Running Scared (The Eddie Malloy series Book 4)

by Richard Pitman

  ‘I’m not saying that Malloy. You’re twisting my words, as usual.’

  I got up and turned to face him at eye level. ‘What are you saying then? You’re talking like Bill almost deserved this.’

  ‘Did I say that?’ He had both hands open, appealing to the others. Nobody responded. Neumann said, ‘The guy was obviously on his way out. I don’t know what he was taking but it would’ve been a matter of time before he did one of us some damage in a race. Don’t all tell me you’re not relieved when it comes down to it? And now you won’t need to keep covering up for him either. They guy’s in a better place. We’ll all be there someday.’

  I looked at him and he held my gaze. ‘You’re a heartless fucker Neumann.’

  ‘Listen to you Malloy! Yesterday, you’re picking the guy up after he takes a swan dive at Worcester. Then you haul him back. Then you lie yourself blue in the face to the Stewards. For what? What did Bill Keating ever do for you?’

  ‘Is that your measurement of value Neumann, do unto others? As it happens, Bill Keating did a hell of a lot for me, but never mind that, one of the things Bill loved about this life was the camaraderie. A large part of what kept him going was just being in the changing room every day. A Band of Brothers he used to call it. Some fucking brother you turned out to be.’

  ‘Bill was a romancer. I’m a realist.’

  ‘Well do me a favour. Bill’s not dead a day yet. Save your realism for when I’m not around, eh?’

  ‘Malloy, if you don’t like it, there’s the door. Nobody tells me what to say or when to say it.’

  ‘Freedom of speech, eh? Well, I’m all for that. You’re a worthless piece of shit. How do you like that? Now I’m going through that door. If you want to sort things out here and now, I’ll see you outside.’

  I headed for the showers. The other six who’d been in the sauna followed me. Neumann stayed inside.

  The best I could do was a third from three rides. I was finished before the fourth race. Normally I’d have hung around till the last waiting for a spare, but I showered and changed and headed for Cathy Keating’s house.

  Cathy leased a big farm at the head of the valley in Lambourn. She’d been running a livery and horse transport business from there for five years and running it well. That had been one of the reasons behind the marriage breakup. Cathy had always been full of drive and ambition and so had Bill.

  Cathy ended up a top businesswoman. Bill ended up a journeyman jockey; he couldn’t face being second best in his marriage as well as his career.

  It was a long time since I’d been to the Keating place. I turned in off the main road in the dusk and my car bumped and wallowed through a minefield of potholes on the driveway. The bouncing headlights showed weeds on the perimeter of paddocks and a few fence spars were broken.

  As I approached the big parking area in front of the house, the surface was smoother and my lights picked out black letters on the blue background of a horsebox: CATHY KEATING EQUINE TRANSPORT. Outside the front door was a police car. I switched off the engine and waited.

  Twenty minutes later two police officers came out, putting on their hats. Cathy was with them and she saw my car and crouched as though trying to see if anyone was inside. I got out. ‘Cathy, it’s me, Eddie, Eddie Malloy. ‘She raised a hand in acknowledgment, ‘Be right with you, Eddie.’ She walked the few steps to the police car. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but her hands were busy, emphasizing her point. The police car turned and swung past, the woman in the passenger side nodding to me. Cathy approached. We hugged lightly, socially, and she withdrew quickly from it. She managed to smile, ‘You’re a fair way from home,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to offer my condolences. Didn’t want to do it by phone.’

  ‘I appreciate it. Come in. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  I sat at the big pine table watching her make tea, thinking how many folk in the horse business almost lived in their kitchens. Often the largest room in the house and always with a table that could seat at least ten, there were warm stoves, dog beds, old radios, framed pictures of past glories, an atmosphere of hope, a den of plans and dreams. But not this one, not tonight.

  Cathy wore jodhpurs and tan boots and a maroon sweater. Bill was dead but horses still needed looking after. She brought two mugs, sat opposite me and pushed her chestnut hair behind her ear. I saw strain but no signs of tears in her brown eyes.

  ‘How are the children?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m ashamed to say I don’t know. I don’t know how they are. They’ve hardly said a word. They’ve just stayed together, in silence. Like Siamese twins. As though it’s just them now and I don’t matter.’

  ‘Shock.’

  She nodded. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I heard Amy found him.’

  Her hands cupped the mug. She stared into it, nodding slowly. ‘He’d been here a while, at the party. It was her birthday, Amy’s’

  ‘Bill told me. I saw him yesterday at Worcester. He had a fall and didn’t seem great. I offered a bed but he said he wanted to get home for Amy’s party.’

  ‘He was a good father.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘A good father. A crap husband. No, that’s not fair. We were a crap couple. Good parents. Bad spouses.’

  Cathy wasn’t one for platitudes so I kept quiet. She said, ‘Anyway, he broke off about eight to pick up two horses at Pete Curland’s. He planned to make an early start for Malton with them this morning. He got back. I saw him drive in. For some reason he steered right over by the paddock down by the hedge and parked there. Ten minutes later, I looked across and the engine was still running. I thought he was on the phone. I forgot about it and the kids did too and carried on with their party. I let them stay up late and it was after eleven when the girls went to get him and say goodnight. And that was it.’

  ‘I heard the horses were still in there.’

  ‘Both of them. Dead. Which is why I’m wearing my tongue out for an hour before you arrived, trying to tell the cops Bill might have killed himself but he wouldn’t have killed a horse along with him, never mind two. And he’d never, ever have done it on Amy’s birthday, or Kate’s, or even mine.’

  ‘They’re saying it’s suicide?’

  ‘They’re saying suspicious circumstances when you ask them but their glazed over eyes and all the other body language is saying “the man punched a hole in the exhaust pipe directly below a floor vent and he’s found with his face over the vent and his lungs full of carbon monoxide” You do the math dear.’

  ‘They can’t have done an autopsy yet?’

  She shook her head. ‘Waiting for guidance from the coroner. So they say.’ She drank tea.

  ‘So how did you leave things with the police?’

  ‘I told them I want it properly investigated, that they can’t just settle on a suicide verdict.’

  ‘And did they ask you the obvious, then?’

  ‘A to Z. “Did he have any enemies?” “Had he been in trouble with anyone?” “Did he owe money to anybody except a bank?” “Had your divorce been acrimonious?”

  She managed a wry, strained smile at that, ‘I said, “Acrimonious enough that I’d have wanted to kill him? On my daughter’s eighth birthday? With two horses belonging to my customer in the fucking back?”’

  I stayed half an hour longer. The girls remained upstairs and Cathy had started on brandy by the time I left. On the long drive home I knew she was right about Bill, the Bill Keating we all knew wouldn’t have killed himself at all, never mind in those circumstances. But he hadn’t been the Bill we all knew for a long while. I wondered what the police would discover, especially in his medical records.

  5

  I didn’t see Cathy Keating again until Bill’s funeral, a month later. She’d fought that long to keep the inquiry going. The autopsy had revealed significant traces of heroin in Bill’s blood and his arms showed puncture marks. It also uncovered a degree of brain damage “consistent with a number of falls from horses travelling
at speed”. When I heard that, a lot of what we’d been seeing with Bill in those final weeks began clicking into place. But cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning from exhaust fumes.

  In Bill’s flat police discovered a number of letters to Cathy, some unfinished but all reflecting Bill’s despair over the way his life had turned out. In some he talked of suffering headaches so severe, they’d made him want to end it all. Several mentioned suicide over his marriage break up and the guilt he felt about his daughters not growing up in a “happy household”. No ‘formal’ suicide note was discovered, but nor could any evidence be found that anyone would have wanted to kill Bill.

  The coroner decided that, on the balance of probability, Bill Keating had committed suicide, possibly while suffering from severe depression. Police had been unable to find the ‘instrument’ used to hole the exhaust, but they argued Bill had probably done that somewhere between Curland’s place and his own, to avoid drawing attention to the noise it would have caused. Their assumption was that a crowbar had been used.

  It was late October. Cathy had set this funeral day because no National Hunt racing was scheduled meaning all Bill’s friends could be there. Winter had arrived early and most of the folk at the funeral had dressed against the cold.

  After the service people filtered away along the narrow red-shale paths of the little churchyard toward a long row of vehicles ranging from a Rolls to a rusty moped with a dented helmet hanging from the seat.

  I walked with Cathy and her daughters. None of us had spoken since we left the graveside. I opened the door of the big car for them. Cathy, defiant in a sky-blue two-piece and white blouse, turned to me; chestnut hair, brown eyes, longish jaw, the same basic facial shape as Bill’s. She asked, ‘Have you got a lift?’

  I nodded. She ushered the girls into the darkened car and said to me, ‘Coming back to the house?’

  I hesitated. She touched my arm and nodded toward the vehicles starting up around us. ‘Most of them are coming back for a bite and a drink. I’d be grateful if you did.’

  She hadn’t cried yet. Kate and Amy hadn’t either. All holding out for each other’s sake.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘I’ll see you there.’

  Kate, the elder daughter, dark-haired like her mother, solemnly fixed drinks from a bar in the corner. Not speaking she simply moved inquiring eyes to the next person after filling each glass and bringing it over.

  She looked as though she didn’t approve of these people chattering in her house, drinking and trying to act normal so soon after burying her father. I knew how she felt and couldn’t quite understand the purpose of these get-togethers, never was comfortable at one.

  I went across and spoke to her. ‘Can I help?’

  She looked up with empty eyes and shook her head then remembering her manners whispered, ‘No, thank you.’

  I re-joined the others and listened to them reminisce for a while before Cathy invited me to join her in a walk outside. I held her long wool coat open but she settled it on her shoulders leaving the sleeves empty. Dusk was falling. The air was frosty.

  Side by side, we walked by the rotting flowerbeds and watched the trees steadily silhouetting against the last of the light.

  Cathy talked.

  About life and death, the kids, her ‘worthless’ career, the years of sixteen-hour days, of drag-out fights with Bill, about happy times with Bill, about the divorce.

  Finally, she stopped walking and turned to me. ‘Look at my eyes, Eddie.’

  I looked.

  ‘Take a step closer.’

  Slightly uncomfortable, but I took it . . . Close enough now to smell the brandy on her breath.

  ‘Look into them.’

  They were a deep rich brown, the pupils widening in the virtual darkness.

  ‘See any tears?’ she asked.

  I looked at her. ‘They’ll come.’

  ‘Think so?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Uh-uh. Can’t cry any more. Lost the ability when Bill left.’

  There was no emotion in her face or voice. There had always been a hardness about her but I’d assumed she saw it as an essential ingredient for business success.

  She broke eye contact and we walked on. She said nothing more till we rounded the front of the house, setting off the bright security light, frost particles drifting in its beam.

  Staring into the night Cathy changed tack, ‘Even though the verdict’s been given, what would I have to do to make the police investigate further?’

  That threw me. I thought she’d accepted things. ‘They’d want hard evidence. They’ve tried and can’t find any. If it wasn’t suicide, somebody killed Bill.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s start with that assumption. Where would we go from there?’

  Her use of the plural put me on guard. I had the makings of a good season in front of me and was reluctant to be side-tracked, even for Cathy. I could leave her to it or try and talk her into accepting the suicide. The trouble was, in my heart I was with her, I didn’t believe Bill, no matter how unwell, had killed himself. ‘It’s getting cold,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll go back inside.’

  I turned to walk along the path. She took hold of my arm and moved in front. ‘Eddie, will you stay till everyone’s gone?’

  She outstared me. I knew she was playing me, but I was too soft to say no.

  6

  I waited in the kitchen while Cathy said goodbye to the last of them and got the girls settled upstairs. I made tea and poured a cup for her as I heard her footsteps on the stairs.

  The mask dropped as soon as she came in. She looked exhausted and almost slumped into the chair. I pushed the saucer gently toward her but some of the tea slopped into it. She muttered a weak thank you and picked up the cup with both hands, staring into it. She’d yet to look at me. Her jaw began clenching rhythmically. The tendons on the backs of her hands rose and flexed as she squeezed the cup. ‘Want something stronger?’ I asked quietly.

  She shook her head, still staring into the fine pale blue china cup, her intensity growing.

  The cup shattered splashing tea over the table and cutting her hands. She looked at the blood on her palms then covered her face with them. I moved across and put my hands on her shoulders. ‘Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.’

  I helped her to her feet. Her face stayed buried in her bloody palms. I tried to hug her gently, but she froze, forearms tight on her chest. We stood in silence for what felt a long time then I clasped her wrists and softly pulled her hands apart. Her brown eyes, tearless, showed a mixture of defiance and despair. There was blood where the tear tracks should have been.

  Easing me away, she walked slowly to the sink and ran cold water on the wounds. Tearing paper sheets from a towel roll, she moved to a small pine framed mirror and started cleaning her face.

  'You got a first aid kit?’ I asked.

  She ignored the question, stamped the pedal-bin open, dumped the bloody tissue and tore some more, which she clasped between her hands as she came toward me.

  A measure of control was back in her eyes. She looked at me steadily, ‘Eddie, I’m in the biggest fucking mess I’ve ever been in in the thirty-seven years of my life. I’d have sworn I could have lived a hundred and thirty-seven and not managed to end up with the problems I’ve got. The business is gone, as good as finished. I’m mortgaged so high they might as well have buried me today with Bill.’

  She gave a huge sigh here and began to relax in the way people do when they finally realize, win or lose, that the struggle is over. The stiffness left her limbs and she managed a smile and a slightly nervous laugh then said, ‘I’m in so deep I’ll need to be bailed out in ten grand increments or I’ll get the bends on the way to the surface.’

  I smiled too and tried, for her sake, to prompt her into talking some more. ‘What happened?’

  'What didn’t?’ And she told me how the business had steadily spiralled downward in the recession then plummeted. As she borrowed to stay aflo
at. She’d cut back, laid staff off, sold equipment, now it was down to the personal stuff. She couldn’t even pay the children’s school fees.

  Having just got myself on the right side of solvency there was nothing I could offer but sympathy. Or so I thought.

  Cathy said, ‘Eddie I’m certain Bill’s death wasn’t suicide and I need to prove it. When Bill and I started this, we took out a big life insurance policy. They don’t pay out if it’s suicide.’

  ‘How big a policy?’

  ‘Seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’

  ‘How much do you owe the banks?’

  ‘The guts of six hundred and fifty thousand.’

  I weighed the question carefully, but she was all defiance now, fiery again. ‘Do the police know about this policy?’ I asked.

  ‘I didn’t tell them.’

  ‘Did they ask you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s the position with the banks? Are they threatening you?’

  ‘They gave me till the end of the year then they repossess.’

  ‘Formally? They’ve said that in writing?’

  She went to a drawer and brought me the letter. It was dated September 1st, three weeks before Bill’s death.

  I looked at her. ‘You want to keep fighting, but if it wasn’t suicide it was murder.’

  ‘And I had most to gain. I know.’

  We looked at each other. She was all grim determination. I was stuck somewhere between admiration for her ballsiness, shame at wanting to let Bill’s memory fade so I could get on with my life, and apprehension because I knew what was coming.

  ‘Will you help me find who killed him Eddie?’

  7

  Next day, Tuesday, I had no rides. I rose at six and dressed hurriedly. It was frosty outside and I hadn’t quite sussed the fancy heating system in my flat.

  I hurried down the narrow stairs into the chilly morning. Sunrise was an hour away. Lights glowed in the yard and the sounds of equine breakfasts being prepared echoed from the big feed room.