by Dick Francis
‘It might be,’ he said. ‘Or it could be another foal. I can’t tell. Many foals look alike.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But I assure you that the foal in this picture is Peninsula. He was the very first foal that Millie Barlow had delivered on her own. She was so proud of that horse and her part in its life that she kept a copy of that picture in a silver frame. It was her most prized possession. Isn’t that right, Mr Radcliffe?’
‘I have no idea,’ he said.
‘After his sister’s death, Scot Barlow asked for the picture in the silver frame to keep in his home as a lasting reminder of her. But the photo was removed from its frame and taken away from Scot Barlow’s house on the night he was killed. Why do you think that was?’
‘I have no idea,’ he said again.
‘I put it to you, Mr Radcliffe, that the picture was removed because it was being used by Scot Barlow to blackmail you in the same way that his sister had done previously. Isn’t that right?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s nonsense. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why would anyone blackmail me?’
‘Does Jacques van Rensburg still work for you?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe he does.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He couldn’t, could he? Because he’s dead. Isn’t that right, Mr Radcliffe?’
‘I have no idea,’ he said yet again.
‘Oh yes, I think you do,’ I said. ‘Jacques van Rensburg went on holiday to Thailand, didn’t he?’
‘If you say so,’ Radcliffe replied.
‘Not if I say so, Mr Radcliffe,’ I said, taking yet another sheet of paper from my stack and holding it up. ‘The South African Department of Home Affairs in Pretoria says so. He went to Thailand on holiday and he never came back, isn’t that right?’
Roger Radcliffe stood silently in the witness box.
‘Do you know why he didn’t come back, Mr Radcliffe?’ I asked.
Again he was silent.
‘He didn’t come back because, as the South African government records show, he was drowned on Phuket beach by the Great Asian Tsunami. Isn’t that right?’
Radcliffe still said nothing.
‘And, Mr Radcliffe, do you know when the Great Asian Tsunami disaster occurred?’
Radcliffe shook his head and looked down.
‘It is sometimes known as the Boxing Day Tsunami, is it not, Mr Radcliffe?’ I said. ‘Because it took place on December the twenty-sixth. Isn’t that right?’
He made no move to answer.
I continued. ‘Which means that, as Jacques van Rensburg was drowned in Thailand by the Great Asian Tsunami on the twenty-sixth of December 2004, this picture had to have been taken before Christmas that year. Which also means, does it not, Mr Radcliffe, that, even though the record of the birth submitted by you to Weatherbys shows otherwise, Peninsula had to have been foaled prior to the first of January 2005 and was therefore, in fact, officially a four-year-old horse when he won the Two Thousand Guineas and the Derby last year and not a three-year-old as demanded by the Rules of Racing?’
For what seemed like an age, the silence in the court was broken only by the sound of fast-moving pencils on notebooks in the press box, and by a slight sob from Deborah Radcliffe in the public seats.
The judge looked intently at Roger Radcliffe, who was standing silently in the witness box with his head down, his previous ramrod appearance now nothing but a distant memory.
‘Well?’ said the judge to him. ‘The witness will please answer the question. Was Peninsula a four-year-old horse when he ran in the Derby?’
Radcliffe lifted his head a fraction. ‘I refuse to answer on the grounds that I might incriminate myself.’
It was as close to a confession as we were likely to get.
But I hadn’t finished with him yet.
‘Mr Radcliffe,’ I said. ‘Did you murder Millie Barlow?’
His head came up sharply and he looked at me. ‘No,’ he said, but without much conviction.
I pressed on. ‘Did you murder Millie Barlow because she made further blackmail demands on you after Peninsula had won the Derby?’
‘No,’ he said again.
‘And did you then murder Scot Barlow when he took over the blackmail demands from his dead sister?’
‘No,’ he said once more.
‘Or was it your godson, Julian Trent, who actually carried out that second murder, on your instructions, after you had used intimidation of these innocent people in order to secure his release from prison for that very purpose?’ I waved my right hand towards Josef Hughes and George Barnett behind me.
Radcliffe’s demeanour finally broke completely.
‘You bastard,’ he shouted at me. ‘You fucking bastard. I’ll kill you too.’
He tried to leave the witness box, but he had made just two steps towards me before he was surrounded by court security guards, and the police.
The judge banged his gavel and silence was briefly restored.
‘The defence rests, My Lord,’ I said, and sat down.
Perry Mason himself would have been proud of me.
CHAPTER 21
The judge adjourned the case for lunch while Roger Radcliffe was arrested by Inspector McNeile. Radcliffe was cautioned and made aware that he had the right to remain silent, but that advice was obviously a bit late. The man I had come to know as ‘the whisperer’ was finally led away, still spouting obscenities in my direction.
The smarmy prosecution QC came across and firmly shook my hand. ‘Well done,’ he said with obvious warmth. ‘We don’t often get to see the likes of that in an English court.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I intend to make another “no case” application and request an acquittal.’
‘Up to the judge, old boy,’ he said, ‘I’ll seek instruction from the CPS, but I don’t think there will be any objection from our side. This jury would never convict Mitchell after hearing that lot.’ He laughed. ‘Best fun I’ve had in years. I don’t even mind losing this one.’
Eleanor, behind me, rubbed my shoulders.
‘You were brilliant,’ she said. ‘Absolutely brilliant.’
I turned and smiled at her. Josef Hughes and George Barnett sat behind her, beaming away as if smiles could go out of fashion.
‘You two can have your self-respect back,’ I said. ‘Without you here I think he might have bluffed his way out.’
If it was possible, they smiled even wider, and then shook me and each other by the hand. I thought it unlikely that the Law Society would give Josef back his right to practise, but he was still a young man and he was bright. I was confident that, without the fear that had consumed them over the past fifteen months, he and Bridget and baby Rory would now be fine.
‘How about a coffee?’ I said to them.
As we made our way out of court I bumped into Scot Barlow’s parents. Mr Barlow senior was a big man and he stood full-square in front of me, blocking my path to the door. He was also considerably taller than I, and now he stood quite still and silent, looking down at me. I wondered if he was pleased or not. He had just discovered the truth about who had killed his children and why, but he had also discovered that they had both been blackmailers. Perhaps he might have preferred it if Steve Mitchell had been convicted of the murder of his son. That would have brought finality. Now he would have to endure another trial, and some unpleasant revelations.
He went on staring at me while I stood waiting in front of him, staring back. Eventually he nodded just once, and then turned aside to let me pass.
Eleanor, Josef, George, Bruce, Nikki and I sat at one of the tables in the small self-service cafeteria area in the main court corridor, drinking vending-machine coffee from thin brown plastic cups, toasting our success.
‘But why was it so important?’ asked Bruce.
‘Why was what so important?’ I said.
‘About the horse’s age,’ he said. ‘So what if the horse was a year older than it
was supposed to be when it ran in the Derby? I know that it was cheating and all that, but was it really worth murdering someone over? It was only a race.’
‘Bruce,’ I said. ‘It may have been “only a race”, but horse racing is very big business indeed. That horse, Peninsula, was sold to stud for sixty million US dollars. And mainly because it won that race.’
His eyebrows rose a notch or two.
‘But it was because he won it as a three-year-old running against other three-year-olds that he was worth all that money. Three is young for a horse, but only horses of that age are allowed to run in the “classic” races held in England, and also the Triple Crown races in America.’
‘I never realized,’ said Bruce.
‘Peninsula was syndicated into sixty shares,’ I said. ‘That means that he was sold in sixty different parts. Radcliffe says that he kept two for himself, so there are fifty-eight other shareholders who each paid Radcliffe a million dollars for their share. I suspect that most of those will soon be wanting their money back. I’d like to bet there are now going to be a whole bunch of law suits. It will all get very nasty.’
‘But why didn’t Radcliffe just register the horse with the right age and run him the year before?’ Josef asked.
‘Most racehorse foals are born between the first of February and the end of April, certainly by the middle of May,’ I said. ‘The gestation period for a horse is eleven months and mares need to be mated with the stallion at the right time so that the foals arrive on cue. The trick is to get the foals born as soon as possible after the turn of the year so that they are as old as possible, without them actually being officially a year older. In Peninsula’s case, either someone messed up with the date of his mare’s covering or, more likely, he was simply born a couple of weeks prematurely when he was due to be a very early foal anyway. Radcliffe must have decided to keep his birth secret until January. If he had registered it correctly in December then Peninsula would have been officially a yearling when he was biologically less than a month old. Then he would have been at a great disadvantage against the other horses born nearly a whole year before him but classified as being the same age. He would most likely still have been a good horse, but not a great one. Not sixty million dollars great. To say nothing of the prize money that Radcliffe will now have to give back for all of those races. The Epsom Derby alone was worth over seven hundred thousand pounds to the winner, and the Breeders’ Cup Classic had a total purse of more than five million dollars.’ I had looked them both up on the internet. It was going to be a real mess.
‘But Millie knew the truth because she’d been there when Peninsula was foaled,’ said Eleanor.
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Radcliffe had probably paid her off. But maybe she was greedy, and that cost her her life. It was our good fortune that you were able to find an image of that picture of Millie and Peninsula as a foal.’ I smiled at her. ‘But the silly thing is that, if Radcliffe hadn’t taken that photo from the silver frame in Scot Barlow’s house, I would never have realized that it was important. He’d have literally got away with murder, and the racing fraud. I suppose, to Radcliffe, it must have shone bright as a lighthouse, advertising his guilt, but no one else would have thought so, certainly not this long after the event.’
‘But how did you know about Millie’s car?’ Eleanor said.
‘I became suspicious when I couldn’t find any regular payments to any car-finance companies on Millie’s bank statements,’ I said. ‘And there was no one-off large payment around the date you told me she had bought it. And Scot’s statements didn’t show that he had bought it for her, so I sent Nikki to the dealer in Newbury to ask some questions.’
Nikki smiled. ‘But you were a bit naughty telling Radcliffe that they definitely recognized him from the photo,’ she said. ‘They only said that it might have been him, but they weren’t at all sure.’
I looked at their shocked faces and laughed. ‘It was a bit of a risk, I know. But I was pretty sure by then that I was right, and Radcliffe couldn’t take the chance of me calling the Mazda chap.’
‘How about Julian Trent?’ asked George. ‘What will happen to him?’
‘I hope the police will now be looking for him in connection with Barlow’s murder,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, I intend to keep well clear of him.’
‘So do we all,’ said George seriously. He was clearly worried and still frightened by the prospect of coming face to face with young Mr Trent. And with good reason.
‘What about the second witness?’ Bruce asked, indicating towards a man sitting alone reading a newspaper at one of the other tables. ‘Aren’t you going to call him?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I always intended calling only one of them, but last Thursday when we got the witness summonses, I didn’t know which of them it would be. I only found out on Friday when I showed the picture of Radcliffe to Josef and George and saw their reaction.’
I’d had a second picture in my pocket on Friday. Apicture of my second witness, cut out from the Racing Post, but it hadn’t been needed.
Now I stood up and walked over to him on my crutches.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much for coming. But I’m afraid I don’t think I’ll be needing you any more.’
Simon Dacey turned in his chair and faced me. ‘This has all been a waste of time, then,’ he said with slight irritation. He folded his newspaper and stood up.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What’s been going on in there?’ he asked, nodding his head towards the door of number 1 court. ‘There seems to have been lots of excitement.’
‘You could call it that, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Roger Radcliffe seems to be in a spot of bother.’
There was a slightly awkward moment of silence while he waited for me to explain further, but I didn’t. The trial was not yet technically over, and he was still, in theory, a potential witness.
‘No doubt I’ll find out why in due course,’ Dacey said with a little more irritation.
Indeed he would, I thought. For a start, he would also be losing his win percentage from all those Peninsula race victories. He might even lose his training licence, but I rather hoped not. I suspected that he knew nothing about the fraud, or the murders, just as he knew nothing about his wife’s affair with Steve Mitchell.
Francesca Dacey’s affair had been a bit of a red herring in my thinking. At one point I had wondered if Mitchell had been framed by her husband simply to get him out of the way. But the truth was that Steve had been nothing more than a convenient fall guy.
Radcliffe had clearly been determined that Mitchell should be convicted so as to close the police file on the case, to ensure that no further investigations were made, investigations that might uncover the blackmail, and the true reason for Barlow’s murder. Radcliffe’s whispering intervention with me, the belt and braces of his frame-up plot, had ultimately led to his downfall. Without it, I was quite certain, Steve Mitchell would, even now, be starting a life sentence behind bars, and I would have been one of the prosecution witnesses, describing in detail my encounter with Scot Barlow in the showers at Sandown Park racecourse.
Ironically, the very attempt to pervert the cause of justice had ultimately been responsible for justice being done.
When the court resumed at two o’clock, I hardly had to make my submission. The judge immediately asked the prosecution for the Crown’s position and their QC indicated that he had been instructed not to oppose the application. The judge then instructed the jury to return a not-guilty verdict and Steve Mitchell was allowed to walk free from the dock.
The story had travelled fast and there was a mass of reporters and television cameras outside the court building when Bruce and I emerged with Steve Mitchell at about three o’clock, into a wall of flash photography. Sir James Horley QC, I thought while smiling at the cameras, would be absolutely livid when he watched the evening news. He had missed out completely on the number one story of the day.
> As we were engulfed by the sea of reporters, Eleanor shouted that she would go and fetch her car. There would be no chance of finding a taxi with all this lot about.
‘Be careful,’ I shouted back at her, thinking of Julian Trent, but she was gone.
Steve and Bruce answered questions until they were nearly hoarse from having to talk loudly over the traffic noise and the general hubbub, and even I was cajoled by some of the reporters into a rash comment or two. I was careful not to say things that would find me in hot water for giving out privileged or sensitive information, things that might be pertinent to the future trial. However, Steve Mitchell had no such qualms. He eagerly laid into the now-ruined reputation of Roger Radcliffe, and also managed to include some pretty derogatory remarks about his old adversary, Scot Barlow, as if it had somehow been all Barlow’s fault that Radcliffe had framed him. I thought that it was a good job that, under English law, the dead couldn’t sue for slander.
Finally, with deadlines approaching and their copy to file, the reporters began to drift away and eventually to leave us in peace.
‘Bloody marvellous, Perry,’ Steve said to me while pumping my hand up and down. ‘Almost as good as winning the National. Thank you so much.’
I decided not to mention my fee – not just yet, anyway.
Bruce and Steve departed together on foot, while I stepped back inside the court building to wait for Eleanor and the car.
I decided to call my father.
‘Hello, Dad,’ I said when he answered. ‘How are things?’
‘It’s good to be home,’ he said.
Alarm bells suddenly started ringing in my head.
‘What do you mean, it’s good to be home?’ I said.
‘Got back here about ten minutes ago,’ he said. ‘I left the hotel as soon as I got your message.’
‘But I didn’t give anyone a message,’ I said.
‘Yes you did,’ he said with certainty. ‘On this phone. One of those damned text things. Hold on. I could hear him pushing the buttons. Here it is. “Hi Dad, Everything fine. Please go home as quickly as possible. Love Geoffrey”.’
