by Bateman
I nudged the chair, but he didn’t move. I gave him a gentle tap on the shoulder, but there was no response. I tutted and looked about me. Nobody else was appreciating my predicament. Friggin’ kids today. Load up on drugs, plug into cyberspace, then can’t cope with it. I tutted. On screen Ewan was staring at me. He looked kind of pleased with himself, and he’d every right to be. I put a hand on the fan’s shoulder and gave him a shake. ‘Helloooo,’ I said, ‘anyone in?’ then tutted again because he’d managed to spill the remains of my Diet Coke and it was just starting to seep out from under the keyboard.
I put my fingers to it to stem the flow, and realised immediately that what had appeared in the reduced light to be Diet Coke wasn’t. It was warm and thick and sticky. And red.
I froze.
Just for a moment. Just long enough for the devil to get an icy grip on my heart.
Then I slowly sank until I was level with the guy’s face, until I could look into his cold, lifeless, staring eyes.
I’d been gone five minutes and someone had drilled a smart little hole in his throat.
May the farce be with you.
A scream.
A young girl in a black cocktail dress, pointing.
I stumbled back.
There was no point in a It wasn’t me! because it was bleeding friggin‘ obvious that it was.
Blood on his hands, your honour.
I only found the corpse.
Murder weapon?
Who cares? Doesn’t he have three dead Chinamen in his house and a You’ve Been Framed special from a bank in Blanchardstown.
The screaming was spreading.
‘It wasn’t me!’ I yelled anyway, holding up bloody hands.
The lights went up. The hip-hoppy-trippy shit abruptly stopped.
‘Call an ambulance!’ I yelled, looking desperately around me, pleading. ‘For Christ sake, don’t just stand there!’
Nobody moved. They were a weird mix of computer geeks and bright young things ready for a night out. None of them wanted to be heroes, or villains. They wanted to surf and dance and drink and drug. They didn’t want a wild-eyed Northerner with blood on his hands ruining their night out. I looked from cool eye to cool eye and I knew there wasn’t one of them would stop me if I walked out of there. I knew just as well that whoever had killed the Star Wars fan, he was no longer amongst us.
I glanced at the ceiling.
Security cameras.
I stormed across to the counter. The sea parted. The owner took several steps back until he couldn’t go any further. ‘I . . . I . . .’ he stammered, ‘I’m . . . s-sure he’d . . . have given your ch-chair back if you’d a-asked . . .’
I put my hands on the counter and tried to look menacing. ‘The cameras,’ I said, ‘do they work?’
He shook his head. ‘Show. We’ve only just o-opened, money’s t-tight.’
‘Fuck,’ I said.
‘I’m s-sorry.’
‘I . . .’ I looked down at the counter. Bloody handprints. ‘I didn’t do . . . Fuck!’ I kicked the bottom of the counter in frustration. Why me? What did I ever do to deserve . . . I sighed. ‘How much do I owe you?’
‘What?’
‘For the use of the computer.’
‘I . . . no. It’s okay. Just go.’
‘No. I don’t think so. I didn’t do this. Just tell me how much and I’ll be off.’
He looked warily at the rest of his customers, then stepped cautiously towards his computer and called up my terminal. I glanced behind. Still nobody moved. They just looked. Blood was now seeping across the floor.
‘Five eighty,’ said the owner.
‘Okay.’ I dug into my pockets. I produced coins and held them out. They were sticky red already.
‘Plus three for the Cokes.’
‘Diet Cokes,’ I said. I turned my hand and the coins fell on to the counter. They didn’t roll away. They stuck. ‘Keep the change,’ I said and walked quickly out of cyberspace.
15
I was certain that I was not followed. Nevertheless I spent the entire night by the fly-smeared window of my tiny bed-and-breakfast refuge, watching every car, studying every drunk, turning only to listen to every creak from the landing outside. Death was my shadow. A young man had been killed by mistake, in mistake for me. I was alive because I’d been accommodating, and needed to use the gents. It was Coke proving that it really did add life.
My stomach rumbled incessantly. There was nothing to eat. Kebab smells filtered through from a carry-out down the road, but I was too frightened to go out. Someone had stabbed the guy in the throat in the middle of a crowded café and nobody had noticed. I was not walking down a cracked-pavemented barely lit street to satisfy mere hunger. I would suck the hairs out of the manky sink for sustenance before I crossed the threshold of this matchstick fortress in the hours of darkness.
They, he, she, couldn’t have followed.
I had crossed and crissed so much on the way back that even I got lost for a while.
I also tried to convince myself that I would not have been followed because there was no need for it. Whoever had killed the Star Wars fan had presumed it was me, and must thus have been satisfied that he had carried out his task. The only way he could have tracked me down was by somehow hacking into the messages I’d left with Hilda and backtracking them to the specific computer console I was operating in the internet café. A fortuitous slash and I was still alive. Star Wars fan’s last view was of Ewan McGregor, his last thought of distant, equally violent galaxies.
Fuck.
I slipped out of the bed and breakfast shortly after eight the next morning. Not that there was any breakfast on offer, and the bed only just qualifed.
Traffic was already gridlocked. It was quicker, although scarier, to walk. He, she, they would probably be aware by now that the man they believed to be the Horse Whisperer was still alive. He, she, they would be looking for me. I was fairly certain that whoever had tried to kill me wasn’t connected to either Oil Paintings, Chicken or the dry-cleaning man. Neither was he, she, they avenging the late Chinese bookies. Their interest was in keeping me alive. Their motive was money, and they were all still looking for me as well.
Popular guy.
There was a newsagent’s on the corner with papers hanging up outside. The Irish Times led with it. Internet Murder, the headline screamed, and I felt like screaming back. There was a description of me, the killer. It was fairly accurate, but it could just the same have fitted ten thousand men in the city. Police had closed down the café and impounded the computers. I knew that they would track my e-mails back to Hilda, and perhaps beyond that to the Horse Whisperer, but there was nothing in either of them to specifically identify me. Hilda would claim ignorance or innocence or both.
On the other hand, I hardly knew her. She might sell me down the river. That was the way my luck was running.
Running.
Jogging.
Shit. I looked at my watch.
Jogging.
It was the last thing I needed.
She was pretty and lovely and prone to bad temper, but I was up to my eyes in trouble and the last thing I needed was to go busting a gut on a country road.
But then.
Why not?
Wasn’t I trying to tie Geordie McClean into the death of Mark Corkery? Mandy was my only valid reason for remaining in his company. If he now believed he had killed Corkery in error, and was back on the trail of the real Horse Whisperer, right down to murder in an internet café, surely it was better to stick close to him; he wouldn’t think the real Horse Whisperer would be foolish enough to hide out in his own back yard. If he was behind the internet café murder, then he had ordered the death of whoever was using that computer, not me specifically. If he did suspect me at all, then the likelihood was he wouldn’t touch me with his daughter around, and wouldn’t risk anything near his own property. Hiding in plain sight. Dangerous but . . . well, just dangerous.
I kept my h
ead down, and walked.
Close to Connolly station I found a sports shop. I went in and bought a Liverpool top, a Liverpool tracksuit and a pair of Nike trainers. The clothes felt coarse yet frail and I could feel the linoleum floor of the shop through the trainers. They were clearly pirated. The Celtic Tiger wasn’t really a tiger at all, just a big pussy cat purring as the cash registers rang. I left the shop wearing my sports gear. My ordinary clothes were in the small sports bag they threw in for a fiver. As I hurried into the railway station one of its straps broke, but there wasn’t time to go back and complain. It was probably the only piece of my new ensemble that was authentic. I bought a ticket to Blanchardstown. From there, making sure to keep my head down as I passed the bank, I took a cab about half a mile out past McClean’s stables and it dropped me by the hump of a small bridge which she’d picked out as the spot for us to meet. We’d agreed ten thirty for our jog. I was five minutes early. I checked the road, saw that it was clear, then climbed down beneath the bridge. There was a stream running beneath it, only about a foot deep, but there was plenty of dry undergrowth in which to hide my sports bag. I was back out just in time to see her jog around a bend in the road. As she approached I was running on the spot, looking eager, and feeling like death.
‘Top of the morning to you,’ I said.
She was wearing a blue and white tracksuit with grey slashes. She was devoid of make-up. She looked stunning, even while frowning. She didn’t say good morning. She just kind of grunted in response, then added a terse ‘Let’s do it.’
Perhaps she wasn’t a morning person. She took off again at speed and I used up what pitiful reserves of energy I had in catching up. From there on in it was a case of hanging on for dear life.
‘How many . . . miles . . . do you . . . normally . . . do?’ I managed. We were, of course, going uphill.
‘Thirty-four.’
‘Thirty-four!’
‘Three to four!’
‘Christ . . . that many?’
‘I thought you ran?’
‘I . . . do . . .’
‘Uhuh.’
She upped the speed, I fell back, with a major effort I caught up, or maybe she slowed again. I gasped: ‘You . . . seem . . . distant . . .’
‘I will be if you keep up that snail’s pace.’
‘No . . . I . . . mean . . .’
‘I know what you mean.’
She sped away again. Fuck it.
Within a couple of minutes she’d become not much bigger than a dot on the horizon. I was bent double, trying to get my breath. When I managed to look up the dot was getting bigger again. I steadied myself against a fence post as she continued to grow. As she closed in I pushed a smile on to my face and said, ‘I must have pulled a––’
But she flashed past. ‘It’s all downhill now,’ carried back to me on the wind.
Christ.
I started after her again. I could feel every friggin’ ounce of gravel through my trainers, plus they were cutting the heels off me. I had sweated through my Liverpool top and was gratified to see that the colour was running; my hands were already dyed red.
Up ahead, distantly, she finally stopped.
She was on the bridge. When I finally got there she was sitting on the wall, hardly out of breath at all. I was gasping for dear life. I sat down beside her. She smiled at me. I smiled back. She put a hand on my shoulder. She smiled again. I smiled back. Her face moved towards mine. Mine moved towards hers.
I had a sensation of floating through the air.
No.
I was floating through the air.
She’d given me an almighty shove.
I shot backwards. It was only a drop of fifteen feet or so, but it seemed more. I plunged into the stream with a yell, when I should have kept my mouth closed. As I thrashed about I swallowed a lungful. The stream bed was relatively soft, small pebbles as opposed to sharp rocks, but it hurt. I was bruised and scratched and soaked and suffering from mild shock.
I stood up and yelled ‘What the fuck was that for?’
She was above me on the bridge. She was no longer smiling. ‘For telling me lies, you bastard.’
I finished coughing up stream life then ran a sopping hand across my face before responding with a suitably Wildean ‘What’re you talking about, you fucking stupid bitch?’
She raised an eyebrow.
I spat. I looked away. I dragged my feet out of the water and tried to pull myself up the bank. Where before I’d negotiated it with the nimbleness of a gazelle, now, wet, cold, heavy, my legs like lead, it was too much. I made several attempts and kept slipping down.
Finally I stayed where I was and glared back up at her. ‘What did I lie about?’
‘You tell me.’
I blew out. ‘Okay! So I don’t go jogging much! I used to run . . . all the time. I just . . . overestimated my capacity for––’
‘Not about the running.’
‘Then . . . what?’
‘Where do you want me to start?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Well how about the car?’
‘What car?’
‘The fucking Ferrari!’
‘Oh.’
‘Indeed. I should have you arrested.’
I looked at my feet, hazy under the water. ‘Sorry,’ I said, glumly.
‘The mechanic spotted it straight away. Are you fucking crazy or what?’
I shrugged helplessly. ‘I really am sorry. I couldn’t control it. I was embarrassed. I didn’t think you’d notice.’
‘Didn’t think I’d notice! You tried to kill me!
‘I didn’t! It was an accident!
‘You cut the brakes by accident?
‘What?’
‘You don’t do something fucking lethal like that by accident.’
‘I didn’t cut any fucking brakes!’
‘You just bloody admitted it!’
‘I did not!’
‘Well what the fuck were you saying sorry for?’
‘Swapping . . . swapping seats with you after we crashed.’
‘What?’
‘I . . . I was driving you home . . . it was too fast for me . . . I crashed and you were still out of it . . . so I put you in the driver’s seat. I thought it might . . . help your insurance . . .’
‘What?’
‘Or . . . or . . . more probably mine.’ I blinked up at her. ‘It was stupid and churlish and I didn’t think it would matter because you’d been nasty and I didn’t think I’d ever see you again so I went and did it except since then I’ve found out how nice you are and I’m really really sorry for doing it.’
Her face was scrunched up. ‘I . . . can’t believe I’m hearing this . . . You put me in the . . . you didn’t cut the . . .?’
‘No. Fuck! No! Somebody . . .?’
‘Yes they did. Beyond doubt they did. And it wasn’t you?’
‘I swear to God.’
‘Why do I not believe you?’
‘I honestly wouldn’t lie to you.’
‘Like about the jogging?’
‘That wasn’t a lie, that was a fib.’
‘Oh yeah. And what about the Horse Whisperer?’
‘What?’
‘You tell me.’
‘I don’t . . .’
‘Don’t fuck me around, Dan.’
‘I’m not, I wouldn’t, I . . .’
‘Stop it. Do you think I’m fucking stupid? You know, you’re more to be pitied than . . . than whatever the phrase is.’
‘I don’t––’
‘Dan. I know. You ask me all that shit about the horses and the stables and the next day, lo and behold, there it all is in the Horse Whisperer. Coincidence?’
‘It must be . . . I wouldn’t . . .’
‘Dan . . .’
‘You know, there’s lots of spies out there. Lots of journalists. Just because . . . doesn’t mean . . .’
She was at the edge of the bank now, hands on hips, confident, in contro
l, certain. I was the drowned rat, shrinking by the second. ‘And what,’ she began triumphantly, ‘if I had fed you a deliberately false snippet of information, just to see if it would turn up?’
Hook, line and sinker.
‘Ah. Well. Then you’d be feeling pretty damn smug right now.’
She let out a sigh. ‘Dan. You crashed my car. You tried to blame it on me. The only thing that makes me think you didn’t cut my brakes is that you were in the bloody car as well. Then you sold information to the Horse Whisperer. Give me one good reason why I should ever, ever speak to you again.’
‘Because.’
‘Because what?’
‘Just because. It’s reason enough.’
We stared at each other.
‘Why, Dan?’
‘Truth?’
‘Truth.’
There are times in your life when you have to make a decision. When you have to swallow your pride, stand up and tell the truth. It’s the mark of a man. I took a deep breath.
‘Because somebody is trying to kill your father and I’m trying to find out why.’
16
I retrieved my belongings from beneath the bridge, and then went back down the road towards her father’s house. I was soaked but not chilled, warmed perhaps by her unexpectedly positive reaction to my strategic lying. We walked in silence. Deliberately. I had told her I wasn’t going to reveal anything until I’d had a shower and the opportunity to change back into my clothes. She agreed quickly enough. The cutting of the brakes on her father’s Ferrari had sown the seeds. I had merely added the fertiliser. I was bathed in a new and flattering light. I had gone from sinner to the Saint. I had a halo that glistened off my teeth.
Over the last hundred yards or so she took my hand. ‘You’re cold,’ she said, although I was not. ‘I’m sorry.’ It was gratifying to see the red dye from the pirated Liverpool shirt soak into her skin as well.
