The Catch by Logan T. M

Author:Logan, T. M. [Logan, T. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thriller, Suspense
ISBN: 9781838771171
Publisher: Zaffre
Published: 2020-06-10T14:00:00+00:00

PART II

THE SON-IN-LAW

39

There was a strangely pungent smell in the kitchen, a mixture of gone-off food, unwashed dishes and Tilly’s overflowing litter tray. I made a mental note to sort the kitchen out tomorrow, when I had a bit more time. Now I sat in my study surrounded by empty mugs and plates, my iPad and mobile, notebook and pen, books and papers and computer printouts covering every available surface and half of the floor too.

Claire had been gone for five days.

Abbie had been married for a week.

I had failed.

In Claire’s absence, I had abandoned the daily pretence of going to work, throwing myself instead into the full-time investigation of my son-in-law. On the PC screen in front of me was a list of Grand National winners from the last forty years. I stared at it, searching my memory for Ryan’s anecdote about the engagement ring that he’d inherited from his grandmother.

She always used to talk about how my Grandad Arthur bet his whole month’s salary on Well To Do to win the Grand National. He knew nothing at all about horses but just liked the name and fancied being ‘well to do’ himself. The horse came in at 14-1 and he blew most of his winnings on this ring.

Something was off about the story but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. My father had been into the racing, and he had always talked about this horse and that horse, the famous winners and the rank outsiders who had surprised everyone. I’d heard of Red Rum and Foinavon, Aldaniti and Corbiere. But I’d never heard of Well To Do. Presumably he was a winner in the late 1940s or maybe the ’50s, if Arthur was a young grandparent before he was married.

I found the page, scrolling down to the history. Originally the horse had odds of 33-1, but this had been backed down to 14-1 the day before the race, making him joint fourth in the betting. Only nine horses out of more than forty actually finished on the day he won.

Tilly limped slowly into my study, her stitches gone now but the cast still on her back leg. Since we’d been on our own in the house, I had been giving her a VIP diet of tinned tuna, cat treats and a daily dish of single cream, and she was starting to thicken a little around the middle. But she was recovering well, and that was the main thing. She sat by my chair, blinking up at me with her big green eyes, until I lifted her carefully onto my lap. I scratched each side of her chin for a moment, listening to her rumbling purr.

I scrolled back to the top of the page. Well To Do only ran in the National once, the year that he won it – 1972. But Ryan was thirty-three, he was born in 1986, a mere fourteen years afterwards. So how could it have been his grandfather who proposed with this ring?

The chronology didn’t work.

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