by Joe McNally
I turned again to the freeze frame…’Jeez, look at her, the whole world waiting for her. You can see it in her eyes, can’t you? Everything still possible. She could have done anything…’
‘If her father, I’m assuming that is Senor Romanic, hadn’t been using her as a shill.’
‘Is there anything more? I don’t suppose you see him switching anything or touching the horse’s ears?’
‘He’ll have somebody in the crowd throwing the switches.’
I looked at Mave as I counted back, ‘Prim is forty, so that’s almost thirty years ago. How would they be sending remote signals to speakers back then?’
Mave watched me, as though waiting for a punchline. I opened my hands and said ‘What?’
‘Ever heard of a transistor radio?’
‘Bit big for stuffing into a horse’s lug.’
She shook her head, ‘Very funny. The speaker out of a basic nineteen-sixties transistor would easily fit.’
I turned back to Prim’s face, ‘So that’s where she got the idea.’
‘Well, playing dead every day at that age with a wild horse galloping circles round you would kind of tend to stick in the memory, don’t you think?’
I nodded, still staring at Prim, feeling pity for her and anger at what had become of her life, of her potential. I said, ‘Mave, I just need a sexist check, here. I need you to confirm that Prim really was as stupid as I think she was?’
‘Was or is?’
‘Tell me she wouldn’t have set all this up just to keep a man like Dil Grant?’
‘That wouldn’t have been her only reason. I suspect she did it to kill off Vita Brodie, metaphorically, of course.’
‘And to win enough money to put her up there with Vita?’
‘I don’t think so. I believe that would have been daddy’s part of the deal.’
‘Why?’
Mave shrugged, ‘I don’t know. Prim just doesn’t seem the type who’s ever lived for money.’
‘The old crime of passion, then? Except that it extended to kidnapping Ben Searcey.’
‘Well, at least you know he’s safe…and she did look after his daughter.’
I closed the laptop lid, ‘Well, one little piece of the puzzle falls into place, Prim going to Deadwood. It never sat right with me that she would just up and leave Dil and Vita cozily together. That was like awarding Vita a big fat You Win badge.’
‘Proves she has a conscience, or half a conscience, I suppose,’ Mave said.
‘I doubt Alice will see it that way.’
Mave leant forward and rested her chin on her hands, and her eyebrows rose together, asking what I was going to do. I sighed and massaged my face. I checked my watch, ‘Is there any way that Senor Romanic could know that we’re onto him?’
‘Nothing’s impossible, but I doubt it would be through anything I’ve done.’
I reached for her hand, ‘I’m not criticizing you.’
‘I know. Just saying.’
I sat back again and made a noise that was half sigh, half moan. Mave smiled, ‘You’re inventing a whole new acoustic for this little kitchen.’
‘There’s more to come, Maven…What do we do now? Call Dil? Mac? Alice?’
‘I think you should stop being all logical just for my sake, and just do what you want to do.’
‘What I want to do, in a way, is go and see Prim and have her tell us we’ve got it all wrong, and give us rock solid one hundred percent proof.’
‘Well, that’s what we’ll do.’
‘Now?’
‘As soon as you like,’ she said.
I stood up, ‘Final question, do we do it all in front of Alice?’
Mave hesitated, then got to her feet, ‘Let’s talk about that in the car.’
We headed southeast for Dil’s place, working through contingency plans. What if Prim wasn’t in the cottage? What if she was in Dil’s bed? It would be close to midnight by the time we got there.
What if she was in her own bed, asleep? Were we to call her on the phone? Ring the doorbell? Ask her to wake Alice? Did I need to ring Dil and tell him to expect to see me rolling into the yard but not to come out and speak to me?
Finally, Mave said, ‘This would be best left until the morning, wouldn’t it?’
‘Can’t now, though, can we? We’d be awake all night wondering if Prim had somehow found out and taken off…with Alice.’
‘How likely is that?’
I shook my head, ‘We can’t wait, Mave.’ I glanced at the dashboard clock, ‘It’s not ten yet. I’ll call Dil and tell him we need to see Alice because of something that’s happened back in Deadwood and that he’s not to go near her in case she spooks and runs.’
‘Best tell him not to speak to Prim, then, wherever she is, which might just be lying right beside him when you make the call.’
She was right. We were just going to have to keep driving, and handle things as they spun out.
53
We parked on the narrow road, 300 yards away from Dil’s and set out between the hedgerows under a half moon. Mave said, ‘One light on upstairs. Is that Dil’s bedroom, do you know?’
‘Haven’t a clue.’
‘How will he take this?’
‘He’ll go fucking mad. I can guarantee. Whatever he feels for Prim will be sunk by the thought of the twenty-five grand he lost on Montego Moon.’
‘She couldn’t have known he’d had that bet, could she?’
‘No way. No one would know except Dil.’
‘She’s entitled to have that loss offset against him winning The Supreme…well half The Supreme. If they hadn’t nobbled Spalpeen, Stevedore would just have been placed.’
‘Dil won’t be sitting there rationalizing, believe me. He’ll go apeshit. And it sounds like Prim gets your sympathy in this.’
‘She got the good looks and the bad men. You’d be amazed how many do,’ she turned to me, the light wind lifting her hair, and she parted it to look at me, ‘you’re not exactly short on sympathy yourself, or we would be knocking on Dil’s door first.’
I shrugged. We were a hundred and fifty yards from the gate when a cloud hid the moon, and Mave stopped. I turned to her, ‘You okay?’
‘Just had a sudden memory of that really dark night we were prowling around Nina Raine’s place.’
I laughed and took her arm, ‘You were just a wee bit scared that time.’
‘I was officially shitting myself. Really. I remember the cramps in my bowel.’
‘Good old mother nature. Fight or flight. And if it looks like flight, you need to be carrying no excess weight so you can flee fast. That’s why you’ll often see a bird shitting as it takes off, if you surprise it.’
‘Well, you almost saw this bird shitting that night as she took off.’
I laughed.
’Sshhh! You’ll wake the dogs.’
She was right. Best be quiet until the dogs caught my scent. They’d be fine then.
As we turned the corner behind the barn, the cottage was fifty yards away. No lights were on inside, but after five more paces the security light on the gable end clicked and fired up a sodium circle of light. Our right hands came up to shield our eyes.
We stopped at the front door. I looked back at the main house. No lights had come on inside.
Mave took out her phone and called Prim.
I watched Mave’s face in the harsh light. I could hear the ringtone.
‘Hello?’
‘Prim, it’s Mave. I’m outside. Can you let me in?’ All this in an anxious stage whisper, and it did its job, for Prim asked no questions. Twenty seconds later she opened the door. Her red housecoat brought that old flamenco dancer image once more to my mind.
Prim looked at Mave, and Mave looked back, saying nothing. Prim swallowed, then turned slightly to look at me…she held my gaze for just long enough to be sure that what she had seen in Mave’s eyes was in mine too, then as the shame rose in her, she lowered her head to stare at the ground.
She did not look up as she stepped back, silently inviting us in.
Just before Prim switched on the light in the small living room, I saw in the hearth the pale red of the last embers. The ceiling light made everything in the grate look grey, but Prim must have sat up quite late. She looked alert, so we hadn’t wakened her. She sat at the end of the longer of the two old leather couches, the worn rug running between them to the tiled hearth.
Alice’s denim jacket lay over the back of the short couch on which Mave and I sat to face Prim.
I thought for a moment that she was going to try some bluffing small talk, but the longer the silence had stretched, the tighter the noose had become, as though all three of us could see it.
I said quietly, ‘Is Alice safe?’
’She’s asleep.’
I said, ‘I thought it was best to talk to you first about your father and Kelman Hines. I wasn’t sure what to do for the best, but we’ve known each other a long time and I thought I owed you this.’
Her shoulders went back, and her big breasts, still in a bra, came up and showed their cleavage in the deep neck of her scarlet dressing gown, and she reached and closed that gap and kept one hand holding the gown shut. But she didn’t cower. From somewhere, she was finding a brave face without seeming proud. She said, ‘You know why I did it?’
‘I think so, but tell me.’
‘I wanted her out and gone. For good.’
‘Even at the cost of Dil going under?’
‘Once she’d taken her horses away, we would have got new owners.’
’New widows. You know Dil’s routine by now.’
’No more widows. Things would have changed.’ She stared at the wall as though that wished-for movie of her perfect future were playing out there.
I said, ‘Where’s Ben being held?’
She turned quickly, looking afraid, ‘We haven’t got Ben! I’d never have allowed it. I promise!’
‘You might never have allowed it, Prim, but I think you lost control after Montego Moon.’
‘I did not! It was me who said they had to find a way of not hurting the jockeys, the horses. I almost died when you were injured on Montego Moon.’
‘That makes two of us.’
‘It wasn’t what I wanted. My idea was to put something in the feed. Or take something out, just the feed that was delivered here.’
I recalled that Dil had met Prim when she’d been working as a rep for her father’s company, which supplied horsenuts for thoroughbreds.
I said, ‘So who’s idea was it?’
She opened her mouth, then stopped, reluctant to blame the only one it could be. I said ‘Your father?’
She just kept looking at me. I said, ‘He suggested that old trick you used to do when you were a kid, where he’d set the horse off in the ring and then stop it.’
‘How did you know about that?’
‘I,’ I glanced at Mave, ’we, I should say, and more than seven thousand others have seen it on YouTube.’
Prim’s pride finally gave way and she slumped and put her head in her hands.
I said, ‘How old were you then, Prim?’
She massaged her face and sighed long and low then looked up at me, ‘Depends. I was nine when we started doing that. But it went on for years.’
‘Did you mention it to your father when you went to see him about Vita?’
‘No. We didn’t talk about it. He had a deal with Kelman Hines to let him use his special ingredients in the horsenuts. Kelman had bought his business. My idea was to substitute our supplies with something low energy or maybe get Kelman to introduce a virus.’
‘Why would Hines do that?’
She hesitated, then said, ‘Father was confident he could persuade him.’
‘But then your father came up with a better idea, one he could use on any horse.’
She became much more animated, especially with her hands, ‘Eddie! I warned them at the start. They promised me the horse would just keep running until it got tired. They said there was no way it would try to jump a fence in such a panic.’
I nodded slowly, caught between sympathy and anger. I said, ‘What sound were they playing through the speakers?’
‘A wolf pack. A hunting wolf pack.’
‘Radio-controlled?’
‘Yes.’
‘And after Montego Moon they turned off one speaker to steer the horse around the jumps?’
‘That’s right…that helped. They promised me it would.’
I nodded, ‘And after that they turned the sound off as soon as the horse had disqualified itself? That’s why Kingdom Come stopped at Uttoxeter the day you led him up?’
‘Yes, yes, yes! That’s all correct. Everything! And I’m glad it’s out now. But we don’t know where Ben is, I promise you that! I swear on it!’
‘Maybe you don’t know, Prim, but your father will know, won’t he? Wasn’t it him who arranged for the two gypsies to grab Ben at the Blue Anchor?’
She got up quickly, ‘It was nothing to do with us!’ She glanced up at the ceiling, obviously wary of her rising voice waking Alice. She came over and stopped to look down at me, ‘Stand up,’ she said.
I stood. She reached for my hands and raised them and gripped them firmly, ‘Eddie, I promise you, I will swear on anything you ask me to, I would never allow Alice to suffer like this. We do not have Ben. My father is as upset as I am that he has gone missing. He has been trying everything he can to find him.’
I looked straight into her dark eyes. If she was lying, her acting was far better than Dil Grant’s had ever been. She said, ‘My father is worried too, because whoever has Ben must know what we’ve been doing. He has been expecting a blackmail call.’
I eased my hands free, and Prim slowly clasped hers at her waist, then reached to close her gown collar once again. I said, ‘What about Hines? Apart from his guy handling the speakers on track, where does he come in?’
‘Nowhere. That’s all he’s done.’
’So who scooped the betting winnings off Spalpeen at Cheltenham?’
‘My father.’
No hesitation.
‘On his own?’
‘He paid for some false documents to open bank accounts with, that’s all.’
‘So what does Kelman Hines get out of this?’
More hesitation…her gaze dropping again, unable to look me in the eye. She said, ‘When my father was launching the horsefeed business, he paid Mister Hines for endorsements.’
‘Was this when Hines was running the equine nutrition lab?’
‘Yes. My father was paying him a percentage of each sale.’
‘Undeclared, obviously?’
She nodded, then kept her head down. I said, ‘And this was back when you were the travelling sales rep for your father’s brand?’
‘Yes,’ quieter now. I watched her. She would not look at me. I said, ‘So, since then, Hines has built a…well, an empire, I don’t think that’s too strong a word for it. And you’re telling me he’d risk that because of an old debt to your father?’
Prim looked up, fighting to raise that pride again, but looking sadder, ‘Mister Hines also had an affair. His wife had just had their first child.’ She managed to hold my gaze, but the sadness in her eyes had been replaced by shame.
Mave shifted in her seat.
I said to Prim, ’So, your father, who you say is anxiously awaiting a blackmail call, was blackmailing Kelman Hines?’
Still she held my gaze, unwilling to duck out of her responsibility, ‘We both did.’
‘But your father made the approach?’
‘Yes.’
I sat down beside Mave. Prim walked slowly back to her seat by the cold hearth. She settled there and looked at me, and then at Mave, ‘We don’t have Alice’s Dad. We don’t know where he is. I’ll take you to see my father tomorrow. You can search his place. I won’t call him. We can sit up all night.’
I believed her. I turned to Mave. She pursed her lips and ra
ised her eyebrows. I said to Prim, ‘The night before Ben disappeared he told me he’d found a lead that was very promising, and that there was just one thing more he had to check before confirming it.’
She listened without blinking, her concentration fixed on me. I said, ‘The most logical find Ben could have made was that Kelman Hines’s company had supplied the vet in charge at each of those tracks. It was information that would have been reasonably easy to find as a layman. All Ben would need to have done was put two and two together.’
Prim said, ‘Ben made no contact with Kelman. Not that night, not ever.’
‘So says Kelman’
‘Eddie, this has been Kelman’s worst nightmare come true. All he’s ever wanted is for it to be over.’
‘Exactly. So what would he do if he gets a call from a guy who used to be one of the best investigative journalists that ever picked up a telephone?’
Her head went up, her jaw muscles clenched, and her hands went out, ’Eddie, listen-‘
I broke in, ‘If Hines was afraid of your father blabbing, how scared is he going to be of a top reporter?’
Prim said, ‘Have you ever met Kelman Hines?’
‘No.’
‘Well, one minute in his company would prove to you that he’d shit himself if a child phoned him about that…if Alice phoned him.’
‘All the more reason for him to call up a hit man.’
Prim clenched her fists and leant forward, ‘But he didn’t, did he? You said that yourself right from the start that Ben wasn’t dead, that somebody had him. Why a call a hitman to go through all that palaver on Crosby beach?’
I watched her. She had a point, but I wouldn’t concede it, though I sensed she was telling the truth. She watched me, then she shook her head quickly, as though trying to dislodge something, and she sighed heavily then looked at me again, ‘Eddie, I’m done. There isn’t any other way I know to try to persuade you. So you’d better tell Dil now, or call the police, or do whatever it was you planned to do next.’
I sighed and slumped back against the fat old leather cushion, ‘What I’d planned to do was to drive out to wherever Ben was and bring him home.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Prim said, ’sorry for everything.’
I turned to Mave, ‘What do you think?’
