The Stabbing in the Stables (26 page)

J
UDE WAS HUNGRY
.
All very well to agree to look after Conker, but she'd not had time for any breakfast when she was summoned to Long Bamber early that morning and was beginning to feel the effects.

She inspected the pony's temporary stable. Not being a hay eater, she wasn't going to challenge Conker for the contents of her net. Nor did the pony nuts look very appealing. But a carrot…

There were still some in a bucket, which Imogen had shrewdly placed out of Conker's range. They looked unlike the kind of carrots that might appear in a supermarket. In fact, they were carrots that had been disqualified from appearing in supermarkets. The mandatory image in the world of supermarkets demands that a carrot be a perfect tapered cylinder built on the lines of a space rocket, whereas in nature carrots come in a variety of knobbly shapes and sizes. The perfect ones go to the customers of Sainsbury's and Tesco; the imperfect ones are fed to horses.

As well as being misshapen, the carrots in the bucket were a bit old and muddy, but Jude was very hungry. To ease her conscience, she also gave one to the pony, and the two of them chomped in contented unison. The carrots were pretty woody, but better than nothing.

She decided to stay in the stall, not principally to keep an eye on Conker, but because the air was very cold outside its shelter. She put the remaining carrots in with the pony nuts, and sat on the upturned empty bucket.

Her enforced wait was in many ways inconvenient but did at least give her a chance to think through the case and the various anomalies that it presented. Having met Alec Potton, she had great difficulty in casting him in the role of murderer. If half of what his wife said about his philandering were true, his behaviour was hardly admirable. Jude didn't think much of men who kept their wives short while spending the family money on girlfriends, but he still seemed to her too weak a personality to make an attack like that which Walter Fleet had suffered.

On the other hand, the blood-spattered Barbour found in the Dalrymples' hayloft undoubtedly belonged to Alec Potton, and the police had had no hesitation about taking him in for questioning. Maybe, as ever, they knew a lot more than Carole and Jude would ever know.

What about motivation, though? Hilary Potton's suggestion, relayed by Carole, that Alec was jealous of Walter's attention to her seemed pretty flimsy. Also, given the state of their marriage, would he have cared that much about anyone coming on to his soon-to-be-ex-wife?

But then again, he had confessed to the murder. Alec Potton had actually told the police that he had killed Walter Fleet. That was quite a difficult fact to get round.

Jude's only explanation was that Alec had reacted instantly to the news that Imogen was planning to confess to the murder. Whatever his other character deficiencies, there was no questioning his love for his daughter. He would do anything to protect Imogen.

In fact, Jude reckoned, daughter and father had behaved instinctively in exactly the same way. Very soon after hearing that Alec had been taken in for questioning, Imogen had planned to get him off the hook by confessing herself, an intention that her mother had only just managed to thwart.

And as soon as Alec had heard what his daughter was proposing to do, he had immediately hoped to get her off the hook by confessing himself. By the time the details came out—that Imogen couldn't have been at Long Bamber Stables at the relevant time because she was with her mother—the deed was done. A confession of murder had been made by the man whose clothes had been found stained with the victim's blood. The police weren't going to throw away a gift like that in a hurry.

The other niggling questions that would not go away concerned Donal Geraghty: who exactly he was blackmailing, and did his blackmailing efforts have anything to do with Walter Fleet's death?

Well, from what they'd overheard at Fontwell—and indeed from Yolanta's behaviour that morning—there seemed little doubt that Donal was putting the squeeze on the Brewises. Why he was putting the squeeze on them was a question Jude couldn't at that moment answer, nor was it the highest in her order of priority. More significant was whether Donal was blackmailing anyone else. The Dalrymples kept coming back into Jude's mind, and the more she had found out about the state of their marriage, the more reasons she could find why they might be open to blackmail.

She was sure that Sonia was holding out on her. From working professionally with the woman, Jude knew the level of tension she was suffering, and Sonia had virtually admitted that its cause was information she dared not divulge. Her husband's violence was a constant pressure on her life, but Jude got the feeling there was something else torturing Sonia Dalrymple. If only she could find out what the secrets were that seemed to be corroding the woman from the inside out. An early visit to Sonia was called for, one when a few more cards should be placed on the table.

And then again there was Donal. Donal the disappearing Irishman. Vanished once again. Yolanta had thought he was in the stables where Jude was sitting; Imogen had implied that he had been there until recently. Where had he disappeared to this time?

Suddenly Jude recalled the little hesitation in Imogen's voice when she'd been asked where Donal was. Had she been lying? Was Donal Geraghty actually still present in the derelict stables?

Jude pulled herself up with difficulty from her crouched position on the bucket. Her limbs had almost locked in the cold, and she shook her legs to restore the circulation.

Conker got the reward of another carrot in anticipation of good behaviour, and a cheery “See you” as Jude set out to explore the rest of the building.

She gave the other five stables a cursory look. If there had been anyone holed up in them, she and Carole would, she felt sure, have seen or heard something. And so it proved. No human agency had stirred the mess in the stables for decades.

Jude went through the narrow passage to the left of the main entrance and found herself in a barnlike structure full of decaying farm carts and rusted machinery. Sagging doors and missing tiles gave her enough daylight to inspect the whole area and confirm that it was uninhabited.

She moved back to the central courtyard and continued in a straight line through the passage to the right of the main gates. The space she entered seemed as large as the one she had just left, but its roof was in better repair, so it took a moment for her eyes to accommodate to the darkness.

As she stood there, trying to make out the shapes that loomed around her, Jude heard a strange sound.

A whimper, like that of an animal in pain.

Except that it definitely came from a human being.

J
UDE MOVED TOWARDS
the source of the sound. The space smelled of old grain, so damp as almost to be fermented. The floor was littered with ancient sacks, long predating plastic, shredded perhaps by the rats who had long ago made away with their contents. Everything underfoot felt slimy.

In the far corner lay what looked like just another pile of torn sacking, and it was from there that the human whimpering came. But the darkness was still intense. Prudent Carole of course would have her torch in the Renault, but Carole and the Renault were now far away. Jude looked around for a light source, and saw an old window, over which a whole sack appeared to have been nailed. But that had been a long time ago, and when she touched it the fabric tore away like tissue paper. The extant panes of the window were obscured by green slime, but enough were broken to let in the daylight.

Jude looked back to the corner and saw Donal Geraghty.

He lay on a pile of filthy sacks and looked as filthy himself. His face was discoloured with dried blood, which had also sprayed down over his clothes. The way he hugged himself suggested that his injuries might include broken ribs. One blue eye was closed by bruising, but the other looked up trying to identify the intruder.

“It's Jude.”

“Oh God, that's all a man needs when he's in a state like this—a visit from the Fethering Miss Marple.”

The old insouciance was still in his voice, but the words were blurred, as though some of his teeth as well as his ribs had been broken.

“Donal, what happened to you?”

He did the nearest to a shrug his broken body could achieve. “I got into a fight,” he said with mock pathos. “Again.”

“Who with?”

“I don't remember his name. I don't know if I even knew it. He was just someone in the Cheshire Cheese last night. All I do know is that he was a lot younger and fitter than me.”

“How did you get here?”

“I suppose I must have walked.”

“Do you really not remember?”

“No, I really don't remember. When I get into a fight, it's like—you ever hear the expression ‘red mist'? Well, I guess that's not a bad description for what happens. I don't see anything else. I don't think anything else. All I know is I have to lash out, and I do. And sometimes when I come back to myself, I'm all right, though I haven't a clue what's happened to the other guy. And sometimes when I come back to myself, well, it's like today. One thing I know for sure—I lost.”

What he said did provide some explanation for the way he'd suddenly turned on Ted Crisp. And indeed why he hadn't mentioned the incident when he next saw Carole and Jude. Maybe his mind had just blanked it out.

“But what are you going to do now, Donal? Don't you think you should be in a hospital?”

“Nah. What good would a hospital ever do for me? There's nothing broken, nothing that needs setting. And fractures, well, they just heal in their own time.”

“I imagine you've had a few over the years.”

He tried to laugh. “Few? That's what might be termed an understatement. If you're a jump jockey, the falls and the broken bones, they come with the job description. My collarbone's been broken more times than a politician's promises. First thing you learn in that business is to heal quick. Otherwise you're out of a job.”

“But then, when you get older, with all those broken bones, the arthritis sets in.”

He looked at her bleakly, recognising the accuracy of her diagnosis.

“Which is why you drink so much. To deal with the pain.”

“So?” He looked at her with some of the old cockiness in his one open eye. “To my mind, Jameson's has got a much better taste than bloody paracetamol.”

“But would paracetamol get you into so many fights?”

He attempted another shrug. “I lead my life the way I want to lead it.”

Looking at him, abject, in terrible pain, lying on filthy sacks, Jude found that hard to believe, but she didn't take issue. Instead, she asked, “Is there anything I can do for you? You say you won't go to hospital, but…”

“You don't have any Jameson's with you, do you?”

“No. Not normally something I carry about my person.”

“Ah, that's a shame. I'm feeling shitty all over, but the most painful bit is the hangover. So, if you could fetch me some, you'd be doing a Christian act.”

“I think a more Christian act might be to get you off the stuff.”

“No, you don't know what you're talking about.”

“You know, Donal, there are other ways of controlling pain, apart from alcohol and drugs.”

“Oh yes? What are they—topping yourself?”

“No. Massage can help.”

He spat contempt at the idea. “I had a lot of massages when I was riding. Then they helped. I'm past that now.”

“And healing…”

He was silent.

“You know about healing, Donal. I saw you heal Sonia Dalrymple's Chieftain. Well, I do a bit of that. And—before you say anything—my results are better with humans than they are with animals.”

“Bloody have to be, I'd have thought, by the law of averages.”

“Well, if you ever want to come to me and try a session, just to get the basics of pain management…”

“Does the process involve Jameson's?”

“No, it doesn't. But it's a good offer.”

“A very good offer, for which I am appropriately grateful. But”—he put on a teasing voice again—“I'm a bit wary of these alternative medicines. You hear these terrible stories of people who take up with some quack and give up drinking the Jameson's altogether. Now that's not something I would want happening to me. I think it could seriously undermine my health.”

The argument was not worth pursuing. Jude moved onto another topic. “Presumably Imogen rang you last night?”

“Yes. Thank the Lord she got me while I was still sober.”

“She told you what she was planning to do?”

“She was worried about that little Conker. Got it into her head that the Horse Ripper was after her. I didn't know, maybe she was right, maybe she did know something. So I told her how to find this place.”

“But she couldn't have stayed here forever.”

“Who's talking about ‘forever'? Kid wanted to find somewhere to hide the horse, so I told her about this place. Nothing more to it. Gave her a chance to get away from those dreadful parents. She's a good kid. I've got a lot of time for her. She understands horses.”

Jude, who'd been standing since she arrived in the barn, moved to prop herself up against the remains of an old workbench. Thin ribbons of sunlight, even more diluted than they were outside, made their way down through holes in the tiles to the slimy floor.

“And Imogen's father,” she said thoughtfully, “is about to be charged with murder.”

“Yes,” Donal agreed. “Not that he did it, mind.”

“I don't think he did either. But,” Jude asked eagerly, “do you have any reason for saying that, apart from gut instinct?”

“Oh, I have a reason, yes. I know he didn't do it.”

“Can you tell me why?”

A pained chuckle came from the corner of the room. “You don't give up, do you, Jude?”

“No, I don't. The reason you won't tell me—you know, why you know Alec Potton didn't kill Walter—is that something to do with your blackmailing activities?”

“Now why would you think that?”

“Because I can't see any other reason why you'd keep quiet about it—unless the information was of some financial value to you.”

“Well now, that might be a very shrewd observation.”

“I can take that as a ‘yes' then, can I?”

“You're welcome to do so. But I'm still not going to tell you why I know Alec Potton didn't do it.”

“Is it something to do with the Dalrymples?”

“And why should it be?”

“Because Sonia's very tense about something, which could be a threat of blackmail. And if you knew details about her marriage that she didn't want made public, or even details she didn't want her husband to find out about…”

She let the ideas trail hopefully in the air, but Donal only let out another painful chuckle and said, “I'm enjoying listening to how your mind works, Jude, but you're still not going to get anything out of me.”

She tried yet another tack. “I know about other people you're blackmailing.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. Very generous of the Brewises to let you camp out here, isn't it?”

This time the idea seemed genuinely to amuse him. Jude pressed home her advantage. “Are you going to tell me what you're blackmailing them about?”

“Well, I'm a fair man, and I don't see why I shouldn't, because the secret in that case is not one I can imagine you spreading around.”

“So what is the secret?”

“Would you be surprised, Jude, if I told you that Mrs. Brewis had…a past?”

“Nothing would surprise me less.”

“Right. Well, I got this from a Russian horse dealer I do the occasional bit of business with. He was down at Long Bamber with me one day when the Brewises were ‘riding out' and he told me he recognised her.”

“Oh?”

“Whore who used to work the Moscow international hotels. Expensive one but still a whore.”

So Jude's thought about a “tart's boudoir” hadn't been so far off the mark after all.

“Well, thank you, Donal, that's most generous. You're right, though. It's not information I would use.”

“I know, but I think it could be a nice little earner for me for quite a while.”

“Be careful, though. If you get too pressing, I think Victor Brewis could turn nasty.”

“I'm damned sure he could. Don't worry, I'll watch my back.”

“So, though you're so generous with the Brewises' secrets, are you still not going to share the Dalrymples' with me?”

“No, I'm not,” he said firmly. Then came a “Damn” when he realised he'd fallen into her trap.

“Thank you very much, Donal. At least you've confirmed that you are blackmailing the Dalrymples.”

“Ah, but I haven't given you anything else. I may be Irish, but I'm not entirely stupid, you know.”

“You're very far from stupid.”

“That's true. Do you know, out of school I got a scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin. To read history.”

“But—”

“I never took it up, though. Far more interested in horses. Always was.”

This was a fascinating insight into Donal Geraghty's past, and at any other time Jude would have followed up on it. But not right then.

“Donal, listen. You know that Nicky Dalrymple is a violent man?”

“I'd got that impression, yes.”

“He might not take very kindly to being blackmailed either.”

“I'll watch my back with that one too.”

“But it's Sonia Dalrymple I'm concerned about. Do you have to blackmail her?”

“Well, a man has to make a living, and that couple are almost indecently well heeled. They're not going to miss a few thousand”—he smiled wryly—“given to such a worthy cause as the Injured Jockeys Fund. And I can't pretend I didn't see what I saw from the hayloft, so…”

“Donal, all I'm asking is for you to show a little pity. Sonia's in a terrible state and…”

They seemed to hear the sound at the same time. Both raised hands to silence the other. Footsteps were approaching the stable block from the side away from the manor house.

Jude moved softly to the broken window.

Walking past, almost close enough for her to touch, with his eyes set determinedly ahead of him, was Nicky Dalrymple.

In his hand was a large kitchen knife.