The Grave Maurice (46 page)

Neil was completely discombobulated by this second assault on his stables—the first being young Nell grabbing Aqueduct as if her life depended on him, and now here came Rice yelling to saddle up the horse. Owing to Neil's years of Dan Ryder's “Do-it-don't-ask” training he threw the saddle he'd been carrying over his arm onto Criminal Type's back and he'd barely done this before Vernon had thrown himself up on the horse in one of the most efficient mountings Neil had ever witnessed.

Rice turned the horse and was now heading for the meadow and the walls.

Neil Epp ran, yelling, “Hey, Vernon! Criminal Type don't go over the sticks!”

Add to this the car that had just pulled onto the gravel lot and out of which got that Scotland Yard detective sergeant who'd been here before, and Neil thought it was the busiest day they'd seen since breeding rights to Samarkand had been initiated.

“Not fifteen minutes ago, Nell left,” he said to the party of worried-looking men who'd just come out of the house. “She came running out, saddled up Aqueduct and took off like Criminal Type on a fast track. Now he's gone too, Criminal Type. With that Rice fellow up on him. Nell'd make a good 'chaser the way she takes those walls, or even a jockey. She's flat-out brilliant—”

Jury cut across Neil's career choices. “Where's the Diamond farm?”

As Neil directed him, Roger turned disbelieving eyes on Jury. “You don't think—?”

“Wiggins, you drive them”—he indicated Roger and Arthur—“and you drive me”—he turned to Melrose.

They ran toward the two cars.

Unfortunately, the quickest way to Roy Diamond's place was not by the road, but by Hadrian's walls, as the crow flies—or the horse.

R
oy Diamond was riding his favorite mount, Havoc, around his mile-and-a-quarter training course, trying to beat yesterday's record time. Roy didn't know it but he had four very bad moments coming his way.

He didn't see the horse and rider streaking across his paddock where a few of his horses grazed, and he didn't see it had taken the last wall as if the wall were made of Devon cream. He didn't see this because he was galloping round the track and his peripheral vision lied: he took movement over that way to be the movements of his own horses.

Coming around the turn he realized this wasn't at all the case and when Aqueduct jumped the fence that enclosed the course, Roy felt fear, a thing he rarely felt because he always considered himself to be in command of any situation. Fear was a negligible, chaffy emotion wasted on Roy. Since the death of his daughter, most emotions were.

She was holding a whip up, clearly with the intention of bringing it down. Nell Ryder, as with her legendary uncle, Dan, never took a whip to a horse. He knew if she slowed she'd be on him with that whip, but what was much worse, with that horse. Nell talked to horses. Roy could see happening to him the same thing that had happened to Dan Ryder.

His jacket was lying over the fence and as he galloped round the track with her in pursuit he knew he had to get hold of the jacket. He saw that part of the fence coming up, reined in Havoc and reeled off the horse, snatched his coat and grabbed the gun from the pocket.

Roy was that popular: he always carried a gun.

Now the next bad moment happened: a cherry-red Aston-Martin was coming at full throttle toward the training track. Between the road and the track were two white fences. The Aston-Martin couldn't jump the fences, so it did the next best thing: went straight through them.

At the same moment Roy caught a glimpse of yet another horse racing across the field a hundred feet away, just as Aqueduct appeared about to fall on Roy like a wall of bricks.

Roy fired. In that split second between intent and execution, Nell vaulted from the horse, and like a kid playing leapfrog, slid over Aqueduct's head and down in front of him. The first shot caught her on the way down, the second as she hit the ground.

Then Roy got off two shots at the driver—was he seeing right?—of the Aston-Martin. Danny Ryder was out of the car and running toward them; Criminal Type jumped the wooden fence around the course and without even slowing, Vernon sprang from the saddle and fell on Roy Diamond, yelling.

Fear is no match for fury in a fight. Vernon wrenched the gun away and pushed it against Roy's temple. Whether he would have fired or not was a moot question as he didn't get the chance. Danny Ryder slid across the track, grabbed the gun-holding hand and knocked the gun from Vernon's grip. Then he tossed it—at the ground, the sky, the past—while Vernon was up and running to where Nell lay as if Aqueduct had thrown her. The horse stood with neck bent, its muzzle wandering over her.

Carefully, Vernon wedged his arm behind her and lifted her as if she were a bunch of broken lily stalks—that pale hair, that translucent face. His hand on her ribs felt the soaking wetness of blood. “Nellie!”

She gazed at him and managed two syllables: “Remem—?”

It was then that Roy Diamond's fourth bad moment arrived full force. Too late for Nell but in plenty of time to see Roy in hell, the four men piled out of the police car and the Bentley and made a rush toward the others. Seeing Dan Ryder, Arthur and Roger stopped dead. Danny looked and turned away in tears.

Jury and Wiggins ran to where Roy Diamond, who clearly saw the vanity of mounting his horse and trying to run, stood with his back to Nell. “Oh, no,” whispered Wiggins.

Jury knelt by Vernon and put two useless fingers against what should have been the pulse in her neck. Then he rose and moved like a glacier to where Diamond was standing.

Roy said, broken-voiced but in fear, not sorrow: “I wasn't aiming at her!”

Jury grabbed one arm in a vise, scooped the gun from the dirt and pulled Roy away toward the house. Wiggins gripped the other arm, and between them, they pulled the man along. Roy wasn't helping the process.

“I was only trying to keep the damned horse from stomping me; I can't help it if she threw herself in front of the goddamned horse.”

They were going through the back door of the house. Melrose and Danny Ryder were keeping up.

“Why'd she do that?” yelled Roy. “Why would she throw herself—my God, man, it was only a horse!”

That was simply too much for Wiggins, who kicked the door shut in Melrose's face, brought his raised knee around and shoved it into Roy Diamond's front, pushing out what sounded—
uph
—like the last breath of the man's life.

“Wiggins,” said Jury.

Wiggins took the ballast of his knee away and Roy slid down the wall.

Jury grabbed Roy by his shirt collar and pulled him back to his feet. He slammed Roy against the wall.

“Sir—” said Wiggins.

“You had your turn,” Jury said over his shoulder. Then he shoved his face into Roy's. They could have breathed with each other's breath. “Now, you listen to me, you hopeless piece of shit—”

“Sir—”

“—it would take me one second to crush you a lot harder than that horse.” To demonstrate, Jury pulled Roy's head away from the wall and slammed it back hard enough to crack plaster. “I'm an off-duty cop and this is a personal dispute, see, and it would take no effort at all for me to drop you where you stand—”

Wiggins gripped Jury's arm. “
Sir!
You can't—”

Jury shook off Wiggins's hand and continued what he was saying in a sibilant whisper as he shoved the muzzle of Roy's gun against his temple. “My sergeant here is worried about police procedure, but me, I don't give a flying fuck for procedure.” He pulled Roy away from the wall again and banged him back again. “Do you know what keeps me from blowing you away,
Roy
? I mean, right now,
Roy
? Your daughter. That's all. Your dead daughter.” Then Jury pulled him away from the wall and nearly threw him at Wiggins. “Charge him and take him to the car.”

“Which charge?” Wiggins called to Jury's retreating back.

“Resisting arrest.”

As Jury walked out of the house, he heard the double note of a police vehicle in the distance. Someone had had the presence of mind, probably Melrose Plant, to call Cambridge.

The others seemed to have scattered to the winds, as if they crewed a little boat that was rudderless or no longer anchored. Melrose Plant leaned against a tree, smoking and looking at Jury. Danny Ryder leaned against his car. When Jury walked up to him, all Danny could do was shake his head and say, “Christ, but I'm sorry. Sara told me about Maurice this morning; I jumped in my car and drove without stopping. When I got to Dad's, Neil Epp told me what had happened, how all of you had raced over here. I knew it was bad news. I knew it had to be this fucker, Diamond, you were looking for.” He ran the side of his hand over his eyes. “One minute, two—if I could've made it a minute sooner—”

“It's always a minute, Danny. There was nothing you could do. But you saved Vernon Rice from blowing that bastard's bloody head off.”

Then he walked over to the course where Arthur and Roger Ryder were leaning against the fence, staring at the ground where a dozen feet away, Vernon was still holding Nell. The depth of their despair was so awful it paralyzed them; they seemed unable to go to where Nell was. Jury couldn't think of a thing to say. Not a word. He searched his mind for some words of consolation and couldn't find one. What bloody good was language when it failed you at every important juncture? Looking over at Aqueduct, who stood stock-still by the fence, he thought,
It's as hard for me as it is for you, boy.

He walked over to where Nell lay and knelt down and put his hand on Vernon's shoulder. Vernon looked at him out of eyes that looked gutted by fire.

The sirens were close now, and there was more than one.

Vernon swallowed hard. “All she tried to say was, ‘Remember.' ”

That, thought Jury, was the word.

S
till with his coat on, Jury stood against the wall in one of the interview rooms of the Cambridge station, looking at Roy Diamond. DCI Greene sat at the table across from Diamond.

“Six witnesses. We have you for both murder and attempted murder. You'll never talk your way out of this; it just won't happen.”

Diamond had regained his cool manner, and said, “If that's the case, why are we talking?”

Greene tipped his chair back, looked at Jury. He had told Jury he was welcome to sit in on the questioning of Roy Diamond. Diamond's smooth manner grated on Jury's nerves, but he said nothing.

“I can tell you one thing, Inspector,” said Diamond. “I'm putting in a complaint to the chief constable about being roughed up.” He nodded his head toward Jury.

“Pity,” said Greene, tonelessly.

“And the commissioner,” Diamond added, “is a friend of mine.”

Jury thought that if the bastard was playing the friends-in-high-places card, Diamond wasn't as sure of his “self-defense” defense as he wanted them to think. He came away from the wall and moved closer to the table. Diamond inadvertently tilted backward.

“Why are we talking? That was your question, wasn't it?” Jury put his hands on the table, leaned toward Diamond and said, in a voice he managed to keep soft, “We're talking because we want to know the rest of it.”

Roy Diamond's eyes widened in mock surprise. “All I know is what I've already told you. All I know is what happened two hours ago: Nell Ryder jumped her horse over the fence at my training track and launched herself at me. That horse came toward me like an express train.
Then
the car comes at me,
then
the second horse. What choice did I have? I can only say I'm lucky to have had the hand-gun with me. It was clearly self-defense.”

Jury's laugh was a bark. Of course, Diamond's solicitor would take that tack, unless he flew a kite of diminished responsibility.

Greene said, “We've got Billy Finn in another room, Roy. We'll have the motive sorted, no sweat.”

Diamond said, “Well, you can ascribe any motive you want to what I've
allegedly
done; the trouble is that you don't have any evidence”—he leaned over the table—“because there isn't any.”

“There will be,” said Jury. “And another thing, what about this sideline of yours, the mares Valerie Hobbs kept on her farm? That
is
your operation, isn't it?”

“Yes. The operation is not illegal, as you very well know. Those mares belong to me, Superintendent. They're my property.”

“Not any longer, they're not. You'll be compensated, not to worry. But I'd really like to know where you were going with this. Because it's my understanding an American pharmaceutical company named Wyeth has a patent on this mare's-urine estrogen drug.”

“They won't have it forever. The patent is going to run out some time around the turn of the century, 2001 or 2. No, my operation is by way of being experimental. I want to see if a drug can be produced that doesn't have to go through a hundred steps to get that end product. Be cheaper to market it.”

“How? How are you—or were you—going to see this?”

“I've several chemists working for me. I've a small plant in the Marquesas. It's temporary, of course. But I have three chemists, an accountant, an investment banker and a lawyer assigned exclusively to this operation. To actually grab some of the market we'd need thousands of horses, such as are on those farms in Canada. And I could hardly organize that in this country, could I? Not on my land, certainly. No place secluded enough.”