As the ferry rode the swell past the North Stack to cover the last few miles into Holyhead, Gleeson was back in his seat at the window. The bag was empty. There was no money in his clothes except sixty-seven pence in change. Corell’s money now belonged to three poker players who’d had almost equal shares in the past three hours. The anesthetizing effects of the booze were wearing off, and Gleeson stared into the night feeling as bad as he could ever remember. His face was desolate as the lights of the port glinted in his cold, resigned eyes. He’d be as well staying aboard and dropping himself quietly over the side halfway across the sea. It would save him time and worry and an awful lot of pain. He knew he was a dead man.
19
It had been a mild, wet autumn, and winter frosts had not yet been regular enough or sufficiently vicious to kill all the insect life. A swarm of flies fed on the bloodied wounds of the carcass. The horse lay in a shallow stream. Monroe had carried out his promise to mutilate the body and the big bay had been shot twice; once through the forehead, ploughing a hole like a dark sticky-edged pit in the clean white blaze, and again just below the left ear leaving brain matter smeared around the exit wound. The entry hole the bullet made lay submerged in the stream causing water to suck and blow, spouting at the flies, unsettling them for a moment before they crowded back. The horse’s neck and flanks carried deep crescent-shaped slash marks. It was a week before they found him. The stream ran through an old abandoned construction site in Northamptonshire, on land that had been mapped out for a bypass until objectors got their way.
In Monroe’s last call to Quigley, the killer had offered a clue; Think of being a bookie at Newbury. What’s behind you and what’s in front of you?’ and he’d laughed and hung up. Nobody had been able to decipher the cryptic message. A man walking his dog found the body. When they went to recover it in a horse ambulance borrowed from Newbury racecourse, the meaning of the clue dawned on Frankie and he said to Stonebanks, ‘If you’re a bookie at Newbury, behind you is the water jump and in front of you is the new stand they’re building. A construction site.’
Stonebanks nodded. ‘He must have whiled away a nice evening thinking that up. Bloody lunatic.’
The police were there as Stonebanks backed the trailer as close to the bank of the stream as he dared. Stonebanks and Frankie, wellingtons on, waded into the water hauling the chain and Frankie winced as he lifted the eyeless bloodied head to let Stonebanks ease the heavy links around the horse’s neck. A sergeant and a constable with a camera watched from above, a darkening sky behind them, as Stonebanks secured the chain and Frankie went back to start the winch motor. The mechanism ground noisily, gradually taking up the slack in the thick chain until it tightened around the horse’s neck, squeezing brown blood from the eyeballs and exit wounds as the big body started moving slowly up the shallow banking.
Stonebanks could see that the underside was almost hairless, the flesh shrivelled from being submerged for so long, and he shook his head in disgust. He’d watched this horse racing more than once. It had been one of the most athletic, majestic jumpers of fences he’d ever seen. Those ripped and wasted muscles had propelled the half-ton thoroughbred around miles of track and over hundreds of jumps. And he ended up like this because of some madman.
They drove the carcass south to an abattoir to be kept in cold storage until the forensic people had seen it.
Back in his house in Lambourn, an excited Gerry Monroe had been waiting all week for the news to break.
It was late when Frankie got home. The cottage seemed even quieter than usual. It was a perfectly still night, barely a leaf rustled. A letter lay on the mat. Frankie went over by the window where, as ever, he’d left the lamp burning. He switched the kettle on and opened the envelope. It was from Martin Broxton, the trainer of Zuiderzie, and Frankie coloured a little as he recalled the emotional letter he’d sent pouring out his life story after Zuiderzie’s Warwick victory.
It was a kind letter, handwritten and, Frankie thought, striking exactly the right note of sympathy and interest in Kathy’s involvement with the horse. But Frankie’s brows creased in the lamplight as he read the Zuiderzie had not survived more than a few hours after the race. The gelding had been struck by some mystery illness and had been put down. Broxton said he realized that this would come as a blow to Frankie on top of the troubles he already had, and that all at the yard missed the horse, who’d been a real character. But, said the trainer, ‘That’s racing,’ a statement Frankie had heard and read hundreds of times over the years he’d followed the sport. That calm acceptance of the heartbreaks as well as the triumphs seemed to be typical of most people who were in the game in any professional capacity. Frankie identified with it easily, but the news of the horse’s death hit him much harder than he’d expected. Zuiderzie had been the only living, breathing thing that he and Kathy still shared, as a memory, a touchstone. Frankie thought of his mother again, and of God, and wondered if he had indeed been cursed.
The other dead horse made front-page headlines in next day’s Racing Post: ULYSSES SLAUGHTERED. KIDNAPPED GOLD CUP FAVOURITE FOUND DEAD IN STREAM.
There was a picture of Robert Archibald, Jockey Club Security Department Chief on page three. He said he’d been doing everything he could to find the killer of Ulysses and that all trainers should take precautions to protect their charges as another kidnapping could not be ruled out.
‘Damn right it can’t,’ said Gerry Monroe aloud as he read it. ‘Damn right.’ He folded the paper and pushed it aside then spun on the swivel chair to tap his keyboard and bring the thoroughbred passport database on to the big bright screen.
After days and nights of research, Gerry Monroe decided on his next kidnapping target. He was going to have to travel north for this one if it was to be taken from the stable. He’d need to check the place out first. He knew Lambourn inside out, and he’d known how easy it would be to take Ulysses from Jack Quigley’s place. But Graham Cassidy, who trained the very promising stayer, Angel Gabriel, was a stranger to him.
Cassidy’s was a small stable up on the Shropshire-Cheshire border. The yard had never hit the headlines; it hadn’t had anything good enough, but Monroe had checked the press cuttings and he knew Angel Gabriel had the right mix. The articles told him the horse was a precious family pet who all but lived in the house with the Cassidy family. The fact that the big chaser was also a live Grand National prospect was a bonus; it helped Monroe put a commercial value on the horse as well as a sentimental one. He wouldn’t go so high this time because he wanted to have a realistic chance of collecting the ransom.
The press cuttings also told Monroe that the Cassidy family, with their very generous income from Mrs Cassidy’s children’s books, had no money worries. In fact, they seemed the perfect happy family with their twenty-year marriage and two smart kids, their beautiful cottage home adjoining the yard in the lush countryside away from all the backbiting and jealousy of the big training centres like Lambourn. The perfect happy family. Monroe smiled to himself and said aloud, ‘Not for much longer.’
The postmark and the typeface of the address showing through the window told Maggie Cassidy that another royalty cheque had arrived. She loved how they tended to come on Monday mornings to make that normally dreariest of days much easier to face.
She kissed the envelope and carried it back to the sunny sitting room, where a half-finished cup of coffee and a just-lit cigarette in an ashtray sat on the polished circular table next to the big floral easy chair. Graham, as ever, was out with the horses. Billy and Jane were at school. A fine frost blanketed the countryside, working with the sun to cast that wonderful shade of winter light that Maggie loved. She’d had a huge picture window put in, almost half the size of the south-facing wall, so she could watch the weather and the light as the seasons came and went.
Maggie smiled as she luxuriated in opening the envelope, sliding her index finger into the gap at the top and slowly pulling the gummed ridge away. She didn’t know how much the c
heque would be for and she loved not knowing. Since the books had begun to sell really well and had been translated into more than fifteen languages, there was no way of keeping track of royalties. She just had to wait until the statement and the cheque came from her London agent.
This little ritual Maggie was going through showed her how much this money meant to her. All the years of struggling to survive made these moments so sweet.
The flap was fully open now. She could see the computer-generated codes on the edge of the cheque. She stopped and smiled, sipped coffee, drew deeply on her cigarette then eased the paperwork out and slowly plucked the cheque from the folds of the statement: £57,648.92
Her smile widened slowly and she read the figures again and checked the written amount to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake. Almost sixty thousand. This was the biggest one she’d ever had. And her agent was working on an auction deal for her next three books, which he said, might bring in as much as half a million.
She laid her head back on the soft upholstery, closed her eyes and wondered, not for the first time, if this was really happening. They’d struggled for years as a family, working so hard, all of them, to try and fulfil the dream that had started as just Graham’s - to win the Grand National. Not just to train the winner of the great race but to breed it, rear it, own it. At the outset, when they’d first met, Graham’s dream had been to ride it too. But he’d been just twenty-five then. When he hit forty, he’d conceded that part of the fantasy to encroaching age and expanding waistline. But he still badly wanted the other two legs of what he called his ‘dream treble’.
It was an obsession with him, one that had never dimmed. His determination, confidence and enthusiasm for realizing the dream had been a big factor in her falling for him. She loved the passion he showed. At the beginning, she’d have preferred that passion to be for her, but she accepted that even if it had been, it would have faded many years ago, tarnished by familiarity, and the ravages of time on her looks and figure. No, Graham’s passion was sustainable because it never needed to be focused on just one creature. If a horse was never going to make the grade, it was quickly dismissed from her husband’s thoughts, relegated to run in small races. A new focus was sought, a new horse, sleek, muscular, with a bold eye, a regal head; ‘the Look of Eagles’ Graham called it.
She’d decided it was probably best his dream wasn’t of what she herself might achieve for him, or she would have been traded in and replaced several times over the years. She knew she’d never be Graham’s number-one love, but he was rock-steady as a man and as a husband, and Maggie had come to value this above all. Some of her friends had much more ‘interesting’ spouses; life-and-soul types, romancers, off-the-wall men who could shock and surprise. But they could also be unfaithful, drink too much, abuse their wives and display most of the other flaws of unpredictable men. Graham would do fine for Maggie every time.
Staring at the cheque, she was trying to figure out what she’d buy him for Christmas. Her head went back again, her eyes closing slowly. This would be their third Christmas where debts would present no worries. Rather than resent money and what it did, or what lack of it did, as she’d done for most of her Christmases, she’d quickly learned to love it, almost to covet it. That scared her because this was the type of love stained by constant fear, a terrible worry that you’ll lose your lover. That he’ll up and go one day just when you were getting used to all the pleasure and security he’d brought. Disappear in the night, no forwarding address.
Maggie clutched the cheque tighter and tried to push the fear from her mind. She was almost fifty years old. If her agent could land this big deal, she could kill this terror, this dread of loss, once and for all. It wasn’t as though she and Graham had another fifty years to survive. Twenty-five, maybe thirty. Half a million would be enough for that, wouldn’t it?
She got up and went out to the yard. In the middle of the quadrangle made by the boxes, a chestnut mare called Mrs Molly stood sweating. Hazel, her blonde groom, held the horse’s bridle while Graham Cassidy felt the mare’s nearside foreleg for signs of heat, which would signify a return of the tendon injury Mrs Molly, had suffered more than a year ago.
Maggie tiptoed quietly toward them. The pitched roof of the stable boxes still showed a frosty collar just above the guttering where it was in the shade. Heat rising from the horses within had helped thaw the rooftops. But it was still cold, enough for the breaths of all four in the yard and the steam rising gently from Mrs Molly to be seen clear and white.
Hazel smiled as Maggie approached holding a finger to her lips, eyebrows raised. Graham was bent double. She stood behind him, waited until he straightened then softly put her hands over his eyes, still cradling the cheque in her palms. ‘I smell money,’ he said.
‘How much do you smell?’ asked Maggie, deepening her voice, mock-mysterious.
Her husband took a deep sniff. ‘I smell enough to buy me that new suit I want for Christmas.’ Maggie continued in the deep voice, ‘Then you’re only smelling the second line of the cheque.’ She rose on tiptoes to push the cheque a foot away from his face, still holding it with two hands.
He opened his eyes. ‘Good God!’ he said. ‘I should have said I smelt a new horse!’
Maggie laughed out loud. ‘No chance!’
Hazel smiled but cursed them silently for not telling how much it was.
When Maggie told her children, at dinner, and showed them the cheque, their reactions reflected their characters and their own desires. Billy, thirteen, his thick light-brown hair, longish face and sharp jaw making him look already much like his father, spent most of his waking hours trying to come up with the ‘big idea’ that would make him millions. He scanned the internet for stories of young men like himself who’d made their fortunes in the world of e-commerce, even though he’d decided that all the seats were taken in that particular millionaires’ stadium. Billy knew he’d have to invent something completely different to make his fortune. But he reckoned he’d a very good chance of doing that because all the entrepreneurs were falling over each other to come up with the next high- tech scheme. This convinced him that if he concentrated on the more practical, solid, day-to-day things people needed, then he’d be much more likely to succeed. He’d probably even overtake these guys. The internet bubble had to burst - had to. He was convinced of it.
‘Aw Mum! Brilliant!’ Billy said as he held the cheque. ‘All that just for writing silly stuff for kids and drawing a few pictures! ‘
Smiling and reaching to take the cheque back, Maggie said, ‘Yes, easy, isn’t it? Why don’t you try it, Billy boy?’
He shrugged. ‘I would but it’s too boring. I’d rather use my brain inventing things like what I’ve just come up with. And it’s very lucky for you Mum that you’ve got that money ‘cause now you’ll have a chance to take a stake in my invention.’
‘Which is what?’ Maggie asked, pouring gravy over her beef and glancing at Graham and Jane, who were smiling knowingly and shaking their heads.
Billy chewed and smiled too and he was nodding gently as if to say, ‘Go on, shake your heads and mock but one day I’ll be rich and you won’t be shaking your heads then.’ He said, ‘Mum, you need to promise to stake me for a patent application first.’
‘Stake you? Stake you! Have you been watching those old gangster movies again?’
He coloured slightly. ‘Nooo, Mum, that’s what we say in the business. An investment for you.’ Maggie nodded as though sizing up the proposal. She cut a piece of beef. ‘And how much do these patent applications cost?’
‘Oh, about five grand would do it, I would think.’
‘Five grand! To send a letter to somewhere telling people what you’ve thought up?’
‘It’s not like that Mum, there’s lots of paperwork and research and stuff to do. Five grand’d just be for the European rights to the Hot -’ he stopped himself.
His sister said, ‘To the hot what?’
Billy was annoyed wit
h himself for almost giving it away. He looked across at Maggie. ‘Mum, are you in?’
‘I might be. Depends what comes after the hot.’
There was a big pause now and Billy felt the eyes of his whole family on him. They’d laughed at him before, plenty of times. He knew they didn’t really mean to hurt him, but they did. He was the only one in the family who wasn’t really great at something and he wanted to be, wanted to be the same as them. As good at something as his dad was at training horses; as good at something as his mum was at writing; as good at something as Jane was at being beautiful and having lots of friends and fund-raising and all the other stuff she did.
And coming up with ideas was all he could really do. He wasn’t very good at school, didn’t like it much. Hated being around girls because he felt so embarrassed and awkward at not having anything to say, to talk about, like being a good footballer or runner or PlayStation wizard like the others were. But the power of his mind was promising. He knew that, even if nobody else did.
‘Come on Billy,’ Jane said, ‘The hot what? The hot water bottle? I’m afraid you’re too late for that!’
They were waiting. Billy tried to look defiant as he said, ‘The Hot Harrow.’
There was a silence for a few moments then Graham said, ‘The what?’
‘The Hot Harrow.’ Billy was pleased that he’d stunned them with this one and his enthusiasm returned. ‘It’s especially important for you, Dad. I thought of it last weekend when we were harrowing the all-weather gallop. I know it’s supposed to be all-weather but it isn’t really, is it?’
‘Not really, I suppose,’ his father said.
‘Because it gets quite hard packed if the frost gets into it and you need to harrow it for ages before a horse can even set foot on it.’
For Your Sins: previously published as Joseph's Mansions Page 9
