by Bateman
I sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what to say.
She was wrong.
But not totally.
I said her name several times, without knowing what to say after it.
I said, ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’
‘Fuck off!’
‘Coffee?’
She hammered the door in frustration. The shock of it made me jump.
‘Just get out.’
‘Mandy . . .’
‘Now!’
I sighed, and stayed where I was. ‘Look, I’m really––’
‘Are you not gone yet?’
‘All I did was remember your mum’s name. Where’s the crime in that?’
‘Go away.’
‘Please come out.’
‘I’m on the toilet.’
‘You’ve been a long time. Are you having trouble working things out?’
There was a pause, and then a very faint giggle.
‘C’mon,’ I said.
‘C’mon yourself,’ she snapped, but it seemed less angry.
I sat on the bed for a few minutes, debating whether it would be diplomatic to put my clothes back on. I had the feeling, somehow, that if I did put them on I would never again have the opportunity to take them off in her presence. That a line would have been drawn. A wall built. A Hoover Dam constructed. There were a lot of images that flitted through my mind, and the most dominant one was of Hilda smiling at me, giving me her cutesy encouragement to travel south to investigate the death of Mark Corkery.
I wanted to throttle her.
And sleep with her daughter.
The bathroom door opened a fraction. A panda-eyed Mandy peered sheepishly out. ‘Perhaps,’ she said softly, ‘I misinterpreted.’
‘That’s okay,’ I said.
‘I over-reacted.’
‘No, you didn’t, it’s understandable.’
‘I hate myself.’
‘You shouldn’t.’
She smiled hesitantly. ‘Do you think,’ she ventured, ‘that you’d be up to that interview now?’
‘With your . . .?’
‘Mmm.’
‘I could try.’
She came fully out of the bathroom. She was naked and I was naked and we stood and hugged and kissed and she clung to me like the poor orphaned kid she felt herself to be. We fell back on the bed. As I moved down her she purred, ‘Tell me, do you intend to delve deeply?’
‘As deep as you will allow.’
‘Will the interrogation be painful?’
‘Only until I get to the truth.’
‘And what is the truth?’
‘You tell me.’
She clasped the back of my head and fell silent.
I nudged her awake. Her bedroom was at the back of the house and that, together with the size of the stables, meant that the room didn’t get much light, so it felt later than it was. Five, according to my watch. She came dozily back to life as I stroked her back. She said, dreamily, ‘What’s the smell?’
‘My apologies.’
‘No, I mean the burning.’
‘We burned the place up, sweet pea.’
She sat up. ‘No, I really mean the burning.’ Her nose crinkled.
I sniffed up. She had a point. ‘Dozy Derek’s left the dinner on.’
She looked at her watch, and didn’t look any happier. ‘I better go check.’
‘You’re not going out dressed like that. Relax. If you’re worried, I’ll go.’
I crawled down the bed and into my pants. Mandy relaxed back into the quilt. I smiled warmly at her. I felt happier and more relaxed than I had in a long time, and that despite the fact that I had lied outrageously to her, wanted to kill her mother, and was suspected of four murders. I’d been in worse situations and was still alive to tell the tale. After all, James was my middle name.
I put on my shirt and my trousers and prepared to pad barefoot up the hall. From the bed Mandy said, ‘Put on your socks and shoes.’
‘What?’
‘Put on your socks and shoes. If you go up there in your bare feet it’ll look like we’ve been having sex.’
‘Will it? And if it does, so what? Are you ashamed of me? And meanwhile the house is burning down.’
‘Yes. It will look like it. And yes, it does matter. And I might yet be ashamed of you. And I don’t think the house is burning down, I just don’t want the place stinking of burned potato. Do you have a problem with any or all of that?’
I shook my head. I sat back on the bed and pulled on my socks. Mandy grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back, then kissed me. I sat up and tied my shoes. She kissed me again. She was quite obviously mental, but she was a good kisser.
I went to the door. ‘Will I pass inspection now?’
‘Wash your hands.’
‘What?’
‘Wash your hands. You smell of sex.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Completely.’ I tutted and walked into the ensuite. ‘He’s not going to smell me, y’know.’
‘Isn’t he? You don’t know him.’
I came out. ‘Now can I go?’
She nodded. I opened the bedroom door. ‘Dan?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t be long.’
I rolled my eyes. I closed the door behind me and walked along the hall. The smell intensified. It was burning, but not the house is on fire burning, burning food. I entered the kitchen. There was smoke coming out of the oven. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, not being overly experienced with cookers. Open the door to let the smoke out, or open the door and a huge ball of fire melts me on the spot and takes the rest of the house with it. My inclination, as ever, was to slip out the front door and go home, let someone else worry about it. Except there were dead Chinamen in my home and I’d a nasty feeling that I’d fallen in love, or at least in lust. I’d a nagging fear, or hope, that I wasn’t going anywhere without her for quite a while.
I found a pair of oven gloves and carefully opened the door.
There was the merest billow of smoke. I reached in and removed a casserole dish. Whatever Derek had been cooking had shrunk and blackened and attached itself to the base. I set it in the sink and ran some cold water on it. A stable hand was leading a horse across the yard towards a horsebox as I opened the back door to let the smoke out. He glanced round. ‘Derek burned the dinner again,’ I said. I gave him a little wave and a reassuring smile. He nodded and went on about his business.
I left the door open, then walked down the hall to the lounge.
Sometimes you can’t see the bleeding obvious. I admired the view of the brilliant green Meath countryside. The cool grey of the clouds. A slim Oprah talking silently on the widescreen television in the corner. And Derek lying on the floor. There was blood seeping on to the carpet. Above him a whiter-than-white square on the wall where a painting had been removed to reveal a safe. The door was hanging open. There was nothing inside.
‘Mandy!’ I yelled.
18
Derek was alive, although slightly bent.
By the time Mandy had buttoned herself into jeans and pulled on a sweatshirt I had him sitting up moaning, which was better than lying down dead. He groaned about the state of the carpet, the blood stains on his shirt and the tragic fate of his glazed turkey à la King. He didn’t seem particularly fazed by the untidy gash on the back of his head.
‘He’s . . . there’s blood . . . Maybe . . .’ I said helpfully as Mandy came through from the hall and let out an initially shocked yelp before hurrying across to kneel at Derek’s side.
‘Christ,’ she said. Derek started to complain again but she shushed him and patted him and mothered him. ‘Call an ambulance,’ she snapped at me.
I stood to look for the phone. As I did there came from outside the roar of speeding tyres on gravel. I turned expecting to see Geordie McClean racing up the drive. Mentally I began to prepare myself. I would be blamed. For this, for everything, it was my fate in life. But it wasn’t Geo
rdie. A Land Rover, a horse box, the one I’d seen moments before, now travelling at speed away from the house.
I said, ‘Mandy.’
She was examining the wound on Derek’s skull. ‘What?’ she said, irritated.
‘You better look.’
She was about to growl something fresh, but the look on my face made her jump up. Her joints clicked. Her brow furrowed as she saw the Land Rover and horse box speeding towards the security gates.
‘What the . . .?’
The gates, erected more for privacy than defence against assault, buckled and then burst open as the Land Rover smashed into them. The horse box gave a little jump at the force of the impact.
‘Oh holy fuck,’ said Mandy.
The Land Rover paused briefly as it came to the road.
And then indicated left and turned.
Indicated.
What sort of a getaway driver indicates?
Derek, ignored momentarily, let out another groan, and settled back on to the floor. He looked a little greyer. I called the ambulance. Before I’d finished giving the information, Mandy had dashed out of the lounge, down the hall and into the kitchen. She hadn’t asked me to call the police, so I didn’t. No point in dragging them in while I was within a thousand miles. I told them Derek had fallen, gave them the address and put the phone down. I pulled a throw off the tan leather settee and tucked it in around him. I told him everything would be okay. He nodded and thanked me and mumbled something about Eric.
I hurried out into the yard. I could hear Mandy’s raised voice. Curses.
As I crossed towards the stables Mandy came steaming out trailing anxious-looking stable hands in her wake. She’d a face like thunder.
‘Fucking fuck!’ she yelled.
‘What?’ I asked. She hurried past me.
‘They’ve taken Dan the Man,’ she said coldly, then thumbed back towards the hapless and helpless-looking stable hands and snapped, ‘And those bastards let them.’ She shook her head furiously at them. ‘Get into the house, look after Derek until the ambulance comes.’
They nodded wordlessly and followed in her wake as she raced into the kitchen. I went after her. She picked the keys to the Ferrari off a hook.
‘What’re you . . .?’
‘What do you think? I’m going after them.’
‘They’ve a––’
‘Of course they’ve a headstart. But they’re driving a fucking horse box.’ She jangled the keys. I followed her into a utility room off the kitchen. She lifted another key and opened a cupboard. She took out a shotgun.
‘There’s an ambulance on the way,’ I said.
‘Tell them to send another one,’ she said, smoothly loading the gun.
‘I’ll come too,’ I said.
She looked at me. And damn it if the vaguest hint of suspicion didn’t cross her eyes.
‘Mandy, I didn’t have anything––’
‘Then help me.’ She turned back into the kitchen. She lifted down another set of keys. ‘The Land Rover,’ she said, pressing them into my hand. ‘When we come to the junction they’re either going left for Dublin or right for Navan. Those are our choices.’
She tore along the hall and pulled open the front door. She hurried down the steps and across the gravel to the Ferrari. She paused for the briefest moment and gave me a look of absolute devastation. ‘He’s my life,’ she said.
I nodded. ‘Which way?’ I asked. We locked eyes.
It was feminine intuition against a lifetime’s experience as a hard-bitten reporter and clown.
‘I’ll take Dublin,’ she said.
I nodded once and we climbed into our vehicles.
Mandy was tearing down the drive before I’d found where to insert the key. When I finally made it out through the mangled gates she’d disappeared completely.
I drove down over the bridge where we’d met earlier to the junction, then turned right on to the N3 for Navan. The traffic was heavy, both ways. I crossed against oncoming and received a cacophony of horns for my trouble. I sped. There were all sorts of roads branching off, not to mention lanes and tracks. Whoever had stolen Dan the Man had done the hard bit. Getting lost in horse country wasn’t going to be difficult.
But I kept driving.
Something about the desperation and mistrust in her eyes.
Something about proving I could do something right.
Something about having been to bed with her and feeling things I hadn’t felt since last time.
I drove, and drove, and before I knew it I was coming into Navan.
It was pointless, pointless, pointless.
Hey, did you happen to see the most beautiful horse in the world?
Pointless.
I pulled into a filling station. I bought a Diet Pepsi and a Twix, God juice and God food. There was nothing I could do. There was a coin box outside. I phoned Geordie McClean’s house. While I waited for a response I checked my watch. I’d been on the road for forty minutes. A hesitant voice said, ‘H-hello?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘B-Barney, who’s––’
And then there was some sort of altercation. I heard a muffled ‘Fuck off you munchkin,’ and B-Barney was quickly removed from the phone. Derek said, ‘Who the fuck is this?’
‘Dan. Are you okay?’
‘Sure. Have you found the horse?’
‘No.’
‘Fuck. Where are you?’
‘Navan. She headed for Dublin.’
‘I know. There’s been no word.’
‘Fuck. Did the ambulance not arrive yet?’
‘It did. I told them to piss off. It’s only a scratch.’ He sighed. ‘Fuck. Fuck. Geordie’s going to go through me.’
‘Have you any idea who . . .?’
‘No. Yes. Somebody whacked me from behind. But it won’t be hard to find out. I mean, the gates were closed, everything’s on camera. There’ll be a roll-call for the munchkins and we’ll see who’s missing. If youse had waited we could have worked it out instead of chasing all over the fucking country.’
‘We panicked.’ I sighed. ‘What do I do?’
‘Don’t tell Geordie, and get the horse back.’
‘Thanks a bunch.’
I put the phone down.
It was the smoke that got me.
I’d driven past the turn-off for Ashtown and on towards Dublin. There was nothing to be gained from going back to the stables. She was somewhere ahead of me, she’d a Ferrari, a shotgun and a temper for company. I just had a Land Rover that smelled of horse shit and a head that was full of it. I’d just flashed past the turn-off to a tiny village called Muldudhart when the traffic ahead of me slowed to negotiate the clouds of thick black smoke that were wafting across the road. I pulled into the hard shoulder, then reversed at speed back to the turn-off.
Several hundred yards outside of the village I came to the Ferrari, and beyond it the empty, burning horse box. There was no sign of Mandy. The Ferrari was unlocked. The keys were gone. The shotgun lay on the ground. I picked it up. One chamber had been fired. I cursed and threw it down. Then cursed again and picked it up and wiped whatever fingerprints I’d left with the tail of my shirt. Distantly I heard the sound of a fire engine. Inevitably police would follow. I got back in the Land Rover and drove back to the headquarters of Irish American Racing.
As I approached the mangled gates I saw that Eric was standing guard, another shotgun in his big hands. It meant that Geordie was home. I wound down the window. ‘How’s it going?’ I asked.
‘What do you think?’ he scowled. ‘The big man wants to see you.’
I nodded and drove on. It was only a hundred yards up the lane. I used the time to try and think up a suitable response to the inevitable question. What were you doing when all of this was going on?
Geordie McClean’s face was white with fury. Derek’s head was white with a crudely applied bandage. The safe door remained open. Geordie didn’t question what I was doing there at all. Derek had f
illed him in. I filled them in.
‘No sign of the horse at all?’ Geordie asked.
‘Or your daughter,’ I added, pointedly.
‘Of course.’ He sighed. ‘I just don’t under––’ He let loose with a flurry of curses, then put his hand to his brow and rubbed it hard. ‘I thought Bosco of all people . . .’
‘Who’s Bosco?’ I asked.
Geordie looked at me. ‘None of your business. Dan. Look. I don’t know why Mandy agreed to be interviewed behind my back . . . well, probably because it was behind my back, but it’s over now, things have gotten serious and I have to sort them out. Now, thank you for chasing after Mandy, for the news about the car, I’ll get my own people on to it now. I’d appreciate it if you left it to us. And please, keep this under your hat. My daughter’s life may depend on it.’
I looked from Geordie to Derek, and then up to Eric now standing in the doorway.
‘I want to help,’ I said.
Geordie shook his head. ‘Dan – you’re more of a hindrance than a help.’
‘You don’t understand. I saved Fat Boy McMaster in New York. I can do it again.’
‘It was long ago and it was far away,’ said Geordie, ‘and frankly you’ve gone badly downhill since. Now please . . .’
‘Geordie.’
‘Or to put it another way,’ said Eric, ‘get the fuck out of the house.’
‘Geordie. I wasn’t interviewing your daughter in there.’
