Come to Grief (17 page)

“I understood the jury isn’t allowed to know anything about a witness. I was at a trial once in the Central Law Courts—the Old Bailey—when a beautifully dressed and blow-dried twenty-six-year-old glamour boy gave evidence—all lies—and the jury weren’t allowed to know that he was already serving a sentence for confidence tricks and had come to court straight from jail, via the barber and the wardrobe room. The jury thought him a lovely young man. So much for juries.”

“Don’t you believe in the jury system?”

“I would believe in it if they were told more. How can a jury come to a prison-or-freedom decision if half the facts are withheld? There should be no inadmissible evidence.”

“You’re naive.”

“I’m Sid Public, remember? The law bends over backwards to give the accused the benefit of the slightest doubt. The
victim
of murder is never there to give evidence. The colt in Lambourn can’t talk. It’s safer to kill animals. I’m sorry, but I can’t stand what Ellis has become.”

He said flatly, “Emotion works against you in the witness box.”

“Don’t worry. In court, I’m a block of ice.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“You’ve heard too damned much.”

He laughed. “There’s an old-boy internet,” he said. “All you need is the password and a whole new world opens up.”

“What’s the password?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Don’t bugger me about. What’s the password?”

“Archie,” he said.

I was silent for all of ten seconds, remembering Archie’s eyes the first time I met him, remembering the
awareness,
the message of knowledge. Archie knew more about me than I knew about him.

I asked, “What exactly does Archie do in the civil service?”

“I reckon,” Norman said, amused, “that he’s very like you, Sid. What he don’t want you to know, he don’t tell you.”

“Where can I reach you on Monday?”

“Police station. Say you’re John Paul Jones.”

 

Kevin Mills dominated the front page of
The Pump
on Friday—a respite from the sexual indiscretions of cabinet ministers but a demolition job on me.
“The Pump,”
he reminded readers, “had set up a hotline to Sid Halley to report attacks on colts. Owners had been advised to lock their stable doors, and to great effect had done so after the Derby.
The Pump
disclaimed all responsibility for Sid Halley’s now ludicrously fingering Ellis Quint as the demon responsible for torturing defenseless horses. Ellis Quint, whose devotion to thoroughbreds stretches back to his own starry career as the country’s top amateur race-rider, the popular hero who braved all perils in the ancient tradition of gentlemen sportsmen...”

More of the same.

“See also ‘Analysis,’ on page ten, and India Cathcart, page fifteen.”

I supposed one had to know the worst. I read the leader column: “Should an ex-jockey be allowed free rein as pseudo sleuth? (Answer: no, of course not.)” and then, dredging deep for steel, I finally turned to India Cathcart’s piece.

That was for starters. The next section pitilessly but not accurately dissected the impulse that led one to compete at speed (ignoring the fact that presumably Ellis himself had felt the same power-hungry inferiority complex).

My ruthless will to win, India Cathcart had written, had destroyed everything good in my own life. The same will to win now aimed to destroy my friend Ellis Quint. This was ambition gone mad.

The Pump
would not let it happen. Sid Halley was a beetle ripe for squashing.
The Pump
would exterminate. The Halley myth was curtains.

 

Damn and blast her, I thought, and, for the first time in eighteen years, got drunk.

 

On Saturday morning, groaning around the apartment with a headache, I found a message in my fax machine.

Handwritten scrawl,
Pump-headed
paper same as before ... Kevin Mills.

Most of Sunday I listened to voices on my answering machine delivering the same opinion.

Two calls relieved the gloom.

One from Charles Roland, my ex-father-in-law. “Sid, if you’re in trouble, there’s always Aynsford,” and a second from Archie Kirk, “I’m at home. Norman Picton says you want me.”

Two similar men, I thought gratefully. Two men with cool, dispassionate minds who would listen before condemning.

I phoned back to Charles, who seemed relieved I sounded sane.

“I’m all right,” I said.

“Ellis is a knight in
shining
armor, though.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you
sure,
Sid?”

“Positive.”

“But Ginnie ... and Gordon ... they’re
friends.

“Well,” I said, “if
I
cut the foot off a horse, what would you do?”

“But you
wouldn’t.”

“No.”

I sighed. That was the trouble. No one could believe it of Ellis.

“Sid, come, anytime,” Charles said.

“You’re my rock,” I said, trying to make it sound light. “I’ll come if I need to.”

“Good.”

I phoned Archie and asked if Jonathan was still staying with Betty Bracken.

Archie said, “I’ve been talking to Norman. Jonathan is now addicted to water skiing and spends every day at the lake. Betty is paying hundreds and says it’s worth it to get him out of the house. He’ll be at the lake tomorrow. Shall we all meet there?”

We agreed on a time, and met.

When we arrived, Jonathan was out on the water.

“That’s him,” Norman said, pointing.

The flying figure in a scarlet wet-suit went up a ramp, flew, turned a somersault in the air and landed smoothly on two skis.

“That,”
Archie said in disbelief, “is
Jonathan?”

“He’s a natural,” Norman said. “I’ve been out here for a bit most days. Not only does he know his spatial balance and attitude by instinct, but he’s fearless.”

Archie and I silently watched Jonathan approach the shore, drop the rope and ski confidently up the sloping landing place with almost as much panache as Norman himself.

Jonathan grinned. Jonathan’s streaky hair blew wetly back from his forehead. Jonathan, changed, looked blazingly
happy.

A good deal of the joy dimmed with apprehension as he looked at Archie’s stunned and expressionless face. I took a soft sports bag out of my car and held it out to him, asking him to take it with him to the dressing rooms.

“Hi,” he said. “OK.” He took the bag and walked off barefooted, carrying his skis.

“Incredible,” Archie said, “but he can’t ski through life.”

“It’s a start,” Norman said.

After we’d stood around for a few minutes discussing Ellis we were approached by a figure in a dark-blue tracksuit, also wearing black running shoes, a navy baseball cap and sunglasses and carrying a sheet of paper. He came to within fifteen feet of us and stopped.

“Yes?” Norman asked, puzzled, as to a stranger. “Do you want something?”

I said, “Take off the cap and the glasses.”

He took them off. Jonathan’s streaky hair shook forward into its normal startling shape and his eyes stared at my face. I gave him a slight jerk of the head, and he came the last few paces and handed the paper to Norman.

Archie for once looked wholly disconcerted. Norman read aloud what I’d written on the paper.

“ ‘Jonathan, this is an experiment. Please put on the clothes you’ll find in this bag. Put on the baseball cap, peak forward, hiding your face. Wear the sunglasses. Bring this paper. Walk towards me, stop a few feet away, and don’t speak. OK? Thanks, Sid.’ ”

Norman lowered the paper, looked at Jonathan and said blankly, “Bloody hell.”

“Is that the lot?” Jonathan asked me.

“Brilliant,” I said.

“Shall I get dressed now?”

I nodded, and he walked nonchalantly away.

“He looked totally different,” Archie commented, still amazed. “I didn’t know him at all.”

I said to Norman, “Did you look at the tape of Ellis’s program, that one I put in with my report?”

“The tape covered with stickers saying it was the property of Mrs. Linda Ferns? Yes, I did.”

“When Ellis was sitting on the floor with those children,” I said, “he was wearing a dark tracksuit, open at the neck. He had a peaked cap pushed back on his head. He looked young. Boyish. The children responded to him... touched him ...
loved
him. He had a pair of sunglasses tucked into a breast pocket.”

After a silence Norman said, “But he
wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t wear those clothes on television if he’d worn them to mutilate the Ferns pony.”

“Oh yes he would. It would deeply amuse him. There’s nothing gives him more buzz than taking risks.”

“A baseball cap,” Archie said thoughtfully, “entirely changes the shape of someone’s head.”

I nodded. “A baseball cap and a pair of running shorts can reduce any man of stature to anonymity.”

“We’ll never prove it,” Norman said.

Jonathan slouched back in his own clothes and with his habitual half-sneering expression firmly in place. Archie’s exasperation with him sharply returned.

“This is not the road to Damascus,” I murmured.

“Damn you, Sid.” Archie glared, and then laughed.

“What are you talking about?” Norman asked.

“Saint Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus happened like a thunderclap,” Archie explained. “Sid’s telling me not to look for instant miracles by the gravel pit lake.”

Jonathan, not listening, handed me the bag. “Cool idea,” he said. “No one knew me.”

“They would, close to.”

“It was still a risk,” Norman objected.

“I told you,” I said, “the risk is the point.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Cutting off a horse’s foot doesn’t make sense. Half of human actions don’t make sense. Sense is in the eye of the beholder.”

 

 

I drove back to London.

My answering machine had answered so many calls that it had run out of recording tape.

Among the general abuse, three separate calls were eloquent about the trouble I’d stirred up. All three of the owners of the other colt victims echoed Linda Ferns’s immovable conviction.

The lady from Cheltenham: “I can’t believe you can be so misguided. Ellis is absolutely innocent. I wouldn’t have thought of you as being jealous of him, but all the papers say so. I’m sorry, Sid, but you’re not welcome here anymore.”

The angry Lancashire farmer: “You’re a moron, do you know that? Ellis Quint! You’re stupid. You were all right as a jockey. You should give up this pretense of being Sherlock Holmes. You’re pitiful, lad.”

The lady from York: “How
can
you? Dear Ellis! He’s worth ten of you, I have to say.”

I switched off the critical voices, but they went on reverberating in my brain.

The press had more or less uniformly followed
The Pump’s
lead. Pictures of Ellis at his most handsome smiled confidently from newsstands everywhere. Trial by media found Ellis Quint the wronged and innocent hero, Sid Halley the twisted, jealous cur snapping at his heels.

I’d known it would be bad: so why the urge to bang my head against the wall? Because I was human, and didn’t have tungsten nerves, whatever anyone thought. I sat with my eyes shut, ostrich fashion.

Tuesday was much the same. I still didn’t bang my head. Close-run thing.

On Wednesday Ellis appeared again before magistrates, who that time set him free on bail.

Norman phoned.

“Cloth ears?” he said. “Same as before?”

“Deaf,” I assured him.

“It was fixed beforehand. Two minutes in court. Different time than posted. The press arrived after it was over. Ellis greeted them, free, smiling broadly.”

“Shit.”

Norman said, “His lawyers have done their stuff. It’s rubbish to. think the well-balanced personality intended to kill himself—his tie got caught somehow but he managed to free it. The policeman he pushed failed to identify himself adequately and is now walking about comfortably in a cast. The colt Ellis is accused of attacking is alive and recovering well. As bail is granted in cases of manslaughter, it is unnecessary to detain Ellis Quint any longer on far lesser charges. So ... he’s walked.”

“Is he still to be tried?”

“So far. His lawyers have asked for an early trial date so-that he can put this unpleasantness behind him. He will plead not guilty, of course. His lawyers are already patting each other on the back. And ... I think there’s a heavyweight maneuvering somewhere in this case.”

“A heavyweight? Who?”

“Don’t know. It’s just a feeling.”

“Could it be Ellis’s father?”

“No, no. Quite different. It’s just... since our reports, yours and mine, reached the Crown Prosecution Service, there’s been a new factor. Political, perhaps. It’s difficult to describe. It’s not exactly a cover-up. There’s already been too much publicity, it’s more a sort of redirection. Even officially, and not just to the press, someone with muscle is trying to get you thoroughly and, I’m afraid I must say,
malignantly
discredited.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

“Sid, seriously, look out for yourself.”

 

I felt as prepared as one could be for some sort of catastrophic pulverization to come my way, but in the event the process was subtler and long drawn out.