Bloodline

I hadn’t quite worked out yet how I would keep an eye on Austin’s car at Kempton the following evening, especially as I was due to be commentating there.

‘I don’t like it,’ Austin said. ‘I don’t like it one bit. What if he goes to the racing authorities?’

‘So would you rather pay him the ten thousand?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said miserably. ‘I can’t.’

It wasn’t the only thing he was going to be miserable about.

I changed the subject. ‘Did you enjoy the Injured Jockeys Fund event at the London Hilton?’

‘What?’ he asked. ‘But that was weeks ago.’

‘Less than three weeks,’ I said. Although it certainly felt like longer. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d been up to see Clare after the dinner?’

There was silence from the other end of the line.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, or at least tell the police?’

‘I was frightened,’ Austin said. ‘People might have thought I had something to do with her death.’

‘And did you?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he answered quickly. ‘She was alive when I left her.’

‘I know.’

‘How could you know?’ he asked.

‘The hotel CCTV cameras picked you up leaving half an hour before she fell.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Good.’

Even down the telephone line, I could hear the relief in his voice.

‘So why did you go up to her room?’ I asked, not wanting his relief to be too long lasting. ‘And how did you know she was even there?’

‘She texted me,’ he said. ‘It was rather embarrassing, actually. It was during the speeches. I’d forgotten to turn my phone off.’

‘What exactly did she text?’

‘She said she had to talk to me about Bangkok Flyer’s race that afternoon and that it might be a problem.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Hold on, I’ll get my mobile.’

I could hear him moving in the background.

‘Half past nine,’ he said. ‘Nine twenty-seven, to be precise.’

About ten to fifteen minutes after she’d left me at Haxted Mill.

‘She said she was coming straight to see me in Newmarket, but I texted back to say I wasn’t at home, I was at that dinner at the Hilton. She then said she’d come to the hotel.’

She must have been really worried.

But she wouldn’t have checked into a room just to see Austin. She could have spoken to him in the lobby, or in the bar. She must have checked in to stay the night with the other man, her mystery lover.

‘How did you know which room she was in?’

‘She texted me again later saying she was there, giving me the room number.’

‘So you went up to see her?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘as soon as the dinner was over. But I only stayed in her room about ten or so minutes, then I left and went home. I caught the eleven-thirty train from King’s Cross. My wife picked me up from Cambridge station. She doesn’t really like going to those big events in London.’

‘What did you and Clare talk about?’ I asked.

‘Not much, really,’ he said. ‘I remember that most of the time I was there she was arguing with one of the hotel security men about unlocking the balcony door. What’s the point, she was saying, of having a balcony room if the balcony is locked? Anyway, the man unlocked it when I was there. I’m not really sure what it was about, but Clare kept calling me darling and pretending to the man that she and I were going to spend the night there together and therefore the door could be opened.’

The ‘two in a room’ rule, I thought.

‘So what did Clare say after the man had gone?’

‘She said that someone knew about her riding Bangkok Flyer to lose. She seemed quite worried about it. I asked her who it was but she wouldn’t tell me.’

‘It was me,’ I said.

‘I know that now,’ Austin replied curtly.

‘So what was so urgent that she had needed to see you that night?’ I asked. ‘Why couldn’t it wait until the morning?’

He didn’t reply.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Why was it so urgent?’

‘Because we had planned to do it again the next day, in the last race at Newmarket, and she knew that I would lay the horse on the internet early on Saturday morning. But she didn’t want to go through with it. In fact, she said she’d never ever do it again. From now on, she was always going to ride to win.’

I sat there holding the phone with tears streaming down my cheeks.

‘Did she say anything about killing herself?’ I asked, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘She seemed happy, almost as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. That’s why I couldn’t believe it when I heard on the Morning Line the next day that she was dead.’

‘Did she say anything to you about writing a suicide note?’

‘No, of course not,’ Austin said. ‘I told you, I don’t think she was planning to kill herself when I left her.’

What on earth had happened in the subsequent half hour?

Almost as soon as I had put my phone down, it rang again, and this time it was my father. What the hell did he want at this time of the morning?

‘Hello, Dad,’ I said as enthusiastically as I could manage. ‘How are you?’

‘What’s all this bloody nonsense in the newspaper?’ he replied, as always ignoring the normal niceties of polite conversation.

‘Which newspaper?’ I asked.

‘UK Today.’

Jim Metcalf, I thought. ‘What does it say?’