The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Other firms are offering more generous odds than mine,’ Gold persisted. ‘I really should try them instead, if I were you. Or perhaps even spread your money about. That way you could be more certain of getting your money down.’

  ‘It’s not their money I want, Mr Gold,’ Cassie replied. ‘It’s yours.’

  Gold kept his eyes on Cassie for a moment longer then once again consulted his watch. ‘Excuse me, Mrs Rosse,’ he said. ‘I really am going to be late.’

  ‘I think you owe me the courtesy of an answer, Mr Gold.’

  ‘I don’t think I owe you anything, Mrs Rosse.’ Gold got out of his chair, brushed a few flakes of cigar ash from a lapel of his dark blue suit and nodded to the man who had been waiting for him by the door of the bar.

  ‘I take it that’s a “no” then,’ Cassie said, remaining in her chair.

  Gold smiled, but there was no humour in his pale eyes. ‘How you imagined you might get any other answer is beyond me, Mrs Rosse. Good day.’

  ‘Good day, Mr Gold.’

  ‘Oh.’ Gold stopped by the side of Cassie’s chair as if he had forgotten something, which Cassie knew perfectly well he had not. ‘Your charming daughter. How is she? I trust she is fully recovered from her fall – and there were no painful consequences?’

  Cassie’s blood froze as the implication of the bookmaker’s remark sank in, but she thought better of saying anything in return which would in any way reveal her shock. Instead she smiled back at him as if they were enjoying the politest of exhanges at some informal social gathering.

  ‘No, Josephine is fine,’ she replied. ‘It was her pride that was hurt more than anything. But how very kind of you to ask.’

  ‘Not at all, Mrs Rosse,’ Gold assured her, the smile disappearing from his face. ‘Let’s hope that nothing else of a similar nature befalls her. It’s an anxious business after all, being a parent, yes? Whatever age one’s children are.’ The smile, not quite gone, flickered back momentarily into life as did the tiny tic in his cheek, then he was gone.

  Cassie sat for a long while until she was quite sure her heart had stopped racing before calling the waiter over and requesting another glass of champagne. Gold had shaken her to her very core with his final enquiry, so much so that suddenly Cassie’s world which she had considered once again to be safely shored up against invasion lay violated at her feet. It mattered not how Gold had found out, nor for how long he had been privy to inside information. What counted was that it now seemed as though everything which had been so meticulously prepared in secret had probably been public knowledge as far as the enemy went ever since inception and that any hope Cassie had nursed of not only recovering her losses but at the same time taking her revenge had been not only inconceivable but totally foolish.

  Gold had made a fool of her. Worse, she considered she had made a fool of herself.

  What could I have been thinking? she wondered as she drank some of her second glass of wine. What folly ever prompted me to believe that I could get away with such a ridiculous venture? How could I ever imagine that I could secretly prepare the best-known racehorse in the world for a tilt at one of jumping’s most prestigious races without anyone giving the game away? Not only that, but then confront one of the United Kingdom’s most powerful bookmaking organizations and expect him tamely to accept what to all intents and purposes must seem like a guaranteed winning bet, and not only that but to bet to lose him one million pounds? I must have taken leave of my senses. Pride. Tyrone always used to warn me that my pride would be my undoing, but for once he was wrong. It isn’t my pride. It’s my conceit. I was conceited enough to think that my one man band could outplay Gold’s philharmonic orchestra.

  First things first, she thought as she hurried up to her suite. Before she made any plans to retrench, first she must make sure there were no holes in the fence back home.

  ‘Mattie?’ She reached him on his car phone, on his way to the races. ‘Mattie, I can’t go into details on the phone but I think as they say our cover’s blown. Or rather to put it a little more truthfully, I think I’ve blown it. I’ll tell you all the moment I get home but in the meantime it’s even more imperative than ever not to leave Nightie alone for one second. Not a minute, not half a minute, not for one unguarded second.’

  ‘I thought that might be the case,’ came back Mattie’s calm reply. ‘I mean, I didn’t think Gold would roll over and give up, but there’s no need to worry. You know I quadrupled all the security the moment the horse arrived in my yard. And Josephine’s staying here so that one of us can be with Nightie twenty-five hours a day.’

  ‘You really should hire more security. I told you to use the firm I use and I’d pick up the bill.’

  ‘And I told you I’m not taking on anyone I don’t know. You know my feelings on strangers in the yard. Even if they’re the most righteous god-fearing blokes you can find ha-ha I don’t want anything upsetting the horse. Any changes in his routine—’

  ‘Yes, all right, all right.’ She’d run this one by Mattie before and he’d made the same point then and just as well, so well that Cassie had been happy to agree. ‘It’s just that Gold really got me worried. I half expect to wake up tonight and find him in bed beside me.’

  ‘So when are you coming back?’

  ‘Soon as I can, Mattie. But I thought before I do, I might drive up and see Joel.’

  ‘What for?’ Mattie wondered. ‘He’s not going to be able to help you.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. Besides, I just suddenly got this feeling that I have to see him.’

  But Cassie’s reasons for wanting to make the journey up to Oxford were not only intuitive ones. It was now eleven months since Joel had been sent to prison and although they had kept up a diligent correspondence, and hard as Joel had worked on trying to unravel the mystery behind The Nightingale’s kidnapping, in the last three months Cassie couldn’t help noticing a change in tone in Joel’s letters, as if rather than to a lover he was now writing to an old friend. Even more to the point, Cassie thought, turning the matter over in her mind as she drove up the M40 motorway towards Oxford, that seemed to be precisely the turn her own feelings had been taking.

  Not that I could ever tell him as much in those sorts of terms, Cassie thought as she sat parked outside Radford Open Prison checking her hair and looks in the driving mirror of her hired car. I couldn’t bear his disdain. I can just see the mock tired look in his eyes and hear the sarcasm in his rejoinder. No, if that really is going to prove to be the case I’m going to have to be a whole lot more honest and original than that.

  Cassie pushed her car door open without looking right into the path of a woman who was making her way back through the park towards her own car. The woman stopped, putting her free hand up to grab the top of the offending door in order to prevent it hitting her in the chest. When she saw Cassie, she stared at her for a moment, almost it seemed to Cassie as if she already knew her.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Cassie said at once, getting out of the car as quickly as she could. ‘That was entirely my fault, I really wasn’t looking.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ the woman replied. ‘I wasn’t really looking either.’

  She turned quickly away from Cassie, briefly examining the hand she had used to stop the door from hitting her, flexing her fingers open and shut. But Cassie had still time to take in the younger woman’s good looks. She was tall with a head of long fashionably tangled dark hair styled to fall around her face which, with its high cheek bones, finely chiselled nose, and small butterfly mouth, gave her an admirably Pre-Raphaelite look. It wasn’t a beautiful face, but it was definitely a face which would be difficult to forget. Her style of dressing too was free-flowing – long loose fawn linen skirt, a white grandad cotton vest under a finespun black wool shirt, a long loose-fitting grey coat almost as long as her skirt, and a pair of what appeared to be men’s ankle boots. Everything about the young woman suggested independence, individuality, and above all feminism, right down to the total l
ack of make-up and jewellery, except for a twisted horsehair bracelet worn on one wrist.

  ‘Have you hurt your hand?’ Cassie asked, out of her car now and beginning to follow the woman who was moving off across the car park.

  ‘No, really,’ the woman replied, turning to give Cassie a brief smile. ‘I’m fine. It’s really no problem.’

  She hurried on, leaving Cassie behind to watch her go, walking ever more quickly towards a green and cream Citroën 2CV which she got into and started immediately, as if she could not wait to get away. Cassie watched her until she had driven off, wondered for a moment why the woman had given her such a strange look, then, putting any further thought of her out of her mind, turned and made her own way into the building behind her.

  From Joel’s letters Cassie had gathered that once he had settled into life at Radford his daily existence was hardly demanding. Once he had fulfilled his allotted tasks he found he had a lot of time on his hands so that soon, thanks to the patronage of the governor who happily for Joel was an art man, he was given a room to himself where in return for teaching sculpture and life drawing he was allowed to start working on his own projects. So it was that when Cassie was finally shown into the art room to meet Joel the surprise was not hers.

  Seeing her Joel stared at her for a moment, frowning as always, before quickly throwing a cloth over the bust on which he had been busy working as Cassie had been ushered in.

  ‘I know you don’t believe in doing things by halves,’ he said, wiping his hands on the sides of his trousers, ‘but even for you, that’s quick.’

  ‘I don’t get it. What was quick? What do you mean?’

  ‘I only posted the letter yesterday,’ Joel replied.

  ‘Oh.’ Cassie laughed to cover her feelings of awkwardness. For a moment she felt as though it was she who was the prisoner and not he, so apparently unencumbered did he seem by any anxiety or strain. ‘No, I mean I wouldn’t have got any letter because I’ve been over here in England the last two days.’

  ‘Really?’ Joel looked at her with what Cassie felt was almost accusation, as if to say in that case she should have come to see him first and not last. ‘I see.’

  ‘I came over to see Mr Gold,’ Cassie said. ‘I didn’t have time to write and tell you—’

  ‘Why should you? I had a letter from you two days ago.’

  They looked at each other for a moment, both of them uncertain as to what to do.

  Cassie smiled. ‘I guess I don’t know the routine here too well, not having visited for so long,’ she said. ‘What do we do? Can we sit here and talk? Or do we have to go somewhere like we did when I first came over? You know, into some official visiting room?’

  Joel shook his head and pulled out a chair at a table near him. ‘We can talk here,’ he replied. ‘I’m a trusty.’

  Cassie sat down. ‘I see you’ve been busy,’ she said, looking up at a wall covered in his drawings and a shelf full of sculptures.

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ Joel returned, fishing out his cigarettes.

  ‘What are you working on? Can I see it?’ Cassie nodded at the bust that stood hidden under the cloth.

  ‘Work in progress. I’d rather not.’

  ‘That’s OK. Whose are all the kids?’ Cassie wondered, remarking on the amount of children’s likenesses Joel had been working on, before singling out the head right in the middle of the collection. ‘Hey.’ She got up for a closer look. ‘This is Padraig, right? It’s wonderful. You did that in here?’

  Joel nodded, examining the end of his cigarette.

  ‘You did this from memory?’

  ‘Nope.’ Joel glanced up at her and smiled briefly. ‘At least not altogether. Erin sent me some photographs.’

  Cassie nodded thoughtfully, returning her attention to the exquisite sculpture. ‘You wrote and asked Erin, did you? For some photos?’ she enquired.

  ‘How could I have got them otherwise?’ Joel asked her back with a laugh. ‘We’re not telepathic. In fact, now you’re here perhaps you could take them back to her?’ He took a white envelope from the shelf and put it on the table between them.

  ‘These are all out of this world.’

  ‘The other studies are – well. Some are kids of other inmates, done from photos again,’ Joel said, inhaling on his cigarette. ‘And those two at the end, the two girls – they’re the governor’s twin daughters.’

  ‘As I said, you do great children.’

  ‘I suppose because I like children.’

  ‘I think it’s more than that,’ Cassie disagreed. ‘I’d say these were works of love.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that.’

  ‘I would. Don’t forget, when you finish here—’

  ‘When I’m released from here, Mrs Rosse,’ Joel corrected her with a smile. ‘This is still a prison, whatever you think, not some glorified polytechnic.’ He cleared his throat and tapped his cigarette on the edge of the tin ashtray on the table in front of him. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘enough of how brilliant I am – or not, as it happens. Sit down and tell me what happened with Mr Goldfinger Gold and then I’ll tell you how I’ve been getting on.’

  Briefly Cassie ran through her meeting with the bookmaker, going light on the details but not on her sense of having blown it.

  ‘I think you’re being unnecessarily hard on yourself,’ Joel said when she had finished. ‘Your approach lacked a little subtlety, perhaps, but you’re bang on target. You want to hear how I’ve been getting on?’

  ‘First of all tell me how you are,’ Cassie replied. ‘You haven’t even told me how you are.’

  ‘You haven’t asked me.’

  ‘I’m asking you now. How are you?’

  ‘How do I look?’

  ‘You look fine,’ Cassie sighed. ‘I didn’t mean exchanging pleasantries. It’s just – well. It’s just a little odd, cutting straight to the chase without even saying hello properly. After all this time.

  ‘Who’s fault is that?’ Joel wondered, taking a pull on his cigarette.

  ‘That isn’t fair, Joel, and you know it,’ Cassie replied. ‘We agreed that—’

  ‘I know,’ Joel admitted. ‘It wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry.’

  Cassie smiled. ‘So let’s start again,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Joel looked at her and nodded. ‘It’s just that in my reckoning gaol’s a fine but public place, and none I think do here embrace. If you get my meaning.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Cassie said, embarrassed lest she had embarrassed him. ‘I just thought maybe we’d jumped the gun a bit. So back to business.’

  ‘The wheel comes full circle,’ Joel said, as Cassie’s eyes strayed to the covered bust behind him. ‘Our friend in Windsor, remember? Our death by misadventure man. He used to work for Mike Gold.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Cassie said after a moment.

  ‘You’re right not to, because strictly speaking he used to work for old man Gold. He worked in shops in south London, before leaving to resurface as a gate man up north. Doncaster first, then Wolverhampton, back up to Nottingham, Catterick then south to Kempton and then Ascot.’

  ‘What do you mean? You think he was always on the Gold payroll?’

  ‘Once a Catholic, if you’ll pardon the comparison. Makes sense, too, doesn’t it?’

  ‘How did you find this out?’

  ‘Prison’s a great place for making contacts. Bloke doing life class, he’s got a bit of talent as it happens. Anyway, he’s what’s called outside a creative accountant. Has a lot of very useful friends. In return, I give him a little extra free tuition. His contacts also helped me make the last and perhaps the most vital of all connections. Remember on the fateful day at Ascot there was a handful of European runners? Mostly as we found with squeaky clean credentials, but one or two gave me pause for thought. Two in particular, one in the Diamond Stakes and one in the King George itself. They were both in the same ownership, namely a stud farm called Lermont. Guess
who has money in the stud farm.’

  ‘Gold.’

  ‘Correct. Herr Brandt and – wait for it – your very own Monsieur de Vendrer. So now you has jazz jazz.’ Joel looked at her, both eyebrows quizzically raised. ‘Want it synopsized?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cassie replied thoughtfully. ‘Go ahead, although I think I have the picture.’

  ‘Your late husband has a feud with a bookie. Bookie dies of heart attack, son blames premature death on late husband. Bookie’s son vows to get even. Some years later, husband also dies prematurely – and in his case tragically – wife assumes mantle and makes a good fist of it. En route she trains for so-called Swiss financier otherwise known as a German currency smuggler who thanks to his trainer’s integrity doesn’t get his bets on to cover some critical financial shortfall. Languishing in gaol he gets to hate honest trainer. Trainer re-meets so-called charming Frenchman who guess what – unbenownst to honest trainer is an old romping companion of trainer’s deadly rival Leonora Von Wagner – and tried to do bad things to honest trainer in his state of the art château somewhere in the Loire. Honest trainer escapes frightful fate by skin of her teeth, locking mad, bad Frog in closet en route and thus humiliating him in front of servants and who knows? Maybe even wronged wife. Sadistic Frog added to list of trainer’s deadly enemies, particularly when fuelled by old rival – now Mrs Charles C. Lovett Andrew – who plus mother are refused a share in the syndication of honest trainer’s home-bred and owned wonder horse. More?’

  ‘You bet,’ Cassie said. ‘I’m a sucker for soaps.’

  ‘Let’s say old rival fans the flames of discontent. Not so unlikely given Monsieur de Vendrer is an old and close friend. Maybe he and she even still play together, for old time’s sake. Certainly someone coordinates all this hatred into something coherent, and if it’s not old rival then it has to be bookie’s son, although my money is on the fact that he enters last, probably through the offices of Herr Brandt who knows a thing or three. The coup is jointly organized, the stud putting in a no hoper at Ascot to provide the necessary cover to get the stolen horse out and Gold’s old employee and still fully paid up mole is on the gate of the racecourse boxes, just to make sure. Everything goes perfectly to plan, except for the untimely death of the gate man.’