‘It’s nothing,’ she said, sniffing.
‘Care to unbutton?’
‘I don’t know why I tell you things.’
‘I listen.’
She blew her nose and gave me a brief apologetic look.
‘I’m old enough to know better. I’m thirty-six.’ She gave her age almost in desperation, as if the figure itself were a disaster.
‘Tremayne told me you’d had a disappointment in the love department,’ I said hesitatingly. ‘He didn’t exactly say who.’
‘Disappointment! Huh!’ She sniffed hard. ‘I loved the beast. I mean, I even ironed his shirts for him. We were lovers for ages and he dumped me from one minute to the next. And now Mackie’s having a baby.’ Her eyes filled with tears again, and I saw it was the raw ache for motherhood, that fierce instinct which could cause such unassuageable pain, that grieved her at least as much as the loss of the man.
‘Do you know what?’ Dee-Dee said with misery. ‘That louse didn’t want a child until after we were married. After. He never meant to marry me, I know it now, but I waited for his sake... and I wasted... three years...’ She gulped, a sob escaping. ‘I’ll tell you, I’ll take anyone now. I don’t need a wedding ring. I want a child.’
Her voice died in a forlorn pining wail, a keen of mourning. With a hunger that strong she could make dreadful decisions, but who could tell which would be better for her to be in the end, reckless or barren? Either way, there would be regrets.
She dried her eyes, blew her nose again and shook herself as if straightening her emotions by force, and when I next looked in on her she was typing away collectedly in her usual self-contained manner as if our conversation had never taken place.
On Tuesday afternoon Detective Chief Inspector Doone sent his men to search the whole area where the bones had been discovered. Chiefly, he told them, they were to look for shoes. Also for anything else man-made. They could use metal detectors. They should look under dead leaves. They were to mark on the map where each artefact was found, and also tag the artefact, being careful not to destroy evidence.
This was now a murder investigation, he reminded them.
On Wednesday morning when we came in from first lot Sam Yaeger was again in the kitchen.
This time he came not in his car but with a borrowed pick-up truck in which he proposed to collect some Burma teak that Perkin had acquired for him at trade discount.
‘Sam has a boat,’ Tremayne told me dryly. ‘An old wreck that he’s slowly turning into a palace fit for a harem.’
Sam Yaeger grinned cheerfully and made no denials. ‘It’s already sold, or as good as,’ he told me. ‘Every jockey’s got to have an eye to the sodding future. I buy clapped out antique boats and make them better than new. I sold the last one to one of those effing newspaper moguls. They’ll pay the earth for good stuff. No fiberglass crap.’
Life was full of surprises, I thought.
‘Where do you keep the boat?’ I asked, making toast.
‘Maidenhead. On the Thames. I bought a bankrupt boatyard there a while back. It looks a right shambles but a bit of dilapidation’s a good thing. Sodding thieves think there’s nothing worth stealing. Better than a Rottweiler, is a bit of squalor.’
‘So I suppose,’ Tremayne said, ‘that you’re taking the wood to the boatyard on your way to the races.’
Sam looked at me in mock amazement. ‘Don’t know how he works these things out, do you?’
‘That’ll do, Sam,’ Tremayne said, and one could see just where he drew the line between what he would take from Sam Yaeger, and what not. He began to discuss the horses he would be running at Windsor races that afternoon, telling Sam that ‘Bluecheesecake is better, not worse, for the lay off,’ and ‘Give Just The Thing an easy if you feel her wavering. I don’t want her ruined while she’s still green.’
‘Right,’ Sam said, concentrating. ‘What about Cashless? Do I ride him in front again?’
‘What do you think?’
‘He likes it better. He just got beat by faster horses, last time.’
‘Go off in front, then.’
‘Right.’
‘Nolan rides Telebiddy in the amateur race,’ Tremayne said. ‘Unless the Jockey Club puts a stop to it.’
Sam scowled but spoke no evil. Tremayne told him what he would be riding on the morrow at Towcester and said he’d have no runners at all on Friday.
‘Saturday, I’m sending five or six to Chepstow. You’ll go there. So will I. With luck, Nolan rides Fiona’s horse in the Wilfred Johnstone Hunter Chase at Sandown. Maybe Mackie will go to Sandown; we’ll have to see.’
Dee-Dee came in composedly for her coffee and as before sat next to Sam. Sam might be a constant seducer, I thought, looking at them, but he wouldn’t want to leave a trail of paternity problems. Dee-Dee might get him into bed but not into fatherhood. Bad luck, try again.
Tremayne gave Dee-Dee instructions about engaging transport for Saturday, which she memorized as usual.
‘Remember to phone through the entries for Folkestone and Wolverhampton. I’ll decide on the Newbury entries this morning before I go to Windsor.’
Dee-Dee nodded.
‘Pack the colours for Windsor.’
Dee-Dee nodded.
‘Phone the saddler about collecting those exercise sheets for repair.’
Dee-Dee nodded.
‘Right then. That’s about it.’ He turned to me. ‘We’ll leave for Windsor at twelve-thirty.’
‘Fine,’ I said.
He went up to the Downs to watch the second lot, driving the newly acquired Land Rover. Sam Yaeger took the pick-up round to Perkin’s half of the house and loaded up his teak. Dee-Dee took her coffee into the office and I made a determined attempt to sort each year’s clippings into order of significance, the most newsworthy on top.
At about that time, Detective Chief Inspector Doone went into the formerly unused office that had been dubbed ‘Incident Room’ for the bones investigation and laid out on a trestle table the bits and pieces that his men had gleaned from the woodland.
There were the clothes found originally, now drying out in the centrally-heated air. There was also a pair of well-worn and misshapen trainers, still sodden, which might once have been white.
Apart from those, there were four old, empty and dirty soft drink cans, a heavily rusted toy fire-engine, a pair of broken sunglasses, a puckered leather belt with split stitches, a gin bottle, a blue plastic comb uncorrupted by time, a well-chewed rubber ball, a gold-plated ball-point pen, a pink lipstick, chocolate bar wrappers, a pitted garden spade and a broken dog collar.
Detective Chief Inspector Doone walked broodingly round the table staring at the haul from all angles.
‘Speak to me, girl,’ he said. ‘Tell me who you are.’
The clothes and the shoes made no answer.
He called in his men and told them to go back to the woods and widen the search, and he himself, as he had the day before, went through the lists of missing persons, trying to make a match.
He knew it was possible the young woman had been a far stranger to the area but thought it more likely that she was within fifty miles of her home. They usually were, these victims. He decided automatically to beam in on the locally lost.
He had a list of twelve persistent adolescent runaways: all possibles. A list of four defaulters from youth custody. A short list of two missing prostitutes. A list of six missing for ‘various reasons’.
One of those was Angela Brickell. The reason given was: ‘Probably doped a racehorse in her charge. Skipped out.’
Doone’s attention passed over her and fastened thoughtfully on the wayward daughter of a politician. Reason for being missing: ‘Mixed with bad crowd. Unmanageable.’