Wild Horses Part 35

'I'm so sorry,' I said helplessly. 'But you didn't die. Paul loved you... He saved your life.'

I thought of the cataclysmic shock in Paul's face when he'd come to Dorothy's house and seen the Armadillo lying on the kitchen table. When he'd seen me sitting there, alive. alive.

He'd blundered out of the house and gone away, and it was pointless now to speculate that if we'd stopped him, if we'd sat him down and made him talk, he might have lived. Paul had been near, once, to breaking open. Paul, I thought, had become a fragile danger, likely to crumble, likely to confess. Paul, overbearing, pompous, unlikeable, had lost his nerve and died of repentance.

My driver, with the black-belt beside him, aimed my car towards Oxfords.h.i.+re while consulting from time to time my written directions, and I sat in the back seat looking again at 'The Gang' photo and remembering what both Dorothy and Lucy had said about it.

'They're so young young'.

Young.

Jackson Wells, Ridley Wells, Paul Pannier, were all at least twenty-six years younger in the photo than the living men I'd met. Sonia had died twenty-six years earlier, and Sonia was alive in the picture.

Say the photo had been taken twenty-seven twenty-seven years ago that made Jackson Wells about twenty-three, with all the others younger than that. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty: that sort of age. Sonia had died at twenty-one. years ago that made Jackson Wells about twenty-three, with all the others younger than that. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty: that sort of age. Sonia had died at twenty-one.

I had been four when she died and I hadn't heard of her, and I'd come back at thirty and wanted to know why why she had died, and I had said I might try and find out, and in saying that I'd set off a chain reaction that had put Dorothea into hospital and Paul into his grave and had earned me a knife in the ribs... and whatever else might come. she had died, and I had said I might try and find out, and in saying that I'd set off a chain reaction that had put Dorothea into hospital and Paul into his grave and had earned me a knife in the ribs... and whatever else might come.

I hadn't known there was a genie in the bottle, but genies once let out couldn't be put back.

My driver found Batwillow Farm and delivered me to Jackson Wells's door.

Lucy again answered the summons of the overloud bell, her blue eyes widening with astonishment.

'I say,' she said, 'you didn't mind my coming home for the day, did you? You haven't come to drag me back by my ponytail?'

'No,' I smiled. 'I really wanted to talk to your father.'

'Oh, sure. Come in.'

I shook my head. 'I wonder if he would come out.'

'Oh? Well, I'll ask him.' Faintly puzzled, she disappeared into the house, to return soon with her blond, lean, farm-tanned enquiring parent looking exactly as he had looked there one week earlier.

'Come in,' he said, gesturing a welcome, happy-go-lucky.

'Come for a walk.'

He shrugged. 'If you like.' He stepped out of his house and Lucy, unsure of herself, remained in the doorway.

Jackson eyed the two agile men sitting in my car and asked, 'Friends?'

'A driver and a bodyguard,' I answered. 'Film company issue.'

'Oh.'

We crossed from the house and came to rest by the five-barred gate on which deaf old Wells senior had been leaning the week before.

'Lucy's doing a good job,' I said. 'Did she tell you?'

'She likes talking to Nash Rourke.'

'They get on fine,' I agreed.

'I told her to be careful.'

I smiled. 'You've taught her well.' Too well, I thought. I said, 'Did she mention a photograph?'

He looked as if he didn't know whether to say yes or no, but in the end said, 'What photograph?'

'This one.' I brought it out of my pocket and gave it to him.

He looked at the front briefly and at the back, and met my eyes expressionlessly.

'Lucy says that's your handwriting,' I commented, taking the picture back.

'What if it is?'

'I'm not the police,' I said, 'and I haven't brought thumbscrews.'

He laughed, but the totally carefree manner of a week earlier had been undermined by wariness.

I said, 'Last week you told me no one knew why Sonia had died.'

'That's right.' The blue eyes shone, as ever, with innocence.

I shook my head. 'Everyone in that photo,' I said, 'knew why Sonia died.'

His utter stillness lasted until he'd manufactured a smile and a suitably scornful expression.

'Sonia is in that photo. What you said is codswollop.'

'Sonia knew,' I said.

'Are you saying she killed herself?' He looked almost hopeful, as well he might.

'Not really. She didn't intend to die. No one intended to kill her. She died by accident.'

'You know b.l.o.o.d.y nothing about it.'

I knew too much about it. I didn't want to do any more harm, and I didn't want to get myself killed, but Paul Pannier's death couldn't simply be ignored; and apart from considerations of justice, until his murderer had been caught I would be wearing Delta-cast.

'You all look so young in that photo,' I said. 'Golden girl, golden boys, all smiling, all with bright lives ahead. You were all kids then, like you told me. All playing at living, everything a game.' I named the light-hearted gang in the photo. 'There's you and Sonia, and your younger brother Ridley. There's Paul Pannier, your blacksmith's nephew. There's Roddy Visborough, the son of Sonia's sister, which made Sonia actually his aunt. And there's your jockey, P. Falmouth, known as Pig.' I paused. 'You were the eldest, twenty-two or twenty-three. Ridley, Paul, Roddy and Pig were all eighteen, nineteen or twenty when Sonia died, and she was only twenty-one.'

Jackson Wells said blankly, 'How do you know?'

'Newspaper reports. Doing sums. It hardly matters. What does matter is the immaturity of you all... and the feeling some people have at that age that youth is eternal, caution is for oldies, and responsibility a dirty word. You went off to York and the others played a game... and I think this whole gang, except you, were there when she died.'

'No,' he said sharply. 'It wasn't a gang thing. You're meaning gang rape. That didn't happen.'

'I know it didn't. The autopsy made it quite clear that there'd been no intercourse. The newspapers all pointed it out.'

'Well, then.'

I said carefully, 'I think one of those boys in some way throttled her, not meaning to do her harm, and they were all so frightened that they tried to make it look like suicide, by hanging her. And then they just ran away.'

'No,' Jackson said numbly.

'I think,' I said, 'that to begin with you truly didn't know what had happened. When you talked to the police, when they tried to get you to confess, you could deal blithely with their questions because you knew you weren't guilty. You truly didn't know at that point whether or not she'd hanged herself, though you knew and said that it wasn't like her. I think that for quite a while it was a true mystery to you, but what is also evident is that you weren't psychologically pulverised by it. None of the newspaper reports and I've now read a lot of them not one says anything about a distraught distraught young husband.' young husband.'

'Well... I...'

'By then,' I suggested, 'you knew she had lovers. Not dream lovers. Real ones. The gang. All casual. A joke. A game. I'd guess she never thought the s.e.x act more than a pa.s.sing delight, like ice cream, and there are plenty of people like that, though it's not them but the intense and the jealous that sell the tabloids. When Sonia died, your playing-at-marriage was already over. You told me so. You might have felt shock and regret at her death, but you were young and healthy and blessed with a resilient nature, and your grief was short.'

'You can't possibly know.'

'Am I right so far?'

'Well...'

'Tell me what happened afterwards,' I said. 'If you tell me, I promise not to put anything you say in the film. I'll keep the fictional story well away. But it would be better if I knew the truth because, like I told you before, I might reveal your innermost secrets simply by guessing. So tell me . . and you won't find what you're afraid of on the screen.'

Jackson Wells surveyed his creeper-covered house and his untidy drive and yard, and no doubt thought of his pleasant existence with his second wife and of his pride in Lucy.

'You're right.' He sighed heavily. 'They were all there, and I didn't find out for weeks.'

I let time pa.s.s. He had taken the first great step: the rest would follow.

'Weeks afterwards, they began to unravel,' he said at length. 'They'd sworn to each other they would never say a word. Never. But it got too much for them. Pig p.i.s.sed off to Australia and left me with only Derek Carsington to ride my nags; not that it mattered much, the owners were leaving as if I had the pox, and then Ridley...' He paused. 'Ridley got drunk, which wasn't a rarity even in those days, and spilled his guts from every possible orifice. Ridley disgusts disgusts me but Lucy still thinks he's a laugh, which won't last much longer as he'd have his hand up her skirt by now except that I've told her always to wear jeans. No fun being a girl these days, not like Sonia, she loved skirts down to her ankles and no bra most of the time and a green crewcut and why the me but Lucy still thinks he's a laugh, which won't last much longer as he'd have his hand up her skirt by now except that I've told her always to wear jeans. No fun being a girl these days, not like Sonia, she loved skirts down to her ankles and no bra most of the time and a green crewcut and why the h.e.l.l h.e.l.l am I telling you this?' am I telling you this?'

I thought he might be mourning Sonia twenty-six years too late; but maybe nothing was ever too late in that way.

'She was fun fun,' he said. 'Always good for a laugh.'

'Yes.'

'Ridley told me what they'd done.' The pain of the revelation showed sharply in the sunny face, i as good as killed him. I thrashed him. Hit him. Beat him with a riding whip. Anything I could lay my hands on. I kicked him unconscious.'

'That was grief,' I said.

'Anger.'

'Same thing.'

Jackson stared unseeingly at time past.

'I went to see Valentine to ask him what to do,' he said. 'Valentine was like a father to all of us. A better father than any of us had. Valentine loved Sonia like a daughter.'

I said nothing. The way Valentine had loved Sonia had had nothing to do with fatherhood.

'What did Valentine say?' I asked.

'He already knew! He said Paul had told him. Paul was in pieces, like Ridley. Paul had told his uncle everything. Valentine said they could all either live with what they'd done or go to the police... and he wouldn't choose for them.'

'Did Valentine know that Roddy Visborough had been there?'

'I told him,' Jackson said frankly. 'Sonia was Roddy's aunt aunt. And whatever sort of s.e.x orgy they'd all been planning I mean, of course, it was nothing like that, forget I said it Roddy couldn't be dragged in, they said it was impossible. She was his aunt!'

'You all knew Valentine well,' I said.

'Yes, of course. His old smithy was only just down the road from my yard. He was always in and out with the horses and we'd drop in there at his house, all of us. Like I said, he was a sort of father. Better than a father. But everything broke up. Training died on me, and Paul left Newmarket and moved away with his mother and father, and Roddy went off to go on the show jumping circuit... he'd been wanting to be an a.s.sistant racehorse trainer only he hadn't yet got a job, and Pig, like I said, he'd already gone off. And then Valentine was moving too. The old smithy needed impossible roof repairs, so he had it torn down and sold the land for building. I was there one day when he was watching the builders throw the junk of a lifetime down to fill up an old well that he had in the back there, that was a danger to children, and I said things were never going to be the same again. And of course they weren't.'

'But they turned out all right for you.'

'Well, yes, they did.' He couldn't repress his grin for long. 'And Valentine became the Grand Old Man of racing, and Roddy Visborough's won enough silver cups for an avalanche. Ridley's still b.u.mming about and I help him out from time to time, and Paul got married...' He stopped uncertainly.

'And Paul got killed,' I said baldly He was silent.

'Do you know who killed him?' I asked.

'No.' He stared. 'Do you?'

I didn't answer directly. I said, 'Did any of them tell Valentine or you which of the four of them throttled Sonia?'

'It was an accident.'

'Whose accident?'

'She was going to let them put their hands round her neck. She was laughing, they all agreed about that. They were sort of high, but not on drugs.'

'On excitement,' I said.

His blue eyes widened. 'They were all going to... that's what broke them up... they were all going to have a turn with her, and she wanted it... she bet they couldn't all manage it, not like that when the lads had all ridden out for second morning exercise, not before they came back again in an hour, and not with all of the gang watching and cheering each other on, and not in a box on hay as a bed... and they were all crazy, and so was she... and Pig put his hands round her neck and kissed her... and squeezed... and she choked... he went on too long... and she went dark... her skin went dark, and by the time they realised... they couldn't bring her back...' His voice died, and after a while he said, 'You're not surprised, are you?'

'I won't put it in the film.'

'I was so angry,' he said. 'How could could they? How could she let them? It wasn't drugs...' they? How could she let them? It wasn't drugs...'

'Do you realise,' I asked, 'that it's almost always men who die in that sort of asphyxia?'

'Oh, G.o.d... They wanted to see if it worked the same for women.'

The total foolishness of it blankly silenced us both.

I took a breath. I said, 'The Drumbeat Drumbeat said I couldn't solve Sonia's death, and I have. So now I'll find out who killed Paul Pannier.' said I couldn't solve Sonia's death, and I have. So now I'll find out who killed Paul Pannier.'

He pushed himself away from the gate explosively, shouting back at me, ''How? ''How? Leave it alone. Leave all of us alone. Don't make this p.i.s.sing film.' Leave it alone. Leave all of us alone. Don't make this p.i.s.sing film.'

His raised voice brought my judo keeper out of the car like an uncoiling eel. Jackson looked both surprised and alarmed, even as I made soothing hand gestures to calm my minder's reflexes.