by Bateman
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘So who are you, and what do you want? How did you get past security?’
‘I’m a journalist.’ Before her mouth could fully form up into a sneer I added, ‘Or was. I’m hoping to write a book about Dan the Man. And Geordie’s move into the horsey world. I’ll interview you if you like, as long as you promise not to break my pencil.’
She wasn’t instantly won over by my rapier-like wit. She looked at me coolly. ‘I don’t talk to journalists.’ She moved along to the next stall. ‘You shouldn’t be in here.’
I went with her. ‘Geordie said it would be okay.’
‘Geordie said it would be okay,’ she mimicked. ‘Do you know him well enough to call him Geordie?’
I shrugged. ‘Who really knows him?’
‘I do.’
‘What do you think of him?’
‘I told you I don’t talk to journalists. Go outside. Go away. These are sensitive creatures, they don’t need to be disturbed.’
‘Sorry. Perhaps I missed something. Which of us has been causing the disturbance?’
I didn’t wait for a response. I turned and sauntered out of the stables. Something behind me was blowing hot air out of its nose, and it probably wasn’t a horse.
When I returned to the front of the house there was a gleaming red Ferrari sitting beside the IAR vehicle. There was an Irish number plate with this year’s date on it. There were no furry dice. I admired it as a nice car and swore that if I ever got to be as old as Geordie McClean I wouldn’t embarrass myself by driving around in a Ferrari. I stepped up to the front door and rang the doorbell. Derek came and let me in. He was wearing a pinny with the same IAR logo on it. ‘Go on through,’ he said, ‘I’m just fixing lunch.’
He pointed me down a corridor and I followed the sound of Van Morrison into the lounge. Not that he was there himself, but his mellow voice seeped out of an expansive and expensive-looking music centre which would have dominated the room if it hadn’t been for the enormous snooker table which did. Geordie McClean was enjoying a pre-lunch cigar and potting a few balls.
I stood in the doorway. ‘Who’s winning?’ I asked. He looked up, smiled, then potted the brown. He straightened, then stood the cue on its end. ‘Y’see, Dan, you come into money and you go out and buy all the things you ever wanted. Like this monster. Then you realise you haven’t any friends to play with.’
‘What about Derek and Eric?’
‘You don’t play with employees. They always lose.’
‘They might just be crap.’
‘No, I’m crap, that’s how I know.’ I raised an eyebrow and came into the room. He didn’t look that crap to me. ‘Do you fancy a game?’ he asked. ‘Say, five hundred a ball?’
‘No.’
‘One hundred.’
‘No.’
‘You’re no fun, Danny boy.’
He stubbed his cigar out into an ashtray sitting precariously on the edge of the table then waved me through into the lounge next door. It was luxuriously appointed and afforded great views over the Meath countryside. The leather seats creaked as I sat down. He stood looking at me to the point where it got embarrassing.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’ I said, eventually.
‘I was just thinking about New York. We went through some shit there, didn’t we?’ I nodded. ‘How time flies, eh?’ I nodded again. ‘What’re you up to, Dan? Please don’t fuck me around.’
‘I wouldn’t do that.’ He kept looking at me. I reconsidered. ‘Okay, yes I would, if I’d any reason to. But I just want some cooperation. To write this book.’
‘I heard you had a kid die on you.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Kidnapped and he starved to death.’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s dreadful.’
‘Yeah. It was.’
‘And you’ve dropped from sight ever since.’
‘You’ve been checking.’
‘Of course. Dan, I know you’ve been on skid row. I had someone look over your apartment, if that’s what you call it. He’d never seen such a dive. I spoke to somebody in the sports department at the Belfast Evening News who nearly broke a rib laughing when I told him you were writing a book about horse racing. He said you wouldn’t know a filly from a fire exit.’
‘I’m gratified that you would go to such an effort checking me out. You’ve obviously got too much time on your hands.’
‘Don’t get defensive, Dan. I do care. I know what you’ve been through. I know your wife left you. I know you haven’t been working. I’m sure you do want to get back to it, but believe me, this isn’t the way. I was serious about the sharks and the goldfish and the guns. You had some knowledge of the boxing and you did a good job with it, we had great crack together while it lasted. But this is different, you can’t swat up on it in a week; you try to write an insider book on this sport and you’ll only embarrass yourself. It’s not two men punching the living daylights out of each other, it’s an industry, it’s a multinational. I’ve been following it all my life, I’m doing well out of it, but it’s a minefield, Dan, and if you try to walk through it without a detector you’ll only get blown up. There are secrets, and there are secrets about secrets, and people do not want them revealed.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘I know you, Dan, you’ll sell me on a nice book about a horse and how wonderful I am but you’ll want to dig and look and dig and look and write it all down and fuck the consequences, but you don’t fuck the consequences in racing. You don’t want this in your life, Dan, believe me.’
I looked at him, and then I shrugged and looked out at Meath.
Then he was sitting beside me. ‘Dan – come with me to the races tomorrow, I’ve half a dozen horses running. Be my guest, come into the Members’ Room, we’ll down a hot whiskey or two and I’ll give you a few hot tips on the runners – Jesus, Dan, I’ve a nose for them, stick with me and you can go home this weekend with more money than you’d ever earn from a bloody book.’
I sighed. ‘I don’t know. Y’know, I thought it was a good idea.’
‘Besides, you ever heard of a racing book that actually sold? Unless you’re fucking Dick Francis.’
‘I’d rather not.’
He smiled at me. ‘Down but not out, Danny boy, sharp as a tack. Well think about what I said. Now then, can I get you a wee drink, or is that a sore point?’
‘Yes, and yes.’
He got me a beer. Derek called us for lunch a few minutes later and we trooped into the kitchen. We sat around a large enamelled dining table, me at one end, McClean at the other and Derek and Eric opposite each other in the middle, once they’d finished serving. There was one other place set, but nobody remarked on it. Derek had prepared a roast turkey meal, which was lovely. McClean said grace, almost literally. The talk throughout was small. Derek and Eric, although they were only in their late thirties, talked wistfully about old Belfast, bits of Belfast that I had not found wistful at all.
‘We used to be cops,’ Derek said.
‘CID.’
‘Then the Troubles finished.’
‘And they scrapped overtime.’
‘We couldn’t afford our mortgages.’
‘So we came to work for Mr McClean.’
‘He cooks,’ said Eric.
‘And he cleans,’ said Derek.
‘They’re a formidable team,’ said McClean. ‘The hob shines, the turkey’s tender and either one of them could shoot you between the eyes from two hundred metres.’
The back door opened suddenly. Derek and Eric’s hands shot under the table, but then they relaxed when they saw who it was. Conversely I stiffened, although in a sense it was inevitable that the girl who walked through the door was who she was, because that was the way my life ran.
‘Ah – Mandy,’ said McClean, ‘late again. Dan – I don’t believe you’ve met my daughter.’
I cleared my throat. ‘Actually, yes. We bumped into each other earlier.’ I
smiled across. The temptation was to say ‘Hiya sugar,’ but I’ve never been one to give in to temptation.
McClean looked at her, looking at me, his brow furrowing, then burst into laughter. ‘Now youse didn’t get off on the wrong foot now, did you?’ He shook his head at his daughter. ‘That’s not like you, Mandy love.’
She transferred her glare from me to him. ‘He was feeding the horses. You know no one feeds the horses unless I say so.’
‘Yes, dear, I know.’
‘Okay.’
‘Your dinner’s in the microwave,’ said Derek.
‘Two minutes forty-five on reheat.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Now now,’ said Derek, ‘let’s not be petulant.’
‘I’m not being petulant. I’m not hungry.’
Eric tutted, and she glared at him. Then she walked out of the kitchen. Her footsteps echoed along the varnished hall floor. A door opened, then slammed shut.
‘Sorry about that,’ McClean said. ‘She always gets like this before the big meetings.’
‘She’s watching her weight,’ said Eric.
‘She still has to eat,’ said Derek.
‘Once the racing’s over, you’ll see her in a better light,’ said McClean.
I nodded, and continued eating. There wasn’t much more to the afternoon. Derek and Eric lingered over their dessert, so McClean gave me a personal tour of the yard and a run-down on the runners he would have at the Easter Monday meeting at Fairyhouse. I got to meet and stroke Dan the Man, a big black horse with a sleek look and intelligent eyes, or maybe I was biased. I said I’d put a tenner on him tomorrow but McClean said it would be a waste of time, he wasn’t running.
‘But I thought . . .’
‘Saving him for bigger things. Tomorrow will be fun, and profitable, but Dan the Man goes in the Grand National, this Saturday in Liverpool. He can’t do both, and it’ll mean more at Aintreee. That’s when they’ll all really have to sit up and pay attention.’
Back at the bungalow McClean waited by the Ferrari while I popped inside to get my jacket. I put my head round the door to say goodbye to Derek and Eric, just in time to see them swapping Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. I didn’t like to spoil the moment, so I just backed away.
Outside, I climbed into Hilda’s car while McClean held the door open for me. ‘Take it easy, Dan. Think about what I’ve said. If you want to come along tomorrow, feel free. I’ll leave your name on the gate and there’ll be a pass there for you for the private members’ enclosure, okay?’
‘And what if I decide to do the Dan the Man book?’
‘Well that’s up to you. Horses can’t sue for invasion of privacy, but they can give you a bloody good kick between the legs.’
I smiled. He closed the door firmly and I started the engine and drove out of the yard. As I went back down the lane towards the open road I could see him watching me in the mirror, arms folded, thinking, thinking.
‘Well what do you think?’ I asked the car, or at least that bit of it which retained an essence of Mark Corkery. ‘Did he kill you? Does he know what I’m up to?’
There was no response. I hadn’t really expected any. But hello would have been nice, or thanks.
9
I spent a relaxed night in front of the television, then had a nightmare about opening a giant Easter egg and finding the mummified corpse of my son inside. I lay in the dark waiting for my heart to slow and wondered whether Patricia shared similar night terrors. I also wondered what it was like to kiss someone with a beard, and hoped that I would never have to find out.
I finally dropped off again towards dawn and didn’t wake until near lunchtime. When I opened the curtains downstairs there were twenty-five thousand people in my front garden.
Well, perhaps not that many. But there were hundreds walking past the house; there were cars parked bumper to bumper on both sides of the road. It was Easter Monday, it was the Irish Grand National. I was going to put my new-found insight into horse racing to good use and win myself a fortune. Before I left the house I called up the Horse Whisperer on my laptop and perused that morning’s breaking gossip. A Scottish jockey was in hospital after suffering a heart attack when a trainer locked him in a sauna to force him to lose weight. A horse that had twice been named US Horse of the Year was rumoured to have proved sterile when put to stud; the Horse Whisperer was predicting it would cost his owners up to $25 million. There were a dozen other reports that were a little too technical. As I locked up the house I thought about the possibility that McClean might be right. That horse racing was a different ball game. I’d had a feeling for the boxing, but this I couldn’t get to grips with at all. How was I ever going to investigate his dirty dealings without some understanding of what was going on?
By blind faith, dogged determination and drink.
It was a combination that had worked before. It was getting them in the right order which was usually the problem.
I walked the half-mile to the course, joining in with the happy throng. I knew enough to know that the Irish Grand National was the social event of the horsey year. There would be big floppy hats and leggy models, and there would also be gnarl-faced old men with nicotine fingers pissed off about having to share the racecourse with big floppy hats and leggy models. Hopefully, in the members’ enclosure, I would see more of the models and less of the gnarlers.
Sure enough, there was a ticket waiting for me on the gate and a pass to the members’ enclosure. Before I attempted to find McClean I took a walk around the course. There were three or four public bars dotted about, and also several kiosks set up to serve only hot blasts of the sponsors’ whiskey, Jamesons. The bars were bunged full, so I concentrated on the whiskey. Only three or four, enough to give me the edge, not enough to knock me over it.
It was still two hours before the big race, but there were half a dozen others on the race card. I could see people pressing in around the parade ring to see the runners go by, so I went along to cast my eye over them. I nodded and tutted as each went past, then made tiny little shorthand notes on my race card; it didn’t amount to much more than writing brown, and browner, but I hoped it made me look at least vaguely competent. I was watching out for Paper Lad, the first runner of the day from McClean’s stable. His colours were listed as red, white and blue, although not in that order. He came into the ring last, which I presumed wasn’t a reflection of his chances. As he passed by before me I noted sagely that he looked suitably athletic, and brown. I made a note.
The jockey was . . .
Familiar.
I’d been concentrating so much on the horse that I’d barely spared a look for the jockey and now he was past, but there was something. I made my way out of the crowd and hurried round to the other side of the parade ring so that I could take a closer look.
I was right.
He was Mandy McClean.
And she looked absolutely stunning. Sitting up on Paper Lad with her cheeks flushed pink and the peak of her cap pointing straight up and her slim, boyish figure encased in gaudy silks. Geordie’s angry daughter. Her jaw wasn’t square at all, but it gave the appearance of squareness, of jutting determination. Her eyes were set hard against distraction. Focused. It was no excuse for her behaviour towards me the previous day, but it was certainly an explanation. Pre-race nerves, fighting with her weight. I had a sudden desire to shout, ‘Your turkey’s in the microwave!’
I restrained myself.
I hurried up to the tote window and placed a bet on Paper Lad. Five pounds. I wasn’t sure why. When I passed the fiver across I noticed that my hand was shaking slightly, and I didn’t know why either. As far as I can recall, my only previous hand-shaking moments have been in the presence of gunmen or my wife. The first time I’d met Patricia all of me had started to shake involuntarily and I’d had to make my excuses and leave, although in retrospect it could have been the magic mushrooms. I didn’t see her for another three months after that and then she was snogging someone els
e. It had been a long battle to win her, and a short war to lose her. How women affect you. I have occasionally fantasised about a combination of a beautiful young woman, silk, and a nice bottom raised invitingly towards me, but a jockey on a smelly brown horse parading her arse to twenty-five thousand drunken punters on a windswept racecourse south of the border suddenly seemed somehow more erotic than almost anything I could imagine.
How can sudden animosity transform itself into . . . into what? Fuck. It was the whiskey. That was all.
You just haven’t had sex for a long time. Don’t even think about it.
I hurried towards the members’ enclosure, feeling foolish and excited.
There was a young fella in a blazer checking passes. As he let me through I noticed a hand-written poster attached to the gate on which he was leaning; it said, Members’ Passes £5. I’d imagined a degree of exclusivity, a nice quiet place from which to enjoy the spectacle of the National, that McClean had had to pull a few strings to get me in, but everyone and his granny were already inside. It was as smoke-filled and boozy as any smoke-filled boozy place on the occasion of a great sporting event. Leggy models and wavy hats were nowhere in evidence.
It took me five minutes to locate him. I checked my watch. The race. The race with her in it was due off in another five. McClean was standing up against the window, binoculars in hand, observing the course. Like practically all outdoor events these days there was a giant video screen situated opposite the finishing line, which most people would end up watching. Below me was the main stand, packed to the rafters. In the distance there was a ferris wheel and beyond it fields packed tight with parked cars. On the screen I tried to pick out Mandy from the field of runners. As McClean lowered his glasses I said, ‘You didn’t tell me your daughter was a jockey.’
He turned and fixed me with a steady look. It seemed to me to be one half pride, one half worry. ‘Aye, well. Anyway, Dan. I’m glad you could come. Can I get you a drink?’
I didn’t think for one moment that he would physically push through the throng on my behalf. He nodded down to his left; there, hidden by his boss and sitting behind a small table, was Derek. He slowly raised himself. I smiled. ‘Where’s . . . ?’
