Asking For Trouble (27 page)

At that moment, a shot rang out, closely followed by another. Something winged across the front of me, narrowly missing Dolly’s ears. There was a crack and splintering of wood. A white scar appeared on the nearest tree-trunk. The next second, Dolly had taken off like a bat out of hell.

‘Hang on!’ yelled Jamie.

There was nothing I could do about it but hang on and we thudded headlong down the track. Hauling on the reins had no effect. I prayed Dolly was sure-footed as the ground was uneven and rutted with tractor tracks. I became aware Jamie was galloping after me, before Dolly swerved without warning and changed direction.

We nearly parted company at that moment. I slipped sideways and just managed to haul myself back. I’d seen cossacks in a circus doing stunts like that, and never felt the slightest urge to join them. Dolly now bolted down a narrow path, probably made by deer, between trees.

There was just about room for her. I grabbed the pommel of the saddle and Dolly’s mane and crouched flat to avoid being swept to the ground by overhanging branches. I sensed, rather than heard, that I’d lost Jamie. He wasn’t behind me, at any rate. The track must come out somewhere and perhaps he was riding round in an attempt to head me off at the other end.

Dolly plunged on. The ground was soft and uneven, in parts boggy so that Dolly’s hoofs squelched in mud and came free with loud, sucking noises We came to a stream and she leapt it easily. By now I’d lost both stirrups and only a miracle kept me glued to her back. We hurtled across an open glade. Dolly took a new path, at a right-angle to the first. She seemed to know where she was going, but it was unlikely Jamie did and wherever he’d headed off to, he’d probably fail to connect up with me now Dolly had changed direction.

Without warning we shot out of the trees into another wide firebreak. There, bumping along towards us was an old pick-up truck. Dolly saw it, checked and wheeled round. I carried on, like the arrow from the bow in the poem, and fell to earth, literally, in a stretch of mud.

I lay there winded, a singing in my ears. I was vaguely aware of cold mud creeping over my outflung hands and dampness oozing through my clothing. Dimly, I heard a familiar voice calling, ‘Fran! Are you all right?’

I opened my eyes. Nick Bryant was stooping over me.

Most of the breath had been knocked out of my body, but I managed to wheeze the unnecessary information that I’d fallen off.

‘Take it easy, you may have broken something.’ In concern, he began checking me over. ‘Try and move your arms, one at a time, then your legs.’

I tried. Everything seemed to be in working order. He gave me a hand to sit up.

I rested my arms on my knees and concentrated on getting my breathing back in pattern. I was in a terrible mess, muddy from head to toe. Dolly had disappeared.

‘I’ll take you home,’ Nick said. ‘The mare will probably go back on her own.’

I told him Jamie was around somewhere. Nick expressed the opinion that Jamie could also find his own way home. I argued that I ought to try and find him. He wasn’t likely to go back to the Astara without me. We were wrangling about this, when hoofbeats announced the arrival of Jamie himself.

He leapt from the saddle and pounded over the turf towards us.

‘What the hell – what are you doing here, Bryant?’

‘Taking a short cut – good thing I was here! Why didn’t you take better care of her?’

I was still sitting in my patch of mud, getting my breath back. They stood either side of me, glowering at one another like a couple of dogs disputing ownership of a bone.

‘Oy,’ I called up to them. ‘How about someone giving me a hand up?’

They hauled me upright between them.

‘I’m taking her home in the pick-up,’ Nick said, holding tightly to my right arm.

‘I’ll find the mare,’ Jamie argued, gripping my left. ‘She won’t have gone far.’

‘You can’t expect Fran to ride back!’ I was jerked to the right.

‘I’ll take care of her, all right?’ A tug to the left.

‘If you don’t mind!’ I protested.

They gave me surprised looks and both released me.

‘I don’t know where the horse is,’ I told Jamie. ‘But she went that-a-way.’ I pointed. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll accept Nick’s offer of a lift back.’

‘Look,’ Jamie urged. ‘I don’t want either of the old people seeing you in that state! Especially Ariadne. They mustn’t know about your taking a fall.’

‘So, I’ll creep in the back door!’

Reluctantly, he let me clamber into the pick-up.

‘He’s a fool,’ said Nick, as we bumped down the track with a grinding of gears. ‘Taking a novice rider out on such a long hack across country.’

‘It wasn’t his fault. Someone fired a gun off and frightened Dolly, the mare. The shot only just missed me.’

‘A gun?’ He glanced at me, frowning. ‘Might have been someone shooting pigeons or even a poacher after a deer. Venison fetches a good price nowadays. I’ll phone the forest warden when we get back. He can send a couple of rangers out to check.’

I persuaded him to set me down in the lane leading to the stud. I hobbled the remaining stretch home and slipped into the house through the kitchen door.

Ruby was there and let out a squawk. I explained Jamie was following after, once he’d found the mare.

‘You leave those muddy clothes with me,’ she said. ‘And go up and run yourself a good hot bath. Have a nice long soak in it. Oh, and you won’t let Mr Alastair or Mrs Cameron know, it’d upset them to think you’d had any accident.’

I soaked in the bath feeling a hundred years old. Any plan I’d had of slipping out to find Ganesh was out of the question now. I limped along to my room and collapsed on the bed until dinner.

Ruby put her head round as I lay there, and informed me Mr James was safely back with Dolly.

I was more than aware that the person who’d come back safely, against all the odds, was myself. I wasn’t meant to return in one piece. Whoever fired off those shots wasn’t firing at pigeons or deer. He’d been firing at me. I remembered Lundy’s expression as I rode out of the yard. But if it had been Lundy, had he been acting alone? Or had the whole thing been set up with Jamie?

I hoped neither Alastair nor Ariadne had been a part of it.

Chapter Sixteen

After dinner Alastair dug out some old family snapshot albums and insisted on showing them to me. They were interesting chiefly for the ones which showed Philip Monkton whom I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet in the flesh. He appeared a heavily built, self-confident type of man, handsome in a florid way. In the couple of photographs in which he appeared with Terry, there was no appearance of closeness. The camera can lie, contrary to the saying. But attitudes don’t. The pictures with father and daughter were obligatory family snaps. Looking closely at Philip, I decided he was a bully.

Meanwhile it started to rain heavily, beating against the windows.

‘In for a nasty night,’ said Alastair in the comfortable way of someone who hadn’t to go out in the bad weather.

My mind was on Ganesh, sitting uncomfortably in the van, eating cold baked beans out of a tin, listening to the rain beat on the roof. I felt guilty. I had a warm bed upstairs. On the other hand, my bumps and bruises were coming out nicely and I was likely to be spending an equally uncomfortable night.

I limped to the window and peered out. It was tipping down.

‘What’s up?’ Jamie asked, sounding suspicious. ‘You’ve been fidgeting about for the last hour. What’s out there?’

‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘I was just looking out at the weather.’ Privately I muttered, ‘I’m in agony!’

He scowled and glanced at Alastair, but he didn’t ask again why I was so unsettled.

Poor old Ganesh. But it had been his idea to drive down here.

I awoke the next morning, hardly able to move a muscle. Every attempt was agony. Given free choice, I’d have remained where I was all day. But the choice wasn’t mine. I got out of bed by sliding over the edge and finishing on my knees on the carpet. I hauled myself upright, yelping with pain, and I made my way down to the bathroom, hunched like Quasimodo. A hot bath helped a little and gave me the courage to tackle the stairs.

Making an entry into the breakfast room with the appearance of everything being all right, when everything hurt, took some doing. But Alastair didn’t appear to notice anything amiss. Jamie wasn’t there.

It had stopped raining. I managed to hide a toast and marmalade sandwich in my pocket and made my robotic way outside trying to look nonchalant. Gan probably had pneumonia by now. I’d find him coughing and expiring with just enough breath left to say ‘I told you so!’

I took a deep breath. The air was filled with a wet-leaf smell. The overnight deluge had left deep puddles in the drive. The buddleia heads drooped and dripped moisture.

There was a rustle in the tangle of foliage. A voice whispered, ‘Fran!’

I peered into the dripping jungle. ‘Ganesh? Are you all right?’

He emerged, clearly anything but all right. He was in a dreadful mess, soaked, shivering and unshaven. But something more than physical discomfort troubled him as I could see from his drawn features and the look in his eyes.

I grabbed his hand. ‘What happened, Ganesh?’

His fingers closed tightly on mine and then released them. ‘Fran, we’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to get back to London – we, I, have got to call the police!’ He swallowed and looked nervously towards the house.

He was right to be cautious. ‘Jamie snoops,’ I told him. ‘Back in the bushes, Gan!’ I gave him a shove and we both retreated into the wet undergrowth. Water trickled down my neck and wet leaves slapped against my face. ‘Just tell me,’ I urged.

‘The woods down there, where I parked the van.’ He made an effort to pull himself together, pushing back his wet hair with both hands. ‘I went into them to – well, the usual reason. Then I went wandering off further, just exploring.’ His jaw wobbled. ‘I found a grave, Fran.’

I couldn’t say anything at first, only stare at him in growing horror and dismay. Somehow I managed to squeeze out, ‘Are you sure about this, Ganesh? The terrain is pretty rough out there.’

‘I tell you, it’s a grave! The rain, it must have washed away the soil. It can’t have been there long, you see. There – there was a hand sticking out among the leaves and brambles. I – I got a stick and just pushed aside a few more to uncover the face.’ He paused and added in a choked voice, ‘I’m so sorry, Fran. It’s – it was someone we know.’

‘Who?’ I asked dully. But my guts, sickened with the knowledge of what he was going to say, heaved.

‘It was Squib.’ When I made no reply he added in a bewildered way, ‘How’s it possible, Fran? Down here? What was he doing—?’

‘He had a plan!’ I broke in miserably. ‘Oh, Ganesh, this is my fault! I should have found out what was in his mind! But I didn’t take him seriously. You know how he was—’

Ganesh grabbed my shoulders and shook me lightly. ‘Yes, I know what Squib was like, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘He knew about the Astara Stud. Terry had told him. He must have thought, somehow or other, he could get some money . . . He’d cleared out of the hostel and was on the run. He told me he was thick, poor sod, and he was thick! He hadn’t worked out her killer could have come from here. If I’d only asked, I could have talked him out of it!’

‘This isn’t your fault!’ Ganesh snapped.

I remembered the stub of chalk in Jamie’s car. I’d thought it proved a visit to our house. But perhaps Squib had been in that car.

‘The dog!’ I exclaimed.

‘No sign of it.’

‘It wouldn’t leave him and he wouldn’t leave it. Squib thought the world of that dog.’ So, somewhere in the woods would be a second, smaller grave. ‘Take me there,’ I said.

Ganesh shook his head. ‘No, Fran,’ he said gently.

‘Squib was a friend!’

‘Squib’s dead. What’s down there in the woods is a decomposing shell.’ He paused. ‘So, do we call the local cops?’

I struggled with my churning brain and shook my head. ‘Not here. I don’t want them swarming all over us here. I vote we go back to London and tell Janice. She’ll be angry but she knows us. Here they don’t know us, we’re strangers. Gan, I suppose you couldn’t tell how he died?’

That was asking a lot from a quick glimpse of a discoloured face and a hand.

Ganesh said fiercely, ‘I didn’t stay to find out! I couldn’t
look
at it any longer, Fran!’

I gulped. ‘Squib wouldn’t have hurt
anyone
! It’s foul – and fouler that you had to be the one to find him!’

‘Someone had to find him. I wish it hadn’t been me. Something, some animal, has been chewing at the fingers. The smell is indescribable, not foul exactly but sweet, like a mix of rotting fruit and disturbed stagnant water. It would have been bad enough even without knowing him. I threw up. If the police look around there, Fran, they’ll find plenty of evidence to tell them I was there. The ground was soft. I must have left footprints. The van’s tyre tracks. We have to go to the police before someone else stumbles over the body.’

I made a decision. The last thing I wanted was to be hauled away by the local police. They knew nothing about us, we were clearly out-of-towners and not the type of tourist a locality encourages. If, in addition, we told them the body was that of a friend of ours, they’d lock us up and toss away the key. I’d also be lying if I didn’t admit to being afraid. It now seemed clear that what I’d suspected must be so, that someone at the Astara was involved in this whole blood-stained business.

I gripped Ganesh’s hand. ‘We’ll go back to London right now. We’ll tell Janice and she’ll contact the locals here. I don’t trust any coppers much but if I trust anyone, it’s Janice.’

He mumbled, ‘All right.’

He didn’t need more problems, but I had to make a confession. ‘I should tell you that someone took a potshot at me yesterday afternoon, while I was out riding, either hoping to hit me or spook the horse. But it couldn’t have been Jamie who fired. He was with me. On the other hand, he was my guide and let me into the tree plantation. Or there’s the groom, Lundy. He could have done it and would have done it, if Jamie ordered, I’m sure! I was set up. They set me up, dammit, between them!’