I had transgressed appallingly, I told him, by driving on the hallowed gallops. He was not to budge the truck an inch.
‘Why not?’
I explained why not.
‘Knife?’ he said disbelievingly.
‘Someone really did mean harm to Nash.’
‘Impossible!’ Moncrieff exclaimed, though more in protest than disbelief.
‘Tennis players, skaters, John Lennon,’ I said. ‘Who’s safe?’
‘Shit.’
Without choice, though reluctantly, I phoned the police, headlines bannering themselves in my head – ‘Jinx strikes Newmarket film again’. Shit, indeed. I met them in the stable yard where all the lads were waiting in groups and Ivan had come to grandiose terms with his possible nearness to injury.
The policemen who presently arrived were different from those who had come to attend Dorothea. I wondered how odd it would strike the force eventually to have been called to two knife incidents within twenty-four hours, however unconnected the events might appear. I wondered if they would realise I’d been on the scene of both.
Nash, beseeched by Ed, came out of the house in costume and make-up and stood side by side with Ivan. The policemen looked from one to the other and came, as we all had, to the only possible conclusion. In carefully matched riding breeches, tweed jacket and large buckled crash helmet, they looked from ten paces identical. Only the slash along the side of Ivan’s jacket distinguished them easily.
I said to Nash, ‘This may put paid to the film.’
‘No one is hurt.’
‘Someone was out to get you.’
‘They didn’t manage it,’ he said.
‘You’re pretty calm.’
‘Thomas, I’ve lived through years of danger of this sort. We all do. The world’s full of crazy fanatics. If you let it worry you, you’d never go out.’ He looked across to where the police were writing down what the lads were telling them. ‘Are we going on with today’s work?’
I hesitated. ‘How will Silva react?’
‘Tough.’
I smothered a smile. ‘Do you want to come out on the Heath and see what someone intended to stick into you? And do you realise that from now on you have to have a bodyguard?’
‘No. I never have a bodyguard.’
‘No bodyguard, no film. Very likely, no film anyway, once Hollywood gets to hear of this.’
He looked at his watch. ‘It’s the middle of the night over there.’
‘You’ll go on, then?’
‘Yes, I will.’
‘In that case, as soon as we can,’ I said gratefully.
Ed came across and said the police wanted to speak to the person really in charge. I went over: they were both older than I and seemed to be looking around for a father figure to relate to. I was not, it appeared, their idea of authority. O’Hara would have fitted their bill.
The lads had told them that an extra horseman had joined their group while they were haphazardly circling after their third canter over the hill. They’d thought nothing much of it, as with film-making the normal routine of training-stable life was not adhered to. The newcomer, dressed in jeans, anorak and crash helmet, had blended in with themselves. It was only when Ivan’s horse had reared away, and Ivan himself had shouted and fallen off, that they’d thought anything was wrong. No one seemed to have seen the slash of the blade.
They couldn’t do much towards describing the extra man. Crash helmets with heavy chin straps effectively hid half the face. The newcomer also, they remembered, had been wearing jockeys’ goggles, as many of them frequently did themselves to shield their eyes from dust and kicked up debris. They thought he might have been wearing gloves: nothing unusual in that, either.
Had I anything to add, the police wanted to know.
‘He could ride well,’ I said.
They seemed to find that unimportant, being used to the many skills of Newmarket, though I thought it significant.
‘He wasn’t a jockey,’ I said. ‘He was too heavy. Too thickset.’
Description of features? I shook my head. I hadn’t seen his face, only his back view galloping away.
I waited until they had let the lads and the camera crew disperse out of earshot before I told them about the knife.
We drove up the road to get as near as possible to the camera truck which still stuck out like an illegal sore thumb. Thanks only to its being Sunday, I guessed, no groundsmen were hopping up and down in rage. Leading the police vehicle, I took Nash with me in my car, breaking all the film company’s rigid insurance instructions. What with one thing and another, who cared?
Moncrieff backed the camera truck ten feet. The police peered in silence at the