Charlie Brooks
Citizen

To my mother, Caroline.Thank God someone in our family can spell.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

PART ONE

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2

3

4

5

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PART TWO

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84

About the Author

Other Books By

Copyright

About the Publisher

PART ONE

1

Tipper knew that Ireland was the Emerald Isle; but he’d never seen a real emerald. Ma owned a necklace made of green stones, which, his father had once told him solemnly, were mined straight out of the Mountains of Mourne. Da was a drunk. But when he said that was why they called it the Emerald Isle, Tipper believed him. The uplands of the country, said Da, were stuffed with emeralds like currants in a slice of barmbrack. There were places you only had to take a spade to the ground and you’d turn up a couple of handfuls. It was later, long after Da had disappeared to England, that Ma let on. As far as she knew there wasn’t an emerald ever found in Irish ground, and her necklace was only paste from Woolworths. A pure emerald would be something else, she said, with all the different shades of green glowing and gleaming inside of it. People like us would only dream of owning such a thing, she said.

Some of the colours Tipper was seeing now, through the dirty window of the local CIE bus, matched his mother’s idea of the gem. There were greens of every description here with yellows and golden colours mixed in. The hedgerows bobbed with red fuchsia and there were scarlet poppies in the oats. This part of Tipperary was called the Golden Vale and after the place Tipper had come from, it lifted his spirits. He saw no concrete tower blocks on rubble-strewn land, no charred shells of stolen cars, vandalized bus shelters or overflowing rubbish bins. Here the land sparkled in the summer sunlight. It may not have had buried gemstones, but it was a rich land, and an ancient one.

Then there were the horses. The road passed field after field of patient mares grazing, attended by their spindle-legged foals. Every second farm in the Irish midlands was also a stud farm, and every other farmer a horseman whose only desire was to breed a Grand National or a Derby legend. Tipper was heading to one of these stud farms, and he was beginning to sense he’d feel at home there. The open spaces of the midlands might be a novelty to him, but horses were not. He already knew something about them.

‘They want me in the hospital,’ Ma had told him abruptly, a few days back. ‘I got to have an operation and it might be weeks before I can look after myself, let alone you.’

‘Jesus, I’ll be all right, Ma. What sort of operation?’

‘Never mind what sort. And you will not be all right. Your brother will be leading you into temptation. So I fixed it with your uncle Pat in the country—he’ll have you for the summer.’

As a matter of fact, she was spot on about Tipper’s brother Liam. When they grew up there had been nothing to do on the estate but kick a football or get into trouble, and you couldn’t play soccer all day every day. So trouble it had been, and that was how Tipper learned he could ride.

Liam had bought a pony for a few pounds at the old Smithfield market in central Dublin. They kept it tethered on some waste ground between two tower blocks. It was the only decent thing Liam ever did. They say that everyone has good in them, but they were wrong when it came to Liam.

They never got round to naming the pony. He was just referred to as ‘Himself’ and, in the O’Reilly family, it was Tipper that got on best with Himself. Bareback, and with nothing more than a head collar and string reins, he would ride races against the other boys’ ponies, never showing a trace of fear. Tipper also developed a talent for cowboy rope tricks. He would put a bucket on top of a gate-post then gallop towards it and lasso the bucket with a length of clothesline. When he tired of a stationary target he lassoed stray dogs. He never missed.

Liam couldn’t ride one side of Himself and he resented his younger brother being such a natural. He enjoyed throwing his weight around once his Da had gone. When he got a few cans inside him he cuffed Tipper hard enough to hurt him. In a playful sort of way.

Tipper and Himself would jump fences made from abandoned supermarket trolleys. But Liam had better use for his brother’s talents. He’d get Tipper to ride Himself into the actual supermarket and create a diversion whilst he helped himself under the cover of confusion.

When Tipper was about nine, Liam developed a new interest—joyriding. Tipper went along with it. Faint praise from his brother was better than a smack. They’d trek across town to an affluent area and pick a side street without too much traffic. Tipper would lie spread-eagled on the tarmac with Himself—who knew how to play his part—seemingly lying on top of him, while Liam lurked nearby waiting for a driver to stop his car and investigate the apparent riding accident. While walking up to Tipper, these Good Samaritans would soon enough hear the screech of tyres as Liam reversed their car away at speed. It was the cue for Tipper and Himself to jump up and get the hell out of it.

But inevitably the scam came to an end. One particular driver was too quick for Tipper and collared him before he could mount up. The result was a visit to the Juvenile Court, and an ultimatum from his mother; Himself must go back to Smithfield Market.

And now, years down the line, it felt like a different world to Tipper as the bus rattled into Fethard, an old town still ringed by its medieval defensive walls. Tipper stepped down into a wide Main Street with his bulging luggage. All his things stuffed into the big loop-handled bag that Ma always used to take washing to the launderette. His cousin Sam was supposed to meet him, but Tipper saw no sign of him. Not that he had a clue what he looked like. Instead he found McCarthy’s, a famous pub that Sam had said everyone knew. It stood on Main Street, in view of the church. And as Tipper settled himself to wait on a low wall opposite the pub, he watched a funeral procession forming up outside the churchyard gate.

‘All right, Tipper?’

It was Sam, sauntering up on Tipper’s blind side. Tipper swung round and nodded.

‘Yourself?’ he smiled. Tipper was immediately struck by Sam’s strength. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he was solid.

‘I’m grand. See the pub?’

He nodded towards McCarthy’s.

‘What about it?’

‘It’s haunted. Every time one of the family’s going to snuff it, a picture falls off the wall. See that funeral?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s the McCarthys too. They have the undertakers as well as the pub.’

‘That’s warped.’

‘It’s good business. They do the funeral and the wake all in one package. Come on. We’ve got to walk.’

The funeral cortege was just passing, led by the coffin borne in a smart Mercedes hearse, with wreaths and bouquets piled on the roof. Grimfaced mourners flanked it or trailed behind on foot. Sam and Tipper kept pace as the procession crawled towards the top of the town where, at the end of Main Street, a sign pointed the way to the cemetery, up a street to the left. But the funeral turned right.

‘They’re going the wrong way,’ observed Tipper.

‘No funeral in Fethard ever goes the right way.’

Sam nodded towards the street that had been avoided.

‘That’s Barrack Street. Cromwell came in that way, and the funerals have never used it since. They turn right here, and take the long way down Burke Street and round the back.’

Sam and Tipper left the funeral marchers and forked right by the Castle Inn.

‘See those walls there?’

Sam indicated with a wave of his arm.

‘They’re only the oldest complete town walls in Europe.’

‘How d’you know that? Jesus, you’re like a guide book.’

‘Me Da tells me. He knows all the history. Come here, there’s something I’ll show you.’

He led Tipper to a place under the town wall and pointed mid way up the stonework.

‘See? There’s an old witch in this wall.’

Set into the stonework Tipper could just make out a distorted head, grinning with a gap-toothed mouth, above a decayed body and arms that reached down below the stomach. Heavy weathering made it difficult to make out the detail of the carving.

‘She’s called Sheela Nagig,’ said Sam. ‘There’s little statues of her all over Ireland. Nobody knows who she is. Come on, we’ve miles to walk.’

He led the way to the stone bridge across the Clashawley River, and set his course along the Kilsheelan road. They took turns to carry Tipper’s unwieldy bag. Sam was setting a fast pace but Tipper found himself constantly slowing down, so he could take in the scene: the geese inspecting the river bank, the horses loose in the fields or tethered to a stake on the roadside, the birdsong in the air and yellow wild flowers billowing from crevices in the drystone walls. They stopped to look at the imposing ivied ruins of Kiltinan Castle, and again to view the shell of an old church by the roadside.

‘Cromwell,’ said Sam. ‘He knocked the shite out of everything.’

After ten minutes they turned into a boreen leading towards the escarpment of a steep ridge that seemed to climb up into the clouds. It was laid out in a patchwork of hedged fields in which horses, sheep and cows grazed, the shining grass patched here and there with clumps of brilliant yellow gorse. This pasture rose as far as a thick belt of pine trees, above which lay an expanse of moorland that stretched up to and beyond the horizon. Sam stopped at last and leaned on a gate to look fondly at this view. Coming up behind, Tipper joined him, his eyes tracing the network of hedges on the hillside, strong barriers of beech, laurel and whitethorn, bursting their buds as they flowered.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘This is some place.’

Sam’s response was reverent.

‘This is the Golden Vale,’ he said. ‘The home of champions and God’s Own Country.’

2

Nikolai Nikolayev, universally known as Nico, sat on a chrome bar stool in the Voile Rouge. The beachside restaurant was heaving. Its tender rushed busily from the small pier on Pampelonne Beach out to the floating gin palaces that had cruised round from St Tropez. The music was beginning to step up a beat and the ‘models’ from the fashion boutique next door were provocatively working the tables.

At the other end of the bar an overweight, eurotrash rich kid made some desperate girl go down on her knees while he poured Louis Roederer Cristal over her face; he laughed loudly for attention. Nico gave him a sycophantic smile of approval and deftly nodded his head. The girl pretended she was having a good time and squealed. That was what she was paid to do. Her team-mate clapped, yelled and tossed her hair over her shoulder. And adjusted her loose fitting top, so her nipples were visible if you’d paid to be that close.

Nico spooned up the last scrapings of his favourite hangover cure: a lemon sorbet heavily laced with Italian bitters. His predatory eyes flicked between the guy he was talking to on the next stool, a Bolivian gigolo named Ramon, and the entrance. Nico had long cultivated the habit of noting every new arrival at the beach bar. The males were quickly assessed in terms of their influence or wealth; the females for any hint of availability; and both for their vulnerabilities, for the most advantageous angles of attack.

It was how Nico lived, how he funded the Jensen and the five-star hotels and vintage champagnes which were the keynotes of his life. With no capital or inherited standing in the world, he might superficially be bracketed with a pique-assiette like Ramon. Yet he stood apart from the hangers-on of his acquaintance, the gigolos, barflies and male models that infested the Riviera. For one thing, he looked different. With his puny physique and polecat face, he had to get by without the standard obvious good looks of those to whom freeloading came easy. Minus that confident jaw, lacking those soulful eyes, Nico compensated by growing a neat beard, wearing designer shades and working considerably harder, and with deeper insight, to access the playboy yachts, private tables and penthouse party circuits that all of them depended on. Nico would have it no other way. He was not, he considered, a Ramon, an expendable accessory, a pawn. He was a player. And he was clever.

His quick brain had even taken him to Harvard. The public Parisian school system prepared him well, but his father, proprietor of a modest food shop in the French capital’s 6ème Arrondissement, could never have afforded college in America. So Nico won a scholarship and took himself across the Atlantic to learn all about the drug habits and compulsive spending of the East Coast Preppy, the Texas Oilboy and the Jewish Princess. With this preliminary social research under his belt, Nico set forth.

He’d been recruited by Reitchel-Litvinoff, the trouble-shooting New York tax accountants, who found many uses for his chameleon social skills, undoubted numeracy and ability to bluff in six languages—including both American and British. For half a decade he shimmied from country to country on behalf of clients anxious to keep their wealth out of the clutches of the taxman. Whenever it was necessary to sidestep the electronic banking system, Nico was on hand. Here he picked up bearer bonds, title-deeds and attaché cases filled with large denomination bills. There he made discreet trades, deposits in numbered offshore accounts and deliveries at the clients’ Swiss chalets and Mustique beach houses.

Yet he featured nowhere in Reitchel-Litvinoff’s employment register. He was paid in cash, or in kind, and was impregnably deniable if things went wrong. Finally things did. The IRS picked Nico up on its radar, and suddenly the United States was an exclusion zone. Within a few days, his contact at Reitchel-Litvinoff no longer returned Nico’s increasingly desperate calls.

So he had landed, like a hopeful turtle, on the Côte d’Azur, and set about foraging for deals and new contacts. It was a perfect habitat for him. Where rich people took their pleasure they also did business, and Nico found the Riviera a natural base from which to haunt the pleasure domes of Europe. Shopping in Rue de Rivoli and New Bond Street, golf at the K Club, opera at La Scala and going ‘Banco’ at Monte Carlo’s baccarat tables. He convinced himself that he really was one of the high rollers. His skill in manipulating currency for other people frequently came in handy; often that currency was narcotic, equally often erotic; and so he negotiated his way through life, with money enough to pull on a hand-made Italian suit and drive a hand-made English car.

Ramon was half way through some story which involved one of the most beautiful girls in the world falling in love with his body. All of his stories were in this vein, and Nico was only half listening. His attention was caught by a party of Russians, who had clearly just come ashore from a private yacht. They were a couple of girls, chic and silkyblonde, a shiny-suited aide-de-camp and some kind of minder, all bossed by a thickset man with short grizzled hair and a pock-marked face. Apparently unable to speak more than a few words of French, the boss called for blinis and lemon vodka by jabbing the menu with a blunt forefinger. His hands looked like they’d spent most of their lives working on a pipeline in Siberia.

When the food arrived he ignored the little pancakes and shovelled quantities of caviar and sour cream directly into his mouth. Nico could hear his fellow countryman growling comments about the bar staff’s inability to speak Russian. From his accent and behaviour, Nico knew this was no White Russian émigré like himself. The man had emerged from Moscow in the Soviet era, and clearly not in a state of poverty.

The Bolivian was still droning on.

‘Di was becoming a nuisance. She was obsessed with me. And Pam didn’t like it. Pam was driving me crazy too. She just couldn’t get enough of me and that loser of a boyfriend was always on the phone. She’s got no brain, you know. I can’t stick these girls with no brain, I don’t care who they are.’

Nico produced a thin smile, nodded in agreement, slid from the stool and patted Ramon lightly on the shoulder.

‘Back in a minute, Ramon,’ he said.

Then he crossed to the Russians’ table, bowing slightly from the waist as the boss-man turned to him. ‘I wonder if I might be of service to a fellow countryman,’ Nico said smoothly.

3

Sam’s family lived in a cottage within the confines of a stud farm. It was among the most prosperous in the area. This was not one of the thousands of rackety micro-studs that litter the Irish hinterland, the kind of small farm where, just for the love and romance of it, a couple of mares would share the grass and the outbuildings with a dairy herd or a couple of breeding sows. The enterprise Sam’s father worked for was owned by rich people in Dublin. They expected the stud’s progeny to be the best, and to win Grade One races from Ascot and Longchamp to Happy Valley and Churchill Downs. And to generate big returns from yearling sales. The stud itself was a demesne of beautifully maintained, white-railed paddocks, shaded by huge chestnut trees and linked via a network of sandy bridleways to various functional and fanatically well ordered buildings: the boxes, covering sheds, tack-rooms and feed stores.

His father Pat, the stud groom, was a wiry countryman with a broken nose that whistled when he exerted himself. He had no intention of this being a summer holiday for his nephew. He expected Tipper to make himself useful; sweeping out barns and stables and feeding horses. It was all new to the boy. The first week felt like a lot like hard work, but as soon as he was allowed to get off the end of a broom and handle the horses Tipper began to enjoy himself.

A couple of weeks into his stay, Tipper came in for his tea and found Sam alone.

‘Where’s your Da and Ma gone to?’ he asked.

‘Gone off in a hurry to Dublin.’

‘What for?’

Sam shrugged. ‘Don’t know. They didn’t say.’

Tipper found out why later in the evening. The stud manager, a remote figure called Mr Power, whom the boys rarely spoke to, sent word for Tipper to come up to the house.

‘I have something to tell you,’ he said in an unnaturally hollow voice when Tipper presented himself. ‘It’s about your mother.’

‘Oh, right! What about her? Is she okay?’

Without immediately replying, Mr Power ushered Tipper into the hall of his house, a large gloomy space hung with racing prints and photographs of horses. He carefully shut the door behind the boy, then turned to face him. Tipper felt uncomfortable in this strange environment.

‘No, I’m afraid that’s the point. She is not okay. As a matter of fact.’

Tipper could tell he was having trouble spitting it out, whatever it was. He waited silently.

‘The thing is,’ Mr Power went on, ‘I’ve had a phone call from your uncle who went up to Dublin with your aunt this morning. They went to the hospital, and the thing is, she’s died, Tipper. I’m sorry.’

Tipper didn’t take this in. He was confused. None of it was making sense.

‘Who’s died? My aunt? I don’t get it.’

‘No, not your aunt. Your mother. Your mother’s died, son. She never got over the operation. She was beyond help, apparently.’

Slowly, like water seeping into a sinking boat, Tipper grasped what Mr Power was saying. His Ma was dead. His Ma. He would never see her alive again.

Tipper didn’t speak or move, but stared at Mr Power transfixed. Then after a few moments he found the ability to walk, and brushed past the stud manager. He opened the front door and quietly closed it behind him. He hoped Mr Power wouldn’t come after him. He hurled himself down the steps and started running, pelting down the drive that stretched to the road. He pounded across the tarmac, leapt a stone wall and plunged into the small wood on the other side. It was hard fighting his way through the undergrowth, but he didn’t think about it. At last he found a small clearing and his flight ended. He needed to be by himself. He didn’t even want to see Sam. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. He didn’t want to see anyone.

In his misery he sat on a fallen bough and propped his elbows on his knees. His emotions were randomly churning around inside him. It was incomprehensible that he’d never see his mother again. Ever. He hadn’t said good-bye to her. He’d just walked out of the door without a care in the world. What had she thought about that? Why hadn’t he taken more notice? Why hadn’t he seen that she was ill? What could he have done? He would never again see Ma. Never pinch another bouquet of flowers from the cemetery to give her. Never eat her rashers and beans, or watch the English soaps with her. These things seemed enormously important. They were a part of his life that had all of a sudden been detonated and blown away.

His eyes were hot and throbbing. He stared at the ground; it was covered with decayed leaves and rabbit droppings. Now his mind was empty of thought. He totally lost track of time. He had no idea how long he’d been there when he realized that he was freezing cold and it was nearly dark. He thought about Sam. He’d have to talk to him about Ma; it was the last thing he’d want to do. He couldn’t bear the thought of talking to anyone about her. Tears started streaming down his cheeks again. Then he got up, wiped his cheeks and brushed his backside. He’d never forget Ma, that wouldn’t change. But everything else had. He just had no idea how he was going to cope. No idea what was going to happen to him.

The next month of Tipper’s life was shrouded in a dark cloud of misery. He couldn’t get his mother out of his mind. Why had he been denied the chance to say good-bye to her? Maybe if he had it wouldn’t have felt so bad. He surprised himself by wanting to talk to Sam incessantly about her. Sam was brilliant. He wasn’t embarrassed like Tipper thought he’d be. He asked Tipper all about her and Tipper told him. He loved telling him and he was so grateful to Sam for listening. His uncle and aunt just clammed up and carried on as if nothing had happened. But when Tipper was on his own a black cloud descended on him.

Tipper threw himself into the work on the stud. He had nothing else. He listened to Uncle Pat who taught him that the thoroughbred horse is a manmade creature, the result of three centuries of carefully selected breeding. With a set of rules worked out in the eighteenth century and never varied since. The racecourse rule demanded that all horses are proven racers, or at least the offspring of proven racers. The intercourse rule ensures that every mating is a true one, witnessed, recorded and verifiable. Artificial insemination is abominated in this world, unlike in cattle breeding. The thoroughbred stud is an establishment dedicated to natural procreation as nature intended.

Tipper loved working with the foals, which at this time of year meant getting them to walk properly on a leading rein. He chatted away to them about his Ma as he walked them up and down the sandy lanes and somehow felt his soul was restored in the process.

‘Just watch their front legs, son,’ Uncle Pat told him. ‘A foal’s not like a grown horse, who kicks behind. It’s the front legs that are most dangerous in a foal.’

Tipper looked at the youngster he was leading, as if to say, you wouldn’t want to hurt me, now would you? And it seemed he didn’t. Tipper was confident, comfortable in his handling of the foals, and they responded. Uncle Pat was impressed by his nephew’s natural instinct.

‘He’s got a gift with these foals,’ he informed Mr Power. ‘But he just doesn’t know it yet. He’ll be grand.’

Tipper’s favourite foal was a high-strung little filly with an unusual dark reddish, almost mahogany coloured coat. When he had time on his hands and no-one was about Tipper would take her into one of the barns, sliding shut the big door before turning her loose. Usually a foal at this stage of its development is nervous of anyone that doesn’t smell of its mother, and flighty to catch. Red had always been especially neurotic and Tipper set himself the task of making her biddable. He got down on his hands and knees, reckoning that foals were no different from children—intimidated by anyone that loomed over them. Little by little Red came nearer, smelling his hand, chewing his coat, and in that way the two of them got to know each other. Next he took a long rope and attached it to a halter loosely hanging round her nose and neck. If she wanted to back off, he let her, but he would then tease her in again, like an angler playing a fish, rubbing her neck before loosening the line once more. Gradually Tipper was mastering Red, but without ever imposing on her or making demands. Her education proceeded only as fast as she herself wanted.

Red remained fearful when out in the open, and that was almost her undoing one afternoon, when Tipper and Sam were left on their own in charge of the paddocks.

‘Lads, be sure to get the foals in if the rain comes,’ Uncle Pat had told them.

The storm came in suddenly on a southerly wind. The sun was still shining but the sky in the south was black. The wind stiffened, tossing straw and sacking around the yard. At the first almighty clap of thunder the boys rushed out carrying ropes to bring in the foals. As soon as they opened the gate and began calling, the herd walked obediently towards them. All of them, that is, except Red, who hung back. They decided to bring in the others and come back for Red. But as they unhooked the gate a second time, another thunderclap split the air and immediately the frightened foal took off, careering away from them towards the far end of the paddock, where she collided with a railing post. She staggered back and hopped unnaturally on three legs. The fourth was streaming blood.

‘Jesus, Sam, will you look at that?’ shouted Tipper. ‘There’s blood pouring out of her.’ The rain was now hosing down and they were getting soaked.

Sam yanked the gate shut behind him and the boys ran over to investigate. Red shied and tried to hop away as they approached. Tipper held Sam back.

‘Stop,’ he said. ‘She’s dead scared. She might hurt herself more.’

Sam looked terrified himself. He was wiping the rain off his face. The consequences if anything should happen to this valuable filly would be dire.

‘Christ on a bike, we’re in the shite!’ he said. ‘Is the leg broken or what?’

‘Hang on. Let me go to her myself.’

Tipper stepped quietly up to Red, praying that she wouldn’t jink away from him. The injury was in the lower part of the off foreleg, which was pumping bright red blood at an alarming rate.

‘Come on Red, we got to get you in,’ he murmured, slowly putting out his hand and threading a rope through the ring in her head collar. He gave her drenched neck a pat. Then he crept backwards, exerting the slightest pressure on the rope.

‘Come on, Red. Come on, littlun,’ he urged.

Slowly, the injured creature hobbled with him towards the gate. They got her into the barn and knelt to look closely at the leg.

‘It’s a big gash she’s got, right down to the tendon,’ said Sam knowledgably, pulling a cleanish tea towel he’d found somewhere about out of his pocket. ‘It bleeds worse there than anywhere.’

‘Jesus. What’ll we do?’ Tipper asked frantically. This was their fault. They would really be for it.

‘We better get the bloody vet to stitch her up. And in the meantime we got to get this towel wrapped around, or she’ll bleed to death.’

The storm was in full spate now, hammering rain on the barn roof. Red rolled her eyes, hating the sound.

‘She’s spooked by this bloody weather,’ said Sam. ‘How’ll we get near enough and not get kicked?’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Tipper, peeling off his waterlogged coat. ‘Hold her head for me.’

He started by rubbing her wet forehead, quietly talking to her all the time. Then he let his hand slip down her neck, then on down the leg towards the gash. Red started to snatch up the leg and Tipper patiently went back to her forehead and repeated the routine until she accepted his touch on the leg. Finally he was able to wrap the towel tightly around the wound, cinching it tight with some twine to make it act as a tourniquet. The blood stopped pouring out.

The vet was an hour coming.

‘Well done, lads,’ he said, as he bent to clean the wound with antiseptic. ‘She’d be dead by now if you’d not got that dressing on her. No easy job, that. Which one of you managed it?’

‘We both did,’ said Tipper.

‘Tipper did,’ corrected Sam. ‘I just kept hold of her head.’

The vet looked up, peering over his glasses at Tipper with new interest.

‘Tipper? Aren’t you the boy from the city—Pat’s nephew? Well, judging by what I’ve seen today, you could make a career for yourself, if you want one. You did well, d’you know that?’

Tipper cradled Red’s head and rubbed behind her ears while the vet put in the stitches. Suddenly he felt fantastically good. No teacher or authority figure of any kind had ever said such a thing to him. He had lived fourteen years without hearing a word of praise, not from anyone except his Ma. He was proud. She’d have been proud too…

‘Now for Christ’s sake,’ said the vet as he packed up his bag. ‘Will you both go and put some dry clothes on? Or it won’t be this foal that might not see the morning.’

It had been only a couple of months after Tipper’s Ma died that Uncle Pat dropped another bombshell on him.

‘I’ve been talking to a pal of mine. Joe Kerly. He’s Head Lad at Thaddeus Doyle’s place on the Curragh. He says to me they’ll take you on for your apprenticeship.’

Tipper’s mouth fell open. This news had come out of nowhere. The Curragh was a couple of hours’ drive from the stud. But it could have been on another continent as far as Tipper was concerned. And he wouldn’t know anyone there. The whole prospect frightened him.

‘Jesus, Uncle Pat. Why can’t I stay on here? I like it here.’

Uncle Pat shook his head lugubriously.

‘No way in the world, son. Sorry. Mr Power says we’re overstaffed already. And anyway’—he winked conspiratorially—‘Doyle’s a top trainer; he’s a lot of good horses. And you never know. He might make a jockey out of you. You’ve a great way with the young horses, I don’t mind telling you. I had me doubts to start with but you’ve done grand.’

4

Retired General Stanislav Shalakov, the soldier-son of peasants, ideally preferred an entourage of real men; men who could be relied on to fall on a live grenade, or shove a bayonet deep into a Chechen belly. So he would not, under normal circumstances, have associated with an opportunist civilian like Nico. In his eyes—well-practiced at the game of assessing human character—the younger man’s sunglasses and doorknocker beard failed to conceal manifest weaknesses: the effete belo-emigrant background and the ingratiating cupidity. But while Shalakov had uncounted billions of roubles at his disposal, his yacht had only recently embarked on the seaways of western-style opulence. He knew instinctively how a Nico Nikolayev could be useful to him.

Shalakov’s power base in the Red Army had been neither a fighting division nor a highprofile piece of window-dressing such as the cosmonaut programme. Unglamorously, but far more profitably, Shalakov had been head of the Catering Corps.

In terms of manpower, the Red Army had been probably the largest organization in the world and Shalakov’s position gave him extraordinary hidden leverage. Only the most foolhardy of his fellow generals ever crossed him, and they quickly discovered their mistake. The time would come, on campaign or exercise, when the food supply chain inexplicably broke down. On the Chinese border fifty troops starved to death after their rations failed to come through. In Kandahar food poisoning decimated a battalion. Shalakov had ways of making sure such disasters were not laid at his door; instead they invariably caused the general in the field to be summoned to Moscow and stripped of his rank.

With the coming of Gorbachev, then Yeltsin and Putin, Shalakov eased into a political role. Having ridden out the storms that wrecked the Soviet empire, he began to construct a private conglomerate of his own, bringing to the task the same ruthlessness he’d employed as a soldier. He oversaw the privatization of the army’s vast network of ranches and farms, meat-packing plants and fish canneries, orchards and wheat prairies, making sure the pick of them ended up in his personal ownership; and for a fraction of their true worth. The resulting conglomerate’s sheer size and strategic importance gave Shalakov behind-the-scenes influence. The Minister of Agriculture was his personal nominee. He dined once a week with the Minister of Finance and the head of the Bank of Moscow. He out-drank Boris Yeltsin and spent holidays at the Black Sea dacha of ‘Vovochka’ Putin.

Yet increasingly he understood that the state needed Shalakov more than Shalakov needed the state. And so his acquisitive eyes turned abroad, to the hot spots of the world. Shalakov had decided to go international.

Nico found out that it wasn’t so easy to get inside Shalakov’s camp. But he kept appearing here and there and never missed a chance to pay his respects to the Russian general whenever possible. He sidled up to Shalakov’s blackjack table in London. He effected an introduction to a Grand Prix driver in Monte Carlo. But he was struggling to get on the pay roll. Until, a good two years after Nico had sidled up to his table in the Voile Rouge, Shalakov invited him for drinks aboard his yacht, Rosebud. Bought during the 2009 financial crash from a hedgefund owner, she was a substantial vessel, with eight staterooms and a crew of thirty. As usual Shalakov made an oblique approach to the subject he wanted to discuss.

‘Do you know how many stud farms the Red Army had for horse breeding?’

Nico, who thought cavalry had gone out with the Charge of the Light Brigade, shrugged.

‘I didn’t know they had any. It’s all tanks and humvees now, isn’t it?’

Shalakov gave Nico a look of sarcastic pity.

‘You don’t know the Red Army doctrine of horse warfare. I was taught this as a cadet in Budenyi Cavalry Academy in Moscow. Never mind the mechanized age, cavalry units are still an important independent arm of war and can be deployed in many ways.’

He began counting the ways on his fingers.

‘They can be used for reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance and patrols, but they are essentially raiders. They can attack at speed, silently and with minimum preparation. They can operate at night, cross narrow mountain passes and swim rivers.’

He spat over the side into the silky-smooth water of the marina.

‘Horses. We should have made more use of them in Afghanistan.’

‘So how many studs were there?’

‘At their peak, during the Great Patriotic War, there were forty-seven. Half that number by my own time, and most of those were then sold off by Yeltsin. They were geographically separated right across the Soviet Union, so that we got a spread of animals biologically suited to different kinds of terrain. In the cavalry we did much research into this.’

‘I didn’t know you were a cavalry man.’

‘Not for many years. But I always kept a few horses. And I bought six of the stud farms from the government. The best ones, of course. Now we are creating a new hippodrome in Moscow. One day it will be the greatest centre in the world for racing horses.’

Nico was used to this kind of talk. With Shalakov everything he touched would one day be the greatest, the priciest, the ultimate in grandeur.

‘That would be something, General,’ he agreed.

Shalakov motioned for the steward to refill Nico’s champagne flute and followed up by asking, almost casually,

‘You know this market well? I mean the racehorse market, here in the west?’

So this was the reason Shalakov had invited Nico today: he had a new project in mind.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nico blithely. ‘I know it inside out.’

He sipped thoughtfully from his glass. It was not strictly true, but since he regularly attended the cream of Europe’s race meetings—Deauville, Ascot, the Curragh—he knew people who’d be only too willing to feed him the inside track on classic breeding, bloodstock sales and top trainers.

‘And are you contemplating a particularly large investment, General?’

‘I never do anything by halves. And, as you well know, I deal only in the finest.’

By the time Nico went ashore he had agreed to make enquiries about how Shalakov could acquire and manage a string of the best racehorses in Western Europe.

5

Uncle Pat had been right about Doyle’s yard: it was a fair operation, with a staff of fifty or more. But that made it all the harder for Tipper. Now he didn’t even have Sam to talk to. He didn’t know anyone or anything in this new world. He was back to square one. He didn’t even have Red to look forward to every morning. Hardly a day went by when he wasn’t bollocked for doing something wrong.

For the first two years he was just one of twenty indentured slaves, sixteen-year-olds kicked out of their beds at four-thirty every morning, seven days a week, riding work, mucking-out, grooming, and feeding. If they weren’t required at the races they would get a few hours to themselves in the afternoon; and then it was back to mucking out at evening stables. One afternoon a fortnight was all they got off.

A little of Tipper’s riding ability was noted on the gallops, and as time passed he even got a few rides on no-hopers at country race meetings. But he was so withdrawn. The black cloud that had descended on him after his Ma died hadn’t entirely lifted. He was painfully unsure of himself and made scant impression. He hated sharing a room with three other boys. He was always having the mickey ripped out of him, and hadn’t yet learned how to rip it back. In bed at night he lay under the sheets wishing he could be back at the stud coaxing Red.

Tipper’s loneliness was all the more intense because he’d begun thinking about girls. His were hopeless fantasies, alternating between the sexual and the impossibly romantic. None of the girls in the village would ever talk to Tipper, let alone dream of going out with him. He earned a pittance in wages, and for a year he looked like a tramp, not being possessed of a single good garment to wear. He spent the first twelve months saving for just one thing—a cheap suit to go to the races in, or the pub, or maybe even a club. Until then he had only the clobber he worked in, and that stank because, when it rained, the wet muck-sacks he carried across the yard leaked all over him. No girl would let him near, even if he’d had the courage to go up and ask for a date.

Tipper had been slaving at Doyle’s for two years when, during the winter off-season, word got around the yard that an interesting new two-year-old filly with a pedigree like royalty was coming to them. She’d had a disastrous start to her career on the oval US dirt-tracks and been picked up cheap in New York by Rupert Robinson, a pal of Doyle’s. Robinson, the youngest son of a hereditary English peer, thought of himself as a society playboy. Though he liked a gamble, he usually lost; a trend which his more astute friends thought unlikely to be reversed by this new acquisition.

‘She’s got the temper of an alley-cat,’ said her handler to Doyle when the fractious filly arrived in the yard. ‘She doesn’t like you anywhere close and she’d scratch your face to ribbons if she had claws.’

Watching from a distance, Tipper said nothing. But at lunchtime, as soon as the yard was quiet, he went to her stable, stood in front of the halfdoor and whispered her name: not the name chalked on the board by the door, Stella Maris, but his name for her. For Tipper had known her from the moment she’d jinked and propped her way down the ramp of the transporter.

‘Red!’ he whispered. ‘It’s me. Remember me?’

The filly’s first reaction was to lay her ears flat and try to bite his head. He dodged the attempt and, sliding the bolt open, slipped inside the stable. At once Red turned her back on him and let fly with one of her hind legs. She was anticipating a smack. So that was the trouble, Tipper thought. Some twat had been thrashing her, thinking it would bring her to hand. Naturally, it had had the opposite effect.

Quietly reciting her name over and over, he stooped and lowered himself until he was kneeling. Slowly, very slowly, he began inching towards Red, uttering calming words in a light singsong. Praying that she wouldn’t lash out again. If she did, and caught him on the head, she could kill him. But because he had crouched down he didn’t pose a threat to her. By the time he was a couple of yards from her he saw, maybe, a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. He slowly turned away and moved towards the door of the box. The straw behind him rustled. Then he felt the filly’s nose gently exploring his back, and he knew it had happened. She’d remembered him.

Five minutes later Tipper was standing at her head, rubbing her ears; for the first time since he’d arrived at Doyle’s, he began to feel hope. In fact it was stronger than that. He felt a tinge of excitement.

Tipper was straight onto the phone to Sam at lunchtime.

‘Sam. You’re not going to believe this. You won’t guess who walked into the yard this morning. You won’t believe it!’

‘Okay I’ll go for Lester Piggott. Or maybe Shergar. I know. Lester Piggott riding Shergar.’

‘Fock off Sam. It was Red. You remember Red?’

‘No. Can’t say I do. Some mare we met in the pub?’

‘Sam, stop messing with me. Red. You know the filly that we had on the stud. Who cut her leg. She’s here at Doyle’s. She’s called Stella Maris now.’

‘No way. That can’t be right. She went to America for Christ sake.’

‘Well she’s back Sam, and she hasn’t changed. She’s not easy, but by Christ is she a good sort.’

‘Please, Mr Kerly,’ he said a couple of days later to the Head Lad. ‘Let me ride the new filly’s work. I know her. I looked after her when she was a foal at Fethard. She was always a bit nervous, like, but we got on famously. Ask my uncle. You seen that scar on her leg? I was there when she got that, see?’

In his anxiety to get through to Kerly he was gabbling. He took a breath and went on more slowly.

‘I saved her life, the vet said, with a tourniquet. She’s a bit difficult all right, but I can quieten her. I can handle her.’

Stella Maris may have exasperated her American owners, but her genes wore diamond tiaras, and Doyle and her new owner, the Hon. Rupert Robinson, hoped that, by returning to the wide galloping turf tracks of home, and with the correct handling, she might soon be worth her weight in jewellery. So Kerly’s eyes widened in disbelief at Tipper’s request to take responsibility for this potential turf princess. He fired a gob of spit at the ground and told him straight.

‘Give it up, Tipper. Jesus this is a valuable filly. She’s got a hell of a pedigree. Now don’t be bothering me.’

Kerly soon learned how wrong he was. The new filly was so unbiddable she wouldn’t even walk out into the yard. When a lad went into her stable she’d sulk in the back of it and then lash out at him in self-defence. For a week Tipper looked on in mounting frustration, until he could bear it no longer. One morning, without dwelling on the consequences, he skipped breakfast and went down to the stable block. He let himself into Red’s box, hurriedly tacked her up and took her out for a hack.

Half an hour later they came trotting in again under perfect control. Joe Kerly was at the gate waiting. Tipper got the bollocking of his life, but he’d proved the point. Red became his ride every day.

6

Nico began his research in London. England was the cradle of the thoroughbred horse, and English racing retained just the right mixture of glamour, snobbery, chicanery and big money to satisfy a man like Shalakov. He stepped from a cab in Wardour Street and strolled through to Berwick Street market. Pushing his way through the throng of shoppers and market traders, Nico selected a number on his phone and, when it was answered, spoke briefly. It was only a short walk from here to his destination, a large basement club with a thick carpet and a dozen different ways of losing money, ranging from one-arm bandits to roulette and blackjack. Flitting between the tables were leggy hostesses in smart burgundy uniforms. The place was pretty empty bar a few excitable Chinese swarming round a roulette table like bees round a hive. A sallow-faced Arab sat expressionless near the roulette wheel, looking glumly at the table.

This dive was called the Piranha Club.

Nico was greeted at the bar by a figure known to his circle as the Duke. Aged somewhere in his fifties, the Duke looked innocuous enough. He had the slack, tapering body of a taxi driver, with fish-like hands, slightly grey skin and thinning straw coloured hair. A pair of large gold-framed bi-focals lived on the tip of his nose giving him a slightly studious look. But the benign appearance, as Nico knew, was seriously deceptive. Not only did the Duke own the Piranha Club, he was one of the largest private bookmakers in London.

‘All right, Nico my son? It’s been a while.’

‘Delighted to see you again, Duke.’

It was pretty well five years since Nico had first met the Duke. He’d needed to buy some marching powder for a client and had been sent in the Duke’s direction.

‘Vodka’s your tipple isn’t it?’

Nico rather wanted a champagne cocktail but that would have upset the Duke’s sense of what was proper. Nico was a Russian, and Russians drank vodka. Turning to the barman he ordered a bottle of Uluvka and a shot-glass. The Duke never drank himself, but he liked debilitating others.

‘So, to what do we owe the pleasure?’ he said, pouring a preliminary shot and watching while Nico obediently drained the glass in one gulp. ‘We don’t usually see you in the dark days of winter.’

‘I’m on a bit of business. Thought you might be able to steer me in the right direction.’

‘Anything to oblige an old mate, Nico. Let’s go over there, where we can talk.’

Carrying the strangely shaped bottle with him, the Duke led Nico towards a table in a quiet booth.

An hour later Nico stumbled out into a rainy night, his head fuddled and spinning from the vodka. He meandered up to Broadwick Street in the hope of a taxi and stood on the curb shivering and peering up and down the street. One after another, black cabs sluiced past, not one of them with its yellow beacon lit. His hair, and the shoulders of his fair-weather suit, were soaked by the time a taxi pulled up.

The soaking and the cold had the effect of sobering Nico up a little. He concentrated on what the Duke had told him and tried to decipher the notes he’d written on the paper napkin as the cab passed under the street lights.

At the top of the napkin he’d scribbled:

The Partridge—Johnny the Fish.

Under that he’d written:

David Sinclair—bit of a chin—training plenty of winners. Posh.

At the bottom of the napkin was a third name:

Shug Shaunsheys—a few dodgy habits but sharp. Will find the goods.

7

Red was straight away in harmony with Tipper and making good progress, until the day she had to re-acquaint herself with the starting stalls. This is always an ordeal for temperamental animals. Each stall is fitted with two sets of gates. The back gates are shut individually behind the horses as the handlers load them; the ones in front are instantaneously flipped open by the starter, to release an explosion of horseflesh as the race begins. The practice drill should have involved Red merely walking up to, into and through the stalls, with both sets of gates open. It looked like a simple task, but it wasn’t for her. Tipper presented her to the stalls and a group of handlers—the same handlers that assist at every course on race day—crowded round her back end to heave her in, while one of them led her by a rope threaded through the bridle. They got her half way in and then she baulked.

‘Go gentle, go gentle lads!’ pleaded Tipper, perched up on her back.

Like hell they would. The handler at her head, Eamonn, yanked hard, while one of the others gave her a whack on the quarters. She immediately plunged backwards out of the stall, then reared, pulling the rope from Eamonn’s hand and almost flipping over backwards. Tipper slithered perilously to the ground beneath her. As he lay there, expecting any moment to be trodden on, he heard the men’s curses.

‘The dirty cow,’ snarled Eamonn. ‘Gimme that fuckin’ hood.’

Picking himself up, Tipper saw him brandishing the blindfold that would go over Red’s eyes, and prevent her from seeing where she was going.

‘Leave off that!’ Tipper yelled. ‘Let me do this. Give us some space, lads.’

When it came to dealing with Red, Tipper could assert himself in a way he would have never have done in any other situation. Momentarily abashed the men shuffled backwards and ducked under the rails that enclosed the loading area. Tipper removed Red’s bridle and took a length of leading-rope, which he looped around the horse’s neck. He attached this to the end of a ball of string he got out of his pocket. The handlers, leaning on the rails to watch, sniggered.

‘If this one gets loose, boy,’ called Eamonn, ‘you’ll be stacking fuckin’ shelves at the supermarket for the rest of your life.’

Tipper paid no heed. He allowed Red to go back as far away as she liked from the line of stalls. Then he went into one of them and knelt down. Oblivious to the derisive snorts of his audience, he reeled in the string and, slowly and hesitantly, Red began moving towards him. It was like that time in the barn at Fethard when he’d first won her confidence. A couple of times, as she got to within ten feet of him, she spun away in panic and he had to start all over again. The handlers grew bored with taking the piss. They left the rail and, sitting down in a ring on the turf, got a card school going.

Six hands of brag later, they didn’t notice that Red had found the courage to get her nose into the stall, where she was nibbling Tipper’s coat. Tipper now turned and carefully slid out of the front of the stall. He sat on his heels ten feet away, with his back to his filly. His eyes remained fixed on a spot down the track, where by the trick of perspective the two white rails seemed to intersect. But all the time his mind was on what Red was doing behind him. At first she did nothing. A long time passed. The laughter and curses of the card players drifted towards them on the wind. Then, infinitesimally at first, Tipper felt the horse’s warm breath on the nape of his neck, and the hesitant prod of her velvet nose.

Eamonn looked up from his hand of cards.

‘Christ Jesus, will you look at that, lads?’ he shouted. ‘The kid’s only bloody done it. She’s walked all the way through by herself.’

The others swung round to look.

‘It must be love,’ said one of the others.

‘Well if it is, that’s the only fuckin’ pull he’ll be making,’ Eamonn retorted.

But the second man might almost have been right. Red had done this difficult thing of her own free will, because she trusted Tipper, and she wanted to be with him.

When the time came to try her at last on the race track, Thaddeus Doyle was in a quandary. He wanted to put up his retained stable jockey, his son-in-law Dermot Quigley, who’d been champion jockey five times. Doyle had seen Stella Maris on the gallops, ridden by Tipper, make mincemeat of prized members of his string, and he asked himself what on earth she would do with a real jock on her back. In the event, he never found out. When they tried working Red with Quigley up, she carted him three times round the yard and threw him sprawling to the ground. As he picked himself up in front of Doyle’s staff Quigley tried to hide his humiliation with anger.

‘That one’s not temperamental. She’s mental. I’d rather ride a barrel over the Niagara bloody Falls.’

So it had to be Tipper on Stella Maris; no one else could get near her.

8

Shug Shaunsheys, bloodstock agent, was sitting in front of his computer screen, his watery eyes transfixed by what they saw. Every now and then, his long pink and grey tongue slid out to moisten his lips. Shaunsheys always licked his lips when he was surfing the net. He clicked the mouse to bring up a new picture. He lived alone. There was no one else in the flat to disturb him, no one to stop him enjoying himself. The prospect of a long, self gratifying evening stretched pleasantly ahead of him. Until his phone rang.

His ringtone was The Teddy Bears’ Picnic. With a muttered curse he groped for it, pressing the receive button and interrupting the tone as it got to ‘in for a big surprise’.

‘Shaunsheys,’ he grunted.

‘Shug. It’s Johnny the Fish. You busy?’

‘No. Just, erm, watching telly.’

‘Then I suggest you get your arse out to the Partridge double-quick. There’s someone important been asking for you.’

Shaunsheys was still distracted by the screen in front of him.

‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘What about?’

‘Horses, you mug. What else would it be about?’ Johnny said.

Shaunsheys clicked the mouse to advance the online slideshow. His eyes widened, then blinked. Jesus Christ!

‘Oh, look Johnny,’ he mumbled as he shifted on his chair. ‘I don’t think tonight—’

‘Don’t be a prat, Shug. There’s a Russian punter in town. So if you know what’s good for you get your arse over here now.’

The Partridge was a large pub and restaurant that stood some two miles outside Newmarket on the London road. Johnny the Fish, its licensee, was the town’s premier racing information exchange. In his time he’d had a spell in the army, and another managing a stud farm. Now he was a genial Mine Host to the trainers, jockeys, and work riders of Newmarket, matching them drink for drink and in the process gathering the kind of intelligence certain people will pay good money for. The Partridge had the look and feel of a club rather than a pub. Deep leather chairs huddled round the fire in the main bar. The walls were festooned with pictures of local heroes; human and equine. And fresh lilies stood proudly in a vase on the end of the bar.

When Shaunsheys walked into the bar fifteen minutes after the phone call, Shelley was the only sign of life, aimlessly polishing glasses. Shelley was sexy and she knew it. She was wearing a tight white T-shirt that didn’t quite reach her waist. It accentuated her breasts which were the perfect size for going without a bra. Shelley was born and bred in Newmarket. By the time she was sixteen she’d been around a bit in more senses than one. But she was of no interest to Shaunsheys.

‘Johnny around?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Probably,’ she replied in as unhelpful a tone as she could muster. Shelley expected men to have a good look at her. She liked that. Shaunsheys didn’t even make eye contact.

‘Well where is he?’ Shaunsheys asked bluntly.

‘Office probably,’ Shelley countered.

‘Well can you tell him I’m here then?’

Shelley tottered off to find the Fish.

Shaunsheys was on the whole a loner who had no proper friends. He’d been sniffing around the bloodstock world for most of his adult life, and was now formally operating as a freelance bloodstock agent, matching buyers with sellers and vice versa. But he lacked the social skills that would ensure real success in this role, and much of the time he was forced to make ends meet as a stooge in the sales ring. Shaunsheys would help bid up lots on occasions when there would be only one prospective buyer and, consequently, the danger of a low sale price. In return for a substantial ‘drink’ he would take up a prominent position at the side of the ring and call entirely fictional bids, if necessary against an accomplice posted elsewhere. They would only go up to an agreed level and then drop out, leaving the genuine bidder paying an artificially inflated price.

The trick was to know how far you could push it, and that meant knowing the market, and the target buyers. Shaunsheys was a natural spy. He spent a good deal of time shadowing prospective bidders around the sales grounds, overhearing their comments and counting how often they came back ‘for just one more look’ at a yearling.

Technically illegal though all this was, the bloodstock world pretty much turned a blind eye. Shaunsheys was, after all, an agent; his fake bids could plausibly be passed off as those of a confidential client; and it all added up to more currency trickling onto racing’s cash carousel.

Johnny the Fish appeared behind the bar, smart in brass-buttoned blazer and yellow bow tie, with matching silk handkerchief overflowing his breast pocket.

‘Glad you could make it, Shug,’ he said rather condescendingly.

Shaunsheys was not his type but the Fish nevertheless had a feeling, however reluctantly, that they were going to be confederates; that they would be playing on the same team with this one. He picked up a glass and put it to the whisky optic.

‘So what’s this all about, Johnny?’ asked Shaunsheys plaintively. ‘I was just putting my feet up for a quiet night in.’

In a swift single movement, Johnny the Fish drained his glass and applied it to the optic again. Then he turned back to Shaunsheys.

‘Come through to the office. You never know who’s going to walk in to this place.’

Shaunsheys picked up his pint and followed the landlord to a small untidy room dominated by a big knee-hole desk, whose surface was littered with unpaid bills, files and form books. Johnny the Fish sat down in his revolving leather-covered chair and beckoned to Shaunsheys to sit opposite.

‘It’s like this, Shug,’ he began. ‘I had a call from our old friend the Duke.’

Shug fingered his pint glass.

‘I hope you haven’t got me out here to meet him.’

‘No. I told you. There’s a Russian guy that wants to meet you. He’s been sent our way by the Duke. He’s called Nico. He’s the side kick of some Russian oligarch.’

‘And?’

‘They want to buy some horses. The Duke has put you in.’

Shaunsheys took a considered pull on his pint.

‘What sort of oligarch? Roman Abramovich?’ Shug asked patronizingly.

‘Look are you interested, or not?’ Johnny was getting the hump with Shaunsheys’ abruptness.

‘Obviously I’m interested. But how did my name come up in the first place? I mean, it’s been a while since I had anything to do with the Duke; not since he froze my account, the bastard.’

‘He’s probably hoping you’ll make enough out of this to pay him.’

‘So how will I do that, exactly?’

Johnny the Fish bent forward confidentially.

‘This guy wants to place a couple of good horses with a Newmarket trainer, but that’s just to test the water. He’s got more long-term plans. You mentioned Abramovich. Nico—the side kick—he reckons this guy wants to be the next Abramovich, but in racing instead of football. And if that’s right, I don’t have to tell you he’ll be thinking very big. Big string. Big breeding operation. Big brown envelopes. They’ve already picked a trainer—David Sinclair—but they want an agent.’

Shaunsheys was still puzzled.

‘Okay, I’m with you so far. But it’ll be Sinclair who’ll buy him his horses, or produce a couple from his yard that he hasn’t sold on. He won’t particularly want to work with me.’

‘No, you’re getting me wrong, Shug. Your role’s nothing to do with Sinclair. The thing is, they also want a top-class brood mare. That’s where you come in…’ Johnny stopped in mid-sentence as the door swung open.

‘There’s a bloke in the bar, Johnny. Wants to see you,’ Shelley mumbled in her monotone voice. Shelley liked the Fish but she wasn’t a bloody messenger girl.

‘That, if I’m not mistaken, will be Nico. One thing Shug. You’ll need to look after me in this deal.’

‘Yeah. Of course,’ Shaunsheys concurred with a wave of his hand. In your fucking dreams, he thought, as they walked back to the bar.

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