As Easy as Murder (22 page)

Standing behind the bunker, Uche reached into the bag, took out a club and held it out for Jonny. He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Not the sand iron. Lob wedge.’

‘You could leave it in the bunker,’ the caddie protested.

‘But I won’t. I see the shot.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Gimme.’

I looked at Tom as he stepped up to the ball. He was gripping the pole of his board with both hands and his knuckles were white. I might have kept on looking at him, but I found the strength to overcome my nerves and turned back to my other boy.

As always he didn’t waste any time. His backswing was long and steep and he drove into the sand so hard that I sensed disaster . . . which tells you how much I know.

The ball flew high, much higher than Cormac’s had, but remarkably seemed to land even more softly, at the very start of the slope. For a second or two, I thought that backspin would keep it there, leaving him the mother of all difficult putts to stay alive in the tournament, but then it moved very slightly, and started to roll very gently, picking up pace, but not too much. I was sure it was going to miss on the left; indeed it might have, had it not, as countless high-definition TV close-up replays showed later, clipped the edge of Cormac’s marker and changed course, very slightly but enough to leave it perched on the edge of the hole, until gravity gave it one last shove and it fell in. The winner and Catalan Masters champion, Jonathan Sinclair, Scotland.

There followed one of those moments beloved of moviemakers, when time seemed to stand still and all the players in the drama were frozen as if encased in plastic . . . until it was broken by the sound of a board hitting the ground and of its bearer, as he jumped high, punching the air and yelling, ‘Yes!!!!’

Everyone went crazy after that, including, to their eternal credit, the Irish, who love a miracle above all else. In the mayhem that followed, Jonny and Uche embraced, then he and Cormac shook
hands formally and hugged a little less so. I couldn’t hear the kid, but I’m a good lip-reader, so I could follow when he said, ‘Welcome to the European Tour, Jonathan. Are you really that good, or was that shot just plain crazy?’

I couldn’t see the reply properly, for the two older Toibins seized my hands and offered congratulations that were both genuine and generous; also my eyes were starting to tear up, as I saw my nephew turning towards me.

If you’re a regular watcher of golf on television, especially the American style, you’ll know that it is de rigueur for the nearest and dearest of the combatants to be greenside as the drama concludes. Great for the winner’s family, tough shit on the loser when it’s a razor-edge finish. I’d always found that staged emotion more than a little sick-making; until then, for, without a thought for the prying cameras, without caring that I was making a tit of myself live on air, I rushed on to the green and jumped into Jonny’s arms.

‘You did it, you did it, you did it,’ I murmured, as I cried on his shoulder.

‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘I owe you the finest dinner in town.’

Uche left us alone for a little while, before reminding Jonny . . . after I’d hugged him too . . . that the job wasn’t done until his score was recorded. ‘God, yes,’ I said. ‘Get that done, properly . . . then I can study the menu.’

As they walked towards the recorder’s caravan, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I didn’t even look at caller ID; I didn’t have to. ‘Yes, Ellie,’ I said, as I answered, ‘you didn’t dream it.’

‘The wee beauty,’ she exclaimed, in the snuffly voice of someone
who doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry and winds up doing both. ‘I thought you were going to eat him there, woman,’ she added. ‘You should have seen yourself. But I don’t blame you. Christ knows what I’d have been like. Who’d have thought it, eh? My wee boy, champion. Believe it or not, I had a phone call from his father last night; he was too busy to go to Girona, of course, but he asked me to pass on his good wishes. Hey,’ she chuckled, ‘maybe the roles will be reversed now, and Jonny can send him a cheque for his birthday. Make sure you tell him to call me once he’s collected his cup . . . and his winnings, of course.’

‘I won’t have to tell him, you daft bat. Have you heard from Mac yet?’

‘No,’ she replied, ‘the old eedjit’s sailing back to Singapore, cut off from all communication. I’m going to ask the shipping line if they can get a message to him. If only that wife of his hadn’t insisted on dragging him off on a cruise. He’ll be shitting rattlesnakes when he finds out what he’s missed.’

She left me with that vision in mind. It might have stayed there for a while, if it hadn’t been for Lena Mankell. She bore down on me from the crowd that was gathering in front of the television backdrop, the one with the sponsors’ logos, where the interview and presentation would take place. Her fists were clenched above her head . . . and she was almost smiling.

Lars followed her, with a toddler in the crook of his left arm and an older child holding his right hand. He’d played on Thursday and Friday, on an invitation. He had missed the cut by eight shots; it did seem that the best of his career was well behind him, but equally he didn’t seem too worried about it. It made me wonder
what a swing coach earns, if he was happy to follow his wife around and able to afford to. There are many ways for pros in decline to make money, but as far as I could see he wasn’t bothered.

‘I knew he would win,’ Lena exclaimed.

‘Even when he was in the sand,’ I challenged, ‘and Cormac was stone dead next to the hole?’

‘Jonny was number one in sand saves,’ Lars informed me, ‘and he played the eighteenth better than Toibin all week. Even if he had not holed out, there would have been a play-off, on that hole, as often as it took, and he would have won.’

It hadn’t come to that so I could afford to be sceptical. ‘Golf isn’t all about statistics,’ I argued.

‘It creates them,’ Lars countered, sombrely, in his accented English. He seemed more solemn in his wife’s presence. I wondered if they were all serious people in their household, kids included. ‘And they all add up,’ he continued. ‘There was a player last year who was best in Europe, if you look at the greens hit in regulation. But then if you looked at the money he earned, he is not in the top one hundred. Link those together and you didn’t even need to look at the putting stats to know he was damn near enough worst putter on the tour.’

‘But Jonny doesn’t have any stats. This was his first tournament.’

Lena took me surprise by laughing; a light, pleasant tinkling sound. ‘And so he has stats. From his very first round, he has stats; everything is measured in golf. In this tournament he is number three in greens in regulation and number one in putting. Those are the two that matter; the others not so much. For example,
driving distance doesn’t tell you whether the players hit driver off the tee, only how far the ball went.’ She nodded backwards at her husband. ‘Lars, here, he hits three metal off the tee mostly, because he’s lousy with driver. It still goes two eighty-seven yards, but stats say he’s weak.’

Her master class might have taken in every club in the bag, had not Tom arrived, looking flushed and triumphant. ‘Were you fired?’ I asked him. ‘You went crazy when Jonny won.’

He beamed at me. ‘So did you. So did the referee; that made it all right. But Uche’s going to be fined, one of the Tour guys says.’

‘What for?’

‘Swearing on TV. It’s not allowed.’

‘But he didn’t know he was on air,’ I protested.

‘That doesn’t matter; he’s supposed to assume that he can be heard.’ He shrugged. ‘But it’s all right. Jonny said it’s the best advice he’s given him all week so he’s going to pay it.’

That seemed fair to me; and to Uche, it seemed, for he was well happy as he came out of the recording area, although he looked exhausted. His ‘boss’ followed him, and was ushered towards the presentation area by a man in a green jacket.

The enormous trophy, and the enormous cardboard cheque (purely symbolic, I learned later; the money hits the bank through electronic channels) were presented by a distinguished man whom I recognised as the President of the Catalan government. His office didn’t earn him a speaking part though, for Telly Man in the Aussie hat moved straight in on Jonny and began an interview. He asked him about his last shot. ‘Most guys would have played it the way Cormac did,’ he said.

Jonny nodded. ‘I know, and so would I if I’d seen it that way. But I didn’t. As it turned out, I caught it just right, spot on, and I got the other fifty per cent, luck.’

A few more questions followed, but I could tell that they weren’t the ones he wanted to answer. Finally, just as Aussie hat was ready to hand back to the commentary box, he leaned forward and said, ‘Before I go I’d like to thank everyone who’s helped me this week; Uche, Lena, Brush, my Auntie Primavera, and my cousin Tom, who knows more about surfing than I do about golf. But most of all I’d like to thank three people. For various reasons, none of them could be here this week, but they’re the people who gave me the confidence to come out here and play and they’re all the bedrock of my support team: my mum, my Grandpa Mac, and my Uncle Oz.’

At the mention of the last name, Tom squeezed my hand. Me? I had to smile through the tears, for I saw that my nephew was a natural. He knows what a headline is and he’d just given them one.

Green blazer wanted to take him straight to the press tent as I approached. ‘Have you . . .’ I began.

He grinned, and nodded. ‘I called her as soon as my card was registered.’

‘What about your father?’ I ventured.

For an instant his eyes went hard. ‘I just thanked him,’ he murmured. ‘He was the closest thing to a dad I ever had.’

‘And Brush?’ I asked, moving on quickly. ‘What about him?’

‘He called me just before I came outside. We’ll speak again tomorrow, to organise my schedule. I’ve got a tour card now, so
everything changes. I’ll be home in a couple of hours. We’ll talk about it over dinner.’

Yes
, I thought as he left,
I’d like to talk a lot more about the reclusive Mr Donnelly
. We would have too, if something hadn’t happened that knocked him right off my ‘things to do’ list.

F
or most people, the day that the circus leaves town is a metaphor for anti-climax. Not for Tom and me, though, not that day. We were high as kites, both of us. He’d shown the courage to be certain of the outcome. I hadn’t: for all the confidence I’d expressed to Ellie after the third round, the closer Jonny had come to the finish, the more scared I’d become, the more fatalistic, anticipating the moment when his luck would change or he’d overreach himself and we’d all waken from the dream. Yes, I had been weak in my faith. But maybe it wasn’t as simple as that: maybe I’d simply been conditioned to assume that the worst would happen by too many not-so-happy endings in my life.

When it didn’t, when the fan stayed shit-free, I was more elated than I’d been in almost eleven years, since the day that Tom was born. Finally, something had worked out the way it was meant to.

I slung an arm around my son’s ever-rising, ever-thickening, shoulders. ‘Home, kid?’ I suggested.

He nodded. ‘Yeah. There’s a Barca game on TV tonight. Jonny was going to take me to dinner with you, but I told him I want to watch it in Esculapi. Is that all right?’ Six months before
I’d probably have told him no, that he had to come with us. But his pals would be there, and his faithful hound, and I’d already decided that however big a cheque Jonny was banking, I’d bypass elBulli in favour of Can Roura, in the square. There was something else too; while he was young and while I was filling in for his mum in a way, Jonny was nonetheless a man, and it was a couple of years since I’d been out with one of those on a twosome.

‘Sure,’ I said, and then the thought of Can Roura reminded me of something else. ‘Hey, what about Uche?’ I exclaimed. ‘Isn’t he supposed to be moving into his studio tonight?’

‘No,’ Tom replied. ‘He asked me to tell you to let Joan know that he’s going to leave it until tomorrow. He’s going to have dinner with his dad tonight.’

‘That’s nice for them. Hey,’ I chuckled, nudging him, ‘I wonder if he really is a prince.’

Before he could react, my mobile sounded again; I imagined that it would be a PS from Ellie, so I didn’t even glance at the screen. If I had done I’d have known that it was Susie calling, the official widow Blackstone. ‘I’ve just seen you on telly,’ she exclaimed, without preamble. ‘Imagine, our Jonny the champ. He’s turned into a good-lookin’ boy, Primavera. And was that Tom, carrying his board?’

‘Yes to all of that,’ I declared. ‘Fantastic, isn’t it?’

‘Absolutely. Is his mum not there? I assumed she’d be basking in it.’ Her tone suggested that Ellie’s feelings for Susie were reciprocated. I didn’t remark upon it, though; I simply explained the reasons for her absence.

‘Poor cow,’ she muttered. ‘I know . . .’ she continued, then stopped.

‘What?’ I demanded.

‘Nothing.’

‘Don’t bullshit me, Susie,’ I warned. ‘What were you going to say?’

She sighed. ‘That I know how she feels. I’ve got a wee health issue myself.’

I turned away from Tom so he couldn’t see my frown. ‘How wee?’