The mysterious phone call David had received at dead of night nearly a year previously, and which still persisted in giving him nightmares when he was sleeping and brain ache when he was awake, was still as much of a mystery to him as it had been on the night he had received it. And now he found himself at the beginning of his last week’s work on his new book – except, of course, that once the first draft of a book is finished there is still a mountain of work to be done: editing, checking for inconsistencies, proof-reading, rewriting…
‘So your book is nearly finished, is it?’ asked his wife Margaret.
‘If only! I still have one scenario more to write, and it’s going to be the most difficult of the whole lot!’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because the final scenario is supposed to represent what really happened, the real explanation of the mysterious phone call that David received in the first chapter, isn’t it? And if it’s telling the readers what really happened, it has to be even more convincing than any that have gone before! And yet I feel as if I’m just as far away from the truth as I ever have been. God knows, I’ve done my best to make them all convincing…’
‘Well, I think they are!’
‘Bless you for that! But I want to be able to convince the sceptics too!’
‘I’m sure you will…’
‘I wish I had your confidence! What makes you so sure?’
‘Because you have one big advantage working for you.’
‘Do I? And what’s that?’
‘Well, just think. Imagine that you suddenly learn the truth. Would it necessarily be more believable than any of your invented stories?’
‘I would like to think so!’
‘Of course you would, but there’s a very good chance that it might not turn out that way, isn’t there?’
‘Yes, okay, I suppose there is…’
‘And if you did happen to stumble over the real story and it turned out to be far less convincing than any of the stories you’ve invented, what would you do then?’
‘Well, I suppose I’d add a few details to make it more credible…’
‘Could you perhaps switch the stories round, so that you present your favourite story as the one that really happened?’
‘Yes, I suppose I could…’
‘In that case, you’re in a win-win situation!’
Why am I?’
‘Well, look at it this way. You either find out the true story behind that phone call or you don’t. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘And if you don’t, you make one up…’
‘Okay.’
‘…making sure that it’s more convincing than what’s gone before.’
‘True.’
‘And if you find out the truth and then you realise that it’s not really a very good story, then you either improve the story, or reject it out of hand and make one up! So you win either way!’
‘Oh, I see what you mean! You mean I shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story!’
‘Yes, if you want to put it that way…’
‘But I’d still prefer to unearth the true story!’
‘Of course you would, that’s natural, but how likely is that? I wouldn’t like to bet on it!’
‘Neither would I, come to that!’
Over breakfast David deliberated, as he always did, on the direction his day’s work would take, but, by the end of breakfast he was still no nearer any sort of plan for the day. He got up from the table, deposited his empty coffee cup and cereal bowl in the dishwasher, turned round, and caught sight of the telephone which stood on one of the kitchen work surfaces, and he at last found an idea coming into his head. He picked up the telephone, and dialled the number from which he had been called at dead of night nearly a year previously, a number which by now was firmly etched in his memory.
He had done this a good many times, of course, but had always heard nothing but the ‘number unobtainable’ tone. To his surprise, on this occasion he heard that the number was actually ringing out. This was new, he thought, but for at least half a minute nothing further occurred.
‘Hello,’ he suddenly heard – a woman’s voice, and with a slight hint of an Irish accent, but not one he recognised. What’s more, it was an older voice than the one he had heard on the only previous occasion he had been connected to that number, a voice which bore no resemblance to the one he had heard before, and which he would certainly not have been able to mistake for the voice of his own daughter.
‘Hello,’ he replied at last.
‘Can I help you?’ said the voice.
‘I don’t know,’ David answered. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s not the voice I was expecting to hear…’
‘Oh, I expect you were wanting to speak to my daughter, were you?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps. I was just expecting a younger voice. Who’s speaking?’
‘This is Anna McCullough, the mother of Theresa Dulson.’
‘Oh, I see,’ David said, feeling he was perhaps making real progress. ‘Can I speak to Theresa?’
‘Not on this number you can’t!’
‘Does she not live there any more?’
Mrs McCullough laughed. ‘In theory she does, but I don’t think she’ll be here in the foreseeable future.’
‘Has she gone away then?’
Mrs McCullough laughed again. ‘That’s one way of putting it! Not that she really wanted to go where she’s gone!’
David was puzzled, thinking perhaps that the lady’s daughter might have recently died. ‘So how long has she gone away for?’
This question was greeted with a further outbreak of laughter, but this time more prolonged. ‘It depends whether she behaves herself, but even if she does, it’s going to be a good few years.’
‘A few years! Has she gone abroad then?’
‘Oh, bless you, do you really not know?’
‘No, I’m sorry, I really have no idea what you’re talking about!’
‘Really? Where do you live?’
‘Cheltenham.’
‘You live in Cheltenham, and you don’t know what happened to Theresa Dulson? I can’t believe it!’
‘Why not?’
‘Do you take the local paper?’
‘The Gloucestershire Echo? Yes, but I don’t always read it from cover to cover. Why?’
‘Well, for the last few months or so, Theresa’s name has been plastered all over the Echo!’
‘Why? What has she done?’
‘She’s really been a naughty girl, so she has!’
‘Why? What did she do?’
‘I’m surprised you don’t know already! Who are you?’
‘My name is David Sumner, and I had a phone call from Theresa about a year ago.’
‘And what do you do, Mr Sumner?’
‘I’m a writer.’
‘Oh, I see, you’re a journalist. I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were from the press. I’ve said too much. Goodbye.’
And she hung up, not even giving David enough time to deny that he had anything to do with the press.
David put down the handset and walked into the lounge, where Margaret was sitting looking through the morning paper. She looked up.
‘Who were you talking to?’
‘I think she said her name was Anna McCullough. I just tried that number again, you know, the number that called me in the night last year…’
‘And you actually got a reply this time?’
‘Yes, I did. But I’m not sure that I’m any further forward! Does the name Theresa Dulson mean anything to you?’
‘Should it?’
‘Well, the woman I was just talking to said Theresa Dulson was her daughter, and she seemed surprised I didn’t know who Theresa Dulson was, because she’s apparently been all over the Echo recently.’
‘Theresa Dulson… Yes, I thought the name rang a bell. I didn’t really read all about it, but I seem to remember there was a court case at Gloucester a few month
s back, something to do with Cheltenham races, I think…’
‘I think I’d better pop down to the library in town and have a look through past issues of the Echo. Do you mind if I use the car?’
‘No, I don’t need to go out today. Will you be back for lunch?’
‘Don’t know. Depends what I find out. Don’t wait for me anyway – if there’s something really interesting and usable, then I will probably be at the library until closing time! See you later.’
So David visited the Reference Section of Cheltenham Central Library, as he fairly often did, because, as a writer, he was constantly involved in research of one kind or another; consequently he knew a number of the staff who worked there, which was extremely useful, because there was usually someone on the staff who was able to save him a certain amount of time. And so it proved on this occasion, for, as soon as he opened the door, he spotted a man called Peter, who was especially knowledgeable about local matters.
‘Peter,’ he said, ‘you’re just the man I was hoping to see! Does the name Theresa Dulson ring any bells?’
‘Good God, yes!’ he exclaimed. ‘She’s been in and out of the Gloucestershire Echo for months! Haven’t you been following it?’
‘No, I’m afraid I missed that story! When did it start?’
‘Well, if you want to start the story at the very beginning, you’d have to go back as far as last year’s Cheltenham National Hunt Festival, although it wasn’t until a couple of months later that the name of Theresa Dulson started to appear.’
‘You mean I’ve got to look through a whole year’s issues of the Echo to follow the story?’
‘I’m afraid so, yes,’ Peter laughed. ‘But it’s quietened down a bit now, now she’s safely behind bars.’
‘Behind bars? You mean she’s been sent to prison? Her mother told me she’d been a naughty girl…’
‘You know her mother?’
‘Not really, but I have spoken to her. What’s she been up to then?’
‘You’ll see for yourself when you start reading the story!’
So David started by looking at the issue of the Gloucestershire Echo which reported the result of the previous year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup, but could see nothing relevant there apart from the name of the winner, which he already knew; although David was not especially interested in racing, for anyone who lived in Cheltenham, it was almost impossible not to be aware of the name of the Gold Cup winner.
By the time the library closed for the day, David was only about one third of the way through the pile of newspapers he had been trudging through, although, he admitted to Margaret when he finally returned home, he did already have the bones of a story which he thought matched the impact of the opening chapter. In the end he spent a whole week leafing through the Echo, but eventually, by the end of the following week, he had completed his version of Theresa Dulson’s story, taking care, of course, to change the names of anybody involved in the real story, especially the name of Theresa herself, whom he renamed Mary Fletcher. Here is Mary’s story, as written by David Sumner:
One sunny day in the middle of March, a crowd of more than 50,000 people, a large number of them Irish, had assembled in the shadow of Cleeve Hill, the highest point of the Cotswolds, to witness the running of the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the most coveted of steeplechase trophies, which has taken place every year since 1924, although the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival, of which it forms the centrepiece, was instituted in the early 1860s.
But the story which was to grip Cheltenham – and, indeed the whole of both the British and Irish racing fraternity for most of the following year – had nothing to do with the Gold Cup itself, but with one of the minor races; the Gold Cup is always run in the middle of the afternoon, and is generally preceded and followed by three other races, all over hurdles or enormous fences. In terms of the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival, of course, minor is a relative term, for the quality of the horses, the amount of the prize money to be won, and the size of the crowd all combine to transform even the least important of the races on the card into an event which would be considered major at any lesser venue than Prestbury Park.
The race in question was the penultimate race on the card, a steeplechase handicap on the Old Course, as it was known, whose entries were limited to four year olds. By now some of the enormous crowd had already left, but even so, the ‘Cheltenham Roar’, which greets the start of every race, was hardly diminished in volume when the race began.
The difference in atmosphere, however, was more noticeable at the end of the race, for, whereas the noise at the end of the Gold Cup nearly matches the volume of the famous ‘Roar’, especially this particular year, when the Gold Cup had been won by the favourite, on the occasion of this minor race the only people cheering were the few who had backed the winning outsider, supported enthusiastically by most of the bookmakers, who considered a 100-1 winner as giving them an opportunity to recoup some of the losses they had suffered in the big race of the day.
The result of the race did not seem out of the ordinary at the time, for, even at the Cheltenham Festival, 100-1 winners are not unknown – the Gold Cup itself famously had a 100-1 winner, Norton’s Coin, in 1981 – but once the bookmakers had done their sums afterwards, stories started to circulate in racing circles about the losses that many of them had had to bear; there had been, it seemed, very few bookmakers who had not been obliged to pay out on a £1,000 stake, which means that the bookmaker has to pay out £100,000, plus, of course, returning the original stake. At first the stories were regarded as merely racing gossip, but, by the end of April, such august publications as the Racing Post were taking the stories much more seriously, even going so far as to report that the police were beginning to take an active interest.
The principal reason for the Racing Post to give credence to what they had originally regarded as ‘gossip’ was the track history of the horse on which the bookmakers had reportedly lost so much money. Your Family was a four-year-old, which, prior to its successful appearance at Cheltenham, had only raced at less prestigious courses such as Market Rasen, Hereford, Southwell and Lichfield, although it had had one outing, a month prior to the Cheltenham Festival, at Chepstow, the venue of the Welsh Grand National, where it had seemingly confirmed its potential by coming next to last in a field of seven; and yet here it was just one month later, winning at Cheltenham by several lengths, and with the owner pocketing £50,000 prize money!
The first time the police admitted that they were taking an interest in the outcome of the race was when they announced that a Cheltenham woman named Mary Fletcher was helping them with their inquiries two or three months after the race in question; at the same time there were reports of police visits having been made to a yard where Your Family had been stabled for the duration of his visit to Cheltenham, and to the residence of the horse’s owner in Staffordshire. Reports also said that two trainers’ yards in Ireland had been visited by the Irish police, although there was so far no confirmation that this had any connection to Your Family’s win.
Mary Fletcher was a divorcee living in Bishop’s Cleeve, a village on the northern outskirts of Cheltenham, just on the other side of the racecourse from the town itself. She was in her late twenties, and worked as a cleaner at a factory making electronic components for the aircraft industry; since her divorce, she had been living alone. Her ex-husband was now in prison, having been convicted of assaulting Mary repeatedly ever since their marriage, which had lasted only five or six years, the last straw having been when her husband arrived home drunk one evening and she had had the temerity to say she wanted a divorce. Her immediate reward was a black eye, followed by a stab wound in the arm a few hours later; that the outcome of the knife attack was not even more serious was because she had heard him come into the bedroom and parried the blow with a pillow, screaming so loud that her next-door neighbours, who occupied the other half of her semi, started banging on the wall, whereupon her husband fled and she was able to summon the police
. Never had she felt so relieved that the walls separating her house from the neighbour’s were so thin. As a result of the attack her husband was charged with Grievous Bodily Harm, found guilty, and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
One evening, Mary had been in her local pub with a few friends, when Mavis, a particular friend with whom she worked, had asked her if she would like to make ‘a few bob’ simply by making a phone call in the middle of the night. She had been reluctant to begin with, but, after Mavis had assured her that the risk to her was low because she would not even be aware of what the operation was meant to achieve, nor even the identity of the person she would be telephoning, or the person who was running the operation, she acquiesced, and was especially pleased when she discovered that her ‘few bob’ would actually amount to £500!
At first, because of Mavis’s assurances that there was no risk involved unless she asked too many questions and was given a lot of information which she did not really need to know, Mary did not inquire too closely. ‘You will receive instructions who to call and when, and the exact words to use,’ she had said, ‘you will not be told the person’s name or where they live, and the message you pass on will not mean anything to you.’
But Mary was by nature an inquisitive person, and soon she wanted to know more. ‘When will I get the money?’ she asked her friend. ‘Will I get paid in advance?’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ came the reply. ‘It will depend on whether everything works out.’
‘So how long will I have to wait?’
‘Not too long. Probably two or three days, I should think.’
‘And when will I have to make the phone call?’
‘I don’t know. Not for a few more weeks anyway.’
‘How will I know who to ring?’
‘You’ll receive written instructions.’
‘Who from?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Will the instructions come through the post?’
‘No, they will be pushed through your letter box.’
‘It’s not something dodgy, is it?’
‘It’s not something you need to worry about, as long as everything goes to plan. And the less you know, the less you have to worry about.’
At Dead of Night Page 18
