‘Nope. I’ve called them off and sent them on into London to look round any of the places Lincoln might go, see if they can pick up a lead.’
‘Good,’ I agreed. ‘Do you think this guy’s heading for Newmarket?’
‘Maybe.’
‘If he spent time hanging around Portman Square yesterday, it would have to be a hell of a coincidence if he wasn’t waiting to see someone coming or going from the Jockey Club – if he was parked in sight of it?’
Matt agreed.
‘Ten to one he’s going to Newmarket. I’ll see you there.’
Ninety minutes later, I was hammering along the road into Newmarket.
Matt had phoned me to say that he and Larry were sitting in his car outside the Equine Forensic Laboratory.
I found them parked discreetly, a hundred yards from the low building, and stopped a little further up the other side of the quiet road.
I guessed that Matt had a clear view of the main entrance while, through intermittent trees, I could see a side entrance. From the refuse bins by it, I guessed it was the rear door of a small canteen.
I dialled Matt.
‘What’s your plan?’
‘Sit here and wait for the time being.’
‘Have you seen anything to tell you why he’s gone in there?’
‘Nope.’
‘Anything on Lincoln?’ I asked.
‘Not yet. We . . .’
I cut him short. ‘He’s just come out!’ I hissed. ‘Can you see him?’
‘No. Where?’
I’d spotted our man emerging from the side door. I had recognised him at once from the photograph Matt had sent down the line to the office, and from the earlier shot with Tresidder.
Greeves – Head of Security! That was who he was, one time brother-officer of Lord Tintern, as well as Gervaise Brown and Sgt. Tresidder. Of course, I’d seen the face before: thirty-five years younger in the regimental photograph we’d seen at both Toby’s and then at Tresidder’s place.
With an abrupt mental somersault, it occurred to me that Toby must have known these people as a child, when his father was still in the army and involved in the regiment’s social life. I winced at the prospect that Toby was, after all, the link in the chain between Tresidder and Greeves, who now seemed as anxious to find Lincoln as we were.
I watched as Greeves walked away from the door. I could see that he was concealing something under his tweed jacket.
He walked swiftly across an expanse of tidily cut grass, fringed with silver birch and tall shrubs. I had a clear view of him now, as he took a manilla envelope from inside his jacket and dumped it into one of the large industrial garbage bins which served the canteen kitchen. He took a quick glance around before he slipped back through the door.
I reconnected with Matt. ‘He came out – very suspiciously – and chucked an envelope into the rubbish bins round my side of the building.’
‘You’re certain it was him?’
‘Five ten – ginger tweed jacket, fawn trousers, receding grey hair.’
‘That’s him. Go in and ask to talk to him. We can watch the exits if he does a runner.’
‘Fine, but see if Larry can get round to the wheelybins at the back and find the envelope. It might be important.’
I got out of the car with my heart racing and hurriedly devised a strategy as I crossed the road and walked between the tall iron gates.
Inside, I was greeted by a new receptionist.
‘Morning,’ I breezed. ‘I was here a few weeks ago. Saw a chap . . . I can’t remember his name. Fiftyish, grey hair, going a bit thin?’ I laughed, praying Dr Poulton didn’t suddenly turn up. The young woman smiled back but offered no help. ‘Sort of gingery tweed jacket . . .?’
‘That’ll be Captain Greeves,’ the receptionist said, glad to be of assistance. ‘Security.’ Her hand hovered over the switchboard. ‘Who shall I say?’
‘Jeffries,’ I answered, suddenly thinking that he might well have seen me before, ‘from the BHS.’
She flicked a switch and waited a moment. ‘Captain Greeves? Mr Jeffries from the BHS in reception for you . . . All right. I’ll tell him.
‘He’s a bit tied up, he says, but he’ll try not to keep you waiting too long.’
Nervously, I hoped that Matt and Larry had all possible exits covered. And I cursed my stupidity for using my own name. Tresidder might well have identified me as one of the people who’d grabbed his converted camera at Newbury the previous Saturday after Tahiti Bride had won.
As I jittered inside, the woman behind the reception desk was staring at me; I made an effort to force a friendly grin and turned away to survey the attractive garden in front of the building.
‘Mr Jeffries?’
I spun back to find the man we’d been pursuing looking at me uncertainly but without any apparent suspicion. It seemed he didn’t have a clue who I was.
‘Captain Greeves.’ I held out my hand, which he took automatically. I hoped that the receptionist hadn’t spotted that he obviously hadn’t met me before. ‘I wondered if we could talk, er . . . privately – a security matter?’
‘Of course,’ he said smoothly. ‘There’s a meeting room here we can use.’ He opened a door into the same room in which I’d talked with Poulton.
He closed the door behind us and waved me to one of the chairs, sitting down opposite me. ‘You’re from the BHS?’ His voice was a sharp, clipped tenor with no regional tinge to it.
‘There’s no problem there,’ I evaded the question. ‘What I wanted to ask you about was some dope-testing results. I keep a few horses and my trainer’s concerned that she ran one which was inadvertently administered Dermobian just before a race. She was never informed that this had been revealed in a post-race test.’
‘Dermobian?’ He looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure?’
‘There’s no question about it. Our vet is adamant it should have shown up. He’s very concerned and has asked me to look into it.’
I detected a faint reluctance in his reaction. ‘I could check it for you, but I can assure you that even a minute trace of Dermobian would be detected. It’s a banned substance, and any horse with it would have the race taken off it. What was the horse called, and when did it run?’
‘Sox O’Dee, Towcester, the thirteenth of last month.’
The colour on Captain Greeves’s face had faded from florid to monochrome as if I’d turned a knob on a television.
‘Sox O’Dee?’ he said hoarsely, staring at me.
‘That’s right. And there were one or two other cases where I’d heard a positive test might have been expected.’
His Adam’s apple jerked in his throat.
I pressed. ‘And runners in other races: Tahiti Bride’s last weekend, and before that Free Willy’s at Cheltenham and Musicmusic at Sandown. Sergeant Tresidder was at all those meetings, wasn’t he?’
He was collapsing before my eyes. His jaw quivered and he didn’t even try to answer.
‘A man’s been murdered, you do know that?’ I prompted.
He was on the brink of saying something, but needed another push.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked evenly. ‘Somewhere else?’
He took a deep noisy breath. ‘Who are you exactly?’
‘A friend of Toby Brown’s. I’m not a policeman – I was working for the Jockey Club. I’m not now.’
I stared at him as frankly as I could and held my breath.
‘What do you want?’
‘I want to know who killed Toby.’
‘What about the other one?’
‘You mean Connor McDonagh?’
He nodded.
‘The police said he died from a diabetic attack.’
‘Do you believe them?’
‘I don’t know, but McDonagh’s not my main concern.’
Greeves took a deep breath. ‘I won’t talk to you here. Give me ten minutes to sort things out and I’ll see you out on the heath,’ he said abruptly. �
�By the Devil’s Dyke.’
‘Fine. The people who followed you here from Lincoln’s place are outside – they’ll be right behind you.’
I crouched by the window of Matt’s car. ‘Did you get the envelope?’
‘We did.’
‘What was in it?’
‘Five sheets of paper, each with a different bar-code photocopied on to it,’ Matt said with satisfaction.
I grinned. ‘We’ve got him!’
‘Could be.’ Matt nodded. ‘There’s a good chance they’re covered with his prints.’
Greeves was waiting for me, a hundred yards from the road. In the lee of the great earthwork thrown up by eighth-century Angles jealous of their fertile land, I saw him, sensibly wrapped up in a big sheepskin coat against the wind whipping across the open landscape. He was standing with his face to the east where a late lot of horses were walking home.
When I was a few yards from him, I called against the wind. ‘Captain Greeves.’
He turned, looking pathetically grateful for my use of his obsolete military title. But he only nodded his acknowledgement.
‘So,’ I said in a businesslike way, ‘how much do you want to tell me?’
His gaze followed the retreating race-horses. ‘You know about Tresidder – it was his idea.’
‘To mask the samples taken from horses he’d drugged?’
‘No, not to mask them. Simply to swap them for clean samples.’
‘How did you know which ones to swap?’
‘The samples come to us in bottles with just a bar-code on. The lab informs the Jockey Club of the bar-code reference of any sample that’s shown up positive; it’s up to them to identify which horse and which race.’
‘Sure, but how did you know the bar-codes?’
Greeves seemed to have an abrupt change of heart about his sudden outburst of honesty. ‘Why should I tell you all this?’
‘To clear your own conscience, I should think. Why did you do all this in the first place?’
‘Why does anyone do anything dishonest?’
‘For lots of reasons, but I suppose you mean money?’
Greeves nodded and seemed, I thought, to become more dignified. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather walk while we talk about this.’
‘Sure,’ I agreed, and we headed north along a track at the foot of the dyke.
Once we had covered half a dozen yards, Greeves heaved a sigh, audible over the wind on this sheltered side of the earthwork. ‘I’ve made a lot of bad decisions,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘God knows I was doubtful at the time, but somehow you don’t imagine how out of hand these things will get. Now I’m being hounded from all sides by people to whom I owe money.’
He took a deep, shaky breath before he went on. ‘I made the mistake of marrying for the second time at forty-five. My wife’s a lot younger than me, and very ambitious; not that she started very far up the social scale – she even thought marrying a passed over captain was a step up. But she was very attractive and I was flattered, and let myself be pushed into every money-sucking scheme she came up with – holidays in the Caribbean, ski-ing in Switzerland, and now private schools for the two boys. I only had a miserable pension and then, by a miracle, I got the job here.’
He stopped walking; I turned to him. I could see in his eyes the despair of a man who knew he was completely washed up. I nodded to encourage him.
‘It’s not a bad job,’ he went on after a moment, resuming his steady pace along the edge of the dyke. ‘Not difficult, not arduous, and not badly paid – considering. Of course, they pay a little over the odds to be sure of getting the right “type” – someone who can talk to the stewards and all the other ridiculous snobs who seem to run everything to do with horses in this country.’
His voice had assumed a bitter note. It sounded as if he might start crying at any moment. I sensed he was making no effort to resist the inevitable.
‘How did you know the bar-codes?’ I gently pressed.
He sniffed. ‘Tresidder gave them to me.’
‘How did he get hold of them?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Well, how did he get them to you?’
‘He either faxed them or sent them in the post.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘We already have the ones you threw out this morning.’
He spun his head to look at me, appalled at first, then he seemed resigned to the inevitability of his own disgrace.
‘I presume you had a pretty good idea of which horses’ samples you were handling?’
‘Only because I went to the races once to see what Tresidder was doing.’
‘You saw?’
‘He was firing sedatives from what looked like a camera with a very long lens, like a lot of the professionals. Of course he had a photographer’s badge so he could go where he wanted. In fact, the lens was like the barrel of a gun using compressed gas – but I expect you know that?’
‘More or less.’ I nodded. ‘And you knew what he was trying to do?’
‘His job was to dope as many of the fancied horses as he could – anything except the nap. He was very good at it. He never missed.’
‘And do you know who he was working for?’
I noticed a microsecond of hesitation before he answered. ‘No.’
‘Not for Steve Lincoln?’
‘Good God, no,’ Greeves said with a scorn so heart-felt it seemed to revive his own failing self-esteem.
‘What were you doing with Lincoln, then?’
‘Being double-crossed, by the look of it.’
I waited; I didn’t need to push now.
Greeves sucked in a sharp, resentful breath through his nostrils. ‘The little bastard tracked me down. He found me at home – really put the wind up my wife. He told me he’d guessed some horses were being doped – there was no other explanation for the winning naps. He’d already noticed Tresidder was always there with his camera, then he spotted me talking to him.’
‘When was that?’
‘A week or so before he found me here. It was at Sandown, the day Musicmusic won. Tresidder was furious I’d turned up there.’ The self-contempt in his voice was almost painful to hear.
‘He was right,’ I observed drily. ‘It wasn’t only Lincoln who spotted you. I photographed you talking to him, though I didn’t have a clue who either of you was then.’ He didn’t look at me. ‘What did Lincoln do?’ I asked.
‘He said he’d already worked out that someone must be switching the samples here and knew it was me. For all I know he was bluffing, but the nasty little shit knows how to needle people. When he said he’d pay for evidence that I’d been asked to swap the samples, I didn’t even try to deny what I’d been doing. I still needed more money – what I’d got from Tresidder didn’t go anywhere.’
‘If Tresidder was paying you to swap samples, why did you stop?’
‘He came to see me on Monday in a hell of a hurry. I told him I wouldn’t do it any more, not after two people had been killed. I didn’t want to be involved in murder as well as everything else.’
‘So, what evidence did you have to offer Lincoln?’
‘The faxes and notes with the bar-codes.’
‘And what did he pay you?’
‘I told you – nothing! When he first came to me – ten days ago it must have been, just after Toby Brown killed himself – he said he knew who was telling Tresidder what to do. He said he’d already had two lumps of cash – five thousand a time, I think – and with hard, documentary proof, he could get a hell of a lot more, maybe fifty thousand.’
I tried to keep a grip on the serpentine course of Greeves’s revelations.
‘Do you think he’d really had some money out of it already?’
Greeves shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The truth’s impossible to discern in a man like that.’
‘So, did you give him the evidence he wanted?’
‘I only gave him half of each of the bar-codes. I told him he could have the rest
once he’d come up with some money. I wouldn’t trust him further than I could spit. He hasn’t coughed up yet, and I need money tonight. That’s why I took the day off and went to London yesterday.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We monitored you waiting outside Lincoln’s old address. Then you drove to Portman Square.’
He glanced at me – nervous, like most people, at the idea of having been spied upon. He looked ahead again and his face tightened with shame. ‘I nearly caved in; I was on the point of marching into the Jockey Club, putting my cards on the table and pleading for mercy. Then I thought the arrogant bastards would have my guts for garters if it suited them and they couldn’t find anyone else to blame. I’d heard they were desperate to produce a culprit and all the bookies are up in arms that nothing’s been done.’
‘Apart from two dead winning tipsters,’ I remarked.
‘Well, who do you think killed them?’ Greeves almost snapped at me.
‘Logic says the bookies, but we’ve no proof at all.’
‘It might help you to bear in mind that whoever is running this scheme still went on with it when they were being blackmailed.’
‘Yes, I hadn’t overlooked that, or that they must have thought it was Toby until he was dead.’
‘If it had started by then. But now it’s obvious it’s just me and Lincoln.’ He turned to look at me, almost elated in defeat. I thought he would not have been a very effective soldier in war conditions.
‘Right,’ I said, stopping abruptly. ‘I have to go. Thank you for what you’ve told me. I won’t be passing any of it on to any official . . .’
‘Frankly, I couldn’t give a stuff!’ The words sounded incongruous in Greeves’s tersely accented military English. ‘It’ll all come out, sooner or later.’
I shrugged. ‘Well, if it does, it won’t be my doing. If Tresidder gets in touch with you, let me know.’ I took out my notebook and scribbled my name and numbers on one of the pages, tore it out and gave it to him.
He shoved it into a pocket without looking at it then turned his back on me and plodded away beside the dyke.
I watched him go and wondered what I should do. After a moment, I turned in the opposite direction and quickly walked back towards my car.
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