Mr and Mrs Joshua Ingram were the owners of Tortola Beach.
‘Perhaps the Ingrams might be interested to know why their horse didn’t win at Doncaster in August.’
‘I thought you said you weren’t blackmailing me.’
‘I’m not,’ I said.
‘That sounded like blackmail to me.’
‘It will only take a few minutes.’
He thought for a moment. ‘Go round to my office. Down the side.’ He pointed to his right. ‘I’ll come and let you in there.’
Reluctantly, I removed my foot from his door and he closed it.
‘Down the side,’ I shouted to Emily, and she drove down behind me as I crunched over the gravel.
Austin Reynolds’s office was attached to the back of his house, looking out towards the stable-yard beyond, and he was already standing at the external door, holding it open.
‘Who’s in the car?’ he asked.
‘Just a friend.’ I was suddenly very glad that Emily was with me. This felt a bit like walking into the lion’s den.
I followed Austin into his office. There was not a lion to be seen.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, sitting down behind his large oak desk.
‘I want to know who is blackmailing you.’
‘So do I.’
‘But you must have some idea.’
‘None,’ he said. ‘All I received were notes.’
I removed from my pocket the piece of paper that I’d found in Clare’s freezer and laid it out on the desk in front of him.
‘Were they like this?’ I asked.
He looked at it briefly and nodded. ‘Pretty much, except mine accused me of laying horses to lose.’
‘Did they arrive with DVDs?’
‘The first one did.’
‘How many have you received?’ I asked.
‘Three.’
‘And what did you do about them?’
‘Paid up,’ he said. ‘At least I did for the first two. Whoever it was didn’t ask for very much, so I paid.’
I was amazed.
‘Except now,’ he said, ‘I’ve been asked for more and I don’t like it.’
‘What do you mean?’
He looked at his watch and stood up. ‘I’ve got to go and get changed.’
‘Not yet,’ I said forcefully, pointing a finger at him. ‘Answer my questions first.’ He sat down again heavily. ‘What did you mean by being asked for more?’
‘It was that bloody race at Wolverhampton,’ he said angrily. ‘I wish I’d never run the damn horse.’
‘Brain of Brixham?’
‘Yes.’
‘But surely that was a genuine error on Clare’s part?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘So why are you being blackmailed over it? Why didn’t you just go to the police?’
‘Clare wanted to,’ he said.
‘So why didn’t you?’ I asked. He said nothing but just sat looking down at his desk. ‘Was it because you had indeed layed the horse to lose?’
He looked up at me. ‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’d thought old Brainy would run really well so I had a big bet on him to win. Too big, really. Then I started to have cold feet about it, especially when he seemed a bit off colour on the morning of the race.’
‘So you layed him on the internet?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Though not using my own name, of course. And just to limit my losses if he didn’t win.’
Austin and I both knew that trainers laying their own horses was strictly against the Rules of Racing, and would be punished by a lengthy ban from the sport.
‘I didn’t lay the full amount. I still stood to lose a lot if Brainy didn’t win.’
That probably wouldn’t have made much difference to an enquiry.
‘It was very stupid,’ he said. ‘I know that.’
‘But not as stupid as arranging with Clare to stop Tortola Beach at Doncaster.’
‘That was all her idea,’ he said. ‘When she found out I’d layed Brainy at Wolverhampton she said there was a much better way of stopping a horse winning, one that nobody would ever discover.’
Except me, that was.
‘So did Clare pay the two hundred pounds?’ I said, pointing at the note.
‘I paid it for her to stop her going to the police,’ Austin said miserably, ‘along with two hundred from me. That bloody mistake of Clare’s has cost me a fortune, what with the loss of prize money and my big bet, not to mention the blackmail.’
‘How about the second note? When did that come?’
‘About six weeks ago.’
‘Asking for the same amount?’ I asked.
‘No, it was a thousand that time.’
‘Did Clare get another one too?’
‘Yes,’ Austin said. ‘Also for a thousand.’
‘And did you pay that for her as well?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I told her to pay it out of the money I’d given her for losing on Tortola Beach.’
She obviously hadn’t done that, not if the two thousand I’d found in her desk had been the same money. I wondered if she’d paid it at all.
‘But you paid?’
‘Yes,’ he said gloomily.
‘And you still didn’t go to the police?’
‘I couldn’t, could I? Not when I’d paid up once before.’
‘And not when you’d also layed Tortola Beach to lose.’
‘That was only a bit,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do too much, could I, or it would have been suspicious.’
‘But why on earth would you stop a horse if you weren’t making much from it?’
He looked the picture of abject misery, a stark contrast to when he had led his victorious horse into the winners’ enclosure earlier that afternoon.
‘Clare was adamant that we should do it. She seemed to act like it was a game. I told her not to be so bloody silly but she said that she would give it a go anyway, whether I wanted her to or not.’
‘So you agreed?’
‘Yes.’
‘But why then did you pay her two thousand pounds if you didn’t make much out of it?’
‘It was like a bet between us. I told her she could have half what I made if she pulled it off without there even being a stewards’ enquiry. She claimed it was easy and that she’d done it before, but I didn’t believe her. I really didn’t think she could do it, but boy, did she prove me wrong. It was brilliant. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.’
My stupid brilliant sister, I thought. Competitive to the end. It hadn’t been the money that had been important, it had been winning her bet with Austin.
‘You said you’ve now been asked for more.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I had another note yesterday morning demanding ten thousand.’ He again looked close to tears. ‘I can’t afford that sort of money.’
‘Show me the note,’ I said.
He opened the top left-hand drawer of the desk and removed a single sheet of paper, placing it down in front of me.
TIME TO PAY A LITTLE MORE.
A PAYMENT OF JUST £10000 IS NEEDED FOR ME TO REMAIN SILENT.
GET THE CASH READY. PAYMENT INSTRUCTIONS WILL FOLLOW.
It did look remarkably like the one I’d found in Clare’s freezer, but it had one very significant difference. The amount of ten thousand pounds had had the last zero added by hand. When it had been printed it had read just one thousand. The blackmailer had obviously decided at the last minute to seriously up the stakes.
‘If it had been for just a thousand like last time,’ Austin said, ‘I’d probably pay it. But ten grand is completely out of order.’
I thought that even one thousand was out of order.
‘When did you say this arrived?’
‘Yesterday morning,’ he said. ‘In the post.’
‘Where’s the envelope it came in?’
He took an envelope out of the drawer and placed it on the desk. It had been addressed in the same printed small capital letters as the note, and the postmark showed that it had been posted on Thursday, even though I couldn’t read from where.