Bloodline

The one thing that was certain about every TV company I had ever known was that, in their reception area, you would find a large-screen television showing the current output, and RacingTV was no exception.

I stood next to the office security desk and watched the sixth, and last, race from Newton Abbot. Mitchell Stacey’s horse won it easily at a canter, and the happy trainer was shown on the screen beaming from ear to ear as his victorious animal was led into the winners’ enclosure.

Newton Abbot racecourse to East Ilsley was about a hundred and sixty miles. Even taking into account that most of the journey was on motorways, and also allowing for the excessive speed at which Mitchell Stacey regularly drove, there was absolutely no way he could be at home within the next two hours.

I climbed excitedly into my old Ford, sped the twenty minutes down the A34, and jumped straight into bed with Sarah.

‘My poor darling,’ Sarah said as we lay together after lovemaking, ‘this is such a horrid business.’ She lightly stroked her fingertips across my bare chest, causing shivers to go right down my legs. ‘It’s so unbelievable.’

Indeed, it was unbelievable and I still hoped that I’d soon wake up from this nightmare and everything would be all right. Somehow it felt wrong that I could go on eating, sleeping, breathing, and even lying here with Sarah. Should I feel guilty for that too?

‘What I can’t understand,’ I said, ‘is what she was doing in London anyway. She told me she was going straight home.’

‘But people do change their minds,’ Sarah said.

I shook my head, not because I didn’t believe Sarah, but in distress at what Clare had done. ‘She also told me she would be riding work at Newmarket on Saturday morning. How was she going to do that if she was staying in London?’

‘Which hotel was it?’ Sarah asked.

‘The Hilton. You know, that tall one at the bottom of Park Lane.’

Too tall, I thought.

Sarah suddenly sat bolt upright in bed. ‘But Mitch and I were at the Hilton on Friday night for that big Injured Jockeys dinner. We had a table of our owners.’

‘Didn’t you see anything?’ I asked. ‘An ambulance or something?’

‘No. Nothing at all.’

‘What time did you leave?’ I asked.

‘Not very late. You know what racing people are like about going to bed early. The dinner started at seven and it was over by half past ten.’

‘Clare fell around eleven thirty.’

‘We’d gone long before then. We were back here by midnight.’

‘But did you see her in the hotel lobby? According to the police, she checked in at twenty past ten.’

Sarah shook her head. ‘I would have remembered if I’d seen her, because she always reminded me of you. You have the same cheekbones.’

She smiled and lay back down next to me again, putting her arm round my waist.

‘How many people were at the dinner?’ I asked.

‘Hundreds,’ she said. ‘The place was packed. They had that comedian with the funny spiky hair, you know, the one that does all those amazing impressions.’ She laughed at the memory. ‘I was actually quite surprised you weren’t there. I remember spending most of the evening looking out for you.’

‘The tickets had all gone by the time I got round to applying.’

‘You should have told me. We had a spare place at our table. Someone dropped out at the last minute.’

‘I couldn’t have come, anyway. By then, I’d arranged to have dinner with Clare.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Sarah said quietly. ‘So you had.’

How different things might have been if only I’d been a bit more organized.

On Thursday morning I drove to Newmarket and went to Clare’s cottage.

I collected the spare key from the yard office, as Geoff Grubb had suggested, and let myself in through the front door.

There was a stack of unopened mail on the doormat, most of it addressed not to Clare, but to me. I knew what it would be. I’d spent most of the previous day answering condolence letters, and the people who’d sent these ones obviously didn’t know the address of my flat.

I collected it all together. There were only a couple of other items — a bill from a mobile phone company, and a notice from Suffolk County Council about a change to refuse collection in the area. I opened the telephone bill and scanned through the list of the numbers that Clare had called. I recognized my own and also that of my parents, but what I was really looking for was a number that she had called regularly, say every day, a number that might have belonged to her mystery boyfriend.

There was no single one that stood out but there were quite a few she had rung more than ten times or so during the monthly billing period. Sadly, the bill did not include the numbers she had called last Friday night after leaving me. Perhaps I would ask the phone company for those. I put the bill down on the desk in the sitting room to look at later, and went upstairs.

It was strange going through Clare’s things. It felt like I was invading her privacy.