Bloodline

‘I doubt it,’ he said, ‘but I’ll try. I don’t have access to the security company’s work sheets, and their office will be shut today. I’m actually off duty at three, but I’ll wait around to hear what Carlos has to say. Ask for me at reception.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I will. And thank you.’

We shook hands, then I emerged through the secret wood-panel door and back into the bustle of the hotel lobby.

‘Two men,’ Carlos Luis Sanchez said. ‘One follow the other.’ He made no attempt to disguise his disgust.

‘The lady was not a prostitute,’ Colin Dilly assured him.

‘Huh,’ Carlos replied. ‘Then why she have two men in her room?’

It was a good question.

‘How were the men dressed?’ I asked him.

‘Dressed or undressed. It makes no difference.’

‘No,’ I said, realizing that he hadn’t understood the question. ‘What were they wearing when you saw them in the corridor?’

‘Suits,’ he said. ‘You know, black suits with ties.’ He moved his hands back and forth by his neck. Bow ties.

‘Both of them?’ I asked.

‘The first one. Yes. I see. The second...’ He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Did you see the second man?’ I spoke slowly.

‘Mario see him.’

‘Who is Mario?’ I asked.

‘My friend,’ Carlos said. ‘One more of porters. He work nights. He say he see second man coming out later, during all fuss over falling girl.’

‘What?’ I said, suddenly taking in what he was saying. ‘Are you telling us that the second man was in her room when the girl fell?’

‘I not know,’ he said. ‘You ask Mario. But Mario say so to me, yes.’

8

Clare’s funeral was brief. Far too brief, I would have said, but it wasn’t up to me as I had left all the arrangements to my father, my brothers and my sister. I’d thought that was the best policy to avoid further shouting and arguments. But as I sat in the Surrey and Sussex Crematorium Chapel at three o’clock on Monday afternoon, I deeply regretted that decision.

Not that the day had started well either. I had tried to call Detective Sergeant Sharp to ask him about the CCTV from the London Hilton, only to be informed that he was away on leave for the week, and no one else seemed to have any knowledge of any recordings or, indeed, of anything else to do with Clare’s death. Call back next week, they told me most unhelpfully, and speak to DS Sharp.

Next I’d called the Injured Jockeys Fund to ask them about the guest list for their gala dinner. Mrs Green, the organizer of the event, was in Portugal, I was told, enjoying a well-earned break after all her hard work. She also would be back next week.

Then my father’s insistence on ‘immediate family only’ at the funeral further added to my frustration.

The arrival at the crematorium, ten minutes before the service, of my father’s younger brother, my uncle George, and his wife Catherine from Spain had not been a welcome addition to the ‘immediate family’ as my father had obviously defined it. When Cousin Brendan had then turned up, along with his wife, Gillian, and their two teenage children, closely followed by his brother Joshua plus second wife, I thought my father was about to postpone the whole thing, but the minister had then made a timely appearance, ushering us all into the chapel.

So there was a total of seventeen of us who sat in the first three rows of chairs as four pallbearers from the undertaker’s carried the simple oak coffin past us and placed it on the high dais at the front. Five other mourners stood at the back near the door, having been banished there by my father, who had loudly accused them of invading his grief.

Not that I was particularly pleased to see one of them, Toby Woodley, the diminutive racing correspondent from the Daily Gazette, a tabloid red-top newspaper best known for celebrity exposés and rumour-mongering.

As well as trying to comfort my mother, I spent time looking out for the mystery boyfriend but none of the five non-family attendees appeared to fit the bill. Apart from Woodley there was an elderly couple I vaguely recognized, and two young women who told my father that they had known Clare from school, not that he had made them any more welcome for that.

Just as the minister was starting the service, the back doors of the chapel creaked open and one further individual joined the congregation. Geoff Grubb came forward and sat down in an empty row behind Uncle George and Aunt Catherine. My father stared angrily at him from across the aisle but, if Geoff noticed, he didn’t react.

If it hadn’t been so sad, it might have been funny.

My father couldn’t see past his anger with Clare for bringing this on us all. He couldn’t grasp that the death of a much-loved daughter and sister transcended the method of her passing, and that her memory should be cherished for what her life had been, not vilified for how it had ended.

The service was embarrassingly short with just a single hymn, ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd’, sung badly by us over a recorded backing track, a few prayers and a concise Bible reading that was delivered, not by a member of the family but by the minister himself.