Authors: Lyndon Stacey
Deadfall
Contents
Bay Tremayne, heir to a viscountcy and manager of his father's Dorset estate, has one burning ambition â to be selected to ride on the British Olympic three-day eventing team. But his dream is about to be put on hold. Arriving at the stables late one night to prepare his horse for a competition the next day, Bay walks into a crisis. Thieves have targeted the tackroom and viciously attacked fifteen-year-old Abby Hathaway, the stable owners' daughter, leaving her unconscious.
As Abby lies in a coma, what seems like freak chance sets Bay on the track of the thieves. Disregarding the advice of the investigating officer and increasingly unpleasant warnings from those involved, he juggles sleuthing with his demanding job and a competitive riding career. But, as the violence against him escalates and begins to affect those close to him, Bay soon realises that someone, under cover of the trouble he has stirred up, is trying to kill him for reasons of their own, and the race is on to find out who, before they succeed ...
Lyndon Stacey is the bestselling author of
Cut Throat, Blindfold
and
Deadfall
. She lives in the Blackmore Vale.
Cut Throat
Blindfold
Lyndon Stacey
Â
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This book is dedicated, with thanks, to Maggie, Hettie and
Pat, my test readers, for their enthusiastic support.
My thanks go to international three-day event rider, Mary King; Emma Johns at the British Greyhound Racing Board; Jo Aitchison at Debretts Peerage; Alison and Brian Shingler at Gants Mill, Bruton, and Richard Harte at Alderholt Mill, Fordingbridge, all of whom have willingly and patiently answered my questions over the past year. Thanks too, to Kim Bevan and Mark Randle of the Wiltshire Police, both of whom were extremely helpful.
And last but not least, I'd like to thank my brother, Peter, for taking the time to set me up with a new computer system at a critical point in the proceedings.
IF LINCOLN TREMAYNE'S
reactions had been even a fraction slower the speeding vehicle would have hit his car head on.
There was no warning; just blinding headlights, a dark bulk careering past and a jolting, metal-tearing impact as the side of his car hit the wall.
Braking to a screeching halt, Linc knew he was lucky not to have been killed. The vehicle had come round the corner on the wrong side of the narrow lane, leaving him no option but to run into the brickwork. If it hadn't been for the buttress he might still have made it relatively unscathed but that extra ten inches or so proved decisive. When the Morgan finally came to rest, he was alone in the lane. One headlight was clearly no more, and there was the depressing sound of loose metal vibrating to the pulse of the powerful engine.
Linc swore. Repairs to a Morgan Plus Eight were a specialist job and consequently cost the earth.
He shifted into first gear and straightened the car up. There was nothing to be gained by staying. The
maniac in the other vehicle wasn't likely to return â and frankly he'd rather they didn't. It was too dark to inspect the damage to the Morgan or the wall, and they would both have to be settled through his insurance company. Not much hope of the premium coming down next year then.
He wondered briefly where the vehicle had been going to in such a hurry. The lane was merely a loop coming from, and leading back to, the main village street of Farthing St Anne. It wasn't a busy road at any time, and at ten-past eleven on a Friday night he hadn't really expected to meet anything.
Linc remembered the time guiltily. He was on his way to plait up Noddy, his intermediate event horse, ready for an early start the next morning, and he'd told the Hathaways, whose stable he rented, that he'd be over about half-past nine. It wasn't his fault that work commitments had kept him far longer than he'd foreseen, but young Abby Hathaway had offered to help him plait and she was at that tricky age where such relatively unimportant things seemed to matter a lot.
The truth of it was that Abigail had a king-sized crush on him. Linc had discussed it with her mother just a couple of weeks before, and they had agreed that in the absence of adult opposition the fifteen year old would soon grow out of her infatuation and doubtless look back on it with acute embarrassment in due course.
Something on the front of the car was rubbing on the wheel and Linc was glad when he pulled into the Vicarage's driveway. Immediately, thoughts of the damaged sports car were banished. Underneath the welcoming lanterns the double wooden entrance
gates were open and swinging in the breeze. On the rare occasions when they
were
left open, they were invariably fastened back. With a frown, Linc edged the Morgan through and into the stableyard beyond.
It was a small, L-shaped yard with five loose boxes, a feedstore and a tackroom bordering concrete and pea-shingle, and shaded by several majestic copper beeches. When Linc drove in the area was in darkness, the only light coming from the open tackroom door. The car lights swept briefly across the wooden half-doors as he swung round to park but the expected motion-sensing security light failed to operate. In that brief moment of illumination, he could see that all three of the stabled horses were alert and staring out over their half-doors.
Seriously alarmed, Linc was out of the Morgan almost before it stopped rolling and heading for the tackroom, hoping against hope that his fears were unfounded.
They weren't.
He stopped short on the threshold, his hand on the splintered edge of the door where the padlock had been wrenched away. On the walls of the familiar cosy, cluttered room five metal saddle racks stood empty. The hooks where seven or eight bridles normally hung were bare, as was another larger rack that Linc knew had held the two sets of harness belonging to Abby's driving ponies, Syrup and Treacle.
His mind registered the stripped walls even as his eyes were drawn to a greater tragedy. On the thin rug that adorned the concrete floor, half in the shadow of a ransacked chest of drawers, a girl in hipster jeans and a grey, hooded tracksuit top lay sprawled on her
side. Her eyes were closed and blood oozed from her dark hair to run in a thin trickle down her white face and drip slowly off her jaw.
Abby Hathaway, who should by now have been in bed; and who, Linc thought with a stab of guilt, had probably been waiting the best part of two hours for him to arrive.
âOh, dear God!' he muttered, stepping forward and dropping to his knees beside the motionless figure. âAbby? Abby, can you hear me?'
There was no sign of life from the unconscious girl but Linc's shaking fingers searched for and located a regular, if weak, pulse below the jawline. Shallow breaths warmed the back of the hand he held to her slightly parted lips, and he forced himself to calm down and think rationally.
Remembered lessons in first aid reassured him that her position on her side was as close to the ideal as could be hoped for, and that his most immediate priority was to keep her warm. To this end he pulled a thick horse blanket from one of the opened drawers to spread over her body and legs, and a thinner one to fold and ease beneath her head. The grey top and jeans may have met when she was upright but now they gaped about six inches apart and, feeling irrationally like a Peeping Tom, Linc noticed a small jewelled ring sparkling in her navel and wondered if her mother knew it was there. He covered her with the blanket, tucking the edges round her, and reached into the inner pocket of his leather jacket for his mobile phone.
He made two calls: one to request an ambulance and the police, and the second to the Vicarage, just a hundred yards away up the drive.
Abby's older sister, Ruth, answered the phone and barely two minutes later was running across the gravel of the yard, breathlessly calling her sister's name.
âWhoa, whoa, whoa! Steady! She can't hear you,' Linc said, slowing her down in the doorway. Ruth, at nineteen, was a slim and very attractive five foot eight, with long wavy red-gold hair and large hazel eyes that were at this moment wide with panic.
âWhat happened?' she demanded in bewilderment, side-stepping him to go to Abby. âOh, my God, is she going to be all right?'
âThe ambulance is on its way. Were you able to reach your parents?' He knew they'd been dining with friends.
Ruth was on her knees, smoothing Abby's dark fringe away from her brow. âYes. They were already on their way home. Dad said twenty minutes at the most. But I don't understand . . . What's she doing here? She should have been in bed.'
âYou've had your tack stolen. I imagine Abby disturbed the thieves. I passed a van or something, going like a bat out of hell. They ran me into the wall just up the lane there.'
âOh, my God!' she said again, noticing the empty walls for the first time. âBut why would she come down here on her own? Why didn't she tell me?'
âI'm afraid she might've seen the light down here and thought it was me,' Linc admitted. âShe was going to help me plait up.'
Ruth frowned. âBut I assumed you'd been and gone ages ago. I've been in the studio all evening.'
âYeah, I'm sorry about that. I didn't intend to be
this late but I got held up. I'd have rung ahead to let you know, but I knew your parents were out and the gate would still be open.'
Ruth looked down at her sister's ashen face with its cruel streak of crimson, and her lips quivered. âAbby, hold on, d'you hear me?
Please
be all right!'
Several long minutes passed, during which Linc silently cursed the circumstances which had led to his lateness and fought the temptation to tidy up the mess left by the thieves. No doubt the police would want everything left strictly alone.
Ruth knelt on the rug, stroking her sister's hand and murmuring a stream of desperate entreaties. After a while she looked up at Linc, eyes swimming. âWe were quarrelling earlier. I said some horrible things. I wish I hadn't!'
âShe'll be all right,' Linc soothed her, with a confidence he was far from feeling.
The sound of an approaching ambulance forestalled any further self-recriminations on either side and he moved thankfully out into the yard to meet it.
It was barely five minutes later, while the paramedics were still in the tackroom with Abby, that her parents, David and Rebecca Hathaway, arrived, parking their ageing Mercedes a little way up the drive so as not to block the ambulance in.
Rebecca hurried down to the lighted doorway to be met with a tearful hug by Ruth. Following, her husband cast a glance at the already overcrowded tackroom and paused beside Linc, worry creasing his brow and fear in his eyes.
âHow is she?' he asked urgently. âWill she be all
right? Ruth was incoherent on the phone. What happened?'
Linc repeated what he'd told Ruth, adding that so far the ambulance crew hadn't said a lot.
The Reverend David Hathaway listened gravely. At fifty he was four years older than his wife, a big-built, imposing man, six foot two in his socks, with grey hair and a neatly trimmed beard.
âAnd you think you saw their getaway vehicle?'
âI think it must have been, but other than saying it was a large one, maybe a van, I can't tell you a lot. I was too busy trying to avoid being creamed on the wall. They were travelling pretty fast. I guess they panicked.'
