Microsoft Word - John Francome - Inside Track.doc (2 page)

He ignored her. Flames were licking upwards now and he added coal. He thrust the poker into the heart of the blaze and left it there. He picked up more photographs and a shiny brown strip of negatives. `Don't burn them, Malcolm, please.'

Ìt's all digital technology now,' he said, adding to the fire. `Planning to get one, were you?'

She looked puzzled. `What?'

'You can buy a top quality digital camera with thirty thousand pounds.'

She said nothing.

Ànd, of course, you'd have a little left over. Smart holidays, new car, deposit on a house maybe?' He left the fire and leaned over her. Òr, of course, you could just blow it all on smack. What a great way to invest my money. Stick it all in junkie Pete's veins. Yours, too, from the look of you.'

`Sod off, you pig.'

`Where have you put the money?’ 'It's nothing to do with me.' Malcolm laughed. He admired her nerve. `Where is it?'

She turned her head away but he took her small pointed chin between thumb and forefinger and yanked her head round. `Tell me,' he said softly.

Ì don't know.'

She was lying, he could tell. He'd handed the cash over to Pete in York at six and seen him get on a trans-Pennine train. He'd have had no time to get 7

it to a bank or building society, even if he'd been so inclined. The cash must be here or nearby, Malcolm was sure of it.

He took the poker from the fire and inspected it. The end glowed a deep and threatening orange, turning to white at the very tip.

`Come on, Mandy, don't make it worse than it is. Where's the money?'

She shook her head wildly. He could see she was petrified. Good. He raised the poker. The whiteness at the tip was fading but it was still hot enough to sear and burn and scar. He pointed it at her pale drawn face.

`Where is it?' he asked gently.

A voice burst into the silence. Malcolm had discounted Pete, curled in a heap of self-pity on the floor. Suddenly he shouted out, `Don't tell him, Mandy! Don't tell the bastard anything!'

Malcolm needed no excuse. He pressed the end of the poker across Pete's thigh.

The reaction was delayed as the heat penetrated the denim of Pete's jeans.

Then his body convulsed and threshed as he tried to escape. Malcolm pushed the poker down hard and the smell of burning fabric filled the room.

Mandy was shouting at him but he couldn't make out her words over the sound of Pete's screams. He lifted the poker and rammed a cushion over the squealing man's face, lowering the volume a fraction. How he despised the gutless fool wriggling in agony at his feet.

Mandy was weeping and a string of snot swung from her nose. How on earth could he ever have found her attractive?

Ìt's upstairs in the toilet,' she moaned. Ìn the cistern.'

`Why didn't you say so in the first place?' he said as he tossed the poker into the coal scuttle.

The toilet was an old-fashioned ball-and-chain monstrosity and he had to stand on the pedestal to reach the cistern. He laid the heavy lid on the floor then removed his right glove and rolled up his sleeve before plunging his arm into the icy water.

Thirty thousand pounds in banknotes made a reasonable parcel, especially wrapped in plastic bags and bound with tape to keep out the wet. He yanked it out and tore open a corner of the plastic with his teeth, just to 8

check. It was his money all right. Malcolm smiled as he wormed his damp hand back into his glove and made for the stairs.

He got downstairs just in time. Though her wrists were lashed together Mandy was picking at the knots that bound her feet. He yanked her arms away.

She saw the parcel with the money in his other hand.

`Just go,' she hissed. `You've got what you came for.' He put the money on the table. This was a two-hand job. `Please don't hurt me,' she cried as she saw the look in his eye. `Sorry, Mandy,' he said as he put his big gloved hands round her slender neck. And he really was.

He held her down for a long time after she'd ceased to thrash around. Five, ten minutes - he wasn't sure. Just to make sure she was dead. Him squatting astride her body, fingers on her throat, their loins pressed together. It was almost like old times.

The air was thick with feathery dust from the smouldering photographs and the fire still crackled in the grate. There was another sound too, a snuffling, whimpering noise like an animal in pain.

He looked away from Mandy's lifeless face into the bulging, terrified eyes of Pete. He had wedged his body behind the armchair and was trying to back further into the tiny space, as if he could somehow disappear from view.

Earlier in the evening, as he had waited on the hillside and contemplated Pete's treachery, Malcolm had looked forward to this moment - when he would put an end to the blackmailer's threat permanently. But now the time had come it was just a chore that had to be seen to.

`Let's get it over with, shall we?' he said as he stepped towards his cowering victim.

He put his coat on in the hall and turned off the light, before slipping out of the front door. At the front gate he paused and watched the orange light dance and flicker behind the curtain. The fire was catching hold. With luck it would destroy the bodies though he had no illusions that it would conceal the act of murder. Just as long as no one could pin it on him.

And they couldn't - he was sure of that.

A gust of icy wind knifed into him, bringing him down from the high that had gripped him. Suddenly he felt weary. He spat out the lifeless cud of 9

gum that he had chewed throughout the whole operation. Flames were racing up the curtain now.

Time to go.

30 November, 2001

Pippa Hutchison eyed her brother surreptitiously as she drove west. He was unnaturally pale, the skin drawn tight over the bones of his face. His thick coffee-coloured hair had been clumsily shorn, making him appear even younger than his twenty-one years - until you looked into his eyes.

His once-open gaze was guarded, the hazel light dimmed by recent painful experience. To Pippa, Jamie looked washed-out and weak - like a plant that's been shut up in a cupboard and forgotten. But what could you expect after eighteen months in prison?

She had not exactly thrived herself since Jamie had been locked away. She had ticked off every day of his sentence on a calendar and now the day of his release had arrived she was surprised how nervous she felt. Things had changed since he'd been inside and she wasn't sure how he was going to react.

Jamie caught her looking at him. He managed a smile but it didn't reach his eyes.

`Not going too fast for you, am I?' she said.

Almost the first thing he'd remarked on as they'd driven away from Her Majesty's Prison Garstone was the speed of the car. `Slow down, Pippa,'

he'd gasped and she'd pointed out they were only doing thirty. Ìs that all?

It seems like twice that.'

`Just wait till you get back on a quick horse,' she'd said, laughing, but he'd not joined in and she'd let it go. She'd eased off the gas, too, and driven like a granny for the next few miles.

The road was winding. Puddles were still holding at the edges courtesy of the overnight rain. So far it had been a typically damp November day.

10

Now, Jamie said, `Bet you're glad you don't have to make this journey again.'

Was she ever. Racehorse trainers were used to crossing the country day and night to get to meetings. Pippa's base in North Yorkshire was a fair distance from the big Flat tracks of the south and she logged many miles every year without complaint. But the fortnightly trip down the motorway and the long slog east below the Wash to Garstone was as gloomy a journey as she'd ever made. It would have been different in other circumstances, of course. But the anticipation of seeing her brother, the anxiety she felt at the state she might find him in and the depression of the return always left her drained. She didn't want to live through that again, or travel on the road that reminded her of it. Not that she would dream of saying so to Jamie.

Ìt wasn't that bad. Handy for Newmarket.' It was what she always said.

He smiled at her properly this time. `Bloody liar.'

Newmarket was many miles from Garstone. Everywhere was miles from Garstone. Pippa often wondered how visitors without a car managed. They must spend hours on trains and a fortune on the local taxis. It wasn't just the men serving time who were being punished.

She slowed at the approaching junction and kept heading west, avoiding the turn which led north to the motorway.

He looked at her in surprise. `Where are we going?'

`Somewhere you can see the sky and fill your lungs with fresh air.' She waited a beat. `But first we're going to Wolverhampton.'

The joke fell flat.

`Pippa, you're not taking me racing, are you?' She said nothing, just concentrated on the road. Ìt's too soon. I can't face anyone yet.'

`But you said you were going to help me out at the yard. You haven't changed your mind, have you?'

`No.,

'Then you're coming racing. Lonsdale Heights runs in the third. The sooner you put a few faces to names the better.'

He made no further protest but she could tell from the set of his jaw that he wasn't happy.

11

Tough. Though she loved her brother and had bottomless sympathy for his recent ordeal, he couldn't be allowed to duck out of things any more. As a child he'd got away with murder. Their mother had always let her little boy off the hook. Pippa, on the other hand, had always had to pay the price.

She was the elder, she should know better, Jamie was only a kid'.

This indulgence hadn't done him any favours. Leeds Crown Court hadn't considered him a kid when he'd pleaded guilty on a drink driving charge, and all his success as a jockey had counted for nothing. Though the death of fifteen-year-old Alan Kirkstall was not deemed to be murder, this was one accident whose consequences thèkid' could not avoid. Jamie had been sentenced to three years, which had come down to a year and a half on remission.

Pippa's resentment about the whole business still burned - she couldn't help it. Throughout his sentence she'd been the one on the outside trying to be a rock, keeping Jamie's morale up while ushering their mother through the swift and hideous progress of lung cancer.

Now her rancour touched on the one topic she had sworn to herself she would not raise on this supposedly joyful journey to freedom. `So,' she asked her brother, `have you got your memory back then?’ 'What?'

Maybe he was startled by the question or by her tone, which was sharp, pitched higher than she had intended. The accusing tone of the aggrieved elder sister.

`Do you still not remember the accident?'

She had not raised the issue in any of her prison visits. It would have been impossible in that crowded and undignified room. But she'd assumed he'd come to terms with his crime during his year and a half inside. For God's sake, he'd pleaded guilty! He must have owned up to himself.

He was a long time responding, as if he was searching within himself for the right answer. Or maybe he was just trying to think of the right way of putting it. `No, Pippa,' he said at last. Ì feel shame and remorse and regret.

But the truth is, I can't remember what actually happened.' She still didn't believe him.

Though regarded as one of the least attractive in the country, Jamie had a soft spot for Wolverhampton racecourse. He'd had his first winner there as a green apprentice of sixteen, squeezing home by a neck in a sprint on a 12

summer evening. He'd been so nervous beforehand that he'd spent most of the time in the toilet. He'd gone down to the start dazzled by the floodlights, his head in a spin. It was a miracle he'd even started, let alone finished. But once his mount was settled in the starting stalls, drawn on a lucky low number, he'd tuned out all his problems. He'd gunned up the inner like a speeding bullet and never saw another horse until he looked over his shoulder when he was past the post.

So, all things being equal, he'd have been happy to spend his first day of freedom at this urban track with its multi-tiered panoramic restaurant and all-weather surface that so offended the purists. But this course, like all the others where he'd once performed so successfully, belonged to a past now closed to him. Though it would surprise many, including Pippa without a doubt, he had not planned his return to racing while serving his time. The accident had changed everything. He'd not ridden in anger since the crash and he wondered if he still could. Racing had been the best thing in his life but maybe he deserved to lose it. A boy had died because of him. He couldn't just climb back into the saddle and carry on riding winners as if that had never happened.

But he was young. He had to do something with his life - that's what everyone told him. And he didn't know much else apart from horses. His mind was in turmoil as Pippa parked the car and he followed her towards the stands. At least they weren't heading to the weighing room. He wasn't looking forward to meeting his former colleagues. They'd showered him with letters after the trial and he'd not replied to one. Some guys had asked if they could visit him and he'd said no. Maybe now they'd forgotten him.

He hoped so - it was no less than he deserved. It was early, there was nearly an hour to go before the first race, but the lunchtime clientele were beginning to gather in the restaurant, eager to get the eating out of the way before the serious business of the day.

`Where are we going?' he said to Pippa as they walked down a corridor and stopped in front of a chipped wooden door.

She didn't reply but opened it and ushered him ahead.

The surprise was total. The small room was jammed with familiar faces, all smiling. Jockeys, stable staff, journalists. A cheer went up at 13

the sight of him. Champagne corks popped. He'd have run if he could but Pippa was right behind him, blocking his escape.

She must have known what he was thinking. Òut of my hands, I'm afraid,'

she whispered in his ear as a sandy-haired giant gripped him by the shoulders and shouted, `Welcome back, you little rascal!' and crushed him in a bear hug.