“You said you wanted a witness statement,” I said.
“Yes, please,” he replied. “I’ll send my sergeant over to take it now.”
“How long will it take?” I asked.
“That depends, Mr. Shillingford, on how much you have to say.”
“How much to do want me to say?”
“Everything that is relevant. Especially what you can remember after going out to your car.”
“I have a production meeting here at eleven o’clock, and I’m going to be pretty busy after that until we go off the air at four-twenty. Can’t I just write out a statement rather than have your sergeant take it down? I could do it now on my laptop and e-mail it to you.”
“Could you print it out and sign it? And also have your signature witnessed? My sergeant will then collect it in about an hour.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll leave it at the racetrack office.”
“Right. Do that. If I need anything further, I’ll leave a message at this number.”
“What about my car?” I said. “What happens to that now?”
“The forensic boys are still going over it. They’re apparently now looking for material fibers.”
I laughed. “I don’t think the inside of that car has been cleaned out since I’ve had it and that’s about eight years. There must be handfuls of fibers present, and dog hair, candy wrappers, and God knows what else.”
“Forensics will bag everything just in case it’s needed later.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“I suppose it’s then yours to take away, but it’s rather badly bashed in at the front and it has no roof. I saw it this morning at the police compound. It would cost more to repair than a car of that age is worth, and you know what insurance companies are like, it would be better for them to write it off completely.”
But not, of course, better for me. I would end up with a paltry sum from the insurers and no car. I sighed. Was it time to get a new car as well as a new house? How about a new girlfriend?
Next I called the number that Emily had given me at the party. She answered on the second ring.
“I thought you might be asleep,” I said.
“I should be,” she replied.
“Did you watch the show?”
“I only saw the last bit of it. I now wish I’d stayed with you instead of coming back here with Angela. But I think she was glad I did.”
“And how are all the sweet young things this morning?”
“Hungover, mostly. The party may have ended prematurely, thanks to you, but if Angela thought that had stopped them drinking she was much mistaken. They must have had bottles stashed away somewhere. Half of them are still incapable of walking properly.”
“That’s because of their high heels.”
She laughed. I liked that.
“What are you doing for the rest of the day?” I asked.
“What would you like me to do?”
“How about coming to the races?”
“Love to,” she said.
I was suddenly very excited.
“Great,” I said. “Can you be here at twelve-thirty? I’ll meet you outside, where you drive in. Just follow the signs.”
“OK, I’ll be there. See you later.”
“Oh, Emily?” I said.
“Yes.”
“One more thing.” I paused.
“Yes?” she encouraged.
“If you like,” I said nervously, “you could bring an overnight bag.”
“OK,” she said slowly. “I would like that. Very much.”
—
I WENT to the press room with my computer to type my witness statement for Chief Inspector Perry. Not surprisingly, with almost four hours to go until the first race, I was the only member of the press there.
It took me about forty minutes to complete the statement, reliving the horrors of the previous night and expressing them in words. But try as I might, I couldn’t recall anything at all that I thought would help in identifying the strangler. I even closed my eyes and tried to evoke his smell, but there was nothing.
I could remember far better what had happened after I’d sat down in my car than before. I suppose that was bound to be the case, as before had been rather mundane while after had obviously not, if one could possibly describe being propositioned by a beautiful woman for sex as mundane.
I remembered that, all right, and it made me smile in anticipation. But I decided against putting it in my witness statement, although it was perhaps the real reason I hadn’t even considered my safety as I’d gone to my car. Suffice to say, my mind had been elsewhere.
I used the printer in the press room to print out the statement and was about to go in search of someone to witness my signature when Jim Metcalf walked in.
“Hi, Jim,” I said. “What brings UK Today’s star reporter here so early?”
“Boredom,” he said. “I got fed up waiting at the hotel. I stayed up here last night. I’m doing a feature on Peter Williams, and I was out on the Heath with his string at seven this morning.”
“Clare reckoned his colt Reading Glass is a good prospect for next year’s Guineas.”
“Possibly,” said Jim, “but he still needs to grow a bit behind. And Peter’s got some other good young colts that will certainly shine next year as three-year-olds. He’s so good at not over-racing them at two and burning them out. That’s what I’ll be writing about.”
“I’ll look forward to reading it.”
“It’ll be in the paper next Saturday,” he said. “To coincide with Future Champions Day.”
I still had my witness statement in my hand.
“Jim, could you do me a favor?” I asked. “I need someone to witness my signature on something.”
“Sure,” he said. “Is it your will?”
“No,” I said, laughing. “It’s a witness statement for the police.”
“What did you witness?” he asked.
I was suddenly not at all sure that this had been a good idea. But I’d already told Lisa, so it was hardly a secret.
“Someone tried to kill me last night,” I said.
“Not Mitchell Stacey?”
I was stunned. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open.
“How . . .”
“Come on, Mark, I’ve known about you and Sarah Stacey for ages. Worst-kept secret in racing. You’ve hardly been that discreet, going out openly to pubs and restaurants and the like. I know for a fact that you went to the theater in London together in August to see that revival of Oklahoma! while Mitchell was up at the sales in Doncaster. I have my contacts.” He tapped the side of his nose, just as Toby Woodley had done at Stratford.
I was quite surprised that my private life should have been of such interest to him. And I didn’t much like the thought that I’d clearly been watched without my knowledge.
“Did Toby Woodley also know about us?”
“I don’t know, but any racing journalist worth his salt should have been able to find out.”
“But Woodley never wrote anything about us in the Gazette.”
But was that what he’d been going on about at Clare’s funeral? Had he actually known about Sarah and me, but his editor had prevented the story being published in the paper so soon after Clare’s death?
“Maybe he didn’t know, then,” said Jim, “but I’d be surprised. Most of what he wrote was rubbish and speculation, but there was usually a glimmer of truth in there somewhere, and he did have an amazing knack for sniffing out real stories.”
“Yes,” I said, “and how exactly did he manage that?”
“I expect he used good old-fashioned journalistic techniques like the rest of us—hiding in the undergrowth with a powerful telep
hoto lens, paying the police for information, and of course hacking into people’s phone messages.”
“Isn’t hacking illegal?”
He looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Of course it is. And so is speeding on the freeway. But we all do it. At least we did before all the fuss.”
“Is that how you found out about me and Sarah?” I asked.
“No. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t.”
“So how did you, then?” I pressed.
“You don’t want to know,” he said slowly.
“Yes I bloody do.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Come on, tell me,” I said aggressively. “How did you find out?”
“Clare told me.”
“Clare?” I said, surprised. “She can’t have. She wouldn’t have.”
“Well, she did,” Jim said.
“When?”
“A long time ago. I don’t think she meant to tell me. It just sort of slipped out. She swore me to secrecy.”
“How come she was even speaking to you in the first place? I thought she despised all journalists.”
“She didn’t despise me.”
I wondered if Jim had been one of the string of unsuitable older men that Clare had bedded.
“Were you sleeping with her?” I asked.
“That’s none of your business,” he replied.
“I think it is,” I said, staring him in the eye.
“OK, I was,” he said. “But it was a couple of years ago now, and it only lasted a month or two.” He laughed. “Only until Clare realized the error of her ways and dumped me.”
So Jim Metcalf wasn’t the “new man” that Clare had been so flattering about at our last dinner.
“But I still loved her enough,” he went on, “to keep her confidences about you and Sarah Stacey. But it amused me to watch you both.”
“Well, for your further amusement and information,” I said, “Mrs. Stacey and I are no longer an item. It’s over, finished. I’ve moved on.”
“But was it Mitchell who tried to kill you? I hear through the press’s grapevine that he’d found out about your affair, and I, for one, wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of that temper.”
“No, you’re probably very wise,” I said, remembering my encounters with Mitchell in the parking lots. “I don’t know if it was him, but I doubt it. Whoever it was went to great lengths to remain hidden and that doesn’t smack of Mitchell’s methods. He’s more of a confrontational sort of guy.”
“So how did this person try to kill you?”
“On the record or off?” I asked.
“Either way,” he said. “You choose.”
I handed him my witness statement and he read it through from start to finish.
“Blimey,” he said, “it really was attempted murder.”
“It sure was,” I agreed.
“I never realized being a racing journalist could be so dangerous, what with that creep Woodley getting himself murdered.”
“The police seem to think that might have been a robbery that went too far.”
“What was stolen?” Jim asked.
“It seems his briefcase is missing.”
“Ah, the famous Woodley briefcase.”
“What’s famous about it?” I asked.
“Don’t you know? He’d always go berserk if anyone went near it in the press room. That’s partly why he was so unpopular with the rest of the racing press. He treated that briefcase as if it was a bloody baby. He was obsessed by it.”
“What was in it?” I asked.
“God knows,” said Jim. “Probably just his sandwiches.”
“Somebody must have thought it was valuable if they killed him for it.”
“I can’t imagine why,” said Jim, laughing. “I’d have happily killed him for nothing.”
“I wouldn’t say that if the police can hear you.” I thought back to my interview with Superintendent Cullen. I hadn’t done myself any favors telling him that I hadn’t liked the victim.
I looked at the clock on the wall. I was late for the production meeting.
“Jim, could you witness my signature? The police will be here soon to collect it.”
I signed the paper at the bottom, and Jim added his signature alongside as witness.
“So can I use any of this?” he asked, pointing at my statement.
“Why not?” I said. “It can’t do any harm.”
16
I went out to meet Emily immediately after the production meeting just in case she was early.
I realized that I had no idea what type of car she drove, so I stood next to the entry road, staring intently at the driver of every vehicle that passed me, in case I might miss her. But I needn’t have worried. Bang on time, at precisely twelve-thirty, she arrived flashing her lights and sounding her horn as soon as she saw me.
And I should have guessed her choice of car. She drove a metallic red Mercedes SLK sports roadster, and she had the roof down.
I was laughing as I climbed in beside her, in the sure knowledge there was no strangler lurking in a backseat because there was no backseat.
“Hello, gorgeous,” I said, leaning over and giving her a brief kiss.
“Where to?” she asked, grinning broadly.
“Straight on down to the end,” I said. “We’ll park in the press lot, it’s nearer to the entrance than the one for the public.”
What was it that Jim Metcalf had said about me not being very discreet in my private life? Well, there was nothing in the slightest bit discreet about Emily’s and my arrival in the Newmarket racetrack’s press parking lot.
For a start, not many members of the press drive Mercedes sports cars, and even fewer arrive for a race meeting in October with the roof down. Then there was the spin of the rear wheels on the gravel by the entrance, and the slight drift of the back end on the damp grass as Emily turned sharply into the parking space.
Next came the dramatic closing of the electric roof, and, as if there were not enough of the press watching already, there was Emily’s loud squeal of delight as she came around the back of the car, enveloped me in her arms, and kissed me passionately full on the mouth.
Perhaps, I thought, the public parking lot would have been better after all. But at least this might kill off any belief lingering amongst the Fourth Estate that I was still romantically involved with Sarah Stacey.
We went through the entrance to the racetrack, and I took her around to the fenced-off compound where the Channel 4 scanner and the other broadcast vehicles were parked. There was still over an hour until we went on the air, but I had to do the voice-over recordings for some of the VTs that would be shown later during the live transmission.
I also had some script notes I wanted to write out in preparation for what was likely to be a busy afternoon, with races from both Ascot and Redcar on the program, as well as three from Newmarket. The more material we had prepared and were ready to transmit at the touch of a button, the better we would be able to cope with any unexpected problems that might arise, as they surely would.
It was very much a case of the nine Ps: Proper prior planning prevents piss-poor program presenter performance.
Emily sat in the scanner and watched while I recorded the voice-over for a host of video clips of previous races, highlighting the running of some of the horses that were in action again today. The whole VT would be used as part of the introduction for the afternoon.
“It’s fascinating,” she said when I’d finished. “It all seems so seamless when you watch on a Saturday.”
“Ah, the magic of live television,” I said. “Never believe anything you see on the TV. It’s all done with smoke and mirrors.”
“Don’t tease me,” she said.
“I’m not,” I said. “I mean it. We will show eight races from three different racetracks hundreds of miles apart all within the span of two and a half hours, and the viewers believe that the whole thing is sequential and under our control, which it isn’t. Now, that’s what I call magic.”
“Does it ever go wrong?” she asked.
“Often,” I said. “And the real trick is to carry on regardless and make out that everything is proceeding exactly as we had expected it to, and to stop talking only when you drop down dead or the program finishes, whichever comes first.”
“You’re crazy.” She laughed.
“Bonkers,” I said, laughing back.
It was the first time I’d felt even the slightest bit happy since Clare had died. Emily was clearly good for me.
—
“GOOD LUCK, EVERYBODY.” Neville, the producer, was speaking over the talk-back in our earpieces and headphones as the production assistant counted down to zero to the start of transmission.
The familiar theme music played, and I watched the opening sequence on the monitor in front of me.
“Cue Mark.”
I took a deep breath and looked straight into the lens of the camera being held in front of my face. “Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Channel 4 Racing on the day of Europe’s richest race for two-year-olds, the Millions Trophy, which is amongst the three races we’re covering from here at Newmarket, as well as four from Ascot, including the Scoop6 Cup, and, as a special bonus, one of the premier northern races for the youngsters, the Two Year Old Trophy from Redcar at four o’clock.”
“Cue VT,” said the director, and the video clips played that I had previously voiced over.
The program was up and running.
I could almost feel the injection of adrenaline into my bloodstream that the countdown to the start had produced. And I loved it. I was an adrenaline-rush junkie and was hopelessly hooked.
I waved and smiled at Emily, who was standing about five yards away, out of picture. We were both in the Newmarket parade ring, close to the winner’s enclosure. It is where I would stay for the duration of the program, watching all the races on the monitor set up in front of me.
Dick Francis's Bloodline (9781101600931) Page 19
