‘At Charing Cross police station.’
‘Can I come and have a look?’ I asked.
‘I can’t think that it will do any good,’ he said, ‘but, I suppose so.’
‘Later this afternoon?’
‘I’ll be here until about six,’ he said. ‘Come to the main entrance on Agar Street and ask for me.’
I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to one and it would take me a good two hours to get there, especially as I had to go via Cambridge to collect my bag.
And there were a couple of other things I had to do first.
‘I’ll try and be there by five.’
The man from the builder’s arrived soon after one o’clock, followed closely by a woman from the car-hire company with a shiny new navy-blue Honda Civic.
Suddenly I felt I was back in business. I could now leave the cottage secure and also get around.
I left the builder’s man tut-tutting about the state of the door and how he would need to replace some of the framing as well as the lock, which was bent beyond repair, and I drove the Honda out of Newmarket along the Bury Road and into Austin Reynolds’s driveway.
I didn’t bother with his front door, which I assumed would be locked. Instead I drove the Honda down the side of the house to his office, and then simply walked in.
There was racing that Monday at Pontefract in the north, and Windsor in the south, and Austin Reynolds didn’t have any runners at either meeting. I’d checked in the Racing Post when I’d been in Geoff Grubb’s stable office collecting the inventory for the cottage.
And, just to make sure he was at home, I’d earlier called his house and he’d answered, although I’d hung up without speaking.
I hoped he might be in his office and I was right. He was sitting in a leather armchair watching RacingTV’s coverage from Windsor.
‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ he blustered, standing up. ‘Walking in like this without so much as a “by your leave”?’
‘At least your door was unlocked,’ I said. ‘So I didn’t need to use a sledgehammer.’
That shut him up, and he sat down again.
Austin Reynolds would have made the world’s worst poker player. Every thought and emotion was readable in his face. And he was suddenly scared, shrinking back into the armchair like a small child caught with his hand in the sweetie jar.
I shouted at him. ‘Do you think I’m an idiot or something?’
He shook his head slightly, although I did think that it had been pretty stupid of me to leave the money and the blackmail note in the cottage.
‘Where is it?’ I asked, drawing myself up to my full six foot two inches and purposefully standing over him in a menacing manner.
‘Where is what?’ he asked me back.
‘The blackmail note you took from Clare’s cottage.’
‘I burned it,’ he said with an air of triumph in his voice. ‘In the fireplace in the drawing room, along with the other one.’
I bet he hadn’t burned the money, but I did expect that the envelope had gone the same way. Without the envelope, and the words written on it, the money was meaningless.
‘So what are you going to do now?’ I asked him, reducing my apparent threat by moving away to his right and perching on the corner of his desk.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Are you going to pay?’ I asked.
‘Er... I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Ten thousand is a lot of money,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
‘And you’ve just burned the things I’d hoped to use to catch the bastard.’
‘I have to protect myself first.’ He said it in a way that made me think he had rehearsed that line many times before in his head.
‘By breaking into other people’s houses?’
‘If necessary, yes.’
‘Have you received the payment instructions?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Let me know when you do.’
‘Why should I?’ he asked.
‘Because, if you don’t, we won’t be able to catch him and he’ll simply ask for more next time.’
Austin shivered.
‘And my advice,’ I said, ‘would be not to pay him this time, either.’
‘But he could tell the authorities about me laying the horse.’
‘Indeed, he could,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe he has any evidence to back up his claims.’ I thought about Toby Woodley’s stolen briefcase. ‘In fact, I don’t really believe that the person who sent you the note last week has the faintest idea what he’s blackmailing you over. I think he’s just an opportunist who’s taking advantage of something he found.’
And, I thought, he’s being far too greedy. If he’d asked Austin Reynolds and Harry Jacobs for a thousand or two, they would have probably just paid and would never have said anything about it to me, or to anyone else. It had been the size of the most recent demand that had been the all-consuming factor in their behaviour.
‘Are you certain about that?’ Austin asked.
‘No,’ I replied, ‘I’m not, but I am certain about something else. If you pay the ten thousand, the next demand will be for even more.’
He looked absolutely miserable.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked pitifully.
‘I want you to pass the payment instructions to me as soon as you get them, and then do nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ he said. ‘How about the money?’
‘There will be no money,’ I said. ‘You’re not paying.’
‘But... what if you’re wrong? What if he has got the evidence?’
‘What evidence could he have anyway?’ I asked. ‘How did you lay the horse in the first place?’
‘I used my wife’s credit card account. It’s still in her maiden name.’
‘But isn’t her billing address the same as yours?’
He said nothing but just looked down at his feet.
How stupid could you get? I thought.
The bloody man deserved to be blackmailed.
Next I went into Newmarket, to the offices of the Injured Jockeys Fund in Victoria Way. I’d already called them and spoken to Mrs Green, the lady who had organized the dinner at the Hilton Hotel on the night that Clare had died.
‘Did you have a nice holiday?’ I’d asked her.
‘Oh, yes, wonderful, thank you,’ Mrs Green had replied. ‘The weather in Portugal was fantastic, just like high summer here.’
‘Good,’ I’d said, laying on the charm.
‘But I was so sorry to hear about your dear sister. It was a real shock, especially as I was quite used to seeing her around the town. I live down near Mr Grubb’s stables. She was always so lovely.’
‘Thank you,’ I’d said to her, meaning it. ‘But the reason I called was that I was hoping you might be able to help me.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m trying to obtain the guest list for your charity night at the Hilton.’
‘Oh.’ There had been a slight pause. ‘I suppose it would be all right to give it to you. The seating plan was on display on the night so it can hardly be confidential, can it? One has to be so careful these days with that damned Data Protection Act. I wouldn’t be able to give you their addresses.’
‘Just the names will be great.’
‘I’d rather not e-mail it to you, if you don’t mind.’ Mrs Green had clearly not been completely convinced that she wasn’t breaking some rule or other. ‘But I could print out another copy of the seating plan, if you’d like. After all, we never had them back at the end of the evening and you could’ve just taken it off one of the boards in the hotel.’
‘Indeed, I could have,’ I’d said, playing along with her game.
I had arranged to collect it from the charity’s offices, and it was waiting for me at the reception desk, sealed in one of those ubiquitous white envelopes.