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.“I’ll put the bridle back in the tack room for repair,” he said, turning back and reaching out for it.“No,” I said, keeping a tight hold of the leather.“Leave it here.”He looked at me with displeasure, but there was absolutely no way I was going to let Ian leave the kitchen with the sabotaged bridle.Without it, he had nothing to show the authorities, even though, to my eyes, the ends of the stitches that I had cut with the scalpel looked identical to the few I had left intact, and which had then broken on the way to the start.Ian must have seen the determination with which I was holding on to the bridle, and short of fighting me for it, he had to realize he wasn’t going anywhere with it.But still he didn’t leave.“Thank you, Ian,” my mother said firmly.“That will be all.”“Right, then,” he said.“I’ll see you both in the morning.”He slammed the door in frustration on his way out.I went over to the kitchen window and watched as he crunched across the gravel in the direction of his flat.“How good a head lad is he?” I asked, without turning around.“What do you mean?” my mother said.“Can you afford to lose him?”“No one is indispensable,” she said, rather arrogantly.I turned to face her.“Not even you?”“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said again.“I’m not,” I said.Dinner on Saturday night was a grim affair.Had it really been only one week since my arrival at Kauri House? It felt more like a month.As before, the three of us sat at the kitchen table, eating a casserole that had been slow-cooking in the Aga while we had been at the races.I think on this occasion it was beef, but I didn’t really care, and the conversation was equally unappetizing.“So what do we do now?” I asked into the silence.“What do you mean?” my stepfather said.“Do we just sit and wait for the blackmailer to come a-calling?”“What else do you suggest?” my mother asked.“Oh, I don’t know,” I said in frustration.“I just feel it’s time for us to start controlling him, not the other way round.”We sat there in silence for a while.“Have you paid him this week?” I asked.“Yes, of course,” my stepfather replied.“So how did you pay?”“In cash,” he said.“Yes, but how did you give him the cash?”“The same way as always.”“And that is?” I asked.Why was extracting answers from him always such hard work?“By post.”“But to what address?” I asked patiently.“Somewhere in Newbury,” he said.“And how did you get the address in the first place?”“It was included with the first blackmail note.”“And when did that arrive?”“In July last year.”When Roderick Ward had his accident.“And the address has been the same since the beginning?” I asked him.“Yes,” he said.“I have to place two thousand pounds in fifty-pound notes in a padded envelope and post it by first-class mail each Thursday.”I thought back to the blackmail note that I had found on my mother’s desk.“What happened that time to make you late with the payment?”“I got stuck in traffic, and I didn’t get to the bank in time to draw out the money before they shut.”“Couldn’t you use a debit card in a cash machine?”“It would only give me two hundred and fifty.”“Can you get me the address?” I asked.As he stood up to fetch it, the telephone rang.As one, we all looked at the kitchen clock.It was exactly nine o’clock.“Oh God,” my mother said.“Let me answer it,” I said, standing up and striding across the kitchen.“No,” my mother shouted, jumping up.But I ignored her.“Hello,” I said into the phone.There was silence from the other end.“Hello,” I said again.“Who is this?”Again nothing.“Who is this?” I repeated.There was a click on the line and then a single tone.The person at the other end had hung up.I replaced the receiver back on its cradle.“Talkative, isn’t he?” I said, smiling at my mother.She was cross.“Why did you do that?” she demanded.“Because he has to learn that we aren’t going to just roll over and do everything he says.”“But it’s not you that would go to prison,” my stepfather said angrily.“No,” I said.“But I thought we’d agreed that we can’t go on paying the blackmailer forever.Something has to be done to resolve the VAT situation, and the first thing I need to know is who the blackmailer is.I need to force him into a mistake.I want him to put his head up above the parapet, just for a second, so I can see him.”Or better still, I thought, so I can shoot him.The phone rang again.My mother stepped forward, but I beat her to it.“Hello,” I said.“Kauri House Stables.”There was silence again
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