Come to Grief Page 9

  Back in the drawing room, looking for her, I asked where Mrs. Bracken had gone. The aunt, the tenants and the deaf husband made no reply.

  Negotiating the hinterland passage and the dustbin yard again, I arrived back at the field to see Mrs. Bracken herself, the fence-leaners, the Scots vet and her brother watching the horse ambulance drive into the field and draw up conveniently close to the colt.

  The horse ambulance consisted of a narrow, low-slung trailer pulled by a Land-Rover. There was a driver and a groom used to handling sick and injured horses and, with crooning noises from the solicitous Eva, the poor young colt made a painful-looking, head-bobbing stagger up a gentle ramp into the waiting stall.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” Mrs. Bracken whispered beside me. “My dear, dear young fellow ... how could they?”

  I shook my head. Rachel Ferns’s pony and four prized colts ... How could anyone?

  The colt was shut into the trailer, the bucket containing the foot was loaded, and the pathetic twelve-mile journey to Lambourn began.

  The Scots vet patted Betty Bracken sympathetically on the arm, gave her his best wishes for the colt, claimed his car from the line of vehicles in the lane and drove away.

  I unclipped my mobile phone and got through to The Pump, who forwarded my call to an irate newspaperman at his home in Surrey.

  Kevin Mills yelled, “Where the hell are you? They say all anyone gets on the hotline now is your answering machine, saying you’ call back. About fifty people have phoned. They’re all rambling.”

  “Ramblers,” I said.

  “What?”

  I explained.

  “It’s supposed to be my day off,” he grumbled. “Can you meet me in the pub? What time? Five o‘clock?”

  “Make it seven,” I suggested.

  “It’s no longer a Pump exclusive, I suppose you realize?” he demanded. “But save yourself for me alone, will you, buddy? Give me the inside edge?”

  “It’s yours.”.

  I closed my phone and warned Betty Bracken to expect the media on her doorstep.

  “Oh, no!”

  “Your colt is one too many.”

  “Archie!” She turned to her brother for help with a beseeching gesture of the hand and, as if for the thousandth time in their lives, he responded with comfort and competent solutions.

  “My dear Betty,” he said, “if you can’t bear to face the press, simply don’t be here.”

  “But . . . ,” she wavered.

  “I shouldn’t waste time,” I said.

  The brother gave me an appraising glance. He himself was of medium height, lean of body, gray in color, a man to get lost in a crowd. His eyes alone were notable: brown, bright and aware. I had an uncomfortable feeling that, far beyond having his sister phone me, he knew a good deal about me.

  “We haven’t actually met,” he said to me civilly. “I’m Betty’s brother. I’m Archie Kirk.”

  I said, “How do you do,” and I shook his hand.

  5

  Betty Bracken, Archie Kirk and I returned to the house, again circumnavigating the trash cans. Archie Kirk’s car was parked outside the manor’s front door, not far from my own.

  The lady of the manor refusing to leave without her husband, the uncomprehending old man, still saying “Eh?” was helped with great solicitude across the hall, through the front door and into an ancient Daimler, an Establishment-type conservative-minded political statement if ever I saw one.

  My own Mercedes, milk-coffee colored, stood beyond: and what, I thought astringently, was it saying about me? Rich enough, sober enough, preferring reliability to flash? All spot on, particularly the last. And speed, of course.

  Betty spooned her beloved into the back seat of the Daimler and folded herself in beside him, patting him gently. Touch, I supposed, had replaced speech as their means of communication. Archie Kirk took his place behind the wheel as natural commander-in-chief and drove away, leaving for me the single short parting remark, “Let me know.”

  I nodded automatically. Let him know what? Whatever I learned, I presumed.

  I returned to the drawing room. The stolid tenants, on their feet, were deciding to return to their own wing of the house. The dogs snoozed. The cross aunt crossly demanded Esther’s presence. Esther, on duty at eight and not a moment before, come ramblers, police or whatever, appeared forbiddingly in the doorway, a small, frizzy-haired worker, clear about her “rights.”

  I left the two quarrelsome women pitching into each other and went in search of Jonathan. What a household! The media were welcome to it. I looked but couldn’t find Jonathan, so I just had to trust that his boorishness would keep him well away from inquisitive reporters with microphones. The Land-Rover he’d seen might have brought the machete to the colt, and I wanted, if I could, to find it before its driver learned there was a need for rapid concealment.

  The first thing in my mind was the colt himself. I started the car and set off north to Lambourn, driving thoughtfully, wondering what was best to do concerning the police. I had had varying experiences with the force, some good, some rotten. They did not, in general, approve of freelance investigators like myself, and could be downright obstructive if I appeared to be working on something they felt belonged to them alone. Sometimes, though, I’d found them willing to take over if I’d come across criminal activity that couldn’t go unprosecuted. I stepped gingerly around their sensitive areas, and also those of racing’s own security services run by the Jockey Club and the British Horseracing Board. I was careful always not to claim credit for clearing up three-pipe problems. Not even one-pipe problems, hardly worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

  Where the Jockey Club itself was concerned, I fluctuated in their view between flavor of the month. and anathema, according as to who currently reigned as Senior Steward. With the police, collaboration depended very much on which individual policeman I reached and his private-life stress level at the moment of contact.

  The rules governing evidence, moreover, were growing ever stickier. Juries no longer without question believed the police. For an object to be admitted for consideration in a trial it had to be ticketed, docketed and continuously accounted for. One couldn‘t, for instance, flourish a machete and say, “I found it in X’s Land-Rover, therefore it was X who cut off a colt’s foot.” To get even within miles of conviction one needed a specific search warrant before one could even look in the Land-Rover for a machete, and search warrants weren’t granted to Sid Halleys, and sometimes not to the police.

  The police force as a whole was divided into autonomous districts, like the Thames Valley Police, who solved crimes in their own area but might not take much notice outside. A maimed colt in Lancashire might not have been heard of in Yorkshire. Serial rapists had gone for years uncaught because of the slow flow of information. A serial horse maimer might have no central file.

  Dawdling along up the last hill before Lambourn, I became aware of a knocking in the car and pulled over to the side with gloomy thoughts of broken shock absorbers and misplaced trust in reliability, but after the car stopped the knocking continued. With awakening awareness, I climbed out, went around to the back and with difficulty opened the trunk. There was something wrong with the lock.

  Jonathan lay curled in the space for luggage. He had one shoe off, with which he was assaulting my milk-coffee bodywork. When I lifted the lid he stopped banging and looked at me challengingly.

  “What the hell are you doing there?” I demanded.

  Silly question. He looked at his shoe. I rephrased it. “Get out.”

  He maneuvered himself out onto the road and calmly replaced his shoe with no attempt at apology. I slammed the trunk lid shut at the second try and returned to the driver’s seat. He walked to the passenger side, found the door there locked and tapped on the window to draw my attention to it. I started the engine, lowered the electrically controlled window a little and shouted to him, “It’s only three miles to Lamboum.”

  “No. Hey! You can’t leave
me here!”

  Want to bet, I thought, and set off along the deserted downland road. I saw him, in the rear-view mirror, running after me determinedly. I drove slowly, but faster than he could run. He went on running, nevertheless.

  After nearly a mile a curve in the road took me out of his sight. I braked and stopped. He came around the bend, saw my car and put on a spurt, racing this time up to the driver’s side. I’d locked the door but lowered the window three or four inches.

  “What’s all that for?” he demanded.

  “What’s all what for?”

  “Making me run.”

  “You’ve broken the lock on my trunk.”

  “What?” He looked baffled. “I only gave it a clout. I didn’t have a key.” No key; a clout. Obvious, his manner said.

  “Who’s going to pay to get it mended?” I asked.

  He said impatiently, as if he couldn’t understand such small-mindedness, “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “With what?”

  “With the colt.”

  Resignedly I leaned across and pulled up the locking knob on the front passenger door. He went around there and climbed in beside me. I noted with interest that he was hardly out of breath.

  Jonathan’s haircut, I thought as he settled into his seat and neglected to buckle the seat belt, shouted an indication of his adolescent insecurity, of his desire to shock or at least to be noticed. He had, I thought, bleached inexpert haphazard streaks into his hair with a comb dipped in something like hydrogen peroxide. Straight and thick, the mop was parted in the center with a wing on each side curving down to his cheek, making a curtain beside his eye. From one ear backwards, and around to the other ear, the hair had been sliced off in a straight line. Below the line, his scalp was shaved. To my eyes it looked ugly, but then I wasn’t fifteen.

  Making a statement through hairstyle was universal, after all. Men with bald crowns above pigtails, men with plaited beards, women with severely scraped-back pin nings, all were saying “This is me, and I’m different.” In the days of Charles I, when long male hair was normal, rebellious sons had cut off their curls to have roundheads. Archie Kirk’s gray hair had been short, neat and controlled. My own dark hair would have curled girlishly if allowed to grow. A haircut was still the most unmistakable give-away of the person inside.

  Conversely, a wig could change all that.

  I asked Jonathan, “Have you remembered something else?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Then why did you stow away?”

  “Come on, man, give me a break. What am I supposed to do all day in that graveyard of a house? The aunt’s whining drives me insane and even Karl Marx would have throttled Esther.”

  He did, I supposed, have a point.

  I thoughtfully coasted down the last hill towards Lambourn.

  “Tell me about your uncle, Archie Kirk,” I said.

  “What about him?”

  “You tell me. For starters, what does he do?”

  “He works for the government.”

  “What as?”

  “Some sort of civil servant. Dead boring.”

  Boring, I reflected, was the last adjective I would have applied to what I’d seen in Archie Kirk’s eyes.

  “Where does he live?” I asked.

  “Back in Shelley Green, a couple of miles from Aunt Betty. She can’t climb a ladder unless he’s holding it.”

  Reaching Lambourn itself, I took the turn that led to the equine hospital. Slowly though I had made the journey, the horse ambulance had been slower. They were still unloading the colt.

  From Jonathan’s agog expression, I guessed it was in fact the first view he’d had of a shorn-off leg, even if all he could now see was a surgical dressing.

  I said to him, “If you want to wait half an hour for me, fine. Otherwise, you’re on your own. But if you try stealing a car, I’ll personally see you lose your probation.”

  “Hey. Give us a break.”

  “You’ve had your share of good breaks. Half an hour. OK?”

  He glowered at me without words. I went across to where Bill Ruskin, in a white coat, was watching his patient’s arrival. He said, “Hello, Sid,” absentmindedly, then collected the bucket containing the foot and, with me following, led the way into a small laboratory full of weighing and measuring equipment and microscopes.

  Unwrapping the foot, he stood it on the bench and looked at it assessingly.

  “A good, clean job,” he said.

  “There’s nothing good about it.”

  “Probably the colt hardly felt it.”

  “How was it done?” I asked.

  “Hm.” He considered. “There’s no other point on the leg that you could amputate a foot without using a saw to cut through the bone. I doubt if a single swipe with a heavy knife would achieve this precision. And achieve it several times, on different animals, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes, well, I think we might be looking at game shears.”

  “Game shears?” I exclaimed. “Do you mean those sort of heavy scissors that will cut up duck and pheasant?”

  “Something along those lines, yes.”

  “But those shears aren’t anywhere near big enough for this.”

  He pursed his mouth. “How about a gralloching knife, then? The sort used for disemboweling deer out on the mountains?”

  “Jeez.”

  “There are signs of compression, though. On balance, I’d hazard heavy game shears. How did he get the colt to stand still?”

  “There were horse nuts on the ground.”

  He nodded morosely. “Slimeball.”

  “There aren’t any words for it.”

  He peered closely at the raw red and white end of the pastern. “Even if I can reattach the foot, the colt will never race.”

  “His owner knows that. She wants to save his life.”

  “Better to collect the insurance.”

  “No insurance. A quarter of a million down the drain. But it’s not the money she’s grieving over. What she’s feeling is guilt.”

  He understood. He saw it often.

  Eventually he said, “I’ll give it a try. I don’t hold out much hope.”

  “You’ll photograph this as it is?”

  He looked at the foot. “Oh, sure. Photos, X rays, blood tests on the colt, micro-stitching, every luxury. I’ll get on with anesthetizing the colt as soon as possible. The foot’s been off too long ...” He shook his head. “I’ll try.”

  “Phone my mobile.” I gave him the number. “Anytime.”

  “See you, Sid. And catch the bugger.”

  He bustled away, taking the foot with him, and I returned to my car to find Jonathan not only still there but jogging around with excitement.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “That Land-Rover that pulled the trailer that brought the colt ...”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s got a red dragon on the windshield!”

  “What? But you said a blue—”

  “Yeah, yeah, it wasn’t the vet’s Land-Rover I saw in the lane, but it’s got a red dragon transfer on it. Not exactly the same, I don’t think, but definitely a red dragon.”

  I looked around, but the horse ambulance was no longer in sight.

  “They drove it off,” Jonathan said, “but I saw the transfer close to, and it has letters in it.” His voice held triumph, which I allowed was justified.

  “Go on, then,” I said. “What letters?”

  “Aren’t you going to say ‘well done’?”

  “Well done. What letters?”

  “E.S.M. They were cut out of the red circle. Gaps, not printed letters.” He wasn’t sure I understood.

  “I do see,” I assured him.

  I returned to the hospital to find Bill and asked him when he’d bought his Land-Rover.

  “Our local garage got it for us from a firm in Oxford.”

  “What does E.S.M. stand for?”

  “Go
d knows.”

  “I can’t ask God. What’s the name of the Land-Rover firm in Oxford?”

  He laughed and thought briefly. “English Sporting Motors. E.S.M. Good Lord.”

  “Can you give me the name of someone there? Who did you actually deal with?”

  With impatience he said, “Look, Sid, I’m trying to scrub up to see what I can do about sticking the colt’s foot back on.”

  “And I’m trying to catch the bugger that took it off. And it’s possible he traveled in a Land-Rover sold by English Sporting Motors.”

  He said “Christ” wide-eyed and headed for what proved to be the hospital’s record office, populated by filing cabinets. Without much waste of time he flourished a copy of a receipted account, but shook his head.

  “Ted James in the village might help you. I paid him. He dealt direct with Oxford. You’d have to ask Ted James.”

  I thanked him, collected Jonathan, drove into the small town of Lambourn and located Ted James, who would do a lot for a good customer like Bill Ruskin, it seemed.

  “No problem,” he assured me. “Ask for Roger Brook in Oxford. Do you want me to phone him?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Right on.” He spoke briefly on the phone and reported back. “He’s busy. Satuiday’s always a busy sales day. He’ll help you if it doesn’t take long.”

  The morning seemed to have been going on forever, but it was still before eleven o‘clock when I talked to Roger Brook, tubby, smooth and self-important in the carpeted sales office of English Sporting Motors.

  Roger Brook pursed his lips and shook his head; not the firm’s policy to give out information about its customers.

  I said ruefully, “I don’t want to bother the police....”

  “Well...”

  “And, of course, there would be a fee for your trouble.”

  A fee was respectable where a bribe wasn’t. In the course of life I disbursed a lot of fees.

  It helpfully appeared that the red-dragon transparent transfers were slightly differently designed each year: improved as time went on, did I see?

  I fetched Jonathan in from outside for Roger Brook to show him the past and present dragon logos, and Jonathan with certainty picked the one that had been, Brook said, that of the year before last.