Cambridge Blue (21 page)

Lorna had made a lot of phone calls and, judging by the variety of numbers, made them to many different people. Then, two weeks and two days before the end of the statement, the calls had suddenly stopped. So that tallied with Victoria Nugent’s claim that Lorna had changed her phone, and therefore left him with no way of checking who she’d been texting on the morning of her disappearance.

His extension rang. It was Marks. ‘Go home, Gary.’ The DI sounded tired, his voice gravelly.

‘It looks like Lorna Spence was using a second mobile the day she died. Victoria Nugent said much the same, and reckons the old one is at the Excelsior Clinic. Could the new one still be at her flat?’

‘I doubt that; the premises were thoroughly searched.’

‘I know, but perhaps it was missed.’

‘Read me the number.’

‘I don’t have it, but I do have a list of mobiles that she was in the habit of texting. We need to know who they belong to, and whether they started texting her on the new number.’

‘I’ll get that checked. Any other progress?’

‘No, apart from that, nothing really. We’re visiting the half-sister, Jackie Moran, first thing in the morning.’

‘You and Kincaide?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Now go home, get some sleep and start fresh tomorrow.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

Goodhew managed a fitful doze from just after 3 a.m. until 5.35 a.m., and awoke to the sound of incessant rain and the silence of birds. He lay on top of his bed, bare-chested but still wearing jeans; a slight improvement on a fully clothed crash-out on the settee.

He sat on the edge of the bed until his head cleared, then crossed to the window, wanting to see the downpour. Some days the rain sounded worse than it actually was, amplified by the water gushing through downpipes and dripping from the guttering. But today it was just as wet as it sounded, if not wetter.

The rain fell in sleet-thick sheets, and the sky was bruised and grey, like a battered lead lid nailed down close above the rooftops.

He made the few hundred yards to work much longer by detouring via Parkside pool. But he stopped swimming after only ninety lengths, worried that he might keep Kincaide waiting, and so arrived at his desk promptly on the dot of 7 a.m.

Forty-five minutes after Kincaide was due at the station, there was still no sign of him. No answer on his home phone, and his mobile was diverted to voicemail. Goodhew told himself there was probably a good reason for this and refused the temptation of dropping back into anti-Kincaide mode.

But equally he did not feel like wasting any more time waiting, so he decided to leave without him, and therefore now stood alone on the doorstep of Jackie Moran’s cottage. The rain had not abated, and it drove at a forty-five degree angle at the unprotected front of the house. The front garden consisted of one raised stone-bordered bed planted with a couple of dozen petunias and, at the end furthest from the front door, young sweetpea plants growing up the sides of a black wrought-iron obelisk. The garden was hardly ambitious, but both sets of plants were being furiously battered by the weather, and only a few minutes passed before Goodhew himself deteriorated from damp to equally bedraggled.

It was a strong Suffolk accent that snapped him out of his moment of rain-muffled solitary confinement. ‘You won’t catch Jackie this late.’ The voice belonged to the postman, who was approaching him from the property next door. ‘She’s like clockwork; gone at eight every weekday.’

‘To work?’

The postman poked a couple of items of what looked like junk mail through Jackie Moran’s letterbox before answering, ‘I dunno.’

‘Damn,’ Goodhew sighed. ‘I really needed to speak to her this morning.’

‘Well, I can tell you where she’ll be – at the stables at Old Mile Farm, just out towards Quy. But I don’t know if it’s work or not, ’cept I s’pose anything involving horses is work. Worse than kids, they are. Probably why all these females love ’em so much.’

Goodhew had been vaguely aware of seeing the farm’s sign along one of the routes leading to Newmarket, but the postman was happy to give him precise directions before waving goodbye.

Newmarket: the home of flat racing, the sport of kings. Many of the racing yards were positioned near the centre of the town itself, tucked just out of sight of the main through roads. Or, more likely in a town where horses had right of way, the roads had been developed afterwards, deliberately planned to avoid disturbing the town’s main industry.

Further out from the centre, the surrounding villages remained horse rich, offering acres and acres of pristine post-and-rail heaven.

And it was with that limited amount of local knowledge that Goodhew drew himself a picture of what to expect at Old Mile Farm, while adding in a younger version of Alice Moran to represent Jackie herself.

The sign for the farm was the only thing visible from the road; it was made of wood and nailed to a telegraph pole. The words had been carved out and painted white. He turned down the unmade track alongside it, and immediately wrote himself a mental note against making such assumptions in the future. He was not, in fact, driving towards some smart racing yard, and none of the three horses turned out in the field bore any resemblance to a thoroughbred, instead belonging to the Heinz 57 varieties of the horse world. The two bays, both standing at about fourteen hands, looked like they were at least fifty per cent native breed, while the third was a heavy-set skewbald closer to sixteen hands. One of the bays trotted alongside the fence, its mane and tail sodden and steam rising from its back even as the rain continued to fall. It reached the far corner, then stretched its neck over the top rail, pricked its ears forward and whinnied.

Goodhew drove on past. The track opened out to a small area of uneven hard standing, just big enough to accommodate half a dozen cars. A RAV4 took up one corner, and although his was the only other vehicle, Goodhew still found it hard to park somewhere avoiding the puddles.

In front of him was a fenced-in manège, and facing on to that was a row of ten loose boxes. The air smelt of wet earth and manure from a giant muck heap, while a lone water butt caught the rain as it spurted from a strip of broken guttering on the overhang of roof above the last stable. The butt was already overflowing, with a loud sploshing of water falling into the butt then bouncing out and on to the concrete floor beneath.

A rug hung over the open door to the third loose box, and he headed towards it. ‘Hello?’ he called.

No reply.

He looked inside but it was empty. He continued along the row and found the seventh stable was the only one occupied. A chestnut gelding, with the name Jester on his head collar, poked his nose over the door. Then, in the distance, Goodhew heard the bay whinny again and was soon able to pick out the sound of hooves. Unlike the others, the horse that was now being ridden into the yard was a thoroughbred. She was a grey and definitely no youngster, walking towards the boxes with the reins hanging loose around her neck. A Border collie trotted alongside, only inches from her hooves.

Her rider wore a crash hat and a wax jacket with its collar turned up, making it impossible for him to catch more than a glimpse of her face.

‘Jackie Moran?’ he asked doubtfully.

‘Yes, that’s me. Give me one minute to sort Suze out.’ She patted the mare’s neck, then swung out of the saddle, landing lightly on the balls of her feet. She led the horse into the third box as the collie sat with its back to Goodhew in the middle of the doorway and watched the untacking. Jackie Moran rugged up Suze, then hauled the saddle on to the door and hooked the bridle on a nearby peg. Neither animal attempted to move until the collie was forced to get out of the path of the closing door.

‘Which way today, Bridy?’ The dog chose the stable and Jackie Moran slid the bolt behind her. ‘She’s a lazy old girl, sleeps half the day now.’

Goodhew guessed she meant the dog.

‘They’re both the same,’ she added, immediately making his guess irrelevant. ‘How can I help you?’ Before he had a chance to reply, she corrected herself, and thus drew an end to her initial informality. ‘I suppose what I should first find out is who you are and what you want.’ She pulled the crash hat from her head and ran her fingers just once through her brown hair, as if that would be enough to unflatten it.

He introduced himself and her expression remained unaltered: cooperative, but not up for having her time wasted. She didn’t need to say ‘Get on with it’, because it was written on her face.

‘I’m here about Lorna Spence.’

‘Thought you might be,’ she said. Perhaps she’d taken stock of him taking stock of her, and she deliberately paused before adding, ‘You’re very young, aren’t you?’, like it was the only thing she’d found worth a mention.

He just shrugged in response.

‘We can sit in there.’ She pointed towards the first stable in the block. ‘Will that be OK?’ She looked hopeful; whatever was in the horsebox-cum-lounge clearly appealed to her. ‘At least it’s dry.’

‘Fine.’ He gave her the ‘after you’ gesture. ‘Go ahead.’

She unbolted both halves of the stable door and he followed her inside. The horsebox-cum-lounge was actually more a horsebox-cum-storeroom with bales of hay and straw, two feed bins and a pile of buckets. She then closed the bottom half of the door – perhaps in the pretence of warmth – and moved two bales so they could sit on them, almost side by side, facing the door.

‘I take the tack and grooming kit home each night to reduce the chance of break-ins. When I was a teenager, I used to bring a sleeping bag and camp out in here, so I could get up early and ride, but I’d never do that now.’

They each sat on a bale, Jackie with her feet planted squarely in front of her, and one hand on each knee; she looked like she was bracing herself.

‘Lorna Spence?’ Goodhew repeated, and let the name hang in the air, hoping she’d conjure up the appropriate question that went with the name. She did.

‘We weren’t close friends, you know, but I liked her and we seemed to get on OK. She helped me exercise the horses once or twice each week.’

‘She rode well?’

‘Very riding-school.’ He looked puzzled, she explained. ‘She’d been taught well, but obviously hadn’t ridden enough to be an unconsciously competent horsewoman. I think she would have struggled with Suze, but she was fine on Jester. Suze looks docile right now, but she’s smart, and she’d have played up. She always sees through people.’

‘Is that a hint?’

A defensive note slipped into her voice. ‘I don’t hint; I either say it or keep it to myself. Lorna was competent, but not expert. Suze is a retired racehorse; she was highly strung in her day and animals like that are well aware of who they can take advantage of. And that was all I meant.’

‘I’ve spoken to Richard and Alice Moran, so I’m already aware of her connection to the rest of your family.’

Goodhew tried to see behind her defiant look. He had the distinct feeling that she chose to keep her thoughts to herself far more often than she vented them. Reticence was no ugly trait, just one he didn’t have the luxury of letting her indulge in right now.

But she seemed to open up a bit whenever she talked about her horse, and if that meant he had to take a metaphorical canter round the paddock to get over each metaphorical hurdle, that was fine by him.

Jackie ran her nail up and down the double-stitched outer seam of her jodhpurs. It was the kind of action that reminded him of a schoolgirl chewing a pencil or twirling her hair. Distracted, and insecure.

‘Tell me about Suze,’ he asked gently.

Her gaze darted up and directly met his. Her face softened, and for the first time he saw what appeared to be a genuine smile. ‘She’s really called Souza Symphony – that was her racing name. My dad owned part shares in her, but she only ran a few times. She wasn’t quite quick enough. She was fast, actually, but we’re talking about a tenth of a second here and there making all the difference. That picture behind you . . .’ She pointed to the back of the stable door, where a photocopy of a press clipping was pinned. ‘That was the only thing she ever won. Beginner’s luck, my mother said.’

There were two people pictured alongside the horse. One was the jockey. Goodhew read the caption: ‘Souza Symphony, winner of the 5F Yearling Handicap, pictured with jockey Brendan Quinn and owner Mrs Sarah Moran.’ If Jackie Moran had tried to dress up as a grinning
Dynasty
extra, this would undoubtedly have been the result. ‘That’s her, then?’

‘I remember how Mum took us on summer holidays to Bournemouth, then abandoned us at the hotel for the day while she drove to Brighton to watch her run. Dad came down a few days later, and they had this huge row about it.’

‘When was that?’

‘1982, can’t you tell by the clothes? Suze is a real old girl now, and I’m glad Mum went that day. She was thrilled. Suze went on to have a couple of foals, then I talked Dad into letting me keep her. I suppose it’s silly to have two horses all to myself, but it’s how I like to spend my time.’

‘Do you work as well?’

‘I inherited this place and the cottage I live in, so there’s no rent or mortgage. I’m paid to look after the three horses there in the field and I give riding lessons at the weekend. That’s it. I’d love to do this place up properly, but I don’t think it’ll happen somehow. I’m not one of our family’s high-flyers, am I?’ Her smile reappeared, but he thought it now looked artificially bright.

‘If you spent a lot of time with Lorna, I would have thought you’d have come forward. Why didn’t you?’ He threw in the question, hoping to catch her more off guard now.

Her eyes narrowed and the smile hardened. ‘Time to get down to business, I suppose?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, first off, thanks for letting me chat about Suze, I needed an ice-breaker. I find it hard to talk to most people.’ She was quite obviously stalling. ‘I suppose that’s why I like it out here.’ She paused, her stalling stalled. A few more seconds passed before she spoke again. ‘I can cope one to one, like this, but not with big groups of people, or in unfamiliar places. It’s pathetic, I know.’ Jackie said it in such a matter-of-fact way that at first he wondered if there was any truth in what she was saying.