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  ‘Jamie Williams?’ asked one of the policemen.

  ‘From school,’ Oliver said. ‘I thought I saw him on my way to the shop, near the phone box. He lives at that farm up the hill on Gretton Road.’

  ‘But why would he take your bike?’ another of the policemen asked.

  ‘Because he doesn’t like me. And he’s always nicking my stuff at school – pens, sports kit, stuff like that. Anyway, I walked all the way up to the farm to see if he had it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come back here first?’ I asked angrily. ‘We were desperately worried.’

  ‘I was afraid,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d be cross that I’d lost my bike.’

  He might have been right.

  ‘So did Jamie Williams have your bicycle?’ the policeman asked him.

  ‘No. At least, he says he hasn’t. So I had to walk home.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll go and have a word with young Mr Williams. What’s the name of the farm?’

  ‘Stoop Farm,’ Grant said. ‘On the right, about a mile out of the village.’

  ‘Right,’ said the policeman. ‘We’ll leave you in peace now. I am pleased that the young man is back home safe and sound. We will go and see the Williams boy to check on the bicycle, and let you know.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m very grateful. And I’m sorry I was so emotional earlier.’

  ‘That’s all right, Mrs Rankin. As long as the boy is unhurt. That’s what really matters.’

  Nevertheless, I was embarrassed that I’d shouted at them, so I let Grant show them out.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Oliver said, coming over and giving me a big hug.

  ‘It’s all right, darling,’ I said, hugging him back and stroking his hair. ‘As the policeman said, you being back home unhurt is the most important thing. And you’re too big for that bike anyway.’

  ‘It’s too late for me to go to football practice,’ Toby announced loudly. ‘So can we have the crisps now?’

  Crisis over. Proper priorities had been restored.

  The policeman came back while I was preparing the scrambled eggs.

  ‘No luck, I’m afraid,’ he said when I opened the front door. ‘I’m satisfied that the Williams boy knows nothing about your son’s bicycle.’

  ‘So who did take it?’ I asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, holding his hands open, palms uppermost. ‘I went and asked the lady who runs the village shop but she had no idea either. She’s agreed to keep an eye out for it. In the meantime, I’ll make out a stolen-property report so you can claim on your household insurance.’

  ‘Won’t you go and look for it?’ I asked.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ he said, not sounding it. ‘We don’t have the manpower. We would definitely search for your child but not for his bike. But the details will remain on file in case it’s found and handed in.’

  I suppose I couldn’t blame him. The police could hardly go door-to-door asking about a child’s mountain bike, even in our small village.

  Life in the Rankin household returned to what might be considered as normal for a Monday night but there were clearly underlying tensions.

  Grant was never normally at his best on Mondays when the whole week of work seemed to stretch ahead of him interminably. It wasn’t that he hated his job, just that it was mundane and predictable compared to his years in the military, and I knew that he sometimes hankered after the excitement and adrenalin generated by being in mortal danger.

  Oliver spent the evening very morose, apologising at least every ten minutes for causing such distress to his mother. And he wasn’t helped by Toby, who gave him no quarter, constantly accusing his brother of ruining his life as he was certain that, having missed the team practice, he would surely be dropped for the next match.

  I, meanwhile, was desperate to get back to my investigation of races ridden by Jason Conway and Mike Sheraton since the previous November. By the time I had been interrupted by the suspected abduction of my son, I’d looked at races up to the end of January and had a list of forty-two in which Conway had jumped the first fence in front, with twenty-six others where Sheraton had done the same.

  But was that significant? After all, someone had to be in the lead at the first fence.

  Over that three-month period, Jason Conway had ridden in just over two hundred races. So he had led over the first fence in only a fifth of them.

  Was that by chance or by design?

  I could see that I would have to spend many more hours studying videos of races, even those in which Jason Conway had not been riding, to see if his numbers were significantly greater than anyone else’s. But there was something about the determination he often showed to be the one in front that I found suspicious.

  Not that I’d get any chance to continue my research on that particular evening. To say that Grant would not have approved would be a gross understatement. He was determined that I should do nothing but rest, as if that alone would solve all my ills, both physical and mental, while I felt I needed a goal, a target, something to occupy what Hercule Poirot always referred to as ‘the little grey cells’.

  After supper, the boys went up to their rooms to do their homework while Grant and I sat together on the sitting-room sofa in front of the TV, testing our general knowledge by attempting to answer a question or two on University Challenge.

  Over the past year, watching television had seemingly become our way of not having to speak to each other. It was easier to allow the programmes to wash over us, filling the void, than to address the one thing that was most important in our lives – the elephant in the room – my mental state, and whether I was continuing to recover.

  I was certainly in a better place than I had been back in November. For a start, I no longer believed that taking my own life was the inevitable outcome, and that was a major step in the right direction. Admittedly, I still thought about suicide now and then but, since coming out of Wotton Lawn Hospital in December, I felt that I was able to rationalise my thinking and positively decide against any form of self-harm.

  Not that I didn’t sometimes feel the weight of gloom and depression hanging on my shoulders, when a fear of being self-indulgent was the only thing preventing me wallowing in tears and despair. But those episodes were now more rare and less intense, helped, I was sure, by a regimen of regular weekly blood tests and targeted hormone therapy. At last I could begin to appreciate how fluctuating amounts of thyroxine or testosterone, oestrogen or progesterone, could affect my mood – not that I fully understood why.

  However, I was becoming increasingly frustrated that I had to go on taking medications in ever-greater numbers. Every trip to a doctor seemed to add another tablet to my lengthy list. But I wanted to stop pill-popping altogether, to stop ingesting man-made chemicals and to become ‘organic’ once again.

  I was fed up with my body and its continually changing hormone levels.

  I was fed up that, in spite of the drugs, I never felt happy.

  Indeed, I was just fed up.

  ‘I think I’ll go up to bed,’ I said to Grant at a quarter to ten.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked with concern. Quarter to ten was very early, even for me.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just tired.’

  ‘I’ll be up in a while.’

  ‘I may be asleep,’ I replied. ‘Night, night.’

  ‘Goodnight.’ He didn’t lean over and give me a kiss, he merely waved a hand in my general direction as his eyes, and his concentration, returned to the TV screen and the end of a murder-mystery drama that I hadn’t been following.

  It was hardly married life as I’d expected it.

  I was woken by Oliver, shouting outside our bedroom door.

  ‘Mum, Mum. My bike is back. It’s out on the drive.’

  ‘Great,’ I said, turning over and looking at the clock on my bedside table.

  Six-forty. Not too bad. The alarm was due to go off in only a few minutes anyway. I turned on the light and sat up on the edge
of the bed.

  ‘What time is it?’ Grant asked, sleepily. I hadn’t heard him come to bed so I expect he’d stayed up watching a movie until midnight, as he often did these days.

  ‘Almost a quarter to seven,’ I said. ‘Oliver says his bike is back and lying on the drive.’

  ‘I bet that Williams boy had it all along,’ Grant said. ‘I imagine he’s handed it back before the police returned to ask him a second time.’

  I heard both the twins running down the stairs and the front door being thrown open. But there was no joy or delight at the discovery.

  ‘It’s all bent and broken,’ Oliver said gloomily as he came back up the stairs. ‘Both the wheels are twisted and the frame is all out of shape.’

  He was close to tears again. It was bad enough for him to have lost his bike in the first place, but then to believe it had been returned safe and sound only to find it ruined was almost more than the poor boy could handle.

  Grant put on his dressing gown and went downstairs and out onto the drive.

  The phone rang and I immediately picked it up using the handset beside the bed.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Dr Rankin?’ asked a quiet male voice.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘You were told before to stop asking questions. I’ll not tell you again. Next time I’ll run over your kid, not just his bike.’

  22

  I was still standing by the bed with the phone in my hand when Grant came back upstairs.

  ‘Who was that?’ he asked.

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

  I was shaking too much.

  Grant looked at me.

  ‘Darling, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  I tried to reply that, as always, I was fine, but the words wouldn’t come out. I felt sick and I pushed past him into the bathroom where I threw up into the lavatory.

  ‘Good God, darling,’ Grant said. ‘What has happened?’

  I shook my head. I couldn’t tell him. My mind was racing round in ever-decreasing circles and my heart was thumping away, nineteen to the dozen.

  I was simply too frightened to repeat what I’d just heard.

  ‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ Grant said, worry etched deeply onto his face.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Call the police,’ I said, managing at last to get three words out together.

  Detective Sergeant Merryweather and Detective Constable Filippos sat on one side of our kitchen table while Grant and I sat on the other.

  ‘What exactly did the man say to you?’ asked the senior detective.

  ‘He said that next time he’d run over my kid not just his bicycle.’

  Even three hours after I’d first heard them, repeating the words made my heart race.

  ‘Next time? A rather strange turn of phrase. Why do you think he said that?’

  I glanced at Grant. He was still unaware of the STOP ASKING QUESTIONS piece of paper previously placed on my windscreen and I would have preferred it to have remained that way.

  No chance.

  ‘Did it have anything to do with the message you received before?’ asked DC Filippos.

  ‘What message?’ Grant said immediately.

  I sat silently, looking down at my hands.

  ‘What message?’ Grant repeated.

  ‘Your wife found a message placed on her windscreen,’ DC Filippos said.

  ‘What message?’ Grant said for a third time.

  I said nothing but the detective wasn’t finished. ‘The message said to stop asking questions.’

  Grant turned and looked at me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’

  That was a good question and I didn’t have a satisfactory answer.

  ‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ I said.

  Grant shook his head in frustration. ‘So what questions were you asking?’

  ‘Just questions,’ I said inadequately.

  ‘Questions about what?’ He was beginning to get angry and I could feel the stress growing in me too.

  It all came out – it was bound to – everything, that was, except my flirtation with the Whisky Macs. I did at least manage to keep that quiet from both Grant and the police.

  But all the rest came out, all the things I had tried so hard to keep from Grant. Not just the message on the windscreen but also the flat tyres, my approaches to the jockeys, the note in the envelope and, most worrying of all, my belief that I’d been pushed in front of the bus.

  Grant was horrified.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said again.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘You’re dead right there,’ he said forcefully. ‘I don’t like it. Not one bit. In future, you must leave any investigating to the police.’

  I glanced across the table at the two policemen. ‘But they don’t know what I do.’

  ‘And what is that?’ asked DS Merryweather.

  Did I say? Was I sure? Did I have enough evidence?

  ‘I think someone is spot-fixing races and I believe it involves the jockeys Jason Conway and Mike Sheraton. And I’m sure it has something to do with Rahul, our unnamed man, who died in Cheltenham Hospital in November.’

  ‘What do you mean by spot-fixing?’ asked DS Merryweather.

  ‘Fixing which horse jumps the first fence in front.’

  I could tell instantly that he thought I was crazy.

  ‘But why would that make any difference to the outcome?’

  ‘It doesn’t. That’s the point. But if you could gamble on which horse jumped the first fence first then it would be corrupt to fix it.’

  ‘But who would gamble on such a thing?’ the detective asked, the disbelief clearly audible in his voice.

  ‘Some people will gamble on anything,’ I said. ‘Especially, it seems, in India and Pakistan. If they gamble on when the first throw-in will occur in a game of football or when a no-ball is bowled in cricket, then why not on which horse is in front at the first fence?’

  ‘What evidence do you have?’

  ‘I’ve been watching videos of races in which Conway and Sheraton have been riding. I believe a pattern is emerging.’

  ‘What videos?’ Grant asked.

  ‘On my computer,’ I said. ‘There are racing websites that have videos of past races, and I was studying those all day yesterday.’

  ‘Is that why you had to send Oliver out to do the shopping?’ Grant was cross again, and with good reason. It was exactly why.

  I nodded and hung my head in shame.

  ‘So, I ask you again,’ said the detective sergeant, ‘did this incident with Oliver’s bicycle have anything to do with the previous message?’

  I nodded again.

  ‘The man on the phone said that I’d been told before not to ask questions and he wouldn’t tell me again. Next time he’d run over my kid, not just his bike.’

  Grant was now really angry.

  ‘How could you have put our son in such danger?’ he demanded.

  ‘But I hadn’t asked any more questions,’ I said unhappily. ‘Not to the jockeys anyway.’

  ‘To who then?’ asked DS Merryweather.

  I thought back to my encounter with the driver of the long black Mercedes with the dark windows.

  ‘The only question I’ve asked was of the driver of a certain Mercedes. I asked him who owned it.’

  ‘Which Mercedes?’

  ‘The one from which Jason Conway had been given the piece of paper with the name of a London railway station and a time.’

  ‘Liverpool Street at three-thirty?’ said DC Filippos.

  ‘Quite so,’ I said. ‘Liverpool Street at three-thirty. Not a train time but the name of a horse that ran in the Gold Cup at three-thirty last Friday.’

  ‘But why go to the trouble of passing a piece of paper with the horse’s name on it?’ said DS Merryweather. ‘Why not just email or call him?’

  ‘Because emails and telephone calls leave re
cords of contact that can be traced,’ I said. ‘I expect Conway now wishes he’d destroyed the paper as soon as he had read it.’ I paused and looked at the three of them. ‘Liverpool Street may have finished third in the race. But it started fast and jumped the first fence in front, and Jason Conway rode it.’

  The detectives stayed for another hour, making notes while I showed them some of the race videos. Not that they were convinced, even then, that anything untoward had been going on.

  ‘It stands to reason that someone has to jump the first fence in front,’ DS Merryweather said. ‘And it’s not as if the same jockey does it every time.’

  ‘That would be too suspicious,’ I pointed out. ‘But there are certain races when it looks very much by design rather than by chance.’

  ‘But don’t some horses just like to run at the front?’ the detective sergeant said dubiously after I’d been through everything I’d found. ‘There’s insufficient here to build a credible legal case. We know from experience how difficult it is to get a conviction for corruption in racing. About ten years ago, we thought we had irrefutable evidence of race-fixing by three jockeys, including a former champion, but an Old Bailey judge still threw it out after deciding the three had no case to answer – and we had a lot more on them than this.’ He waved his hand dismissively at my computer. ‘The same would certainly happen here. It’s all circumstantial and coincidental.’

  ‘There was nothing coincidental about running over Oliver’s bicycle,’ I said. ‘That was deliberate and intentional.’

  ‘But what is there to connect it to your allegation of spot-fixing in races? And how is it linked to the death of our nameless man from a cocaine overdose? Are you not guilty of simply piecing together several random situations into a single narrative because you want that so much to be the case?’

  Was I?

  I thought back once again to the reaction of the jockeys to the image of the unnamed man, to the certainty I’d felt about the Mercedes driver knowing who I was, to my collision with the bus and the telephone call of that morning.