Come to Grief Page 13

  “Never underestimate his wits,” I said.

  “And he’d better look out for yours.”

  “He and I know each other too well.”

  On Wednesday afternoon Ellis turned up at his regular television studio as if life were entirely normal and, on completion of an audience-attended recording of a sports quiz, was quietly arrested by three uniformed police of ficers. Ellis spent the night in custody, and on Thursday morning was charged with severing the foot of a colt: to be exact, the off-fore foot of an expensive two-year-old thoroughbred owned by Mrs. Elizabeth Bracken of Combe Bassett Manor, Berkshire. To the vociferous fury of most of the nation, the magistrates remanded him in custody for another seven days, a preliminary precaution usually applied to those accused of murder.

  Norman Picton phoned me privately on my home number.

  “I’m not telling you this,” he said. “Understand?”

  “I’ve got cloth ears.”

  “It would mean my job.”

  “I hear you,” I said. “I won’t talk.”

  “No,” he said, “that, I believe.”

  “Norman?”

  “Word gets around. I looked up the transcript of the trial of that man that smashed off your hand. You didn’t tell him what he wanted to know, did you?”

  “No ... well ... everyone’s a fool sometimes.”

  “Some fool. Anyway, pin back the cloth ears. The reason why Ellis Quint is remanded for seven days is because after his arrest he tried to hang himself in his cell with his tie.”

  “He didn‘t!”

  “No one took his belt or tie away, because of who he was. No one in the station believed in the charge. There’s all hell going on now. The top brass are passing the parcel like a children’s party. No one’s telling anyone outside anything on pain of death, so, Sid ...”

  “I promise,” I said.

  “They’ll remand him next week for another. seven days, partly to stop him committing suicide and partly because ...” He faltered on the brink of utter trust, his whole career at risk.

  “I promise,” I said again. “And if I know what it is you want kept quiet, then I’ll know what not to guess at publicly, won’t I?”

  “God,” he said, half the anxiety evaporating, “then ... there’s horse blood in the hinges of the shears, and horse blood and hairs on the oily rag, and horse blood and hairs in the sacking. They’ve taken samples from the colt in the hospital at Lambourn, and everything’s gone away for DNA testing. The results will be back next week.”

  “Does Ellis know?”

  “I imagine that’s why he tried the quick way out. It was a Hermès tie, incidentally, with a design of horseshoes. The simple knot he tied slid undone because the tie was pure smooth silk.”

  “For God’s sake ...”

  “I keep forgetting he’s your friend. Anyway, his lawyers have got to him. They’re six deep. He’s now playing the lighthearted celebrity, and he’s sorrowful about you, Sid, for having got him all wrong. His lawyers are demanding proof that Ellis himself was ever at Combe Bassett by night, and we are asking for proof that he wasn’t. His lawyers know we would have to drop the case if they can come up with a trustable alibi for any of the other amputations, but so far they haven’t managed it. It’s early days, though. They’ll dig and dig, you can bet on it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “None of the Land-Rover evidence will get into the papers because the sub judice rule kicked in the minute they remanded him. Mostly that helps us, but you, as Sid Halley, won’t be able to justify yourself in print until after the trial.”

  “Even if I can then.”

  “Juries are unpredictable.”

  “And the law is, frequently, an ass.”

  “People in the force are already saying you’re off your rocker. They say Ellis is too well known. They say that wherever he went he would be recognized, therefore if no one recognized him, that in itself is proof he wasn’t there.”

  “Mm,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about that. Do you have time off at the weekend?”

  “Not this weekend, no. Monday do you?”

  “I’ll see if I can fix something up with Archie ... and Jonathan.”

  “And there’s another thing,” Norman said, “the Land-Rover’s presence at Combe Bassett is solid in itself, but Jonathan, if he gets as far as the witness box, will be a meal for Ellis’s lawyers. On probation for stealing cars! What sort of a witness is that?”

  “I understood the jury isn’t allowed to know anything about a witness. I was at a trial once in the Central Law Courts—the Old Bailey—when a beautifully dressed and blow-dried twenty-six-year-old glamour boy gave evidence—all lies—and the jury weren’t allowed to know that he was already serving a sentence for confidence tricks and had come to court straight from jail, via the barber and the wardrobe room. The jury thought him a lovely young man. So much for juries.”

  “Don’t you believe in the jury system?”

  “I would believe in it if they were told more. How can a jury come to a prison-or-freedom decision if half the facts are withheld? There should be no inadmissible evidence.”

  “You’re naive.”

  “I’m Sid Public, remember? The law bends over backwards to give the accused the benefit of the slightest doubt. The victim of murder is never there to give evidence. The colt in Lambourn can’t talk. It’s safer to kill animals. I’m sorry, but I can’t stand what Ellis has become.”

  He said flatly, “Emotion works against you in the witness box.”

  “Don’t worry. In court, I’m a block of ice.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “You’ve heard too damned much.”

  He laughed. “There’s an old-boy internet,” he said. “All you need is the password and a whole new world opens up.”

  “What’s the password?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Don’t bugger me about. What’s the password?”

  “Archie,” he said.

  I was silent for all of ten seconds, remembering Archie’s eyes the first time I met him, remembering the awareness, the message of knowledge. Archie knew more about me than I knew about him.

  I asked, “What exactly does Archie do in the civil service?”

  “I reckon,” Norman said, amused, “that he’s very like you, Sid. What he don’t want you to know, he don’t tell you.”

  “Where can I reach you on Monday?”

  “Police station. Say you’re John Paul Jones.”

  Kevin Mills dominated the front page of The Pump on Friday—a respite from the sexual indiscretions of cabinet ministers but a demolition job on me. “The Pump,” he reminded readers, “had set up a hotline to Sid Halley to report attacks on colts. Owners had been advised to lock their stable doors, and to great effect had done so after the Derby. The Pump disclaimed all responsibility for Sid Halley’s now ludicrously fingering Ellis Quint as the demon responsible for torturing defenseless horses. Ellis Quint, whose devotion to thoroughbreds stretches back to his own starry career as the country’s top amateur race-rider, the popular hero who braved all perils in the ancient tradition of gentlemen sportsmen...”

  More of the same.

  “See also ‘Analysis,’ on page ten, and India Cathcart, page fifteen.”

  I supposed one had to know the worst. I read the leader column: “Should an ex-jockey be allowed free rein as pseudo sleuth? (Answer: no, of course not.)” and then, dredging deep for steel, I finally turned to India Cathcart’s piece.

  Sid Halley, smugly accustomed to acclaim as a champion, in short time lost his career, his wife and his left hand, and then weakly watched his friend soar to super-celebrity and national-star status, all the things that he considered should be his. Who does this pathetic little man think he’s kidding? He’s no Ellis Quint. He’s a has-been with an ego problem, out to ruin what he envies.

  That was for starters. The next section pitilessly but not accurately dissected the impulse that led one to
compete at speed (ignoring the fact that presumably Ellis himself had felt the same power-hungry inferiority complex).

  My ruthless will to win, India Cathcart had written, had destroyed everything good in my own life. The same will to win now aimed to destroy my friend Ellis Quint. This was ambition gone mad.

  The Pump would not let it happen. Sid Halley was a beetle ripe for squashing. The Pump would exterminate. The Halley myth was curtains.

  Damn and blast her, I thought, and, for the first time in eighteen years, got drunk.

  On Saturday morning, groaning around the apartment with a headache, I found a message in my fax machine.

  Handwritten scrawl, Pump-headed paper same as before ... Kevin Mills.

  Sid, sorry, but you asked for it.

  You’re still a shit.

  Most of Sunday I listened to voices on my answering machine delivering the same opinion.

  Two calls relieved the gloom.

  One from Charles Roland, my ex-father-in-law. “Sid, if you’re in trouble, there’s always Aynsford,” and a second from Archie Kirk, “I’m at home. Norman Picton says you want me.”

  Two similar men, I thought gratefully. Two men with cool, dispassionate minds who would listen before condemning.

  I phoned back to Charles, who seemed relieved I sounded sane.

  “I’m all right,” I said.

  “Ellis is a knight in shining armor, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure, Sid?”

  “Positive.”

  “But Ginnie ... and Gordon ... they’re friends.

  “Well,” I said, “if I cut the foot off a horse, what would you do?”

  “But you wouldn’t.”

  “No.”

  I sighed. That was the trouble. No one could believe it of Ellis.

  “Sid, come, anytime,” Charles said.

  “You’re my rock,” I said, trying to make it sound light. “I’ll come if I need to.”

  “Good.”

  I phoned Archie and asked if Jonathan was still staying with Betty Bracken.

  Archie said, “I’ve been talking to Norman. Jonathan is now addicted to water skiing and spends every day at the lake. Betty is paying hundreds and says it’s worth it to get him out of the house. He’ll be at the lake tomorrow. Shall we all meet there?”

  We agreed on a time, and met.

  When we arrived, Jonathan was out on the water.

  “That’s him,” Norman said, pointing.

  The flying figure in a scarlet wet-suit went up a ramp, flew, turned a somersault in the air and landed smoothly on two skis.

  “That,” Archie said in disbelief, “is Jonathan?”

  “He’s a natural,” Norman said. “I’ve been out here for a bit most days. Not only does he know his spatial balance and attitude by instinct, but he’s fearless.”

  Archie and I silently watched Jonathan approach the shore, drop the rope and ski confidently up the sloping landing place with almost as much panache as Norman himself.

  Jonathan grinned. Jonathan’s streaky hair blew wetly back from his forehead. Jonathan, changed, looked blazingly happy.

  A good deal of the joy dimmed with apprehension as he looked at Archie’s stunned and expressionless face. I took a soft sports bag out of my car and held it out to him, asking him to take it with him to the dressing rooms.

  “Hi,” he said. “OK.” He took the bag and walked off barefooted, carrying his skis.

  “Incredible,” Archie said, “but he can’t ski through life.”

  “It’s a start,” Norman said.

  After we’d stood around for a few minutes discussing Ellis we were approached by a figure in a dark-blue tracksuit, also wearing black running shoes, a navy baseball cap and sunglasses and carrying a sheet of paper. He came to within fifteen feet of us and stopped.

  “Yes?” Norman asked, puzzled, as to a stranger. “Do you want something?”

  I said, “Take off the cap and the glasses.”

  He took them off. Jonathan’s streaky hair shook forward into its normal startling shape and his eyes stared at my face. I gave him a slight jerk of the head, and he came the last few paces and handed the paper to Norman.

  Archie for once looked wholly disconcerted. Norman read aloud what I’d written on the paper.

  “ ‘Jonathan, this is an experiment. Please put on the clothes you’ll find in this bag. Put on the baseball cap, peak forward, hiding your face. Wear the sunglasses. Bring this paper. Walk towards me, stop a few feet away, and don’t speak. OK? Thanks, Sid.’ ”

  Norman lowered the paper, looked at Jonathan and said blankly, “Bloody hell.”

  “Is that the lot?” Jonathan asked me.

  “Brilliant,” I said.

  “Shall I get dressed now?”

  I nodded, and he walked nonchalantly away.

  “He looked totally different,” Archie commented, still amazed. “I didn’t know him at all.”

  I said to Norman, “Did you look at the tape of Ellis’s program, that one I put in with my report?”

  “The tape covered with stickers saying it was the property of Mrs. Linda Ferns? Yes, I did.”

  “When Ellis was sitting on the floor with those children,” I said, “he was wearing a dark tracksuit, open at the neck. He had a peaked cap pushed back on his head. He looked young. Boyish. The children responded to him... touched him ... loved him. He had a pair of sunglasses tucked into a breast pocket.”

  After a silence Norman said, “But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t wear those clothes on television if he’d worn them to mutilate the Ferns pony.”

  “Oh yes he would. It would deeply amuse him. There’s nothing gives him more buzz than taking risks.”

  “A baseball cap,” Archie said thoughtfully, “entirely changes the shape of someone’s head.”

  I nodded. “A baseball cap and a pair of running shorts can reduce any man of stature to anonymity.”

  “We’ll never prove it,” Norman said.

  Jonathan slouched back in his own clothes and with his habitual half-sneering expression firmly in place. Archie’s exasperation with him sharply returned.

  “This is not the road to Damascus,” I murmured.

  “Damn you, Sid.” Archie glared, and then laughed.

  “What are you talking about?” Norman asked.

  “Saint Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus happened like a thunderclap,” Archie explained. “Sid’s telling me not to look for instant miracles by the gravel pit lake.”

  Jonathan, not listening, handed me the bag. “Cool idea,” he said. “No one knew me.”

  “They would, close to.”

  “It was still a risk,” Norman objected.

  “I told you,” I said, “the risk is the point.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Cutting off a horse’s foot doesn’t make sense. Half of human actions don’t make sense. Sense is in the eye of the beholder.”

  I drove back to London.

  My answering machine had answered so many calls that it had run out of recording tape.

  Among the general abuse, three separate calls were eloquent about the trouble I’d stirred up. All three of the owners of the other colt victims echoed Linda Ferns’s immovable conviction.

  The lady from Cheltenham: “I can’t believe you can be so misguided. Ellis is absolutely innocent. I wouldn’t have thought of you as being jealous of him, but all the papers say so. I’m sorry, Sid, but you’re not welcome here anymore.”

  The angry Lancashire farmer: “You’re a moron, do you know that? Ellis Quint! You’re stupid. You were all right as a jockey. You should give up this pretense of being Sherlock Holmes. You’re pitiful, lad.”

  The lady from York: “How can you? Dear Ellis! He’s worth ten of you, I have to say.”

  I switched off the critical voices, but they went on reverberating in my brain.

  The press had more or less uniformly followed The Pump’s lead. Pictures of El
lis at his most handsome smiled confidently from newsstands everywhere. Trial by media found Ellis Quint the wronged and innocent hero, Sid Halley the twisted, jealous cur snapping at his heels.

  I’d known it would be bad: so why the urge to bang my head against the wall? Because I was human, and didn’t have tungsten nerves, whatever anyone thought. I sat with my eyes shut, ostrich fashion.

  Tuesday was much the same. I still didn’t bang my head. Close-run thing.

  On Wednesday Ellis appeared again before magistrates, who that time set him free on bail.

  Norman phoned.

  “Cloth ears?” he said. “Same as before?”

  “Deaf,” I assured him.

  “It was fixed beforehand. Two minutes in court. Different time than posted. The press arrived after it was over. Ellis greeted them, free, smiling broadly.”

  “Shit.”

  Norman said, “His lawyers have done their stuff. It’s rubbish to. think the well-balanced personality intended to kill himself—his tie got caught somehow but he managed to free it. The policeman he pushed failed to identify himself adequately and is now walking about comfortably in a cast. The colt Ellis is accused of attacking is alive and recovering well. As bail is granted in cases of manslaughter, it is unnecessary to detain Ellis Quint any longer on far lesser charges. So ... he’s walked.”

  “Is he still to be tried?”

  “So far. His lawyers have asked for an early trial date so-that he can put this unpleasantness behind him. He will plead not guilty, of course. His lawyers are already patting each other on the back. And ... I think there’s a heavyweight maneuvering somewhere in this case.”

  “A heavyweight? Who?”

  “Don’t know. It’s just a feeling.”

  “Could it be Ellis’s father?”

  “No, no. Quite different. It’s just... since our reports, yours and mine, reached the Crown Prosecution Service, there’s been a new factor. Political, perhaps. It’s difficult to describe. It’s not exactly a cover-up. There’s already been too much publicity, it’s more a sort of redirection. Even officially, and not just to the press, someone with muscle is trying to get you thoroughly and, I’m afraid I must say, malignantly discredited.”