The vet looked at him pleadingly. Frankie shook his head slowly. Culling got up. ‘Look, look, I’ll let you see something…’ He went out and came back quickly with a briefcase. He opened it and showed Frankie all the literature from the Everlasting Life Company, gave him the letter accepting him, the certificate guaranteeing a place in their cryogenics capsule. ‘Why do you think I live alone?’ Culling asked. ‘Do you think I don’t want a wife and a family like any other man? But why should I indulge myself? How selfish would it have been to marry, to leave a grieving wife behind? How selfish to have children? To afflict another generation? All I ever wanted to do was to have another chance. I haven’t spent a penny of that money on myself, on material things. I just wanted a chance to live again, to live like you live, Mister Houlihan! I did what I did so I can live again after death, to bring children into the world who have the same chance as you of seeing seventy or eighty years of life!’
Frankie looked into his eyes, convinced now that Culling hadn’t made this up but unsure whether he was seeing madness at work or desperation. He said, ‘And you believe these… these charlatans can give you this?’
‘The principle is sound! Look at the progress there has been in medicine in the past fifty years. It is virtually certain that someday, disease will be completely eliminated. It might be a hundred or two hundred years but it will happen! ‘
‘And you think they can bring you back to life too, to benefit from it.’
‘Yes, I think they’ll have advanced that far.’
‘To be able to play God?’
Culling nodded vigorously and Frankie saw that he truly believed this, and the rage that had been building in him began to fade. He lowered his head, shaking it slowly in disbelief that Kathy had died not because someone had wanted a yacht or a New York penthouse; she’d been taken away from him because this poor, deluded man wanted to live forever.
Raising his head, he looked at the pathetic, wild-eyed, sweating figure sitting opposite and all he felt was a welling sadness at the pointlessness of it all, at the terrible waste. He needed to leave, to get away from this man. Slowly he rose to his feet. ‘Are you going to write a confession or not?’
Culling stood up. ‘I’m going to write it. I just wanted you to know why I did it. You seem to despise me. You obviously disagree one hundred per cent with what your bosses have asked you to do. Not your idea, you said, you needed me to know that. Well I need you to know that I didn’t do it out of greed or for personal gain.’
‘Sure, sure.’ Frankie was wearily dismissive. He looked at his watch and said. ‘I’m leaving in exactly two minutes.’ The vet sighed and left the room. Frankie heard a door bang down the hall. A few minutes later Culling returned and handed him a folded piece of headed paper. Frankie opened it and read it.
‘Satisfied?’
Frankie looked into his eyes for a long moment then said, ‘Bad question to ask, Mister Culling. Bad question.’ And he turned away down the hall and out through the door.
Culling sank into the soft chair in the conservatory, put his head in his hands and wept with relief. Less than an hour later, he heard another knock on the door and recognized Frankie’s outline through the glass. When he opened it he saw two uniformed policemen flanking Frankie, and he recognized Stonebanks but not the other man in the long dark coat. Frankie said, ‘Mister Culling. This is Detective Sergeant Saunders of Newbury CID. He has your confession and the tape I made.’ Frankie sounded exhausted. There was no note of triumph in his voice.
Culling looked terrified. ‘You lied!’ he said.
‘I did.’ Frankie took two steps forward and looked straight into Culling’s eyes. ‘Remember Kathy Houlihan? The girl who died on Sauceboat? I was married to her. You killed my wife. Your foolish, crazy, selfish scheme killed my wife.’
Culling looked horrified. He held his breath as Frankie stared at him for what seemed a long time. Then Frankie turned, head low, shoulders sagging, and walked away, back through the gate and down the road.
45
Throughout February and March, Frankie spent every weekend with the Cassidys. They made sure he was involved as closely as possible with the training of Gabby for the Grand National. And he relished it, loved it. Fridays couldn’t come soon enough so that he could travel north. He’d traded off all these winter Saturdays with his colleagues, promising to cover for them in the summer. He just didn’t want to miss a minute more than necessary of the of the big horse’s preparation for the great race.
His relationship with the whole family developed, bonds strengthened, especially between him and Graham. Maggie said she’d never known her husband talk so much as he talked to Frankie. And Graham steadily began finding himself again, gradually winning back his mental strength in tiny victories. Frankie helped nurture this. He’d seen the damage that had been done to Graham, recognized it, and had wanted to help repair it.
Sean benefited too from Frankie’s company, as did Billy, who blossomed and grew in confidence with the praise Frankie gave him, the respect he showed. Jane and Maggie, still strong and whole, watched it all from the sidelines and marvelled at how sensitive and soft and insecure men could be. They saw Frankie begin to heal his own wounds through the way he was ministering again, helping others. Frankie too realized this and found that the steady fading of grief brought no weakening of his relationship with Kathy. It improved it. He thought about her just as often but the thoughts were bringing more and more smiles and fewer tears.
As they moved into Grand National week and Angel Gabriel was flying on the gallops at his best ever, Graham said, Frankie found the anticipation around the yard almost unbearably intense and finally he truly understood the seduction of the training life - the powerful addiction to hope. Three days before the race, he hit the downward slope on the racing roller coaster; Angel Gabriel stood on a stone, bruised his foot and was declared by Graham to be unfit to run in the big race.
The adrenaline they’d all been buzzing on for weeks evaporated in a minute and plunged everyone but Graham into despair. As he led the badly lame Gabby into his box, he stopped to comfort a distraught Frankie with a smile and a slap on the back. That’s racing. There’s always next year.’ And they all knew that Graham was hurting even more than the rest of them, but they took strength from it for they realized he was back to his old self.
In early April, after talking with Sean, Maggie wrote to Sean’s mother in London offering her a job and a small cottage. It took Bridget Gleeson three weeks to write back and say no, she was happy in London, but would maybe try and see Sean every Christmas if she could afford the fare.
Culling went for trial in April, as did Corell in Dublin. Culling got five years for the manslaughter of Kathy Houlihan and three years for defrauding punters by doping racehorses. His lawyer managed to get the sentences to run concurrently. Culling named Breslin, and the bookie was charged with conspiracy to defraud and jailed for two years.
After the first day of Corell’s trial, somebody with a high-powered rifle shot Pat Pusey dead as he left the courthouse. He had never taken the witness stand. Corell’s defence team successfully argued that the tapes of Pusey’s conversation with Wildman were inadmissible, that they were the rantings of a small-time crook trying to make himself look bigger by concocting tales of violence and murder. Corell walked free.
On the last day of April, a heat wave drifted slowly across Europe and settled over the British Isles. It was to be the longest since UK weather records began. Maggie and Graham watched their daughter and Sean build their loving relationship in the heat of the summer. After a family discussion, including Sean, they wrote to Bridget Gleeson asking if they could become Sean’s legal guardians. She replied quickly this time, saying she’d be more than happy to agree.
Frankie spent much of the summer house hunting. By mid-August, he’d chosen a modern flat in an exclusive complex on the outskirts of Newbury; close enough to Lambourn to keep his eye on the hub and far enough away to avoid the b
ack-stabbing and politics.
By early September, the experts were forecasting the end of the heat wave. There had been little more than a few millimetres of rain since June. Hosepipe bans had long been in force across all populated areas of the country, forest and moorland fires had taken animal and human lives.
At Keshcarrigan in Ireland, the water level at Laura Lake was lower than even the oldest fisherman could remember. Late one Saturday afternoon, the local police took a call from a walker saying he thought that a vehicle was in the lough, a big lorry probably, he could just see the roof. An hour later, divers recovered the bloated, fish-bitten remains of Gerry Monroe. Identification proved difficult, but the registration plate on the horsebox matched the kidnap and cash theft report they’d had on file since the beginning of the year. It was also possible to link the abandoned Kawasaki motorcycle with the false number plates that lay rusting behind the police station.
The divers brought out the expensive suitcase Monroe had stored the money in. The quality of the seals had kept the half-million pounds completely dry.
The Cassidys took Frankie’s advice and managed to gain the agreement of the Irish police not to make public the recovery of the cash until a date mutually agreed. It was November when all the papers for their adoption of Sean Gleeson were finally signed and sealed. The Irish police had not contacted them again, so they decided to say nothing publicly about getting their money back. In keeping with their promise of a reward, they deposited fifty thousand pounds in an account for Sean, to which he’d be given access on his eighteenth birthday.
By Christmas, Sean still hadn’t got over the shock of it. Often his mind would go back to the night he’d rifled his father’s pockets in the hope of finding a fiver. Instead, he’d cursed when he’d pulled out the ‘oul’ piece of paper the paper that had lain for months in his bedroom because he’d been too lazy to tidy up.
Sometimes he’d wander out at night to talk to Pegasus, who had a warm box now and was properly groomed and fed but no better behaved. ‘Fifty grand, Peg, for an oul’ piece of paper! Would ye credit it?’ And he’d move in close to stroke the grey nose and the pony, disdainful as ever, would nudge him hard back the way he came. ‘Oi! Don’t push yer luck! There’s some real horses here, ye know! Any more of that and ye’ll be back tied to yer clothes pole in Joseph’s Mansions!’
Dear Reader,
Thank you for buying For Your Sins. We have a number of other titles for sale, and we plan to release three or four new titles a year.
If you would like advance notification of publication, please join our mailing list, which you can find at this website: http://eepurl.com/DytaD
Best wishes
Richard and Joe
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For Your Sins: previously published as Joseph's Mansions Page 26