Aim High (The Eddie Malloy series Book 7)

by Joe McNally

  The major spent less than forty-eight hours in custody, before his lawyer won him bail. There was, his lawyer argued, no case whatsoever for holding his client in connection with the murders on the Welsh coast. As for the major’s business involvements with shell companies, what crime, asked his lawyer had been committed? And, indeed, if a crime had taken place, what evidence was there other than hearsay that his client had knowingly been involved?

  And Eddie’s family, which now, Kim had decided, included Maven Judge, would never go back to live in the south. When Eddie, Mac and Sonny were released by the police after seven hours’ of questioning, Mave, Marie and Kim took an almost manic delight in giving Eddie directions, from place to place on his way to find where they had ended up.

  They forced him to stop off at what they called checkpoints and phone for the next set of instructions. Sonny was with him. Mac had gone to meet Tim Arango. Normally, Eddie would have ranted and raved at this crazy chase east then north, but he hadn’t yet rebalanced his senses.

  He had not anticipated life beyond the cliff edge. Every single moment passed in what seemed to Eddie a different dimension from what he was already thinking of as his previous life. Sonny had said little throughout the journey, and after an hour, Eddie stopped asking if he was okay.

  As Eddie stooped to ring for his final set of instructions, he reckoned there was less than an hour’s light remaining. He had also figured out where they were, or at least he would bet on it: Kyrtlebank, his childhood home. He accepted that it would have been a sensible choice. It was remote enough, and anyone who knew anything about him, or, more importantly, who searched online for old news stories, would realize it was the last place he or his family would have run to for refuge.

  He was deep into Cumbria, had just come off the motorway, and as he waited for Mave to answer, he knew he would play along, they all seemed so excited.

  Mave put him on loudspeaker and, as they’d done with previous calls, each of them shouted a line of directions. When he ended the call, he did so with great relief. They were not at Kyrtlebank.

  The final turn he made using the instructions he’d noted, was down a single track, high in the Cumbrian Fells above Lake Ullswater. It had once been a proper road. But was overgrown and pot-holed. He noticed freshly broken branches on the hawthorn hedges and assumed the horsebox had done the damage.

  A mile along, around a gentle bend, he saw the horsebox parked. A flaking sign on a low brown wall read Felltop Farm. Eddie pulled up at the end of the driveway and turned to Sonny. ‘This is it, my friend.’

  They got out and closed the door and stood at the bottom of the drive looking at the long-fronted sandstone farmhouse. A For Sale sign had been uprooted and lay in the grass behind the brown wall. There was no sign of life until smoke suddenly began rising from the chimney. A side door opened in the farmhouse and Mave, Marie and Kim came running out shouting and screaming and laughing down the driveway toward the two men.

  Kim grabbed Eddie round the waist. Marie hugged his neck, Mave reached up to Sonny who seemed ready to fall forward and crush her. But he steadied himself and opened his arms and the tears came again.

  Inside, Eddie discovered they had spent twenty minutes wrestling the smaller of the two tables from the big kitchen into the living room so they could all sit facing the fire and look out of the huge side window to the fells as dusk descended.

  ‘Guess where you are!’ Kim said, when they’d all settled with hot drinks.

  ‘Your farm.’

  Kim looked disappointed. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘From the way you used to talk about it. The road you described when you told me how you learned to ride a bike. And the same road you described when you told me about your first pony. And the same road you described when you were walking home from school each day. It kind of etches itself in the mind.’ Eddie drank tea and added, ‘Oh and the for sale sign dumped on the lawn helped.’

  ‘Oh no! I forgot about that!’ Kim covered his face.

  Eddie looked at them, one by one. ‘The Cumbrian air’s worked wonders. Or maybe Kim’s become infectious, if you know what I mean…you look like children again.’

  Kim said. ‘We’re staying, Eddie. We’re not going back to Newmarket. We’ve got the horses. Mave’s going to buy the farm. We’re all staying here, and we want you to as well!’

  ‘And Sonny,’ Mave said quietly, reaching to touch his arm.

  Eddie looked quizzically at his sister. Marie smiled and nodded. He turned to Mave. She did the same. ‘No travelling?’ he asked.

  ‘It can wait.’

  ‘We’re going to be a family,’ Kim said. ‘A proper family. We’re all going to start over. You’re our family. You can’t be head of the family because there’s not going to be a head of the family. We’re all going to be equal.’

  Eddie said, ‘You’ve thought a lot about this, haven’t you?’

  ‘We’ve talked about nothing else,’ Kim said, ‘Have we?’

  ‘We haven’t,’ the women said.

  Kim looked at Eddie. ‘Will you come and live with us here?’

  Eddie watched the boy as his past life fast-forwarded in his head: the wounds, the dreams, the hopes, the determination, the solitude, the hurt, the daily defence of…he didn’t know what…of permitting himself to be alive. Then the confrontation with death in the early hours of that morning. Still his face stayed calm, perhaps even peaceful as he answered, ‘Yes. I will.’

  Kim got up and jumped. He jumped and raised his fists and he shouted, then he began bouncing round the perimeter of the table and everybody laughed. Sonny too.

  Mave rose and stood behind Sonny, her hands on his shoulders. ‘Will you join us, Uncle Sonny? Uncles are needed in every family.’

  He reached up and took her hand, and he nodded. Kim was at Eddie’s side, watching. ‘No nodding allowed, Uncle Sonny! You need to say “I will!” It’s like vows, like “I do”.’

  ‘I will,’ Sonny said. ‘I do.’, and everyone cheered again, and Eddie thought of Mac.

  78

  Mac had not wanted to leave voicemails for Broc Lisle, but he tried so many times, he thought it best in the end to leave a message. Lisle returned his call just after eight o’clock. ‘I do apologize, Peter, it’s been rather fraught lately. My father is very ill. I’m spending as much time as I can by his bedside.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry, Broc. This can wait. I was unaware of your father’s illness. It must seem an awful intrusion. Please, I’ll let you get back to his side.’

  ‘Not at all. Cynthia, a good friend of mine, is with him. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I was hoping to see you to thank you for that tip-off on Ivory. It seems rather rude to do this by telephone, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not at all. It was a pleasure to help. I heard a little about your ordeal. I cannot even imagine what it must have been like.’

  ‘Well…’ Mac dried up.

  Lisle said, ‘Look, are you still in the office? Are you in London?’

  ‘I am. Just heading home now.’

  ‘Why don’t you stop off here at the nursing home and sit a while? Cynthia needs to get back to work. I’d be grateful for the company.’

  ‘Of course. I’d be pleased to.’

  The lamp in the corner of Lisle senior’s room was low. Lisle turned to Mac, ‘He looks at it, the lamp, even though it can cause him discomfort at times. The eyes of the dying seek the light, Peter. I’d heard the saying. I’ve seen it proved during these vigils.’

  ‘Are you his only family?’

  ‘After mother died, yes. My solitary son, that’s what he used to call me.’

  Mac nodded. Lisle bent forward to wet the drying lips, then sat back, showing the moist tissue to Mac. ‘They’re really well prepared. The wooden case there, below his bed, contains any medication he needs. Just in case, they call it. All the staff are trained to administer it. There’s a muscle relaxant, diamorphine and these very effective patches. See that one on fat
her’s neck? They dry up this bloody mucus before it can build.’

  ‘He’s been ill for some time, then?’

  ‘Three years now. I almost didn’t take the BHA job, but they agreed on the conditions I needed for father. He’d have been quite proud of me getting that job, you know,’ Lisle reached to touch Mac’s arm, ‘apologies for the circumstances, of course.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You see he was a racing man himself. Won the Grand Military Gold Cup many years ago, when I was ten. The memories are vivid. He’d have been proud to see me working in racing. One of the reasons I found it worth persevering through such a trying year.’ He smiled warmly, ‘You’ll be glad now, you did lose that bloody job, eh?’

  And Mac kept vigil with him, and talked about his own childhood, something he’d never done with anyone but Jean. And beside them Lisle senior faded steadily. His breathing would stop and start. He would rally, and try to raise his head, and his son comforted him and talked to him and moistened his lips and held his hand until the old man drew his final breath. Lisle checked his watch. ‘Three fifty-six a.m. on the twenty-seventh of January.’

  Mac put a hand on Lisle’s shoulder. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  ‘Eighty-eight years, eleven days. I wish I knew what time of day he had been born. I get comfort from precision, Peter. I don’t know why.’

  ‘I’m certain you’ll be able to find out, Broc. Certain.’

  ‘It makes the value of a life so much more, what’s the word I’m looking for…tangible? No, more solid. Something you can wedge accurately and precisely into its time slot in the turning of the universe. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I do.’

  The friendship between Mac and Broc Lisle strengthened over the following weeks. Mac attended the funeral, as did Eddie and Sonny, Mave, Marie and Kim: the family. Eddie’s house in the valley was up for sale. He had moved north. Part of his plan had been to persuade Mac to join them, to be one of that family.

  And Mac admitted that he might have done it, had it not been for his growing attachment to Broc Lisle. Mac had never had a male friend with whom he’d felt he could be himself, not even Eddie. They were too different.

  And Lisle too found comfort in Mac’s company. It was a different comfort from that offered by Cynthia. He’d been seeing her often since his father’s death, and the friendships had calmed his fear of the future. Of aging. Of following too literally in the footsteps of his father.

  The search for the killer of the three jockeys and Ivory and Dalton lost what little impetus it had. To help Mac as much as he could, Broc discovered through Cynthia that Nina Raine was in Agadir, living with a man who had worked for Jordan Ivory.

  The major resigned as chairman of the Jockey Club, but remained free pending fraud investigations. Racing began again on all Jockey Club Courses, without incident.

  79

  Come April, and the end of the winter jumps season, Eddie was well settled in Felltop Farm. The sale had been completed, the money put in trust for Kim, and two extensions built, so everyone had their own living space. The stallions were back in operation and Kim was trying to persuade Eddie to consider retirement and swap his riding licence for a training licence.

  ‘Maybe next year, Kim.’

  The women proposed a housewarming celebration that was to last a weekend. The first night was close friends and family only. Mac had travelled up and Eddie had taken no persuading to agree that Broc and Cynthia should attend, and the three arrived in the warmth of what seemed an early summer.

  The day was spent eating and drinking and walking in the fields and laughing and making plans and Eddie had never imagined that life could hold so much promise. Promise that was nothing to do with riding winners.

  Marie and Mave had insisted that they would not be cooking dinner. That job would be left to caterers. And they made a hard and fast rule that everyone was to dress properly for dinner. Eddie argued tamely. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn a suit and tie. But he was overruled. Sonny did not admit it, but he was looking forward to being in a suit once again. To stand tall and tanned and handsome and remember past days.

  So the dining room was lit. Fine china and silver was on the table, and champagne, which Sonny stared at transfixed for a few seconds when it was offered. He declined quietly.

  Kim sat directly opposite Broc Lisle who was the most enthusiastic man Kim had ever met. The boy was fascinated by the fine clothes, perfect manners and the impression Lisle gave of being a sort of ideal father from a time long past.

  After dinner, Kim invited Broc Lisle for a full tour of the farm. He showed off the stallions, and asked Lisle if he wanted to see the hayloft where he’d hidden when the police had been searching for him after the death of his dad.

  ‘Of course,’ Lisle said, ‘Lead the way.’

  Kim looked up at him, ‘You might get your suit a bit dirty.’

  ‘Not at all. Let’s get climbing.’

  In the loft, Kim opened the doors and they settled on hay bales while Kim pointed out the different fields and what had happened in them over the years. ‘And see the road back there, the smooth one you drove along, before you turned onto our track?’

  ‘I see it.’

  ‘That’s where I first learned to ride a bike, when I was five. And I did my first proper rising trot on exactly the same bit on my first pony.’

  ‘Something you’ll always remember, I’m sure. Things that happen in childhood will stay with you all your life.’

  ‘Well, I’ve already decided that when we get our first horse in training, I’m going to ride him along that exact same stretch.’

  ‘I hope that brings you some luck, and he wins for you too.’

  Lisle looked toward the horizon. Kim said, ‘It must be great to work in racing. Have you always done that?’

  ‘No. On the contrary, I’m a rookie, I’m afraid. The army was to me what racing is to you. Since I was a boy, I always wanted to follow my father into the army, though he loved his racing too.’

  ‘Were you in any wars?’

  Lisle hesitated, smiling sadly. ‘Well, not wars in the formal sense of the word. I carried out what they call special duties in different conflicts around the world.’

  ‘Spying?’

  ‘No, not spying, though I worked with some spies early in my career.’

  Kim paused, then said, ‘Did you ever have to shoot anyone?’

  Lisle, still staring into the distance, nodded, ‘I did,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Was it…hard? Was it a difficult thing to do?’

  Lisle turned to him. ‘In a way. But you must do your duty. You must protect your ideals, and what is dear to you.’

  ‘Like your country?’

  ‘Your country. Your beliefs. Your loved ones.’

  Kim stared at him. Lisle stood up and said, ‘Anyway, enough of me, what about you, I guess jockeying will be your game, like your uncle?’

  Kim got up, smiling again. ‘Uncle Eddie was Champion Jockey at twenty-one. I’m planning to be Champion by my twentieth birthday!’

  ‘Well that is the best way to achieve anything, Kim. Never settle for second best. I’ve tried to live my own life that way, in the footsteps of my father. My motto has always been the one he taught me when I was your age. And I have lived by it.’

  Kim watched him as Lisle’s gaze turned once more to the view across the land. ‘What is it? The motto?’

  Broc smiled and reached to put a hand on Kim’s shoulder. ‘Aim high.’

  arcangels wanted

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  Thanks

  Joe McNally

 

 

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