Time to Pay (2 page)

He wished he felt as confident as he sounded, but the fact remained that Damien had been shot by what the evidence suggested was an extremely competent marksman. As Gideon had no clear idea where he might be hiding, there appeared to be little he could do to avoid the same fate, if it was, indeed, on the cards.

‘Listen, I've got to catch his horse,' he told the paramedic. The situation was bad enough without the added worry of having tens of thousands of pounds' worth of racehorse going AWOL when
the emergency services arrived. At the moment Nero was calmly grazing on the soft grass at the edge of the track but he was an unpredictable beast at the best of times, and Gideon placed no dependence upon the mood lasting.

Pocketing the phone, he stood up, feeling intensely vulnerable. He wasn't even wearing a back protector; but then, Damien's hadn't done a lot for
him
.

Nero saw him coming and lifted his head, jaws champing. He'd stepped through the circle of his reins as they trailed, and feeling the pull on his neck he threw up his head and stepped back in alarm.

‘Steady, lad.' With an effort, Gideon tried to calm the turmoil in his own head and concentrate on the matter in hand.

Another burst of gunfire made him jump, but it was only the clay shooters again. He noticed, with a kind of detached satisfaction, that Nero had hardly reacted to the sudden noise. It was one of the problems they had been treating him for, and the reason they'd been riding in the wood on a shooting day.

After a couple more steps backward, Nero allowed Gideon to take hold of his rein, but then he was left with another problem: the horse wasn't good about being tied up. Gideon suspected that somewhere in his past, something had frightened him in that situation, and left him with an unreasoning fear of restraint. It was something else they'd been working on together, and Nero was improving, but this certainly wasn't the time to put him to the test. He was quite capable of
breaking his reins and galloping off into the sunset.

It wasn't going to be easy to deal with police and ambulance men while hanging onto a borderline-neurotic horse, but the only alternative wasn't really an alternative at all. A call to the stables would doubtless bring help running – but there was no way he would willingly expose any of Damien's family or staff to the horror of the scene before him.

He looked across to where his own, more placid, mount had stripped the new foliage off the sapling he was tied to and was now making a start on the bark. He, at least, seemed content.

Gideon's thoughts returned to Damien's family. The trainer had shared Puddlestone Farmhouse and the adjacent cottage with his parents, his younger sister – who was also his assistant trainer – and his wife and three-year-old son. They were a close family unit and he dreaded to think of the effect this was going to have on them.

Unbuckling Nero's reins to free them, he ran the stirrups up and slackened the girth. Guessing that the police, when they arrived, wouldn't want any more hoof and boot prints than strictly necessary in the vicinity of the crime scene, he unhitched his own horse and led them both twenty yards back down the track.

The sun shone on, determinedly cheerful, and a fly alighted on Gideon's hand. He shook it off, imagining the flies that were almost certainly collecting on Damien's ravaged body. The thought was disgusting, but it was a fairly warm day and
Gideon was only wearing a rugby shirt, and no jacket that could be taken off and used to cover the dead man.

He glanced at his watch. Ten to twelve.

How long had he been waiting? It seemed like for ever.

How soon could he expect help to arrive?

Gideon longed for the weight of responsibility to be lifted from his shoulders. He was way out of his depth.

It was quiet in the woods. The clay shoot had stopped, he realised, and in the distance he could hear the faint swish of traffic on the road. Seconds later he heard the first far-off sounds of a siren, growing steadily louder. From past study of the map, Gideon knew that the ambulance couldn't be more than four hundred yards away when it eventually wailed to a halt, but the trees were too thick for him to see its flashing lights.

For several minutes he waited, straining his eyes and ears for any sign of the crew, and then his phone trilled, making him jump. He hoped to God it wasn't any of Damien's family ringing to find out where they'd got to. What the hell could he say?

‘Gideon? Do you have a blue and white shirt and two horses?' The male voice was accompanied by a certain amount of heavy breathing and background noise. ‘OK; we've got a visual and we'll be with you very shortly.'

Gideon assumed it was the ambulance crew, on foot and hurrying, and sure enough, within moments he could see two figures in Day-Glo jackets approaching through the undergloom of
the conifers from the direction of the clay shooters' field. The horses lifted their heads, still munching, and watched them come.

They emerged onto the track, one – young and almost bald – carrying a folded-up stretcher and heading straight across to where Damien lay; the other middle-aged and rather portly, pausing beside Gideon, ostensibly to check on him but, in reality, breathing hard and needing a moment to recover.

‘All right, mate?' he asked between breaths.

‘Yeah. What about you?'

The ambulance man bent double and shook his head.

‘Stitch,' he said succinctly. ‘Not as fit as I used to be.'

It took only a matter of moments for the younger man to confirm death, which verdict he relayed to his colleague by straightening up, pursing his lips and shaking his head. He made his way back to them, and Gideon didn't miss the wary glances he cast at the surrounding trees as he did so.

A crashing sound startled the horses and presaged the arrival of two uniformed police officers, one swearing as he attempted to disentangle himself from the vicious grasp of a blackberry runner and the other evidently finding it highly amusing.

Seeing Gideon and the paramedics close by, the second man swiftly sobered up, and after receiving the news that Damien Daniels was, in fact, dead, produced a notebook and took down not only Gideon's name but also those of the
two ambulance men, while his colleague stood by, gingerly removing bramble prickles from his trouser leg.

Shortly after, the paramedics – made redundant by the absence of life to preserve – took their leave and trudged off through the trees, down what seemed set to become a well-worn track. Hardly had their fluorescent jackets disappeared into the murky depths of the wood when two more men came into view, this time in plain clothes but somehow, Gideon thought, still just as obviously policemen. The foremost of these fell prey to the same arching bramble stem that had snared the first man, and swore, if anything, even more vehemently. It would have been funny if the circumstances had been different.

Gideon watched as the newcomers exchanged a few low-voiced words with the two uniformed officers, who were quite clearly relaying the information they had gleaned from him. The elder of the plain-clothes men was fiftyish, with thinning grey hair, a grey suit and an almost avuncular look about him. The other was perhaps twenty years his junior, a dark-haired, unsmiling man in jeans, a tee shirt and a black leather jacket.

It was this younger man who presently introduced himself to Gideon as Detective Sergeant Coogan and began by asking if he couldn't tie the horses up somewhere.

‘Well, actually – no.' Gideon explained his dilemma.

‘But presumably someone else could hold them,' Coogan said. ‘I'm allergic to the bloody things.' He called the uniform back. ‘You –
Fletcher – come and look after these horses, would you?'

Judging by his expression, Fletcher wasn't too keen on the idea but Coogan wasn't big on sympathy.

‘Oh, come on! How difficult can it be? They won't eat you.'

Fletcher took the horses' reins from Gideon, regarding the two animals much as one might a couple of hungry lions, and trying to keep at arm's length from them both.

‘Good. Now take them away, down the path, they've done enough damage as it is – trampling all over the crime scene!' Coogan turned to Gideon. ‘Right, suppose you tell me what happened here.'

Gideon sat staring into the plastic cup standing cradled between his hands on the tabletop before him. The liquid it contained was scalding hot, but that was all that could honestly be claimed for it. He had asked for coffee but the muddy-brown, machine-generated brew had little smell and even less taste.

He was sitting, as he had been for the past three and a half hours, in an interview room at Chilminster police station. Fluorescent strip lights lit the small, windowless room, which had black vinyl on the floor, shiny cream paint on the walls, and one massive Victorian radiator that either didn't work or hadn't been turned on. The surface of the heavy wooden table at which he sat was defaced with inkstains, scratches and cigarette burns, and his chair was of red moulded plastic and was to comfort what Punch and Judy was
to political correctness. High above the door, an extractor fan whirred constantly, producing a rattling vibration every six seconds.

Apart from the visit from the cheerful young PC who had brought him the coffee, Gideon had been alone for the last three-quarters of an hour, and felt cold, depressed and utterly drained. In spite of the passage of time, a feeling of unreality dogged him. It was still difficult to accept that the cheerful, energetic man he'd ridden out with that morning had anything to do with the lifeless body he'd left behind him in the woods.

His mind went back to the scene as it had been when he was led away: the area cordoned off by quantities of red and white striped tape, half a dozen men and women in stark white coveralls busily searching the track and surrounding forest with meticulous care, and a uniformed photographer documenting the tragedy from every angle. A helicopter scanned the neighbouring countryside for any sign of the gunman, backed up on the ground, Gideon knew, by four pairs of armed-response officers, and two dog handlers.

All the while, Damien, lying face up as Gideon had left him, stared sightlessly into the cloudless blue sky.

The door of the interview room opened and Gideon glanced up just in time to see a head withdraw as it closed once more.

‘Hey!' he called, getting to his feet. ‘Hey. When can I go?'

There was no response, and he banged his fist on the table in frustration. He was beginning to
feel more like a suspect than the innocent witness to a crime; a feeling reinforced by the fact that on arrival at the station he had had his hands swabbed and his clothes taken away.

‘Sorry, sir, it's routine,' he was told, and was left to change into a white all-in-one garment fashioned from some sort of papery fibre. It looked like the sort the CSI team had worn.

He could call someone to get some clothes brought in if he wanted, he was told, so he'd called Graylings Priory where Giles Barrington-Carr, his friend and landlord, lived with his sister Pippa. Gideon knew Pippa was out drag hunting, but left a message with Giles' answering service.

He'd been taken to the interview room where, before long, Coogan and another plain-clothed officer joined him, and the questions began.

Did Gideon often ride with Mr Daniels?

This was the fifth time.

Did they often take this particular route?

Yes, they had the last three times, to accustom the horse to the sound of the guns. It was part of the therapy.

Had Gideon noticed anyone in the wood that morning?

Only a dog walker . . .

Could Gideon describe the dog walker?

To be honest, he'd been more interested in the dog – a rather handsome Rottweiler. As far as he could remember, the owner was female, middle-aged, plump and dark-haired; not your average sniper material.

‘And how many snipers do you know, Mr Blake?' Without a flicker of humour.

‘OK, point taken,' Gideon said wearily.

Had Mr Daniels seemed his normal self that morning?

Yes.

Not worried about anything, or distracted?

No. Full of plans for the future.

Was Gideon aware of any trouble within Mr Daniels' family – had he said anything about relationship problems?

‘Look,' Gideon said with a touch of irritation. ‘I'm an animal psychologist, not a marriage-guidance counsellor! As far as I know, he was happy with his home life, but I couldn't say for sure. I don't – didn't – know him that well. We mostly talked about the horse.'

‘Would you say Damien Daniels was hot-tempered? Confrontational?'

‘No. He's – he was – very easy-going. He got on with most people.'

‘You say most people – who didn't he get on with?'

‘Well,
I
don't know,' Gideon said, exasperated. ‘I didn't mean anyone in particular, but I expect there were people – nobody hits it off with absolutely everyone, do they?'

‘And what about you? Have you ever quarrelled with him?'

‘No. And before you ask – I didn't quarrel with him this morning, and I didn't shoot him.'

He was the recipient of a long, calculating look, then Coogan changed tack.

‘When did you first realise that Mr Daniels had been shot?'

Gideon had already related the events of the
morning twice, but previous experience of police procedure had taught him that it did no good to kick against it, so he swallowed his impatience.

‘Not until the paramedic on the phone told me to turn him over. I hadn't moved him before because I thought his neck was broken.'

‘And you say you didn't hear the shot because of the noise from the guns next door.'

‘That's right.'

‘Did you think perhaps he'd been hit by a stray shot from there?'

‘No. Not when I saw the wound.'

‘You're familiar with firearms, then, Mr Blake. Do you own one?'