The Wrong Kind of Blood (20 page)

I expected there to be nothing remaining of the Gut; maybe a bramble struggling for purchase in the flower bed of some semidetached lawn, but there it was, in all its shabby, untrammeled glory. A wall of ash and elder had been planted around the perimeter, and had grown to hide most of the houses from view.

“Ah, you wouldn’t be romantic about it if you lived here,” said Dave Donnelly, kicking the charred remains of a fire out of his way. Dave had never hung around the Gut back then. He was always captaining the hurling team, or training with the rowing club, or taking the scouts on hikes. He plucked a bramble off his trouser leg, and brushed poppy seeds from his sleeve.

“Every couple of weeks there’s a cider party or a knife fight or a fire out of control or some fucking shenanigans up here,” he said.

“I can’t believe they haven’t built on it,” I said. “I mean, it’s hardly an area of outstanding natural beauty, is it?”

“There’s a dispute between two old boys over who owns it. They’ve been locked in battle for twenty-odd years. And as long as it goes on, neither will lift a finger to do anything about it, and no one else can either.”

Dave stood in the shade of the younger oak, batting a caustic mist of pollen, hornets, and midges away with a huge red hand.

I sat on a tree stump — maybe the same stump, I couldn’t remember — leaned the black watch tartan duffel bag I’d carried from the car on the ground beside it and lit a cigarette. I didn’t always smoke, and some biological quirk meant I could go for long periods without, but I always seemed to need one after being in a church. Dave shook his head when I offered him one.

“Jaysus, state of your hands, Ed. That’s not from the rosebush yesterday, is it?”

There were sores and lacerations on each finger to the knuckle, and abraded skin on the palms of my hands and on my wrists; I looked like I had eczema.

“Climbing up Castlehill Quarry. And a barbed wire fence.”

“Right. Some kind of sponsored thing, was it?”

“That’s right, in aid of the Garda Benevolent Fund.”

Dave grinned, but the grin faded like steam on a mirror. He made to speak, then stopped himself; he seemed to be having difficulties getting started. Plunge right in there, Loy.

“So any sign of the gun, Dave?”

“The story is, it must still be in there. There’s no way anyone could have gotten it out of the Technical Bureau, security is too tight. No sign of a break-in. So it’s all some kind of administrative cock-up.”

“You don’t think so.”

“I think it’s very convenient. It suits people who want Peter Dawson’s death to just go away.”

“Barbara Dawson told me she believes Peter killed himself. She claims Superintendent Casey agrees with her. What’s all that about?”

Dave shook his head.

“Casey’s doing what he’s always done when he’s got a case he wants to bury: he’ll let it slide until the trail’s gone cold, then he’ll dump it on the coroner and get an open verdict, death by misadventure, or some such.”

“But does he think Peter committed suicide? I mean, who moved the body onto the boat?”

“He has enough from the postmortem to say it could be suicide. And now, no pesky gun to get in the way. But sure, even if Peter killed himself, where did he do it, and who cleaned up afterward? That’s what we should be asking. But Casey doesn’t want to go there.”

“Why not?”

“Who do you think moved the body onto the boat?”

“Tommy Owens said the gun came from Podge Halligan. I’d say the Halligans have got to look favorite.”

“And that’s just what Casey wants to avoid — making any link between John Dawson and the Halligans. There’s to be no gangland connection in this case: that’s official.”

“Despite the fact Immunicate runs security for Dawson Construction?”

“Immunicate runs security for lots of people, Ed.”

“So he’s just going to block a potential murder investigation?”

“Oh, we’re still to chase down Tommy Owens. But we’ll end up ruling him out: no motive, no eyewitness, and the print on the weapon is a partial. If we had a weapon, that is.”

“So what, Dave, somebody’s husband, somebody’s son may have been murdered by gangsters. And the Garda superintendent in charge of the investigation doesn’t want an investigation. Talk to me here.”

“The important thing — the only thing that matters — is keeping the Dawsons happy.”

Dave rolled the great muscles in his neck and shoulders, then turned away and looked up toward Castlehill. The sun was setting now; flanked by two cranes, the wooden cross at the top of the hill seemed to glow. I’d forgotten the cross was there; it was the first time I’d seen it since I’d got back; it had been erected to celebrate some huge Catholic jamboree back in the fifties, when there wasn’t much to do, and certainly little to celebrate. There was no chill in the shade now; the rain had made it more humid, not less. Dave mopped his brow with the back of his hand.

“And the Dawsons are happy with a suicide verdict. Can you imagine that? They’re happier to think he killed himself than that someone murdered him. And we’re happy to go along with it.”

“Is Casey connected to Dawson?”

“What, in some golden circle kind of way? I don’t know. But John Dawson made a lot of friends over the years — not just the Jack Parlands who’ve been found out, but a lot more who haven’t. And these fuckers like to please each other without having to be asked, you know what I mean? At the low end, it’s a wad of cash. With the big boys, it’s a lot more subtle. Being known as sound, as reliable. They never even have to meet, it’s all understood — one good turn knocks onto another, the right words in the right ears, and suddenly there’s an assistant Garda commissionership up for grabs.”

“You could leak it to the press.”

“What kind of a fuckin’ thick do you take me for, Ed? There may be many things Casey is useless at: police work and man-management for a start. But getting good write-ups in the papers is his speciality, and he keeps enough journalists sweet to root out anyone who pulled a stunt like that. And there’s me back directing traffic and signing dog licenses.”

I waved my cigarette before my face to ward away the midges. Sweat was matting my hair and gathering at my throat, stinging the cuts Dessie Delaney had left there.

“Do you know a guy name of Colm Hyland, Dave? Boatman down the Royal Seafield? Because I think he’s the link. I think he helped the Halligans get the body onto the boat.”

I told Dave about seeing Hyland in Hennessy’s with George Halligan and about his rendezvous with Blue Cap down at the old ferry-house.

“Who were the supplies for?”

“The Immunicate guy minding the place, I guess. What’s he minding it for, is the question. Was Peter Dawson killed there? It’s not far from where his boat was moored. And here’s the other thing, I saw an Immunicate van running directly into John and Barbara Dawson’s house.”

I filled Dave in on my trip to Linda’s house, and gave him the duffel bag with Peter’s computer hard drive in it.

“What did you do with Linda’s car?” Dave said. For a moment I thought he was going to haul me in for stealing it.

“It’s by the coast side of the pine forest, where I parked the Volvo. Can you have Peter Dawson’s hard drive analyzed, Dave?”

“One of the computer lads will rush it through for me. I got him off a speeding thing there, he owes me a favor. Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?”

“There’s a document called ‘twimc’ — to whom it may concern, I think it is. It was modified, but after Peter’s death. But whoever did it didn’t put the document in the trash. I’m no technohead, but if the content of it could be retrieved, it might be something.”

“I’ll get Shane onto it tonight. Should have something on the bank and phone records in the morning. Would have had it today, there’s just too many listening ears around the station, Casey’s spies. What’s the story on MacLiam?”

“He was in deep to Podge Halligan: gambling and drugs. The heroin wasn’t coming directly from Podge though. The autopsy said what?”

“The heroin killed him, most likely.”

“And what, he was shooting up on the harbor wall, so when he OD’d, he just tumbled into the sea? That’s convenient. What about the money?”

“Unmarked bills. No witnesses, no signs of struggle — certainly not after five days in the water. Toxicology reports can take months. Same story: they’ll cruise it out to an inquest. Then death by misadventure. Or an open verdict.”

Dave took the duffel bag, looked me up and down and shook his head. He made to move off, then turned back, his broad face grim with unease.

“Thing I was going to tell you, remember the concrete corpse we found in the town hall? He was shot five times. So we’ve just got a report back from the lab. According to the ballistics report, they’re Parabellum nine-millimeter rounds from a Glock 17 — an identical match for the slugs they found in Peter Dawson, and shot from the same gun — just twenty-odd years in the difference.”

It all goes back to Fagan’s Villas.

“I know… look, we didn’t say anything the other day, but I know there’s a chance that could be your oul’ fella. And the fact that, well, he used to be in business with Dawson, and now the same slugs that kill Dawson’s son are found in this corpse, well, I’m not saying it makes any sense yet, but — if it is your da — it’s got to be more than a coincidence.”

Especially if you don’t believe in coincidence.

“We got no match from dental records. Never had any for your da. The missing persons database from twenty years ago is in rag order anyway. We have a jacket though, with a label from a tailor in Capel Street. We may be able to trace who it was made for, get an ID that way. Ed? You don’t remember if your da used a tailor, do you? Fitzhugh’s, it was called.”

I seemed to have been robbed of the power of speech. The wooden cross above Castlehill looked starker now against the paling sky, suddenly flimsy next to the cranes that dwarfed it. The sweat had turned cold on my back, and I was close to shivering. I looked at Dave and shook my head. He brought one of his huge hands up and gave my bicep a squeeze.

“Look after yourself, Ed,” he said. “I’ll pay Colm Hyland a visit, see what I can raise. I’ll be in touch.”

Dave Donnelly strode off across the Gut and pushed out through a gap between two hawthorns, swearing. From my jacket pocket I took the photograph of my father and John Dawson that I’d found on Peter’s boat and looked at the two young men, their pints raised to the future.

I was eighteen, and had spent the summer working behind the bar in the golf club in Castlehill, listening to men lie about themselves and their lives and watching women pretend to believe them. Sometimes I’d try out my own lies on their daughters, and by the end of the summer, they were pretending to believe me too. I had money saved, and once I got my exam results, I was going to stay for a month with Kevin O’Rourke’s brother, Brian, who had moved to California and was managing an Irish pub called Mother MacGillacuddy’s on Main Street, Santa Monica. Then I’d come back and start at university.

The Leaving Cert results came out on a Friday late in August, and we all went into school to get them. My physics teacher reckoned mine were good enough to secure me my first choice, which was a place studying medicine at Trinity College, Dublin. She was pleased for me, and she gave me a hug and kissed me on the mouth. Miss Stephens wore tight pencil skirts and heels and sheer blouses through which you could see her bra, and everyone was scared of her, and I remember thinking that if Miss Stephens could kiss me, anything was possible.

We got to Hennessy’s by about midday, and fed the jukebox and shouted and laughed and drank our way through the afternoon. At around five, a couple of the lads had been sick, and some of us went across to the chipper and sat eating our cod and chips in the church car park, watching girls from the local convent school playing tennis on the public courts and yelling half-witted remarks at them. Then it began to rain, and we went back to Hennessy’s, but after I had a mouthful of my pint, I started to feel queasy. I told the lads I’d see them after, and walked home. In the house, I called out for my mother, but there was no sign, and I figured she hadn’t made it home from work yet. I decided I’d have a shower, that that would sober me up enough so I could go back to Hennessy’s and drink some more. After all, you didn’t get your Leaving results every day.

The immersion had been left on, unusually, but at least that meant there was hot water. We didn’t actually have a shower, but you could attach a plastic shampoo spray to the bath taps and it did much the same job. I washed my hair and sprayed the grime of Hennessy’s off my body and thought of how proud my mother would be when she heard my results. My father had walked out in April, and the house had been quiet without his drunken rages, his tantrums and sulks and peevish, embittered ranting. It wasn’t the loss of his business that caused him to behave so obnoxiously. He had always been like that. “Your father is a very disappointed man,” my mother used to say, as if that somehow explained it. Neither my mother nor I had admitted yet that we were relieved that my father had left, that we didn’t much care where he had gone, and that we hoped he would never come back, but I think that was what we both felt. My mother in particular seemed happier than she had ever been, younger and more alive.

I put clean clothes on in my room. My rucksack was packed, and my passport and plane ticket were in my desk drawer, along with dollars and some traveler’s checks. I was counting the twenty-dollar bills again, just to make sure a very selective thief hadn’t broken in and stolen a couple of them, when I heard a noise from my parents’ bedroom. I went out onto the landing and knocked on their door. There was no answer. I tried the handle, but the door was locked. I called my mother’s name, and banged on the door, and shook the door handle. I heard urgent whispers, and movement inside, and then my mother came to the door. She wore a pale pink satin robe I had never seen her in before. He hair fell in strands across her face, her lips were full and smeared with red and she had tears in her mascara-smudged eyes. She was frightened, and kept swallowing and trying to speak, but the only word she could get out was my name. I stepped into the room and saw a man on the other side of the bed. He had his back to me, and was pushing the tail of his white shirt into his navy suit trousers. He had a plume of gray-white hair, and smelled of musk and fresh-cut pine.