Declared Dead

'Where are you now?' she asked.

'At the cottage. Why?'

'I'm coming down, if you don't mind waiting there for an hour or so for me.'

I looked round the room. It suddenly seemed extremely eerie. 'I think I'll be okay, but hurry up all the same.'

By the time Amy arrived, I had drunk a quarter of a bottle of whisky, and heard footsteps in every part of the house, except the downstairs lavatory. She was dressed in a leather cat suit. Amy wasn't classically good looking, but she made the most of herself and I think men were attracted to her because of her bubbly personality. She was almost three inches taller than I was and quite well built with dark hair and hazel eyes, her face liberally covered with freckles.

'Amy, I'm sorry, did I interrupt something?' I asked, grinning at her.

'Well, I was just warming up with some champagne when you called!'

'I'm sorry.'

'Don't apologise. I was beginning to have second thoughts anyway. Those barristers do know how to bang on about themselves! If I have to hear once more about what he told the judge…'

'At the rate I'm going, I'll be appearing in front of one myself, soon. What am I to do if those are Edward's remains in the boot of the car?'

'Co-operate and tell them everything you know.'

'Everything? Even about the fight and Freddie and the blackmailing?'

'All of it. They probably won't believe the blackmail bit and even if they do, there's no way they're going to drag old man Pryde into this.'

'Do you think they'll want to see me again?'

'They're bound to, and next time it won't be in the cosy warmth of your sitting room. Who saw you today, by the way?'

'An Inspector Wilkinson and a young constable. Wilkinson was a bit too smooth for my liking, but he's plainly on the ball.'

'I'll have him checked out. This is the kind of case that a policeman can make his name on. Identify the body, quick arrest, speedy trial and unanimous conviction. Result: instant promotion and gratitude of nation.'

'They've got to identify the body first. From what I could gather, they've only the charred bones to work on. And, oh yes, the Inspector mentioned a pool of dried blood near the car, too.'

'I don't know about the bones, but the blood will be enough to provide a positive identification provided they have something else to match it with.'

'Positive identification? I thought that all you could tell from blood was the individual's group, which could be the same as millions of other people's.'

'Haven't you heard of DNA?'

'Well, vaguely.'

'It's this new process that is revolutionising everything from the detection of rape to the determination of paternity. It works like this, or at least I think it does. Every one of us has our own individual blueprint. Once you have a piece of an individual's skin or some semen or blood for example, you can detect from that the chromosomal ingredients unique to that person, his or her blueprint, as it were. They can then be matched up to another sample of blood or semen or skin or hair root, it doesn't even matter which, and hey presto, you have positive identification.'

'So if I told you that there was still some of Edward's blood on that bronze they took away…'

'It would be a major breakthrough for them. If that pool of blood they found is human, they will now be able to tell you for certain whether it's Edward's or not. In other words, they'll have both halves of the jigsaw.'

I frowned.

'Do you think it might not be Edward's then?'

'No, not really. I'm just worried that if it is, suspicion's going to fall on someone I know.'

'May I ask who, and perhaps even more importantly, why?'

She looked extremely concerned when I gave her the answers.

* * *

I returned to spend the night at Ralph Elgar's. Freddie was fast asleep, still blissfully unaware of the tragedy unfolding around him. Not surprisingly, I couldn't sleep. I looked back on my life with Edward and tried to pinpoint a time when things had started to go wrong. There was no doubt that some of the blame for the failure of our marriage lay on my shoulders. I had become consumed by my ambition to make it as a jockey and expected him to understand that ambition too, as well as giving it his whole-hearted support. It never occurred to me that he might have different goals for himself; indeed he never gave any indication of having any goals. I suppose on reflection that we married because at the time we enjoyed going to bed together and liked having fun. Unfortunately, marriage requires a commitment of a different nature. And now Edward was dead.

I wondered what was going to happen, just how much was going to come out. I thought about what Inspector Wilkinson had said about lying low for a couple of weeks and rejected the idea. There would no doubt be a lot of gossip on the racecourse and no shortage of pointing fingers. On the other hand, if I gave up riding, even for a short while, it would seriously damage my prospects. After all, someone still had to pay the bills and the mortgage and buy Freddie's clothes. I compromised by deciding not to ride for a week and to do my best to shelter Freddie from the turbulence that lay directly ahead. If Edward was dead, I wouldn't be able to go back to riding six days a week as I had been. I would have to spend a lot more time at home with my son.

* * *

The police arrived to collect me just before lunchtime. I can't say I was surprised. I had tried to phone Tom earlier that morning, only to be told by Mrs Drummond that he had been taken away for questioning shortly after breakfast. She sounded perplexed and upset and said that the police had been extremely brusque in their manner.

It was a curious sensation sitting in the back of a police car with an officer on either side. Like ambulances, police cars may be part of our everyday life but somehow they always seem reserved for somebody else, never you.

After arriving at the station I was shown into a bleak and depressing interview room, which contributed even more to my sense of foreboding. The walls needed a good coat of paint and I could not help wondering what sordid details they had heard over the years. Waiting to greet me was Inspector Wilkinson and he in turn introduced me to an overweight, morose gentleman, a Superintendent Pale down from Scotland Yard. It appeared that Wilkinson was to conduct the interview under Pale's watchful glare.

'Firstly, Mrs Pryde, I must warn you that this interview is being recorded on video camera

I looked over and spotted the camera in the ceiling.

'… and that everything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence. Is that clear? You are, of course, entitled to say nothing and if you wish, you may contact a solicitor.'

Neither course appealed to me. The last thing I wanted to do was to appear in any way embarrassed or as if I had something to hide.

'No, thank you,' I answered. 'I'm perfectly happy to answer your questions.'

'Good. You told me yesterday that the last time you saw your husband alive was three weeks ago on Friday, that would be the nineteenth.'

'Yes, that's right.'

'You had a row, following which you walked out on him taking your son with you.'

I nodded.

'And since that time, you have had no contact with him?'

'Correct. That's just what I told you yesterday.'

'You know, of course, that Mr Radcliffe claims he saw your husband the next day, in the evening?'

'I've no reason to doubt Mr Radcliffe's word.'

'Can you remember what Mr Radcliffe said about that meeting?'

I chose my words carefully. 'Only that he had asked my husband to meet him at the Crown and Anchor pub on the Marlborough road, that they had a row and that the next thing Mr Radcliffe remembers is waking up in his car, still in the car park, in the early hours of the following morning. He was unable to explain why he had passed out.'