Bloodline

‘And was sticking a knife into Toby Woodley’s back also a bloody accident?’

‘He deserved it,’ Brendan said with real menace in his voice. ‘The bastard was blackmailing me.’

‘He was blackmailing everyone,’ I said, ‘but no one else killed him.’

‘He knew about Clare and me. He said he’d put it in the paper.’

I wondered whether Toby had really known, or had just been guessing. Perhaps a blackmail note had given him the true answer. It had certainly condemned him to death.

‘But you blackmailed people too,’ I said. I thought back to the handwritten zeros added to the amounts. ‘And you were much greedier than Toby.’

‘It seemed like an opportunity not to be missed.’ He was suddenly smiling as if pleased with himself. I couldn’t think why. To continue the blackmail had been stupid and far too risky, and it had finally given him away.

‘And what about me?’ I said. ‘Why did you try to kill me?’

‘You said at the funeral that you were going to see the video from the hotel.’

‘And you thought I’d recognize you?’

He nodded.

He’d almost been right.

He suddenly lunged forward and grabbed the end of the pole with his left hand, pulling it sharply towards him, with me along with it.

He slashed at my hands with the knife and I had to let go or else I’d have lost my fingers.

Now the tables were turned and he jabbed the end of the pole towards my face, forcing me to duck wildly sideways.

This really isn’t funny, I thought, and, maybe for the first time, I was scared, very scared.

I tried to reach down to pick up another of the poles but Brendan swung the one he had in a great arc, bringing it down heavily on my back between my shoulder blades. It would have landed on my head and killed me if I hadn’t seen it at the last second and ducked.

Even so, the blow was bad enough, driving the air out of my lungs and causing me to drop to my knees. My broken ribs didn’t like it much either.

I sensed, rather than saw, the pole being lifted again for another blow. This time, I thought, it will be fatal.

I rolled to my left out through the railings of the walkway and onto the roof proper, as the pole smacked down into the place where I had just been.

I was not going to bloody die, I told myself. Not here. Not now.

I stood up, dragged some air into my aching and injured lungs, and ran.

I ran on the corrugated steel, towards the front of the grandstand, and I could hear Brendan running behind me. I didn’t have time to look back but I was sure he’d have the pole in his hands, ready to strike me down as soon as he got within range.

I ran up the slope of the roof and didn’t stop when I got to the brink. I didn’t even pause, I ran like a tightrope walker, straight out from the edge on one of the cylindrical spars of the lighting gantry.

Desperate situations necessitate desperate measures, and running as fast as I could along an eight-inch diameter metal spar with nothing but air beneath for more than a hundred feet was desperate indeed.

And the spar wasn’t horizontal. It sloped up at an ever-increasing angle as I moved away from the edge of the roof towards the floodlights. I was tightrope-walking uphill and my stability only came from the movement.

As the slope caused me to slow, I began to wobble.

I went down on my hands and knees, clutching with my fingers at the metal, trying to dig my nails into the smooth, hard paint.

Nevertheless, I began to slide backwards, down the spar, back towards the edge of the grandstand roof, and back towards Brendan and his pole.

It wouldn’t take much for him to push me off with it.

All there was below me was hard, unforgiving and deserted concrete, a hundred and twenty feet away, straight down. The fifteenth floor of the Hilton Hotel, or the roof of the Kempton Park grandstand — different distances, maybe, but the outcome would be much the same.

I could imagine what would be said: It’s such a shame — Mark never came to terms with his twin sister’s suicide, nor the loss of another close friend and the break-up of a long-term relationship. But he found a way out of his pain.

I managed to turn myself over so that I was now sitting on the spar with my ankles locked together beneath it, and my hands down in front of me on the cold metal.

But still I slid down, inch by inch.

Brendan was standing just short of the edge of the grandstand roof proper, holding the pole in both hands and watching me intently as I moved ever so slowly, but inexorably, towards him.

He stepped forward and swung the pole at me.

I had time to see it coming and, keeping my legs tight round the spar, I leaned right back flat against it as the pole whizzed past harmlessly just inches from my eyes.

But the sudden movement meant that I slid still further down the spar.

Next time I’d easily be in range. I knew it and so did Brendan.