The Wrong Kind of Blood (8 page)

“What did the woman look like?”

“Honey blonde, hair piled high, expensive-lookin’ black clothes. I mean, she was old, must’ve been at least forty, but she looked well on it. Discreet. Tasteful. Most people in here with money, they wear it on their backs, know what I mean like?”

Linda.

“And were they here long?”

“I didn’t see them again. I had a smoke break at seven, when I came back on they were gone. Or she was gone, anyway. I was lookin’ out for her. I was gonna ask her where she got her hair done.”

I paid for the Jameson with a ten, drank the rest mixed with water and left the change as a tip. Coming out onto the Seafront Plaza, I looked out across the sea toward Bayview Point. There was some kind of commotion down on the promenade, with a crowd gathered, and what looked like flashing lights. I headed that way, and pushed across the grass through the summer throng of joggers, dog walkers and ice-cream eaters. A horde of rubberneckers had gathered behind the bandstand around the second set of white and blue police tape I’d seen that day. There to secure the scene were two uniformed Guards. One looked like he was taking witness statements from about half a dozen people. The other was my blabbermouth friend from the town hall, the Guard with no lips. I marched straight toward him, tapping my mobile phone.

“Detective Sergeant Donnelly,” I said, nodding meaningfully.

He threw a glance to his rear, looked at me uneasily, then nodded and lifted the tape to let me through. The tape sealed off the center point of the promenade, where a set of stone steps leads down to the sea. There’s a lower walk beneath the promenade, which gets drenched by the waves at high tide. The tide was turning now, and it was on this lower walk that the burly figure of Dave Donnelly stood, inspecting the body of a man sodden and distended by the sea. I was halfway down the steps when a woman in a charcoal gray suit appeared from the other side of the walk and blocked my passage.

“Sir, this is a crime scene, you’ve no business here, please leave the area,” she said.

She was about five five, with short red hair and piercing green eyes; her body was slender but powerful-looking, like a tennis player’s. Dave Donnelly turned around.

“Move back up the steps, sir, now. Now!”

I did as I was told. Dave joined us on the upper promenade, an expression of incredulity on his open face.

“Loy? What do you think you’re doing here?” said Dave.

The only thing I could think of was the truth.

“The Guard on duty let me through, so I thought I’d come down and have a look. Body just wash up?”

The redhead had been staring at me; now she turned to Dave with a grin of derision.

“You know this clown, Detective?”

“I used to,” Dave said.

The redhead’s name was Detective Inspector Fiona Reed. Dave explained briefly who I was. Fiona Reed didn’t look impressed.

“You realize you risked contaminating a crime scene? If you have the experience D.S. Donnelly says you have, you should know better,” she said.

“That body looked like it went in the sea a few days ago,” I said. “Thousands of folk would have walked back and forth along upper and lower promenades since, the weather we’ve had. No forensics to speak of, I’d say, except on the body itself.”

Behind D.I. Reed’s back, Dave Donnelly was rolling his eyes.

Reed put her hand on my forearm and squeezed. She had quite a grip.

“Don’t be a smart aleck, Loy. Especially when you know fine well you’ve just behaved like a prick. And don’t think because you used to be friends with Dave, you can tag along after him.”

She tightened her grip on my arm, then released it. Dave was trying to suppress a grin. He wasn’t trying very hard.

“Now get out of here, and let the real detectives do their work.”

I did my best to look abashed. It wasn’t difficult. My arm felt like someone had closed a door on it.

“I’ll see him to the tape, D.I. Reed,” Dave said.

She looked at him, then back at me, shook her head once and walked away. Dave set off toward the lipless Guard. I followed.

“You’re some fuckin’ eejit, Ed,” Dave said. “You don’t want to make an enemy of Fiona Reed.”

“I know I don’t,” I said.

“You just have,” Dave said.

“Have you an ID on the body, Dave?” I said.

“It’s not Peter Dawson anyway.”

“Does that mean you know who it is?”

We reached the tape. The lipless Guard didn’t like me any more than D.I. Reed did, but at least he kept his hands to himself. The police photographer had arrived, along with the forensic team I had seen earlier at the town hall. Behind them a tall, raven-haired woman in a long black dress was being led along by a female Guard. The woman wore dark glasses, and as she approached the promenade, she stumbled, and laid her hand on the Guard’s shoulder for support.

“That’s Mrs. Williamson. I better get back,” said Dave, turning to go.

“Dave? Would it help if I said please?”

He turned back and said, “You’re supposed to be a detective. Work it out for yourself. And don’t pull a stunt like this again, Ed.”

Then he was on his way across to join Mrs. Williamson.

When I got back to the car, I checked the index cards I had found in the Dawsons’ bin. No Williamson there.

The other list read:

Dagg
T
L
JW

The T was Tommy Owens. The L was Linda. But before Linda arrived, Peter took off — to meet JW? Perhaps — except who was JW? Could the W stand for Williamson?

I took the photographs from my pocket. The flyer I had found on my windscreen came with them. It highlighted the failure of Seafield County Council to ensure the survival of the community swimming pool, and warned of the danger of this public amenity being sold to private developers. It proposed a public meeting at the bandstand on Seafield Promenade, and a march from there to the pool. The flyer closed: “Issued on behalf of the ‘Save Our Swimming Pool’ campaign by Noel Lavelle and Brendan Harvey, Labour Party councillors, Seafield County Council.” The names seemed familiar.

I looked through the list of fourteen names again: Brian Joyce, Leo McSweeney, James Kearney, Angela Mackey, Mary Rafferty, Seosamh MacLiam, Conor Gogan, Noel Lavelle, Eamonn Macdonald, Christine Kelly, Brendan Harvey, Tom Farrelly, Eithne Wall, John O’Driscoll. There were the Labour pair. What about the rest? Were they all local councillors? Another name on the list rang a bell: James Kearney. I got Rory Dagg on his mobile and asked about the Kearney whose office you had to sit outside to get building permits.

“That’s Jim Kearney, yeah, what about him?” Dagg said. I could hear the chattering of small children in the background.

“Is he a local councillor?”

“No. But he works for the council. He’s the planning officer.”

“Could you… if I read a list of names to you, could you say whether they have any connection with Seafield County Council?”

“Depends how long the list. I’m solo here with three kids under five.”

I ran through the list, excluding Harvey and Lavelle.

“Yeah, most of them are either councillors or council officers.”

“What’s Seosamh MacLiam?”

“An epic pain in the hole, that’s what he is. Antideveloper, antibuilder, anti-fucking anything that wasn’t built two hundred years ago. We’d all be living on the side of the road if it was left to the same Mr. Williamson. Only he wouldn’t want any roads either.”

A crash sounded down the phone, then a piercing scream and child’s wailing.

“Gotta go,” grunted Dagg, and broke the connection.

Mr. Williamson? Seosamh MacLiam. Of course: MacLiam — Son of Liam — is the Irish for Williamson. And Seosamh is the Irish for Joseph. I’d been away so long I’d forgotten Ireland has a language of its own — even if most of the Irish prefer not to speak it. And Mrs. Williamson was his wife, now his widow, come to identify the body.

Joseph Williamson.

JW.

Peter Dawson’s disappearance and the councillor’s death looked like they could be connected. It was time to talk to Tommy Owens.

When I drove along Seafield Promenade, MacLiam/Williamson’s body had been strapped to a gurney and was being loaded into the back of a Garda medical vehicle. An RTE TV crew were filming, and as I passed, I saw D.I. Fiona Reed flipping a reporter’s microphone out of her face. I turned off the coast onto Eden Avenue — twenties and thirties villas hidden from the road by great sycamore, ash and horse chestnut trees, their branches aching with green in the evening sun. In Quarry Fields, kids played on skateboards, and in the drive to what I hadn’t yet gotten used to calling my house, wearing a pair of battered old combat trousers and a “Give ’Em Enough Rope”–era Clash T-shirt, Tommy Owens was wax-polishing the 1965 Volvo.

When he saw me, he came close and spoke in a low, urgent voice.

“Ed, the gun is gone. I checked the sideboard—”

“It’s okay, Tommy, I’ve got it.”

“You’ve got it with you? Or—”

“I’m looking after it. Don’t worry.”

Tommy looked up at me from beneath furrowed brows. I winked at him and turned back to the car.

“Jesus, Tommy, are you done already?” I said. “Good work.”

“Most of the work was done twenty years ago,” he said, a slow smile of pride spreading across his face. He made a long speech about pistons, rods and rings, camshafts and carburetors, bearings and bushings, transmission gaskets and seals. I nodded like I had a clue what he was talking about, and he said, “You haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, have you?”

“No,” I said. “But if you give me the keys, I’ll be happy to drive the thing.”

“It’s gonna need maintenance, Ed, and if it’s obvious you haven’t a notion, you’ll be ripped off, any garage’ll think, here comes some rich cunt with his weekend hobby, let’s make him pay.”

“I’ll worry about that later, Tommy.”

“Just be sure that you do. Anyway, there she is.”

“Thanks.”

I went into the house, picked up the Laphroaig, glasses, and a jug of iced water, and brought them outside. Tommy was sitting in the porch, rolling up a three-skinner, heating a small block of dope with a cigarette lighter and crumbling the edges into the tobacco. I sat beside him and poured a couple of drinks. A woman in her thirties came out of the house opposite with her two young children. At her gate, she looked across the road at us. I offered a smile and a wave, but she whipped her head away and hurried her kids out of our sight. I guess two middle-aged men drinking whiskey and rolling joints on a porch wasn’t her idea of adding value to the neighborhood.

Tommy smoked the joint about halfway down, until his eyes were red and watering and a smile had plowed its way into his face. He offered it to me, but I waved it back at him, and he finished it off. He nodded and laughed a little, and took a hit of his drink.

“So, Ed, what did you get up to today, man? Have a swim, get any sun?”

“I spent my day asking people questions, Tommy. See, I’m looking for Peter Dawson.”

“Peter Dawson? Why, what’s happened to him?”

“According to his wife, he’s gone missing.”

“His wife? And what, has she hired you to find him? I warned you about Linda Dawson, Ed—”

“But you didn’t tell me you were with her in the High Tide last Friday.”

Tommy’s grin had become a mask. “Was I? I can’t remember.”

“And minutes earlier, you were drinking with Peter Dawson. Making you the last person to see him before he disappeared.”

“If you say so, man. I bump into a lot of people. Maybe I should keep a diary, log what everyone says, case they go missing and I’m the only one who knows what their last words were. Only thing, I’d better warn them not to talk shite to me all the time.”

“Tommy, what were you doing with Peter Dawson?”

“Just… bumped into him in the street, you know? Thought we’d have a quick jar.”

“In the High Tide? Don’t bullshit me, Tommy, there’d have to be a very good reason for you to go into a pub like that.”

Tommy tipped his head back and grimaced. “I know, Jaysus, the state of the place, like drinking in a fucking hairdresser’s.”

“So? What was that very good reason?”

Tommy drank some whiskey, took a gulp of air into his lungs and exhaled slowly.

“Peter owed me money. I was meeting him so he could pay it back.”

I burst out laughing.

“Sorry, millionaire’s son owes you money? What did he borrow, twenty quid?”

Tommy frowned, as if he were about to get on his dignity, then laughed it off.

“All right, man: truth? Weekend deal for Mr. D: fifty-bag of dope, fifty-deal of coke.”

“Yeah? This you scamming the Halligans, creaming off the top of their stash? Or is that what you do now, Tommy? Are you one of Podge’s dealers?”

“What if I am?”

“A drug dealer. For a gangster. That it?”

“It’s not as if… I mean, it’s just dope, coke, E: consenting adults all the way. Not as if I’m hanging round the playground pushing smack to schoolkids.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing much. I just wanted to get out of there.”

“But you didn’t, did you? You stayed.”

Tommy looked quickly at me, as if wondering which lie to tell, then stared at the ground.

“Peter was… agitated. Excited, you know. Like something big was about to happen.”

“What? He wasn’t branching into the drugs trade himself, was he?”

“I don’t know. Not drugs. Anyway, he got a call on his mobile. Whoever it was wanted to see him earlier than they’d arranged. He asked me to stay and tell Linda he’d call her later.”

“So you met Linda that night? She never mentioned it.”

“Nah, she wouldn’t,” Tommy said, with sour emphasis.

“And how did you find her?” I said.

“The usual. ‘Lady Linda talks to the little people.’ This expression on her face, like someone might spot her talking to me.”

“Was she drunk?”

“I’ve never seen Linda Dawson drunk.”

“Really?”

“I don’t mean she doesn’t drink all the time. But she can hold it. She’d drink you and me under the table. It’s a useful part of her act, though.”

“What act?”