Bloodline

I was glad. I’d done enough answering questions for one morning. But I was sure none of my answers had been of any use to the police, or to me for that matter. Nothing helped to make sense of Emily’s death.

But I hadn’t said anything to DCI Coaker about blackmail. I couldn’t see how it might have been relevant.

Now I wondered if I should have done. But that would have surely opened a whole new can of worms and sent the likes of Austin Reynolds and Harry Jacobs running for the hills. Then they would, of course, deny everything and I’d be left with egg on my face. And did I really want to expose my sister as a cheat and a race fixer if I didn’t absolutely need to?

But why else did someone want me dead?

According to Chief Inspector Perry, Mitchell Stacey had had an alibi for Friday night, but he had also once threatened to have my legs broken, and he would have needed some help to do that. Did he have some ‘heavies’ he could call on for a bit of garrotting to order, or was I being just fanciful, and also guilty of confusing television drama with real life?

Oh, Emily!

How I wished this nightmare was nothing more than a fictional storyline from some screenwriter’s imagination.

‘I need to get the key from the stable office,’ I said to Angela as she turned into the driveway of Clare’s cottage.

But I was wrong.

The front door to the cottage was wide open, and a key hadn’t been used to open it. The frame had been splintered all around the lock and there were six overlapping two-inch-wide round impressions in the wood of the door. Someone had clearly used brute force and a sledgehammer to simply smash their way in.

‘Oh, shit!’ I said with feeling. ‘It’s been burgled.’

Angela stayed in the car while I moved forward warily to the door. I thought it unlikely that any burglar would still be in the cottage at eleven o’clock in the morning, but I didn’t particularly want to disturb some crazy knife-wielding drug addict who was searching for the wherewithal for his next fix.

‘Hello,’ I called. ‘Anyone there?’

I stood in the doorway listening for any movement, or for the sound of someone escaping out the back. There was nothing.

‘We should call the police,’ Angela shouted at me through the open car window.

I’d had enough of the police for one morning.

‘I’ll take a look first,’ I shouted back.

I stepped inside expecting to discover that the place had been completely ransacked, but was pleasantly surprised to find that nothing much looked out of place. The bags of Clare’s clothes were still stacked under the stairs, and the cardboard boxes I’d filled with the contents of her desk remained where I’d left them on the floor of the sitting room.

Indeed, the only things I could see that had been shifted were some of the papers that had been in the boxes, which were now strewn across the carpet.

However, there was something missing.

Not the fancy television set. Not even Clare’s collection of silver racing trophies that were still lined up on the mantelpiece.

It was the white envelope containing the two thousand pounds in cash that was missing — gone from the cardboard box where I’d placed it, along with the blackmail note that I had carelessly left in full view on the desk.

Austin Reynolds, I thought.

Who else would only take those items and leave the silver?

Austin Reynolds removing any evidence that could incriminate him. And this time he would have worn gloves.

I went upstairs to have a quick check around, and then went back out to Angela.

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘There’s no one here and nothing seems to be missing, not even Clare’s trophies. Perhaps the burglar was disturbed as soon as he broke down the door.’

‘Maybe someone heard the noise,’ Angela said, ‘and investigated.’

Possibly, I thought, but the bangs made by a sledgehammer on Clare’s front door could have easily been mistaken for a horse kicking the wooden wall of his box not ten yards away. Racehorse stables were never silent places, even at dead of night.

‘Do you think we should still call the police?’ Angela said.

‘What for?’ I asked.

‘If only to get an incident number, for the insurance.’

‘But nothing is missing.’

‘The front door will need replacing, and that must cost something,’ Angela said. ‘When we got burgled two years ago we needed a police number before the insurance company would pay for anything.’

‘Much too complicated,’ I said. ‘The insurance will be in Geoff Grubb’s name, and there’ll probably be an excess on it that’d be more than the cost of the door anyway. Much easier if we just fix it ourselves without involving the police. For a start, we’d be here all day waiting for them to turn up.’

Angela shrugged her shoulders. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

We went inside.

‘It’s really strange being here,’ Angela said, standing in the middle of the sitting room. ‘You know, without Clare.’

I suppose I’d become a little used to it. I went over and gave her a hug while she sobbed gently on my shoulder.

The tears also welled in my eyes. First Clare, and now Emily. Was there any limit to grief?