traffic.
Ewen had a runner in the first race at both courses and, if he was going to be at Haydock Park in time for the first, he would be expected to drive his distinctive top-of-the-range white BMW up the hill on the Baydon road sometime around ten o’clock, and by ten thirty at the very latest.
So I sat and waited some more.
I turned on the car radio but, like the handbrake, it didn’t work too well. In fact, it made an annoying buzzing noise even when the engine wasn’t running. It was worse than having no radio at all, so I turned it off again.
I looked at the new watch I’d bought in Newbury the previous afternoon. It told me it was nine thirty.
At nine forty-five I recognized a car coming up the hill towards me. It wasn’t a white BMW but an ageing and battered blue Ford – my mother’s car.
I sank down as far as I could in the seat as she drove by, hoping that she wouldn’t identify the vehicle in the gateway as that of her head lad. Even if she’d done so, I knew she wouldn’t have stopped to enquire after ‘staff’, and I gratefully watched as her car disappeared round the next corner. As I had expected, my mother was off to Haydock Park races, where she had Oregon running in the novice hurdle, his last outing before the Triumph Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. Ian had told me that he was looking forward to watching the race on Channel 4.
I went back to watching and waiting, but there was no sign of a white BMW.
At ten to eleven I decided it was time to move. I hadn’t seen Ewen’s car go past but that didn’t mean he hadn’t gone to Haydock, it just meant he hadn’t gone there via the Baydon road. It was the most likely route from the Yorkes’ house but certainly not the only one.
I moved Ian’s car from the gateway on the Baydon road to another similarly positioned on Hungerford Hill, another of the roads out of Lambourn. If Ewen Yorke was going to Ascot this afternoon he would almost certainly pass this way, and would do so by twelve thirty at the absolute latest if he was going to be in time to saddle his runner in the first race.
The distinctive white top-of-the-range BMW swept up the hill at five minutes to twelve and I pulled out of the gateway behind it.
I had planned to follow him at a safe distance to avoid detection, and to make sure that he actually did drive to the motorway and join it going east towards Ascot. As it was, I had no need to worry about keeping far enough back so that the driver couldn’t see that it was me behind him. Ian Norland’s little Corsa struggled up Hungerford Hill as fast as it could, but Ewen Yorke’s powerful BMW was already long gone, and was well out of sight by the time I reached the top road by the Hare pub.
I didn’t like doing it, but I’d have to assume that he had, in fact, gone to Ascot and wouldn’t be back in Lambourn for at least the next five hours. Once upon a time I would have been able to check by watching the racing from Ascot on BBC television. That was sadly no longer the case as, except for the Grand National, the BBC had cut back its jump-race coverage to almost nothing. Someone in that organization seemed to believe that if a sport didn’t involve wheels, balls or skis, it was hardly worth reporting.
Instead, I pulled into the car park of the Hare and waited, watching the road, to see if the white BMW came back. Maybe he had forgotten something and would return to get it.
He didn’t.
I waited a full thirty minutes before I was sure enough that Ewen and his BMW were away for the afternoon. He wouldn’t now have had enough time to return home and then make it to Ascot for the first race.
I drove the Corsa out of the pub car park, down the hill to Lambourn village, and pulled up on the gravel driveway next to the Yorkes’ front door.
Julie seemed surprised to see me, but maybe not so surprised as if she had believed me dead.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked from behind the door through a six-inch gap.
‘I thought you said at Newbury races to come and see