Visborough.’ I spelled it, as Howard had done. ‘Well, could you get me a copy of that obituary? It was published in the Daily Cable, Howard says. It must have been at least three years ago. Howard doesn’t know who wrote it. He never followed anything up in any way. He says simply that the obituary, and especially its inconclusiveness, was what jolted his imagination into writing the book.’
‘You don’t ask much!’
‘The Daily Cable must have a cuttings library. You’ll certainly be able to get that obituary. Could you fax it to me here at Bedford Lodge? If I knew exactly what started Howard’s imagination working in the first place, perhaps I could help him find an explosive denouement.’
‘You’ll have the obituary tomorrow,’ O’Hara promised.
‘Thanks.’
‘How’s your friend?’ he asked.
‘What friend?’
‘The one who’s dying.’
‘Oh.’ I paused. ‘He died during last night.’
‘Bad luck.’
‘He was old. Eighty something. A blacksmith turned top racing journalist, grand old character, great unusual life. Pity we can’t make a film of him.’
‘Films of good people don’t have much appeal.’
‘Ain’t that the truth.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Valentine Clark,’ I said. ‘The Daily Cable might do an obituary of him too, you never know. He wrote for the Racing Gazette. Everyone in racing knew him. And… um… he knew the real trainer, Jackson Wells, the basis of the character that Nash is playing.’
‘Did he?’ O’Hara’s attention sharpened down the line. ‘So you surely asked him what he knew of the hanging?’
‘Yes, I did. He knew no more than anyone else. The police dropped the case for lack of leads. Valentine said Jackson Wells’s wife was an unmemorable mouse. He couldn’t tell me anything helpful. It was all so very long ago.’
O’Hara almost laughed. ‘It was very long ago for you, Thomas, because you’re young. I’ll bet twenty-six years is yesterday to Jackson Wells himself.’
‘I… er…’ I said diffidently, ‘I did think of going to see him.’
‘Jackson Wells?’
‘Yes. Well, Valentine, my dead friend, he was originally a blacksmith, as I told you. He used to shoe my grandfather’s horses regularly, and he did say he’d also sometimes shod the horses Jackson Wells trained. So perhaps I could make some excuse… following Valentine’s death… to make a nostalgic visit to Jackson Wells. What do you think?’
‘Go at once,’ O’Hara said.
‘He won’t want to talk about the wife who hanged. He has a new life now and a second wife.’
‘Try, anyway,’ O’Hara said.
‘Yes, I thought so. But he lives near Oxford… it’ll take me half a day.’
‘Worth it,’ O’Hara said. ‘I’ll OK the extra time.’
‘Good.’
‘Goodnight,’ he said. ‘I’ve a lady waiting.’
‘Good luck.’
He cursed me – ‘You son of a bitch’ – and disconnected.
I’d always loved early mornings in racing stables. I’d been down in my grandfather’s yard dawn by dawn for years, half my day lived before the first school bell. I tended, for the film, to make the horses more of a priority in my attention than perhaps I should have, moving about the yard, in close contact with the creatures I’d grown up among, and felt at home with.
I’d ridden as an amateur jockey in jump races from the age of sixteen, with most of my family expecting horses in some way to be my life for ever, but fate and finance – or lack of it – had found me at twenty engaged in organising horses in Arizona for the cavalry in a Western drama. By twenty-one I’d become the director of a bad minor film about rodeo riders, but that had led to the same post in a noble native-American saga that had modestly hit the jackpot. After that I’d spent a year working for film editors, learning their craft, followed by another year on sound tracks and music, and by twenty-six I’d been let loose as director on an unconsidered romance between a boy and a puma that had made astonishing profits. O’Hara had been the producer: I had never since been long out of work. ‘The boy’s lucky,’ O’Hara would say, selling my name. ‘You can’t buy luck. Trust me.’
For this present film I’d suggested to O’Hara early in the preproduction stage that this time we should buy, not rent or borrow for fees, our stableful of horses.
‘Too expensive,’ he’d objected automatically.
‘Not necessarily,’ I’d contradicted. ‘We can buy cheap horses. There are hundreds that have never done well in races, but they look like good thoroughbreds, and that’s what’s important. Also we won’t have any problems with insurance or recompense for injuries, we can travel them where