“Well, then, I suppose the offer is yours to accept or decline, Ms. Weiland,” the therapist said.
Lani’s heart thumped, blood filled her ears. Yes, yes, I say, yes… She’d always wanted to fight for justice, to right wrongs, to help people. To fight evil. But then something in Lani’s veins felt thick, like a poison. More betrayals, more danger, the possibility of another gun pressed against her sternum by a giggling man, a thick forearm around her throat, a sniveling “please don’t” she’d sworn she’d never say but found herself mouthing while the woman she had once called “Mom” stood over her, knife in hand. Her heart didn’t slow down at all, but it beat at a different, darker tone. Enthusiasm buried in a tar pit of fear.
“But…” Lani said. “The trauma. I do have PTSD, I think. I spend so much time just in bed, crying and crying, my eyes squeezed shut so I won’t see anything and start drawing connections. Will you help me?”
“No questions,” the therapist said.
“But, can I receive treatment for it?” Lani asked.
“Oh, dear,” the therapist sighed. “If we treated you for that, you wouldn’t be useful to us at all.”
Rosy Is Red
Sally Spedding
Monday 23 November 1985, 9:00 a.m.
Just think, right now in sunny Sydney, some lucky dude was trotting along to Bondi with his board under his arm. Or, as it would still be the weekend there, reclining on his airbed by the pool with an ice-cold 40 in his hand.
Damn.
His desk phone…
More trouble.
***
After the call, Sam Cottrell stared out of his Apex Private Detective Agency’s office window ten floors above Shoreditch, east London, where even the pigeons had given up waiting for the tea trolley’s first visit. Diagonal, rust-colored rain from some desert or other battered the vast sheet of glass in front of his desk, and if he shut his eyes, he could imagine he was back home at Killiemore in the depths of winter. A scared kid waiting for yet more lightning to strike. And even though he’d built up this business from a basement in Tottenham five years ago, he was still scared. Ever since last Thursday, when he’d smelled that distinctive, male body odor and felt hot breath on the back of his neck, he’d wanted to be anywhere but here.
***
A tap on his door.
He swiveled too fast away from his Amstrad and the chair spun him around an extra circuit. Not very clever. From now on he must make sure both he and his desk faced what could be a lucrative new assignment door. Bad feng shui otherwise, so the tea lady had opined. And she knew a thing or two.
“Only me, the Mongoose,” came a young woman’s voice, and Sam let out a ridiculous sigh of relief. Seconds later, there she was, Jenny Mason, his original partner in crime—with rain-glazed skin, brown hair almost black from being wet, showing the shape of her clever head. With her cell phone clamped to her ear, she gestured to him that the call was almost over.
“No worries,” he said, returning to his screen, adding to his preparatory notes for a client meeting.
He’d nicknamed her the Mongoose after she’d solved their first tricky case. She’d admitted being flattered by it. Better than Snake Killer anyway, but right now, given what was happening in his life, that might be more appropriate.
“The hospital’s just phoned,” she said, frowning, returning her phone to its pouch belted around her shapely waist. “Mom’s struggling. They’re giving her oxygen all the time now.” She checked her watch. Squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. He’d never seen her cry and didn’t want to. Since leaving the Met after too many years of sexist crap, she’d become the main brick in his wall. Invincible, and with useful contacts.
Sam got up and, without reserve, gave her a hug. Her musky scent and the weather she’d brought in filled his nose. “I’m so bloody sorry,” he said. “Anything I can do?”
“Thanks, but I’ll be fine. St. George’s hospital’s really good, so I’ve heard.”
“Look, I’ve had a call too. I’ll be over at Temple Gates if you need me.”
“Where the hell’s that?”
He gave her the full address, printed off his page of notes before picking up his phone from the desk’s top drawer, and his bulging briefcase from beside it. “If your Mom’s alright, I’ll see you there. If not, no stress…”
However, when he looked up, about to warn her of his very own personal stalker, she’d vanished, save for the faint whiff of her perfume making him feel seriously alone. Also aware that locking the office meant possible loss of income. Most inquiries to Apex began with an in-person visit, and each one taken on kept the wolf from the door.
***
Sam hurried past his poster collection, showing Sydney Harbor Bridge, the Cape Byron lighthouse, and Ayers Rock in all its forbidding beauty, into the lift and down to Albion Street. Selfishly he hoped the Mongoose’s mother would hang on. Both women had grown much closer since Mr. Mason, newly retired, had died in a pileup on the M25 last Christmas. If his widow went too, the personable and diligent ex-cop and crime fiction fan, who’d kept business coming in and his accountant off his back, might just jump ship…
Sam ran to his Volvo across the flooded car park, instinctively glancing back at the office block, where even the filthy rain couldn’t disguise what was standing at the canteen window directly above his office.
His dirty secret, following his every move.
No….
***
Given the weather conditions, he drove way too fast along Stratford Road with Arctic Monkeys filling his space, blocking out what he mustn’t remember and the fact that she wasn’t sitting next to him. He had a job to do. The puzzling matter of the vicious death of a broodmare at Temple Gates, the Coleridge-Burton family seat in Essex. Also a prestigious stud farm and racing stables established shortly after the last war. Its well-bred thoroughbreds regularly picked up the biggest prize money, both on the flat and over fences.
So far, nothing was tailing him.
Past Ilford, and its premature army of inflated Santas crawling up house walls and drainpipes, before he turned on to the A113 northeast where gunmetal clouds shifted and separated, letting in some blue. But even this couldn’t dispel the darkest cloud that was Calum, his older brother, let out of the Scrubs at 08.00 hours last Thursday morning. His threatening closeness behind him one hour later had made him seem more like three feet taller than the four inches he actually was. Estuary, not Irish, in his voice. Harder than nails.
“Ye’ve got till Christmas Eve to settle yer debt,” he’d snarled. “Got it? Or else I’ll be wrapping ye up nice and tight with tinsel and the works for the fuzz to open…”
Settle yer debt…
Exactly what he’d said.
***
Just past the sign for Weald Bassett, Sam dropped a gear up Temple Hill as those three ominous words fluttered in his mind like the bats in Killiemore Cottage, where both boys and their mother had spent too much of their lives. Where trigger-happy Calum would take a pop at anything that moved.
And twelve years ago, he had.
***
Another sad item on Sam’s wish list loomed into view as he drove up the hill toward his destination. A place like this with what seemed like half of Essex for its grounds.
Bejesus. Could a house be much bigger or a driveway much wider? He asked himself. And look at those cedars, whose strange, layered limbs spread motionless and black against the brightening sky where an aircraft and its vapor trail was heading west.
The perfect image for a true crime book cover, he thought. Then thought of what awaited him, and who needed fiction? He also asked himself if he’d want a tree like that as a permanent feature outside a main window.
No way.
***
He cast around for the best place to park, also checking the expanse of weed-free gravel for
any recent horse trailer’s wheel imprints, or those of a loaded vehicle in a hurry, but as far as he could tell, the embedded chippings lay undisturbed.
Curiouser and curiouser, given that his latest client had said this was the only way to and from the stables. The crime scene.
He then turned his attention beyond it to the mock Palladian pile hogging the sky, tempted for a moment to record on camera its position in relation to other possible factors. But manners dictated the proprietor must give permission first. This was a case that wouldn’t be involving the fuzz just yet. He mustn’t spoil what had, only a week ago, been an accidental and very useful meeting with the stud’s owner and trainer, Felix Coleridge-Burton, at the local point-to-point race.
The man had never trusted the police since a bent newly-promoted chief inspector was found snooping by the gallops and had funded a villa in the Algarve on his tipster proceeds. So, a flatfoot with excellent references and a feisty, good-looking sidekick who’d ditched the force had been Coleridge-Burton’s first port of call…
Sam switched off the engine and checked himself in his rearview mirror. Although he looked every one of his twenty-nine years, his latest haircut, stubble-free cheeks, and good clothes helped present the image he wanted.
***
Just then, a tall, skinny guy in dark green livery that included a peaked cap appeared from a booth built as solidly as the house itself, but half-hidden by deliberately untrimmed hawthorn bushes. Having slapped a visitor sticker on the Volvo’s windscreen, he gestured to Sam to continue walking round to the rear of the house, from where a line of horses could be seen moving like a surreal brown chain across the gallops.
“No perky Miss Mason with you today?” asked the guy in a Yorkshire accent before checking Sam’s ID. He’d obviously heard of her from his boss.
“Family stuff. She may be along later.”
“We certainly hope so. We need all the brains we can get.”
Reeking of Lynx and a recently stubbed-out cig, this guy, who’d given his name and previous life as Graham Sturt, ex-SAS in Belfast, led him past an annex of garaging, storage units for the stables, and the stableyard itself. Or rather, the stable acre.
Sam glanced around, mentally totting up what this and its well-bred, four-legged occupants were worth. He estimated at least fifty million, given the Group One winners housed here, plus broodmares and stallions from Europe and beyond. Then he sniffed hay and molasses mingling with leather and invisible dung. These delivered another surge of memories best forgotten. At this point, Sturt held out a white-gloved hand, stained around the wrist. “Your phone please, sir. It’s security.”
This must be a joke. He was security. Here to investigate the theft of an almost full-term colt from a top broodmare. A crime which must, for the moment, be kept under wraps.
Sam hesitated, and in that pause, the offending phone rang.
“Excuse me,” he said, turning away to listen. “It’s Miss Mason.”
She seemed tense, brittle. Not like her at all.
“To be honest, Sam, I’m not coping very well,” she began on a poor line. “For a start, it took me over half an hour to find Mom. Right next to the morgue, if you please…”
He guessed the worst.
“How is she?”
“Gone. Ten minutes ago. Got to hang around and do all the necessaries. Is that okay?”
Aware of the uniform listening in, Sam couldn’t say what he really wanted. “Don’t be so bloody daft,” came out instead. “’Course it is.”
“Where are you?”
“Temple Gates, like I said.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll be back in the office by two. Hang on in there and let people help you. Promise?”
No reply, and all the while, that impatient, white-gloved hand was waiting.
***
An anemic sun cast the inside of loose box number 32 the color of that thin honey his Gran used to make before she lost her only daughter and before she herself passed away. For a moment, Sam had to search for the stricken mare, half-buried in the bloodied straw in the unlit corner. Then his hastily-eaten breakfast began to travel upwards into his throat. The neatly severed umbilical cord trailed into the sunlight. Her lips were pulled back over her teeth as if she’d died in agony.
Suddenly that partial sunlight vanished. Felix Coleridge-Burton was standing in the doorway behind him. The trim, buttoned-up owner-trainer stood in silence while Sam made rapid shorthand notes on the grim scene. Judging by the mare’s eyes, her blood’s color, plus the multitude of flies already settled on the open wound, the time of death could have been early that same morning. Five, six, or seven o’clock, most likely, and being well into November, darkness would have been an asset to her violator. Singular or plural, too soon to tell.
“You said your vet’s already taken a look. Is he around?” Sam asked, once he’d finished writing.
The middle-aged owner-trainer shook his head. “It’s a she. Our best Derby prospect has suffered a burst blood vessel. She’s tied up with that for a while…”
“And her opinion on this?”
“Speechless. For the first time in her life.”
Sam bent down to stroke the mare’s rigid head. “What’s this poor bugger’s name? You never said.”
“Rosy Dream. A lovely, lovely girl…”
The guy was choked alright. Who wouldn’t be? Here was a bright chestnut with a fine winter coat, four white socks and a straight blaze, reminding him of the filly foal he’d cared for as a teenager. Saved for by sticking at a paper route for three years in all weathers. Sunny, he’d called her, over whose head Calum had fired a shot for a laugh. Until the barbed wire fence stopped her panicked escape…
He found himself looking for traces of old scars; other possible violations. There were none.
“She was a stunner,” he said out loud.
“So’s the stallion. Pas de Deux by Sadlers Wells. Damned thing is, if his missing foal survives this trauma, he really could hit the big time.”
“Surely he’d be recognized?”
Coleridge-Burton let out a sour laugh. “You clearly don’t know how far the unscrupulous will go to disguise an animal. But if the foal’s not registered with Weatherbys…”
“Go on.”
“Worthless.”
Sam stood up and pulled out his new camera. “Be interesting to see who crawls out of the woodwork.”
“Indeed.”
“May I take some shots of Rosy?”
A frown, a doubtful pause. After all, both men were still strangers.
“Only if they become my property when this is all over.”
“No worries.”
Using flash, Sam took four photos, focusing on the gaping wound in the poor creature’s belly, then turned around. “To me, sir, this caesarean looks like an expert job. Someone, or more than one, knew what they were doing. There’s no evidence of her being restrained or stunned. Or needle marks either. Was there any chloroform residue when you found her?”
“No, but there wouldn’t be. Harry Barr, my Head Lad, found the top of her box door wide open, when it’s normally shut at night.”
“What time?”
“Six. On the dot as always, in winter. But as for the CCTV—I could kick myself. Its film ran out three hours later. I should have checked and installed a new one immediately…”
His stiff upper lip wasn’t stiff anymore. Sam passed him his own clean handkerchief and asked a tricky question. “Is your guard on duty all the time?”
“I wish. Eight a.m. to eight p.m. Union rules. Also, his wife has ME or something terrible like that, and could we find anyone to do nights here? No way.”
So, the perp or perps had enjoyed a clear run…
“How many knew when the foal would be viable? Had enough colostrum at the ready?”
A pause, during
which Sturt walked by, glancing in, holding Sam’s phone like a trophy. Little did the officious creep know he was at the top of the list of suspects.
“We’ve no other mare who’s just given birth. Our five other pregnant ones aren’t due to foal until next March.”
“Colostrum could have been brought in from another source?”
A reluctant nod. “Could be the wrong motive altogether.”
“It’s the one I prefer to dwell on, sir. That whoever did this wanted the foal to survive.”
The owner-trainer wiped both moist eyes with Sam’s handkerchief and handed it back.
“By the way, I noticed your front gates aren’t electronically controlled,” Sam went on. “Are they locked at any particular time?”
“No. We’ve never had any trouble with security before…”
Sam broke in.
“Any chance of speaking to your Harry Barr?”
Coleridge-Burton shook his tousled, gray-flecked head.
“He’s too upset. His was the last shift that ended at one a.m.”
“I’d still like to see him. Who else is normally found around here?”
“My wife, Laura, who loved this mare to bits. Our son, Rex; riding work out on the gallops; plus stable hands and riders…”
“How many?”
“Twenty altogether.”
Sam sensed an impossible task looming and, not for the first time, wondered why Felix Coleridge-Burton or his wife hadn’t simply called the cops. They’d have provided choppers with thermal imaging. The lot.
“Can we go somewhere to talk?” he said. “Get a proper list of names drawn up…”
His watch showed 10:00. How he missed the Mongoose. At least she’d have grilled the mucking-out brigade by now.
“To me, and I don’t say it lightly, sir,” Sam began tentatively, “but this crime smacks of being an inside job. We need to get everyone’s alibis established. And fast. Oh, and I need to know more about the mare herself…”
***
The glass-domed swimming pool beyond the orangery glittered under the brightening sky. Sam thought longingly of Bondi again, then switched back to the crime, which was growing more complex by the minute.
The Book of Extraordinary Amateur Sleuth and Private Eye Stories Page 20
