The Color of Blood (32 page)

It was nothing but the truth, yet I could see its effect on Pat Tracy in terms of the melodramas it evidently reminded him of. His eyes glowed with excitement; he rocked back and forth in his chair, his gums working his teeth rhythmically, like maracas underwater.

I produced a ten-euro note and laid it on the table. He glanced at it, then inclined himself away from me by forty-five degrees, picked up
Sink the Bismarck!
held it in front of his nose with one hand and began to read. The effect of this move was undermined a little by his holding the book upside down. I added a twenty to the ten, which he appeared to look on with more favor, before returning to his “reading.” I decided to employ some strategy of my own by whipping both notes away, standing up and walking to the window, as if in high dudgeon. I could see his reflection in the glass. He was peering at the table, as if the money was still there but had somehow been absorbed by the wood. I turned slowly and deliberately, and then walked back and slapped a fifty down, leaving my hand on half of it. He looked at it, tried to pick it up, looked at me and nodded. I let it go, he snaked it away in a pocket, and I sat down again. Pat looked cautiously about the room, then leant in close to me.

“She was a looker all right,” he said. “Said she was the victim of her da. Wanted to marry her off to some fat oul’ fella, so he could get the use of some land the oul’ fella had. But she was in love with a young lad, and since her da wouldn’t give his consent, she was going to elope with him, and what’s more, never see the da again.”

“It sounds very harsh on the da,” I said.

“Sure the da was beating her black-and-blue,” he said. “And other things.”

“And you believed all that, did you?”

Pat looked around again, then leant in and said, “I believed the twenty quid. Twenty year ago, twenty quid was twenty quid.”

“And what else can you remember?”

“About her? Nothing. She brought the clothes, left them in a heap, gave me the money and went off on her boyfriend’s motorbike.”

“Did you see the boyfriend?”

“Not really. He had one of those crash helmets on, you know the ones with the full-face visors.”

I got up to go. I was pretty sure I knew who it was anyway. The final thing Pat Tracy said confirmed it.

“I can tell you what make the bike was though. A Norton Commando. British engineering. Fair play to the Brits, they knew how to build a fucking motorbike.”

I had parked down by the pier. As I headed down toward the car, I checked my messages; seemed a sure way of getting people to call you, no matter what time of night, was to turn off your phone: Dave Donnelly had rung five minutes ago; I called him straight back.

“Dave, you’re working late.”

“Thought you might be up worrying.”

“Why would I be worrying?”

“That we’d get some more CCTV footage of the Waterfront Apartments for the time leading up to David Brady’s murder.”

“And did you?”

“We did. There’s a camera across the street.”

“And how is it looking for me, Dave? Should I invest in a solicitor? Or a helmet?”

“Always wise to have both. Unfortunately, all it picks up of you is your back, just like the one inside the door.”

“Or the back of a man my height in a black coat like mine.”

“Don’t get fucking smart with me, Ed.”

Sooner or later, Dave always reminded you who was in charge. I was under no illusion; he could run out of patience with me, and he probably would if I didn’t take care. But it was getting so I didn’t give a damn; worse, it was getting so I wanted to bring it to a head.

“So we did get a fine look at Shane Howard, barreling in like a man whose blood is up.”

“Yeah?”

“But before that, we have three young fellas, one lad we don’t know, in a long black coat and a black baseball cap; two we do: Darren and Wayne Reilly. You know them?”

“I know who they are.”

And where they are, and how they died.

“Not sure how they avoided the camera in the lobby, maybe they went up the emergency stairs. Anyway, we have good sets of prints all over the gaff, all over the
knife.
Remember the knife, Ed?”

“Sabatier carving knife? I’m not supposed to know about the knife, Dave.”

“You’re some fuckin’ comedian, do you know that? How’d you like to be laughing the other side of your face?”

“And a motive? Squabble over a coke deal?”

“Something like that. Brady was a big customer of theirs. Friends of his say he was always arguing about paying them. They said Brady’s father is loaded, which accounts for the flash apartment, but he had threatened to switch off the money supply if Brady’s rugby game didn’t improve. The old man thought Brady was too fond of the old party lifestyle.”

“So where are you, up in Woodpark waiting for the Reillys to come home?”

“We’ve a couple of roadblocks. Thought you should know, although fuck knows why. On a two-way street, the information has been strictly one-way for a long time. Don’t suppose you’ve anything for me?”

How about the Reillys’ dead bodies, Sean Moon, the murder weapon and Brock Taylor? How about the murderer of Audrey O’Connor, Stephen Casey and Dr. Rock? How about the riddle of a dead child no one wants to remember, and a suicide that never was? Why is a father who abused at least one of his daughters commemorated like a plaster saint? And how does a burning man who fell to earth fit with it all? How about you do my job, Dave, and I sit on my arse until the Garda Technical Bureau comes up with matching prints? I looked out over the black murk of the bay, and breathed in the damp clog of the air, and nearly choked.

“Jonathan O’Connor has a black baseball hat. And a long black coat.”

“So do I. That it?”

I wanted to give him the Reillys. But I wasn’t finished with Brock Taylor. And I had to keep Maria and Anita Kravchenko out of it; they’d be deported if I didn’t.

“I’ve another call, Dave, I’ll talk to you soon.”

I broke the connection before Dave had finished swearing at me. The other call was from Tommy. At first I couldn’t make head nor tail of it because his voice was so hushed; I thought he must have gone back on the booze, if not the whole medicine cabinet.

“I can’t hear a word you’re saying, Tommy.”

So he said it plain.

“Sean Moon is in your house.”

I drove too fast to Quarry Fields; it was five minutes from the pier and I made it in three. And I didn’t think enough about what I was doing; I probably should have bided my time. But at three in the morning, it’s easier to lead with your chin than use your head. I parked across the road and up a stretch by a maroon BMW I couldn’t remember seeing before and bolted across the road with my hand on the Sig Sauer compact in my jacket pocket. There was a silver SUV in my drive, and the approach light was on and the front door of my house was open. I brought the gun out as I went through the gate, and was immediately blindsided by a smash across the right side of the head. I tumbled, and the Sig clanked to the ground as my grip turned to sand. I managed to climb to my feet very briefly; my balance was shot from the blow to the head; I could see that it had come from a baseball bat, although I couldn’t make out the features of the man who had hit me; I probably looked pretty comical staggering around in a half circle, trying to keep upright like a newborn colt, but it didn’t seem to amuse the guy with the baseball bat; he raised it over me, and I shielded my head with my arms; my legs were spread to help me stand, so he kicked me in the balls so hard I thought I was going to die, and hoped I would. I collapsed on my hands and knees and vomited and wept, and then I felt a smart of dull pain on the back of my head, more like a nudge than a pain, and I tumbled into a dark red pool.

In a dream, I saw a trim brunette in a black pencil skirt and a black silk blouse with hair piled on top of her head and hanging longer at the back and good legs in black stockings wandering about a room with high windows and white walls and white furniture and a white carpet, everything white, against which she seemed to sway like a dark shadow. She was busy everywhere, doing something with the shutters, lighting a cigarette, rearranging white marble ornaments on the white marble fireplace and dabbing at the mirror that hung above it. As the growing pain in my stomach and in my head told me this was no dream, the brunette’s movements started to appear agitated and fussy; after completing each action, she would sit on a long white couch opposite me and take a drag on her cigarette; sometimes she would have to relight it first. My head was slumped on my left shoulder, and I could see out of both eyes, but it felt like there was a heavy weight on the side of my head. I became convinced it was a clock, some old antique clock with heavy workings, made of lead, perhaps — did they make clocks out of lead? I could hear its ticking in my head like the driving rhythm of an old diesel train, feel it thumping in my chest, and the muck sweat on my brow and the cold sparky taste of metal, then acid, on my tongue. I raised my head and the pain in my stomach slipped down into my balls, and I forgot about getting sick because I thought I was going to die. I could see a white clock on the center of the mantelpiece. For some reason, that reassured me. I could see the brunette’s ankles, but I couldn’t seem to lift my eyes yet to look at the rest of her. A wave of nausea shot up my stomach on an acid tide; I opened my mouth, but it turned in my throat and hurled itself back toward my balls. A white plastic bowl, the kind you’d pack salad leaves for a picnic in, was placed in my lap, and a white hunk of something the size of a human brain was pushed carefully between my legs; it was a pack of ice wrapped up in soft plastic. After a few minutes, the pain receded to the point where I felt it would be possible to lift my head.

“Keep something down?” the brunette asked. She had a soft, mild Dublin accent. She was holding up a bottle of pills.

“What?” I said, or tried to; my voice sounded like the crackle of burning wood.

“Ponstan,” she said. “They’ll help.”

“Morphine,” I barked.

“Trust me, I’m a nurse,” she said. “Morphine would be if he’d cut your balls
off.
”

I was tied to a straight-backed chair. I couldn’t see whether it was white or not. I didn’t care much, but I seemed to care enough to wonder. The brunette stood in front of me with the pills and a glass of water; I took a drink to lubricate my mouth and throat, then she put the pills on my tongue, one by one, and I washed them down with the rest of the water. My stomach did some more rumbling and heaving, and sweat poured down my face. The right side of my head felt like a boiled flesh poultice attached to my brain with barbed wire and rusty nails. Tears of pain rolled down my cheeks. The brunette went out of the room and came back in with a wet facecloth; she sat on a couch beside my chair and mopped my brow, and wiped my cheeks and rested the cloth carefully along the right side of my face.

She must have been in her midfifties, but she didn’t look it; I’d’ve put her at forty-five; she was probably aiming for forty, and not falling too far short. Her face had that lush, pearly glow expensive women all seem to have these days; her brown eyes and naturally dark coloring meant she needed little in the way of makeup; her blouse had shoulder pads, and with her hair piled up the way it was, she looked a bit like a woman from the 1940s; with that thought, the whole situation seem to dissolve once more into a dream.

She dropped the facecloth in the plastic bowl and took them away someplace, then sat back down opposite me and lit a fresh cigarette.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, Eileen… is it Dalton? Or Taylor?”

She looked pleased and anxious at the same time, as if she had finally got her wish and instinctively realized living it wasn’t going to be as simple as wishing for it had been.

“Taylor,” she said. “Eileen Taylor.”

“But Brock’s name was Dalton when you married. Did he change it or fake it?”

“Let’s leave Brian out of it.”

“I wish we could, Eileen. But we wouldn’t be having this little chat without him and his pal Sean Moon. Do you think I might have a drink?”

She raised her eyebrows and smiled to herself, as if in praise of folly.

“Not recommended, Ed Loy. Not in the state you’re in.”

“Did Father Massey give you my name?”

“He told me you were snooping around.”

“So you’ve kept in touch, you two. He knew all about your disappearing act, did he?”

“Not before, no. I wrote him a letter a little while after. Asking for his forgiveness.”

“He must have given it.”

“He was very good to me. Not many priests of that time would have been so sympathetic.”

“Explain something. You left a baby in the porch of the church. Father Massey takes it to the Howards, who arrange for it to be adopted. All very hush-hush. How did that work? I mean, it was 1986, in a city. He was a priest, he must have had… legal obligations.”

Eileen Dalton stood up and walked to the window, a fussy dark shadow once again. From there she looked around at me pityingly, reprovingly, as if I were some impossibly naive idiot she was a fool to be wasting her time on. I had a feeling she’d used that look before.

“I thought you’d know why.”

“I think I do. Was it because you somehow told Father Massey—”

“I left a note with the baby. A sealed envelope, addressed to him.”

“Telling him who the boy’s father was.”

“That’s right. So you do know.”

“I think I know. But I’d like to hear you say it.”

She looked out through the dark glass. I could see her reflection. She was shaking. When she turned, she held on to the shutter handle for balance.

“All right,” she said, throbbing with passion, as if every moment of regret for the long years of missing her son was laced through the words. “All right then. Jerry Dalton’s father was Dr. John Howard.”

THERE’S A MOMENT IN EVERY CASE WHEN YOU CATCH A
glimmer of the end: not that you know all the answers, but you begin to see the pattern. It often comes when you’re at your lowest ebb, and you’ve nothing but darkness in sight. Eileen Dalton telling me John Howard was Jerry Dalton’s father felt like such a moment. The energy in the room seemed to split apart and flow together again in a new configuration. I was still tied to a chair in Brock Taylor’s Fitzwilliam Square house, but I felt I had been given, if not quite a winning hand, at least something to play for. If Eileen Dalton had been feeding her son clues about the Howard family, chances were she wanted something to happen, and that something had to involve her getting out of Brock Taylor’s, and she might need some help to get where she was going.