely white and near to dying, but from what they said the betting money was out of their pockets and on the horse in a big way and there was a good deal of lip- and knuckle-biting from off to finish.

Nolan, as if determined to outride Sam Yaeger, hurled himself over the last three fences and won by ten lengths pulling up. Tremayne let out a deep breath and the owners hugged each other, hugged Tremayne and stopped shaking.

“You could give Nolan a good cash present for that,” Tremayne said bluntly.

The owners thought Nolan would be embarrassed if they gave him such a present.

“Give it to me, to give to him. No embarrassment.”

The owners said they’d better run down and lead in their winner, which they did.

“Stingy cats,” Tremayne said in my ear as we watched them fuss over the horse and have their picture taken.

“Won’t they really give Nolan anything?” I asked.

“It’s against the rules, and they know it. Amateurs aren’t supposed to be given money for winning. Nolan will have backed the horse anyway, he always does with a hot chance like this. And I get one-hundred-percent commitment from my jockey.” His voice was dry with humor. “I often think the Jockey Club has it wrong, not letting professional jockeys bet on their own mounts.”

He returned to the weighing room to fetch Sam’s saddle and weight cloth for Cashless, and I went off to the Tote and collected his Telebiddy winnings, which approximately equaled his stake. Nolan, it appeared, had been riding the hot favorite.

When I commented on it to Tremayne in the parade ring as we watched Cashless being led around, he told me that Nolan’s presence on any horse shortened its odds, and Telebiddy had won twice for him already this season. It was a wonder, Tremayne said, that the Tote had paid evens: he’d expected less of a return. I would do him a favor, he added, if I would give him his winnings on the way home, not in public, so I walked around with a small fortune I had no hope of repaying if I lost it, keeping it clutched in my lefthand trousers pocket.

We went up to the stands for the race and watched Cashless set off in front as expected, a position he easily held until right where it mattered, the last fifty yards. Then three jockeys who had been waiting behind him stepped on the accelerator, and although Cashless didn’t in any way give up, the three others passed him.

Tremayne shrugged. “Too bad.”

“Will you run him in front again next time?” I asked, as we went down off the stands.

“I expect so. We’ve tried keeping him back and he runs worse. He’s one-paced in a finish, that’s his trouble. He’s game enough, but it’s hard to find races he can win.”

We reached the parade ring, where the unsuccessful runners were being unsaddled. Sam, looping girths over his arm, gave Tremayne a rueful smile and said Cashless had done his best.

“I saw,” Tremayne agreed. “Can’t be helped.” We watched Sam walk off towards the weighing room, and Tremayne remarked thoughtfully that he might try Cashless in an amateur race, and see what Nolan could do.

“Do you play them off against each other on purpose?” I asked.

Tremayne gave me a flickering glance. “I do the best for my owners,” he said. “Like a drink?”

It appeared he had arranged to meet the owners of Telebiddy in the Club bar and when we arrived they were already celebrating with a bottle of champagne. Nolan, too, was there, being incredibly nice to them but without financial results.

When the two women had left in a state of euphoria, Nolan asked belligerently whether Tremayne had told them to give him a present.

“I suggested it,” Tremayne said calmly, “but you’ll be lucky. Better settle for what you took from the bookmakers yourself.”

“Damn little,” Nolan said, or words to that effect, “and the bloodsucking lawyers will get the lot.” He shouldered his way out of the bar in self-righteous outrage, which seemed to be his uppermost state of mind oftener than not.

With noncommittal half-lowered eyelids Tremayne watched him go, then transferred his gaze to me.

“Well,” he asked, “what have you learned?”

“What you intended me to, I expect.”

He smiled. “And a bit more than I intended. I’ve noticed you do that all the time.” With a contented sigh he put down his empty glass. “Two winners,” he said. “A better-than-average day at the races. Let’s go home.”

 

 

AT ABOUT THE time we were driving home with Tremayne’s winnings safely stowed in his own pockets, not mine, Detective Chief Inspector Doone was poring over the increased pickings from the woodland.

The detective chief inspector could be said to be purring. Among some insignificant long-rusted detritus lay the star of the whole collection, a woman’s handbag. Total satisfaction had been denied him, as the prize had been torn open on one side, probably by a dog, whose toothmarks still showed, so that most of the contents had been lost. All the same, he was left with a shoulder strap, a corroded buckle and at least half of a brown plastic school-style bag which still held, in an intact inner zipped pocket, a small mirror and a folded photograph frame.

With careful movements Doone opened the frame and found inside, waterstained along one edge but otherwise sharply clear, a colored snapshot of a man standing beside a horse.

Disappointed that there was still no easy identification of the handbag’s past owner, Doone took a telephone call from the pathologist.

“You were asking about teeth,” the pathologist said. “The dental records you gave me are definitely not those of our bones. Our girl had good teeth. One or two missing, but no fillings. Sorry.”

Doone’s disappointment deepened. The politician’s daughter had just been ruled out. He mentally reviewed his lists again, skipped the prostitutes and provisionally paused on Angela Brickell, stable lad. Angela Brickell ... horse.

 

 

THE BOMBSHELL BURST on Shellerton on Thursday.

Tremayne was upstairs showering and dressing before going to Towcester races when the doorbell rang. Dee-Dee went to answer it and presently came into the dining room looking mystified.

“It’s two men,” she said. “They say they’re policemen. They flashed some sort of identity cards, but they won’t say what they want. I’ve put them in the family room until Tremayne comes down. Go and keep an eye on them, would you mind?”

“Sure,” I said, already on the move.

“Thanks,” she said, returning to the office. “Whatever they want, it looks boring.”

I could see why she thought so. The two men might have invented the word gray, so characterless did they appear at first sight. Ultimate plainclothes, I thought.

“Can I help you?” I said.

“Are you Tremayne Vickers?” one of them asked.

“No. He’ll be down soon. Can I help?”

“No, thank you, sir. Can you fetch him?”

“He’s in the shower.”

The policeman raised his eyebrows. Trainers, however, didn’t shower before morning exercise, they showered after, before going racing. That was Tremayne’s habit, anyway. Dee-Dee had told me.

“He’s been up since six,” I said.

The policeman’s eyes widened, as if I’d read his mind. “I am Detective Chief Inspector Doone, Thames Valley Police,” he said. “This is Detective Constable Rich.”

“How do you do,” I said politely. “I’m John Kendall. Would you care to sit down?”

They perched gingerly on chairs and said no to an offer of coffee.

“Will he be long, sir?” Doone asked. “We must see him soon.”

“No, not long.”

Doone, on further inspection, appeared to be about fifty, with gray-dusted light-brown hair and a heavy medium-brown mustache. He had light-brown eyes, big bony hands and, as we all slowly discovered, a habit of talking a lot in a light Berkshire accent.

This chattiness wasn’t at all apparent in the first ten minutes before Tremayne came downstairs buttoning the blue-and-white-striped cuffs of his shirt and carrying his jacket gripped between forearm and chest.

‘Hello,” he said, “who’s this?”

Dee-Dee appeared behind him, apparently to tell him, but Doone introduced himself before either she or I could do so.

“Police?” Tremayne said, unworried. “What about?”

“We’d like to speak to you alone, sir.”

“What? Oh, very well.”

He asked me with his eyes to leave with Dee-Dee, shutting the door behind us. I returned to the dining room but presently heard the family-room door open and Tremayne’s voice calling.

“John, come back here, would you.”

I went back. Doone was protesting about my presence, saying it was unnecessary and inadvisable.

Tremayne said stubbornly, “I want him to hear it. Will you repeat what you said?”

Doone shrugged. “I came to inform Mr. Vickers that some remains have been found which may prove to be those of a young woman who was once employed here.”

“Angela Brickell,” Tremayne said resignedly.

“Oh.”

“What does ‘Oh’ mean, sir?” Doone inquired sharply.

“It means just oh,” I said. “Poor girl. Everyone thought she’d just done a bunk.”

“They have a photograph,” Tremayne said. “They’re trying to identify the man.” He turned to Doone. “Show it to him.” He nodded in my direction. “Don’t take my word for it.”

Unwillingly Doone handed me a photograph enclosed in a plastic holder.

“Do you know this man, sir?” he asked.

I glanced at Tremayne, who was not looking concerned.

“You may as well tell him,” he said.

“Harry Goodhaven?”

Tremayne nodded. “That’s Fiona’s horse, Chickweed, the one they said was doped.”

“How can you recognize a horse?” Doone asked.

Tremayne stared at him. “Horses have faces, like people. I’d know Chickweed anywhere. He’s still here, out in the yard.”

“Who is this man, this Harry Goodhaven?” Doone demanded.

“The husband of the owner of the horse.”

“Why would Angela Brickell be carrying his photograph?”

“She wasn’t,” Tremayne said. “Well, I suppose she was, but it was the
horse’s
photograph she was carrying. She looked after it.”

Doone looked completely unconvinced.

“To a lad,” I said, “the horses they look after are like children. They love them. They defend them. It makes sense that she carried Chickweed’s picture.”

Tremayne glanced at me with half-stifled surprise, but I’d been listening to the lads for a week.

“What John says,” Tremayne nodded, “is absolutely true.”

The attendant policeman, Constable Rich, was all the time taking notes, though not at high speed: not shorthand.

Doone said, “Sir, can you give me the address of this Harry Goodhaven?”

With slight irritation Tremayne answered, “This Harry Goodhaven, as you call him, is Mr. Henry Goodhaven, who owns the Manor House, Shellerton.”

Doone very nearly said “Oh” in his turn, and made a visible readjustment in his mind.

“I’m already running late,” Tremayne said, making moves to leave.

“But, sir ...”

“Stay as long as you like,” Tremayne said, going. “Talk to John, talk to my secretary, talk to whoever you want.”

“I don’t think you understand, sir,” Doone said with a touch of desperation. “Angela Brickell was
strangled.”

“What?”
Tremayne stopped dead, stunned. “I thought you said ...”

“I said we’d found some remains. Now that you’ve recognized the ... er ... horse, sir, we’re pretty sure of her identity. Everything else fits: height, age, possible time of death. And, sir”—he hesitated briefly as if to summon courage—“only last week, sir, we had a Crown Court case about another young woman who was strangled ... strangled here in this house.”

There was silence.

Tremayne said finally, “There can’t be any connection. The death that occurred in this house was an accident, whatever the jury thought.”

Doone said doggedly, “Did Mr. Nolan Everard have any connections with Angela Brickell?”

“Yes, of course he did. He rides Chickweed, the horse in that photograph. He saw Angela Brickell quite often in the course of her work.” He paused for thought. “Where did you say her ... remains ... were found?”