Dick Francis's Refusal (25 page)

Now all of that was forgotten as we rediscovered each other's bodies, giving and receiving pleasure in equal measure and bringing each other to a simultaneous, heart-thumping climax.

“Wow,” I said. “That was good.”

“It certainly was,” Marina said. “And I needed it.” She snuggled up close to me. “I wasn't expecting you back tonight.”

“Would you have preferred it if I wasn't?”

“Don't be silly,” she said with a laugh. “Of course not.”

We lay together with our arms entwined, drifting off into contented sleep.

•   •   •

I
WAS AWAKE
in an instant as if a noise had disturbed me. It was still pitch-black, so I slowly turned over and touched the top of my bedside clock, lighting up the digital figures, which showed the time as 5:27.

I had been asleep for less than four hours.

I lay in the darkness, straining to hear any unfamiliar or unwelcome sound. There was nothing other than the gentle breathing of Marina next to me, and that was hardly unfamiliar or unwelcome.

Had I dreamed it?

I rolled out of bed, put on my dressing gown and padded as silently as I could across the landing and down the stairs in my bare feet. In spite of the early hour and the near-complete darkness outside, there was just enough light in the house for me to see my way, light from the alarm keypad near the front door, from the cordless phone charger on the hall table and from the digital-clock readout on the electric stove in the kitchen.

I looked down at Rosie, fast asleep in her bed in front of the AGA. I smiled. She was clearly not much use as a guard dog.

All seemed quiet as I peered through the kitchen window for a few moments, searching for any movement outside. There was none that I could see, so I relaxed and went back into the hall, where I was suddenly attacked.

I felt myself being pushed back and then thrown to the ground, landing on my back and hip with a breath-expelling thump onto Charles's antique Persian carpet.

I knew that throw. It was a basic judo move.

“Chico,” I said urgently with what little air I could muster. “It's me, Sid, for God's sake.”

“Well, why didn't you bleedin' say so?” came back his cockney twang from the darkness. “I reckons you was an intruder, like. You should be upstairs in your slumbers, mate.”

“I thought I heard a noise,” I said, rolling over and trying to get myself up.

“Here,” Chico said, holding out a hand, “let me help.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking it. It must be a sign of getting old, I thought, that I needed help getting up from the floor. I put it down to only having one available hand to push with.

“Didn't you hear anything?” I asked, rubbing a fast-developing bruise on my right hip.

“Only me droppin' a bleedin' coffee cup,” he said sheepishly, “when I nodded off.”

“Oh,” I said, “that's all right, then. Come on. Let's both go up to bed. No one's going to come now. And it'll be light soon.”

“Yeah, I reckon you're right.”

We went upstairs together, with him climbing on up to a second level, to the rooms in the eaves that had once been the domain of the domestic servants, while I went and again slid between the sheets with Marina.

This time, she remained sleeping, her rhythmic breathing untroubled by my nocturnal excursion. I smiled in the dark, doing my best to ignore my aching hip, and slowly drifted back to sleep.

T
here was absolutely nothing on the early-morning radio news about a fire in Chipping Warden—no report of the Molson family being burned to death and no account of any gasoline-fueled arson.

In one way, I was hugely relieved. I was sure it would have been the headline story if one of the country's top twenty or so steeplechase jockeys had met his end in such a manner.

I dressed and went down to the study to check once more on the computer and found only one minor reference on a local-news website. It reported that a fire engine had responded to an emergency call soon after midnight and had dealt with a minor blaze near the church at Chipping Warden. It gave no other details and no mention of it being set deliberately or, indeed, of any damage to property.

In fact, it was all rather strange. The fire that Chico and I had seen could surely not be described as a minor blaze. When we had last seen them, the flames had been so fierce that I had feared for the lives of the occupants of Rose Cottage in spite of the presence of the firemen.

I called the Molsons' number using Charles's phone.

“Tony Molson,” said the voice that answered.

“Tony, it's Sid, Sid Halley.”

“I'm not talking to you,” he said angrily. “Bloody mad, you are. Nearly got us burned alive, you did. I should never have won that race. Now, sod off and leave me alone.”

“It was me that called the fire department,” I said, hoping that by saying so I wasn't jumping straight into my own firestorm. “How do you think they got there so fast?”

“According to the cops, someone called William McCusker phoned them. I nearly jumped out of my skin when they told me that. They asked me if I knew anyone of that name, but, of course, I said I didn't.”

“It wasn't him, it was me,” I said again, although, actually, it had been Chico. “I gave them the name William McCusker in order to try and incriminate him.”

“So you're telling me that you knew about the fire before it started. That's what the senior fire officer told me. He reckoned that whoever called them out must have been the person who'd started it. Otherwise, how would they have known?” There was another pause. “Did you start it, Sid?”

“No, of course I didn't,” I said. “Billy McCusker's men started it, as you must know. But what I don't understand is how your house wasn't destroyed, the flames looked so intense.”

“So you were here last night?” he asked with accusation.

“Yes,” I said, “I was. I followed three of McCusker's men all the way from Manchester to Chipping Warden. And I watched them fill a can full of gas at one of the freeway services on the way. When I realized what they were going to do, I immediately called 999 and, yes, it was before the fire started, but not by more than five or ten minutes. And a good job too or you'd all be toast this morning.”

“It was a ring of fire—a wall of flames,” Tony said, “but set back, away from the house. The fire officer said he's seen nothing like it before. Meant to scare me, I suppose, rather than kill me. And it's bloody worked too, I can tell you. Margaret is in a real state.”

I could believe it. So would I have been.

“Where in Manchester does Margaret's sister live?” I asked.

“Eh?”

“Margaret told me that her sister lives in Manchester. Which part?”

“Somewhere called Didsbury. South of the city center. Why?”

“No reason.”

I doubted that Margaret's sister had given McCusker the information about the Molson twins on purpose. It was probably just a good story to tell at some local social gathering when she'd had a few too many glasses of wine. But Billy McCusker had known all too well how to exploit the knowledge for his own ends.

“Are you going to the police about us?” Tony asked.

“Do you want me to?”

There was a lengthy pause.

“No,” he said, sounding like he was almost in tears. “What I really want is for you all to go away and leave me in peace.”

“Retire, then,” I said. “Quit as a jockey. Do it now. Today. Then McCusker will have no further use for you. And, even if the BHA did take away your jockey's license, it wouldn't matter because you'd not be race-riding anymore.”

“But I don't want to retire yet,” he said pitifully. “I reckon I've got a few more seasons left in me.”

“Then McCusker isn't going to go away. Not unless you help me do something about him.”

“Like what?” he said dryly. “You've seen what the man's like. I'm telling you, if he tells me to lose a race again, I'll bloody lose it. Next time it won't be just a scare, he'll burn the house down with us inside it.”

I couldn't argue with him.

I believed it too. In fact, I was quite surprised he hadn't done it this time.

•   •   •

C
HICO WAS
already in the kitchen when I went through to make myself some coffee.

“Don't you ever sleep?” I asked.

“It's nine o'clock. I should be at work.”

“Won't the juvenile delinquents miss you?”

“Nah, they won't even notice. Good old Scottish granny.” He grinned at me. “I'm off all week, thanks to her.”

“Well, I hope you get to sleep more than you did last night. And keep your hands off me from now on, my hip's really sore this morning.”

I rubbed it.

“You shouldn't wander round the place in bare feet, then. You gave me quite a fright, driftin' about the place like a bleedin' ghost.”

“Not as much of a fright as you gave me,” I assured him.

He laughed. “I'm off for a run round the village. You don't need me for a bit, do you?”

“No, that's fine,” I said. “We'll decide what to do next when you get back.”

“Right,” he said. “I'll be about forty minutes.”

He departed just as Marina returned from having taken Saskia to school.

“Everything OK?” I asked her.

“So-so,” she replied, screwing up her face. “Paula's still not speaking to me.”

“Give her time,” I said.

Rosie came over and snuggled up to Marina's leg, wagging her tail with enthusiasm. Marina tickled her behind her ears.

“When can we all go home? Charles is lovely, but he nearly drove me nuts yesterday. And I want my own things, my own bath and my own kitchen.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

I went back to the study and called D.C.I. Watkinson's number without much expectation that he'd answer. But I was wrong.

“Detective Chief Inspector Watkinson.”

“Hello, Chief Inspector,” I said with levity. “This is Sid Halley.”

“I shouldn't be talking to you,” he replied.

“As you've said before, but you are. Have you seen the report of a fire last night in Chipping Warden?”

“Not our patch,” he said. “Chipping Warden is in Northamptonshire. We're Thames Valley.”

“Billy McCusker doesn't take much notice of police force boundaries, and Chipping Warden is only just down the road.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but it's over the county boundary.”

“Well, ask your Northamptonshire colleagues for the report. It will make for interesting reading. Tell them that Billy McCusker's heavies were the men with the gasoline.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Because I followed them all the way from his house in Manchester, and I watched them fill the jerry can they used at the Hilton Park services on the M6. And I have the photos to prove it.”

“My, you have been busy.”

“What did you expect?” I asked. “Someone has to do it, and your lot don't seem to be doing much other than arresting the innocent. And that reminds me, who was it that made a complaint against me?”

“I can't tell you that.”

“Can't or won't?” I said, echoing what Sir Richard Stewart had said to me all that time ago.

“Can't,” the chief inspector replied. “Even if I knew who it was, and I don't, that sort of information is confidential to protect the identity of any children involved.”

“How about protecting the identity of those incorrectly accused?” I said. “The law in this country seems stacked against me at the moment.”

“You and me both,” he said. “Have you any idea how hard it is to get a conviction these days?”

“Is that meant to make me feel better?” I said. “Because it doesn't. When can I move back into my own house?”

“What do you mean?”

“My bail conditions are that I cannot knowingly go within two miles of Annabel Gaucin, but my house is only a mile from hers. And it's not as if there's anything I could do to her at one-mile distance that I couldn't do at two.”

“So where are you now?”

“At my ex-father-in-law's place. It's three miles from the Gaucin household.”

“Didn't you mention that when you were released?”

“Yes,” I said, “but the custody sergeant, in his own inimitable way, said it was tough luck, and I'd have to find somewhere else to live. He didn't seem to like me very much. Kept calling me scum.”

“Custody sergeants can be like that,” he said. “I'll have a word with Superintendent Ingram to see if we can amend the conditions.”

“Thank you.”

“Anything else?” he asked, clearly indicating that our conversation was over.

“Yes,” I said. “Find out about that fire.”

But what good would that do? If they could convict McCusker's men of setting it, which I doubted, they'd hardly be sent down for a decent stretch, if at all. No one was killed or injured, and there was no substantial damage to property.

And even if McCusker himself was convicted of conspiracy to commit arson, he'd get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. And stepping forward as a witness for the prosecution was hardly likely to endear me to him.

I had to find a bigger battle to win, one that would end the war.

•   •   •

T
HE TELEPHONE RECORDS
arrived in the mail from Terry Glenn at the Metropolitan Police.

There was also a brief note from Terry, stating that the cell number I'd given him was registered to a pay-as-you-go SIM card, and even though he was able to send me the calls list, there was no official record linking any particular individual to the number.

The records showed that someone, presumably McCusker, had used that cell phone quite extensively, with several dozen outgoing calls listed over the past six months. Sadly, they didn't show details of his incoming ones.

If he used this number for incoming calls as well, as he had done for the information tips from Robert Price, then the outgoing calls list might not give me the full roll of the jockeys he had corrupted as I had hoped.

I scanned through the numbers, looking for any that I recognized, but none appeared familiar. Sadly, I didn't have my own extensive contacts list close at hand to compare them with. I'd have to wait for the police to return my cell phone or computer in order to do that.

I glanced through McCusker's home-phone list. Again there were dozens of calls, but, as before, there was no number that shouted out to me in recognition. I thought it unlikely that he would carry on any suspicious business on his home number anyway because it would surely be far too easy to trace.

Unfortunately, McCusker was no mug, and I was confident that he'd have used the untraceable pay-as-you-go phone for his nefarious goings-on, probably rerouting calls through various SIM cards just as he'd done when he'd called me.

And that reminded me, I needed to get a new SIM card from the telephone shop in Banbury to replace the one cut up the previous night.

I stuffed the number lists into my pocket and went looking for Chico.

“Good run?” I asked, finding him in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he said. “Nice change to have fresh air to breathe rather than the usual diesel fumes of North London. So what's on the agenda for today.”

“Banbury for new SIM cards,” I said. “I'll get a few, just in case.”

“Then what?”

“I wish I knew,” I said. “I feel so lost without my phone and computer.”

“Have you picked up your voice mail messages using Charles's landline?”

“No,” I said slowly. “Good point.”

I went back to the study and Chico followed.

In all, there were fifteen, mostly old, messages on my voice mail, but, thankfully, not one from Queen Mary's Hospital, demanding my presence on their operating table.

Five of the messages were abusive, calling me a pervert or a pedophile. Charming, I thought, and wondered what sort of person takes the trouble to call someone's phone to leave such a message.

Six other calls were from so-called friends or acquaintances who said they didn't believe a word of what was said in the papers or on the television, and they wanted to make sure that I knew that. But they also asked questions like
Is it true?
or
Is Saskia all right?
So maybe they did believe what they read or heard after all.

But it was the other four messages that were the most interesting.

The first was from our Irish friend, and I played it out on the speakerphone on Charles's desk for Chico to hear.

“Well, Mr. Halley, now you know what it feels like to be banged up in jail.” The sound of his voice, even in a recording, sent shivers down my back. “Remember that, and, in future, do as I tell you.”

The message had been left at half past six on Thursday evening, the same day that I'd been released on bail. He'd probably been watching the six o'clock news on the television.

“He sounds a bit like he looks,” Chico said, “all brawn and no brain.”

“Don't underestimate his intelligence,” I said. “He's no fool or he would still be in jail for Darren Paisley's murder.”