The Horse With My Name (9 page)

‘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 else. 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.