The Color of Blood (37 page)

I met Finnegan’s gaze and shrugged. If he connected me to the GHB, I could be in a lot of trouble. But I was in a lot of trouble already. And if I had my way, Finnegan wasn’t going to be the most reliable witness the world had ever seen come the dawn.

“What did he say to you?”

“Nothing,” Finnegan said. “He left again almost immediately, wouldn’t tell me where he was going. He seemed extremely agitated.”

“There must be something we can do,” Sandra said. “I mean, what they’re saying can’t be true, can it?”

“It was Jonathan who called me and told me Jessica was with David Brady,” Shane said. “The Guards traced the calls. I think he knew me well enough to know I would lose the head altogether, that I’d lam around there to try and catch them in the act, and in the process get caught up on CCTV, which needless to say is just what I did. He tried to frame me for the murder.”

“He tried to throw the blame onto Emily as well,” I said.

“I don’t believe it,” Sandra said. But she sounded, wearily, as if she did.

“Jonathan called Jessica that morning also,” I said. “Was that usual? Did he ever have any contact with her?”

Shane shook his head.

“Not that I know of.”

Denis Finnegan sprang into action.

“I might be able to shed some light on that,” he said. “I’ve been doing a certain amount of dabbling in the property market. Jonathan would visit properties on my behalf and make an assessment for me of their potential. In that regard, I know for a fact he has seen several of the houses Jessica was showing in recent months.”

It was impossible to tell whether Finnegan was improvising to protect his stepson, or whether he was telling the truth. Before I could push him on it, Shane Howard plowed in.

“You’re a great man for property schemes, aren’t you, Dinny? The fourth tower, isn’t that right?”

“I’ve made no secret of my views. They support those of your sister.”

“And isn’t it very convenient that Jessica’s not around anymore to get in the way of your plans?”

“If you intend to level any malign insinuation regarding Jessica’s murder at my door, I would advise—”

“Ah, cut the lawyer crap now, Dinny. I bet that’s not the way you talk with Brock Taylor.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I bet Brock Taylor wouldn’t let a woman stand in the way of his plans. What’s a nice lawyer like you doing with a crook like that?”

“Brian Taylor has paid his debt to society, has settled with the Revenue and the CAB. He is now a respectable businessman, and is legally entitled—”

I couldn’t let that one run.

“Brock Taylor was a murderer and a crook, and you owed him big-time. Incalculable, really, how much. At least, that’s what he reckoned. I don’t know what way the pair of you structured the deal, or whether he just left it up to you, but either way, he was expecting to be paid back in a major way. Was he going to be a partner? Once Shane was safely stowed in jail, and you and Sandra had the running of it all, it would have been easy to cut him in, wouldn’t it? Or was he already in? For what? A third? A half? It’s all for Sandra, remember, so you can’t cut her out entirely. Although with someone like Brock Taylor, who knows where the bodies are buried because he killed them himself, you’re on very shaky ground, aren’t you, Denis? Maybe your loyalty to your childhood pal will have to take precedence over your veneration of the glorious Howard family.”

Sandra found her voice again.

“Denis? What is he saying? What bodies?”

Denis Finnegan had set his little feet down beside each other on the floor. I stroked the Sig with one hand, just to remind me it was there. Finnegan wasn’t going to speak, so I had to.

“Denis had a crush, no, more than a crush, a kind of blind, overwhelming interest in your future, Sandra. He was benevolent, all-powerful, like God, really. And just like God, he didn’t mind if a few bodies got in the way, so long as it was to serve what were considered your best interests. I don’t know why he decided on Richard O’Connor — maybe he felt you needed a father figure, maybe Denis loved Dr. Rock himself and hoped to channel his sublimated passion through you. Fuck knows, I’m not a psychologist, what I do know is that he paid a man who called himself Brian Dalton — who we know as Brock Taylor — to murder Audrey O’Connor and carry out a bungled robbery at Richard O’Connor’s house, and then to plant the proceeds of the robbery on Stephen Casey, Eileen Harvey’s first son, and murder him too. Which he duly did. And in due course, presumably encouraged on both sides by Denis Finnegan, romance blooms and Sandra and Dr. Rock marry, and have a son. Jonathan.”

“I must warn you that legally, you are on the flimsiest of grounds here, Mr. Loy. The law of slander—”

“Legally, I live in a cell with cockroaches and rats and no running water; when the Seafield cops are done with me, I won’t have a legal bone left in my body,” I said. “So let’s just skip the legalities for a while and continue with our nice cozy family chat. After all, Brock Taylor used to work for my father once, so I think I can consider myself part of the family too, even if I come in through the servants’ entrance.”

I looked around the room. Sandra was staring alternately at me and Finnegan, her green eyes sick with fear. I took the rugby medal out of my pocket and gave it to her.

“See, Rock’s name is engraved on it. The Guards never recovered Rock’s medals after the robbery. I found them in a drawer in the spare bedroom of your husband’s house in Mountjoy Square.”

Sandra Howard thrust the medal into my hand, flung herself off her chair and vomited into the fireplace.

“I heard Brock Taylor admit to killing Audrey O’Connor and Stephen Casey tonight. And then his wife killed him.”

Finnegan was squirming in his chair, but he seemed to have lost the power of speech. Sandra got to her feet and breathed deeply.

“Keep going, Ed,” she said. “Tell it all.”

“So then, having set you up for marriage with Dr. Rock, Denis goes off and completes his legal training and starts his practice, representing many of the prominent criminals of the day including, of course, his boyhood pal, Brock Taylor. But he keeps a hand in on the Southside, the bit of coaching for Castlehill, the bit of attention paid to Sandra, and a spot of rugby sevens on a Saturday morning with the guys. Including Dr. Rock. And then one Saturday morning, Dr. Rock collapses, a suspected heart attack. Maybe he hasn’t taken his insulin, maybe he’s hung over and the exercise is getting to him. And Denis says he’ll take him to hospital, which he does. Now I can’t be sure — the only one who knows is Denis — but I think what happened was, Rock asks him to inject him with insulin. And Denis does, only he gives Rock an overdose. By the time they get to hospital, Rock is slipping into a coma, and Denis neglects to mention that Rock is a diabetic, and Rock is treated as if it’s a regular myocardial infarction, a heart attack, and he dies in a couple of hours.”

Finnegan was shaking his head.

“I didn’t know he was a diabetic,” he said. He appealed to Sandra. “I swear I didn’t.”

Sandra wouldn’t look at her husband’s face.

“I spoke to the doctor who admitted him. He remembers you. He’ll be happy to make a complaint to the Guards.”

Finnegan got to his feet.

“I don’t have to stay here and be subjected to this—”

Shane Howard pushed him back into his chair.

“Yes you do, Dinny, yes you fucking do.”

“Along with the medals in Finnegan’s house, I found one other item,” I said, and produced the silver ID bracelet from my pocket. Again I gave it to Sandra for inspection. She let loose a howl of pain and sank to the floor.

“What does it say?” a shrill voice asked. It was Jonathan O’Connor, in black coat and baseball hat and wraparound shades. I didn’t know how long he had been in the room. Long enough, it looked like. Jonathan crossed the room toward his mother, who held out her arms in an embrace he avoided. He took the bracelet and examined it.

“It says ‘Diabetes Type 1,’” I said. “If your father had been wearing it—”

“He took it off for the game,” Finnegan said. “He took it off whenever we played sevens. He was in his gear when we went to the hospital.”

“How do you have his bracelet then? Where did you get it? Why did you keep it?”

“I had nothing but respect and admiration for Rock O’ Connor,” Finnegan said. “He was my friend, he was everything to me.”

Jonathan laughed, a forced, mirthless sound like static from a badly tuned radio.

“Your friend? Yes, but who are you?” Jonathan said. “You’re not who you claimed to be at all. You’re a fraud, a fabrication. You’re not fit to be a part of this family.”

“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for the Howards’ sake. For Sandra’s sake.”

Finnegan’s voice was thick with a sincerity I’d never heard in it before. He looked pleadingly at Sandra, and I saw the Northside boy he’d been, and the dream that had sustained him, and the ties of history and of blood that had laid him low.

“You killed her husband,” Jonathan said, his voice shrill with excitement. “You killed my father. If that was for the Howards’ sake, then so is this.”

I still don’t know if Jonathan was too quick for me, or if I just stood back and let it happen. Both, perhaps. He had been inching toward Finnegan gradually, and Finnegan had risen to his feet again, and then Jonathan was upon him. The blade whipped out of his coat and sparkled in the drear and then buried itself in Denis Finnegan’s chest, twice, three times, straight in the heart. By the time the Sig was in my hand, Finnegan was as good as dead. Jonathan sprang back, still holding the knife; I waved the gun at him, and he tossed the bloody weapon on the floor. The knife was a Sabatier, the same as the knife that had killed David Brady; the method was the same as that used to murder Jessica Howard; the knife was probably the second of the two I had found missing in Denis Finnegan’s kitchen. I wondered whether Finnegan was Jonathan’s fourth victim. But the knife used to kill Jessica had not been found.

And then Shane Howard crouched by the body, and felt for a pulse, and turned to me and shook his head. It reminded me that he had a medical training, that he would have known there is very little blood when someone was stabbed through the heart, that the bleeding was largely internal. He wouldn’t have asked where his wife’s blood was. He would have known.

Jonathan stepped back from us all and pulled his shades off; his eyes blazed with what could have been fear but looked like triumph. He cast around for his mother, but she was hanging one-handed on the mantelpiece now, her breath coming in quick bursts, her worn face drained of life, of hope.

“He killed my father,” Jonathan cried, as if there had been no other route open to him. “He was nothing. Nothing but scum.”

He seemed exhilarated, almost gleeful. What I had thought was weakness in his eyes now looked like something else: a delirium of violence, a killing rage.

“How many others did you kill, Jonathan?” I said.

“No one,” he said, unable to suppress the grin that spread across his face.

“What did you say to Shane Howard when you rang him on Halloween morning? What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. I didn’t ring him.”

“I have phone records that say you did.”

“You couldn’t, my phone is—”

“Untraceable, I know. And now I know for sure you made that call. You told him his wife was having an affair with David Brady, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“You’d already killed Brady by then. And you must have thought you were clever dodging the CCTV camera in the lobby. But there’s a camera across the road, and it’s got footage of the Reillys and their accomplice. That’s you, Jonathan.”

Jonathan shook his head.

“And after that, you went around to Jessica Howard, whom you also rang that morning, you went around and stabbed her to death too. Just the way you stabbed Denis Finnegan, straight through the heart. And then you went back to Honeypark, took a shower, dumped your clothes in the house, just the way you tried to make out Emily had had a shower and dumped her bloody clothes there — which is why you set fire to the place yesterday. Now this is what I think you were doing, Jonathan. You were working with Denis Finnegan, listening to his plans, the great Howard name, the construction of the fourth tower, the grandiose achievements that separate the likes of you, great men, from the likes of the rest of us, the little people who don’t have any castles or towers in our names, or portraits of ourselves on every wall. Denis knew all about the blackmail scheme involving the porn film — David Brady had sent it to him by e-mail attachment, so he may have felt it was a way of persuading Shane Howard to play ball on the development front. But then the Reillys were involved with their crude demands for cash, and the whole thing just became too much grief. Finnegan told Brady, and Brady tried to back out — but the Reillys weren’t having that. This was their chance for some long-term income, blackmailing Shane Howard. So between you and Wayne and Darren, the plot was hatched to get rid of David Brady. You didn’t like him anyway, did you Jonny? All the things Emily did with him. It should’ve been you, shouldn’t it?”

Jonathan was very still, his eyes blank now, his mouth set.

“Why you killed Jessica Howard is clearer, I think. She was actively opposed to the plan to build the fourth tower; she wanted to redevelop the site for apartments and town houses. That was bad for Denis, because with Jessica involved, there was no way he could bring Brock Taylor on board. And it was bad for you: apartments full of dreadful little people sullying the Howard name. So you went around there and you killed her. And you tried to set Shane Howard up for both murders.”

I was looking at Shane as I spoke. He couldn’t meet my eye.

“No, you’re completely wrong,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t kill Jessica.”

“But you did kill David Brady. And you did kill David Manuel. I found Emily’s laptop last night, in your room in Finnegan’s Mountjoy Square house. I thought at first Emily had been e-mailing David Manuel. But how could she, she didn’t have her computer. No, Jonathan, pretending to be Emily, negotiated an emergency late-night appointment with Manuel last night. Manuel knew too much, and wanted Emily to go to the cops. Jonathan went there, overpowered Manuel and set fire to his room. Manuel fell to his death, horribly burnt.”