Felix Francis - Crisis

‘And compensation for hurt feelings,’ I added.

We completed our dinner in happy companionship.

‘Are you going home tonight?’ I asked Kate as we stood up to go.

‘Not unless you force me to,’ she said. ‘My bag’s in the Mini.’

I smiled at her and she smiled back at me.

‘Oh my God!’ Janie said with a laugh. ‘You two lovebirds. It’s enough to make me vomit.’

The three of us walked out of the restaurant door onto Newmarket High Street.

‘Have either of you two ever heard of a place in Cambridge called the Healthy Woman Centre?’

Both of them laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.

‘The name,’ Kate said. ‘It’s so misleading.’

‘Why?’

‘Because everyone knows that the Healthy Woman Centre is just an abortion clinic.’

I didn’t sleep very well and woke on Tuesday morning with the rising of the sun at five o’clock.

My mind was simply too busy whirling facts round and round like clothes in a spin dryer. And the threads were getting just as tangled.

Newmarket in May comes alive well before six and I lay awake listening to the sounds of the morning. Kate was still sleeping soundly beside me and, being careful not to wake her, I got up and dressed.

I used a sheet of the hotel notepad to leave her a note on my pillow.

Gone out to the gallops. Back for breakfast at 7.30.

I walked up the Warren Hill training grounds to the very top where the tree plantation grows on the crown of the hill. I sat down on a stump and looked down on the town with the huge cantilever roof of the racecourse grandstand standing out white above the houses in the far distance.

I didn’t usually like early mornings but there was something rather special about being up here at this hour, before the ever-strengthening sunshine had driven away the last of the mist from the hollows.

Was it really only a week since I had first walked this same turf, getting mud all over my polished black city shoes?

So much had happened in that time but, here I was, still searching for the key to the mystery of why the seven horses had died in a stable fire.

Had it been just an attempt to cover the murder of Zoe?

Or was there another reason as well?

And why had Zoe been there in the first place?

What did Arabella know that she was afraid would all come out?

Was it to do with sexual abuse?

Had Zoe really had an abortion at age thirteen?

And, if so, who had been the father?

So many questions but precious few answers.

And there was something troubling me about what Janie had said.

I took out my smartphone and sent a text message to the research team containing a couple of requests. One was easy and the other much more difficult.

I knew that the wizards were renowned for getting into work early and leaving late, but I didn’t expect the confirmation of reception reply that I received back almost immediately.

It was only five forty-five in the morning.

They need to get a life , I thought.

At six o’clock, I watched as the strings of horses started to appear and, each in turn, cantered up the polytrack towards me, the sound of their hooves on the ground growing louder as they approached.

And, talking about hooves, whose stupid idea had it been to lock me in a stable with the mad horse Momentum?

I considered that a real affront to my dignity. I had walked straight into a potentially disastrous situation when I was the very person that others came to in order to get them out of theirs.

I didn’t particularly want that on my CV.

As ASW was always telling his operatives, we were in business to protect the reputations of our clients, but the most important reputation we needed to protect was our own and that of our company. Without that we were nothing.

I watched as a Land Rover drove up Moulton Road and parked.

Ryan and Oliver , I thought, but only Ryan emerged. Oliver was probably still at home trying to mollify his wife after my exposé yesterday concerning the monthly payments.

I smiled at the memory and decided it was time to insert another thunderflash.

I remained hidden by the cover of the tree line and watched as three strings of light-blue caps and red pom-poms came up the polytrack, Ryan watching them intently through his binoculars.

The horses made two runs each up the track and then Ryan walked back to his Land Rover and drove away. Back to Oliver’s house for his coffee before second lot.

I stood up, went down the hill and back to the Bedford Lodge Hotel.

‘Thought you’d deserted me again,’ Kate said when I walked in.

‘Never,’ I replied. ‘I just needed some space to think.’

‘Did it help?’

‘Not really.’

‘You should have stayed here with me then,’ she said in mild rebuke.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Fancy some breakfast?’

‘To be honest,’ Kate said, ‘I’m still pretty full from last night’s Chinese. But I could murder a coffee.’

Murder, I thought.

I needed to remind myself that I was dealing with someone capable of the most heinous of crimes. And he or she would probably do anything not to get caught.

In the end I skipped the coffee as well, opting instead to take a thunderflash along the Fordham Road.

Susan Chadwick opened her front door in jeans and a sweatshirt, and with no red lipstick in evidence.

‘Ryan’s up at the yard,’ she said.

‘I know. I’ve come to see you .’

I could tell she didn’t like it.

‘I’ve got the kids here.’

‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Can I come in?’

‘What for?’ she said, standing her ground in the doorway.

Just because DCI Eastwood hadn’t felt the need to push her too hard didn’t preclude me from doing so.

‘I want to talk to you about the film you saw on the night of the fire.’

She blushed, her neck and face swept by a crimson tide rising from below.

‘What about it?’ she asked, the nervousness clear in her voice.

‘Good, was it?’

‘Excellent.’

‘Remind me of the title,’ I said. ‘I’ve already looked up to see what was playing that night.’

She stared at me in silence. She knew she was in trouble. She should have done the same research I had. She’d have made a poor spy.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

She led the way down the hall into the kitchen. Her two children were having their breakfast, the two-year-old boy in a high chair with a plate of toast in front of him, and the five-year-old girl sitting cross-legged on the floor watching the TV in the far corner, a bowl of cereal balanced on her knees.

‘I’ll have to take Faith to school soon,’ Susan said.

‘What time?’

‘She has to be there by eight-fifty, at the latest.’

I looked at my watch. It was eight o’clock. As I’d planned, it was right in the middle of second lot at the training yard. Ryan, I hoped, would again be on Warren Hill, watching his horses canter up the polytrack.

‘Which school?’

‘St Louis Primary. It’s just down the road. We walk.’

‘So we have time,’ I said.

‘For what?’ she asked with trepidation.

‘For you to tell me where you really were when the fire broke out.’

‘I was at my mother’s house,’ she said with conviction. ‘I stayed there that night.’

‘But you weren’t there all evening, were you?’

‘I told that policeman I went to the cinema.’

‘But you didn’t, did you?’

‘No,’ she said sheepishly. ‘I spent the evening with a friend.’

‘Which friend?’

She blushed again, slightly darker this time but there were also tears of distress in her eyes.