By that time it was dark and, just like the CCTV camera at the Hilton Hotel, Gareth’s two small cameras had automatically switched to infrared operation, both of them assisted by an infrared lamp positioned on the signals-relay vehicle that bathed the area in a radiation invisible to humans but clear as daylight to the cameras.
I nearly fell off my stool in the commentary box, from where I hadn’t moved since well before the first race. It was a good job that it didn’t happen actually during a race commentary, I thought, or I would have completely lost the plot.
Jack Laver had also worked his magic and had installed not one but three monitors in the commentary box, and the extra two showed the images from Gareth’s hidden cameras.
And there was the blackmailer, bold as brass, walking over to Austin’s car, bending down, removing the envelope, and stuffing it down his coat without stopping to open it to count his money — not that he’d find any money.
And just for good measure, as he had bent down, he had looked straight into the camera hidden in the Honda from a distance of just a couple of feet. The image may have been monochrome green, and he might have had zombie-like eyes, but his features were clear and distinct.
Almost before anyone would have had a chance to react, our man was up and gone, visible now only via the second camera, walking briskly back towards the racecourse entrance, once more to mingle with, and become anonymous amongst, the other racegoers and the attendant policemen.
The man’s head bobbed up and down slightly with each step, and I had seen that easy, large-stride, lolloping motion before in the video room at Charing Cross police station.
The man who collected Austin Reynolds’s envelope, with its filling of gravel, was the same man who had exited the Hilton Hotel just minutes after Clare had fallen to her death.
But this time, I’d seen his face. And, in spite of the greenness and the zombie eyes, I was certain I knew him.
I knew him very well indeed.
‘Got ’im,’ Gareth said excitedly, bursting into the commentary box. ‘Did you see? Bleedin’ marvellous.’
To him it was still only a game but, to be fair, that’s all that I’d implied it was.
‘Yes,’ I said, almost equally excited. ‘I did see.’
I was thinking fast.
‘Take this,’ I dug into my leather bag and gave him a plain, unmarked DVD. ‘I need you to do a bit of editing,’ I said, and I explained what I wanted him to do.
‘No probs,’ he said, taking the DVD. ‘Give me about ten to fifteen mins.’ He left as quickly as he’d arrived.
The horses were coming out onto the course for the fourth race, a six-furlong maiden stakes for two-year-olds with seven runners, one of whom, Spitfire Boy, had run at Lingfield in the race when Clare had ‘stopped’ Bangkok Flyer. That race had been over seven and a half furlongs and Spitfire Boy had faded badly in the last two hundred yards. Perhaps this shorter trip would suit him better.
I described the colours of the jockeys’ silks as the horses made their way to the start on the back straight, taking particular note of Ground Pepper, the young colt trained by Austin Reynolds.
I tried to concentrate on the horses but my heart was pounding.
If I was right, the man who had collected the envelope had murdered Toby Woodley. I should tell the police straight away.
Concentrate, I told myself. For God’s sake, concentrate on the racing!
Try as I might to learn the colours, visions of the man’s face with his zombie eyes kept crowding into my consciousness.
‘They’re loading,’ I said into my microphone as the horses began to be inserted into the starting stalls by the team of handlers.
I flicked my main monitor over to the current betting odds and gave the meagre crowd an update.
‘Spitfire Boy is favourite at three-to-one, Ground Pepper at fours, eleven-to-two bar those.’
I switched the monitor back to show the horses at the start.
‘Mark, coming to you in ten seconds,’ said Derek into my headphones, ‘nine, eight, seven...’
‘Just three to go in now,’ I said over the public address.
‘...six, five, four...’
‘Ground Pepper will be the last to load.’
‘...three, two, one...’
As always, I paused fractionally as the satellite viewers came online.
‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘They’re all in. Ready.’ The stalls gates swung open. ‘They’re off, and racing.’
I thought I did pretty well, considering the minimal amount of time I had devoted to learning the colours.
I was helped by Spitfire Boy, who was a determined front-runner, taking the lead in the first few strides and setting a strong pace that spread the field round the far end of the course, making their identification easier.
As always, the horses bunched more as they turned into the straight and, on this occasion, their jockeys’ faces didn’t remind me of Clare. This time, they all appeared to me with green faces and zombie eyes, each of them full of murderous intent.
Spitfire Boy held on to win by a neck, with Ground Pepper fading to finish fourth of the seven.
As soon as the last horse crossed the line I grabbed my mobile and called the number of Superintendent Cullen’s sergeant. There was no answer. I tried it again. Still no answer, so I left a message asking him or his boss to call me back urgently.
What should I do now?
There were police downstairs by the entrances. Should I go down to one of them, or should I call 999?
Gareth’s voice came into my headphones. ‘Mark, I’ve done the edit. It runs for just thirty-eight seconds. I’ll send it through to your monitor.’
‘What the hell are you doing on the talk-back?’ I said. ‘Where’s Derek?’
‘They’ve all gone on a loo break. We’ve got ads for the next...’ He paused while he checked ‘...three mins and twenty. Do you want to see this or not?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Put it up.’
I watched as his handiwork came up on my main monitor.
The plain, unmarked DVD that I had given to Gareth was a copy that Detective Sergeant Sharp had given me of the Hilton Hotel CCTV footage as the man with the baseball cap and turned-up collar had come down in the lift, and then walked across the hotel lobby, including the view from behind.
Just as I had asked, Gareth had edited the CCTV footage together with that from the cameras tonight so that the images appeared side by side on a split screen, first with the close up of the man’s face alongside the shot of him in the lift, and then the two views of him walking away from the camera, one in the hotel and the other in the Kempton car park.
And it was those final fifteen or twenty seconds of walking that left no doubt whatsoever that the two men in the films were one and the same person.
I glanced out of the commentary box towards brightly lit bookmakers’ boards and the dark racecourse beyond, and was horrified by what I saw.
Gareth may have been Mr Bleedin’ Magic when it came to cameras, but he was Mr Blitherin’ Idiot when it came to acting as a producer.
The edited films were not just playing on my monitor but on the huge television screen set up in front of the grandstand.
‘For God’s sake, Gareth,’ I shouted through the talk-back. ‘It’s on the big screen.’
‘Bugger me. So it is. It’s bleedin’ everywhere.’
He thought it was funny.
Derek didn’t. In fact, he was furious.
‘Was this your doing? ’ he demanded loudly. ‘I go to the bloody toilet and the next thing I know we’re broadcasting God knows what to all the television sets right round the racecourse.’