Come to Grief, Page 2

  I glanced upward at my picture. In those days, six years ago, I’d had two hands. In those days I’d been British steeplechasing’s champion jockey: whole, healthy and, I dared say, fanatical. A nightmare fall had resulted in a horse’s sharp hoof half ripping off my left hand: the end of one career and the birth, if you could call it that, of another. Slow, lingering birth of a detective, while I spent two years pining for what I’d lost and drifted rudderless like a wreck that didn’t quite sink but was unseaworthy all the same. I was ashamed of those two years. At the end of them a ruthless villain had smashed beyond mending the remains of the useless hand and had galvanized me into a resurrection of the spirit and the impetus to seek what I’d had since, a myoelectric false hand that worked on nerve impulses from my truncated forearm and looked and behaved so realistically that people often didn’t notice its existence.

  My present problem was that I couldn’t move its thumb far enough from its fingers to grasp the large heavy cut-glass brandy decanter, and my right hand wasn’t working too well, either. Rather than drop alcohol all over Charles’s Persian rug, I gave up and sat in the gold armchair.

  “What’s the matter?” Charles asked abruptly. “Why did you come? Why don’t you pour a drink?”

  After a moment I said dully, knowing it would hurt him, “Ginnie Quint killed herself.”

  “What?”

  “This morning,” I said. “She jumped from sixteen floors up.”

  His fine-boned face went stiff and immediately looked much older. The bland eyes darkened, as if retreating into their sockets. Charles had known Ginnie Quint for thirty or more years, and had been fond of her and had been a guest in her house often.

  Powerful memories lived in my mind also. Memories of a friendly, rounded, motherly woman happy in her role as a big-house wife, inoffensively rich, working genuinely and generously for several charities and laughingly glowing in reflected glory from her famous, good-looking successful only child, the one that everyone loved.

  Her son, Ellis, that I had put on trial.

  The last time I’d seen Ginnie she’d glared at me with incredulous contempt, demanding to know how I could possibly seek to destroy the golden Ellis, who counted me his friend, who liked me, who’d done me favors, who would have trusted me with his life.

  I’d let her molten rage pour over me, offering no defense. I knew exactly how she felt. Disbelief and denial and anger ... The idea of what he’d done was so sickening to her that she rejected the guilt possibility absolutely, as almost everyone else had done, though in her case with anguish.

  Most people believed I had got it all wrong, and had ruined myself, not Ellis. Even Charles, at first, had said doubtfully, “Sid, are you sure?”

  I’d said I was certain. I’d hoped desperately for a way out ... for any way out ... as I knew what I’d be pulling down on myself if I went ahead. And it had been at least as bad as I’d feared, and in many ways worse. After the first bombshell solution—a proposed solution—to a crime that had had half the country baying for blood (but not Ellis’s blood, no, no, it was unthinkable), there had been the first court appearance, the remand into custody (a scandal, he should of course be let out immediately on bail), and after that there had fallen a sudden press silence, while the sub judice law came into effect.

  Under British sub judice law, no evidence might be publicly discussed between the remand and the trial. Much investigation and strategic trial planning could go on behind the scenes, but neither potential jurors nor John Doe in the street was allowed to know details. Uninformed public opinion had consequently stuck at the “Ellis is innocent” stage, and I’d had nearly three months, now, of obloquy.

  Ellis, you see, was a Young Lochinvar in spades. Ellis Quint, once champion amateur jump jockey, had flashed onto television screens like a comet, a brilliant, laughing, able, funny performer, the draw for millions on sports quiz programs, the ultimate chat-show host, the model held up to children, the glittering star that regularly raised the nation’s happiness level, to whom everyone, from tiara to baseball cap worn backwards, responded.

  Manufacturers fell over themselves to tempt him to endorse their products, and half the kids in England strode about with machismo in glamorized jockey-type riding boots over their jeans. And it was this man, this paragon, that I sought to eradicate.

  No one seemed to blame the tabloid columnist who’d written, “The once-revered Sid Halley, green with envy, tries to tear down a talent he hasn’t a prayer of matching....” There had been inches about “a spiteful little man trying to compensate for his own inadequacies.” I hadn’t shown any of it to Charles, but others had.

  The telephone at my waist buzzed suddenly, and I answered its summons.

  “Sid ... Sid...”

  The woman on the other end was crying. I’d heard her crying often.

  “Are you at home?” I asked.

  “No ... In the hospital.”

  “Tell me the number and I’ll phone straight back.”

  I heard murmuring in the background; then another voice came on, efficient, controlled, reading out a number, repeating it slowly. I tapped the digits onto my mobile so that they appeared on the small display screen.

  “Right,” I said, reading the number back. “Put down your receiver.” To Charles I said, “May I use your phone?”

  He waved a hand permissively towards his desk, and I pressed the buttons on his phone to get back to where I’d been.

  The efficient voice answered immediately.

  “Is Mrs. Ferns still there?” I said. “It’s Sid Halley.”

  “Hang on.”

  Linda Ferns was trying not to cry. “Sid ... Rachel’s worse. She’s asking for you. Can you come? Please.”

  “How bad is she?”

  “Her temperature keeps going up.” A sob stopped her. “Talk to Sister Grant.”

  I talked to the efficient voice, Sister Grant. “How bad is Rachel?”

  “She’s asking for you all the time,” she said. “How soon can you come?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Can you come this evening?”

  I said, “Is it that bad?”

  I listened to a moment of silence, in which she couldn’t say what she meant because Linda was beside her.

  “Come this evening,” she repeated.

  This evening. Dear God. Nine-year-old Rachel Ferns lay in a hospital in Kent a hundred and fifty miles away. III to death, this time, it sounded like.

  “Promise her,” I said, “that I’ll come tomorrow.” I explained where I was. “I have to be in court tomorrow morning, in Reading, but I’ll come to see Rachel as soon as I get out. Promise her. Tell her I’m going to be there. Tell her I’ll bring six wigs and an angel fish.”

  The efficient voice said, “I’ll tell her,” and then added, “Is it true that Ellis Quint’s mother has killed herself? Mrs. Ferns says someone heard it on the radio news and repeated it to her. She wants to know if it’s true.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Come as soon as you can,” the nurse said, and disconnected.

  I put down the receiver. Charles said, “The child?”

  “It sounds as if she’s dying.”

  “You knew it was inevitable.”

  “It doesn’t make it any easier for the parents.” I sat down again slowly in the gold armchair. “I would go tonight if it would save her life, but I ...” I stopped, not knowing what to say, how to explain that I wouldn’t go. Couldn’t go. Not except to save her life, which no one could do however much they ached to.

  Charles said briefly, “You’ve only just got here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what else is there, that you haven’t told me?”

  I looked at him.

  “I know you too well, Sid,” he said. “You didn’t come all this way just because of Ginnie. You could have told me about her on the telephone.” He paused. “From the look of you, you came for the oldest of reasons.” He paused again, but I didn’t
say anything. “For sanctuary,” he said.

  I shifted in the chair. “Am I so transparent?”

  “Sanctuary from what?” he asked. “What is so sudden ... and urgent?”

  I sighed. I said with as little heat as possible, “Gordon Quint tried to kill me.”

  Gordon Quint was Ginnie’s husband. Ellis was their son.

  It struck Charles silent, open-mouthed: and it took a great deal to do that.

  After a while I said, “When they adjourned the trial I went home by train and taxi. Gordon Quint was waiting there in Pont Square for me. God knows how long he’d been there, how long he would have waited, but anyway, he was there, with an iron bar.” I swallowed. “He aimed it at my head, but I sort of ducked, and it hit my shoulder. He tried again ... Well, this mechanical hand has its uses. I closed it on his wrist and put into practice some of the judo I’ve spent so many hours learning, and I tumbled him onto his back ... and he was screaming at me all the time that I’d killed Ginnie ... I’d killed her.”

  “Sid.”

  “He was half-mad... raving, really ... He said I’d destroyed his whole family. I’d destroyed all their lives ... he swore I would die for it ... that he would get me ... get me ... I don’t think he knew what he was saying, it just poured out of him.”

  Charles said dazedly, “So what did you do?”

  “The taxi driver was still there, looking stunned, so ... er ... I got back into the taxi.”

  “You got back ... ? But ... what about Gordon?”

  “I left him there. Lying on the pavement. Screaming revenge ... starting to stand up ... waving the iron bar. I ... er ... I don’t think I’ll go home tonight, if I can stay here.”

  Charles said faintly, “Of course you can stay. It’s taken for granted. You told me once that this was your home.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then believe it.”

  I did believe it, or I wouldn’t have gone there. Charles and his certainties had in the past saved me from inner disintegration, and my reliance on him had oddly been strengthened, not evaporated, by the collapse of my marriage to his daughter Jenny, and our divorce.

  Aynsford offered respite. I would go back soon enough to defuse Gordon Quint; I would swear an oath in court and tear a man to shreds; I would hug Linda Ferns and, if I were in time, make Rachel laugh; but for this one night I would sleep soundly in Charles’s house in my own accustomed room—and let the dry well of mental stamina refill.

  Charles said, “Did Gordon ... er ... hurt you, with his bar?”

  “A bruise or two.”

  “I know your sort of bruises.”

  I sighed again. “I think ... um ... he’s cracked a bone. In my arm.”

  His gaze flew instantly to the left arm, the plastic job.

  “No,” I said, “the other one.”

  Aghast, he said, “Your right arm?”

  “Well, yeah. But only the ulna, which goes from the little-finger side of the wrist up to the elbow. Not the radius as well, luckily. The radius will act as a natural splint.”

  “But, Sid...”

  “Better than my skull. I had the choice.”

  “How can you laugh about it?”

  “A bloody bore, isn’t it?” I smiled without stress. “Don’t worry so, Charles. It’ll heal. I broke the same bone worse once before, when I was racing.”

  “But you had two hands then.”

  “Yes, so I did. So would you mind picking up that damned heavy brandy decanter and sloshing half a pint of anesthetic into a glass?”

  Wordlessly he got to his feet and complied. I thanked him. He nodded. End of transaction.

  When he was again sitting down he said, “So the taxi driver was a witness.”

  “The taxi driver is a ‘don’t-get-involved’ man.”

  “But if he saw... He must have heard ...”

  “Blind and deaf, he insisted he was.” I drank fiery, neat liquid gratefully. “Anyway, that suits me fine.”

  “But, Sid...”

  “Look,” I said reasonably, “what would you have me do? Complain? Prosecute? Gordon Quint is normally a level-headed, worthy sixtyish citizen. He’s not your average murderer. Besides, he’s your own personal long time friend, and I, too, have eaten in his house. But he already hates me for attacking Ellis, the light of his life, and he’d not long learned that Ginnie, his adored wife, had killed herself because she couldn’t bear what lies ahead. So how do you think Gordon feels?” I paused. “I’m just glad he didn’t succeed in smashing my brains in. And, if you can believe it, I’m almost as glad for his sake that he didn‘t, as for my own.”

  Charles shook his head resignedly.

  “Grief can be dangerous,” I said.

  He couldn’t dispute it. Deadly revenge was as old as time.

  We sat companionably in silence. I drank brandy and felt marginally saner. Knots of tension relaxed in my stomach. I made various resolutions to give up chasing the deadlier crooks—but I’d made resolutions like that before, and hadn’t kept them.

  I’d stopped asking myself why I did it. There were hundreds of other ways of passing the time and earning one’s keep. Other ex-jockeys became trainers or commentators or worked in racing in official capacities, and only I, it seemed, felt impelled to swim around the hidden fringes, attempting to sort out doubts and worries for people who for any reason didn’t want to bother the police or the racing authorities.

  There was a need for me and what I could do, or I would have sat around idle, twiddling my thumbs. Instead, even in the present general climate of ostracism, I had more offers of work than I could accept.

  Most jobs took me less than a week, particularly those that involved looking into someone’s credit and credibility rating: bookmakers asked me to do that frequently, before taking on new account customers, and trainers paid me fees to assure them that if they bought expensive two-year-olds for new owners at the Sales, they wouldn’t be left with broken promises and a mountain of debt. I’d checked on all sorts of proposed business plans and saved a lot of people from confidence tricksters, and I’d uncovered absconding debtors, and thieves of all sorts, and had proved a confounded nuisance to imaginative felons.

  People had sobbed on my shoulders from joy and deliverance: others had threatened and battered to make me quit: Linda Ferns would hug me and Gordon Quint hate me; and I also had two more investigations in hand that I’d spent too little time on. So why didn’t I give it up and change to a life of quiet, safe financial management, which I wasn’t bad at, either? I felt the effects of the iron bar from neck to fingers ... and didn’t know the answer.

  The mobile phone on my belt buzzed and I answered it as before, finding on the line the senior lawyer I’d talked to in the corridor in the law courts.

  “Sid, this is Davis Tatum. I’ve news for you,” he said.

  “Give me your number and I’ll call you back.”

  “Oh? Oh, OK.” He read off his number, which I copied as before, and also as before I borrowed Charles’s phone on the desk to get back to square one.

  “Sid,” said Tatum, coming as usual straight to the point, “Ellis Quint is changing his plea from not guilty to guilty by reason of diminished responsibility. It seems his mother’s powerful statement of no confidence in his innocence has had a laxative effect on the bowels of the counsel for the defense.”

  “Jeez,” I said.

  Tatum chuckled. I imagined his double chin wobbling. He said, “The trial will now be adjourned for a week to allow expert psychiatric witnesses to be briefed. In other words, you don’t have to turn up tomorrow.”

  “Good.”

  “But I hope you will.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “There’s a job for you.”

  “What sort of job?”

  “Investigating, of course. What else? I’d like to meet you somewhere privately.”

  “All right,” I said, “but sometime tomorrow I have to go to Kent to see the child, Rachel Ferns. She’s
back in the hospital and it doesn’t sound good.”

  “Hell.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are you?” he asked. “The press are looking for you.”

  “They can wait a day.”

  “I told the people from The Pump that after the mauling they’ve given you they haven’t a prayer of you talking to them.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said, smiling.

  He chuckled. “About tomorrow ...”

  “I’ll go to Kent in the morning,” I said. “I don’t know how long I’ll stay, it depends on Rachel. How about five o‘clock in London? Would that do you? The end of your business day.”

  “Right. Where? Not in my office. How about your place? No, perhaps not, if The Pump’s after you.”

  “How about, say, the upstairs bar of Le Meridien restaurant in Piccadilly?”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “All the better.”

  “If I need to change it,” he said, “can I still get you on your mobile phone?”

  “Always.”

  “Good. See you tomorrow.”

  I replaced Charles’s receiver and sat on the gold armchair as before. Charles looked at the mobile instrument I’d laid this time on the table beside my glass and asked the obvious question.

  “Why do you ring them back? Why don’t you just talk?”

  “Well,” I said, “someone is listening to this gadget.”

  “Listening?”

  I explained about the insecurity of open radio transmission, that allowed anyone clever and expert to hear what they shouldn’t.

  Charles said, “How do you know someone’s listening to you?”

  “A lot of small things people have recently learned that I haven’t told them.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t actually know. Someone has also accessed my computer over the phone lines. I don’t know who did that, either. It’s disgustingly easy nowadays—but again, only if you’re expert—to suss out people’s private passwords and read their secret files.”

  He said with slight impatience, “Computers are beyond me.”

  “I’ve had to learn,” I said, grinning briefly. “A bit different from scudding over hurdles at Plumpton on a wet day.”