The Horse With My Name (8 page)

‘I heard a whisper.’

There was no reaction; I didn’t really expect one; he was an old pro. He gave a little shrug. ‘Well it must be true then,’ he said, turning and nodding to the men by the Land Rover. They pushed themselves straight and pulled open the doors. McClean put his hand out to me and we shook. ‘I’ll see you up at the house around one if it suits, Dan. You can have a proper look at Dan the Man and we can have a chat about the book. Good to see you.’ He climbed into the vehicle. One of his men was behind the wheel and the other in the back. The passenger window was already rolled down. As the engine was started I said, ‘Why the guns, Geordie?’

He flicked the end of his cigar out of the window and it landed at my feet. ‘Dan, remember the boxing? You thought it was full of sharks? Well they were fucking goldfish compared to this.’ The Land Rover moved forward. He winked and said, ‘Toodle-pip then.’

I watched him speed off down the lane and thought for a moment about what I might be getting myself involved with. It wasn’t the thought of shotguns, sharks or goldfish,
or even the horse shit on my trousers. It was dealing with a grown man who said
toodle pip
.

I stopped off at a diner in the village that was advertising a full Irish breakfast. The woman serving didn’t give a second glance to my shit-spattered trousers but she looked confused when I asked for an Ulster fry. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I forgot I was south of the border, down Mexico way.’

Her brow crinkled like the bacon she brought. And the egg and the sausage. It was nice, but it lacked what makes the northern fry special: potato bread, soda bread, pancake, and I pined quietly for it. I shouldn’t have been eating
any
of it, of course. It is not the modern way. But then I’ve never been particularly modern, you only have to look at my record collection to see that. In my book, if it’s not fried, battered or covered in chocolate, it’s not worth eating.

The thing is, I’ve never been Mr Fatty. Quite the opposite. I’m dead thin. This occasionally helps me to delude myself that I’m actually quite healthy, but deep down I know that cholesterol gathers just as handily in the arteries of a thin man as a fat; that if I continue the way I’m going the day will come when I’m sauntering down to the pub for lunch and I’ll just explode. Like a lot of fools, I have conned myself into believing that anything with the word
Diet
on the side must naturally be good for you, and that the more of it you take, the healthier you will be. It amazes me that the marketing people haven’t yet devised
Diet Benson & Hedges
as a marketing ploy, because they do make you thinner, eventually.

I picked at my fry. I’d gotten out of the way of healthy eating in the past few months – being sad and lonely was enough without being hungry – but when I was properly married Patricia used to sit me down and say, right, healthy eating begins on Monday. That was generally on a Tuesday,
allowing me the best part of a week to stock up on my supplies of sugar and fat, culminating in a Sunday night visit to McDonald’s, where I’d discovered the delights of hot apple pie and ice cream smothered in caramel sauce. And all for just 90p. Or two for £1.80.

‘I said, are you finished?’

I looked at my plate. It was clean. It was a stupid question unless down here they ate plate as well. But I nodded and smiled, because I had to live with these people, at least for a weekend. She was middle-aged and her hair was tied back in a hambuger bun. Her skin was yellow, or it might just have been batter. I glanced at my watch. It was still only seven thirty. Staying up all night to meet McClean had paid off, but now I could go back to bed and sleep off the drink.

Or I would have done if the party animals had not still been boozing and singing along at the tops of their voices to some country cak on the radio, with the birdshit neighbour across the road staring in with a face like a bag of spiders.

I roared in and smacked off the radio. ‘Stop it!’ I yelled. ‘It’s eight o‘clock in the fucking morning! Grow up! Tidy up! And if you have to throw up do it somewhere else! Haven’t you got jobs to go to? Haven’t you got homes, you sad fucking wankers! And even if you haven’t, I don’t fucking care, just get out of my fucking house, okay!’

They stared meekly at me as they gathered up their meagre belongings. I moved to let the dry-cleaner get his coat from the chair behind me. When he’d pulled it on he shyly gave my arm a little squeeze. ‘We understand about Patricia, Dan, and your son.’

I looked from one sympathetic face to another, and wondered what I’d said, and why. ‘You know nothing!’ I snapped. ‘Now you better be fucking out of here by the time I wake up!’

I practically ran out of the lounge and up the stairs. I tore off my jeans and crawled beneath a quilt. For some reason there were tears rolling down my cheeks and I couldn’t stop hugging myself. It was the funniest thing.

I woke just before noon. The house was quiet. I had a quick shower and shave and soaked myself in anti-perspirant and aftershave, but I could still smell horses, and I’d the feeling that I would do for some considerable time to come.

I dressed in my idea of smart casual. Black jeans, red sweatshirt, black sports jacket, Oxford shoes. If I was going to spend much longer around horses I would certainly have to do something about the shoes. It would mean investing in wellington boots or at least investigating if they did a lace-up version. When I went downstairs there was an oil painting of a little girl picking flowers hanging in the lounge. There was chicken in the freezer and a bag of Guinness cans in the fridge. On a hanger perched on the open door to the utility room were my stained jeans, now washed and pressed.

There was no note anywhere, and there was no need for one.

Geordie McClean’s stable was about twenty minutes out of Ashtown. As usual I was running behind schedule. The windy roads and the cows in the way didn’t help. When I finally pulled up to the gates it was nearly half past one. It had been Hilda’s idea to try and meet Geordie face to face on the gallops, rather than risk a brush-off from some underling at the house, so I was hoping he hadn’t checked out my lie about being redirected there by his staff. But as I looked up at the gate and the security cameras watching me I knew that he knew, and just hoped that it wouldn’t make any difference. I gave my name and my business and after a thirty-second wait the gates swung inwards.

I drove up towards a large whitewashed bungalow. Large, but it wasn’t a mansion. It had nothing on Mark Corkery’s place. There was an IAR Land Rover sitting outside and I could just see the red roof of what I presumed to be the stables beyond. As I parked, the front door opened and the two guys who’d admired my jacket earlier came out, though this time neither of them were packing lead. They were much friendlier. They introduced themselves as Derek and Eric and asked me what part of Belfast I was from. They said they’d grown up around the corner from there and asked me if Lavery’s bar was still in business because it had been a while since they’d been back. I said it was and always would be. We were getting on like old mates, but there was no doubt in my mind that no matter what corners we might have passed each other on years before, they would still break my legs if McClean asked them to.

‘Is the man in?’ I asked. ‘I got delayed.’

‘Nah – he’s running late. He sends his apologies and would you wait.’

I nodded. They invited me inside and I said I’d rather take a look round, if they didn’t mind.

‘Not at all,’ said Eric.

‘He said you’d want to,’ said Derek.

‘Feel free. We’ve no secrets here.’ He laughed as he said it and I grinned back. Then they searched me for a camera.

‘Sorry,’ said Eric, ‘we have to be careful.’

‘In this business,’ said Derek, ‘information means money, and money means information.’

‘It’s a bit wasted on me,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t know a thoroughbred from a pantomime horse.’

I winked like a professional and wandered away, absolutely convinced that as soon as I was out of view they’d be scurrying back inside to watch my every step via one of the many security cameras mounted about the property.

8

I had taken the precaution of bringing sugarlumps, pilfered from the home of the Irish all-day breakfast. I was going up and down the stalls patting heads and feeding cubes and thought I was getting on rather well when there was a shriek from behind and a girl came powering out of the afternoon brightness into the rather pleasant gloom of the stable.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing!’ she yelled as she approached, her voice English plummy.

Naturally I assumed someone else had done something awful. A stable lad had stuck a pitchfork into half a million’s worth of prime horseflesh or a carelessly dropped hand grenade was about to blow; but no, when I turned she was certainly shouting at me. Her cheeks were red and her nostrils were flared and her big brown horse eyes were mad as hell.

‘Nothing . . .’

She let out another shriek, this time generously soaked in derision, and grabbed hold of the hand I was now holding tightly closed. ‘Open it!’ she screamed.

She had a more than decent grip, so fearing for my safety,
I reluctantly uncurled my fingers. ‘Sugar . . . horses . . .’ I stammered.

She glared at the half-dozen sugarlumps sitting on my palm, then slapped them wildly out of it. ‘Are you
insane
?’ she hissed.

‘I th-thought . . . horses loved . . . Trigger . . .’

‘Have you any idea what . . .’ Then she let out a frustrated grunt and stamped her feet down on to as many of the cubes as she could find. She was slim and somewhere around the twenty mark; her hair was mousy brown, cut short so that she wouldn’t have to bother with it, but obviously did. It didn’t seem the time to ask what a fine young filly like her was getting so upset about. So I just continued to look hapless while she opened the first of several stall doors and began to urgently examine the creatures within.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘Who the hell are you?’ she snapped. ‘What the hell are you doing here? Who told you you could come in here? Didn’t you think to
ask
? Have you any idea what this can do to their blood sugar? How it can affect our readings? How do I know they’re not full of dope? Don’t you know never ever
ever
to give a thoroughbred something to eat without checking first?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.

She gently slapped the side of the horse, then came out of the stall towards me. The first assault had made her seem quite tall, but now that she was standing head to shoulder before me it was clear that she wasn’t really. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Dan the Man.’

‘What?’

‘Dan the Man.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Dan the Man. The horse.’

‘Yes, I
know
the horse.’

‘Geordie McClean named him after me. Dan Starkey. Dan. The Man.’ I smiled proudly.

‘Dan the Man was bought in as a juvenile last year from the East Coast. He wasn’t named after anybody, at least nobody on this side of the Atlantic.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘So who are you, and what do you want? How did you get past security?’

‘I’m a journalist.’ Before her mouth could fully form up into a sneer I added, ‘Or was. I’m hoping to write a book about Dan the Man. And Geordie’s move into the horsey world. I’ll interview you if you like, as long as you promise not to break my pencil.’

She wasn’t instantly won over by my rapier-like wit. She looked at me coolly. ‘I don’t talk to journalists.’ She moved along to the next stall. ‘You shouldn’t be in here.’

I went with her. ‘Geordie said it would be okay.’

‘
Geordie
said it would be okay,’ she mimicked. ‘Do you know him well enough to call him
Geordie
?’

I shrugged. ‘Who really knows him?’

‘I do.’

‘What do you think of him?’

‘I told you I don’t talk to journalists. Go outside. Go
away
. These are sensitive creatures, they don’t need to be disturbed.’

‘Sorry. Perhaps I missed something. Which of us has been causing the disturbance?’

I didn’t wait for a response. I turned and sauntered out of the stables. Something behind me was blowing hot air out of its nose, and it probably wasn’t a horse.

When I returned to the front of the house there was a gleaming red Ferrari sitting beside the IAR vehicle. There
was an Irish number plate with this year’s date on it. There were no furry dice. I admired it as a nice car and swore that if I ever got to be as old as Geordie McClean I wouldn’t embarrass myself by driving around in a Ferrari. I stepped up to the front door and rang the doorbell. Derek came and let me in. He was wearing a pinny with the same IAR logo on it. ‘Go on through,’ he said, ‘I’m just fixing lunch.’

He pointed me down a corridor and I followed the sound of Van Morrison into the lounge. Not that he was there himself, but his mellow voice seeped out of an expansive and expensive-looking music centre which would have dominated the room if it hadn’t been for the enormous snooker table which did. Geordie McClean was enjoying a pre-lunch cigar and potting a few balls.

I stood in the doorway. ‘Who’s winning?’ I asked. He looked up, smiled, then potted the brown. He straightened, then stood the cue on its end. ‘Y’see, Dan, you come into money and you go out and buy all the things you ever wanted. Like this monster. Then you realise you haven’t any friends to play with.’

‘What about Derek and Eric?’

‘You don’t play with employees. They always lose.’

‘They might just be crap.’

‘No,
I’m
crap, that’s how I know.’ I raised an eyebrow and came into the room. He didn’t look that crap to me. ‘Do you fancy a game?’ he asked. ‘Say, five hundred a ball?’

‘No.’

‘One hundred.’

‘No.’

‘You’re no fun, Danny boy.’

He stubbed his cigar out into an ashtray sitting precariously on the edge of the table then waved me through into the lounge next door. It was luxuriously appointed and afforded great views over the Meath countryside. The
leather seats creaked as I sat down. He stood looking at me to the point where it got embarrassing.