They went back inside the house. The trainer had builders in and the kitchen was a mess. He led them to a big basement room kitted out with a snooker table and a bar. A coffee machine stood in the corner and Quigley made them all a hot drink. They sat at the bar. Benjamin drew his fingers through his thick, silver-grey hair and looked at Stonebanks. ‘Well, what next? Or should I say what first?’
Stonebanks said, ‘We need to talk to all the staff, to the builders, to any suppliers who’ve been here in the past six months, to—’
Benjamin interrupted him. ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute! We have forty-eight hours, Mister Stonebanks. Two days!’
‘With respect, Mister Benjamin, we need to start somewhere. We can make a couple of assumptions but -’
Benjamin interrupted again. ‘Look, the police have given me all this already. They seem to think this is about as serious as some ragamuffin kid stealing a kitten from a litter. I want Ulysses back safe and I want him back quickly.’
Stonebanks looked at him over the rim of his cup. ‘Even if it means paying the ransom?’
Benjamin sneered in a half-smiling sort of way that said, is this man some kind of idiot? And Frankie disliked him even more. Benjamin said, ‘I’m not paying any ransom, Mister Stonebanks. Don’t we pay enough in fees all round to keep our horses in training, and people like you and your silent colleague in jobs?’
Stonebanks had been leaning back against the edge of the snooker table. He straightened. ‘OK, Mister Benjamin. We’ll do our best. We need to speak to everyone who’s been on the premises recently. I’ll start with Mister Quigley and my colleague Mister Houlihan will speak to the head lad.’
Talk fast then, Stonebanks. I want that horse back! Call me at my office within the hour!’ Benjamin marched out, throwing the empty plastic cup on the floor to roll and dribble the dregs of its coffee on to the grey carpet.
Questioning of staff and builders and suppliers brought nothing. Frankie set about it with enthusiasm though Stonebanks told him it was all a waste of time and just went through the motions, despite a call from his boss who, in turn, was being harassed by owner Christopher Benjamin. Benjamin bullied the police into setting up a phone tap and by dusk, it was in place.
The dark grey cordless phone had been moved on to the old oak kitchen table. Frankie thought this smooth cold piece of plastic, which allowed contact with any other point in the modern world, appeared incongruous resting on the gnarled wood that looked a thousand years old.
For the first ten minutes, all four of them watched it. Jack nursed a large Scotch and the only sound in the room came when he raised it to his lips and the ice clinked. They stared as though the phone were a bomb; watched as though they were shackled there. Even their blink rates decreased with the concentration.
Then it rang.
As he put down the phone in the darkness of the remote call box deep in rural Oxfordshire, Gerry Monroe congratulated himself on his sharp criminal brain. He had upped the stakes with the Ulysses people, told them that he’d torture the horse and leave it in a hell of a mess if they didn’t deliver the cash by midnight on Tuesday.
He wasn’t expecting them to pay up. Not at this time. This first one was experimental. He needed to find out if he could get it all together, pull the whole thing off. The money didn’t matter this time. He’d deliberately asked too much because he needed to see the reaction when they got the horse back dead. He needed to see how deeply they’d probe. Not very deeply, he suspected, but he had to see proof of that before taking his plan to the next stage.
Pulling on his helmet, he mounted the big black Kawasaki bike and fired up the engine. Under a moonless sky, the twin headlights carved a path through the blackness picking out squashed creatures and the faintest of white line markings.
Speeding through the night, he smiled behind the visor at his brilliant idea. How easy it had been to scare Culling into getting those files. Now he had access to information on all thoroughbreds registered in the UK. He had the markings for every horse in racing from its passport. He knew everything from each animal’s overall colour to the pattern of hair growing on its flanks.
And he’d left not a trace behind.
Monroe whiled away the remainder of his journey planning how he’d spend his money once he was a millionaire. An expensive racehorse did not feature in his budget.
>17
On Tuesday night in the dining area of trainer Jack Quigley’s kitchen, Jack, Frankie, Stonebanks and Ulysses’ owner, Christopher Benjamin, sat around the old table. The telephone was no longer the centre of attention. The kidnapper had said on Sunday that he would not call again until five to twelve on the Tuesday. If they had the money then he would arrange for collection. If they didn’t, Ulysses would be dead by midnight.
Benjamin had no intention of paying. Nobody at the table doubted he had the funds to pay; he’d made millions trading in the international money markets. But he simply wasn’t going to. He’d been there for most of the past twenty-four hours and had ruled like a prison camp commandant. The tension around the yard had grown almost tangibly as the hours ticked by. In the trainer’s house, the atmosphere would have frayed the nerves of the calmest man.
Stonebanks and Frankie had spent much of the past two days liaising with the local police, interviewing Quigley’s suppliers and ex-employees, talking to colleagues and paid contacts within the industry but they’d come up with nothing. And this laid them open to increasingly frequent thrusts of Benjamin’s sarcasm and rudeness.
Stonebanks and Frankie thought that someone with a grudge against Benjamin was a much more likely suspect than anyone Jack Quigley had been involved with, but neither wanted to voice the thought.
At seven-thirty Eileen Quigley had offered to cook dinner. ‘Nobody’s hungry!’ Benjamin snapped at her. ‘Just make some tea!’
Frankie’s eyes went to Jack when this happened and for the first time he saw a spark of real anger in the balding trainer’s tense, tired face. But Quigley stayed silent. Frankie looked at Benjamin and just resisted shaking his head slowly. He was beginning to despise the man and he couldn’t remember feeling that way about anyone before.
At nine-forty Benjamin looked at his big shining watch for the hundredth time that day then muttered something incomprehensible. Nobody had spoken for a while and Stonebanks said, ‘Chances are the guy will give us an extension. He must know that forty-eight hours is a joke.’
All eyes turned to Benjamin. He said, ‘And what sort of extension would you like, Mister Stonebanks? Would a year be long enough?’ He shook his head slowly as if to say, ‘Idiot’. He continued, ‘Even if you had a year there would be as much chance of you people finding him as, as…’
‘As you learning some manners,’ Frankie said.
Benjamin froze for a few seconds then turned to Frankie. ‘What did you say?’
‘I think you heard what I said, Mister Benjamin.’
‘What I heard was you being insolent and insubordinate. You’ve said so little in the past two days I was beginning to wonder if you were mentally handicapped in some way. I thought maybe you were on some special help scheme with the Jockey Club.’
‘I’m not going to trade insults with you,’ Frankie said.
‘You’re not going to trade anything with anybody, young man, especially with your local shopkeepers as you will have no salary to do any trading with when I speak to your boss.’
Frankie smiled.
Benjamin raised his voice. ‘Do you hear me?’
‘I hear you. I’ve said my piece. Let’s all quieten down a bit. It’s been a long day.’
‘Don’t tell me to quieten down, you little Irish bog man! ‘
‘Talking of bogs,’ Frankie said and got up and left the room.
‘Come back here!’ Benjamin shouted. Frankie kept walking. Quigley and Stonebanks fought hard not to smile. ‘Are you his boss?’ Benjamin asked Stonebanks.
‘Unfortunately not.’ Stonebanks said, thinking to hims
elf that if he had been, he’d have recommended Frankie for a big salary increase.
‘Then tell Robert Archibald I don’t expect the insolent idiot to be in a job at the end of this week!’
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to tell him that yourself, Mister Benjamin.’
‘Then you’re a witness! I’ll be citing you!’
‘Fine.’
When Frankie came back five minutes later, he resisted a provocative smile or comment and settled back into his chair. It was just after ten o’clock.
Eileen Quigley walked in. Her slumped posture and general demeanour as well as her exhausted- looking, tear-stained face said everything about how the past two days had affected her. She was just the right side of forty but looked years older, even though she’d obviously put on makeup recently. She’d changed her clothes too in the past hour and looked smarter. In a hollow voice she said, ‘Can I get anyone a tea or coffee?’
Benjamin turned in his seat. ‘No you bloody can’t! What you can get is a Yellow Pages! Do you have one of those or has somebody stolen that too?’
Frankie looked at Jack. The anger spark was even brighter. Eileen Quigley reached into the cupboard above the TV and took out a Yellow Pages directory. Wearily she brought it to the table, and laid it as carefully and apprehensively in front of Benjamin as she would have put food before a wild animal.
Benjamin threw it across the table at her husband. ‘I suggest you turn to the section marked Transport and find someone who has a couple of horseboxes for hire tomorrow. If Ulysses is killed tonight, you’ll be making calls in the morning to arrange for the removal of my other twelve horses.’ Jack looked at him, his eyes showing the first real signs of defiance. But then he slowly picked up the book and started leafing through. His wife let go a sob, and sank back to lean on the short L-shape of the breakfast bar. Jack reached the page he wanted, took a pen from his shirt pocket and circled three telephone numbers. He ripped the page out. Then he walked around the table to where Benjamin sat. He put the page on the table in front of his biggest owner, the man who paid him almost £15,000 a month to train his horses, money that meant the difference between surviving in the life he’d always loved and going out of business. And he said, ‘Put this in your pocket and get out of my house. Make the calls yourself. If Ulysses walked back through that door right now, I still wouldn’t train another horse for you. I’d sooner starve to death.’
Benjamin was speechless. He looked at the torn-out page, then up at Quigley’s angry but triumphant face. And what Benjamin saw was the source of his power evaporating, the loss of his control which was based on fear. He said, ‘Sit down man, and don’t be so bloody stupid!’
‘No. You get up. I want you out of my house in the next sixty seconds and your horses out of my yard by noon tomorrow.’
‘Listen -’
‘No, you listen, you ignorant bastard! Get out before I punch you all the way to do the door and through it! Get out!’
Benjamin looked shaken as he got to his feet. Quigley suddenly seemed easily capable of what he threatened. The owner moved slowly toward the door. ‘What about the call? What about Ulysses?’ he asked in a much weaker voice than he’d been using earlier.
‘We’ll let you know in the morning when you come for your horses,’ Quigley said.
‘But I’m entitled to -’
Quigley interrupted. ‘You’re entitled to the same treatment, the same civility as you’ve shown us in the past two days, so you’re entitled to be treated like shit. Keep walking.’
Benjamin stood and looked at his ex-trainer. Quigley moved toward him. Benjamin hurried out. There was a silence for a few seconds, and then Frankie started clapping. Stonebanks joined in as Eileen walked proudly toward her husband of sixteen years and put her arms around him. Jack Quigley smiled peacefully.
18
Things weren’t panning out for David Hewitt the way he’d expected when he’d agreed to Corell’s offer of the house and full lab facilities. Before moving in, he’d been worried about the supply of horses but they’d been plentiful - Hewitt had no complaints on quantity. It was quality he needed. He’d told that to Monroe often enough and now the slaughter man had come to see him with a proposal. Hewitt was nervous about calling Corell. Monroe wanted a lot of money, but Hewitt knew it would make a big difference to the project. Trouble was that in nine months he hadn’t delivered a single thing although Corell hadn’t put him under any pressure.
He sat on the arm of the chair in the library and watched the CCTV shot as Monroe’s motorbike accelerated out of picture.
Through the tall window, the early-evening moon seemed huge, the richest yellow he could recall seeing it, like an enormous burnished coin. He was missing his girlfriend Marcia, and felt almost unfaithful when he spoke to her on the phone, as he had to lie about where he was. Corell had stressed the importance of nobody knowing what was going on in the big house.
The big house.
He’d walked around it all at the start, grateful for the space and the peace after the chaos of the university lab. Now the silence enveloped him, especially at night, a sinister silence. He played rock music and sometimes watched TV, but he’d found that keeping busy was the best way of warding off loneliness. He’d always had the capacity to lose himself in his work, and these past few weeks had shown him how valuable an asset this was. Hard work made the days seem shorter. It would also bring him more quickly to his goal. He’d have the professional satisfaction of leading his own field, not to mention a very big payoff from Corell and a share of future profits.
At the beginning, he’d tried to convince himself that this was a legitimate venture; that Corell was fully above board. But when he’d met him and his driver, Gleeson, and especially Gerry Monroe, he could no longer pretend, not even to himself, that these people were operating within the law. Monroe had just confirmed this with his proposal. Hewitt ran his fingers wearily through his thick fair hair and sighed. If he made this call to Corell, if he engineered the acceptance of Monroe’s proposal, he was as good as colluding in whatever they were doing. Monroe had said, ‘Don’t worry about the names; you don’t need to know anything in advance except that I can deliver. I’ll tell you the names when I bring you the horses.’
He got up and went to the small table by the door. Kelly Corell’s number was on a piece of paper by the telephone. Hewitt dialled.
Brendan Gleeson was in a Dublin betting shop when his mobile rang. Impatiently he pulled it from his pocket, about to switch it off so he could watch the end of the two-fifteen from Navan. Then he saw that it was Corell calling. He hurried outside and ran thirty yards down the street, making sure the blower commentary was out of earshot before he pressed to accept the call. His boss sounded a bit on edge and that made Gleeson nervy. ‘Where are you?’ Corell asked sharply.
‘I’ve just come out of the supermarket, Mister Corell. Just getting something in for the tea for me and the boy.’
‘Get yourself up here now.’
‘Sure. Sure, Mister Corell.’
Gleeson ran to his car and drove fast to the club Corell owned. Twenty minutes later, he was on his way back to the docks. Beside him on the passenger seat was a grey canvas holdall with ten thousand pounds in Bank of England notes inside it. Gleeson had raced to the waterfront hoping to catch the 3.15 ferry, cursing everyone in his way. But when he reached the terminal, the ferry was still in port and the long queue of vehicles told him they hadn’t even begun loading. The winter weather had done him a favour in delaying the sailing, but now that he was here, he wanted them to get on with it.
He watched the yellow-jacketed shore crew begin signalling them on board just after four o’clock. In the dimly lit hold, Gleeson parked and pulled his handbrake on tight, leaving his car in gear. Grabbing the bag, he hurried upstairs to quench his thirst.
Ten minutes later, he was sitting at a table by the window through which the shore lights twinkled in the gathering dusk on the dark surface of Dublin Bay. In
front of him on the pale blue table top were two pints of Guinness and two large Jameson’s whiskies topped up with lemonade. He finished a glass of the whiskey in one drink then followed it by gulping a half-pint of Guinness. Only then did he relax, easing himself back in the seat, smiling as he waited for that familiar glow to take over and shift his troubles outside the worry zone.
Gleeson had no concerns about carrying the cash. He’d hide it on himself, among his clothes. When they searched at Holyhead, it was always the vehicle itself they checked. If he took the bag, they’d look inside it but he’d just leave it on board once he’d hidden the money. Easy. He drank half of the other whiskey. He’d need to be careful. He couldn’t risk failing a breathalyzer on the other side, didn’t want them to smell the drink off him especially as he’d persuaded Corell to let him bring the car. He’d argued it was just as quick by the time you’d taken into account the drives to the airports at each end and all the ballsing about with check-ins and stuff. There was also a much higher chance of being caught with the cash if he’d flown, with all that bag searching and frisking at the airport.
No, this was best.
An hour later, he knew he was drunk. The ship hadn’t left port. They announced that the sailing might have to be postponed until the next day but they’d wait for just thirty minutes more to see if the weather in the Irish Sea improved. Gleeson judged that it was a hopeless case and decided to have a few more drinks. He’d drive confidently here in Dublin, even drunk.
But the ship sailed at five-thirty, and a cursing Gleeson eased himself out of the ridged seat and, swinging the grey holdall, walked unsteadily toward the illuminated toilet sign. On the way back from relieving himself, Gleeson noticed three men playing cards at a table by a big brown pillar. He walked over. A pile of notes lay on the table. Cigarettes burned in the glass ashtray, glasses with varying levels of Guinness rested on beer mats. Gleeson smiled. ‘How’ye doin’ lads? Mind if I sit in?’
For Your Sins: previously published as Joseph's Mansions Page 8