Longshot

by Dick Francis

  Doone didn’t say yes or no, and I understood what he’d meant by preferring to listen to unadulterated first thoughts, to the first pictures and conclusions that minds leaped to when questioned.

  He talked to Bob for a while longer but as far as I could see learned nothing much.

  “You want to see Mackie,” Bob said in the end. “That’s young Mrs. Vickers. The girls tell her things they’d never tell me.”

  Doone nodded and I led him and the ubiquitous Rich around the house to Mackie and Perkin’s entrance, ringing the bell. It was Perkin himself who came to the door, appearing in khaki overalls, looking wholly an artisan and smelling, fascinatingly, of wood and linseed oil.

  “Hello,” he said, surprised to see me. “Mackie’s in the shower.”

  Doone took it in his stride this time, introducing himself formally.

  “I came to let Mrs. Vickers know that Angela Brickell’s been found,” he said.

  “Who?” Perkin said blankly. “I didn’t know anyone was lost. I don’t know any Angela ... Angela who did you say?”

  Doone patiently explained she’d been lost for six or more months. Angela Brickell.

  “Good Lord. Really? Who is she?” A thought struck him. “I say, is she the stable girl who buggered off sometime last year? I remember a bit of a fuss.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Good then, my wife will be glad she’s found. I’ll give her the message.”

  He made as if to close the door but Doone said he would like to see Mrs. Vickers himself.

  “Oh? All right. You’d better come in and wait. John? Come in?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He led the way into a kitchen—dining room, where I hadn’t been before and offered us rattan armchairs around a table made of a circular slab of glass resting on three gothic plaster pillars. The curtains and chair covers were bright turquoise overprinted with blowsy gray, black and white flowers, and all the kitchen fitments were faced with gray-white-streaked Formica; thoroughly modern.

  Perkin watched my surprise with irony and said, “Mackie chose everything in a revolt against good taste.”

  “It’s happy,” I said. “Lighthearted.”

  The remark seemed somehow to disturb him, but Mackie herself arrived with damp hair at that point looking refreshed and pleased with life. Her reaction to Doone’s first cautious words was the same as everyone else’s. “Great. Where is she?”

  The gradual realization of the true facts drained the contentment and the color from her face. She listened to his questions and answered them, and faced the implications squarely.

  “You’re telling us, aren’t you,” she said flatly, “that either she killed herself ... or somebody killed her?”

  “I didn’t say that, madam.”

  “As good as.” She sighed desolately. “All these questions about doping rings ... and boyfriends. Oh, God.” She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them to look at Doone and me.

  “We’ve just had months and months of trouble and anxiety over Olympia and Nolan, we’ve had the TV people and reporters in droves, driving us mad with their questions, we’re only just beginning to feel free of it all ... and I can’t bear it ... I can’t bear it ... it’s starting all over again.”

  10

  I borrowed the Land-Rover and at Doone’s request led him down to the village and into Harry and Fiona’s drive. I was surprised that he still wanted me with him and said so, and he explained a little solemnly that he found people felt less threatened by a police officer if he turned up with someone they knew.

  “Don’t you want them to feel threatened?” I asked. “Many policemen seem to like it that way.”

  “I’m not many policemen.” He seemed uninsulted. “I work in my own way, sir, and if sometimes it’s not how my colleagues work then I get my results all the same and it’s the results that count in the end. It may not be the best way to the highest promotion”—he smiled briefly—“but I do tend to solve things, I assure you.”

  “I don’t doubt it, Chief Inspector,” I said.

  “I have three daughters,” he said, sighing, “and I don’t like cases like this one.”

  We were standing in the drive looking at the noble façade of a fine Georgian manor.

  “Never make assumptions,” he said absentmindedly, as if giving me advice. “You know the two most pathetic words a policeman can utter when his case falls apart around him?”

  I shook my head.

  “‘I assumed,”’ he said.

  “I’ll remember.”

  He looked at me calmly in his unthreatening way and said it was time to trouble the Goodhavens.

  As it happened, only Fiona was there, coming to the kitchen door in a dark-blue tailored suit with a white silk blouse, gold chains, high-heeled black shoes and an air of rush. She smiled apologetically when she saw me.

  “John,” she said. “What can I do for you? I’m going out to lunch. Can you make it quick?”

  “Er ...” I said, “this is Detective Chief Inspector Doone, Thames Valley Police. And Constable Rich.”

  “Policemen?” she asked, puzzled; and then in terrible flooding anxiety, “Nothing’s happened to Harry?”

  “No. No. Nothing. It’s not about Harry. Well, not exactly. It’s about Angela Brickell. They’ve found her.”

  “Angela . . .? Oh, yes. Well, I’m glad. Where did she go?”

  Doone was very adroit, I thought, at letting silence itself break the bad news.

  “Oh, my dear,” Fiona said after a few quiet revelationary seconds, “is she dead?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so, madam.” Doone nodded. “I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Oh, but . . .” She looked at her watch. “Can’t it wait? It’s not just a lunch, I’m the guest of honor.”

  We were still standing on the doorstep. Doone without arguing produced the photograph and asked Fiona to identify the man if she could.

  “Of course. It’s Harry, my husband. And that’s my horse, Chickweed. Where did you get this?”

  “From the young woman’s handbag.”

  Fiona’s face was full of kindness and regret. “She loved Chickweed,” she said.

  “Perhaps I could come back when your husband’s at home?” Doone suggested.

  Fiona was relieved. “Oh, yes, do that. After five tonight or tomorrow morning. He’ll be here until about ... um ... eleven, I should think, tomorrow. ’Bye, John.”

  She hurried back into the house, leaving the door open, and presently, from beside our own cars, we saw her come out, lock the back door, hide the key under the stone (“Tut, tut,” Doone said disapprovingly) and drive away in a neat BMW, her blond hair shining, cheerful hand waving good-bye.

  “If you had to describe her in one word,” Doone said to me, “what would it be?”

  “Staunch,” I said.

  “That was quick.”

  “That’s what she is. Steadfast, I’d say.”

  “Have you known her long?”

  “Ten days, like the others.”

  “Mm.” He pondered. “I won’t have ten days, not living in their community, like you do. I might ask you again what people here are really like. People sometimes don’t act natural when they’re with policemen.”

  “Fiona did. Surely everyone did who you’ve met this morning?”

  “Oh, yes. But there’s some I haven’t met. And there are loyalties ... I read the transcript of part of that trial before I came here. Loyalty is strong here, wouldn’t you agree? Staunch, steadfast loyalty, wouldn’t you say?”

  Doone might look gray, I thought, and his chatty, almost singsong Berkshire voice might be disarming, but there was a cunningly intelligent observer behind the waffle, and I did suddenly believe, as I hadn’t entirely before, that usually he solved his cases.

  He said he would like to speak to all the other stable girls before they heard the news from anyone else, and also the men, but the women first.

  I took Doone a
nd Rich to the house in the village which I knew the girls called their hostel, though I’d never been in it. It was a small modern house in a cul-de-sac, bought cheaply before it was built, Tremayne had told me, and appreciating nicely with the years. I explained to Doone that I didn’t know all the girls’ names: I saw them only at morning exercise and sometimes at evening stables.

  “Fair enough,” he said, “but they’ll all know you. You can tell them I’m not an ogre.”

  I wasn’t any longer so sure about that but I did what he asked. He sat paternally on a flower-patterned sofa in the sitting room, at home among the clutter of pot plants, satin cushions, fashion magazines and endless photographs of horses, and told them without drama that it looked possible Angela Brickell had died the day she hadn’t returned for evening stables. They had found her clothes, her handbag and her bones, he said, and naturally they were having to look into it. He asked the by now familiar questions: did they think Angela had been deeply involved in doping horses, and did they know if she’d had rows with her boyfriend.

  Only four of the six girls had been employed at the yard in Angela’s time, they said. She definitely hadn’t been doping horses; they found the idea funny. She wasn’t bright enough, one of them said unflatteringly. She hadn’t been their close friend. She was moody and secretive, they all agreed, but they didn’t know of any one steady boyfriend. They thought Sam had probably had her, but no one should read much in that. Who was Sam? Sam Yaeger, the stable jockey, who rode more than the horses.

  There were a few self-conscious giggles. Doone, father of three daughters, interpreted the giggles correctly and looked disillusioned.

  “Did Angela and Sam Yaeger quarrel?”

  “You don’t quarrel with Sam Yaeger,” the brightest of them said boldly. “You go to bed with him. Or in the hay.”

  Gales of giggles.

  They were all in their teens, I thought. Light-framed, hopeful, knowing.

  The bold girl said, “But no one takes Sam seriously. It’s just a bit of fun. He makes a joke of it. If you don’t want to, you just say no. Most of us say no. He’d never try to force anyone.”

  The others looked shocked at the idea. “It’s casual with him, like.”

  I wondered if Doone were thinking that maybe with Angela it hadn’t been casual after all.

  The bold girl, whose name was Tansy, asked when they’d found the poor little bitch.

  “When?” Doone considered briefly. “Someone noticed her last Sunday morning. Mind you, he wasn’t in a great hurry to do anything because he could see she’d been lying there peacefully a long time, but then he phoned us and the message reached me late Sunday afternoon while I was sleeping off my wife’s Yorkshire pudding, great grub, that is, so Monday I went to see the lass and we started trying to find out who she was, because we have lists of missing people, runaways mostly, you see? Then yesterday we found her handbag, and it had this photo in it, so I came over this morning to check if she was the missing stable girl on our missing persons list. So I should think you could say we really found her this morning.”

  His voice had lulled them into accepting him on friendly terms and they willingly looked at the photograph he passed around.

  “That’s Chickweed,” they said, nodding.

  “You’re sure you can tell one horse from another?”

  “Of course you can,” they said, “when you see them every day.”

  “And the man?”

  “Mr. Goodhaven.”

  Doone thanked them and tucked the photo away again. Rich took slow notes, none of the girls paying him any attention.

  Doone asked if by any chance Angela Brickell had owned a dog. The girls, mystified, said no. Why would he think so? They’d found a dog’s collar near her, he explained, and a well-chewed ball. None of them had a dog, Tansy said.

  Doone rose to go and told them if anything occurred to them, to send him a message.

  “What sort of thing?” they asked.

  “Well, now,” he said kindly. “We know she’s dead, but we want to know how and why. It’s best to know. If you were found dead one day, you’d want people to know what happened, wouldn’t you?”

  Yes, they nodded, they would.

  “Where did she go?” Tansy asked.

  Doone as near as dammit patted her head, but not quite. I thought that that would have undone all his good fatherly work. Willing they might be, but feminists all, too smart to be patronized.

  “We have to do more tests first, miss,” he said obscurely. “But soon we hope to make a statement.”

  They all accepted that easily enough and we said our good-byes, traveling back through the village to a bungalow nearer Bob Watson’s house, where the unmarried lads lived.

  The living room in the lads’ hostel, in sharp contrast to the girls’, was plantless, without cushions and grubbily scattered with newspapers, empty beer cans, pornography, dirty plates and muddy boots. Only the televisions and video players in both places looked the same.

  The lads all knew that Angela Brickell had been found dead as one of them had learned it from Bob Watson. None of them seemed to care about her personally (exactly like the girls) and had no information and few opinions about her.

  “She rode all right,” one of them said, shrugging.

  “She was a bit of a hot pants,” said another.

  They identified Chickweed’s picture immediately and one of them asked if he could have the photo when the police had finished with it.

  “Why?” Doone asked.

  “Because I look after the old bugger now, that’s why. Wouldn’t mind having a snap of him.”

  “Better take another one,” Doone advised him. “By rights this belongs to the lass’s parents.”

  “Well,” he later demanded of me, after we’d left. “What do you think?”

  “It’s your job to think,” I protested.

  He half smiled. “There’s a long way to go yet. If you think of anything, you tell me. I’ll listen to everything anyone wants to say. I’m not proud. I don’t mind the public telling me the answers. Make sure everyone knows that, will you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  THE TELEPHONE IN Shellerton House began ringing that afternoon in a clamor that lasted for days. However reticent Doone had been, the news had spread at once like a bush fire through the village that another young woman connected with Tremayne Vickers’s house and stables had been found dead. Newspapers, quickly informed, brusquely demanded to be told where, when and why. Dee-Dee repeated and repeated that she didn’t know until she was almost in tears. I took over from her after a while and dispensed enormous courtesy and goodwill but no facts, of which at that time anyway, I knew very few.

  I worked on the book and answered the phone most of Friday and didn’t see Doone at all, but on Saturday I learned that he had spent the day before scattering fear and consternation.

  Tremayne had asked if I would prefer to go to Sandown with Fiona, Harry and Mackie, saying he thought I might find it more illuminating: he himself would be saddling five runners at Chepstow and dealing with two lots of demanding owners besides. “To be frank, you’d be under my feet. Go and carry things for Mackie.”

  With old-fashioned views he persisted in thinking pregnant women fragile, which Mackie herself tolerated with affection. I wondered if Tremayne understood how little Perkin would like my carrying things for Mackie and determined to be discreet.

  “Fiona and Harry are taking Mackie,” Tremayne said, almost as if the same thought had occurred to him. “I’ll check that they’ll take you too, though it’s a certainty if they have room.”

  They had room. They collected Mackie and me at the appointed time and they were very disturbed indeed.

  Harry was driving. Fiona twisted around in the front seat to speak to Mackie and me directly and with deep lines of worry told us that Doone had paid two visits to them the day before, the first apparently friendly and the second menacing in the extreme.

  “He s
eemed all right in the morning,” Fiona said. “Chatty and easygoing. Then he came back in the evening ...” She shivered violently, although it was warm in the car. “And he more or less accused Harry of strangling that bloody girl.”

  “What?” Mackie said. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Doone doesn’t think so,” Harry said gloomily. “He says she was definitely strangled. And did he show you that photo of me with Chickweed?”

  Mackie and I both said yes.

  “Well, it seems he got it enlarged. I mean, blown up really big. He said he wanted to see me alone, without Fiona, and he showed me the enlargement, which was just of me, not the horse. He asked me to confirm that I was wearing my own sunglasses in the photo. I said of course I was. Then he asked me if I was wearing my own belt, and I said of course. He asked me to look carefully at the buckle. I said I wouldn’t be wearing anyone else’s things. Then he asked me if the pen clipped onto the racecard I was holding in the photo was mine also ... and I got a bit miffed and demanded to know what it was all about.” He stopped for a moment, and then in depression went on. “You won’t believe it ... but they found my sunglasses and my belt and my gold pen lying with that girl, wherever she was, and Doone won’t tell us where for some God-silly reason. I don’t know how the hell those things got there. I told Doone I hadn’t seen any of them for ages and he said he believed it. He thought they’d been with Angela Brickell all these months ... that I’d dropped them when I was with her.”

  He stopped again, abruptly, and at that point added no more.

  Fiona, in a strong mixture of indignation and alarm, said, “Doone demanded to know precisely where Harry had been on the day that girl went missing and also he said he might want to take Harry’s fingerprints.”

  “He thinks I killed her,” Harry said. “It’s obvious he does.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” Mackie repeated. “He doesn’t know you.”