Gilgamesh

by Jo Bannister

  Grim, grey Skipley, with its cloak of grit and perpetual slick of drizzle, was centuries away, but only minutes by car. Its grimy urban fingers reached out to the hospital at the foot of The Brink. For the moment, the ring road held its industrious sprawl in check, but if that defence was ever breached, it would be up this hill in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Then Foxford and Standings would be no more than bus-stops on the town service, and the cottage where Harry and I lived would very likely be a pub, with a fake water-wheel in the garden and the sign “Kosy Korner” in poker-work over the door.

  I was born and bred in the town, but it wasn’t a town like Skipley, and anyway a year in the country had made a kind of rural recidivist of me already. Any time now I’d be joining Save Our Sycamore societies and Who Needs Motorways groups.

  Held up at intervals by a bread-van, a school bus, and an agricultural implement I couldn’t identify. A year in the country isn’t long enough to come to terms with the deeper intricacies of the Massey Ferguson range; I probably took longer driving from Foxford to Standings than it took Sally to ride it. Finally I turned in between high brick gateposts and up the wide gravel drive to the big house. I think it was the fastest I’d travelled on that journey.

  The housekeeper called Sally down, and I told her what David had said. Her face began to shine, with a strange dark glow that had a touch of fanaticism in it.

  “Bless him,” she said, and it was no mere figure of speech but an expression of religious fervour. “That’s absolutely typical of the guy: the day after he’s put in the hospital with a bullet in his back and no idea if he’ll ride again, he’s making plans so the horse won’t lose his chance and the team won’t lose the horse.”

  “Will they find someone who can ride him? You said yourself, not half a dozen riders in Europe could have got him to where he is today.”

  “It’s a lot easier riding a trained horse than training him. Even so, this sport’s full of perfectly good riders who wouldn’t throw a leg across that saddle, even for a shot at the World Championships.” She grinned at me then, a sudden ferocious gleam. “Besides, they may not get the chance. I’m going to ride him at Bramham at the end of the month. I’ll give the selectors something to look at. If we do good, they’re not going to throw me off the horse and put somebody else on.”

  Carefully expressionless, I thought about it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, let alone shocked. David wanted someone to ride Gilgamesh in the championships—why not Sally, who raised and broke him, who at least knew what problems the big horse presented? Clearly she was a good rider. Better than that, according to Ellen: only bad luck had kept her from breaking into the top rank along with David Aston and the select band of other event riders whose names the public know. She had the talent; she obviously had the drive. If she had David’s horse she could probably go to the World Championships with as much chance as anyone else there. Maybe it was no more than fate reversing the swing of the pendulum, giving her the opportunity to benefit from David’s misfortune as others had no doubt benefitted from hers.

  Yet a tiny distaste stirred in me. It may have been more sentimental than rational, but I didn’t like seeing her step so readily into the shoes of a man who’d had the legs blown from under him. There was something greedy about it. But I wished her luck and said I’d follow her progress with interest.

  I went home then and spent the rest of the evening watching bad TV with half an eye and wondering if, as we walked together up the drive to Foxford, I should have asked her a different question. And whether she’d have answered me if I had.

  Chapter Eight

  By the time Harry got home, he was fit to drop, and I felt like a worm for keeping him from the bed he deserved and needed. But I needed to talk about the spectre my mind had conjured up to haunt me. At least, I hoped and believed it was a spectre, a thing of horror but no substance manufactured out of coincidence by a deeply suspicious, if not actually unhinged, mind. What I wanted Hairy to do was debunk my malicious little thought before it got ideas above its station and became a theory.

  I said, “We keep talking about ‘him.’ ‘He’shot David and ‘he’ stole the painting, and who was ‘he’and where did ‘he’go then? Is there a reason for that, or is it just habit?”

  Harry looked at me as if I’d offered him a hamster sandwich. “What?”

  “Have you some reason to suppose the crime was committed by a man?”

  “Have you a reason to suppose it was committed by a woman?” It might have been a parrot’s response, but it wasn’t; it was a serious and astute question, and from that familiar sharpness in the tired depths of his eyes, he was looking for an answer.

  Well, I wouldn’t have raised the subject if I hadn’t wanted to talk about it. I might have been happier asking the questions and ruminating over the answers for a while, but I wasn’t blind to Harry’s right, and duty, to require whatever cards I thought I held to be shown face up.

  “‘Reason’ is too big a word. But wouldn’t it explain some things—well, one thing anyway? The parka. Covering her face would be a poor disguise if the rest of her body from her neck to her knees was giving her away. A sweater or a light jacket wouldn’t do: it had to be something long and bulky. A parka.”

  Harry said, “Who?”

  Even now his directness takes me by surprise sometimes, throws me off balance. “What?”

  “No, who—who do you suspect? Come on, Clio,” he said, in that special tone that senior policemen keep for junior policemen who put their own fingerprints on evidence and fail to appreciate the significance of back wounds in supposed suicides, “that wasn’t a hypothetical question. You have someone in mind. Not Ellen, surely?”

  “Good God, no.” The very idea was absurd, not only because I had been with her when the shooting occurred. “Certainly not Ellen. Listen, I don’t want to accuse anyone; I don’t have any evidence. But—”

  “But?”

  “Harry, I’d love you to be able to tell me it couldn’t have been Sally Fane.”

  I’d succeeded in surprising him. For a moment he said nothing. I could see him consider it, hear the rumble of machinery as his brain milled it through. Then he said, with no particular inflexion, “What makes you think Sally shot David?”

  I shrugged, unhappy and defensive. “I’m not sure I do think that. It’s just that—well, the idea occurred to me and I couldn’t seem to shake it off. And it does have its attractions.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as the parka. Such as the fact that she was around when I was hit. And before that, when I tripped over the hatch, she damned near ran me down with the horse. If she wanted to distract my attention from where she’d put the painting, it was as good a way as any.”

  “It’s a wonder, then, that she didn’t do a better job of shutting you up,” he said with a heavy humour that did not disguise the serious thought he was giving it. “What are you asking me to believe—that when she saw you go back to the tank, she hit you, stuck your head in the hole, and dropped the cover onto you, and then lifted the cover, pulled you out again and gave you artificial respiration?”

  I started to bridle. I knew his doubt was professional and necessary, but I couldn’t help taking it personally. “Yes, about that. You were already on your way to Foxford then; perhaps she heard your car. Or maybe she thought Karen was coming. Pulling me out might have seemed the only way to stop anyone wondering if she’d pushed me in.”

  “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” Harry said quietly. “I mean, it’s more than just idle conjecture. You think Sally Fane did it.”

  “I told you, I’ve no evidence. For all I know, she may have a watertight alibi putting her somewhere else for an hour either side of ten o’clock. I hope to God she has. But if you want to know what I think, I think it was her.”

  “In God’s name, why?”

  All things considered, he’d taken it quite well. He hadn’t laughed in my face. He hadn’t told me to stick to
make-believe and leave the detection of real crime to those qualified to do it. He had listened and considered, and treated my fears with respect. And all that was about to end.

  “I think she wants to ride his horse.”

  I watched expressions fleet across his face like cloud shadow chasing over a hillside. For a moment there was disgust, as if I’d played a shabby trick on him; then bewilderment as he wondered if he’d understood what I was saying; then impatience going on anger because, just briefly, he thought I was wantonly crossing the demarcation line between my world of imaginary evils and his of the real thing.

  David had thought something similar. When I got my head clear of this thing, I was going to have to worry why people I cared about thought, even briefly, that I saw them as novel-fodder.

  Finally Harry’s features settled in a kind of wary, almost reluctant receptiveness, his credulity strained but not severed. He knew really that I wouldn’t joke about this. He was ready to listen to an explanation of my extraordinary claim and to jump right down my throat if it wasn’t good enough.

  “You think Sally Fane shot David Aston because she wanted a ride on his horse?”

  It was like facing the third degree. I had to keep reminding myself that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I swallowed, took a deep breath, and tried to justify myself.

  “David was on the long list for the British team going to the World Three-Day Event Championships. Not necessarily because he’s one of the top dozen riders in the country, although he may be, but because he has one of the very best horses, Gilgamesh—he’s called after that painting. By all accounts, he’s a mad, bad, evil bastard, but he has more sheer ability than any other horse in the country, possibly in the world. He’s not just a horse as far as these people are concerned: he’s the horse, and whoever can ride him probably gets a ticket to the event that’s the Leeds Piano Prize, the Royal Variety Show, the Bolshoi Ballet, and the Olympic pentathlon all rolled into one.

  “Colonel Fane bred him, and Sally broke him and started training him. Then they sold him to David. I don’t know the full story; from what David said, she was having trouble with him, but he reckoned she’d have got his measure, given time. If she’d kept him, it would be her facing selection, not David—and I don’t think David would be in the hospital.”

  I was getting my hearing, and without interruptions. My pulse steadied, and I concentrated less on how I was saying this and more on what I was saying. “Maybe she thinks she still has some rights in the horse. Or maybe she doesn’t give a damn so long as she gets what she wants. Every day of the week sportsmen and women do things and take things that will wreck their own brains and bodies, just for a shot at the big one—the cup, the medal, the title, the belt. If they’re prepared to do that to themselves, is it so improbable that some of them—maybe only a few of them, but one or two—are prepared to do harm to their opponents?

  “Eventing is a high-risk sport anyway. Any day David could have ridden out to exercise and come back in an ambulance or a black plastic bag. She left it this late hoping something like that would happen and given her the same opportunity without the risk. But it didn’t, so she made sure that he wouldn’t be available for selection but the horse would. She wasn’t particularly vindictive: she didn’t want to kill him or even maim him: she used a small-calibre gun and we may yet find she was careful enough to leave him with no permanent disability. He’s out of the World Championships—with luck, that’s all. She’s riding Gilgamesh at Bramham at the end of the month, and David’s already told the selectors to use the horse if they can find a rider. She’s got her chance; it’s up to her now.”

  I paused, more for breath than because I had finished, and risked a glance at Harry’s face to see how I was faring. I won’t say he was sold—he never looks entirely sold, even when the judge reaches for his black hanky—but he was following closely and the strained credulity had given way to an open mind, still laced perhaps with that professional doubt but clearly considering the idea on its merits, without prejudice for its innate outlandishness. It was the best I could have hoped for.

  He said pensively, “So what actually happened last night?”

  I thought for a moment, then began to speculate. “She drove over from Standings with the rifle, the parka, and the scarf in the boot. She parked somewhere not too obvious—maybe that little Lovers’ Lane effort that runs up to Foxford Wood? From there she crossed into David’s big field and walked along the hedge and waited somewhere she could watch the back windows. She was waiting to get David on his own.

  “Me being there was a problem. She expected him to be working in the study as usual, and she needed the window open because to shoot with that degree of accuracy she had to get close without him hearing and turning to face her. If the phone hadn’t gone, she’d have been in trouble. Maybe he’d have been safe, at least for another day.

  “After she’d shot him, she took the painting—she’d know about it; David named the horse she sold him after it—to establish a motive. If a burglar shot him, no one would ask who stood to gain by disabling him. But having it put her in danger, so she dumped it at the first opportunity. It took longer than she expected though: the frame was nearly too big for the hole. She must have sweated blood getting rid of it, and more blood again if she heard me coming out of the house behind her. A minute earlier I’d have caught her struggling with it half-way through the hatch and she’d probably have shot me too. I think she did try to kill me when she realised I knew what that noise was. If she could have made a convincing accident of it, I wouldn’t be here now.”

  There was a long quiet while neither of us spoke. Harry broke it. “Does she know you suspect her?”

  I thought back. “I don’t think so. Last time I saw her I hadn’t worked any of this out.”

  “Then it’ll keep till tomorrow. Come on, let’s go to bed.”

  But he hadn’t quite finished. After the light was out and I thought he was asleep, a mumble came up from under the quilt. I raised it an inch and murmured down the dark tunnel, “What was that, dear?”

  The bed humped and heaved as he turned towards me. There was enough twilight penetrating the drawn curtains for me to see the rough shape of him, long and bulky under the bedclothes, and for a moment the terrible tidy stillness of David Aston under his came to trouble me.

  Harry said, “Do you want to just happen to be there when I talk to her tomorrow?”

  I shuddered and shook my head. “If I’m wrong about this, I’m going to find it hard enough to look her in the face again. At least it’s your job to ask embarrassing questions. If she ever accuses me of putting you up to it, I shall lie in my teeth and say that a nasty suspicious husband is the cross I bear.”

  “Thanks heaps,” he said grimly, and the bed erupted once more as he turned his back on me.

  “Thanks heaps,” he said, with heavier and more sardonic emphasis when he came in for his lunch the next day. He threw his jacket at the back of one chair and dropped into another with enough force to threaten the floorboards we shared with the dry rot. “I have rarely been made to feel such an utter pillock in pursuit of my duty, and never since my old chief retired and went to run a South African gold-mine.”

  “Sally?” I ventured into a lugubrious pause.

  “Sally indeed,” he said venomously. “Sally, who raced over from Standings with a Little Paramilitary kit in her car boot. Sally, who shot a friend in the back so she could have a ride on his horse. Sally, who stuffed the Herring down the hatch of the slurry tank and tried to do the same to you when she caught you peering into it Sally, who was entertaining her father and four other people at a dinner party at Standings while you were knocking back David’s home-brew, and was still entertaining them when David came out of surgery. Sally, who couldn’t possibly have done what you said she’d done if she was James Hunt, James Bond, and Mrs. Beeton all rolled into one.”

  We were finishing up the stew. I wished I had something more placatory to offer him. I
said quietly, “Whoops,” and wondered if there was any ice-cream in the fridge.

  Trying desperately to see the bright side, I added, “You know, it would have been pretty awful if it had been Sally. For David and Ellen, I mean—well, for all of us. The Brink’s a small community to have that kind of thing happening within it Much better if it was a stranger.”

  Harry looked up at me suspiciously. “But?”

  I managed a reasonable simulacrum of injured innocence. “But nothing. If you tell me Sally couldn’t have done it, obviously I accept that. You’re the policeman. You’re the one with all the training, the experience, and the facilities. All I have to work with is a kind of gut instinct for what’s likely, for those things that could have happened but wouldn’t have happened that way unless certain other things happened too. A sense of the probable, perhaps.”

  “And?” He was still looking at me, much as you look at a magician with three egg-cups when the evidence of your own eyes insists that the marble is under the middle one, and all your instincts warn you that it isn’t.

  “And,” I said, thoughtfully and carefully, aware that I was putting myself beyond redemption, even by a baked Alaska, “it doesn’t seem probable to me that all those dominoes would fall into line like that unless that was the way they were set up in the first place.”

  2. Roads and Tracks

  Chapter One

  She had more sense than to come looking for me, but the next time I showed my face at Foxford, she pinned me to the wall with the force of her indignation. “Your Harry thinks I shot David!”