He was a fair-haired man with a manner that was not exactly brutal but spoke of long years of acclimatisation to dreadful experiences. Detective Chief Inspector Wyfold, he’d said, introducing himself. Forty-fivish, I guessed, sensing the hardness within him at sight and judging him through that day more dogged than intuitive, looking for results from procedure, not hunches.
He was certain in his own mind that the attack on Ginnie had been sexual in intent and he scarcely considered anything else, particularly since she’d been carrying no money and had expressly said she wouldn’t leave the farm.
‘She could have talked to someone over the gate,’ he said, having himself spent some time on the lower drive. ‘Someone walking along the road. And there are all your grooms that we’ll need detailed statements from, though from their preliminary answers it seems they weren’t in the hostel but down at the village, in the pubs.’
He came and went and reappeared again with more questions at intervals through the day and I lost track altogether of the hours. I tried, in his presence and out, and in Oliver’s the same, not to think much about Ginnie herself. I thought I would probably have wept if I had, of no use to anyone. I thrust her away into a defensive compartment knowing that later, alone, I would let her out.
Some time in the morning one of the lads came to the house and asked what they should do about one of the mares who was having difficulty foaling, and Lenny also arrived wanting to know when he should take Rotaboy to the breeding pen. Each of them stood awkwardly, not knowing where to put their hands, saying they were so shocked, so sorry, about Ginnie.
‘Where’s Nigel?’ Oliver said.
They hadn’t seen him, they said. He hadn’t been out in the yards that morning.
‘Didn’t you try his house?’ Oliver was annoyed rather than alarmed: another burden on a breaking back.
‘He isn’t there. The door’s locked and he didn’t answer.’
Oliver frowned, picked up the telephone and pressed the buttons: listened: no reply.
He said to me, ‘There’s a key to his bungalow over there on the board, third hook from the left. Would you go and look... would you mind?’
‘Sure.’
I walked down there with Lenny who told me repeatedly how broken up the lads were over what had happened, particularly Dave and Sammy, who’d found her. They’d all liked her, he said. All the lads who lived in the hostel were saying that perhaps if they’d come back sooner, she wouldn’t have been attacked.
‘You don’t live in the hostel, then?’ I said.
‘No. Down in the village. Got a house. Only the ones who come just for the season, they’re the ones in the hostel. It’s shut up, see, all winter.’
We eventually reached Nigel’s bungalow where I rang the doorbell and banged on the knocker without result. Shaking my head slightly I fitted the key in the lock, opened the door, went in.
Curtains were drawn across the windows, shutting out a good deal of daylight. I switched on a couple of lights and walked into the sitting room, where papers, clothes and dirty cups and plates were strewn haphazardly and the air smelled faintly of horse.
There was no sign of Nigel. I looked into the equally untidy kitchen and opened a door which proved to be that of a bathroom and another which revealed a room with bare-mattressed twin beds. The last door in the small inner hall led into Nigel’s own bedroom... and there he was, face down, fully clothed, lying across the counterpane.
Lenny, still behind me, took two paces back.
I went over to the bed and felt Nigel’s neck behind the ear Felt the pulse going like a steam-hammer. Heard the rasp of air in the throat. His breath would have anesthetized a crocodile, and on the floor beside him lay an empty bottle of gin. I shook his shoulder unsympathetically with a complete lack of result.
‘He’s drunk,’ I said to Lenny. ‘Just drunk.’
Lenny looked all the same as if he was about to vomit. ‘I thought... I thought.’
‘I know,’ I said: and I’d feared it also, instinctively, the one because of the other.
‘What will we do, then, out in the yard?’ Lenny asked.
‘I’ll find out.’
We went back into the sitting room where I used Nigel’s telephone to call Oliver and report.
‘He’s flat out,’ I said. ‘I can’t wake him. Lenny wants instructions.’
After a brief silence Oliver said dully, ‘Tell him to take Rotaboy to the breeding shed in half an hour. I’ll see to things in the yards. And Tim?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can I ask you... would you mind... helping me here in the office?’
‘Coming straight back.’
The disjointed, terrible day wore on. I telephoned to Gordon in the bank explaining my absence and to Judith also, a: Gordon’s suggestion, to pass on the heartbreak, and I took countless incoming messages as the news spread. Outside on the farm nearly two hundred horses got fed and watered, and birth and procreation went inexorably on.
Oliver came back stumbling from fatigue at about two o’clock, and we ate some eggs, not tasting them, in the kitchen. He looked repeatedly at his watch and said finally, ‘What’s eight hours back from now? I can’t even think.’
‘Six in the morning,’ I said.
‘Oh.’ He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘I suppose I should have told Ginnie’s mother last night.’ His face twisted. ‘My wife... in Canada...’ He swallowed. ‘Never mind, let her sleep. In two hours I’ll tell her.’
I left him alone to that wretched task and took myself upstairs to wash and shave and lie for a while on the bed. It was in taking my jacket off for those purposes that I came across the plastic bottle in my pocket, and I took it out and stood it on the shelf in the bathroom while I shaved.
An odd sort of thing, I thought, for Ginnie to have tucked into her waistband. A plastic bottle of shampoo; about six inches high, four across, one deep, with a screw cap on one of the narrow ends. The white label saying ‘Shampoo’ had been handwritten and stuck on top of the bottle’s original dark brown, white-printed label, of which quite a bit still showed round the edges.
‘Instructions,’ part of the underneath label said. ‘Shake well. Be careful not to get the shampoo in the dog’s eyes. Rub well into the coat and leave for ten or fifteen minutes before rinsing.’
At the bottom, below the stuck-on label, were the words, in much smaller print, ‘Manufactured by Eagle Inc., Michigan, U.S.A. List number 29931.
When I’d finished shaving I unscrewed the cap and tilted the bottle gently over the basin.
A thick greenish liquid appeared, smelling powerfully of soap.
Shampoo: what else.
The bottle was to all intents full. I screwed on the cap again and put it on the shelf, and thought about it while I lay on the bed with my hands behind my head.
Shampoo for dogs.
After a while I got up and went down to the kitchen, and in a high cupboard found a small collection of empty, washed, screw-top glass jars, the sort of thing my mother had always saved for herbs and picnics. I took one which would hold perhaps a cupful of liquid and returned upstairs, and over the washbasin I shook the bottle well, unscrewed the cap and carefully poured more than half of the shampoo into the jar.
I screwed the caps onto both the bottle and the jar, copied what could be seen on the original label into the small engagement diary I carried with me everywhere, and stowed the now half full round glass container from Oliver’s kitchen inside my own sponge-bag: and when I went downstairs again I took the plastic bottle with me.
‘Ginnie had it?’ Oliver said dully, picking it up and squinting at it. ‘Whatever for?’