Even so, the blow was bad enough, driving the air out of my lungs and causing me to drop to my knees. My broken ribs didn’t like it much either.
I sensed, rather than saw, the pole being lifted again for another blow. This time, I thought, it will be fatal.
I rolled to my left, out through the railings of the walkway and onto the roof proper, as the pole smacked down where I had just been.
I was not going to bloody die, I told myself. Not here. Not now.
I stood up, dragged some air into my aching and injured lungs, and ran.
I ran on the corrugated steel toward the front of the grandstand and I could hear Brendan running behind me. I didn’t have time to look back, but I was sure he’d have the pole in his hands, ready to strike me down as soon as he got within range.
I ran up the slope of the roof and didn’t stop when I got to the brink. I didn’t even pause, running like a tightrope walker, straight out from the roof on one of the cylindrical spars of the lighting gantry.
Desperate situations necessitate desperate measures, and running as fast as I could along a metal spar eight inches in diameter with nothing but air beneath for more than a hundred feet was desperate indeed.
And the spar wasn’t horizontal. It sloped up at an ever-increasing angle as I moved away from the edge of the roof toward the floodlights. I was tightrope-walking uphill, and my only stability came from movement.
As the slope caused me to slow, I began to wobble.
I went down on my hands and knees, clutching with my fingers at the metal, trying to dig my nails into the smooth, hard paint.
Nevertheless, I began to slide backward, down the spar, back toward the edge of the grandstand roof, and back toward Brendan and his pole.
It wouldn’t take much for him to push me off with it.
All there was below me was hard, unforgiving, deserted concrete, a hundred and twenty feet straight down. The fifteenth floor of the Hilton Hotel or the roof of the Kempton Park grandstands—different distances, maybe, but the outcome would be much the same.
I could imagine what would be said: It’s such a shame—Mark never came to terms with his twin sister’s suicide, nor the loss of another close friend and the breakup of a long-term relationship. But he found a way out of his pain.
I managed to turn myself over so that I was now sitting on the spar, with my ankles locked together beneath it and my hands down in front of me on its cold metal.
But still I slid down, inch by inch.
Brendan was standing just short of the edge of the grandstand roof proper, holding the pole in both hands and watching me intently as I moved ever so slowly but inexorably toward him.
He stepped forward and swung the pole at me.
I had time to see it coming, and, keeping my legs tight around the spar, I leaned back flat against it as the pole whizzed past harmlessly just inches from my eyes.
But the sudden movement meant that I slid still farther down.
Next time I’d easily be in range. I knew it and so did Brendan.
I tried my best to climb away from him, but for all my efforts I only managed to slide even closer.
Brendan was smiling again. He was sure he had me now.
Not if I could help it.
As he swung the metal pole at me I purposely leaned forward into it, taking a heavy blow on my left wrist, which made my whole left arm go numb.
However, at the same time, I grabbed the pole firmly with my right hand and pulled hard.
Just as it had done with me earlier, it caught Brendan unawares.
He should have let go.
Even so, he would probably have been all right if the grandstand roof had been flat at the front, allowing him to have a steady stance. But it wasn’t. The slope meant that he was leaning forward slightly, and now my sharp tug on the pole had him reeling over the abyss.
I could see the horror on his face as he pitched forward, grasping desperately for the wire stays that crisscrossed the framework to give it added rigidity.
But he didn’t fall.
The bulk of his body had gone over the edge of the roof, but he was still supported by the pole that was underneath him, held up at one end by a wire stay.
The other end of the pole was still in my right hand, and Brendan’s weight was beginning to rotate me alarmingly around the spar.
I looked across at him and he stared back at me, terror deeply etched in his features, a dreadful realization apparent in his eyes—his zombie eyes.
I thought of my darling sister Clare, and also of the lovely Emily, and what might have been.
Maybe I could have saved him if I’d wanted to or maybe I couldn’t.
I’d never know.
I let the pole slip through my fingers and decided to look upward at the black sky rather than downward at the concrete.
I had no wish to witness another of Brendan’s “accidents.”
EPILOGUE
Two months later, on a bright cold morning just two days before Christmas, a thanksgiving service was held for Clare in Ely Cathedral, and this time I organized everything myself.
The original plan had been to hold it at St. Mary’s parish church in Newmarket, but such had been the demand for tickets that somewhere larger had to be found, and the cathedral, just half an hour up the road, was perfect.
There is something very grand about our great churches, and Ely Cathedral is certainly no exception, sitting as it does on a small mound surrounded by the flatlands of the Fens.
The service matched the surroundings, and, unlike at her funeral, there was lots of live music, with the cathedral choir adding to the splendor.
Geoff Grubb read a lesson, as did James and Stephen, while Angela and I both gave eulogies.
Indeed, the Shillingford family had turned out in force.
Even Joshua, Brendan’s younger brother, was present, although Gillian, Brendan’s widow, and their boys were not.
Life for them had been far from easy.
Not only had their father died that night at Kempton but he had been shown to be a murderer, and the press had not been kind to him.
Toby Woodley may not have been the most popular member of the press but he still was one of their brotherhood and they had devoured his killer like a pack of hungry dogs.
“You can’t libel the dead,” Toby had said to me at Stratford races.
So right he was.
Jim Metcalf and his fellow journalists had taken full advantage of that fact, dismantling any semblance of good reputation that Brendan had built up over his years as a trainer.
It had even been widely reported by some that Brendan had been the trainer who had layed his horses to lose, the trainer about whom Toby Woodley had written in the Daily Gazette the previous May.
That, I was sure, had come as a great relief to Austin Reynolds, although both he and I knew it wasn’t true.
The service concluded with a five-minute film tribute to Clare that was shown on big screens set up on either side of the altar and also on a number of screens placed along the nave.
The previous week I had spent a whole day in RacingTV’s editing suite in Oxford putting the film together. It started with a montage of photographs of Clare from throughout her life together with some home movies of her riding her pony as a child. Then there was footage of her career, including big-race victories intercut with snippets of interviews and celebrations. And for the soundtrack I had chosen, appropriately, the song “The Winner Takes It All” by ABBA.
When I had first played the finished film through for myself, it had made me cry, and now as the music echoed around the arches and vaulted ceiling of the Norman cathedral there were many more tears all around me.
But the film wasn’t all doom and gloom. Quite the contrary.
/> There was laughter, too, and spontaneous applause when it finished with a still image of Clare, standing high in her stirrups, all smiles and happiness, punching the air, having just won a race at Royal Ascot.
—
I STOOD under the West Tower, shaking hands, as the huge congregation spilled out past me through the West Door onto Palace Green.
I suppose I initially had chosen a day when there was no racing in the hope that enough people would come to fill St. Mary’s Church in Newmarket. Now it seemed that absolutely everyone I knew in racing, and many more that I didn’t, had turned up at Ely Cathedral, and soon my right hand was aching from so much shaking.
It was a good thing that it wasn’t my left hand.
That was only just out of a cast after eight weeks.
Brendan had fractured my wrist in six places when he’d hit me with the pole, and it had been almost more than I could manage to get myself off the floodlight gantry and back onto the grandstand roof without going the same way he had.
Detective Sergeant Sharp and Detective Chief Inspector Coaker came out of the cathedral together.
“Lovely service,” they both said in unison. “Very moving.”
“Thank you,” I replied. “Any news?”
“Mr. Brendan Shillingford’s car has now been confirmed as the one that hit you and Mrs. Lowther at the pub in Madingley,” DCI Coaker said. “It had been repaired by a garage in Bury St. Edmunds. Mr. Shillingford apparently told them that he’d hit a deer in Thetford Forest. But we’ve been able to extract a sample of Mrs. Lowther’s DNA from blood found on the underside of the vehicle.”
I suppose I was pleased.
“How about the knife?” I asked.
“According to Superintendent Cullen at Surrey, the knife found on Mr. Shillingford was consistent with that used to kill Mr. Woodley, although they were unable to find any trace of his blood on it.”
“Will there be a trial?” I asked.
“Only the remaining inquests,” he said, shaking his head. “There’d be no point in a criminal trial.”
“Will the inquests name Brendan as the murderer?”
“That doesn’t happen anymore. I expect the coroners to record verdicts of unlawful killing in the case of Toby Woodley and Emily Lowther, but there will be little doubt about who was responsible. Mr. Shillingford’s verdict will probably be misadventure.”
Brendan’s misadventure.
The policemen moved away through the door and outside into the pale December sunshine.
I turned to see who was next in the line.
“Hello, Mark,” said Sarah Stacey.
I anxiously looked around behind her.
“Mitchell’s not here,” she said. “I’ve left him.”
I stared at her. “When?”
“About six weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked.
“Because I didn’t leave Mitchell for you,” she said with determination. “I just left him. Time will tell what happens from now on.”
“But where are you living?”
“With my sister,” she said.
I hadn’t even known she’d had a sister. “What about the prenup?” I asked.
“My lawyer says it’s not enforceable. Not after fourteen years of marriage.”
“I hope he’s right.”
“Call me sometime,” she said, and then she turned and walked away, out of the cathedral. Was it also out of my life?
I watched her go. Maybe I would call her or maybe I wouldn’t. As she had said, time would tell.
Harry Jacobs came bounding up to me.
“A fitting tribute,” he said. “Well done. Clare would have been proud of you.”
“Thanks, Harry,” I said, shaking his hand.
He smiled at me warmly and moved away. Nothing more needed to be said, not today.
In November, I had visited Harry’s impressive country mansion near Stratford-upon-Avon to give him the good news that both of his blackmailers were dead and that his guilty secret had died with them.
I certainly wasn’t going to say anything to anyone about any blackmail.
We had sat in his conservatory, looking out over the rolling Warwickshire countryside, and his relief had been almost palpable.
“I want to close that offshore bank account,” he had said, “but there’s more than twenty-five thousand pounds in it, and I can hardly bring that back into my regular accounts without my accountant or tax lawyer asking where it came from.”
“Then give it to charity,” I told him. “Send it anonymously to the Injured Jockeys Fund.”
And that was precisely what he did, right there and then, using his computer and Internet banking.
“Tell me, Harry,” I asked him as I was leaving, “where does all your money come from?”
“Don’t you know?” he asked, slightly amused. “When I was young and extremely foolish, I managed to borrow an obscene amount of money from a bank to buy fifty acres of industrial wasteland. It was contaminated with all sorts of toxins and heavy metals. Dreadful place. I almost cried when I saw it after I’d bought it.”
“Surely you saw it beforehand?”
“I went to the auction to buy something else, but it sold for far too much. The next lot was the fifty acres and the price seemed too good to be true. So I bought it, completely unseen. I’d thought I must be on a winner whatever it was like.”
“And were you?”
“I didn’t think so just then. I tried to sell it immediately for less than I’d paid for it, but there were no takers.”
“So where was the land?” I asked him.
“Somewhere called the West India Docks,” he replied, beaming broadly. “East London. It’s now part of Canary Wharf, and there’s over two million square feet of offices on my land alone.” He laughed. “The bank I originally borrowed the money from now pays me a fortune each year in rent for their headquarters building. Money for old rope.”
One of the other advantages of having the service on a non–race day was that all my colleagues from RacingTV were able to attend. More than that, Gareth had set up his cameras in the cathedral to record everything for posterity, and I’d even seen Iain Ferguson doing a piece for the camera outside as everyone had arrived.
That should have been my job.
“Hi, Mark,” Nicholas said, walking over and shaking me warmly by the hand. “Lovely service.”
“Thanks, Nick,” I said, meaning it. “And Angela was great too.”
“Yes, she was rather good.” His tone almost implied surprise.
“How are things?” I asked.
“Pretty good, at the moment,” he said. “The bank has realized they can’t do without me. Thank God.” He smiled broadly. “It seems there was almost a riot amongst the senior management when it was suggested by the chairman that I should be let go. I’d never realized how much I was appreciated. Perhaps I’ll ask for a raise next.” He laughed. “How about you?”
“I’m finally moving house,” I said. “I’ve bought a place in Oxfordshire, and I move in after the New Year.”
“Congratulations,” he said. “Although I think it’s a bit extreme to go to all that trouble just to get away from your dad.”
We both laughed.
“He’s not been so bad recently,” I said. “Almost human.”
I looked across to where my father was standing with my mother on the other side of the West Door, also talking to people as they left the cathedral. As I was watching, he glanced in my direction and smiled at me, a genuine smile that reached all the way to his eyes.
I smiled back. “I think he’s been better since the conclusion of Clare’s inquest.”
Not that the verdict had been quite the one we wou
ld have wanted.
The coroner had recorded an open verdict in spite of my assurances that Brendan had as good as admitted to me that he’d been responsible for her death—accident or otherwise. Not that I’d been able to properly get my head around the fact that Brendan and Clare had been lovers and that she had been pregnant with his child.
But at least the verdict wasn’t suicide, even though the coroner had still placed great emphasis on the existence of the note addressed to me.
I had tried to explain that I believed it was a letter Clare had been writing to me, after our row at dinner, because she couldn’t reach me on the telephone. It was nothing to do with her death, and it had probably been half written, as found, when Brendan had first arrived in her room.
But the coroner had not been convinced and stubbornly maintained that the note, in fact, was strong evidence of her suicide, although, as he’d said, no one could be sure of what had happened in the hotel room that night.
But I knew.
I was certain of it and that was enough.
Whatever anyone else might think was irrelevant.
BY FELIX FRANCIS
Gamble
BY DICK FRANCIS AND FELIX FRANCIS
Crossfire
Even Money
Silks
Dead Heat
BY DICK FRANCIS
Under Orders
Shattered
Second Wind
Field of Thirteen
10 Lb. Penalty
To the Hilt
Come to Grief
Wild Horses
Decider
Driving Force
Comeback
Longshot
Straight
The Edge
Hot Money
Bolt
A Jockey’s Life
Break In
Proof
The Danger
Banker
Twice Shy
Reflex
Whip Hand
Trial Run
Risk
Dick Francis's Bloodline (9781101600931) Page 30
