Wild Horses
Joe McNally
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Thanks
Disclaimer
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Special offer
About the Author
Copyright © 2016 by Joe McNally
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Dedicated to those in search of a second chance
Thank you . . .
…to my wife, Margy, for her patience and love.
…to my great friend, Charlie for proofreading
…to my Beta-team, whose first Eddie Malloy book this is
Thanks
I’m grateful to the growing number of fans of the Eddie Malloy series: this is the 8th book in that series.
Joe McNally
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
1
The only good thing about regaining consciousness in an intensive care unit is that it’s better than not regaining consciousness at all. Other than that, I see no upsides. Waking in a hospital bed when your last memory is of riding in a race means you are not going to be riding again anytime soon. While you’re down and out, your rivals will steal your rides.
The nurse hadn’t noticed I’d come to. I closed my eyes again to slit-level, watching through an eyelash curtain, as she rolled a machine to the foot of the bed, then crouched to organize some tubes coming from it.
What to do?
If I spoke, I might scare her into banging her head on the metal plate overhanging the top of it. I decided a quiet groan should do it.
She stopped. She didn’t straighten up, just raised her head slowly, ‘Are you awake?’
I opened my eyes. She smiled wide. I did too.
After the doctor had seen me, they let Mave in. She came smiling toward me, along the ward, around the bed to my side, her arms opening to hug me gently, ‘You had me worried, Mister Malloy.’
‘I’d probably have had me worried if I’d been awake.’
‘Well, that doesn’t make much sense at all. I’d put it down to the knock on the head if I didn’t know you so well.’ Her hands rested softly on my shoulders as she eased back to look at me, ‘What did the doctor say?’ she asked.
‘Not much. Said somebody else’ll be along to speak to me shortly. What time is it?’
‘Nearly eight.’
‘In the morning?’
‘At night.’
‘Jeez! What day is it?’
‘Monday.’
‘I’ve been here since Saturday?’
‘We. We’ve been here since Saturday.’
I smiled. We hugged.
They didn’t let Mave stay long. After she left, the specialist arrived, Mister Crichton. He checked charts, watched machines and shone a zooming light at my pupils. Then he pulled a chair over and sat down. That made me concentrate. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Fine. Good.’
He paused, watching my eyes, then said quietly, ‘In jockey-speak that translates to “diabolical” and “wiped out.”’
I smiled.
‘Jockeys amaze me,’ he said, ‘had I the chance to do my Ph.D. again, it would be on the pain threshold of professional jockeys.’
‘The amateurs are pretty hardy too,’ I said.
‘What is it that makes you capable of defying acute pain and trauma?’
‘Fear.’
‘That seems counter-intuitive.’
‘We’re afraid we’ll lose rides on horses we’ve built up a partnership with. Owners and trainers are superstitious. If I haven’t ridden a winner for them in the past ten rides and a sub steps in and rides three in a row, I can probably say goodbye to a source of rides that’s taken years to build.’
‘And you’d risk damaging your health for that?’
‘Crazy, isn’t it?’
He watched me for a while then smiled sadly and shook his head. He slid a notebook and pen from his pocket, ‘What’s your last memory?’
‘Watching you take out that notebook.’
He smiled properly this time. I said, ‘Sorry…my last memory was seeing my nephew off at the airport…and my sister and a friend…to Australia.’
‘When? What day?’
‘It was Friday afternoon, the day before the race.’
‘I thought you couldn’t remember the race?’
‘Oh, sorry, I thought you meant my last memory before the race itself. No, I’m pretty sure I can remember everything until the lights went out.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘I was riding a horse, a mare, in a handicap steeplechase at Bangor. We were cruising along down the back straight when she took off with me, went absolutely crazy, galloping as though she was trying to burst her heart. Never sat on anything like it…never even seen anything like it. Five furlong sprinters don’t go that fast, never mind three-mile ‘chasers. Sometimes, when a
horse is fresh, on the way to the start or in the early stages of a race, it’ll run away with its jockey, but not after more than two miles of racing.’
‘Is there a, well, a procedure of any kind for when it happens? Do you plan for it?’
‘You can’t. If it happens early, you can wrestle with them, haul on just one rein, try to pull them in a circle, but ten men couldn’t have stopped this mare, trust me. It was as if someone had shot her with a bullet full of energy.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I tried not to look as stupid as I felt, at least at first I did. When I realized she’d completely lost it, I just tried to hold on until she ran out of gas, but she galloped straight into a fence as though she hadn’t even seen it and fired me out of the saddle like a human cannonball. Things go into super slow motion when you’re halfway though a fall, and I saw the earth coming at me and I remember realizing there was no way I was going to tuck and roll. No way. And that was it. Sometimes, you’ll take a kick or two in the head as well when the others pass you…don’t know if I did or not.’
'The racecourse doctor doesn’t think you did. The damage was done when you landed, and I must say I find it remarkable, utterly remarkable, that you’re able to talk so lucidly after being unconscious for so long.’
‘One of the advantages of being brainless.’
He smiled and shook his head, then stood up and slid the chair back against the wall, ‘You’re going to be here for a few days under observation, I’m afraid.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I won’t be riding for a while anyway. Might as well be miserable here as at home.’
‘Where is home?’
‘Lake District. A farm overlooking Ullswater.’
‘Sounds idyllic. And I understand you have someone there to take care of you?’
‘I do.’
‘You’re a lucky man, in more ways than one. I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘Thanks, Doc.’
‘My pleasure.’
‘One last thing, Doc, do you know if my horse survived, Montego Moon?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
2
Next morning, as the cleaners moved among us and some of my ward mates drifted back to sleep, I heard Dil Grant coming, his cowboy heels click-clacking down the ward. Our long friendship had drummed the rhythm of his walk into my memory.
I turned as he came into view, this man from Toronto, this failed movie actor, this crocked stuntman, in whose middle-aged head he was Wyatt Earp.
In Dil’s dreams, there was time yet to make something of himself with what remained of his Hollywood looks. All they would have helped with this morning was charming the charge nurse into letting him bust through the visiting restrictions like they were the batwing doors of a saloon.
He stopped. I waited for the fringe-sweep. He did it, that spread-fingered combing of the thick iron-grey hair. It had begun as an affectation, and ended up a habit.
‘You look like shit,’ he said.
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘They give you a mirror?’
‘Not my own personal mirror, no. I’m one of those people who can rub along without looking at myself every hour.’
‘Just as well. You’re whiter than that sheet you’re lying on.’
‘Hollywood tans are hard to come by at Hexham.’
He smiled.
I said, ‘I was going to tell you to pull up a chair, but no doubt you’ve swoonerized the nurses into bringing you a sofa.’
‘Losing your touch, Dil.’
He sat. Our faces were on the same level. I wasn’t sure if he was going to smile or cry. ‘Did Montego Moon make it?’ I asked.
He nodded, ‘Bruised and pretty sorry for herself, but she’ll live.’
‘That’s good.’
He stared at me in a strange way, expectant, regretful. I waited.
‘What happened?’ he asked quietly.
‘I was going to ask you the same thing.’
‘I’ve been around horses since I was nine years old, Eddie. Outside of a rodeo show, I’ve never seen anything like that.’
‘Be thankful you weren’t sitting on her.’
He resumed the sorrowful staring.
’Spit it out, Dil.’
‘I had twenty-five grand on that horse.’
I saw again the actor he’d once been, visualizing himself now in a huge close-up, hurt-looking, eyes glistening. ‘Dil, I could say I was sorry to hear that, and poor you and other such bullshit, but all I can offer with any degree of truth is, hell mend you, as my mother used to say.’
‘Eddie, I stuck to my part of the bargain.’
‘You’ve lost me now…’
‘We had an agreement that I’d never admit before a race that I’d had a bet. I was desperate to tell you when I legged you up. It killed me to hold that in, to not let you know how important that was to me.’
I leaned forward, ‘Dil, what are you trying to say here, because it seems to me it’s something like if you’d told me about the bet, somehow I’d have stopped that mare doing what she did, and not only that, but I’d have won on her too…is that what you’re saying?’
He held my gaze for a few seconds then ducked out with the fringe-sweep, ‘I’m not saying that, Eddie, I’m saying…I’m saying what happened nailed me to the wall yesterday,’ his voice rose, ‘it nailed me to the fu-‘ I lifted a hand and my anger rose too, ‘Dil! Keep it down!’ It was a harsh whisper. He saw the threat in my eyes and sat back, and dropped his head, already beaten.
I said, ‘Know something? When I heard you coming along the ward, I thought, well, if Saturday did nothing else, it changed old Dil’s spots. I believed that for once you were here to see how I was, after being in a coma for more than forty-eight hours. When have you ever visited me in hospital? Ever?’
He stared at his shiny pointed boots, ‘That’s not the kind of relationship we’ve got, Eddie, you know that.’
‘I’m your stable jockey, have been for, what, three years? And, yes, you’re right, that’s not the kind of relationship we’ve got. And that’s fine with me. But if you’re going to be a dick, at least be a consistent dick. You could have saved this for when I got out. But you’re so full of self-pity you come on a round trip of, what, three hundred miles to give me a hard time for almost getting killed on a horse you train? A horse you train! And you’re asking me where she learned to take off like a Scud missile three quarters of the way through a race? Man, have you got balls doing that!’
He hid behind the fringe this time, ducking, letting it fall, then raising his hands to cover the bottom half of his face, a heavy sigh blowing through his fingers like a whistle. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly.
‘You’re sorry for you, Dil, nobody else.’ I folded my arms.
He looked up, a spark back in his blue eyes, ‘I’m apologizing to you! At least have the grace to accept it!’
I lay back and looked at the ceiling, ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You could look at me when you say it!’
I sat up again, ‘I’m sorry. Now the two of us are sorry. I’m in hospital, you’re in schtuck. Shit happens. We’re both still above ground. Think about that on the way home.’
‘I’ve got enough to think about, thanks.’
Silence again, then I asked the hard question, ‘Who are you going to replace me with?’
‘Haven’t thought about it. Probably use the best available.’ He swept his fringe and grunted with frustration.
‘Why the plunge?’ I said, ‘You told me a while back you’d quit the five figure bets.’
‘Oh, it was supposed to be the start of the great grand plan. I’ll tell you about it when you’re better.’
I bit back a sarcastic response. Dil went to the end of the bed and gripped the rail and said, ‘Even if you’re out of here tomorrow, you won’t pass the doctor for at least a fortn
ight. What’s your plans?’
‘I don’t have any. Why?’
‘Vita’s been pestering me to find a house for her.’
‘Hasn’t she got enough houses?’
’She wants one near the yard.’ His actor’s face conveyed a hammed-up hint.
’Near you, you mean?’
He opened his hands in that what-can-I-do pose.
‘What’s Prim got to say about that?’
‘I’m working on her.’
I laughed, ’Prim might not have Vita’s money, but I know which one I’d back in a fight. Prim will truss you up. She will boil you in a gypsy cauldron until your balls are the size of rice grains.’
‘That’s why I’d rather Vita bought the house. Her other suggestion was to move in with me.’
I smiled wide, ‘Forget my earlier advice about being thankful you’re still above the ground. Was that big bet to pay Prim off, or something? To get rid of her?’
‘The opposite. It’s a long story,’ he said as he let go the bed rail and straightened, ‘Know something, Eddie? Good looks have been nothing but a curse to me. When I was young I thought I was so blessed…so blessed.’
‘And don’t forget the humility God gave you too.’
He looked under his carefully shaped eyebrows at me, ‘Eddie, believe me, if I had the choice again, knowing what I know now, I’d settle for being a plain John Doe.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. Not even your ham-acting face can convince yourself of that, never mind me.’
He shrugged his cheeks, and nodded, ‘Well, maybe I’d just have made better choices.’
‘Dil, go home and google The Moving Finger by Omar somebody or other. A good tip Mac once gave me.’
‘Will it depress me?’
‘Probably.’
‘I’ll pass.’
‘I thought you might.’
‘Well…want to help Vita with her house-hunting?’
‘Er, no. First of all, I’m not an estate agent, second, I like Primarolo Romanic an awful lot more than I like Dame Vita Brodie, and even if I didn’t, the last place I’d want to be is on Prim’s wrong side.’
‘Vita ain’t a dame. She pays the bills.’