The Wrong Kind of Blood (34 page)

“So what is Podge up to?”

“He’s just doin’ what he wants. He doesn’t give a fuck. He doesn’t want to be a businessman, he wants to be a criminal. He likes it, end of story. And of course, he likes hurtin’ cunts too, because he’s a fuckin’ mental bastard.”

I lit two more cigarettes. The smoke sluiced out into the mist and the slow dawn light; silver wisps curled around horse chestnut leaves heavy with moisture.

“All right, so George is giving Podge a bollocking, what then?”

“George has the lads put Peter Dawson in a white Immunicate van, so he can bring him up to his folks’ house.”

“Why his folks’ house? Why not his own house?”

“Don’t know.”

“And was that it?”

“No, Hyland came in then. He brought Peter’s yacht to the ferry-house. And MacLiam is gone. And he has a chat with George, how he’ll see it’s all cleaned up, and that’s it.”

“Anything else you can remember, Dessie?”

Dessie sucked smoke into his lungs as if it could satisfy his craving.

“The blue plastic bag full of photos I saw belowdeck, Hyland had them now, gave them to George Halligan. George took off with Peter Dawson. That’s it. And then Hyland and me spend the night cleaning off Peter’s boat with cleaning fluid and bleach an’ all. Perfect end to a perfect day.”

“So Podge murdered MacLiam.”

“He killed him anyway.”

“He knew it was a double dose of heroin, he sent you out and he made sure MacLiam took it. That’s intention. And you say you could see in his eyes he was going to do it.”

“So why didn’t I stop it?”

“How could you, without losing your own life? If you give evidence, Podge could do life.”

“I thought you said your mates in the Guards were gonna pick him up tonight. I’m not saying I will or I won’t, but there’s no way I’m saying a word if he’s on the streets.”

I realized there’d been no word from Dave Donnelly. I checked my mobile. I had set it to mute in Charnwood and had missed four calls, all from Dave. They had picked Podge up in possession of twenty kilos of heroin, with a street value of 2.2 million euro.

I told Dessie Delaney what had happened. I also told him that, if he didn’t tell Seafield Guards everything he had just told me, I was going to make it clear to Podge that Delaney had been the one to betray him. Just because Podge was in jail didn’t mean he couldn’t order a hit. On the other hand, if the Guards were looking after him, a bit of protection for the key witness in a high-profile murder would be in order. And for his family too.

Delaney was anxious, and scared, and upset. But that wasn’t my problem. I’d wanted to help him. I felt bad for his kids, I felt sentimental about them. But there was nothing I could do. He had got himself into this fix, and there was only one way out. I didn’t know if he was going to serve jail time. I thought he deserved to, if not for MacLiam’s death, for the fact that he assisted Podge in buying a stash of heroin that, if it had gone onto the streets, would have caused a lot more deaths, left a lot of kids without their parents. Maybe he’d get out of it, and clean up, and get a taxi plate, and bring up his kids right, and they’d all go on holidays one day to that Greek island he had the postcard of in his wallet. Maybe in all of this, someone should have a happy ending, even if no one deserved it.

“WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

“You been listening to the radio, George?”

“Edward Loy, glad to know there’s no hard feelings. I had a sense you wouldn’t bear a grudge when it comes to business. Well, my offer still stands—”

“Have you been listening to the radio?”

“Yes, I’ve been listening to the radio. House prices rise again, Exchequer receives tax take boost, banks announce record profits. Nothing about Seafield Council’s timely decision to rezone Castlehill Golf Club for high-density development yet. First report will probably come when the usual shower of socialist layabouts and university muppets mount a picket—”

“Item one on the seven a.m. bulletin. 2.2 million worth of heroin picked up in Seafield. Man held. They didn’t say who it was, or where exactly he was picked up.”

I could hear George’s fibrous, tar-rich breath crackling down the line.

“Go on,” he croaked.

“He was arrested outside the disused ferry terminal. On his way in. He was driving a blue BMW.”

“I’ll kill the cunt!”

“You might have to. Because the cops have a witness to Councillor Seosamh MacLiam’s murder. He’s going to give evidence against Podge, and in the course of things, your name will inevitably come up in relation to what they were trying to persuade the councillor to do out there.”

“Who is it? Not Hyland. Fuckin’
Delaney
—”

“They have Podge cold on the smack, George. And they’re going to offer Delaney a deal that keeps his family safe. So if I were you, I’d be thinking limitation, not elimination.”

“You’re very smart all of a sudden, aren’t you, son?”

George Halligan, a year younger than me, short of breath, sounded suddenly like an old man.

“What the fuck did he want with all that heroin?”

“Meet me on the beach across from the Bayview Hotel and I’ll tell you.”

“I’m meeting an investor for breakfast at the Royal Seafield,” George rasped.

“All right, I’ll meet you there. Is he up on the narcotics trade, this ‘investor’ of yours?”

George called me a variety of names, then said he’d see me on the beach.

“And come alone, George,” I said.

I had handed Delaney over to Dave Donnelly earlier that morning. Dave wanted me to bring him into the station, but I wasn’t convinced if I came in, I’d succeed in getting out, so we set the meeting for six-thirty in the pine forest car park in Castlehill. Before I took Dessie there, I let him talk to his girlfriend. I was in two minds about this, as I wasn’t sure he could be trusted, but I was in two minds anyway about why I liked Delaney when there was so much to dislike. Maybe it’s just that the good in him seemed to outweigh the bad. I always thought that was worth taking a chance on. I was often wrong.

I stood in the tiny hall of the house in James Connolly Gardens while he went upstairs and spoke to his girlfriend. After a few minutes she came downstairs and went into the kitchen. Delaney came down and nodded at me to follow her.

Delaney introduced her as Sharon. She had a hard thin face and cold green eyes and dyed copper hair and her cigarette looked like a part of her hand. I had seen her before, with Dessie on the Seafront Plaza. I wondered if she was using too.

“What about us?” she said. “Where are we going to go? We can’t stay here.”

I said it wasn’t up to me, it was up to the Guards to work out whether they’d be offered witness protection.

“Yeah, but now, where do we go now? Word gets out, Podge could have someone down here in five minutes, even from jail. The kids, anything.”

She wasn’t panicking, she was just looking for the right word. She wasn’t using, not smack at any rate. Those hard eyes were clear and smart. Delaney was lucky to have her.

“What about Collette?” he said.

“In Galway? How do we get there?”

Delaney looked at me. I nodded to whatever it was. He took a brick of money from his pocket and offered it to her. She looked at it like it was dirt, then she looked at him the same way. Delaney was coming apart as it was from the lack of heroin; I thought her gaze might send him under.

“Is that drug money?” She spat the words out.

“It’s money I gave him,” I lied. “Use it. Get a taxi to Heuston, take a train to Galway. I’ll see what the Guards offer, and then I’ll get in touch.”

She turned the gaze on me. It was strong stuff to take, particularly when you’d been up all night. I liked her. If Delaney wasn’t strong enough to make it, she certainly was.

“If rehab for him isn’t included, forget it,” she said.

I nodded.

The fridge had a freezer section on top, with three drawers. She pulled open the third drawer, took out packs of fish fingers and peas and potato waffles, then produced a plastic sandwich box, which she handed to me. I opened it. Inside, in a sealed sandwich bag, was a blood-filled syringe.

“The murder weapon, isn’t that what they call it?”

I looked at her in astonishment, and she almost smiled.

“When I was cleanin’ up Peter Dawson’s boat with Colm Hyland, I slipped it in me jacket,” Delaney said.

“Go on, wait in the hall a minute till I say good-bye to this bollocks,” she said.

From the hall, it sounded more like a mother with her son than a woman and a man.

When we left the house, Delaney was crying. It seemed like the right thing to do.

I took the wheel. On the way to the pine forest, Delaney took a wrap of heroin from his pocket. He was sweating and fidgeting; I could see he needed it badly. Then he wound down the window and tossed it out of the car.

“Why’d you do that?” I said.

“Cops hate junkies bad enough as it is. If I’m out of it, it’s only gonna make it worse.”

It was a gray morning, and the mist was cold and damp enough to make you shiver.

“Dessie, do you still have the postcard of that Greek island in your wallet?”

Delaney nodded.

“What’s the story with that?”

“My brother part owns a restaurant and bar there. Fifty grand and I could buy into it. Dream on, yeah?”

Dream on.

Dave Donnelly was standing by his car among the pines. I pulled in beside him and turned to Delaney.

“Do me a favor. Leave George Halligan’s name out of it.”

“He’s hardly in it.”

“At the ferry-house. Just leave him out.”

“Why? You’re not workin’ for him, are you?”

“No. But I need a favor from him. Okay?”

“Okay.”

I got out and greeted Dave.

“You’re looking pleased with yourself,” I said.

“Things turn around,” Dave said.

He told me that the National Drug Unit boys had shown up trying to take the case over, but that he’d brought O’Sullivan and Geraghty in, and they were making sure Dave got the credit.

I gave him the syringe and told him what it was.

Dave punched me in the arm, he was so happy.

I asked Dave about rehab and witness protection and he said he’d have to work it out with D.I. Reed, and maybe O’Sullivan and Geraghty too.

“What about Superintendent Casey?” I said.

“If Casey spends the rest of his days playing golf, he’ll be a lucky man,” Dave said. “Casey’s finished, he’ll do well to stay out of jail. The NBCI boys couldn’t believe the decisions he made on the Dawson and MacLiam cases.”

“He will stay out of jail though,” I said.

“Of course he will,” Dave said. “I was just imagining we lived in a different country there for a minute, where bad cops get what they deserve.”

I got Delaney out of my car, and Dave put him in his. Then he leaned in at the driver’s-seat window.

“Ed, there’s something Jack Dagg said—”

“Ah, listen, away with Jack Dagg, Dave; I don’t have the time for it now.”

I started my engine.

“Go easy on Delaney,” I said. “He’s not all bad.”

Dave’s face was expressionless.

“If he helps send Podge Halligan down for murder, I’ll buy him a teddy bear,” he said.

The strand at Bayview was broad and stony and sloped down to a foaming gray sea. I stood on the shoreline and looked toward the land. The lights of a train flashed out through the mist as it snaked around the edge of the cliff. Its sound seemed muffled by the roar of the surf as it vanished silently into a granite tunnel on the northbound line.

George Halligan crunched his way through the pebbles in a navy suit and matching raincoat. He took a handkerchief from his top pocket and wiped the pebble dust off his black penny loafers.

“Fucking beaches. This is what people build swimming pools for,” he said, and coughed. The coughing went on for a while. I waited until he was finished, and then I waited some more. He took a Cohiba from its thick foil tube and bit the end off and lit it and threw the foil tube away.

“Pick it up,” I said.

“What?” he said.

“Pick it up.”

He looked at me warily for a second, then he picked it up and put it in his coat pocket.

“About that business up in the house,” he said. “I didn’t mean it to go that far. Truth be told, I was called away, and word got out you were there, and Podge got hold of you and… well, it shouldn’t’ve happened.”

“What should’ve happened? You slipped me the knockout juice yourself. What was it? Rohypnol?”

“Roofies and GHB cut together. Podge uses it.”

“Not anymore. What was the idea?”

“Just to scare you off. Stop you poking around. You’d’ve ended up in your car down here or somewhere, with a big headache, and a message: Watch your step.”

George shook his head, like it was nothing to do with him.

“Podge got carried away. It was wrong.”

“You could have killed me. Rohypnol and GHB mixed, you could have fucking killed me.”

“Send me the bills. Dentist’s or whatever.”

George’s black eyes looked like shiny little bugs. He spat bits of tobacco over one shoulder, then turned away from me, as if the matter had been dealt with. I looked at his Italian shoes, his silk tie, his perfectly pressed suit, his pale blue shirt with the white collar. He was the boss who never gets fired, the killer who never gets caught, the general who never gets shot.

“Now, tell me about Podge,” he said. “I can’t hang around here all day.”

That seemed to make up my mind, or what was left of it. George was about six inches shorter than me, and maybe fifty pounds lighter. I picked him up by his coat lapels and flung him backward into the sea. The slope on the shore was very steep. He stumbled trying to keep upright, but I followed through and knocked him down, and then I was on him. We were in about a foot of water, and I held him under for a while, then let him up. I had a rock in my hand, and I was going to use it. I could see the fear in his eyes, and the shock that anyone would dream of laying a finger on him, then I felt the barrel of a semiautomatic hard under my chin. I don’t know whether I was too quick to react or too slow, or whether my synapses were simply refusing to pass vital information on, but instead of backing off, I just rammed George down again while whipping my head to the side of the gun. He got one shot off into the air, and I smashed the rock against his hand, and the gun dropped in the water. His legs started to kick frantically now, and his arms clawed at mine. Time seemed to slow down, and I tasted salt water cold on my lips and I wondered whether it wouldn’t be simpler just to drown him and have done. Then that wondering passed, and I let him up and dragged him ashore. He sat on the stones, coughing and wheezing and spitting, getting his breath back so that he could curse and threaten me. I went back in the water and found his gun. It was a SIG Sauer compact, with seven shots remaining from an eight-shot magazine. I showed it to him, put it in my pocket, lit a cigarette and watched him. After a while, he reached out a hand. I lit another cigarette and passed it over. He looked at me for a few seconds, his eyes cold and tight, then took the cigarette.