John Francome - Declared Dead

I washed my hands and returned to the main room and paid my bill. Although I caught Amy glancing at me, I pretended not to notice her. I followed the directions without any problems, and twenty minutes later, after resisting a plaintive voice from within telling me to turn around, I arrived at the front of Milligan's farm.

The building was semi-derelict; at least two of the windows on the first floor were smashed and vandalised. The farmhouse had the dilapidated air of having been uninhabited for months if not years, and I prayed hard that Amy had used her imagination and found those directions. I reluctantly got out of the car, taking the bottle of ammonia in one hand and clutching my handbag with the two thousand pounds in the other. I had already hidden Willie's wad of fifty-pound notes inside my bra. I walked, or rather tiptoed, round the side of the house, avoiding the weeds and what looked like stinging nettles. The back door was closed. Before opening it, I peered through the least dirty of the panes of glass in the window immediately to its right. Over in the far corner I could see what appeared to be an old stove and on top of it a frying pan.

I turned the handle and pushed open the door. It creaked under the pressure and I stepped gingerly over the threshold and into what had once been the kitchen. I paused and listened. Not a sound. 'Is anyone here?' I called out, the words fighting to stay in my throat. Still that dreadful silence. I walked across the kitchen and into the hall. By the front door were a couple of circulars from which I learnt that a Mr O'Malley had once lived there. I opened the nearest door and found myself in what had been the sitting room. In the hearth were the remnants of a log fire and dozens of cigarette ends. Now for the stairs. I took each step as slowly and deliberately as if it led to the gallows and clung tightly to my bottle of ammonia. I was sweating terribly; my heart was pounding as if at ramming speed. I was forcing myself to look in all the rooms – I owed that much to Tom – and then I was going to run down those stairs, out of the back door and drive to Limerick as if the devil himself was chasing me. Amy will be here by now, I told myself. There's no way she wouldn't be within shouting distance, probably a few yards down the drive. I pressed on. There were only four doors, thank goodness. The first three rooms were empty. Just one left. I thought I heard a noise.

'Michael, are you in there?' I asked out loud, although it sounded more like a whisper. 'It's me, Victoria.'

Again, silence. Courageously, or at least it felt that way, I threw the door open and stood back. Empty. I ran downstairs and grabbed the handle of the back door. It was locked. As I opened my mouth to scream, a gloved hand came over my face, and the ammonia bottle was jolted from my clammy grip by a powerful blow to my wrist. My mind went dark as my legs gave way under me and I fell to the floor.

'Victoria! Victoria! Wake up, please wake up!'

It was Amy's voice. She was kneeling over me and although my eyes were closed, I could feel her breath on my face.

'Say something, anything, please.' She put her hands on my shoulders and started to shake me.

I opened my eyes and all around me was in darkness. I couldn't feel any pain, only a sense of bewilderment, loss and failure.

'What happened?' I asked, putting out my hand to touch the profile above me.

'Thank God you're all right.' She started sobbing. 'I'm so sorry.'

'Amy, please calm down.' I struggled to my feet, pulling her up with me in the process. 'What's the time for God's sake?'

'It's about eight o'clock.'

'What? Do you mean I've been here for over two hours?'

'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.'

'Don't keep apologising, let's just get out of here and we can discuss everything in the car. Hold on, where's my handbag?' There was no electricity working in the kitchen and we both crawled round the floor feeling in vain with our hands for the handbag. 'It's no good,' I said after five minutes. 'It's gone and all the money with it. The bastard.'

We walked quickly to the cars, which were both parked in front of the house. I was lucky he hadn't stolen my hire car because I'd left the keys in the ignition. 'Come on,' I said. 'Let's drive in convoy to Tipperary and park under the brightest light in the main street and talk.'

I stopped near the police station, parked and went and sat in the passenger seat of Amy's car. The poor thing still looked as though she had seen a ghost.

'I'm so glad you're all right,' she said, holding my hand. 'I thought for a ghastly moment you had been murdered.' She started to sob again.

'That makes two of us,' I replied, trying to appear calm and rational. 'But here I am alive and well.'

'What happened in there?'

I told her everything right up to the moment when I must have passed out.

'Did you get a look at him?'

I shook my head. 'It was all over so quickly. He must have watched me go in the back door and waited for me in the kitchen. I feel such a fool.'

'Don't blame yourself. He sounded so genuine on the phone, all that stuff he told me about wanting to help his old boss out. Victoria, are you sure you're all right? I mean you – he didn't do anything to you?'

That thought hadn't occurred to me. 'I'm sure he didn't touch me.' It was then I remembered the wad of money from Willie O'Keefe which I had stuffed inside my bra. I asked Amy to excuse me for a second. She watched in astonishment as I slipped my hand down inside my jumper and started feeling about. It had gone.

'The bastard!'

'What's happened?'

'Some money I was given for riding that winner. I put it in my bra for safe keeping. It's gone.' I shuddered at the thought of Corcoran searching me while I lay on the ground.

'How about you?' I said, changing the subject. 'Didn't you find where I had hidden the directions?'

'Oh yes, that was easy. I knew that's why you said you were going to the loo so loudly. I waited five minutes before leaving the tea rooms, only when I came out into the car park the car had two flat tyres.'

'Sabotage?'

'That's what I thought, but Corcoran doesn't know me and remember I did get there well ahead of you. I mean, there was no reason to connect us. The man I eventually persuaded to repair them said it was almost certainly the work of local schoolboys who've nothing better to do with their Saturdays.'

I shook my head in disbelief at the mess we were in. Two thousand pounds of my mother's money down the drain and no further progress in locating Corcoran. Only a short time ago I was sympathetic to the Irishman for having suffered so long at Edward's hands, yet now I hated him. It was my turn to be penitent. 'I'm sorry, Amy, I should never have got you into this mess.'

'Don't you be sorry, I'm just as much to blame. It'll teach us both to play detective. The real question is where do we go from here? Should we tell the Garda, do you think?'

'What's there to tell? How two girls have come out here to pay an ex stable lad two thousand pounds as a down payment for confessing that he was being blackmailed. They'll laugh us out of Ireland. No, we're going on the first plane back to England and when I'm there I'm going to…' I paused.

'You're going to what?'

'Expose that sod Musgrave and make one of my late husband's blackmail victims admit to the police just what was going on.'

'And which one do you have in mind?'

'Sir Arthur Drewe.'

'And how do you propose to drag him down to the police station?'

'By the balls, if necessary.'

We spent the night in a hotel near Shannon airport and took the first plane in the morning back to London. We were both feeling pretty despondent and Amy's well-intentioned attempts to make me look on the bright side fell embarrassingly flat. The simple truth was that Tom's trial was less than eight weeks away and we were no nearer producing any evidence that might help him. Amy, doing her best to reassure me, made great play of the fact that the case against him was purely circumstantial, and that from now on, our energies might be better directed elsewhere, like trying to find a witness who had seen Tom in the car park after he and Edward had left the pub. That was fine in principle, but the trouble was knowing where to begin, assuming such a witness even existed. No such person had as yet come forward voluntarily. Tom himself had no recollection of what he did or where he went that night. And indeed, as Amy admitted, all the attempts by his own solicitors, including hiring a fleet of private detectives, had proved fruitless. Most people are in bed late at night and those who aren't don't necessarily want to advertise their movements. We were at an impasse.