by Joe McNally
Lisle had known his lack of experience in racing would be a drawback. But he had broken that down and considered it and judged it surmountable. What he did understand keenly was when the odds were in his favour. This had been a marginal decision, taking this job, and he now believed his original calculations had been wrong. The odds had been against him, because Mister Buley had not supplied a comprehensive set of data. Worse, Mister Buley had obscured some important facts.
But Broc Lisle would see it through. A change of odds was much less important than implementing orders. Persistence would see him through. Persistence and innovation…
He found the number and dialled…Persistence…Innovation…And some cherished friends. ‘Cynthia?’
‘Broc! How lovely to hear from you.’
18
At home with Kim and Marie, eating with them, helping with the horses, working the day through, trying to muck in as best he could with a strapped clavicle, Eddie began to sense the rhythm of their lives.
Marie had been ten when Eddie left home in Cumbria. Since then they had seen little of each other. The estrangement was not just one of time or distance; adulthood had messed them up too. Or was it that childhood had planted the bad seed and the years had cultivated it?
By the time they met again they couldn’t get to emotional grips with each other, couldn’t find a way through the fog, the dense clutter of the past. When their father died, Eddie had persuaded Marie to move in with mother here at the stud. But he had done that through selfishness, a motive Marie had taken too long to recognize and Eddie had taken too long to acknowledge.
Marie’s initial rejection of Kim had enraged Eddie, stirring an anger that had always been with him. One born of injustice. A childhood cruelty. Marie had known about it. She’d used it to skewer Eddie, as well as her own son. There had never been a formal truce.
Eddie was discovering that the key to slowly unwinding the gnarled and wasted years, was the patience and remarkable wisdom of a thirteen-year-old boy who wanted his mother to find peace for the first time in her life.
Eddie knew that if anyone was entitled to harbour resentment, Kim was. If anyone was owed answers, Kim was. If anyone deserved nurturing it was Kim. Yet here he worked quietly at putting back together something that two adults didn’t know how to fix. When Eddie had discovered Kim’s existence, his worry was how the boy was to be looked after. Now here was Kim looking after them.
They’d all been in the kitchen for an hour, talking. Kim ruffled Eddie’s hair - an old joke between them - and said goodnight. Then he kissed Marie and hugged her, emotionally tucking her in even though she sat in the kitchen and he was the one bound for bed.
As the creak of each stair grew fainter, Eddie watched Marie’s smile which had barely faded. ‘He’s some kid,’ Eddie said.
She nodded slowly, still smiling. ‘He reminds me of you sometimes. In some ways.’ Her mind was back in Cumbria twenty years ago.
‘He asked me about his father. When we were out riding.’ Eddie spoke softly, careful to let her see he wasn’t trying to pick a fight.
She opened her hands on the table, as if about to start explaining. Then up they went to finger-comb her hair. ‘He’s never mentioned it to me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know if he was being protective or just wanted to cut things off.’
‘What do you want?’ Eddie asked.
Her chin tilted sharply forward as she looked at him, hands still supporting her head, fingers lost in her hair. ‘I want to tell him that his father was the only man, the only boy I ever loved. I want to tell him that when I was stopped from seeing him I tore my hair out in clumps and tried to block the toilet with it as some sort of revenge. I want to tell him that when I met Rory Campbell I felt like I’d been hauled aboard a rescue ship after a lifetime of clinging to wreckage. I want to tell him that my parents ripped me away from Rory and threw me back overboard, and while I was still trying to survive they took his son away from me.’
Eddie watched her. She straightened slowly and smoothed her hair. ‘That’s what I want to tell Kim.’
‘He’ll still be awake. I think he’d very much like to hear it.’
‘Someday, Eddie.’
‘I think if you go up and tell Kim what you just told me, he’ll love you even more than he does now. And he’ll feel a hell of a lot better about himself, and more importantly, about his father. Did you ever see him again?’
She smiled. ‘Some evenings I’d slip out and stand at the bottom of the lane near his house, watching and hoping he’d come out to the ice cream van when it stopped outside.’
‘Did he never try to contact you?’
‘He sent me a letter, through a friend. I still have it.’
‘You look like a girl again, just talking about him.’
Her smile held sadness and nostalgia. ‘We were fourteen. Everybody used to give me all that puppy love crap and tell me I’d get over it. I never did. Never will.’
She pursed her lips. The longing in her eyes pumped another hit of hatred of Eddie’s parents into him, tempered by a tenderness for Marie that left him unsure whether to weep or scream with frustration. Eddie leaned forward and put a hand on her bare forearm. ‘Marie, do one thing for me and for you and for Kim…go upstairs now and tell him what you just told me.’
She shook her head slowly. ‘He’d be awake all night.’
‘He’d be a boy who’d finally know how wanted he was by his mother and father. How much would that have meant to you at that age? How much would it have meant to us? Wouldn’t you have liked to hear it?’
She looked up, as though their mother still lay alive and listening in that old upstairs room. Marie’s eyes were wet and glistening in the overhead light. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d like to have heard that more than anything else in the world.’
She rose and walked, closing the door behind her. Again the stairs creaked. Eddie heard the bedroom door click open, then voices, and Eddie got up and went out into the night.
He crossed the yard toward the barn under a crescent moon, light-footed and light-hearted and enjoying a sense of achievement he’d ever experienced. Way better than riding the winner of the biggest race. How strange, he thought, how strange.
19
Nic Buley was alone in the BHA building in High Holborn, London. The only light burning was in his office. It was close to midnight. He’d been waiting an hour for the promised call on his private line. He passed the time remembering with fondness how, in his previous job, the chairman of the BHA had phoned from New York at three in the morning with the intention of leaving a voicemail.
Buley had been stranded in the office by a public transport strike and had decided to sleep there. He answered the phone. The BHA chairman had asked if he was actually still at work, and Buley had said he was, on a vital project. That lie had helped him get this job. The man whose call he was waiting for now, would decide if Buley would keep this job. Buley blanched as he realized that the man would decide whether he was ever to hold any job of merit again.
The call came on the stroke of midnight. The man said, ‘You can go home.’
‘Now? I mean, do you mean for now? For tonight?’
‘I don’t mean permanently, if that’s what you’re afraid of. You’re doing a good job. A degree of finesse will be required to see things out in the Old Bailey, then get Lisle to fall on his sword as planned.’
‘He might need to be pushed onto it, or at least helped a little. He’s proving quite resourceful.’
‘He’s a clown. You know it, and I know it. The public likes him. He was an appropriate appointment at the time. But you’ve manoeuvred him perfectly, haven’t you?’
‘So far, I suppose. But he’s much more level-headed than he comes across at times. If he hits a dead-end, he just backtracks like some automaton and keeps looking until he finds another way.’
‘That’s known as blundering blindly.’
‘I don’t think we should underrate him.’
/>
‘Buley, do not let him affect this verdict.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You don’t sound too confident. Do what you need to.’
‘I will.’
‘And keep your bloody nerve, man!’
Buley nodded. The phone clicked. The empty tone purred in his ear, and he held the phone there and stared at his reflection in the plate glass window.
By the time Eddie’s collarbone had healed, Mave had backed two winners, as had Nina Raine. Eddie passed his medical inspection at Ludlow and won on his first ride, though he was breathing as heavily as the horse come the finish. Missing just a week’s race-riding takes the edge off your fitness. Eddie was still blowing when he reached the changing room. Dinky Cobb said, ‘Sit down, Eddie. I’ll get the oxygen mask!’
Eddie sat and smiled at him. ‘Very funny.’
‘You’re an old man now, remember.’
‘Keep this up and you won’t live to be an old man!’ Eddie threw a boot at him. Dinky sidestepped and laughed, and everyone in the room smiled, because Dinky’s laugh was one of those deep-bellied ones which gets to everybody. The sound was all the funnier coming from his tiny frame. He was an elf with a giant’s laugh. Dinky was a rare guy in that he was easily light enough to ride on the Flat, where horses carry much less weight than those racing over jumps. But Dinky had chosen jump racing purely for the thrill of it.
Listening to the laughter, and watching the faces of these men who risked their lives every day, Eddie took a few seconds to let it sink in. These would be the precious times come retirement. Eddie had noticed too how much lighter the atmosphere in the changing room had been since the trial had started at the Old Bailey. No jockey could claim sainthood, but the absence of three colleagues they all knew to be consistently crooked, had allowed everyone to breathe more easily.
Reports from court suggested the three might be back soon. The BHA’s case had been strengthening as Broc Lisle worked on making the evidence more ‘jury-friendly’. But it had taken an unexpected hit when the press discovered the BHA had paid the police almost a third of a million pounds “to assist with expenses in a vital and unique prosecution.” The defence had portrayed it as bribery.
Eddie thought of Mac, and wondered if the big man had changed his mind and used his press contacts to mortally wound the BHA’s case. No, that wasn’t Mac. He wouldn’t change character this late in life. So who else had it in for the BHA?
Eddie dropped in at Mac’s place on the way home. No car. No signs of life. He waited five minutes, then left. As he turned out of the driveway, Mac came over the brow of the hill in his Merc. He considered honking, or flashing Eddie, but he left it too late as Eddie’s car took a right-hand bend at speed. Mac, tutted. ‘That fellow will take one risk too many one day,’ he said aloud.
A message on Eddie’s PC told him he’d missed a ping from Mave. He clicked to return it.
She accepted, waving her small hand at the webcam. ‘Mister Malloy. I see your first one back was a winner.’
‘T’was.’
‘Well done.’
‘Thank you.’
‘We have one for tomorrow.’
‘Not at Worcester, I hope?’
‘Afraid so. But it’s in the last, so you’re not riding in it.’
‘Not yet. I might pick up a spare.’
‘Leave early. Feign injury. Fall asleep on the toilet.’
‘Keep trying, Mave.’
‘Listen, everything’s going to plan. This’ll be my third big bet with all the online guys so we’re building a solid audit trail for your defence. Sonny will be at the track with twenty-five grand and Nina and her hubby are placing their bets in the betting shops.’
‘How long do you intend to keep giving her tips?’
‘Until she has enough to move to Turkey and look for her son.’
‘How much is enough?’
She stopped typing and stared at the webcam. ‘Eddie, what is this, the third degree?’
‘It pisses me off that they’re getting what they wanted free of charge after kidnapping Sonny. Remember how you felt when he went missing? Remember who buggered up your long term plans by selling pictures to Barney Scolder?’
‘But we’re stuck with that, aren’t we? Now we’re swapping indignation for outdignation.’
‘Very funny.’
‘What’s the point of being bitter? You’ll just poison yourself.’
‘Mave, I’m not bitter! Just…well, pissed off.’
‘Forget it. Put it behind you. We are where we are, let’s just concentrate on digging our way out.’
‘Okay.’
‘Good. When are you next up this way?’
‘I’m at Haydock on Friday. I could drive across after that.’
‘Stay over. It looks like we’ll know where we are with this corruption case in London by then. Scolder will be closer to a decision on playing his hand with the pictures. Where are you on Saturday?’
‘Chepstow.’
‘Well, you can have a lovely early morning drive the length of Wales.’
‘All twisting roads and sheep.’
‘A metaphor for life, Eddie.’
‘A motofor, I think you mean.’
‘See you on Friday.’
20
Eddie roamed the silent house in the early hours, resisting the temptation to disturb Mave. He knew she was trying to get her sleeping habits back to normal.
He made coffee and got his doodling pad and pen. He had to act. He’d never been able to live with indecision. He sketched Scolder’s name. He drew a judge’s wig, then a gallows, and began a solitary game of hangman. Whatever the papers were forecasting about the trial, Eddie knew he couldn’t wait out the weeks before the verdict, before publication of the pictures that could finish him. He had to confront Scolder. He’d do it come daylight. Eddie cut the rope on the hanging man with a slice of ink from the black pen and went to bed.
As Eddie drove to Worcester in the morning sunshine, he called Barney Scolder on the number Jonty had given him. It went straight to voicemail. Eddie left a message.
A minute later, Mac called him. ‘Good morning. How’s the collarbone? I hear you had a winner yesterday, so I’m guessing it’s half healed, at least.’
‘Morning, Mac. Nah, I’m too old now to ride with anything short of full repair. Those days are long gone.’
‘I’d hate to see your litany of complaints once you reach my age.’
‘Litany…that’s another word of yours I like, Mac. I’ll add it to my list.’
‘Please do.’
‘What’s happening? I dropped by your place last night.’
‘That’s why I’m calling you. Was it something urgent?’
‘No, it was just…How did you know I’d been there?’
‘I recognized the tread mark of your tyres. Your nearside rear just impinged on a section of soil by the front lawn. I noticed it this morning.’
‘You’re kidding me, Mac?’
‘Why would I?’
‘You noticed and identified a short tyre mark?’
‘Well, nothing unusual there. I’ve been in the investigation business since you were knee-high to a Shetland pony. I know you’ve always questioned my competence, but I have picked up a few tricks in my time.’
‘Jeez. Well kudos to you, Mac. I’ll dine out on that one.’
‘All in a day’s work, Eddie. Anyway, what was it you wanted?’
‘Just to see if you were okay. I’ve been in Newmarket for a couple of weeks with family. I should have called you while I was away.’
‘Not at all. Most kind of you. Very thoughtful. But I’ve been fine. In fact, last night when you dropped by, I was with an old colleague who was sounding me out for a meeting with Broc Lisle.’
‘Lisle wants to see you?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Interesting. Any idea what it’s about?’
‘None, I’m afraid. But it won’t be long until I find out.’
‘Maybe Lisle thinks you leaked that news of the police pay-out to the press?’
‘Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘I’m only kidding, Mac. First, how would he know you knew? Second, a few phone calls would soon teach him that you’re not the type for revenge, as you said yourself.’
‘Unless one of those phone calls was to you, Eddie, who, if I recall correctly, suggested right away that I would drop the BHA straight in it.’
‘What happened there was that I was thinking aloud about what I would have done. Bollocks to all this revenge served cold stuff.’
‘Ahh, it’s not the temperature that pays dividends, it’s the timing.’
‘I’ll try to remember that. Listen, it could be that Lisle is after your help with this case. They’ve got to be very close to losing it after that bribe story came out. Let Lisle sink. And the BHA.’
‘Eddie, I have two years of my life invested in that case. Those three are guilty and they’re going to walk unless the BHA can shore things up and fight back.’
‘So why should you help? Buley gave Lisle your job. They owe you, you don’t owe them. Come on, Mac!’
He hesitated. ‘Well…it’s not as though I’m doing anything else.’
‘Mac, Buley hung you out to dry, and now he’s sending Lisle back to see if there’s any juice left in you before they abandon you again! Give them nothing!’
‘I’ve said I’d meet him. I can’t back out now.’
‘Well, meet him. Tell him you don’t come cheap. You’ve spent your life nailing villains in racing, tell him you’re a consultant now. If they can pay the cops three hundred grand, they can pay you fifty for anything you’ve got.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Mac, you’re saying that to get me off the phone. Seriously, you’ve got to make a living now. No more paycheques. Charge the bastards.’
‘I’ll raise it.’
‘Well raise it before you tell him anything. And get a contract.’