Tremayne and I had each read two accounts of the previous day’s proceedings while dealing with the sandwiches, one in a racing paper, another in a tabloid. Tremayne’s comments had been grunts of disapproval, while I had learned a few facts left out by the Vickers family the evening before.
Fiona’s cousin Nolan, for starters, was an amateur jockey (‘well-known’, in both papers) who often raced on Fiona’s horses, trained by Tremayne Vickers. Nolan Everard had once briefly been engaged to Magdalene Mackenzie (Mackie) who had subsequently married Perkin Vickers, Tremayne’s son. ‘Sources’ had insisted that the three families, Vickers, Goodhavens and Everards were on friendly terms. The prosecution, not disputing this, had suggested that indeed they had all closed ranks to shield Nolan from his just deserts.
A demure photograph of Olympia (provided by her father) showed a fair-haired schoolgirl, immature, an innocent victim. No one seemed to have explained why Nolan had said he would strangle the bitch, and now that I’d heard him talk I was certain those had not been his only words.
‘The question really is,’ Fiona said, ‘not whether the Jockey Club will warn him off racecourses altogether, because I’m sure they won’t, they let real villains go racing, but whether they’ll stop him riding as an amateur.’
Harry said, as if sympathetically, to Nolan, ‘It’s rather put paid to your ambitions to be made a
Nolan looked blackly furious and remarked with venom that Harry hadn’t helped the case by not swearing to hell and back that Lewis had been comprehensively pissed.
Harry didn’t reply except to shrug gently and refill Lewis’s glass, which was unquestionably comprehensively empty.
If one made every possible allowance for Nolan, I thought; if one counted the long character-withering ordeal of waiting to know if he were going to prison; if one threw in the stress of having undoubtedly killed a young woman, even by accident; if one added the humiliations he would forever face because of his conviction; if one granted all that, he was still unattractively, viciously ungrateful.
His family and friends had done their best for him. I thought it highly likely that Lewis had in fact perjured himself and that Harry had also, very nearly, in the matter of the alcoholic blackout. Harry had at the last minute shrunk from either a positive opinion or from an outright lie, and I’d have put my money on the second. They had all gone again to court to support Nolan when they would much rather have stayed away.
‘I still think you ought to appeal,’ Lewis said.
Nolan’s pornographic reply was to the effect that his lawyer had advised him not to push his luck, as Lewis very well knew.
‘Bleep the lawyer,’ Lewis said.
‘Appeal courts can
‘Olympia’s father was incandescent afterwards,’ Mackie said gloomily, nodding. ‘He wanted Nolan put away for life. Life for a life, that’s what he was shouting.’
‘You can’t just appeal against a sentence because you don’t happen to like it,’ Harry pointed out. ‘There has to be some point of law that was conducted wrongly at the trial.’
Lewis said obstinately, ‘If Nolan doesn’t appeal it’s as good as admitting he’s expletive guilty as charged.’
There was a sharp silence all round. They all did think him guilty, though maybe to different degrees. Don’t push your luck seemed good pragmatic advice.
I looked speculatively at Mackie, wondering about her sometime engagement to Nolan. She showed nothing for him now but concerned friendship: no lingering love and no hard feelings. Nolan showed nothing but concern for himself.
Fiona said to me, ‘Stay to dinner?’ and Harry said, ‘Do,’ but I shook my head.
‘I promised to cook for Gareth and Tremayne.’
‘Good God,’ Harry said.
Fiona said, ‘That’ll make a change from pizza! They have pizza nine nights out of ten. Gareth just puts one in the microwave, regular as clockwork.’
Mackie put down her glass and stood up tiredly. ‘I think I’ll go too. Perkin will be waiting to hear the news.’
Nolan remarked tartly between ‘f’s that if Perkin had bothered to put in an appearance at Reading he would know the news already.
‘He wasn’t needed,’ Harry said mildly.
‘Olympia died in his half of the house,’ Lewis said. ‘You’d have thought he’d have taken an interest.’
Nolan remembered with below-the-waist indelicacies that Tremayne hadn’t supported him either.
‘They were both busy,’ Mackie said gamely. ‘They both work, you know.’
‘Meaning we don’t?’ Lewis asked waspishly.
Mackie sighed. ‘Meaning whatever you like.’ To me she said, ‘Did you come in Tremayne’s car?’
‘No, walked.’
‘Oh! Then... do you want a lift home?’
I thanked her and accepted and Harry came with us to see us off.
‘Here are your clothes in your bag,’ he said, handing it to me. ‘Can’t thank you enough, you know.’
‘Any time.’
‘God forbid.’
