For Your Sins: previously published as Joseph's Mansions

by Richard Pitman

  Checking his watch, he said, ‘Don’t know whether to say too late or too early.’

  ‘Must be neither, then, which makes it just the right time.’ She poured him a large whiskey with ice in a heavy cut-crystal glass. She already had a drink sitting on the hearth, and she settled on the rug as Frankie had seen her do so many times before. She raised her glass. He moved out of the seat toward her and they touched glasses gently. ‘Here’s to getting your money back.’

  She smiled. ‘Come on, then, don’t keep me in suspense!’

  He drank, and then went to where his jacket hung and took an envelope from the inside pocket. He took out two pictures and showed her one. She made a face which said, ‘Maybe, maybe not.’ He handed her the other print, which was of a man in a mask with just his vivid blue eyes showing. ‘That’s him,’ she said immediately.

  ‘That’s what I told Stonebanks. That’s corroboration. That’s Gerry Monroe. And this is now a legitimate job for our friends in the police! I’ll call them first thing in the morning.’

  She looked straight at him, smiling admiringly. ‘You’re brilliant Frankie, well done!’

  ‘All in a day’s work! ‘

  ‘Oh, I can’t wait to tell Graham.’ She hurried along the hall toward the bedroom but was back within a minute.

  Frankie said, ‘That was quick.’

  ‘He’s sound. I’ll leave it. I’m dying to wake him, but the medication makes him so groggy. It’ll be such brilliant news to give him in the morning, at the start of a brand-new day! ‘

  ‘Should make a different man of him!’ Frankie said and gulped down the last of his drink. ‘Although we still need to catch Monroe.’

  ‘Surely that wouldn’t be too difficult, even for the police. They know who he is now, for God’s sake. It should just be a matter of picking him up.’

  ‘I hope so. Depends where he is.’

  She moved to pick up his glass. ‘One more?’

  ‘Sure! Sure, if you’re having one?’

  ‘Why not? We’re celebrating aren’t we?’

  ‘We are, we are.’

  An hour later Frankie was on his fourth large whiskey. Maggie had already had two drinks before he arrived. She was on her sixth. Frankie too was on the rug now, legs outstretched, warming in front of the fresh logs, which crackled quietly. They’d talked about all that had happened since they’d first spoken on the phone, agreed they now felt like they’d known each other for years. They discussed plans for getting Gabby back and maybe the money, although Maggie said if this whole thing had taught her anything it was the value of love and family and normality, lack of upset, the beauty of a quiet life. xxx

  They’d been silent for a while, sitting companionably, stockinged feet almost touching, staring into the fire, listening to the tick of the clock and the occasional hollow howl of the wind in the chimney. Maggie said, ‘Tell me about your troubles.’

  Slowly he turned his head away from the fire, smiling as he looked at her.

  ‘You’ve helped so much with ours, with mine. I know you have some of your own.’

  ‘Ahh, perceptive, you women!’ He lowered his eyes but raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Tell me, Frankie.’

  He stared at the floor then into the fire again and seemed to gaze way beyond it. The yellow embers reflected in his eyes and Maggie couldn’t be sure if tears were there. He said, ‘I’ll tell you about a girl called Kathy, who was all the stuff in the love poems and all the romantic books and movies and every pop-song lyric and, and… sentiment that was ever written all rolled into one… to me, she was. She was as much a part of me as the leg you see before you on the floor. When we were apart, her face was never out of my mind for a second. Not just her face but her person, her being. ‘Twas with me in my mind as solid as though she herself was in my mind. She wasn’t just a part of me, Kathy; she was a part that made me so much better than I was, so much more than I was, for she added all the things that I didn’t have. She was beautiful, intelligent and brave, very brave… and honest and fair. She loved adventure and she loved coming home and she loved the weather and being outdoors, in the woods, in the rain, on horseback, on foot, with me, holding hands, feeding her life into me as surely as if she were giving me a transfusion. And I know that there are many who’ll say this but I know without even having to think about it or analyse it or anything deep, any stuff like that, that there never was a couple anywhere that loved each other more than we did. There was no possibility that there could be. You’d be as well saying there were degrees of the speed of light as saying any couple loved like we did…’ He drank.

  ‘… anyway, couple’s a poor expression for us, for the way we were. We were one, one person. Neither of us realized until we met that we’d each been only half a person. Then we clamped together… couldn’t even see the join.’ He smiled sadly.

  Maggie watched him. ‘How did she die?’

  ‘She was thrown from her horse at Stratford after she won a race… She…’ Frankie couldn’t bring himself to say the words “killed outright”. ‘She never regained consciousness.’

  Shocked, Maggie put her drink down and got to her knees, resting her bottom on her heels.

  ‘My God, was that your wife? Frankie, that was only a few weeks ago! ‘

  ‘October twelfth. Eleven weeks and six days ago.’

  Tears came to her eyes as she watched him. The ironic smile, supported by alcohol, that had shown on his face from time to time had slipped slowly like a tired mask to leave him staring blankly into the fire, eyes cold and forlorn now. Maggie moved slowly toward him. She took his hand in both of hers. ‘Frankie, I am so, so sorry. Here we are worrying about a horse and you’ve lost your wife. She was the one you left the priesthood for?’

  He nodded but didn’t look at her, eyes still blank. She said, ‘If I could take her place and send her back to you, I would.’

  He turned slowly toward her and looked into her eyes. ‘Would you?’

  His eyes slowly filled and the tears spilled over. She leant forward and put her left hand behind his neck, pulling his head down to cradle it on her bosom.

  35

  Hewitt left the big house once a week and travelled to Swindon to buy groceries. He had never gone into Lambourn since he’d arrived in the area, agreeing with Kelly Corell that it was best to keep away from the village, to protect his anonymity. He avoided Newbury for the same reason. Swindon was much less focused on racing, and he could shop there without too much fear of someone saying, ‘Hey, aren’t you the guy that moved into Kennedy’s old place?’

  Wheeling his supermarket trolley past the newsstand, Hewitt stopped dead. The face of Gerry Monroe stared at him from the front page of the Racing Post. The headline was EX-JOCKEY WANTED FOR KIDNAPPING: £50,000 REWARD. Hewitt bought a copy and pushed it into one of the shopping bags. He was nervous about being seen reading it. He now knew Monroe hadn’t been kidding, and the two horses he’d been looking after for the slaughter man were probably the exact ones he’d said they were when he’d called the other day, Ulysses and Angel Gabriel.

  Hewitt found himself by his car without realizing he’d walked there. He got in and opened the newspaper. The owners of Angel Gabriel were offering the reward for the capture of the kidnapper and the return of the stolen ransom money.

  Hewitt’s mind spun. He was in deep now. He was harbouring two kidnapped horses, two very popular horses. And he was holding ten thousand pounds in cash for Monroe in payment, waiting for the slaughter man to come and collect it. The only people likely to be coming now where the police. His hands shook as he loaded the shopping bags.

  Back in the house, he called Corell and told him.

  ‘And you still have the ten grand Pat Pusey brought you?’

  ‘It’s still here. It’s in a cupboard in the lab. I don’t want to be found with it, Mister Corell. And the horses, what will I do about them?’

  ‘Don’t be worryin’, now, everythin’ll be fine. Wasn’t that exactly what
we wanted, a couple of good horses to help you on a bit?’

  ‘Mister Corell, I thought everything was going to be above board when I took this on. I was never willing to take any risks.’

  ‘Sshhh now, will ye? There’s no risk here. I’ll sort any problems out. That’s my side of the deal. Haven’t I always got you just what you wanted when you wanted it?’

  ‘Well, you have and I’m grateful, but I just feel this is getting out of control and I hate being involved in something that’s out of control, I really do, Mister Corell. I can’t stress that enough to you!’

  ‘David, listen to me… you’re not involved in anything, d’ye hear me? You’re a good straight fella doin’ a good straight job. Now if you have no more need for those horses, tell Monroe to get them to hell out of the place.’

  ‘I don’t know when he’s coming back! I can’t tell him anything! ‘

  Corell thought the scientist close to breaking point. He said quietly, ‘Would you give me Mister Monroe’s number and I’ll contact him and ask him to get the horses out of there?’

  ‘Hold on. Hold on a minute. I’ll get it.’

  While he was waiting for Hewitt to come back, Corell’s desktop phone rang. He told the caller to hold. He took Monroe’s number and promised Hewitt he’d call back soon. Pat Pusey was on the other phone sounding pleased with himself. He told Corell, ‘Yer man’s in jail in Limerick.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Brendan Gleeson.’

  ‘Sure, that’s sharp work by the guards in catching him for stealing my ten grand, and me not even reported it yet.’

  Pusey laughed dutifully then said, ‘I wish it was for that, boss, but it was drunk and disorderly. Want me to go and get him?’

  ‘Get it done in twenty-four hours. I’ve got another job for you after that.’

  Frankie and Stonebanks had spent forty-eight hours in Lambourn trying to trace Monroe. The man had few friends but Frankie had spoken to his former girlfriend who claimed she hadn’t seen him for over a year. Stonebanks had spoken to his employer, the owner of the abattoir, who said it didn’t surprise him to find that Monroe was a criminal, that he’d always seemed shifty, a bit of a loner who’d been resentful of most things, especially his fellow-workers. He also asked Stonebanks to add his missing horsebox to the list of lost property. Stonebanks took the registration.

  The January night was cold, and Frankie and Stonebanks stood by the gas fire in Stonebanks’s house drinking tea and eating lemon sponge cake. Stonebanks’s police contact called. Frankie watched him smile for the first time in days as he made positive noises and jotted down notes. He hung up and turned to Frankie, still smiling. ‘The horsebox left Holyhead on the Stena Line ferry for Dun Laoghaire on January fourth. It hasn’t come back.’

  Frankie smiled now. ‘He’s taken them to Ireland.’

  ‘That’s a fair conclusion, I think, Mister Houlihan.’

  36

  Sean and Jane hadn’t missed a single evening doing the final rounds at Uncle Fergus’s place. They’d help feed the horses and check them over, then bid them goodnight with a final pat on the shoulder or stroke of the nose. Afterwards they’d usually go back inside and tell Poppy how all the horses were and watch TV with her for a while or sit talking, sometimes long into the night. But Jane had sensed something different today with Sean, and she wasn’t surprised when he asked her to come into the barn after evening stables.

  She followed him as he climbed high on the hay up to the chair they’d made, just room enough between the sweet-smelling bales for them to sit comfortably side by side. This was the first time they’d been here after dark and although there was sufficient light from the dusty neon strips in the centre of the barn, it was colder than ever, and Jane shivered and moved closer to Sean as they settled down. He wouldn’t look at her.

  ‘What’s wrong? She asked.

  Sean stared at his feet. ‘I don’t know how to tell you…’

  Jane swallowed a lump but tried to make a joke. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

  He barely smiled. She knew it must be bad. ‘You’re leaving,’ she said quietly.

  He nodded.

  Now she stared at her feet, crossed her ankles and swung them slightly, linked her hands in her lap for a few seconds then crossed her arms and put her chin on her chest. The silence lasted a minute or more then Sean said, ‘I’ll come back.’

  ‘You’ll never come back if you leave. It’ll never be the same.’ There was anger in her voice. ‘Stay!’ It was a command.

  He shook his head slowly. ‘It’s just for a few days. I’ll be back.’

  She jumped off the hay bale and stood, arms crossed defiantly. ‘Right, I’m coming with you!’

  ‘Yer kidding!’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Uncle Fergus won’t let you. Shit, it’s worse than Chicago where I live! They have girls like you for breakfast. No - nobody eats breakfast where I come from. They’d have you for a late snack.’

  ‘Oh, is that so, Sean Gleeson? Is that so? We’ll see!’

  Rather than meet, as usual, at Stonebanks’s house, Frankie had asked that Stonebanks meet him in the George pub in Lambourn, the one most popular with the racing fraternity. Stonebanks had taken a bit of persuading that it would be a good idea for them to be seen to be concentrating on this case in public, but Frankie had made all the right decisions so far. Frankie was convinced that the reward would play a big part in someone coming forward with information, and he wanted to have the visual ‘prompt’ of seeing him and Stonebanks around as much as possible.

  They sat drinking beer. It had been two days since they’d last spoken face to face. Stonebanks had been to Ireland with a CID officer to seek the help of the Irish police in tracing the horsebox. Frankie had been back to visit the vet, Peter Culling, to try and find out how much he knew about the private life of Gerry Monroe.

  ‘How was good old Dublin?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘I didn’t see that much of it - busy, I’d say. Your old home town, wasn’t it?’

  ‘‘Twas. Many years ago.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘Sometimes I do. But it’s changed now. Everywhere changes and it’s kind of upsettin’ when you’ve got such good memories of some of the places you knew as a kid, if you know what I mean.’ Stonebanks smiled. There are still plenty of criminals there according to your Garda man.’

  ‘No doubt. No doubt,’ Frankie said, smiling too.

  Stonebanks explained that the Garda had been very helpful and promised to do what they could, although they’d warned that Monroe might have disappeared ‘into the west’ where there were still some very remote places. Frankie said, ‘Let’s give them a chance for a week or so then maybe we’ll go over ourselves and have a look around.’

  Stonebanks nodded slightly, and half-raised his eyebrows in a way Frankie had come to know as being non-committal. Stonebanks was a tough man to move from his home comforts for too long. He drank some beer and asked Frankie how he got on with Culling.

  Frankie grinned. ‘He’s a strange character and I’d bet he knows a lot more than he’s telling. I deliberately mentioned, again, the fact that Zuiderzie had won unexpectedly the day he died and yer man seemed to get extra nervous. He was working at Warwick that day which is where Zuiderzie won. I think there might be some connection between him and the horse winning.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Although he felt he was acting in some corny movie, Frankie had a good look around him to see if anyone might be able to hear before saying, ‘Talk me through the dope testing procedure again.’

  ‘You think he might have doped the horse? The sample was clean. You know that.’

  ‘Take me through it anyway.’

  Stonebanks put down his glass and started talking, using his hands a lot as Frankie had learned he was sometimes inclined to do. ‘After every race, the stewards will nominate horses to be routinely dope-tested; the winner is almost always one of them. They’re taken to
a special box where a vet will take a sample of urine, split it into two smaller samples and label each. One is sent to the lab at Newmarket for analysis, the other is offered to the trainer to keep for reference, just in case.’

  ‘In case a test proves positive and he wants to have it double checked?’

  ‘That’s right, but nobody takes that sample. They know that whatever comes back from the lab will be spot-on, and as no trainer in his right mind would dope his horse anyway, it’s looked on as a pointless exercise.’

  ‘Culling was the senior vet there that day,’ Frankie said. ‘Would it have been possible for him to insist on taking the urine sample from Zuiderzie himself?’

  ‘Possible but highly improbable. It’s the job generally given to the most junior vet, as I’m sure you can imagine. In fact even he, although he shouldn’t, sometimes gets the stable manager to do it for him.’

  ‘The stable manager?’ Frankie sounded incredulous.

  ‘Come on, Frankie, do you know how long you can wait around after a race for a horse to start pissing? Do you think these guys are going to be doing this six, eight, ten times a day?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Frankie said. ‘But Culling would have access to the dope box at any time?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So he would have had access to the samples?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So he could have switched the one for Zuiderzie?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose he could have.’

  Frankie sat smiling, trying not to look too triumphant. He picked up his glass and drank, still looking at Stonebanks over the rim.

  ‘Come on, Frankie! Speculation, pure and simple! What motive could he have had?’

  ‘Making money, by any chance?’

  ‘Betting?’

  ‘How else?’

  ‘It would be much, much easier to dope the favourite to lose than an outsider to win.’

  ‘Granted, but if you’ve got the knowledge and the opportunity and a good chance of getting away with it, how much better is it to dope an outsider to win? You’re nobbling the favourite just as effectively and you can bet the winner too at a big price.’