Bloodline

‘But that’s what’s so bloody stupid,’ he said. ‘I haven’t really done anything.’

‘So what were they using to blackmail you?’ I asked.

‘It was an offshore bank account I had on the Isle of Man.’

‘What about it?’

‘I opened it in a different name because I thought at one stage I might move all my assets to the Isle of Man.’

‘For tax purposes?’

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Capital gains tax, to be precise. In the end, I didn’t go through with it but I never closed the account. I’d put some money in it and I suppose I should have paid tax on the interest it earned, but it was so small I didn’t think it mattered. Also, I didn’t tell my accountant or put any offshore account details on my tax return as I didn’t want the tax people to think I was trying to fiddle my taxes.’

‘Which you were,’ Emily said.

‘Yeah, well... but not using that account.’

‘But you were fiddling your taxes somewhere else?’ I asked.

‘Not actual fiddling,’ he said, slightly affronted. ‘I avoid tax, not evade it. There’s an important difference. Avoidance is legal, evasion isn’t.’ He smiled unconvincingly. ‘But I could really do without being audited by the Revenue. Let’s just say it might be awkward, you know, over certain of my interpretations of the tax laws.’

‘Sailing close to the wind,’ said Emily.

‘Exactly,’ Harry agreed. ‘Very close.’

‘So what did the blackmail note say?’

He knew it by heart. ‘ “I know you are using an offshore bank account to evade paying tax. Just two hundred pounds will make the story go away. Get the cash together. Payment details will follow.” ’

‘Same blackmailer,’ I said. ‘When did you get the note?’

‘Nearly two years ago. At a time when it might have been very embarrassing to have had a Revenue investigation. So I paid.’

‘Were you told to leave the money under your car in a racecourse car park?’

He nodded. ‘But he demanded more. About six months later I had to pay a thousand, next it was two thousand, then I got another note yesterday demanding a further twenty thousand. Now, I think that’s rather too much.’ He sounded like someone who had just been overcharged for a meal or a hotel room.

‘Have you by any chance got the note with you?’ I asked.

He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his coat pocket. ‘I didn’t want to leave it at home in case my wife found it.’

He handed it to me and I spread it out. It was a computer printed sheet just like the others but, as on the latest one to Austin Reynolds, the last zero of the twenty thousand had been added by hand.

I glanced at my watch. The next race was due off in fifteen minutes.

‘I’ve got to go down and see the horses in the parade ring,’ I said. ‘They’re juvenile three-year-old hurdlers and some of them I haven’t seen run before. I want to see them in the paddock to help me learn the colours. You two stay right here. I’ll be back before you know it.’

I skipped down the stairs and out towards the parade ring. Dodging through the crowd, I ran straight into Mitchell Stacey almost knocking him over.

‘Sorry,’ I said automatically before I even realized who he was.

He stared at me with contempt. ‘Watch where you’re bloody going, can’t you.’

We stood facing each other for a moment.

Why, I thought, had Mitchell set up a spy camera in his bedroom to film Sarah and me? How had he known to do so?

What was it that Sarah had said to me in that last call? I should have paid the little shit. Paid who? Had Sarah also been a victim of blackmail?

Mitchell turned away towards the weighing room and I went on to the parade ring to see the horses, but my brain was elsewhere. Instead of learning the colours of the jockeys’ silks, I called the Stacey home number on my mobile.

‘Hello,’ said Sarah’s familiar voice after two rings.

‘Sarah, it’s me,’ I said.

‘I told you that it was much better for both of us if we didn’t talk again. And we had the police around here this morning asking questions about you.’ She sounded angry. ‘I’m sorry, I must go.’

‘No, please. Don’t hang up,’ I shouted quickly. ‘Listen. Were you being blackmailed?’

There was a long pause from the other end, and I wondered at one point if she had indeed hung up, but she hadn’t. I could hear her breathing.

‘Did someone ask you for two hundred pounds to make the story of you and me go away?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t pay him. Maybe it would’ve been better if I had.’

I should have paid the little shit.

‘But you do know who it was, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was that little shit of a journalist, Toby Woodley.’

19

I was not at all sure how I managed to commentate on the juvenile hurdlers.

My eyes had watched the horses being mounted in the parade ring but none of the data received had reached my conscious brain. My mind had been racing with too much other information and too many unanswered questions.

Had Toby Woodley been murdered at Kempton Park races because of the blackmail?