Next Time You’re Out Prancing on Your Pony

Charlie leaves the control room and heads upstairs. Before stepping onto the stone floor of the kitchen he removes his boots and places them at the end of the second step. This action always fills him with an awkward vulnerability; he imagines suddenly having to spring into action in his socks, skidding on the floor as he tries to get his client to safety.

Mr Clancy is sitting at the kitchen island, sipping his coffee as he pours over a broadsheet. ‘Morning, Clarlie,’ he says.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Anything I need to know?’

‘Nothing of note, sir. Femi and Scott’s handover was brief. Amazon delivery at 22:11, which Femi received at the gate. Six patrols completed with zero to report.’

‘Good.’ Mr Clancy lowers the paper to make eye contact. ‘My wife caught him vaping by the stables again last night.’

Charlie knows the client is referring to Scott, the youngest member of the team.

‘My apologies, sir. I’ll have a word with him.’

‘She wants him gone. But I recall you saying that he’s a solid CPO…’

‘He is,’ Charlie says with a nod. ‘He knows the rules though. I’ll tell him he’s on his final warning.’

‘Thank you. I’ll be home all day. Zoom calls in the study. I may go for a short ride around the grounds, but I’ll let you know this afternoon.’

Scott. Vaping by stables again, Charlie scribbles into his note pad.

He sighs, wishing that this were his biggest problem: Scott is the one of the better ones, diligent with his patrols and communication, thorough with the CCTV; meticulous in many ways (aside, it seems, from maintaining the health of his lungs or obeying Mrs Clancy’s house rules).

Charlie slips his boots back on and walks back down to the basement, passing the control room this time before ascending the steps that lead outside.

The compound sits a hundred yards from the winding country road. It scarcely seems out of place within the bucolic village, boxed in as it is by hedges, walls, and the imposing wrought iron gate. No one passing by would suspect that the owner was anyone of interest—at least no more than any of the other rich landowners nearby. The internal perimeter fence is completely concealed from view; so too are the grizzled men tasked with protecting the inhabitants.

‘Since the local elections three days ago…’ the phoneline goes silent for a moment. ‘Right. Warren has received a total of thirty-two explicit death threats across all his social media accounts. Thirty of which are from anonymous users.’

‘The other two?’

‘The other two are middle-aged liberals, a man from Slough and a woman from Hull. I doubt that either of them know how the internet works—or they’d have been anonymous too.’

‘You’ve reported it to the police?’

‘Of course. Brian and Marge will no doubt be getting a surprise phone call from the old bill soon enough. Poor sods will probably wet themselves.’

‘Serve the morons right,’ Charlie chuckles. ‘Any worrying details amongst the messages?’

‘Hmm. Perhaps one. A charmingly named Nazislayer666 sent a direct message to the IG account.’ Steph reads the message: ‘I love killing fascists as much as you love killing foxes, Warren. Next time you’re out prancing on your pony, I’ll be sure to knock you to the ground and cave your head in. It’ll be like Richard III at the battle of Bosworth—except that he was ruler of England and you’ll never be more than a fringe politician, a racist pencil-pusher whose mangled body was discovered on his country estate one sunny afternoon.’

Charlie groans. ‘Right. So, they know he has horses, and a country estate.’

‘Could be a lucky guess.’

‘The fox-hunting bit too…’

‘It’s well publicised that he took part in a few hunts before the ban a couple of decades ago.’

And a fair few after, if you believe the rumours… Charlie thinks but doesn’t say.

‘If we were to think worse case though, we have a would-be aggressor who knows Mr Clancy’s address and knows he likes to take afternoon rides on the grounds.’

‘I mean, we’re in your domain now, Charlie...’

‘Right. I won’t take up any more of your time, Steph. Just email over what you have.’

Charlie takes a breath, steeling himself before his next task. He descends the stairs back down to the basement and enters the control room after knocking. When the team leader steps inside Hector turns his head from the monitor to look back (chances are that this is performative and he was on his phone before he heard the knock).

‘All right, mate. I’ll need the room for a while. Grab a radio and do a perimeter patrol. Let Jon know too.’

‘Yes, boss.’

Charlie spends the next hour or so tracking Femi on the CCTV, every time he leaves the control room. It feels like an act of disloyalty to his teammate, a breach of trust. Though what other option is he left with?

At 23:03, he watches the CPO type a quick message on his phone and promptly leave the office. Then he tracks him entering the second-floor bathroom a minute later. He fast-forwards until he sees another flash of movement. He skips back. Femi has not exited the room, yet Mrs Clancy is now entering. There’s a lock on the inside and no reason why the operative wouldn’t use it. Charlie fast-forwards. Ten minutes go by, then twenty. Half an hour later, Femi exits. Fifteen minutes after that, Mrs Clancy finally does too, now wearing a bath robe.

‘You stupid, arrogant little…’

Charlie groans and closes the remote playback feature. He’d never liked Mrs Clancy; while initially she was just a demanding spouse, now she was threatening his livelihood, his reputation.

Warren Clancy has a busy twelve hours of engagements the following day, during which the politician manages to become even more polarising. Comments he’d made in a series of zoom calls go viral, prompting a severe reaction from his detractors and outspoken leftists. Charlie contacts Steph for an updated number of death threats, which have now risen to the low four figures. While this is nothing new for Mr Clancy, who’s survived no less than three attempts on his life during the last decade (including one that left him with a knife wound to his shoulder), the conditions are markedly different these days; his profile has never been larger and neither has his schedule of public obligations. And, painfully, the kind of intense scrutiny placed on a client of this calibre automatically broadened to those tasked with protecting him. The idea of outing Femi and Mrs Clancy suddenly seemed out of the question; it meant career suicide, the immediate termination of Charlie’s contract and a permanent black mark against his company.

After an uneventful morning, the visit to Mr Clancy’s local constituency finally gives Charlie and his men the burst of activity they’d been dreading. A bearded man leaps from the small group of protesters outside the front of the building, brandishing a machete from the inside of his coat as he advances to within mere metres from his target.

Charlie quickly bundles his charge into the back of the Mercedes and instructs the driver to make an evasive manoeuvre. Meanwhile Jon and Scott tackle and disarm the assailant as Hector and serge catch up in the contingency vehicle.

Back at the estate an hour later, the TL decides that he’ll see his client through this rough patch and fulfil what’s left of their contact, which will thankfully terminate in one month. He’ll elect not to renew it, rid himself of Femi, and accept one of many lucrative contracts no doubt offered to him in the aftermath—as the standing of his company would surely have reached new heights.

Despite the success of the afternoon, and the series of congratulatory messages that Charlie receives as a result, the following week brings an alien level of stress. His Security Advanced Party uncover two further assassination plots, apprehending one man with a so-called zombie knife and another with an unlicenced pistol. It seems the danger posed to Warren Clancy is limitless; further attempts on his life feel both inevitable and imminent.

Charlie calls an emergency meeting, where it’s agreed that the client be placed on an indefinite lockdown: Mr Clancy will remian the estate, receive no unexpected guests—those with invitations will be thoroughly searched—and all deliveries will be subjected to quarantine and examination.

On the first day, Jon observes a white van parked by the gate. Its driver garbed in sunglasses, a baseball cap and medical facemask. A quick check of the number plates shows that they do not correspond with the vehicle.

The second day brings another suspicious visitor—grey transit with fake plates, its driver similarly disguised—who promptly drives away when Scott attempts to approach.

When Charlie calls another emergency meeting, Mr Clancy becomes apoplectic at the suggestion of a safehouse.

‘No. I’ve done as you’ve said and cancelled all of my engagements. But I refuse to be run out of my own damn home!’

The lockdown is therefore upheld, with an unspoken measure: Mrs Clancy won’t be informed of any development, and neither will Femi. Though the CPO can’t be fired at this critical juncture—as the operation has to seem like it’s functioning as normal—he’s denied access to the control room, confined to continual patrols, and offered zero information of the client’s comings and goings. Charlie then makes Mr Clancy promise that he’ll also keep his wife completely in the dark, which the politician finds highly irregular and ‘hard to swallow’. But swallow it he does.

On day four Charlie’s request for armed police is finally accepted, and with it comes a sense of control he finds long overdue. There now seems better cohesion within the team, slicker communication, and lastly what he views as a heightened level of morale. There is one member of the team to which this does not extend to, however.

Femi skulks around the grounds with an expression of bitterness and resentment, perplexed by his sudden maltreatment, the icy interactions with his Team Leader. For reasons unexplained he no longer has access to the control room and his colleagues all seem to avoid him like the plague.

By day five of lockdown the CPO decides to use his new status as an undesirable to his advantage. He spends his time sitting on his phone in CCTV blind spots, radioing through perimeter patrols he doesn’t bother attempting, whiling the hours until his next forbidden rendezvous with the client’s dissatisfied wife.

This comes at 8am on day number six.

It’s one of their riskier engagements: while Mr Clancy commences another packed day of Zoom calls in his study, his wife enters the ground floor bathroom and waits.

Femi swiftly enters five minutes later.

Something about the current fraught situation, the danger simmering away within the household, makes this illicit encounter even more intense. The pair writhe around on the bathroom floor like a pair of crazed animals (with the exception that neither makes a sound).

Afterwards Femi sits with his back to the bathtub, Mrs Clancy curled up with her head on his chest.

‘I can’t help thinking that they know about us,’ Femi mutters abruptly.

The client’s wife stifles a sneer. ‘If they knew about us, you wouldn’t have a job.’

‘I just don’t understand Charlie’s sudden coldness. It’s like he doesn’t trust me anymore.’

‘You’re just an employee, darling—he doesn’t owe you anything. Whereas my own damned husband won’t tell me a thing, and we share a bed.’

‘That’s just the boss’s precaution. We’ve never had a situation like this, with this kind of threat-level; he’ll have sworn your husband to secrecy.

‘I’m so tired of living like this. I almost wish one of these attempts were successful…’

He turns to look in her pale green eyes, there’s a callousness in them he’s never noticed before (or perhaps one that he’d simply chosen not to see).

‘I’m just saying, it’d make things easier. Can’t you imagine it?’

Femi considers this an hour later as he moves a lawn chair to directly beneath the terrace camera, obscuring himself from view. He radios through a fictitious external patrol and thinks about Mrs Clancy’s cold eyes; how well did he really know the woman?

At the front of the house, Charlie is speaking to one of the armed policemen.

‘I need you to pass on a message. My CPO isn’t answering his phone.’ He tuts. ‘Likely because I’ve warned about using them when they shouldn’t. Anyway, I’ve got to head out, but Jon needs to know that Mr Clancy is going for a short ride around the grounds at midday. I don’t want it said across the radio.’

‘Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll find him.’

‘Great, you know which one I mean?’

‘Yeah, black gentleman, kind of stocky.’

Charlie nods. ‘Thanks for that.’

On his way out, a slightly worrying thought crosses his mind: he would never have described Jon as ‘stocky’. He shrugs, supposing it’s a trivial detail. Perhaps one person’s lean is another one’s stocky.

Meanwhile in the blind spot on the terrace, Femi continues to think about Mrs Clancy and the strange look he thought he’d glimpsed in her eyes.

All they’d really shared were a couple dozen clandestine meetings: intense moments of passion where few words were even exchanged. He’d truthfully never even contemplated a future for the two of them. To him she was just the boss’s unhappy wife, an unusual dose of excitement in a job he’d probably no longer have in a month’s time.

Femi’s reverie is suddenly interrupted by one of the armed policemen.

‘Ah, there you are.’

Femi stares back blankly.

‘Uh, your boss Mr Flint told me to pass on a message in person.’

Femi frowns. ‘He did?’

‘Yeah, didn’t wanted anything said over the radio. Mr Clancy will be taking a ride around at the grounds at 1200. Just a short one, not venturing past the areas you’ve patrolled. You said everything was all in order, right?’

‘Uh, yeah. That’s what I said.’

‘Great, thanks.’

Femi smiles for moment. Perhaps he’d imagined all the apparent distrust suddenly placed in him of late—or at least blown it out of proportion. This is an important detail to be told, Mr Clancy taking out one of his horses. Is he finally back in the Charlie’s good graces?

He walks back into the house via the kitchen and the smile must still be present, because Mrs Clancy grins back as she sips a coffee at the kitchen island.

‘Well, somethings cheered you up,’ she says in a low voice, the one she always adopts when the two of them are alone but outside of their private meetings.

‘Hmm, yeah. Seems I’m being trusted with intel again. Maybe I’ve been—’

‘What intel? I went to find Warren in his study, but he’d disappeared.’

‘It’s nothing. Just something minor.’

‘Then spill it. I have a right to know what—’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Just tell me, please. I’ll be extremely unhappy if you don’t.’ She flashes him another strange look with those cold green eyes. ‘You don’t want me to be unhappy with you, Femi. Trust me.’

He notices the quickening of his heartbeat and sighs. ‘Fine. It’s hardly a revelation. Your husband is just going for a ride today, that’s all.’

For a brief second Mrs Clancy’s eyes seem to light up. Then she blinks and they’re cold again, impassive. ‘A ride? Just around the grounds?’

‘Yeah. Midday.’ He smirks, despite feeling unsure of himself. ‘There. Hardly a juicy disclosure, was it?’

At midday an illicit camper crawls out from the spot in which he’s been staked out for the last twelve hours, a dense assortment of hedgerows perhaps two hundred yards from The Fascist’s stables.

The Fascist’s wife had been spot-on with every piece of information she’d given him so far: where to gain access to the grounds and where to hide; she’d even correctly informed him that the close protection officer would cease his regular patrols, leaving his presence unreported. Now she’d messaged to say The Fascist would be out prancing on his pony at midday.

This was his moment. Any minute now he was going to emerge from the bushes and strike, ridding the world of a right-wing devil. He’d even fashioned his own halberd—the blade removed from a huge felling axe and attached to the end of a sturdy flagpole. The thing was a work of art. He’d practised swinging it for a month now, picturing landing the deathblow a thousand times—far more practise than Richard III’s killer would have ever had.

Despite this he feels nervous. That fabled king slayer was lucky enough to find his victim stuck in marshy ground; on this warm summer’s day, he won’t be so fortunate. He’ll have to leap out and first spook the horse, then administer the perfect blow.

A moment later he hears the gentle thudding of horse hooves. He raises his gruesome contraption in the air. Time to become immortal.

A moment later the young man rushes out with a manic scream, startling the horse better than expected, which almost unmounts its equally terrified rider. As the animal flounders, the young man raises the axe head high, then strikes.

The blow lands in between neck and shoulder—sadly not on his head. Although this is immaterial: The Fascist lets out a wail of agony before falling to the ground. The following strikes do land in the desried place, though the second and third are redundant.

The Fascist is dead, his head a bloody pulp.

From the distance the young man sees some of the close protection team sprinting over. He drops his bloodied weapon and makes his escape.