Bloodline

At that point, rather inconveniently, Lisa arrived from the scanner and walked over towards us.

‘Aren’t you both coming for breakfast?’ she asked.

‘We’ll be there in a minute,’ I said. ‘Austin and I are just discussing the running of his horses.’

She looked at Austin. ‘Did Mark tell you that I said you should get a new car?’

‘I’m sorry I was late.’

‘Yeah, you’re a bloody nuisance,’ Lisa said.

She had a well-earned reputation for believing that it was she who was doing the favour for the guests who agreed to come on her programme, rather than the other way round. And she wasn’t against giving them a hard time if they didn’t do as they were told.

‘I said to be here by seven thirty, not twenty to nine.’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ he whined. ‘The battery was flat. I had to wait for the AA. I got here as soon as I could.’

I bet he was now wishing he hadn’t bothered to make it here at all.

Austin managed to escape from my attentions by saying he was going to the gents on our way to breakfast, and then disappearing altogether.

I didn’t mind too much. I knew where to find him. For a start, he would be with Tortola Beach in the parade ring before the third race later that afternoon.

‘So how come you got yourself strangled?’ Lisa asked as we tucked into bacon and eggs in one of the grandstand restaurants. ‘Whoever did it couldn’t have been much cop if you’re still here to tell the tale.’

‘Oh, thanks a lot,’ I said. ‘I tell you, I’m damn lucky not to have been murdered.’

I explained to her in detail how I had crashed my car in order to survive and how I’d spent half the night in Addenbrooke’s hospital.

At last, Lisa started to take me seriously. ‘Have you any idea who it was?’

‘None,’ I said. ‘And I’ve no idea why, either.’

I decided not to mention anything to her about Mitchell Stacey. The more I thought about it the less likely it seemed that he had been involved. Strangulation from behind just didn’t seem to be his sort of thing. But I suppose I couldn’t be sure.

‘Were you serious when you said it might have something to do with the murder of Toby Woodley?’

‘I really don’t know,’ I said. ‘Was it just coincidence that there were two “racing” attacks only two days apart, and I was present at both of them?’

‘Coincidences do happen, you know,’ Lisa said. ‘And Toby Woodley was such an awful little creep that there must have been a shedload of people queuing up to kill him. Me for one.’

‘He may have been an awful little creep but his death was still horrible. And no one deserves to be stabbed in the back.’

‘Oh, please,’ she mocked. ‘Don’t make me cry. Toby Woodley deserved everything he got.’

‘You’re a hard woman, Lisa. You might think differently if he’d died in your lap.’

‘Why, did he die in yours?’

‘As a matter of fact, he did.’

She was surprised. ‘I’d heard a rumour that you’d helped to give him CPR but I didn’t really believe it.’

‘All true, I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘Guilty as charged. Not that it did him any good. He bled to death, and quickly too. Very nasty.’

‘Do the police have any idea who did it?’

‘Not that I’m aware of,’ I said, ‘but they’d hardly tell me, anyway.’

‘Probably someone who got fed up with his bloody sniping. I don’t believe that man ever wrote a single word of truth in that rag of his.’

‘Do you remember that piece he did in the summer about a trainer laying his horses on the internet and then ensuring they lost?’

‘Remember it!’ Lisa said with irritation. ‘We did a segment about it on the show. Even had Woodley on as a guest because he promised me he’d reveal who it was on air.’

‘And did he?’ I couldn’t remember it, but I’d been abroad on holiday in late May.

‘Did he hell! It was a total waste of time. One of my worst ever shows. Little creep just sat there grinning like the Cheshire Cat, making promises he never kept. I reckon he simply made it all up. Load of old tosh. The bastard made me look like a fool.’

So that was why Lisa hated him so much.

‘And, madam, what were you doing on Wednesday evening last at nine o’clock?’ I mimicked a policeman holding a notebook.

‘Ha, ha,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘I was at home, officer, watching The Apprentice on television, and I have witnesses to prove it.’

I thought about Austin Reynolds. Had he been the trainer in the story? Had Toby Woodley, in fact, been much closer to the truth than Lisa, or anyone else, had imagined?

‘You don’t think that story had anything to do with his death, then?’ I asked.

‘Do you?’

I could hardly say yes without backing it up with some sort of evidence and I didn’t really want to do that. Lisa had an uncanny ability for smelling out a story and the last thing I wanted was to put her on the scent of Clare and race fixing.

‘I don’t know,’ I said tamely, ‘but there must have been some motive. People don’t just stab someone for no reason.’

‘Don’t they?’ she said. ‘Haven’t you watched the news recently?’

Lisa lost interest in our conversation and started talking to the show’s director on her other side.