Declared Dead

'I'd love to,' I said, 'if you've got anything entered.'

'For sure I have,' he replied in his rich Irish brogue. 'What an honour this is for the rider of the Gold Cup winner to be phoning me, a humble Irish trainer and asking for mounts.'

'Stop taking the mickey,' I replied. 'The honour's all mine.'

'I've just the thing. He's called Jimmy the One and he's entered in a two mile handicap chase. He's a stone cold certainty.'

I remembered that with Willie they always were. 'But haven't you already promised the ride?' I asked, not wanting to go round jocking somebody else off.

'No bother. It's only my nephew, Shaun, and the way he's riding at the moment even the horses are begging for the virus. I think it's a great idea and I look forward to seeing you in the weighing room before the first.'

I thanked him and spent the rest of the morning in Cirencester and then Cheltenham trying to pawn my wedding ring and a gold bracelet my grandmother had left me.

That afternoon Amy phoned me back with Corcoran's proposals. At four-thirty, I was to go to Mrs Moloney's tea rooms in Limerick, where I was to await further instructions. After ten minutes' tough negotiations Amy had been able to beat his financial demands down to four thousand pounds, two thousand up front on the day of the meeting and the remainder after he had made a statement to the police in England. It was agreed that he would travel back with us that weekend to avoid any risk of his having second thoughts and pocketing the money.

Amy herself was becoming a little sceptical.

'How do we know we can trust him? He's a self-confessed thief and for all we know may even have murdered your husband. Don't you think we should play safe and call the police in now and let them help us?'

'Are you being serious? I doubt whether the English police have any jurisdiction in Ireland, although you'll know that better than I do, and in any event Wilkinson regards this whole blackmail business as something I've dreamt up to protect Tom. Can you see the Garda offering to tail me, or for that matter Corcoran being so naive as not to notice?'

'I thought you said he wasn't very bright.'

'I did, but that doesn't mean he's not cunning. No, we're going to have to do it this way and take the risk. If you don't want to come along I quite understand, I really do.'

'Of course I want to come. It was my idea, wasn't it? I'm not going to let you go and meet this man on your own under any circumstances. What's more, I'm coming armed.' That reminded me that I'd forgotten to ask Amy about my own protection.

'What? You're bringing a gun with you?'

'Don't be ridiculous. Where could I get a gun from? I'm bringing a bottle of ammonia which, I'm reliably informed, will temporarily blind any would-be assailant.'

'Can you do me a favour?'

'What's that?'

'Bring two bottles with you.'

She laughed. 'And how are you getting on raising the money?'

'Pretty badly. Fifteen hundred pounds so far, but I've decided I'm going to ask my mother for a loan.'

'Can she afford it?'

'Probably not, but when she realises how much hangs on all this she'll help and she knows I'll repay her as soon as I can.'

'As long as you're sure, otherwise I'll lend you the rest. Let's just hope it's going to be money well spent.'

* * *

By Friday I had two thousand pounds in my hands – a fat wad of fifty and twenty pound notes – and I felt an irresistible urge to keep on counting it. I had spent the morning schooling two novice chasers for Ralph and my back had come through without any twinges of pain. During the week I had made no attempt to pursue any of my other leads, having reached a temporary impasse as far as Musgrave was concerned and being too afraid to risk any further contact with Brennan. I had a sneaking suspicion that it had been the jockey who had run me off the road – I had no proof, just an instinct – and I had no desire to give him a second chance to hasten my departure from this world. To my surprise, I hadn't heard from Sir Arthur Drewe. I had somehow expected that he would contact me immediately on receiving my letter to find out what I was after, but it now appeared that he was prepared to play a waiting game and possibly even to call my bluff. What could I do then? To be honest, I didn't have the faintest idea. The last person I expected to see that afternoon appeared just after five o'clock. Eleanor Pryde swept into Ralph's house as if she owned the place and asked if she could have five minutes alone with me in private. I was having a cup of tea with Ralph at the time, discussing future race plans, and I have never seen him so lost for words. Tall and refined, with a generous application of rouge on both cheeks, Eleanor conveyed an unmistakable air of authority: here was a woman who was used to giving orders and expected them to be obeyed. I agreed to her request, remarking, to Ralph's horror, that it was the first time in five years as my mother-in-law that she had ever voluntarily sought out my company for such a long period. Having been ushered unctuously by Ralph into his study – he even apologised for the mess it was in – Lady Pryde went straight into the attack. I had expected to be harangued about Freddie and asked how I could be so selfish as to want to bring him up. Not a bit of it. Her first act was to thrust out her right hand in front of me and demand: 'Where is it then?'

'Where is what?' I replied, trying to play the innocent.

'Don't be so stupid, you silly girl. Gerald has told me everything. He has been very foolish, very foolish indeed, but I have no intention of seeing everything he has achieved thrown away now.'

'There's no need for that to happen.'

'It's money you want, is it? Or are you trying to blackmail us into letting go of our little Freddie?'

I liked that! Suddenly my own son had become their property.

'I'm not looking for your money and you can leave Freddie out of this. He's staying with me. What I want is that old-fashioned thing called justice.'

'What a noble sentiment! What you really mean is that you want your lover to escape spending the rest of his life behind bars, where he belongs. How could you behave like this, after what has happened to my poor son? Edward never hurt a soul in his life.' She gave out a strangled, and in my view theatrical, sob and started searching her handbag for a handkerchief.

'Your poor son?' I exclaimed in disbelief. I was beginning to wonder just what Gerald Pryde had told his wife. I went on the attack.

'Lady Pryde, your poor son, as you call him, was a blackmailer who regularly beat me up into the bargain.'

'How can you talk like that, after everything we and Edward did for you? I told him never to marry you, I warned him that you were a scheming little social climber who would drag him down, and how right I was. Give me the original of that letter, please.'

'I can't.'

'What do you mean, you can't? Where is it?'

I lied. 'In a safe place with instructions that if anything happens to me the letter is to be sent to the national press.'

'So you are the blackmailer?'

'No, Lady Pryde, just think of me as an instrument of justice. If your husband admits to the police that he was being blackmailed by his own son I undertake to destroy that letter.'

She stared at me with an expression of complete and utter contempt.

'My dear, you are quite mad. My Edward would never have done such a thing. I warn you, you are playing a very dangerous game and if you persist with it someone is going to get hurt.' With that less than noble parting sentiment she turned and strode majestically out of the room and from the house into her waiting car.

Chapter 10

We were like a couple of giggly teenage girls playing truant from school. We checked in one after the other at Heathrow, without giving away we were travelling together and then sat in different sections of the departure lounge. Once on board the plane, having been allocated seats right next door to each other, we dropped the subterfuge and talked away nineteen to the dozen. I suspected that Amy was as nervous as I was, but we were both making a real effort to appear calm and even jolly. She had remembered my ammonia and I slipped it in my bag.