Hands Down, page 15
‘I’m bored,’ she said, sounding it, ‘and I want to come home.’
‘But you always love staying with Opa and Oma.’
‘Not this time. I hate it that Opa is sick. And Mummy cries all the time.’
‘Darling, Mummy is very sad that Opa is unwell. That’s why she cries.’
I wondered if Marina was also crying over the collapse of her marriage.
‘Now be a good girl,’ I said. ‘And look after Mummy for me.’
‘Why don’t you come here? Then you could look after her yourself.’
I sighed inwardly. ‘I will come just as soon as I can. It must be nice having your Uncle Elmo there.’
‘I don’t really remember him.’
‘That’s all the more reason for getting to know him now.’
‘But I miss Rosie,’ she said miserably.
‘Rosie misses you as well,’ I said. ‘But she’s being a good girl too. I took her with me yesterday all the way to Yorkshire. She absolutely loved being in the car and you should have seen her running along the moors looking for rabbits. She had a wonderful time.’
For obvious reasons, I didn’t also say that she had been barking at masked intruders.
‘Will you tell Mummy that I phoned and ask her to call me later.’
‘Okay,’ she replied gloomily. ‘But please can I come home? I’ve got to go to Annabel’s birthday party.’
‘That’s not for another whole week. I hope you’ll be home by then.’
I was trying to sound encouraging but it was breaking my heart to hear my daughter so sad, especially when I couldn’t even give her a cuddle to cheer her up.
‘Don’t forget to tell Mummy.’
‘I won’t.’
‘I love you, my darling.’
‘Love you too, Daddy. Bye.’
We disconnected and I sat for a few moments with the phone in my hand, feeling very low. I needed her home, and her mother too, but how could I bring them back to this house when there were men in balaclavas, together with petrol cans, determined to burn it down?
* * *
Charles arrived fifty minutes after I’d called him and he was no longer in his pyjamas. In fact, he was wearing smartly pressed grey trousers, a starched white shirt with gold cufflinks, a double-breasted blazer, plus a striped tie and highly polished black shoes.
‘Casual would have been fine,’ I said, letting him in through the locked back door.
‘This is casual,’ he said. ‘Smart would have been a suit, or uniform.’
You can take an admiral out of the navy, I thought, but never the navy out of an admiral.
‘Now, what is all this about?’ he asked.
‘Why does it have to be about anything?’
‘You’d never ring me before nine o’clock in the morning for nothing.’
He clearly knew me too well.
‘Do you want a coffee?’ I asked.
‘Black, please, no sugar.’
I used Marina’s new-fangled coffee machine to make our drinks, popping in a couple of the foil capsules. I splashed some milk into mine, and then Charles and I sat down at the kitchen table.
‘Now,’ I said to him. ‘I have some things to tell you. You don’t have to do anything, I’d rather you didn’t, but I would like you to know a few details just in case.’
‘In case of what?’ he asked seriously.
‘In case I become incapacitated, or worse.’
‘I see. And is that likely?’
‘You know the two men in balaclavas I told you about, the ones who came looking for me in the car park at Catterick?’
He nodded.
‘Well, they turned up again here last night.’
I told him how it was only through the good fortune of Rosie’s reaction that I had avoided walking into their ambush. I also told him about the police arriving and then finding a container of petrol.
That shocked him.
Both he and I knew what villains with petrol were capable of. The front of his house still bore the physical scars while we carried the mental ones with us every day.
‘So what did you tell the police?’ he asked.
‘Not much. They seem to think it was a potential burglary that I interrupted.’
‘But you don’t?’
‘No.’
‘So why didn’t you tell the police that?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘I have all day,’ Charles said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs. ‘And I’m pretty good at complicated.’
I told him about my trip north to see Marcus Capes, and also my second visit to Simon Paulson’s yard, and I summarized what they had both told me.
When I was finished, Charles sat silently for a few seconds, drumming his fingers on the table.
‘I can’t see why you don’t just go straight to the racing authorities and tell them what you’ve found out. Both these men you spoke to have clearly broken racing’s rules and surely they deserve to suffer the consequences.’
The Royal Navy, throughout history, had always erred on the side of harsh punishments, rather than forgiveness. Perhaps Charles would also want me to advocate flogging them both with a cat-o’-nine-tails.
I was baffled by his position, and not a little annoyed.
‘Come on, Charles, be reasonable. Can’t you appreciate that these two men are victims here, rather than true rogues? If I go to the authorities now, the real villain will inevitably walk away unscathed and he would simply coerce more trainers and different jockeys in the future to do his dirty work.’
I don’t think Charles was convinced.
‘So who is this despicable arch-villain?’ he asked sardonically.
‘It’s a man called Anton Valance but, other than what Marcus and Simon told me yesterday, I have no real evidence against him. And I don’t believe either of them would tell the authorities what they’ve told me anyway. They would simply deny all of it to save their own skin. And what Gary Bremner said to me would quite likely be inadmissible because he’s now dead. Any accusations he made might be thrown out as just hearsay. That’s why I didn’t mention Valance’s name to the police. I need far more proof first.’
‘And how do you intend to get it?’ Charles asked cuttingly.
‘I’m not sure yet, but I’m working on it.’
‘Why are you telling me this now?’
‘So that you can tell the police if anything happens to me.’
‘As a result of those two men who came here last night?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Exactly that.’ I swallowed, realising what I was saying. ‘Tell me, Charles, how is it that evil men are able to recruit heavies to illegally beat people up? I couldn’t do that. Could you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just watch any of the James Bond movies. The bad guys, Ernst Stavro Blofeld or whoever, seem to have a whole army of willing helpers who are prepared to get shot, stabbed, strangled or blown up by 007, and for what? A bit part in destroying the world?’
‘But that’s only fiction,’ Charles said with a dismissive wave. ‘It’s just made up.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But it seems to be true in real life as well, especially if these two goons are anything to go by.’
He waved a hand. ‘It seems that some people will do anything for money.’
He was so right, but how much money had the balaclava pair been paid in order to kill Gary Bremner?
And how much more would they need, I wondered, for them to also kill me?
19
Charles remained at my place for the rest of the day and we spent the afternoon in my sitting room watching the racing from Ayr on the television.
‘Which is the jockey you want me to watch?’ he asked.
‘Jimmy Shilstone. He rides a horse called Lateral Flow Test in the second and another called Wit Of Cricket in the fifth.’
‘And you think he might be stopping them?’
‘I don’t know. I just want to wait and see. Neither of the horses is trained by Simon Paulson.’
‘Who then?’
‘Two different trainers, both from Scotland.’
Ayr is the largest of the five racecourses north of the border and, in my career, I had ridden there quite a few times, notably in five Scottish Grand Nationals, one of which I had won.
Lying just a mile from the sea, close to the outer reaches of the Firth of Clyde, the course has well-draining sandy soil providing excellent underfoot conditions throughout the year for both jump and flat racing. Its oval track is about a mile and a half round with slight undulations along the back, a downhill turn into the home straight, and a gentle rise from there to the winning post.
The second race on today’s card was a three-mile novice hurdle although, at this late stage in the jumping season, with only four more weeks to go, the ‘novices’ in this race were all pretty experienced, with one of them having run as many as seven times over hurdles prior to today.
Jimmy Shilstone’s mount was the second favourite at four-to-one and he jumped off in the middle of the pack as the starter dropped his flag.
With two complete circuits of the course to run, and twelve flights of hurdles to negotiate, the early pace was steady, with the field of eight closely bunched as they raced down the back for the first time. Only when they had completed the first loop did the race begin in earnest. Jimmy took his mount to the front as they swung downhill into the home straight for the final time and he jumped clear over the final three obstacles, was never headed, and won by two lengths.
‘Well, he obviously didn’t stop that one,’ Charles said.
He certainly hadn’t, and he had ridden a flawless race, judging both the pace and the strides of the horse into the hurdles to perfection. It was in striking contrast to the two races he had ridden at Catterick earlier in the week.
‘Not what you were looking for then?’ Charles said.
‘No,’ I agreed, ‘but it did show he can do it properly if he wants to.’
In the fifth race, a two-and-a-half-mile handicap chase, Jimmy finished a poor third on a grey that had simply not had the puff to stay close to the front pair on the climb to the finish but, as far as I could tell, it wasn’t from any lack of judgement or effort from its jockey.
‘Fancy a whisky?’ I asked Charles as I turned off the television after the last race.
He looked at his watch.
‘That would be lovely.’
‘I’m afraid I only have blended Scotch. No single malts.’
‘That’s all right. I’ll just have a small one anyway. I have to drive home.’
‘You could always stay the night,’ I said, echoing his earlier words to me.
‘Would you like me to?’ he asked seriously.
Did I? Would it make me feel safer? But was it fair to place Charles in potential danger just because I would feel more comfortable with some company?
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll be fine. You don’t have any overnight stuff anyway.’
Such as your pyjamas, I thought.
‘I could always go home now and collect a few things. My shotgun, for instance. Si vis pacem, para bellum.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s Latin. Motto of the Royal Navy. If you wish for peace, prepare for war.’
The shotgun was certainly a tempting offer. But I’d been in trouble with the police before for using Charles’s shotgun, even if, without it, he and I, plus Marina and Saskia, would have all been murdered.
Eventually, the police had agreed that my use of it was in self-defence and therefore justified under the special circumstances we had encountered, but they hadn’t been at all happy and had subsequently tried to revoke Charles’s shotgun certificate. But he had successfully argued in the Crown Court on appeal that he still needed it to control vermin.
Could men in balaclavas with baseball bats be considered as vermin?
Definitely.
‘What a good idea,’ I said.
It would surely be foolhardy to turn down such an offer now, and then find out in the night that I had no defence against unwelcome intruders carrying more petrol. I could hardly ask them to wait patiently in my garden while I completed the four-mile round trip to Aynsford and back to collect it.
What was the old adage our politicians often use to justify the billions of pounds spent on maintaining and updating our country’s nuclear weapons?
Better to have them and never use them, than to get rid of them and only find out later that you really needed to keep them after all – as a deterrent, of course.
Perhaps I could also do with a deterrent, and maybe the discharge of a couple of 12-bore shotgun cartridges over balaclava-clad heads would do the trick.
Charles went off to collect his shotgun, his pyjamas and a few other things, while I remained at home with the doors firmly locked. Rosie lay on her bed by the Aga and snoozed. That was a very good sign. She had always been able to hear visitors arriving long before I could, either welcome or unwelcome, and she would bark in excitement that they might provide her with a treat.
Even though it wasn’t yet dark outside, I went round the house turning on lights to make the place look more occupied than it really was.
Charles soon returned and he’d brought some ten-year-old Laphroaig with him, along with his other stuff.
‘If we need a drink,’ he said, giving the bottle to me, ‘and I do. We might as well have the best.’
‘Not too much, mind. I wouldn’t want to be sleeping it off if our friends come back.’
‘I also bought a whole box of cartridges,’ he said, putting the shotgun down on the kitchen table.
‘Let’s just hope we don’t need any of them.’
I collected two glasses from the cupboard in the dining room and splashed three-quarters of an inch of Laphroaig into each.
‘Cheers,’ I said, taking a small sip from one.
‘A willing foe and sea room,’ Charles replied, lifting the glass to his lips.
‘Eh?’
‘Friday’s toast. In the Navy. Sorry. Force of habit.’
‘Don’t apologize. I’m all for a willing foe if it means he leaves us alone.’
‘I’ll definitely drink to that.’ Charles took another sip. ‘Do you have any food? I’m quite hungry. Mrs Cross would have normally left my supper out and I could have collected it just now, but she’s still away on grandmother duty.’
He made it sound like a huge inconvenience, which it may well have been. Being a naval officer probably meant you didn’t need to cook your own food very often, so he’d probably never learned how to.
I went and looked in the fridge. It was even more empty than last time.
‘I could do you an omelette,’ I said. ‘With some chips and peas.’
‘Sounds great.’
I put some frozen oven chips in the Aga, peas in the microwave, and cracked my last five eggs into a bowl. And, I thought, what joy to have two hands to do it with.
I also found some cheese in the fridge door, so we were soon sitting down to a feast of cheese omelettes with all the trimmings, washed down with one of the Isle of Islay’s best single malts, followed by two scoops of chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream, Saskia’s favourite.
What decadence.
‘Have you spoken to Marina?’ Charles asked, finally laying down his ice-cream spoon.
‘Not today,’ I replied. ‘But I did speak to Sassy this morning.’
‘How is she?’
‘She said that she was bored and wanted to come home.’
‘That’s a good sign.’
But it wasn’t a good sign that Marina hadn’t called me back. I told myself that it was maybe because Saskia had forgotten to pass on my message. Or perhaps she had, and Marina had just chosen not to call.
I went over to the house phone to check it was still working and hadn’t been cut off by the balaclavas. It hadn’t. And my mobile was fully charged, with plenty of signal from the new mast installed at the top of the village.
I sighed. ‘Marina’s very busy looking after her father.’
‘Shouldn’t he be in hospital?’
‘They’ve tried. Marina took him to their local one, but the doctors sent him home again.’
Charles shook his head and tut-tutted. ‘Getting old is certainly not for the faint-hearted. I just hope I pop off in my sleep when no one expects it. I’d hate to be a burden on anyone. There should be a pill we can all take when we’ve had enough.’ He sniffed his whisky. ‘Not that I’m ready to go yet, mind. Plenty more of this in my cellar to finish first.’ He smiled at me but it was one more of resignation than amusement.
‘You’ve got plenty of years yet,’ I said.
‘Yes, well, I hope so. But things are beginning to fail, and my old waterworks are a pain. I have to get up so often in the night these days.’ He sighed. ‘Do you know I’ve now been retired from the Navy for almost as long as I served? Where have all the years gone?’
‘Come on, Charles,’ I said. ‘Stop being so morbid. What would you like to do? Shall we watch something on TV? Or maybe a film?’
He turned up his nose at my suggestion. ‘They all speak so fast in films these days, and mostly in regional accents. I find it so difficult to follow what they’re saying.’
My, he must be getting old.
‘How about a game then?’ I said.
So we played Scrabble and I discovered, to my cost, that he might be old but there was nothing wrong with his brain, and he certainly didn’t lack a competitive edge.
Twenty-five years ago, when I’d first met Charles, at a time when he had been horrified by his daughter’s choice for a husband, I had beaten him easily in our first ever game of chess because he had underestimated my ability. He had assumed that, because I had left school aged only sixteen with no academic qualifications, I was simple-minded and unable to grasp the strategic nuances of the game.
Perhaps, now, I was guilty of doing the same thing with him, due to his advanced years.
After about an hour and a half of playing, and with two more wee drams of Laphroaig consumed each, we had run out of letters to pick up. I was doing very well, winning easily, when I put down an A and an S on an available P to make a vertical ASP.
