Pulse(60)

‘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.