Eleanor, behind me, rubbed my shoulders.
‘You were brilliant,’ she said. ‘Absolutely brilliant.’
I turned and smiled at her. Josef Hughes and George Barnett sat behind her, beaming away as if smiles could go out of fashion.
‘You two can have your self-respect back,’ I said. ‘Without you here I think he might have bluffed his way out.’
If it was possible, they smiled even wider, and then shook me and each other by the hand. I thought it unlikely that the Law Society would give Josef back his right to practise, but he was still a young man and he was bright. I was confident that, without the fear that had consumed them over the past fifteen months, he and Bridget and baby Rory would now be fine.
‘How about a coffee?’ I said to them.
As we made our way out of court I bumped into Scot Barlow’s parents. Mr Barlow senior was a big man and he stood full-square in front of me, blocking my path to the door. He was also considerably taller than I, and now he stood quite still and silent, looking down at me. I wondered if he was pleased or not. He had just discovered the truth about who had killed his children and why, but he had also discovered that they had both been blackmailers. Perhaps he might have preferred it if Steve Mitchell had been convicted of the murder of his son. That would have brought finality. Now he would have to endure another trial, and some unpleasant revelations.
He went on staring at me while I stood waiting in front of him, staring back. Eventually he nodded just once, and then turned aside to let me pass.
Eleanor, Josef, George, Bruce, Nikki and I sat at one of the tables in the small self-service cafeteria area in the main court corridor, drinking vending-machine coffee from thin brown plastic cups, toasting our success.
‘But why was it so important?’ asked Bruce.
‘Why was what so important?’ I said.
‘About the horse’s age,’ he said. ‘So what if the horse was a year older than it was supposed to be when it ran in the Derby? I know that it was cheating and all that, but was it really worth murdering someone over? It was only a race.’
‘Bruce,’ I said. ‘It may have been “only a race”, but horse racing is very big business indeed. That horse, Peninsula, was sold to stud for sixty million US dollars. And mainly because it won that race.’
His eyebrows rose a notch or two.
‘But it was because he won it as a three-year-old running against other three-year-olds that he was worth all that money. Three is young for a horse, but only horses of that age are allowed to run in the “classic” races held in England, and also the Triple Crown races in America.’
‘I never realized,’ said Bruce.
‘Peninsula was syndicated into sixty shares,’ I said. ‘That means that he was sold in sixty different parts. Radcliffe says that he kept two for himself, so there are fifty-eight other shareholders who each paid Radcliffe a million dollars for their share. I suspect that most of those will soon be wanting their money back. I’d like to bet there are now going to be a whole bunch of law suits. It will all get very nasty.’
‘But why didn’t Radcliffe just register the horse with the right age and run him the year before?’ Josef asked.
‘Most racehorse foals are born between the first of February and the end of April, certainly by the middle of May,’ I said. ‘The gestation period for a horse is eleven months and mares need to be mated with the stallion at the right time so that the foals arrive on cue. The trick is to get the foals born as soon as possible after the turn of the year so that they are as old as possible, without them actually being officially a year older. In Peninsula’s case, either someone messed up with the date of his mare’s covering or, more likely, he was simply born a couple of weeks prematurely when he was due to be a very early foal anyway. Radcliffe must have decided to keep his birth secret until January. If he had registered it correctly in December then Peninsula would have been officially a yearling when he was biologically less than a month old. Then he would have been at a great disadvantage against the other horses born nearly a whole year before him but classified as being the same age. He would most likely still have been a good horse, but not a great one. Not sixty million dollars great. To say nothing of the prize money that Radcliffe will now have to give back for all of those races. The Epsom Derby alone was worth over seven hundred thousand pounds to the winner, and the Breeders’ Cup Classic had a total purse of more than five million dollars.’ I had looked them both up on the internet. It was going to be a real mess.
‘But Millie knew the truth because she’d been there when Peninsula was foaled,’ said Eleanor.
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Radcliffe had probably paid her off. But maybe she was greedy, and that cost her her life. It was our good fortune that you were able to find an image of that picture of Millie and Peninsula as a foal.’ I smiled at her. ‘But the silly thing is that, if Radcliffe hadn’t taken that photo from the silver frame in Scot Barlow’s house, I would never have realized that it was important. He’d have literally got away with murder, and the racing fraud. I suppose, to Radcliffe, it must have shone bright as a lighthouse, advertising his guilt, but no one else would have thought so, certainly not this long after the event.’
‘But how did you know about Millie’s car?’ Eleanor said.
‘I became suspicious when I couldn’t find any regular payments to any car-finance companies on Millie’s bank statements,’ I said. ‘And there was no one-off large payment around the date you told me she had bought it. And Scot’s statements didn’t show that he had bought it for her, so I sent Nikki to the dealer in Newbury to ask some questions.’
Nikki smiled. ‘But you were a bit naughty telling Radcliffe that they definitely recognized him from the photo,’ she said. ‘They only said that it might have been him, but they weren’t at all sure.’
I looked at their shocked faces and laughed. ‘It was a bit of a risk, I know. But I was pretty sure by then that I was right, and Radcliffe couldn’t take the chance of me calling the Mazda chap.’
‘How about Julian Trent?’ asked George. ‘What will happen to him?’
‘I hope the police will now be looking for him in connection with Barlow’s murder,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, I intend to keep well clear of him.’
‘So do we all,’ said George seriously. He was clearly worried and still frightened by the prospect of coming face to face with young Mr Trent. And with good reason.
‘What about the second witness?’ Bruce asked, indicating towards a man sitting alone reading a newspaper at one of the other tables. ‘Aren’t you going to call him?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I always intended calling only one of them, but last Thursday when we got the witness summonses, I didn’t know which of them it would be. I only found out on Friday when I showed the picture of Radcliffe to Josef and George and saw their reaction.’
I’d had a second picture in my pocket on Friday. Apicture of my second witness, cut out from the Racing Post, but it hadn’t been needed.
Now I stood up and walked over to him on my crutches.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much for coming. But I’m afraid I don’t think I’ll be needing you any more.’
Simon Dacey turned in his chair and faced me. ‘This has all been a waste of time, then,’ he said with slight irritation. He folded his newspaper and stood up.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What’s been going on in there?’ he asked, nodding his head towards the door of number 1 court. ‘There seems to have been lots of excitement.’
‘You could call it that, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Roger Radcliffe seems to be in a spot of bother.’
There was a slightly awkward moment of silence while he waited for me to explain further, but I didn’t. The trial was not yet technically over, and he was still, in theory, a potential witness.