Blood Never Dies

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘They found this, guv, in Corley’s room,’ he said. ‘Atherton scanned it and emailed it over – thought it might be something.’

  It was a printout of a Google map showing a part of rural Hertfordshire. On the white border at the top of the page was handwritten ‘New Farm, Gubblecote’ and a postcode; the Google arrow was pointing to a group of buildings with NEW FARM printed beside them in tiny writing. And in the border at the side of the page was scribbled ‘2.30 Tues 19th’.

  ‘It were in a mess of papers on the desk by the computer in the bedroom that’s been made into an office,’ Hollis elaborated. ‘Atherton says the thing in the pile straight underneath’s a gas bill for the Wynnstay flat with the due date twenty-first of July, so it looks as though it might be from around the time we’re interested in – after he left the Hot Box, which Villiers said was mid-July. And the nineteenth of July was a Tuesday.’

  ‘It certainly looks like an appointment. Of course, he might just have scribbled it down on the nearest piece of paper. It might have nothing to do with New Farm,’ Slider said.

  ‘Aye, guv, but Atherton says it does look like the same ink, both scribbles,’ said Hollis. Of course, Atherton would have thought of the same thing.

  ‘I wonder how he’d get out there,’ Slider mused. ‘He didn’t have a car, as far as we know.’

  ‘Train to Tring, most like,’ said Hollis, ‘and then a taxi. You see from the map it’s only about three or four miles from the station. Unless he hired a car.’

  Slider shook his head. ‘Train’s more likely, I think. He’d have had to show a driving licence to hire a car, which would have revealed his identity, which he seems to have been at pains to conceal all along.’ He thought a bit while Hollis looked at him hopefully. ‘I think I’ll go and have a look,’ he said at last. ‘See what’s there.’

  ‘Not on your own, guv,’ Hollis said. ‘If it’s something to do with the case—’

  ‘If it’s not, I’ll have had a wasted journey.’

  ‘Take someone with you,’ Hollis urged.

  ‘Everyone’s busy,’ Slider said. ‘I won’t take any risks, don’t worry. If there’s anything interesting there, I’ll call for backup.’

  It was good to get out into the country again, and especially on a lovely summer day. The muggy oppressiveness had been dispelled by the storm and the greyness of yesterday had given way to a deep blue sky with big white cauliflower clouds. The best sort of day, and this part of Hertfordshire was the best sort of English countryside, soft, green and rolling, the pastoral idyll at its wholemeal and buttery best. You expected a film crew round every corner shooting food commercials.

  He parked the car on the road by the farm lane entrance, deciding to walk the last bit. As he stopped the engine and got out, the profound silence of countryside settled round him like a mantle. There was nothing but bird sounds: a flock of jackdaws, rollicking from tree to tree deleting expletives; greenfinches canarying away in the hawthorns; unseen robins threading silver beads on invisible strands. A testosterone-rich cockerel was ushering some of his wives along the field edge, pausing every few steps to crow, arching his body spasmodically as though it were being pumped out of him. But under that, you could feel the silence like a great benign pressure on the skin.

  Slider stretched and stared, his tensions releasing themselves, country boy that he was. All around, the green patchwork of field and hedge, corner-pinned with tree clumps and occasional snugged-down farm buildings, rolled to the horizon and the long curve of the Chilterns. The downs were tree-clad – Ashridge Forest, Tring Forest – and impossibly blue with the distance, as though they were exhaling a soft cobalt smoke.

  He walked down a grass and baked-earth path between fields – wheat on one side, late this year after the bitterly cold spring and still only half ripe, the olive-yellow colour of oak flower. On the other side, the cockerel’s field was a hay meadow, long cut but still fringed with blue scabious and yellow goldenrod, kex and mallow and purple knapweed, the hedge tangled with bramble and bee-heavy old man’s beard.

  The smell of summer-warm grass came up to him, and suddenly he stopped, riven with such a piercing sense of place that for a moment his breath caught. It was the smell of his boyhood, the freedom and innocence and endless goodness of being nine years old, growing up in the country, in the summer. He stood paralysed with an agony of loss and longing for the fields he had roamed in summer days that seemed to go on for ever; when his mother was still alive. You could go back to a particular point on the earth’s surface, but it would not be the same where, and it would not be the same when. Adulthood is the unending exile, from which there is no return.

  He was brought back to the present by the familiar sound of hooves on packed earth, and of warm breath blown out from soft, velvet-edged nostrils. He turned the corner and came upon the next field, post-and-rail fenced, and a handsome, fine-boned bay horse was suddenly right before him. His quick eye had taken in the woman on the far side of the paddock, bucket and rope in hand. He assessed the situation before he was aware of it, and as the horse, which had been prancing light-heartedly, stopped in surprise at his sudden appearance, it was an action without conscious thought that put out his hand and caught hold of the head-collar.

  The bay jerked back in reaction, but it knew it was caught and submitted good-naturedly, lowering its head, and mumbled at Slider’s buttons. He scratched gently at its forehead, and it regarded him with large, lovely, calm eyes.

  The woman was coming towards him – middle-aged, and slender with the natural leanness of constant activity; dressed in jodhs and jodhpur boots and a dark green polo shirt, face and arms nut brown, short curly brown hair. There was another horse in the field, a thickset, cobby chestnut with a heavy blonde mane and tail, which he recollected had been frolicking and bucking in the other direction at the moment he appeared, and was now still, watching developments.

  ‘Thanks,’ the woman called as she grew near. ‘He likes to play up a bit before he’s caught, but I’m in a rush this morning. They always know.’

  ‘He’s a fine fellow,’ Slider said. ‘Bred?’

  ‘Three quarters,’ she said. ‘His name’s Mansur.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘Clover will come now he’s caught. Afraid of missing anything.’

  Slider looked, and, yes, the stout chestnut was hurrying towards them as fast as she could waddle without actually breaking into a trot.

  The woman regarded Slider consideringly. Her face was smooth and all-weather brown, lightly fretted around the eyes with sun-frown lines. She seemed late forties but could have been older – hers was not the sort of face to show age – and you would not have called her beautiful, but she had fine eyes. Slider had to stop himself staring.

  ‘You know about horses,’ she said, and it was not a question, more a laying down of a marker for ways in which they could relate to each other.

  ‘I grew up on a farm.’

  ‘Not many people can say that now,’ she remarked. The chestnut reached them, blowing, fussing; laid her ears back to establish precedence and shoved her head forcefully into the bribe-bucket. But the bay paid no attention, only breathed out contentedly into Slider’s jacket and settled itself more comfortably into his caressing hand.

  ‘Did you know he’s lost a shoe on the near hind?’ Slider said.

  ‘Yes, I found it by the gate last night. God knows how he managed to get it off. He’s always casting them. Luckily the smith’s coming this morning anyway to do removes. But I got behind, and they always know when you’re in a hurry.’

  ‘I’ll lead one back with you,’ Slider said.

  ‘There’s no need,’ she began, and then considered him again. ‘Did you come to see me? You’re not a farmer now, are you.’ It was not a question. The suit was a dead giveaway.

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ he said, and saw her register an Ah, that’s what it is about you conclusion. ‘You’re in a hurry. I’ll lead one, and we can talk on the way.’

&nbs
p; ‘You can take Mansur, then, since he seems to like you,’ she said. She had to pull the chestnut’s head out of the bucket to clip on the lead rope. The bucket was empty now, but the greedy blonde muzzle was still hoovering about in there looking for stray oats. Slider climbed over the fence, and they started off towards the gate on the far side. Beyond it there was a nice, square Victorian farmhouse, tile-hung and with tall chimneys, Hertfordshire style, and a collection of farm buildings, some old, wood with red-tiled roofs, some all corrugated iron, and some hybrid, wood with corrugated roofs.

  ‘What sort of farm were you brought up on?’ she asked, and the topic lasted them, along with discussion of how farming had changed, until they reached the yard, where there was a range of well-kept looseboxes, and two more heads looking over doors. The newcomers whickered and were answered, and Slider wondered, not for the first time, what it was horses said to each other.

  ‘Are they all yours?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh no. I do liveries,’ she replied. ‘My husband and son farm, but every little helps, you know, these days. Can you put him in that end box? Leave the head collar on.’

  When he came out again, bolting the door behind him, she was waiting for him, hands on slim hips, enquiry on her face. ‘I’m Angela Kennedy,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Bill Slider,’ he replied, holding out his hand. Hers was grubby, but he never minded clean horse dirt. ‘I should show you my identification.’

  ‘I believe you,’ she said, but he showed it anyway. He didn’t want this nice woman ever to be taken in. ‘Detective Inspector?’ she said. ‘Does that make it something serious?’

  ‘Serious for us, not for you,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you’d mind looking at this photograph and telling me if you know this man.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said at once, studying the picture carefully. ‘I recognize him, though he looks a bit different – the hair, I think. It’s Colin.’

  So he was being Colin Redgrave when he came here, Slider thought. ‘When was that?’

  ‘When I last saw him? It would be, let me see, the middle of last week. Wednesday? Why do you ask? Is he in some kind of trouble?’

  He read honesty from every line of this woman, just as he knew the gelding was a good horse. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that he’s dead. He appears to have committed suicide.’ Her face registered shock and distress. ‘He had no form of identity about him, and we’ve been trying to find out who he is. We did find a Google map of your farm among his things, so we thought he might have come here.’

  ‘Well he did, you’re right – but what a terrible thing! He seemed so nice, and not at all depressed. Why did he do it, do you know? Did he leave a note?’

  ‘No, nothing at all. It’s a mystery to us, too. You say he came here – would you like to elaborate?’

  She frowned for a moment, assembling her thoughts. ‘I’ll tell you everything I know about him, which isn’t much, but you’re applying to the wrong person. You need to be speaking to David. Come in the tack room and I’ll get you his phone number. I’ll put the kettle on, too – I think I need a cup of tea, now, before the smith comes.’

  In the tack room she lit the gas ring under a large, battered kettle, and as she dropped tea bags into mugs she began to explain. ‘I told you I take in liveries. A lot of them are local children’s’ ponies, and I have hunters in the winter – they’re out at grass at the moment – but Mansur and two others in the boxes belong to a long-term client of mine, David Regal.’

  Slider’s mind twitched under the sting of the familiar name, but his face betrayed nothing.

  ‘He’s a wealthy businessman – very wealthy, I gather,’ she went on, ‘and he’s very keen on horses. I think he owns a couple of racehorses as well, but he’s been keeping riding horses with me for, oh, it must be five or six years, now. He can’t get down to ride them as often as he’d like, so I have to keep them exercised and schooled. But when he can get away, it’s usually at short notice, so I have to keep them up. He telephones me to get them ready and he drives down from London with a friend or two, and goes out for a long hack. We have good riding country round here.’

  ‘I can see that you do. So he brought this young man Colin with him, did he?’

  She looked uncomfortable, and played with a teaspoon. The sunlight, struggling in through the small and filthy window, played with her unkempt curls. ‘David’s a good client of mine,’ she said.

  ‘I promise I won’t tell him that you told me anything, but I wish you would be perfectly frank with me. It may be very important.’

  She sighed and looked up. ‘All right. I suppose it might have something to do with . . . Anyway, David comes down to ride, and he always brings a friend with him. Usually just one. Always a good-looking young man. Sometimes he’ll come with an older man as well, and it’s clear he’s a business client, but the other is always a beautiful young man.’

  ‘I see,’ said Slider.

  She nodded slightly. ‘They don’t last long. After a few weeks or sometimes months, it’ll be a new one, and you never see the previous one again.’

  ‘You think he—’ Slider began.

  ‘I don’t think anything,’ she said hastily. ‘He’s a valued client and pays me very well for keeping his horses. The rest is his business. But you asked, so I’m telling you.’

  ‘I understand. What did you make of Colin?’

  ‘I hoped he’d last a good, long time, because I liked him. He was a cut above the rest – a very bright young man, I thought, friendly and polite to me. Some of them seemed to think they had to treat me like a servant. And he could ride. It was embarrassing sometimes when the ones he brought couldn’t. Colin said he’d ridden a lot as a child and I could see he’d been well taught – he had a very good seat and good hands. And he loved horses. I was happy to send them out with him. I know they’re not mine, but I care about them, and I can’t bear to see them hauled about by the mouth, or have some sack of potatoes banging about on their backs.’

  ‘Do you remember when David first started bringing Colin here?’

  ‘It’s not very long,’ she said. ‘Probably only three or four weeks ago, something like that. But David seemed quite keen on him, because he’s been bringing him more often than usual – twice a week, three times one week. Funny thing—’

  She stopped, and at the same moment the kettle boiled, which gave her the excuse to turn away. She filled the mugs and began stirring the tea bags, frowning down at them.

  ‘You were saying,’ Slider prompted. He was aware time was short. If they were interrupted she would probably clam up. ‘It was a funny thing?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought Colin was – well, gay,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘You get a sort of feeling about men, the way they react to you, you know? I’d have thought he was – not exactly interested in me, but noticing me.’

  ‘I understand what you mean.’

  She looked up. ‘Perhaps that’s why he didn’t last with David?’ she said, making it a query. ‘Perhaps he was bi, or undecided. Could that be why he killed himself? He seemed happy when he was here. Maybe that was the horses. If you love them it’s hard to be completely unhappy around them. But he chattered to me quite naturally, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.’

  ‘Did he ask a lot of questions?’

  She smiled. ‘Odd you should say that. Yes, he did. I teased him about it, called him a question-box, just like my own son was – though that was when he was much younger.’

  ‘What did he ask about?’

  ‘Anything and everything. I can’t remember, specifically. About me and the farm and David and the village and everyone in it. He was interested in everything. It was rather charming, really. Young people can be so shut away these days, only interested in themselves.’

  ‘Do you know what he did for a living?’ Slider asked.

  ‘He never said anything about a job,’ she replied. ‘I can’t say I got the impression he was a toiler �
�� I mean, he came here on weekdays with David. Maybe he had money, or his own business. He was well dressed, and he had that look about him, of money.’

  ‘And what about David? What’s his line of business?’

  She shook her head. ‘I really don’t know. It’s silly, but after all this time I really know very little about him. I know he has his own company in London, and I think he lives in London too, but that’s about all. The cheques arrive on time, he pays me in advance, and any extras that are needed he never makes any bones about, so he’s a good client, and good clients you don’t alienate by asking questions if they don’t want to answer them.’

  ‘What about the other businessmen he brought here? What can you tell me about them?’

  ‘Oh, a mixed sort of bunch. Some of them didn’t really look like my idea of a businessman. A lot of them were foreigners, and I suppose he was showing them a good time to grease the wheels.’

  ‘What sort of foreigners?’

  ‘I can’t be sure – I was never introduced to them. A lot of them I’d say were probably East Europeans or Middle Easterns. At least they knew how to ride, even if they were a bit too dashing in the saddle for my liking.’

  Slider got the image: Kazakhs galloping across the Steppes, Arabs galloping across the deserts, Bulgarians – what did they gallop across? David Regal greasing the wheels of business – but what business? And what else did he share, besides his horses?

  ‘So you last saw Colin on Wednesday last week,’ he resumed. ‘And have you heard from David since? Has he brought anyone else here?’

  ‘No to both questions. I didn’t think anything about it, because David doesn’t come on a regular basis, and sometimes there’ll be a gap of a few weeks. But if poor Colin has – well, that would explain it. I thought he’d come this weekend just past, since he’d seemed so keen on Colin, but he didn’t. Was that . . .? When did it happen?’

  ‘Last Sunday night,’ Slider said.

  ‘Oh dear. Oh, it’s so dreadful. I hope they hadn’t had a row or something like that. And what about his family? They’ll be devastated. He was so nice. Well, I expect David will be able to tell you who to get in contact with. How odd that he didn’t have any identification with him. Did you say—?’