‘And how about if I say I’m going home anyway?’
‘That wouldn’t be wise,’ he said.
No. Then I probably would be arrested.
I thought back over the interview.
‘You haven’t asked me why I think Mr Woodley was attacked.’
‘No, sir,’ said the detective without elaborating.
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘All in good time, sir,’ he replied.
We sat in silence for a while and I wondered what the police were doing that took so long. Looking for a knife, I supposed. That’s it, I thought, they couldn’t arrest me for stabbing Toby unless they could find the knife because otherwise there was no way I could have done it.
And maybe they wouldn’t ask me why I thought Toby had been stabbed until they knew whether I could have done it or not. Perhaps it would affect how they asked their questions.
I sat there hoping the killer had taken the murder weapon away with him. Knowing my luck, he’d have thrown it away under my car.
Someone came into the cubicle carrying a folded tracksuit and a pair of trainers. Thank goodness, I thought. My feet had lost all feeling.
I was left alone briefly to change but the detective and his sidekick soon returned, accompanied this time by another man who was clearly their boss — the superintendent.
‘Mr Shillingford,’ he said. ‘Detective Superintendent Cullen.’ He held out his hand towards me and I shook it. ‘I’m sorry you have been asked to stay here for so long. I hope my boys have been looking after you?’ He smiled.
No knife, I thought.
‘They have been charming,’ I said, smiling back. Two could play at this game. ‘And thank you for the tracksuit.’ We both smiled again.
Another chair was brought in and we all sat down, although the cubicle was hardly big enough for the four of us.
‘Can you think of any reason why Mr Woodley would be murdered?’ the superintendent asked.
‘Other than over today’s front page of the Daily Gazette?’ I said. There was little point in not mentioning it, and I thought it would be better if I did so first.
‘Exactly. Other than that.’
‘Lots of them,’ I said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I can think of lots of reasons why someone might want to murder Toby Woodley. He was a horrible little man who preyed on other people’s weaknesses.’ I paused briefly. ‘I’d have happily stuck a knife into his back.’
‘And did you?’ he asked seriously.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Someone else seems to have done it for me.’
‘Is that an admission of a conspiracy?’
‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘But if you’re expecting me to grieve over Toby Woodley, you’ll be disappointed. I hated the little creep.’
‘I understand,’ he said slowly, ‘that you have been telling people here this evening that he was nothing more than an insect that needed stamping on. Is that right?’
‘Quite right,’ I said. ‘Because he’s been trashing my late sister’s reputation with his lies and I couldn’t do anything about it.’
‘Someone may have.’
‘Well, it was not me.’
‘What were the revelations about you that Mr Woodley was going to write about?’
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ I said. ‘I was rude to him at Stratford races yesterday and I expect he was planning to make up some nonsense about me in revenge.’
‘How were you rude to him?’
‘I basically told him he was a little shit,’ I said. ‘Because he was.’
Superintendent Cullen looked down at his notebook, then up at me.
‘Are you happy he’s dead?’
I sat there and looked at each of the three policemen in turn.
‘I tried to save his life, didn’t I? I put my mouth over his — over the mouth of someone I hated and despised — and I breathed into him.’ I instinctively wiped my mouth with the sleeve of the tracksuit. ‘Of course I’m not happy he’s dead. But, equally, I’m not especially sad about it either.’
They finally let me go at about half past midnight after I had agreed and signed a full account of the incident, as I remembered it. But they kept hold of my clothes, my shoes and, much to my annoyance, my car.
‘I need my car,’ I said.
‘None of the cars close to the white van have been moved,’ the superintendent said to me. ‘We need to search the area again properly in daylight and I’m not prepared to damage any forensic evidence that may be present by moving the cars.’
‘But how am I going to get home?’ I asked. ‘Especially at this time of night.’
‘I’ll get a car to take you.’
‘Thank you. How about my clothes?’ I asked. ‘And my shoes?’
I was rather fond of those shoes.
‘You’ll get them back in due course.’
I didn’t like to ask how long ‘in due course’ might be. Years, probably, particularly if they provided evidence that was pertinent to a prosecution.
‘I’ll need my car tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to get to Warwick races.’
‘Don’t push your luck, Mr Shillingford,’ the superintendent said, but with a smile. ‘You’re lucky to be getting a lift home, and I could always change my mind. Ever heard of trains? Leave your car keys and your details with my sergeant and he’ll contact you when you can retrieve your car.’
I didn’t push my luck. I gave my car keys to his sergeant.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
I was driven in an unmarked police car by a driver who didn’t say a word to me all the way from Kempton to Edenbridge. He dropped me outside my front door, again in silence, and drove off.
I let myself in and then sat in my sitting-room- cum-kitchen-cum-dining-room-cum-office with a stiff whisky. I didn’t often drink spirits but I didn’t often have someone die with their head in my lap.
Who would have wanted to kill Toby Woodley?
Sure, there were lots of people, myself included, who might rejoice at his passing, but I couldn’t imagine that anyone would actually kill him over something he had written in the paper. As Jim Metcalf had said, everyone knew the Daily Gazette was nothing more than a glorified rumour mill, and no one really believed any of it.
So why was Toby Woodley dead? And did his death have anything to do with his pieces in the paper about Clare? Or was it totally unrelated? Indeed, were the deaths of Toby Woodley and Clare Shillingford entirely isolated incidents for which the only common factor was me?
I sat for a while pondering such questions but without coming up with any useful answers.
I knocked back the rest of my whisky and went to bed.
What I needed most was someone to talk to, someone to bounce some ideas off. In the past that would have been either Clare or Sarah.
I lay in the darkness missing both of them hugely.
On Thursday morning I caught a train from Edenbridge to London and then another from London to Warwick.
I usually went everywhere by car and it made quite a change for me to sit and watch the world go by through the carriage window.
I bought a stack of newspapers at Edenbridge station and spent the journey reading everything I could find about the murder of Toby Woodley in the Kempton racecourse car park. There was precious little that I didn’t know already.
Only the Racing Post named me as one of the two men who had tried to save Toby’s life. I wondered how much flak I would receive from my colleagues for that.
The Daily Gazette, in contrast, named me as someone who was helping the police with their enquiries, which I suppose had been true at the time the paper had gone to press late the previous evening. The Gazette also speculated as to why one of its star reporters — their words — had been so cruelly cut down in the prime of his life. Was it something to do with the Daily Gazette’s on-going investigation into race fixing? Without actually saying so directly, the paper had used the obvious association of the Shillingford name to imply that it must have been me who had killed Toby Woodley to shut him up.