Gilgamesh

by Jo Bannister

  Bello:

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  Contents

  Jo Bannister

  1. The Dark Horse

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  2. Roads and Tracks

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  3. Speed and Endurance

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Jo Bannister

  Gilgamesh

  Jo Bannister

  Jo Bannister lives in Northern Ireland, where she worked as a journalist and editor on local newspapers. Since giving up the day job, her books have been shortlisted for a number of awards. Most of her spare time is spent with her horse and dog, or clambering over archaeological sites. She is currently working on a new series of psychological crime/thrillers.

  1. The Dark Horse

  Chapter One

  It was the first really warm evening of the summer. After dinner we repaired to the drawing-room to watch the sun go down over Foxford Wood. Now we were into May, it was in no great hurry but seemed to hang endlessly over The Brink, bleeding pink and golden streamers through the shot-silk sky.

  The drawing-room windows were Tudor, the original intricate mullions casting shadows of almost oriental complexity across the floor and up the walls. In the cold hard light of day it was clear that the window frames needed attention, that the floor was sagging and the plaster cracked, but the setting sun gave us all rose-tinted vision.

  Besides, pristine or shabby, Foxford was charming—not the biggest, or the grandest, or the oldest, or the most architecturally perfect house I’d ever been in, but far and away the most charming. And besides that, it was the home of two very good friends. Given that Harry was otherwise occupied this evening, I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be doing than sitting in the Tudor window of Foxford’s charming, threadbare drawing-room, digesting Ellen Aston’s excellent dinner, sipping David Aston’s home-pickled wine, and watching the sun leak water-colours through the sky.

  From the other window, on the front of the house, I could look down over The Brink and the tiles of our house—mine and Harry’s, all but lost among the burgeoning hedgerows a quarter of a mile away—onto Skipley, its first lights out and twinkling dimly, its dark ungracious form lurking in the valley softened by the translucence of the summer evening. It was dark little towns like Skipley, uncompromising in their creation by and dedication to the Industrial Revolution, that gave the Black Country its name. I had never thought to live here or anywhere like here.

  But from the window where I sat, my eye travelled along the side of the old brick byre, across David’s sand school and then along the swell of The Brink, the angularity of the escarpment blunted by time and clothed in the fertile farmland of the Shires, green and gold with the ripening harvest, to the secret shadowy bluff of the woods and beyond across all of Yeoman England to the borders of Wales. Time and scale seemed as nothing in these closing minutes of the day.

  I said, “It doesn’t look Harry’s going to make it now. I’m sorry, Ellen.”

  She smiled, untroubled. “I’m sorry too, but it doesn’t matter. There’ll be another chance. He’d have got here if he could. What was it this time?”

  I winced. All our friends knew the risks of inviting my husband anywhere. They didn’t even get annoyed when he didn’t show, just wondered what had stopped him this time. “A conference in Coventry. Policing the Midlands into the 1990s. In essence, a fifteen-rounds, no-holds-barred, all-in wrestling-match between the Chief Constable and the rest of the force over allocations, priorities, manning levels, and so on. It must have gone the distance.”

  “Take him some chicken pie for his supper.” She went back to the kitchen to make up a doggy-bag. The gesture defined quite neatly the friendship we had developed in the last year: unpretentious, pragmatic and warm. Harry would deem it a real favour that Ellen had sent a piece of her pie in compensation for missing dinner, and I did too.

  I said to David, “So what’s the next step for the Lester Piggott of the eventing world?”

  He grinned, a dry little grin that arched the sandy brow over one green eye. “The eventing world doesn’t have any Lester Piggotts. The only people who make real money out of it are the feed merchants.”

  “But the glamour!” I exclaimed, winding him up a little, I admit it.

  “Oh yes, there’s that,” he agreed. “There can be few more glamorous experiences in this world than walking two miles home with your boots full of pondweed in pursuit of a horse that has just upended you in two feet of lake water in front of several thousand people. And the TV cameras. Julian Seaman had an interesting cock-up once, and the BBC started ‘Grandstand’with it fifty-three consecutive times.”

  “Well,” I said, “if it isn’t profitable and it isn’t glamorous, you’ll hardly care whether you get going to the world championships or not.”

  “If you believe that,” said David, “you’ll believe anything.”

  Actually, apart from Cyril Smith, no one was less likely to be mistaken for Lester Piggott or any flat-race jockey. He was a tall man, as tall as Harry, with long strong limbs and powerful muscles across his shoulders, and he walked like one of his horses, with long, free, mile-eating strides. Sun and wind had bleached his hair and faded his green eyes like an old cowboy’s and creased up the skin of his face, and now the eyes and the creases and the broad friendly mouth fell into a happy grin of their own volition.

  “The next thing is to finish a couple more events in good shape—in the top four, say, and still with a leg at each corner. The long list will be reduced to a short list after Gatcombe in August, and if we’re still on that, we lie, cheat, steal, crawl, and, if absolutely necessary, jump some fences to keep in with the selectors. There’ll be a training session, and then they’ll announce the team. If we’re on it, we celebrate and start worrying in earnest. If not, we make loud remarks in beer tents about how the selectors are related to all the men on the team and having relations with all the women.”

  The phone rang. David answered it and exchanged greetings; then he put a hand over the mouthpiece and grimaced at me. “It’s one of my owners. I owe her a report on her horse, and then we need to talk about what we aim him for next. I’ll take it in the study; I have the schedules and my diary and everything in there. Can you give me a moment and then hang up?”

  I took the receiver from him. “Don’t worry, your home brew is safe with me.” It was too. I waited for the click on the line and hung up.

  Ellen came back with a tray of coffee and a substantial parcel. “I could put what’s left of the wine in,” she said doubtfully.

  “Serve him right,” I agre
ed.

  She giggled. “Yes, it really is pretty vile, isn’t it?”

  “I hope this works out for David,” I said. “He deserves it; he’s worked hard.”

  “They all work hard. There’s also a big element of luck: the right horse at the right time. Even then it can all go wrong. Horses come apart easier than most things, and they’ve a nasty habit of saving a really good big knee or sprained tendon for the week before the big event.”

  “Hush,” I said, glancing uneasily at the ceiling. “Somebody’ll hear you.”

  Ellen shrugged. “It’s just another of the risks you take in this business. Everyone has at least one hard-luck story; some people have runs of misfortune you can hardly believe are coincidence. David lost an event once when his horse, which had led after dressage, gone clear across country under the time allowed, and passed the vet next morning, tripped over a Jack Russell and pulled a ligament on its way out to the show-jumping. The disappointments are just part of the game; you have to grin and bear them.”

  I shuddered. “I don’t think I could cope with that sort of uncertainty. Fortunately it doesn’t matter, because I couldn’t do any of the rest of it either.”

  “You just have to enyoy it while it lasts and accept that it won’t last for ever. All the same, it’s hard when the bubble bursts. Do you know the Fanes at Standings, who David bought his horse from?”

  I nodded. I knew them a little, the retired colonel and his striking daughter.

  “Three or four years ago Sally seemed one of the best young prospects in eventing. She had a good horse that chalked up several good results in a row, a couple of top yards were offering her rides, and the smart money said she’d ride for her country before she was twenty-five. Then the bubble burst. Her good horse ran into some back trouble and had to be rested for a year. She had no young hopeful ready to fill in, and when Pasha was no longer winning big prizes at important events, the owners who’d been so keen on her riding for them lost interest and went courting riders whose names were in this month’s papers, not just last month’s.

  “She never really recovered from that. The next year Pasha was fit again, but he was already past his prime and no one ever offered her another chance on a really good horse. Mostly what she does now is break horses and bring them out as novices; she still competes, but not at David’s level, I think mostly it’s for fun. It’s a nice enough life; she seems to enjoy herself, but it’s not what any of us expected for her. That’s what it’s like, literally not knowing what tomorrow’s going to bring. That’s what keeps us all glancing over our shoulders and checking our insurance policies.”

  It was as if a cold air had moved through the room. I had thought my business a shade on the precarious side, but I didn’t begin to understand what living dangerously was about. I shook off the momentary oppression. “The horse he got from the Fanes: is that the one they’re considering for the world championships?”

  “The big bay bastard, that’s right. He’s the best horse David’s ever had, and quite the least likeable.”

  We drank the coffee. Ellen took a cup to the study. The roseate sun lowered itself slowly onto the ragged head of Foxford Wood, a little like a reluctant fakir trying out a new bed of nails. Against the glowing disc the treetops stood out preternaturally clear and close, like moss seen through a raindrop.

  The phone said “ding” as David put it down, but he clearly wasn’t finished yet. We could faintly hear him busy behind the thick wall—the rattle of a filing cabinet, then a crack and a clatter as if the books piled high on his desk had all gone flying at once.

  “I wish,” Ellen said thoughtfully, “that David would tell Mrs. Cooper that her horse will never be better than a decent one-day-eventer, instead of letting her persuade him to enter it for things it isn’t up to and then taking out his frustration on the furniture.”

  We waited for David to return, but patently he was still struggling on the horns of his dilemma. At least he was doing it quietly now. Well, more quietly: a dull clang reached our ears and we both grinned.

  After another minute I stood up. “Listen, I’d better make a move. Ellen, it was a lovely dinner, but I’d have been happy to celebrate David’s news with a hamburger. I’ll just stick my head in on the way past and say goodnight.”

  I forgot the doggy-bag. Ellen went back for it. I opened the study door. “I’m just on my way, David. Listen, I do wish you every—”

  It hadn’t been David’s books hitting the floor; it had been David. He lay sprawled in front of the desk, his long legs entangled with those of his upturned chair. He was mostly on his face, and the breeze through the French window stirred his sandy hair. There was a round mark, black and red, in the small of his back.

  “Jesus Christ!” Shock kicked me back nearly twenty years to when I was a young casualty officer faced with my first gunshot wound. Now as then my first thought was not for what had happened but for whether I’d be able to cope. Now, as then, I had to push myself to take the first step towards assuming responsibility for the hurt and hurting man.

  I dropped on my knees beside him. “David, can you hear me?”

  He wasn’t unconscious, but nor was he that far off. His eyes were stretched, glazed and vacant. The fine dew of sweat on his face was nothing to do with the warmth of the evening. His skin felt cool to the touch.

  His eyes crept round to my face. “Clio?” His voice was weak and breathy, and he sounded surprised to see me. “What happened?”

  “An accident,” I lied. “Lie still, love, we’ll soon sort you out.”

  There was virtually no bleeding from the hole in his back. I passed my hand under his belly but found no evidence of an exit wound. If he wasn’t bleeding, I didn’t want to move him any more than that.

  I yelled, “Ellen, get in here.” My voice cracked in a not wholly professional fashion. But then, bullet wounds weren’t my profession any more, or only in a way.

  I couldn’t spare the time to watch her face when she came in with Harry’s supper and saw her husband lying there like a felled tree. I heard her gasp, but by then I was on the phone.

  In gaps while I was put through, I said, “Get a blanket. Nothing too heavy, but we need to keep him warm. Hold his hand, but don’t let him try to move. It’s all right, the ambulance will be here in ten minutes.” In fact, the ambulance was there in five, but it still wasn’t all right.

  With the emergency services on their way, I went back to my patient. There wasn’t that much I could do for him. He needed no help with his breathing, which was free enough if stressed and shallow, and his pulse was rapid and thready but essentially competent. I didn’t think there was significant bleeding inside or out. I didn’t think his life was in any immediate danger. For all my experience and expertise, I couldn’t do more in that particular situation than anyone could have done: keep him warm and comfortable until the ambulance arrived, and reassure his wife, crouching white-faced over his long, still, tumbled body.

  And try to fight back the rage that was growing in me, the towering rage at what had been done to my friend while he sat defenceless and unsuspecting with his back to the window, the impotent fury at what had been done to him in his own home, on one of the best days of his life, while I had sat only the width of a thick wall away but quite powerless to prevent it.

  There would be a time for anger, but not now with the man still lying brokenly on his study carpet and his wife looking in shock for some kind of explanation, which I didn’t have, or help which I couldn’t offer. Everything I could do I had already done; all that was left to do was wait.

  I have never been good at waiting.

  I started to my feet. “Stay here, Ellen. I’ll go meet the ambulance, bring them round the side. Try not to be frightened; it doesn’t look too bad.” It was the truth but not the whole truth. It didn’t look too bad for a gunshot wound to a man’s back, but there are no good ones.

  I went out through the French window and jogged round the side of the house
. To be honest, it wasn’t the ambulance I was looking for. To be entirely honest, I don’t know what I was looking for. If I’d thought there was any danger of meeting the gunman in the dusk, I’d have found an urgent reason to stay with my injured friend and lock all the doors and windows as well.

  But I did see him. At least, I saw—momentarily silhouetted against the glow of the dying sunset—a figure I took to be the man who had shot my friend David through his own French windows, and he was bent low and scuttling across the top end of the sand school towards the thick thorn hedge between the cross-country field and the wood.

  It was only a moment before the dark figure disappeared against the greater darkness of that big old hedge, and could have gone up the line of it towards the wood or round the back of the byre and up through the yard towards the lane. But for that moment my eye held frozen a picture of a bulky, shapeless form running bent almost double over the long, thin thing I took to be the gun. I opened my mouth to shout after him, but only a whisper came out. I couldn’t tell if he knew I was there or not. After a moment, I could no longer tell if he was there or not.

  And after only a minute longer I heard the two-tone siren of the ambulance coming up the hill from Skipley, growing swiftly from faint beginnings to a banshee howl as it cornered the gatepost. It crashed to a halt with a spitting of gravel and two men jumped out with a stretcher.

  Ellen went with the ambulance. I stayed behind to talk to the police.

  The first car arrived just behind the ambulance. John Martin was the senior detective. We greeted one another with the slightly embarrassed rectitude of two people who last met in a singing conga line at Skipley Policemen’s Ball.

  “Harry wasn’t back, then?”

  “We took a swing round your house on the way up. He’d just got in; he’ll be along in a minute.” He looked round the study, not in microscopic detail with a magnifying glass but by pivoting slowly on his heel in the centre. I saw him register the fallen chair and the open window. He was the only policeman I ever knew who didn’t look at least as much like a policeman in plain clothes as he had in uniform. With his wide, permanently wrinkled forehead and nondescript little moustache, he looked exactly like a local-authority parks superintendent.