twenty-six years too late; but maybe nothing was ever too late in that way.
‘She was 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. And whatever sort of sex 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 assistant 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 bumming 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 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, God… They wanted to see if it worked the same for women.’