Natasha caught sight of the judge, who was watching their exchange, his expression unamused. 'We'll discuss it outside. But, yes, it went well,' she whispered, and leant forwards to focus on Simpson.
Within minutes Ben was back. Not going, gone the note said. Disappeared.
She scribbled, ??? Where?
He doesn't know. Is this someone in your family?
Natasha's head sank into her hands.
'Mrs Macauley,' came the voice from the front, 'are you all right?'
She straightened her wig.
'I'm fine, your honour.'
'Do you need to take a short recess?'
She thought quickly. 'If your honour would allow it, a pressing matter has come up unexpectedly that I should deal with.'
The judge turned to Simpson, who was staring at her with barely disguised fury, as if she had planned it. 'Very well. We will adjourn for ten minutes.'
He picked up the phone before it had even had time to ring.
'She's gone,' he said. 'Cleared out, with half her stuff.'
'Have you rung the school?'
'I played for time. Rang in saying she was sick. I thought if she turned out to be there, I could say I'd made a mistake.'
'But she's not there.'
'She's gone, Tash. Photos, toothbrush, the lot.'
'She's probably at the stables. Or with her grandfather.'
'I rang the hospital. He's had no visitors today. They're certain of it. I'm on my way to the stables now.'
'She won't leave the horse,' she said confidently. 'Think about it, Mac. She wouldn't leave the horse, and she wouldn't go very far from her grandfather. He matters more to her than anyone.'
'I hope you're right. I don't like this.' Mac, unusually, sounded jumpy.
She thought suddenly of Sarah, silent and strangely accepting, the previous evening. She had known something was not right. But she had been so grateful to the girl for accepting the forthcoming upheaval without making a scene that she had not thought to question it. 'I've got to go back into court. Ring me when you get to the stables. She's got my card, remember? Like you said, she's probably just gone to buy her grandfather some new bloody pyjamas at my expense.'
The cowboy was leaning against the rusting car, talking to one of the young boys, as Mac wrestled with the gate, trying to ignore the Alsatian, which issued a warning growl as he entered. He glanced to the railway arch; the horse's stable was open. Clearly no one was in there.
'Ah . . . Mr . . . ah . . . John? Mac - you remember me? Sarah's friend.'
The cowboy stuck his roll-up into his mouth and shook Mac's hand. He pursed his lips. 'Oh, I remember you, all right,' he said.
'I'm looking for Sarah.'
'You and everyone else,' the old man said, 'from here to Tilbury Docks. I'm damned if I know what the hell's been going on here while I been gone.'
The boy glanced from John to Mac and back again. 'Like I said, John, I've hardly been here.'
'Fat lot of good you are.'
'I don't get involved with nothing. You know that.'
'Has she been here?' Mac said.
'I only seen her for a split second. She never even told me what was going on. It's a mess, that's for sure.' Cowboy John shook his head mournfully.
'Hold on - you have seen her? Today?'
'Oh, I seen her. I seen her seven o'clock this morning. Last I seen her she was taking off over the flyover like that damn circus horse had wings. How she never got herself killed is between her and the Almighty.'
'She's been out riding?'
'Riding?' Cowboy John regarded him as if he was stupid. 'You don't know?'
'Know what?'
'I been out looking for her all morning. She's gone. She's took that horse before anyone worked out what she was doin' and she's gone.'
'Gone where?'
'Well, if I knew that she'd be standin' here now!' Cowboy John sucked his teeth, irritated.
The boy lit a cigarette, his face bent low over the flame of his lighter.
Mac went to Sarah's lock-up. 'You got a key for this?'
'I don't own this place no more. I gave--'
'I got one,' the boy said. 'She gave it to me so I could feed her horse when she weren't here,' he explained.
'And you are . . .'
'Dean.'
'Ralph,' said Cowboy John, shoving the boy with long brown fingers. 'His name is Ralph.'
The boy fiddled in his pocket, withdrawing an oversized bunch of keys. He went through them carefully, finally pulling out one that he used on the padlock. Mac pushed open the door. The lock-up was deserted. There was no saddle on the rack, no bridle, only a webbing headcollar and some brushes in a box. 'John? Are you saying you think she's taken off with the horse?'
Cowboy John raised his eyes to heaven, and nudged Ralph beside him. 'Quick, ain't he?' he said. 'Yes, she's taken the darn horse, and she's left me a big ole pile of doo-doo in its place. I got some people who are very, very unhappy. I got a feeling all sorts has been going on here that I don't know about.' He eyed Ralph balefully. 'But, for starters, I got to work out how to tell Le Capitaine in the hospital there I ain't got the slightest idea where his precious little girl is.'
Mac closed his eyes for the longest time. He let out a long sigh. 'That makes two of us,' he said.
The sun was at its highest point, which, given the time of year, wasn't very high at all. It had travelled round so that it faced her, causing her to squint under her hat, and she made a few mental calculations, trying to work out how far she could get before dark. Before Boo became too tired to go on.
An endurance horse could do fifty, maybe sixty miles in a day. She had read about it. Such animals had to be brought up to this standard slowly, their muscles hardened by relentless slow work, their backs and quarters strengthened by regular riding up and downhill. Their shoes had to be checked and their legs protected.
Boo had enjoyed none of these precautions. Sarah talked to him now as they headed through the suburbs at a brisk trot, following the signs for Dartford. She could feel the spring in his paces slackening, read the hope in his ears, his steadied gait, that she might ask him to slow. Not yet, she told him silently, with a faint squeeze of her legs, a gentle urging of her seat. Not yet.
It was busier here, and the sight of a girl on a horse drew curious glances, the odd shout from passing van drivers or children gathered outside the lunchtime queue for the chip shop. But she kept her head down, her only communion with her horse. She could usually get past them before they realised what they had seen.
She found a quiet street before she dared to use a cash machine. She dismounted, walked Boo across the pavement, pulled Natasha's card out of her pocket and typed in the number she knew by heart. It was burnt darkly on her conscience. The machine hummed and considered her request for what seemed an interminable time. Her heart began to thump. They might know by now. Natasha would have discovered what she had done, the extent of her betrayal. She had wanted to leave them a note, to explain, but she couldn't find the words, her head still muddied by fear, shock and loss. And she couldn't risk anyone knowing where she was going.
Finally the message flashed up on the screen. How much money would she like? PS10, PS20, PS50, PS100, PS250? After the weeks spent scrimping, worrying about individual pounds, the figures were dizzying. She didn't want to steal, yet she knew that, once the Macauleys had worked out she had taken it, the card would be stopped. There would be no more money.
This might be her only chance.
Sarah took a deep breath and placed her fingers on the keypad.
He was waiting outside the courtroom when Natasha emerged at midday. He had his back to her and spun round when he heard her voice. 'Any news?'
'She's taken the horse.'
He watched Natasha register this in stages: first, a kind of blank inability to digest what he had said, then the same disbelief he himself had felt. A kind of embarrassed half-laugh at the ridiculousness of the idea.
&n
bsp; 'What do you mean she's taken the horse?'
'I mean she's run away with the horse.'
'But where could she go with a horse?'
Her eyes left his face and focused behind him on Cowboy John, sauntering along the corridor, humming as he came. It had taken him a while to get up the stairs. 'I don't know why you couldn't have used a phone,' he wheezed, clamping a hand on Mac's shoulder. He smelt of old leather and wet dog.
Mac stepped back, propelling the old man forwards. 'Natasha, this is . . . Cowboy John. He runs the stables where Sarah keeps her horse.'
'Used to run. Hell! If I'd kept a hold of things we'd never've been in this mess.' Cowboy John took her hand briefly, then bent low over his knees, hawking into a handkerchief.
Natasha winced, her hand still in mid-air. A small group of people were watching them surreptitiously. Along the corridor a thin, expensively dressed blonde woman had been shocked into silence.
'So what do we do?'
'Findin' her would be a start. I say we split up and start askin' around. Girl on a horse like that gotta attract some attention.'
'But you said you'd been looking for her this morning and didn't hear anything. John saw her near the marshes,' Mac explained.
John touched the brim of his hat, his rheumy eyes looking off into the distance. 'She knew where she was headed, that's all I'll say. Had a rucksack on her back, and she was hitting some speed.'
'She'd planned it. We should call the police, Tash.'
John shook his head vehemently. 'You don't want to go involvin' busybodies. That's what got her into this mess in the first place. Besides - the police? Nonononono. That girl ain't done nothin' wrong. She's made a mess, yes, but she ain't done nothing' actually wrong . . .'
Mac caught Natasha's eye. Neither of them spoke. He waited, wrong-footed by her reticence. Then he reminded her, 'You were the one who said we had a legal duty to report her missing.'
Natasha peered down the corridor and blinked hard.
'Tash?'
What she said next made him dip his head, as if unsure he had heard her correctly.
'Look, I don't want to report her yet. She turned up the last time, didn't she?' Natasha turned back to John. 'You know her. Where might she have gone?'
'Only place that girl would ever go is to see her grandpa.'
'Then let's go there,' Mac said. 'We'll talk to the old man. See if he has any ideas. Tash?' She just stared at him. 'What?'
'I can't go, Mac. I'm in the middle of a case.'
'Tash, Sarah is missing.'
'I'm well aware of that, but she's done this before. And I can't just drop everything every time she decides to take off for a few hours.'
'I gotta tell you, I don't think she's aimin' to come back any time soon.' Cowboy John removed his hat and scratched the top of his head.
'I can't leave this case.' She gestured down the corridor at the thin blonde woman, who was now wrapped in a cashmere shawl, like an accident victim. 'This is the biggest case of my career. You know that.' She couldn't hold his gaze and coloured slightly. His stomach constricted with anger.
'I can't just drop everything, Mac.'
'Then I'm sorry to have troubled you,' he said tightly. 'I'll ring you at Conor's when she turns up, shall I?'
'Mac!' she protested, but he had already turned away. Somehow almost nothing she had done had disappointed him as much as this.
'Mac!'
He could hear Cowboy John shuffling and wheezing behind him. 'Aw, hell, you really gonna make me do all them stairs again?'
'The broader the chest so much the handsomer and stronger is it . . . the neck would then protect the rider and the eye see what lies before the feet.'
She couldn't remember Papa holding her - not like Nana held her, as if it was as natural to her as breathing. When she came in from school, she would walk up to Nana's chair and Nana would gather her up, pulling her into her nylon housecoat, that warm, sweet, powdery scent filling Sarah's nostrils, that eiderdown bosom to be leant against, an unending source of love and security. When she wished Sarah goodnight she would hold her longer than she needed to, scolding herself.
After Nana died Sarah, overwhelmed by sadness, would sometimes lean against Papa and he would put an arm around her to pat her shoulder. But it was not an action that came naturally to him, and she always had the feeling that he was a little relieved when she pulled herself together. Sarah had felt the lack of human contact like an ache, long before she understood what it was she was missing.
Her grandfather had been sitting at the kitchen table, perhaps a year or so ago. She had walked in, back early from the stables, and asked him what he was reading. The book was familiar to her, so familiar that she had never been curious about it. And her grandfather, placing it carefully on the laminate tabletop, had begun to tell her about a man with the skill of a poet, the battlefield mastery of a general, one of the first to advocate a partnership with the horse that was not based on cruelty or force. He read her a few passages. The words, if it were not for the arcane tone of their translation, could have come from any modern-day manual on horsemanship: 'Whenever, therefore, you induce him to carry himself in the attitudes he naturally assumes, when he is most anxious to display his beauty, you make him look as though he takes pleasure in being ridden, and give him a noble, fierce, and attractive appearance.'
She had edged a little closer to him on the seat.
'This is why I always tell you you must never lose your temper with a horse. You must treat him with kindness, with respect. It's all here. He is the father of horsemanship.' He tapped his book.
'He must have really loved horses,' Sarah had said.
'No.' Papa had shaken his head emphatically.
'But he said--'
'It is not about love,' he said. 'There is not one mention of love in this whole book. He is not sentimental. All that he does, all the douceur he shows, it is because he understands that this is how you get the best out of the animal. This is how man and horse excel together. Not all this kissing-kissing.' He had made a face and Sarah had laughed. 'Not all this emotion. He knows that the best way for the horse and the man is simply to understand each other, to respect each other.'
'I don't get it.'
'A horse does not want to be a lapdog, cherie. It does not want to be dressed up in ribbons, sung to, like these silly girls at the stables. A horse is dangereux, powerful. But it can be willing. You give a horse a reason to perform for you, to protect you, by understanding the things it wants to do itself, and there you achieve something beautiful.'
He had watched her, trying to ensure she understood. But she had felt disappointed. She had wanted to believe Boo loved her. She wanted him to follow her around the yard not because she might have food but because he needed to be with her. She did not want to think of him as the means to an end.
He patted her hand. 'What Xenophon is asking is better. He is asking for respect, for the best of care, for consistency, fairness, kindness. Would the horse be happier if he spoke of love? Non.'
She had been so determined not to agree with him.
'Surely you can see that there is love in what he does,' he had said, his eyes wrinkling at the corners. 'There is love in what he does, what he . . . proposes. Just because he does not speak of it, it does not mean it is not there in every word. It is there, Sarah. In. Every. Little. Act.' He had banged the table.
She could see it now, even if she hadn't then. It was as close as he had ever come to telling her how much he loved her.
They had rested a little way outside Sittingbourne, Sarah allowing Boo to graze the lush edges of the fields on a long rein, finally hungry enough herself to eat one of the rolls she had packed. She sat in a quiet lane on a plastic bag, protecting herself from the wet grass, and watched her horse's head lift as he was distracted from eating by a distant crow or, on one occasion, a deer beside a copse.
Sarah had ridden fast in open country, galloping down the edges of ploughed fields, fo
llowing bridle paths when she could, staying on verges to protect Boo's legs. All the while she kept the motorway on her right, the distant hum of its traffic within earshot, knowing she could not get lost while it was close. Boo had been energised by the green. He had bucked several times when she first let him go down a long, flat stretch, his great head tossing with excitement, his tail lifting. She had found herself laughing, urging him on, even as she knew she should be conserving his energy for the hours ahead.
When had he ever been free like this? When had his eyes been filled only with distant green horizons, his hooves cushioned by soft ground? When had she been free? For a few glorious miles she allowed herself to forget what she was leaving and focus only on the sheer pleasure of being welded to this magnificent animal, sharing in his pleasure at his surroundings, feeling the joy of a superior power that was willing to accede to her. They flew down the edges of the fields, leaping small hedges and ditches filled with brackish water. Boo, infected by her mood, went faster, refusing to steady when he crossed small lanes, instead leaping them, his ears pricked, his long legs eating up the ground beneath them.
I think that if I become a horseman, I shall be a man on wings.
She was on wings, like Xenophon. She urged him faster, gulping, laughing, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes and streaming, horizontally, along her face. He took the bit, stretched out and ran, as horses have run since the beginning of time, for fear, for pleasure, for the glory of doing what they did. She let him. It didn't matter where he was headed. Her heart was elastic, bursting. This was what Papa had meant, not the endless time spent perfecting one movement of his legs, not the circles, the passage, the careful weighing up of what could be achieved. One sentence of Papa's kept running through her mind, rhythmic, in time with the muted thud of his hooves hitting the ground.
'This is how you escape,' Papa had told her.
This is how you escape.
'Second visitor this afternoon. He will be pleased.' The nurse had just closed the door behind her as they arrived at the Captain's room. She hesitated. 'I have to tell you, he's not done too well the last couple of days. We've got the consultant coming up this afternoon, but we suspect he's suffered another stroke. You may find him a little hard to understand.'