The Horse With My Name

by Bateman

‘Better the devil you know, eh?’

  I shook my head. ‘You’re quite pleased with her really, aren’t you? Daddy’s girl nearly got away with it.’

  He nodded as he walked off. ‘Yup,’ he said, as much to himself as anyone, ‘she’s certainly full of spunk.’

  ‘I know,’ I called after him, ‘mostly mine.’

  I was hoping for a reaction, but there was nothing. Derek and Eric smirked when they realised he hadn’t heard. Geordie and Mandy started arguing again beside the car, but I’d had enough of it. I turned and wandered back into the stable. I was thinking that journalism was too dangerous for me. Even writing biographies and novels had proved detrimental to my health. I needed an ordinary, dull job. Something to do with big complicated forms or digging holes for no obvious reason. I could paint long walls white, and then repaint them the next day black. I could count pebbles on the beach or hunt for fossils. I could shampoo dogs or replace tiles on old roofs. I could sell hot dogs by the seaside or collect hymn books in church.

  I needed excitement like I needed a hole in the head.

  I needed the love of a good woman, and by good I mean one who goes to church on Sundays and wears a bonnet and makes cakes. We wouldn’t bother with sex; it only complicates things. I would become a monk. I would live on an island, although not Wrathlin. I would fish. I would study ancient myths and legends or become an astrologer.

  I would phone Patricia and ask her advice.

  I needed a mobile phone. That would solve a lot of my problems. I could talk to her any time, any place, anywhere. And she to me. If she’d only known where I was half the time, I’m sure she would have called. She’s had her own dark moments of late, and no matter what the state of our love life, she knows there’s only one person in the world who understands her. And it ain’t some fucker with a beard.

  Another thing: I didn’t want to smell horses ever in my life again.

  I wandered back towards the stable doors. I’d thought they were all gone, I’d heard an engine and not bothered to turn, but as I was about to step back out into the sunshine I realised that what I’d heard wasn’t their departure, but another vehicle arriving. And now that I was closer, the sound of raised voices.

  I moved deftly into the shadows.

  Derek and Eric had their shotguns raised and pointed at a Land Rover and horse box parked in the middle of the triangle. Bending over the bonnet, pointing guns, were Jimmy the Chicken, Oil Paintings and Dry Cleaner.

  Jesus. Any moment now Brian Rix would enter stage left with his trousers around his knees.

  Didn’t anyone ever give up?

  I knew instantly what had happened.

  They’d been reading the Horse Whisperer as well.

  ‘I won’t tell you again,’ Jimmy the Chicken was shouting, ‘put those fucking guns down!’

  Derek and Eric held firm.

  ‘Now!’ yelled Oil Paintings.

  ‘Why don’t you put yours down?’ Derek shouted back.

  I pressed myself into the stable door frame. Jimmy and Co. hadn’t spotted me yet. If I backed up quiet as a mouse with slippers I could exit through the door at the other end of the stables. Then run away and really get that less dangerous job.

  ‘Put your fucking guns down or the fucking horse gets it!’

  They had their guns trained on Dan the Man.

  ‘Be sensible!’ shouted Derek. ‘It’s the fucking horse you want.’

  ‘Don’t tell us what we want, you cunt!’ Jimmy shouted back.

  Geordie said, ‘Come on now, take it easy, there’s no need for all this, let’s just settle down, we’ll work something out.’

  ‘Daddy! They’re the ones killed Mummy!’ Geordie’s eyes narrowed as they turned to his daughter. ‘They are! Ask Dan!’ She pointed towards my shadows. Guns shifted. ‘Please don’t let them take my horse!’

  ‘Get the fuck outta there!’ Dry Cleaner yelled. ‘And don’t try anything stupid.’

  As if.

  I stepped shyly into the limelight, hands raised. ‘I saw nothing,’ I said. ‘I didn’t have my contacts in.’

  I don’t know about horse brains, but it looked like Dan the Man was starting to feel the tension. He was raising up on two legs and whinnying. Mandy jumped to grab hold of the leather. After two attempts she got it and began to talk gently to him, holding him firmly down at the same time. She also managed to look thunderously from her dad to me to Jimmy the Chicken.

  ‘We want the fucking horse, so let him go!’

  ‘Can’t do that,’ Derek growled, his eyes flitting from Jimmy, to Oil, to Dry.

  Jimmy moved slowly out from behind the Land Rover. ‘We’re going to come over there and take him. Just stay where you are and no one’ll get hurt!’

  ‘You come any closer I’ll blow your fucking arms off, and that will hurt.’

  ‘Then let him go!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘That horse is ours!’

  ‘Ours!’

  ‘He’s mine!’ Mandy yelled.

  ‘Shut up, Mandy!’ shouted Geordie.

  ‘No! He’s mine!’

  ‘He’s ours!’ yelled Jimmy the Chicken, coming closer, gun raised, held tight, sweat on his brow. Oil Paintings and Dry Cleaner followed, slowly, cautiously. Derek and Eric moved between the advancing trio and the horse, guns held just as high, eyes narrowed, fingers already squeezing lightly on triggers, just waiting for the final application of pressure.

  Soon the only thing between the Jimmy camp and the Geordie camp was little old me, hands aloft and heart in my shoes.

  There was almost complete silence. I looked from one set of gun barrels to the other. I swallowed. ‘I guess this is what they call a Mexican stand-off,’ I said in a vain attempt to keep things light.

  ‘No,’ replied a voice from the roof of the barn, ‘this is what you call a Mexican stand-off.’

  Five Chinamen, five guns. Holy manoley.

  27

  Shouting, yelling, five guns up top, three on one side, two on the other, five and three and two makes . . . ten. Say six bullets apiece – although six as a figure is a hangover from Western six-guns and movies where the bad guy has used up all his bullets but only the good guy knows it – so, say, for inflation and modern technology, ten bullets apiece . . . .minus Derek and Eric’s shotguns of course, two apiece, presuming they’re double-barrelled, makes a grand total of . . .

  Shut up!

  Stop that head whirring!

  One moment, one moment amidst the yelling and swearing, one moment on one hair trigger and we would all be dead, including the horse with my name. It needed someone to stop it, someone with the will power, the tact, the diplomacy and the bravery to stand up and be counted.

  Cometh the moment, cometh the man.

  Bosco stepped out of the stable, hands raised, and for a moment all guns pointed to him. ‘This isn’t going to helth anyone,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Geordie.

  ‘What?’ said Dry Cleaner.

  ‘What?’ said the English-sounding Chinese.

  ‘This isn’t going to helth anyone,’ Bosco repeated.

  ‘Helth?’ said Geordie.

  ‘Help,’ said Mandy. ‘If your brutes hadn’t knocked his teeth out he’d be able to say it properly. Help,’ she repeated.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Bosco. ‘Listen, folks, we’re all going to end up dead, what’s the pointh in that?’

  ‘Pointh?’ said Oil Paintings.

  From above came a low roll of laughter from the lead Chinese. Jimmy the Chicken grinned, and lowered his gun a fraction. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘fair point. Maybe we all need to cool off, no point in throwing the bathwater out.’

  Derek and Eric, one gun on the Chicken crew and one on the Chinese, remained steady as rocks. Geordie McClean moved up behind them and gently put his hands on their shoulders. They relaxed, just a little. Everyone looked to the Chinese. Their team leader lowered his gun, the others kept theirs in place.

  ‘Okay,’ said the C
hinese. ‘We will talk. With safeguards. One representative from each side to meet in the middle of the square.’

  ‘It’s a triangle,’ I whispered.

  ‘Okay?’ said the Chinese.

  Eyes met eyes. The impasse seemed to stretch interminably.

  Then Geordie made the first move, walking confidently across the cobbles, everyone watching. Even the horse. There was a moment of panic when he reached into his pocket as Jimmy the Chicken went to join him, but Geordie slowed down enough to show that he was only getting a cigar out. He offered one to Jimmy, who refused. Then came the Chinese. I half expected him to do a double somersault from the roof and land barefoot on the cobbles, his chest bare, his lethal hands raised, ready to inflict mayhem, but as it was he merely disappeared for a minute while he made his way down and reappeared through the stable doors, carefully brushing bits of straw off his immaculate Armani suit. Enter the Clothes Horse.

  Mandy, leading Dan the Man, came and stood by my side. She slipped her hand into mine and squeezed. I gave her an encouraging squeeze back. We watched. We couldn’t hear what they were saying across the way, it was all conducted in urgent whispers, but the finger-pointing gave us an indication that things had not started well.

  ‘Jockeying for position,’ I said.

  Then they split and returned to their respective sides. Bar Geordie, of course, who stayed where he was, puffing quietly on his cigar, keeping his own counsel. Once he nodded across at Mandy, but when she ignored him he did not look in her direction again. After five minutes Jimmy walked back across to Geordie. A minute later the Chinese joined them and they began another session.

  ‘How can he even talk to those scumbags?’ Mandy whispered.

  ‘Who’re we talking about here?’ I murmured back.

  ‘Stop it. You know what I mean.’

  ‘As Michael Corleone would say, it’s just business.’

  ‘Who’s Michael Corleone?’

  ‘The Godfather.’

  ‘Whose godfather?’

  ‘The film.’ She looked blankly at me. ‘You’ve never seen The Godfather? The film? Al Pacino. Marlon Brando.’

  She shook her head. ‘Why, is it any good?’

  ‘It’s one of the greatest films ever made. Surpassed only by Godfather II. The winning sequence was rather dashed by Godfather III. I can’t believe you haven’t seen any of them.’

  ‘I’ve better things to do with my time.’

  ‘Like what?’ She patted Dan the Man. ‘Oh please,’ I said. ‘Sitting on a brown horse jumping over fences. Get a life.’

  ‘As opposed to sitting in a dark room watching pretend things.’

  ‘Shhh. Here they come. Nevetheless, I enjoyed our chat. We should go out on a date. To the pictures. Or a ride, whatever takes your fancy.’

  ‘Why are they walking in our direction?’

  ‘Your direction.’

  ‘I don’t like this.’

  ‘Neither do I. Though slightly better than if it was my direction.’

  ‘Mandy.’ Geordie stopped in front of his daughter, flanked by Jimmy the Chicken and the Chinese. I stepped to one side, just to give them space. ‘Mandy,’ Geordie said again.

  ‘Whatever it is, the answer is no.’

  ‘Mandy, don’t say that. Hear us out.’

  ‘Or we’ll kill you,’ said Jimmy the Chicken.

  ‘Stop that!’ Geordie barked. There was another moment where guns were raised all around, then it slowly passed. Mandy looked from her father to the other two, then returned her disappointed gaze to Geordie.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Mandy, we have a problem. Nobody wants to get hurt here.’ He clasped his hands together. ‘We’re from Belfast, so we know violence doesn’t get anyone anywhere, these days it’s all about compromise and taking the bomb and the bullet out of the equation.’

  ‘Stop the bullshit, Daddy, and tell me what youse want.’

  ‘My girl, indeed.’ He sighed. ‘Okay. Mandy. In order for us all to come out of this healthy, and indeed wealthy, we’ve decided to take a gamble. Rightly or wrongly, these gentlemen are owed money by your mother, and they believe, by association, by me as well. I simply don’t have the money to pay them. As you must have suspected, businesswise things have not been going well. The stables, with the exception of Dan the Man, have been a disaster. Plenty of little winners, but not enough to keep my head above water. Everything I have is mortgaged to the hilt. I can barely meet the bloody payments as it is.’

  ‘Get on with it!’ the Chinese hissed.

  ‘Okay. Okay. Mandy, love, Dan the Man is the only thing that can save me, and us. There are two alternatives – this ends in a bloodbath or we draw up an agreement, here and now, splitting ownership of Dan the Man three ways. You and me––’

  ‘That’s two––’ Mandy began.

  ‘That’s one,’ said Jimmy the Chicken. ‘You and her’s one.’

  ‘I know. I know,’ said Geordie. ‘Just stay with me on this honey, trust me.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Please. Listen. Jimmy, here, is two, and the Chinese delegation is three. We split Dan the Man three ways. I know it’s not what you want, but at least we all live to fight another day, and we make some money when we come to sell him.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Mandy said.

  ‘What’s not to understand?’ Jimmy the Chicken snapped.

  ‘You said it was a gamble. You said you’d decided to take a gamble. Where’s the gamble? You’re just selling me out. Big gamble.’

  Geordie glanced at Jimmy and the Chinese, then cleared his throat. ‘Well that’s where you come in. Your dream’s going to come true. Just like I promised.’

  Mandy looked suspiciously around the three of them. ‘Meaning . . .?’

  ‘Meaning you’re gonna ride the big fella in the National,’ said Jimmy the Chicken. ‘He’ll be worth ten times as much if he wins.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t win,’ said the Chinese, ‘we’re going to kill your father.’

  It was a rogues’ gallery all right, and could never be anything other than a temporary alliance. But in the strange way that bizarre ideas sometimes capture the public imagination, so their ridiculous gamble came to be regarded as something else entirely, as a sound business investment that would pay great dividends. Once Mandy accepted that she had no choice but to ride in the Grand National, the air of hostitility that had surrounded the negotiations lifted; guns weren’t exactly put away, but they were certainly lowered. Almost immediately the players began to place bets amongst themselves as to the winning time, the second-placed horse, third, fourth, first to fall, first riderless horse to finish, first to be put down, first to injure a drunken spectator, all spending the money none of them yet possessed, nor indeed was likely to. It was fascinating, or would have been if I didn’t know that all three parties had at one time or another tried to kill me; it was probably the only thing they all had in common.

  Mandy hurried Dan the Man into a horse box. Geordie, Jimmy and the Chinese agreed that Bosco would go with her to provide support. They weren’t worried about her trying any funny stuff. After all, they had her dad. And for all the big deal she made about hating him, I knew she wouldn’t let him be killed.

  I said, ‘Maybe I should go too.’

  ‘Maybe you should shut the fuck up and sit there,’ Geordie replied.

  ‘Do you want me to go with her, boss?’ Derek said.

  Geordie shook his head. ‘No. Stay here. We’d be outgunned for sure if things turn nasty.’ He turned to look at Jimmy the Chicken, chatting with the Chinese over to the left. He gave a slight shake of his head. ‘The things you do,’ he said to himself as much as anyone.

  Bosco opened the Land Rover door and climbed in. Mandy finished securing the horse box and then hurried round to the passenger door. She stopped, looked at me, then said, ‘See you later alligator.’

  ‘In a while crocodile.’

  As she went to close the door, Geordie took ho
ld of it.

  ‘Mandy,’ he said. ‘Wait.’

  ‘I haven’t time. I’ve still to get to the fucking races. I have to give him a run-out. He’ll be in no shape to run if he doesn’t.’

  ‘Just . . . I’m sorry. Your mum and I . . . we’ve been playing games all our lives. We loved each other, we just couldn’t . . . well, you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Well then believe me. I know I promised Dan the Man to you. But some things are more important. Win the race, we’ll work it out. And if you don’t want to win it for me, then win it for her.’

  ‘I always was.’

  ‘Okay. Good luck.’

  She turned away. She stared straight ahead as Bosco drove her out of the stable yard towards the biggest race of her life.

  And mine.

  28

  Geordie McClean entered the house like he owned it. Just pushed open the snibbed front door and walked into the hall. We followed in behind. The Chinese crew went into the lounge on the left and switched on a television while Jimmy the Chicken, Oil Paintings and Dry Cleaner retired to the kitchen to look for drink, pausing only to rip the telephone from the wall.

  Typically, each of them carried a mobile phone, but it was agreed that these would be off limits for the duration of the race, just in case anyone tried to pull a fast one. However, they all had businesses of one shade or another to oversee, so I was nominated, seconded and elected as Mobile Phone Carrier with the strict instruction to answer all incoming calls, taking only a message, and the warning that I’d be put to death if I attempted to make an outgoing call. I was to remain in plain sight. I had eleven mobile phones switched on and secreted in various cavities about my body. Even if I survived this particular adventure, I would probably die from a brain tumour.

  The house was ramshackle and smelled of horses. The owner of the stables had several runners in the support races at Aintree and had taken most of her staff with her. Those who remained were tied up in the cellar. Four stable lads and a stable girl. Nicely counterbalanced by the unstable gangsters already getting excited about the racing on the TV upstairs. I sat at a table in the dining room opposite Geordie McClean. A sliding glass door gave us a view of the lounge beyond with its widescreen television. I leaned across and lifted a banana from a bowl in the centre of the table. I peeled it and took a bite, though only after some hesitation. I had to be careful. After scoffing the rest of the Starbursts on the train, I didn’t want to overdose on goodness. Geordie took an apple. He rubbed it on his coat, then took a bite.