Perhaps I should contact my solicitor and sue them. But I knew of others who had sued the Daily Gazette and, even though a few of them had won sizable damages, they always lost in the end. Newspapers in general were relentless and vindictive, and the Gazette led the way on both counts, hounding its detractors for ever with every slight misdemeanour, every speeding ticket, every marital indiscretion, even every faux pas being splashed across its front page in large bold type.
I took a taxi from Warwick station to the racecourse.
I was early.
I climbed up the stairs to the commentary box and sat silently looking out across the racecourse. There was a good hour and a half to go before the first race but I needed to think. In particular, I needed to think once again about why Clare might have killed herself, and also why anyone would murder Toby Woodley.
The phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Superintendent Cullen’s sergeant.
‘Mr Shillingford,’ he said, ‘did Mr Woodley have a black leather briefcase with him last night when you first saw him in the racecourse car park?’
‘I didn’t really notice,’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘Mr Woodley was seen with it earlier in the racecourse press area, but now it’s missing.’
‘So was it a robbery that went too far?’ I asked.
‘Possibly,’ the sergeant replied. ‘We are trying to determine if the theft of the briefcase was the reason for the attack on Mr Woodley, or whether it was taken afterwards by a third party.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t help you. I don’t remember seeing any briefcase.’
He thanked me anyway, and also told me that my car was now ready for collection and that the keys would be in the Kempton Park racecourse office, which was open late as they were racing there again that evening.
‘Thanks,’ I said, not really meaning it. Not having my car was a bore. I’d better look up the return train times from Warwick to London.
The sergeant hung up.
So the meeting at Kempton tonight was going ahead.
Just as it had been with Clare, Toby Woodley’s demise had been but a minor blip in the ever-moving symphony of life in general that played on regardless. Were we each so insignificant, I thought, that our death would mean nothing more to most people than a slight inconvenience over collecting a car?
Clare’s death certainly meant more to me than that.
I still couldn’t believe she had gone for ever.
I listed in my head, yet again, the only reasons I could muster to explain why she would have killed herself and, yet again, I came up with precious few.
She must have been depressed. Surely people who kill themselves must be depressed. But depressed about what?
I kept coming back to the question of the elusive boyfriend. She had definitely been seeing someone — more than that, she’d been sleeping with him. I thought back to our conversation at that last dinner: What a lover! she had said, and she’d grinned like the cat who’d got the cream. But she’d refused point-blank to say who it was, and I felt she’d become quite aggressive about it when I’d pressed her.
So who was Clare’s great lover and was he one of the two men that Carlos, the bellman, had seen go to her room?
But why hadn’t he come forward to grieve with the family?
He might be married, I thought. Or perhaps the affair had finished sometime between dinner and eleven thirty that night. Was that the reason she had jumped?
Or had it been to do with her riding?
Had someone else spotted what I had seen in the race at Lingfield? Maybe somebody had threatened to tell the racing authorities. I thought back again to something else Clare had said that night: I can’t imagine a time when I couldn’t ride any more. I wouldn’t want to go on living.
And how about Toby Woodley?
Were his death and Clare’s connected? Had someone killed him to shut him up? Had there been more truth to his articles than I’d given him credit for? Was there, indeed, a betting syndicate that had made a fortune laying Brain of Brixham in April?
I didn’t think there could be. For a start, the internet exchanges would have told the British Horseracing Authority if there had been any unusual betting patterns on that race, particularly as Clare had been suspended for riding carelessly in it.
Perhaps Toby Woodley hadn’t got the details completely right but, nevertheless, someone had thought he’d been close enough.
Overall, I was frustrated by my lack of information. I hoped that the Hilton Hotel’s CCTV film or the guest list from the Injured Jockeys Fund gala dinner might give me some clues.
Provided I could get hold of them.
I collected my car from Kempton at eight o’clock that evening, having cadged a lift from Warwick with a south-coast trainer who didn’t mind a brief detour off the M25.
‘It’s the least I could do,’ he said. ‘I was very fond of Clare.’
He dropped me at the gates of the Kempton car park and I walked through to the racecourse office. The only signs of the previous day’s murder were the white tent still covering the spot where Toby had died, and a very large number of police officers standing around holding clipboards.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ called one of them as I emerged from the office with my car keys. ‘Were you here yesterday evening?’
‘Yes, I was,’ I said. ‘I’m collecting my car, which was kept here. I was interviewed last night by Superintendent Cullen.’
He still wrote down my name and address on his clipboard. ‘Is there anything else you’ve remembered since you were interviewed that might be useful to us?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
He let me go and I walked towards my car, which someone had moved over to the fence near the exit.
I felt slightly uneasy.
Less than twenty-four hours ago someone had been murdered in this car park. Stabbed in the back. While there was easily light enough to see the cars, there were plenty of dark shadows in which someone could be hiding. The hairs on the back of my neck stood upright and I spun round to check.
There was nobody there.
I laughed at myself. Of course there was nobody there.
Even a psychopath would surely think twice about murdering someone here with this many policemen about.
But I did walk right round my old Ford before I opened it, and I also checked the back seat to make sure no one was lurking there with intent.
They weren’t. Not this time.
12
On Friday morning I packed a suitcase and drove myself to Newmarket.
My original plan had been to come to Newmarket after racing at Warwick the previous day and stay for a couple of nights with Clare. But that plan had changed even before Clare’s death. About a month ago we had both sort of decided during a phone call that two nights was one night too many in the current belligerent atmosphere that had existed between us.
But Clare had then laughed and promised to hide all the kitchen knives during my stay. At least, I thought, we hadn’t gone too far down an irreversible path that we were unable to see the funny side and laugh at ourselves. But then the disastrous event in Park Lane had overtaken us.
Oh, how I longed again for her still to be alive. It was like an ache that wouldn’t go away. Painkillers had absolutely no effect. I’d tried.
I parked next to Clare’s cottage and collected the key from Geoff Grubb’s stable-yard office. There must have been another key in Clare’s handbag, and I presumed the police had that. I would have to ask Detective Sergeant Sharp for it on Monday. Would they also have her car? I would ask the detective about that as well.