joined by a howl of police cars and ambulances. Tommy was staggering onwards when Rupert caught up with her.
‘Christ, Tommy, are you OK? Where did it get you?’
‘Wilkie, Rafiq,’ mumbled Tommy.
‘Come back from there.’ Rupert had just put his dinner jacket round her shoulders when he caught sight of another swaying figure. Beneath the blood and soot, only the thick Irish accent was recognizable.
‘Michael, oh Michael,’ sobbed Tommy, ‘did you get Wilkie out? Where’s Rafiq?’
‘Rafiq was here,’ explained Michael in a dazed voice. ‘He asked for a few moments alone with Mrs Wilkinson to say goodbye. Said he was leaving England for ever.’
‘He was leaving the world for ever,’ howled Rupert, ‘fucking suicide bomber! You stupid fucker, leaving him alone with her.’
Through the black smoke, they could see the stables had been bulldozed to rubble, with a great crater gaping in the centre.
‘Don’t go any nearer, Mr Campbell-Black,’ ordered a policeman. ‘You must all come into the centre of the course. The ambulance has arrived. Can you walk that far or do you need a stretcher?’ he asked Tommy and Michael.
‘Has Michael been killed? Has Michael been killed?’ Tresa shot past Tommy, then, recognizing Michael, threw herself into his arms. ‘Thank God you’re safe.’
Next moment, Chisolm raced towards them with a singed and blackened face, bleating frantically.
‘Oh poor darling,’ cried Tommy.
‘There, there, poor little duck,’ Rupert grabbed Chisolm’s collar, ‘poor little girl.’ He stroked her head.
‘If Chisolm’s escaped, perhaps Rafiq and Wilkie have too,’ gasped Tommy, and fainted.
As the crowd shambled towards the middle of the course, police and bomb disposal experts were already checking the car parks for further bombs.
No one was allowed to leave, which caused several shouting matches.
‘My stable lads have got to get back to the yard to look after the horses,’ yelled Rupert.
‘I’m on GMTV tomorrow,’ screamed Harvey-Holden.
Several of the jockeys had seen fit to take bottles from the tables and were having parties. But as the news got round that Mrs Wilkinson had been blown to kingdom come, laughter turned to tears and the racecourse went quiet.
144
Later, when questioned by the police, a patched-up Michael in his bloodstained shirt remembered Rafiq asking about a button on the side of the stable door, which the Clerk of the Course vouchsafed would not normally have been there. It was deduced that the bomb had been triggered off by a mobile that anyone could have rung from the hall or beyond. But this was a bomb with a difference. The killer had used Obliterat, a sophisticated substance which literally obliterates everything within forty yards and renders even DNA analysis inoperative.
Guests, sponsors, caterers and racecourse staff were compelled to sleep in makeshift accommodation in schools, village halls and in the great concert hall of the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra. They were only released the next day. A heavily sedated Tommy was rushed to Rutminster Hospital, where surgeons removed several splinters of wood from her left shoulder. She had been lucky they didn’t puncture an artery, she was told, even luckier they had missed her heart.
Tommy, wiped out by the loss of Rafiq and Wilkie, didn’t believe they had.
The nation – nay the world – joined her in mourning. After Furious and Ilkley Hall’s deaths in the National, Animal Rights were suspected. So was Islamic terrorism, particularly when police, after a tip-off, raided the bleak room in Larkminster where Rafiq had taken refuge after he’d been sacked by Rupert. Piled up in a corner, they found film footage of 9/11 and the beheading of hostages, tapes of ranting sermons from radical preachers, militant literature, a picture of Bin Laden and flyers claiming that ‘Allah loves those who fight for him.’ Not entirely incriminating evidence, but traces of Obliterat were also discovered along with photographs of Furious, Amber and Rafiq’s family in Pakistan.
Why the hell, reasoned the police, hadn’t he covered his tracks, unless he intended never coming back?
Michael, in spite of being rushed to hospital, was in the doghouse. If he hadn’t abandoned Mrs Wilkinson … Tresa, however, was in her element. What a good thing she’d had her hair highlighted yesterday. Still wearing her lovely black dress from last night, slightly bloodstained from hugging Michael, she visited him in hospital before a long session in a side room with handsome Chief Inspector Gablecross.
‘Amber broke Rafiq’s heart, Chief Inspector. Rafiq and I were friends, he talked to me a lot. I’m a good listener, he was lonely. He utterly adored Furious. He only wanted to make money as a jockey