The Wrong Kind of Blood (32 page)

“Is he dead?” I said.

She shook her head.

“I sometimes wish he was,” she said. “But that’s not right. All that is, so I could get over him. But he’s alive, and out there, and better off without me.”

“Do you think so?”

She lit a cigarette, forced out the smoke as if she’d run a fast mile.

“I was incapable. Out of it all the time. I let him run into the traffic. He was found, and they took him into care. If I’d come off it in time, I could have had him back. But I didn’t want to kick. You know what the worst thing is? I didn’t want him back. I was so strung out, my first reaction was, Good, at least the little bollix won’t be under my feet anymore. And by the time I realized what I’d done, it was too late. So yes, I think he’s better off without me. I think to have felt like that rules me out of the mother club, don’t you?”

“I’d say it was the heroin doing the feeling for you.”

“How do you know? Maybe I’d’ve felt like that anyway. You can’t keep blaming it all on smack.”

“Did it come from Larry Knight?”

She shrugged.

“If it wasn’t him, it would’ve been someone else.”

“That’s not a law. If you can’t get hold of heroin, you don’t go around seeking it out. Everyone knows how evil it is — especially the fuckers who deal it. That’s why you get it free at first. Smoke a little, work up to your first shot, ’cause that’s gonna feel so much better. And then everything else except another shot feels so much worse. And
then
they make you pay.”

She nodded at me, and looked at the photograph of her little boy as a three-year-old, and began to cry. I didn’t blame her. She had a lot to cry about. I felt like joining in. She was close to me, Gemma Courtney, even though we’d only just met; history had made cousins of us. I looked through the bag of photographs, searching first for the letter. When I found it, it was scrawled on the lined pages of a child’s exercise book:

Darling,
I’m sorry for the hurt I’ve caused you. But I had to leave. Think if you got a chance to go back to a time when you were at a crossroads. You had a choice and you took the wrong path. Well that is what happened to me. It was before I met you, but it meant everything was wrong after.
Well I got handed a second chance and I said, I cant mess it up again. I know its hard, but your better off without me, and little Gemma is too. Look after her for me. You were not happy without your job, well you can go back to the service and get your ma to look after the baba. One day we will look back and wonder what the fuss was.
God bless,
Kenny

“Was your mother in the civil service?”

Gemma nodded.

“Department of Education. But she couldn’t get her job back. They’d filled it and there was nothing else around. And anyway, her mother reacted to Da taking off as if Ma was some kind of loose woman — you know, why else would a husband walk out on his wife, it must’ve been her fault. She didn’t want to help. I suppose she would have come round eventually, but Ma cut her off. So she had no one to mind me, no support system, no job, nothing. And down we went, the pair of us.”

“What happened?”

“Booze, pills, not a good mixture. A few hospitalizations. Then she worked out how many pills she needed to do it right. Saved them up and took them all. She was younger than Da, she was only in her forties. Didn’t look it.”

Gemma got up and went into the kitchen, and I heard the metallic roar of the kettle. Suddenly there was a blast of noise, music and a voice announcing “News Headlines on Sky.” It was as loud as if it had been on in the room. Gemma stuck her head around the door.

“That’s just the oul’ one in 37, she’s half deaf. Better than the crowd on the other side, the young fella wants to be a DJ. But they’re on holidays at the moment.”

The news blared on. I thought of Mrs. Burke, the last of the old Fagan’s Villas, and
her
TV, yelling out its tale of exhumed corpses, of revelations beyond the grave. She had called my father and his friends the Three Musketeers, and here I was, looking at a photograph of them. It was a complete version of the fragment I had been carrying around in my pocket. The missing man had been Kenneth Courtney. And John Dawson was to blame. It was strange looking at the two men together, the murderer and both his victims: Dawson had a slightly stronger jaw, a fleshier face, a colder eye, a more pronounced sense of physical power; Courtney had deeper-set eyes, and a fuller mouth; but the resemblance between them was what you first saw: if not like twins, they certainly put you in mind of brothers. And there was my father, glass aloft, dark eyes glittering. The four beaming girls gathered behind looked out of place, like a chorus line at a funeral.

Gemma came back in with more tea, and looked at her watch.

“I’ve someone coming at ten, you better shift soon,” she said.

“This is my father, Eamon Loy, and a man named John Dawson,” I said.

She looked at John Dawson.

“God, he was the spit of Da, wasn’t he? And you think he killed both of them?”

“I think so. Gemma, did your mother ever speak of my father, or John Dawson?”

“Ma didn’t know any of Da’s old friends. He’d been in England, he was working on the buildings there, saved his money. He came back here, they met at some dance, I don’t know, and got married soon after.”

“Who was at the wedding?”

“People from Ma’s work. No one on his side, I don’t think.”

“And these photographs—”

“I didn’t even know we had them, until your man rang up, Peter Dawson — is that whatdoyoucallhim, John Dawson’s son?”

“Yes. What did he say?”

“Pretty much like you. Our fathers were friends, did I have any photographs from that time, all this. I said I didn’t think so, but he left his number. I hunted around, found this under the mattress. It’s all stuff of Da’s. I guess Ma didn’t want to see it around, but didn’t want to get rid of it either.”

“What else did he say?”

“He said he’d pay me for them, if I didn’t want them.”

She tried that on for a moment, then shook her head.

“Take them if you want. But you’d better go. I don’t like men crossing over at the door, it doesn’t look well.”

She smiled then, a crooked, crinkle-eyed smile that seemed to fill her great eyes.

“You don’t need to do this. I can give you money,” I said, thinking of Barbara Dawson’s bribe.

“I do all right,” Gemma Courtney said. “I do it on my own. I don’t need anyone’s help.”

At the front door, she touched my arm.

“Let me know what happens,” she said.

I told her I would, made to leave, then thought of something.

“Gemma, were you ever called ‘Grand’?”

She smiled that crooked smile again.

“Grand not too bad or grand la-di-da?”

“No, your name: ‘Gemma Grand.’”

“No. No, the only thing that’s grand around here is the canal, and even that’s seen better days.”

IT WAS DARK WHEN I CAME OUT OF THE HOUSE; THE MIST
had billowed up to choke the light, and overcast had segued into night. I walked up to the point where the Avenue opened left into a square. Larry Knight’s operation looked like it was centered in two houses on the opposite corner. The garden walls of the houses had been augmented by ornate metal railings, and spotlights positioned on the roofs made the high black and gold-spiked gates blaze and shimmer like a drug dealer’s ensign. Lord of the manor, tribal chieftain: Larry Knight.

A thin trickle of bodies was leaking in from the lane at the far end of the Avenue and making their way to 52 and 53; I guessed there was another “checkpoint” up there. I began to pick my way across the obligatory patch of mud and moss and weeds that passed for a green space in Charnwood. Halfway across, I saw Tracksuit in position by the gates, checking out the customers. At least, I thought it was Tracksuit, who had looked like Dessie Delaney; when I got closer, I noticed he had his arm in plaster: it
was
Dessie Delaney. I cut back toward the lane at the far end. Halfway there, I ducked into a house that had boarded-up windows and doors and a skipful of household debris in its front yard. I settled down behind the Dumpster and set my mobile phone to mute and waited. It was damp and cold, and smelled of plaster dust and mildew and dog shit. Much of the square was shrouded in mist, but the roof spots lit 52 and 53 like a stage set.

Delaney’s mobile rang; he took the call, then went inside. When he came out again, it was with his tracksuit-wearing look-alike and the leather-jacketed bouncer with the boxer dog. Tracksuit went to the lane at the far end of the Avenue, while the Bouncer headed up past Gemma Courtney’s house. After that, the flow of customers heading for 52 and 53 abated, and then stopped altogether. About twenty minutes passed, during which no one entered the Avenue from either end. Tracksuit and the Bouncer returned, conferred with Dessie Delaney, and then all three went inside. A few minutes later, the spotlights went off. Nothing happened for a while, except (a) it began to rain again, and (b) a rat ran over my feet and I had to bite my lip to stop myself shouting out. Rain ran down my face and down my back, and I began to doubt whether anything worth seeing was going to happen. But waiting around until nothing happened is a part of the job; sometimes, it feels like it’s what the job’s about.

The first car was a BMW, navy, or black; it set the roof spots off as it pulled up outside the big gates. The second car was one of the new Jags with the fuller hood and the chunkier, curvier styling; it was silver, and it slid into place nose to nose with the BMW.

Larry Knight got out of the Jag, his gray hair plumed back, his white hooded top fluorescent in the sparkling rain. Podge Halligan, in baseball cap and sleeveless biker leather over denim jacket, got out of the BMW and shook Larry Knight’s hand. Each man carried a sportsbag. The gates swung open, and, as the men went inside, Dessie Delaney stepped out and took a look around the square, then closed the gates again. After a few minutes, the lights went off and it was back to waiting. Dogs barked, and in the distance, a couple were having the kind of wheedling drunken argument that seems like the weather, it lasts so long. The thunder of heavy vehicles along the main road was constant; I tuned in and out of its rattle and boom.

At midnight, a flow of people appeared from both directions of the Avenue and scuttled quietly into their houses; the “checkpoint” must have been suspended, although only temporarily, as there was no more movement for another hour; at one, the same thing happened. At twenty past one, the lights came on as Dessie Delaney opened the spiked gates; Podge Halligan and Larry Knight emerged from the house and went through a reprise of their dumb show, shaking hands and swinging sportsbags into cars. Larry Knight pulled away first and Podge Halligan followed him. Dessie Delaney didn’t join Podge in the BMW; he went back inside the gates. Then, a spill of people appeared into the Avenue, including a handful of baseball-capped youths who were admitted to 52 and 53. These must have been the lads who had manned the checkpoints, as there was a now steady, random footfall along the street.

I needed to talk to Dave Donnelly, but I didn’t want to let Dessie Delaney go. But maybe he wasn’t going anywhere. He had told me how his wife’s brother used to deal in Charnwood, how Delaney was connected there; maybe he hadn’t gone back in Podge’s car because he was acting for Larry Knight on this deal. The level of noise on the Avenue had returned to normal, now that business had been concluded; hip-hop boomed bass heavy from one open window; the Wolfe Tones droned monotonously from another. I figured that gave me enough sonic cover to make a call. Dave’s mobile was off, so I rang his home. Dave answered.

“Dave, Podge Halligan is coming from Charnwood with what I’d lay odds is a bag of smack in the car.”

“Charnwood? Larry Knight? What the fuck?”

“Podge has been planning this for a while. Flood the area, under his control. Tommy Owens told me.”

“Have you seen Tommy Owens? Where is he? Ed—”

“He’s safe.”

“You’re fucking me around, Ed—”

“You’ll get everything I have, I swear—”

“Because if those NBCI fuckers think I’m protecting you—”

“Wait until you serve them up Podge Halligan on a plate. You’re gonna need three interception points, and fast.”

“Three? I don’t know if I—”

“Get Geraghty and O’Sullivan involved, why not? Anonymous tip-off, your own private intelligence gathering. Podge’s house, the old ferry terminal in Seafield.”

“And what’s the third?”

“John Dawson’s house.”

“Ed, are you serious? Even Geraghty and O’Sullivan don’t want to question John Dawson unless they’re certain they’ve a case.”

“You don’t have to question anyone, just wait outside.”

I gave Dave the BMW’s description and plate number. Before I hung up, he told me Seafield Council had voted by a majority of three to rezone the Castlehill golf club lands for high-density development. The Halligan brothers were all business tonight.

It began to look like Dessie was settling in for the night. When another rat began to check me out, I dislodged myself from my place behind the Dumpster. I stretched and stamped my feet, then walked as far as the lane and had a piss. Then I walked toward Gemma Courtney’s house. When I was at the corner of the square, the roof spots flashed on, and I heard the gate slam. I doubled back along the mud patch, covered by the mist, and spotted a figure in navy and white sportswear turning into the lane. I followed, hoping it was Delaney. The other end of the lane gave onto a short terrace which swung right into Charnwood Square. The mist let me stay close. We left the estate, cut right by the park and turned down a cross street. I could see a sign for Fogarty’s up ahead. I broke into a run, and as I closed in, spotted the plaster on my quarry’s right arm. He turned as I was on him, a few yards from the pub; I put him against the wall with my left forearm across his windpipe; my right arm held his left at the wrist.

“Hello, Dessie,” I said.

“No way,” he said, shaking his head.