Dick Francis - Silks

‘But how did you know about Millie’s car?’ Eleanor said.

‘I became suspicious when I couldn’t find any regular payments to any car-finance companies on Millie’s bank statements,’ I said. ‘And there was no one-off large payment around the date you told me she had bought it. And Scot’s statements didn’t show that he had bought it for her, so I sent Nikki to the dealer in Newbury to ask some questions.’

Nikki smiled. ‘But you were a bit naughty telling Radcliffe that they definitely recognized him from the photo,’ she said. ‘They only said that it might have been him, but they weren’t at all sure.’

I looked at their shocked faces and laughed. ‘It was a bit of a risk, I know. But I was pretty sure by then that I was right, and Radcliffe couldn’t take the chance of me calling the Mazda chap.’

‘How about Julian Trent?’ asked George. ‘What will happen to him?’

‘I hope the police will now be looking for him in connection with Barlow’s murder,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, I intend to keep well clear of him.’

‘So do we all,’ said George seriously. He was clearly worried and still frightened by the prospect of coming face to face with young Mr Trent. And with good reason.

‘What about the second witness?’ Bruce asked, indicating towards a man sitting alone reading a newspaper at one of the other tables. ‘Aren’t you going to call him?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I always intended calling only one of them, but last Thursday when we got the witness summonses, I didn’t know which of them it would be. I only found out on Friday when I showed the picture of Radcliffe to Josef and George and saw their reaction.’

I’d had a second picture in my pocket on Friday. Apicture of my second witness, cut out from the Racing Post, but it hadn’t been needed.

Now I stood up and walked over to him on my crutches.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much for coming. But I’m afraid I don’t think I’ll be needing you any more.’

Simon Dacey turned in his chair and faced me. ‘This has all been a waste of time, then,’ he said with slight irritation. He folded his newspaper and stood up.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What’s been going on in there?’ he asked, nodding his head towards the door of number 1 court. ‘There seems to have been lots of excitement.’

‘You could call it that, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Roger Radcliffe seems to be in a spot of bother.’

There was a slightly awkward moment of silence while he waited for me to explain further, but I didn’t. The trial was not yet technically over, and he was still, in theory, a potential witness.

‘No doubt I’ll find out why in due course,’ Dacey said with a little more irritation.

Indeed he would, I thought. For a start, he would also be losing his win percentage from all those Peninsula race victories. He might even lose his training licence, but I rather hoped not. I suspected that he knew nothing about the fraud, or the murders, just as he knew nothing about his wife’s affair with Steve Mitchell.

Francesca Dacey’s affair had been a bit of a red herring in my thinking. At one point I had wondered if Mitchell had been framed by her husband simply to get him out of the way. But the truth was that Steve had been nothing more than a convenient fall guy.

Radcliffe had clearly been determined that Mitchell should be convicted so as to close the police file on the case, to ensure that no further investigations were made, investigations that might uncover the blackmail, and the true reason for Barlow’s murder. Radcliffe’s whispering intervention with me, the belt and braces of his frame-up plot, had ultimately led to his downfall. Without it, I was quite certain, Steve Mitchell would, even now, be starting a life sentence behind bars, and I would have been one of the prosecution witnesses, describing in detail my encounter with Scot Barlow in the showers at Sandown Park racecourse.

Ironically, the very attempt to pervert the cause of justice had ultimately been responsible for justice being done.

When the court resumed at two o’clock, I hardly had to make my submission. The judge immediately asked the prosecution for the Crown’s position and their QC indicated that he had been instructed not to oppose the application. The judge then instructed the jury to return a not-guilty verdict and Steve Mitchell was allowed to walk free from the dock.

The story had travelled fast and there was a mass of reporters and television cameras outside the court building when Bruce and I emerged with Steve Mitchell at about three o’clock, into a wall of flash photography. Sir James Horley QC, I thought while smiling at the cameras, would be absolutely livid when he watched the evening news. He had missed out completely on the number one story of the day.

As we were engulfed by the sea of reporters, Eleanor shouted that she would go and fetch her car. There would be no chance of finding a taxi with all this lot about.

‘Be careful,’ I shouted back at her, thinking of Julian Trent, but she was gone.

Steve and Bruce answered questions until they were nearly hoarse from having to talk loudly over the traffic noise and the general hubbub, and even I was cajoled by some of the reporters into a rash comment or two. I was careful not to say things that would find me in hot water for giving out privileged or sensitive information, things that might be pertinent to the future trial. However, Steve Mitchell had no such qualms. He eagerly laid into the now-ruined reputation of Roger Radcliffe, and also managed to include some pretty derogatory remarks about his old adversary, Scot Barlow, as if it had somehow been all Barlow’s fault that Radcliffe had framed him. I thought that it was a good job that, under English law, the dead couldn’t sue for slander.

Finally, with deadlines approaching and their copy to file, the reporters began to drift away and eventually to leave us in peace.

‘Bloody marvellous, Perry,’ Steve said to me while pumping my hand up and down. ‘Almost as good as winning the National. Thank you so much.’

I decided not to mention my fee – not just yet, anyway.

Bruce and Steve departed together on foot, while I stepped back inside the court building to wait for Eleanor and the car.

I decided to call my father.

‘Hello, Dad,’ I said when he answered. ‘How are things?’

‘It’s good to be home,’ he said.

Alarm bells suddenly started ringing in my head.

‘What do you mean, it’s good to be home?’ I said.

‘Got back here about ten minutes ago,’ he said. ‘I left the hotel as soon as I got your message.’

‘But I didn’t give anyone a message,’ I said.

‘Yes you did,’ he said with certainty. ‘On this phone. One of those damned text things. Hold on. I could hear him pushing the buttons. Here it is. “Hi Dad, Everything fine. Please go home as quickly as possible. Love Geoffrey”.’

‘What time did you get it?’ I asked him.

‘About half past ten this morning,’ he said. ‘My old Morris is quite slow on the motorway these days.’

Radcliffe had already been in the witness box at half past ten. The message had to have been sent by Julian Trent.

‘I thought I told you not to tell anyone where you were.’

‘I didn’t,’ he said, sounding pained. ‘No one knew where I was other than you, but I still don’t see why it was so important.’

‘But who else knew the number of that phone?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I called and gave it to Beryl and Tony on Saturday,’ he said. ‘They’re my neighbours. Just in case anything happened to the house.’

I could just imagine Julian Trent turning up to find the place deserted and asking the neighbours, in his most charming manner, if they knew where Mr Mason had gone. He probably told them he was Mr Mason’s grandson, come to surprise him. Of course they would have given him the phone number.