Chapter Thirty-Eight
‘Oh my God! Oh my flying God!’ shouted an upper-crust voice from behind a curtain of white flowers and red berries. ‘Bloody hawthorn! Shit! I’m okay! I’m okay!’
Stevie did not know what to do. She could not dismount Chestnut.
She had finally got control of her horse and brought it to a halt.
RCC’s horse was skipping around the field as if it had perpetrated the best practical joke.
She peered past the flowers and berries and saw only flashes of white shirt.
‘That was not supposed to happen! For crying out loud, Miss Mason!’
‘What can I do?’
‘Can you ride over to my horse and call her? Her name is Gibby. I don’t want her following the hounds without me. She’ll take to heel in a trice, that one, and I’ll be a laughing stock.’
‘Yep.’
Stevie amazed herself by kicking Chestnut – just the lightest heel-tap with her stirruped shoes – and getting the horse to move at a trot, but this time, unlike the last, keeping the reins as tight as she could.
The horse could not hit its lethal acceleration.
‘Gibby! Gibby!’ she shouted. ‘Here, girl!’ She even had the confidence to turn back to where RCC had entered the bush at a diagonal, a flash-frame in her mind’s eye of him half in, half out of the bush as he shot off the horse like a tumbling bullet, neither up nor down.
The hole he had made in the hawthorn had closed behind him, as if the bush had devoured its invader.
But now she saw two arms emerging. ‘Gibby!’ She turned.
‘That’s it, Chestnut. Boy meets girl, lovely.
Kiss away.’ The two horses nuzzled each other.
Her heart lifted. She felt joy for the first time since she had arrived at this hunt feeling like a foreigner.
A stab of joy. Here, where the camber of the field lifted, she felt the blood and muscle of the horse below the saddle like a medieval queen taking power from nature.
The leader of the hunt was a hundred yards behind and below her.
Could she – dare she – reach for the reins of his horse, lead it back to him?
She leant a little, released Chestnut from one hand.
But her horse felt the grip loosen instantly and kicked, bucking like a steed in a Wild West rodeo, raising his front legs, kicking at the back, as if intent on a sudden escape.
She quickly grabbed the mane and pulled the horse’s head back.
‘Not hurting you, am I, you little menace?’ she growled.
The other horse turned, and suddenly she saw Richard Cammell-Curzon alongside his animal. His face was streaked with blood.
‘Climb down, can you, for a minute?’
But she was the queen. She would climb down when she wished to. She answered to no one.
They stared at each other. She was so breathless she was almost unable to speak. Her outfit, she realized, was sopping wet with sweat. His tunic was studded with thorns and fragments of the bush he had fallen into, his neck splashed with mud.
‘Dog rose,’ he said. ‘Cushioned me and stung me. Pink flowers, prickles. Dog rose and hawthorn. Broke my fall, hey.’
What was his accent – what was the ‘hey’ he had added?
Was that South African, Australian? She could only guess.
The primal howling of the hounds, which could carry for miles, had faded completely now.
There was only a still breeze. For no reason she could put her finger on, Stevie felt fearful.
She did not want to dismount. Chestnut might buck as soon as he felt one foot lift from the stirrup.
She might then be carried at a racehorse lick, hanging by one leg, unable to bail.
‘Step down, little girl.’
That was it. She gritted her teeth. ‘I’m not a little girl.’
‘Scottish?’
‘Glasgow and some other places.’
‘We welcomed you as a disabled rider and you’ve taken off like bloody Lester Piggott.’
His voice was aristocratic, but with a tremble that she thought might be the result of shock from the fall. She stared down at him.
‘I’ve never seen anyone go off like that, almost as if you never rode a horse before.’
She would never admit it. ‘I like a fast ride.’
‘You stayed on. Ninety-nine per cent of first-timers fall when they lose the horse like that, and I’m the hunt leader, so I had to follow, understand? I’m liable.’
‘I’m not a first-timer,’ she lied, not wanting to blow her cover.
‘Okay. Well. Right. We were told – I was told – you were experienced. Obviously someone got their wires crossed. Let’s just say you’ve not been on too many hunts before, hey?
’ He would not accuse her of lying. His face softened.
He touched his forehead. ‘Oh God, am I bleeding? I thought it was sweat.’
She looked at him. By chance, she was in conversation with the owner of the flat Lev Malnyk had stayed in and she must take her chance while it was there, before he was summoned away or someone else joined them in this isolated field.
‘Do you want to climb up, and we ride back?’ she said. ‘Or shall I get down and we take a minute?’
His face was blank. His eyes were not focusing. The wound in his forehead dripped fresh blood onto the line of an eyebrow, and now the red liquid had found a channel down his cheek. He placed his legs further apart. ‘Crikey, I feel light-headed. Dismount, can you?’
She had to try. She stole a foot from the stirrup, but held the reins tight.
Quickly she stood, straightening her left leg, swung her right leg over, and jumped from the saddle.
But her left foot was still in the stirrup, almost at the level of her head.
RCC saw it happen and raced around the horse, taking the reins and pushing the toe of Stevie’s leather boot so the foot was released.
‘Take the reins. I need to stop mine bolting.’
A moment later they were at the edge of the field. He had lengthened the halters on both animals and tied them to a fencepost. ‘Don’t like to do this, they hate it, but I need half a tick in the shade. Felt faint there. Went into that bush like a cruise missile.’
Stevie reckoned she had no more than five minutes before someone came looking for them, and then her chance of finding out about his connection with the biker was gone. She was so close, but she must not blow it by being obvious.
‘What was your name again?’
‘Richard Cammell-Curzon.’ He had lit a cigarette. ‘And you’re Stevie, yes?’
‘Stevie Mason.’
‘Short for Stephanie?’
‘No, not short for anything. Like the poet, I keep being told.’
‘Stevie Jones?’ he asked.
‘Stevie Smith.’
‘Got you,’ he joked. ‘Of course I knew that.’
She looked sideways at his face. The thin blond beard had traces of red, not blood but ginger. So beneath the helmet he was a redhead? His scratched skin was fair. He felt his face. His fingers were almost feminine. He kept pursing his lips, as if trying to suck a fly from his front teeth.
‘I’m so damn embarrassed, the leader of the hunt, doing the flying squirrel in front of our newest member.’
‘I thought I’d get an instant ban for taking off.’
‘It was hardly your fault, Stevie,’ he said. ‘Not that I don’t go with your story that you’ve ridden racehorses for years, but no one shoots off like that from a hunt when the hounds are going in the other direction. I’m just pleased it was me who fell, not you.’
‘Your name. It’s a coincidence. I have a friend in the police who mentioned a Curzon-Cammell—’
‘Other way around—’
‘No, I think they mentioned Curzon-Cammell. They were talking about the person who owned the flat the Sidmouth biker stayed in, you know, the guy who …’
She stopped. He was staring at her.
‘That was me.’
‘You?’ She did her best to feign surprise.
‘There’s hardly going to be a Cammell-Curzon and a Curzon-Cammell.’
‘I saw the biker was from Russia.’
‘Russia? I wasn’t told that. I was told Ukraine.
Thought I should help, so I cut the rate a little.
But it’s not my bag, meeting the tenants.
I can’t tell you, when the girl died, when the attack in Sidmouth happened – attack or accident or whatever the hell it was – how sick I felt.
What had he been using my bloody place for? ’
‘It’s so horrible. Did the police speak to you?’
‘Of course! The Met. I told them exactly what I’ve just told you. Never met him, never interviewed him, all done through an agency.’
Stevie peered at him. She simply had no register for this kind of man. She saw the blood and scratches on his face and wondered if he was in shock, and the shock and embarrassment were making him so talkative. She wanted more.
‘Even with an agency,’ she said, ‘wouldn’t he need referees or whatever? Or would you supply them?’
‘Some landlords do that. It’s not strictly legal.
The referee should know the person. Wasn’t his a doctor?
I can’t remember. For all I know, he might have made a name up.
A funny thing though – the police came back to me later, Devon Police.
They’d found things in the flat but they couldn’t say what they were. I guess I was being immature.’
‘Meaning – sorry, I don’t get you.’
‘They were a bit bolshy. They wouldn’t tell me stuff, so I didn’t tell them stuff. I should have, I know, but a landlord isn’t supposed to creep around a tenant’s flat. So I kept my mouth shut. I rather regret it.’
‘You kept your mouth shut about what?’
‘To be brutally frank, there was a bit of concern among the other tenants before the crash happened. So I had watched the place and let myself in when he was gone. The flat had virtually nothing in it. But there was a big machine in the living room. At first I thought, “DJ equipment”. It was a big boxy computer on a stand. I wasn’t sure it was for music.
I think it was a 3D printer. The name on the outside was BONNET.
Yup, I actually think it was a 3D printer, had BONNET on it in massive letters. I wonder what he was printing?’
Stevie said: ‘Maybe those ampoules. Or maybe he was making something radioactive?’
‘They swept the flat for radiation and found nothing. Odd, isn’t it!
’ Richard Cammell-Curzon exclaimed. ‘Do you mind if I—?’ He showed a packet of cigarettes which looked to have been secreted in his waistcoat.
‘These two are in love, I reckon.’ As he lit the cigarette, he nodded at the horses. ‘Odd, very odd,’ he murmured. ‘Bonnet.’