‘Yes.’
‘One more thing.’ I paused.
‘Yes?’ she encouraged.
‘If you like,’ I said nervously, ‘you could bring an overnight bag.’
‘OK,’ she said slowly. ‘I would like. Very much.’
I went to the Press Room with my computer to type out my witness statement for Chief Inspector Perry. Not surprisingly, with almost four hours to go until the first race, I was the only member of the press there.
It took me about forty minutes to complete the statement, reliving the horrors of the previous night, and trying to express them in words. But, try as I might, I couldn’t recall anything at all that I thought would help in identifying the strangler. I even closed my eyes and tried to evoke his smell but there was nothing.
I could remember far better what had happened after I’d sat down in my car than before. I suppose that was bound to be the case as before had been rather mundane, while after had obviously not, if one could possibly describe being propositioned by a beautiful woman for sex as mundane.
I remembered that all right, and it made me smile in anticipation. But I decided against putting it in my witness statement, although it was perhaps the real reason I hadn’t even considered my safety and security as I’d gone out to my car. Suffice to say, my mind had been elsewhere.
I used the printer in the Press Room to print out the statement and was about to go in search of someone to witness my signature when Jim Metcalf walked in.
‘Hi, Jim,’ I said. ‘What brings UK Today’s star reporter here so early?’
‘Boredom,’ he said. ‘I got fed up waiting in the hotel. I stayed up here last night. I’m doing a feature on Peter Williams and I was out on the Heath with his string at seven this morning.’
‘Clare reckoned his colt Reading Glass is a good prospect for next year’s Guineas.’
‘Possibly,’ said Jim, ‘but he still needs to grow a bit behind. And Peter’s got some other good young colts that will certainly shine next year as three-year-olds. He’s so good at not over-racing them at two and burning them out. That’s what I’ll be writing about.’
‘I’ll look forward to reading it.’
‘It’ll be in the paper next Saturday,’ he said. ‘To coincide with Future Champions Day.’
I still had my witness statement in my hand.
‘Jim, could you do me a favour?’ I asked. ‘I need someone to witness my signature on something.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Is it your will?’
‘No,’ I said, laughing. ‘It’s a witness statement for the police.’
‘What did you witness?’ he asked.
I was suddenly not at all sure that this had been a good idea. But I’d already told Lisa, so it was hardly a secret.
‘Someone tried to kill me last night,’ I said.
‘Not Mitchell Stacey?’
I was stunned. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open.
‘How...’
‘Come on, Mark, I’ve known about you and Sarah Stacey for ages. Worst kept secret in racing. You’ve hardly been that discreet, going out openly to pubs and restaurants and the like. I know for a fact that you went to the theatre in London together in August to see that revival of Oklahoma! while Mitchell was up at the sales in Doncaster. I have my contacts.’ He tapped the side of his nose, just as Toby Woodley had done at Stratford.
I was quite surprised that my private life should have been of such interest to him. And I didn’t much like the thought that I’d clearly been watched without my knowledge.
‘Did Toby Woodley also know about us?’
‘I don’t know, but any racing journalist worth his salt should have been able to find out.’
‘But Woodley never wrote anything about us in the Gazette.’
But was that what he’d been going on about at Clare’s funeral? Had he actually known about Sarah and me but his editor had prevented the story being published in the paper so soon after Clare’s death?
‘Maybe he didn’t know, then,’ said Jim, ‘but I’d be surprised. Most of what he wrote was rubbish and speculation, but there was usually a glimmer of truth in there somewhere, and he did have an amazing knack for sniffing out real stories.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and how exactly did he manage that?’
‘I expect he used good old-fashioned journalistic techniques like the rest of us — hiding in the undergrowth with a powerful telephoto lens, paying the police for information and, of course, hacking into other people’s phone messages.’
‘Isn’t phone hacking illegal?’
He looked at me as if I was an idiot. ‘Of course it is, and so is speeding on the motorway, but we all do it. At least, we did before all the fuss.’
‘Is that how you found out about me and Sarah?’ I asked.
‘No. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t.’
‘So how did you, then?’ I pressed.
‘You don’t want to know,’ he said slowly.
‘Yes I bloody do.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Come on, tell me,’ I said aggressively. ‘How did you find out?’
‘Clare told me.’
‘Clare?’ I said, surprised. ‘She can’t have done. She wouldn’t have.’
‘Well, she did,’ Jim said.
‘When?’
‘A long time ago. I don’t think she meant to tell me. It just, sort of, slipped out. She swore me to silence.’
‘How come she was even speaking to you in the first place? I thought she despised all journalists.’
‘She didn’t despise me.’
I wondered if Jim had been one of the string of unsuitable older men that Clare had bedded.
‘Were you sleeping with her?’ I asked.
‘That’s none of your business,’ he replied.
‘I think it is,’ I said, staring him in the eye.
‘OK. I was,’ he said. ‘But it was a couple of years ago now, and it only lasted a month or two.’ He laughed. ‘Only until Clare realized the error of her ways and dumped me.’
So Jim Metcalf wasn’t the ‘new man’ that Clare had been so flattering about at our last dinner.
‘But I still loved her enough,’ he went on, ‘to keep her confidence about you and Sarah Stacey. But it amused me to watch you both.’
‘Well, for your further amusement, and information,’ I said, ‘Mrs Stacey and I are no longer an item. It’s over. Finished. I’ve also moved on.’
‘But was it Mitchell who tried to kill you? I hear on the press grapevine that he’d found out about your affair and I, for one, wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of that temper.’
‘No, you’re probably very wise,’ I said, remembering my encounters with him in the racecourse car parks. ‘I don’t know if it was him but I doubt it. Whoever it was went to great lengths to remain hidden, and that doesn’t smack to me of Mitchell’s methods. He’s more of a confrontational sort of guy.’
‘So how did this person try to kill you?’
‘On the record or off it?’ I asked.
‘Either way,’ he said. ‘You choose.’
I handed him my witness statement and he read it through from start to finish.
‘Blimey,’ he said. ‘It really was attempted murder.’
‘It sure was,’ I agreed.
‘I never realized being a racing journalist could be so dangerous, what with that creep Woodley getting himself murdered.’
‘The police seem to think that might have been a robbery that went too far.’
‘What was stolen?’ Jim asked.
‘It seems his briefcase is missing.’
‘Ah, the famous Woodley briefcase.’
‘What’s famous about it?’ I asked.
‘Don’t you know? He’d always go berserk if anyone went near it in the press room. That’s partly why he was so unpopular with the rest of the racing press. He treated that briefcase as if it was a bloody baby. He was obsessed by it.’