The Price of Blood (13 page)

"George didn’t tell me that. But even if he had. Podge is my brother."

He looked up, his face a riot of opposing emotions: there was shame there, or at least embarrassment, and what looked like compassion for Tommy, but mostly there was defiance, the mark of the loyal blood code by which he lived. I had a certain respect for that. But I remembered Tommy after Podge had raped him, remembered the weeping shell of a man he became, and the anger within me erupted. Against my own best interests, against the interests of the case, against everything but the heat of the moment. I had my own blood code too, and sometimes I had to be true to it.

"Well, in every way it counts, Tommy’s my brother, Leo," I said, and my hand was on the barrel of the Glock and I brought it up and smashed the butt against the bridge of Leo Halligan’s nose, once, twice and again, just to make sure it was broken.

   I offered to drive Leo to the A&E in St. Anthony’s. He told me to fuck off, among other things, and made his way down the hill on foot. George Halligan lived on the other side of Castlehill, ten minutes’ walk away. Tommy joined me on the trip to Jackie Tyrrell’s house up among the pine forests off Tibradden Road. The M50 was quiet, and we made the journey in twenty silent minutes. The house, at the top of a gravel drive about half a mile above the road, was a Victorian Gothic detached redbrick-and-stone villa with stained-glass windows and a bell tower, set among bare oaks and elms; within view was the stone farmhouse with paddock and stables that served as the center of the riding school.

I asked Tommy if he wanted to come in. He said he’d wait in the car, "and keep an eye out." When I opened the car door, he put his hand briefly on my forearm, and went to say something and either couldn’t form the words or thought the better of it, and looked me in the eye, and nodded: a Tommy Owens apology, or a Tommy Owens thank-you, or a conflation of the two.

"What’s the story with Leo?" I said. "History there?"

Tommy flexed his narrow jaw and winced as if his teeth ached.

"It’s nothing. I’ll tell you about it later man."

"You’ve got to start acting in your own best interest, Tommy," I said, as sternly as I could. Tommy nodded gravely, but I could see he wasn’t going to let it go.

"I could say the exact same for you man," he said finally.

The ensuing silence held for about ten seconds, and then we both burst out laughing.

The hall was of double height and featured the kind of Christmas tree you’d expect to find in some corporate HQ: maybe sixteen feet tall, it blazed with light amid the dark marble-floored room. The Brazilian servant (I always ask now: the Philippines and Brazil are the biggest suppliers of staff to the rich Irish, for reasons I don’t pretend to understand: perhaps because they tend to be smaller, they don’t have to be given rooms, but can sleep in cupboards or on shelves instead) led me up the stairs. I asked for a bathroom first, where I looked at the damage: an eye that was red and closing, and a bunch of welts and cuts across my face. I’d seen worse in the mirror. They’d be hilarious company tomorrow. I washed them with lavender-scented liquid soap and dabbed at them with towels soaked in hot water. The maid led me into a white reception room the size of the ground floor of my house; it didn’t look particularly large in the context of Jackie Tyrrell’s.

Jackie Tyrrell had changed into wide black silk trousers and a fitted black top with just enough cleavage and black lace on show to ensure I would pay attention. Good for her: a healthy dose of vanity was one of the vital signs of life, particularly in a woman. I joined her on a white couch with a weathered gilt wood finish that I recognized as being French and very expensive; there was a matching occasional table where she sat; the room was full of similar pieces in assorted configurations. Late Romantic orchestral music played through speakers I couldn’t see.

Jackie knelt up on her knees beside me as I sat down. Her eyes were clearer than before, her manner softer, flirtier, almost kittenish; it was as if she had drunk herself, if not quite sober, then mellow.

"Your
face,
my God," she said.

"You should see the other girl’s," I said.

"What happened?"

I shook my head.

"Lassie slaps. Handbags at ten paces," I said.

She looked at me for a moment, an appalled expression on her face, then agreed to see the funny side.

"Their
nails,
was it?" she said, in an effortless Dublin accent.

"Going for my eyes, they were."

"Fucking bitches. I
hate
those fucking bitches so I do."

She poured me a drink from a pitcher of iced liquid the color of tea; it had the warmth of tea but more of a kick.

"Sidecar," she said.

"Brandy, lemon juice…triple sec."

"Cointreau. Same difference.
Sláinte
."

"Up."

I looked at Jackie as she drained the dregs of her glass and poured herself another. She couldn’t drink like this every day, unless her face was a latex mask. I looked closer. No, it was the very moist, unlined skin of a woman in her early fifties: the folds around her throat showed the first signs of the next phase. Could Botox replenish your skin to such an extent if you regularly put away what she seemed capable of drinking? My face must have been an open book.

"This is a special occasion, Ed. I go for months without touching a drop. I assume that’s what you’re wondering? Why I don’t have a face like a neon prune?"

"Forgive me."

"It’s quite all right, I take the compliment whenever I can. Always take the compliment, girls. I do like to drink though, so I’m being a bit of a glutton today. Tonight. This morning."

"Good morning," I said.

"Nice morning," she said.

I drank up, and she refilled my glass. The music changed: low, brooding, ominous phrases filled the room.

"I know this," I said. "
The Isle of the Dead
."

"Rachmaninov. You’re not supposed to like Rachmaninov, you know."

"Are you not? Who says?"

"The Musical Powers That Be."

"Yeah? Fuck
them
."

"How do you know this? You’re not secretly an expert cellist and a gourmet chef and a published poet and all those other things detectives are supposed to be while preferring not to go on about it?"

"No. But I was a barman."

"And like cabdrivers, barmen are in possession of absolute knowledge."

"No. I worked in an Irish pub in Santa Monica called Mother Magillacuddy’s."

"Jesus."

"Well, I was young. Anyway, Irish music at the weekends, the rest of the time, we could play what we wanted. And there was a music student who worked there, a violinist. And this was one of her favorites. We used to blare it on a Monday night at all the people who didn’t want to admit the weekend was over."

"I thought that was Sunday night."

"Amateurs want the weekend to keep going on Sunday. Monday is pros’ night, real terminal cases. Hence
The Isle of the Dead
…"

"And this little violin case. Did you get anywhere with her? I bet you did. Tell all."

"You first. Fun and all as this is…you didn’t by any chance call Leo Halligan on Saturday night, did you?"

"I wouldn’t know how to go about calling Leo Halligan. I thought he was in jail," she said, sounding indignant at the very suggestion.

"He’s out of jail now. And you’re not exactly a million miles removed from him. His brother was in the parade ring in Gowran Park today, you could easily have asked him for Leo’s mobile.

"So don’t get airs, missus."

"Something like that."

She raised her glass, as if to concede the point.

"Was F. X. Tyrrell there today?" I said.

"Of course. So everyone thinks he’s taking it seriously, and not just a way of setting the odds adrift for Leopardstown. He and George Halligan were chatting. More than once, as it happens."

The music had become higher and more insistent, delirious almost, woodwinds and swirling strings. Jackie had an "ask me, go on, ask me" glint in her eye.

"What do you think that was about, Jackie?"

"
Well
…there was talk…a lot of talk, at the time…back when Patrick was racing for Frank—"

"You guys were still married then?"

"The wheels were coming off, but the train was still rolling. Anyway, there was talk about Patrick and Leo Halligan—"

"How they rode together. Miranda didn’t really deny it either."

"Yes, but there was more to it. I mean, sexwise, you’re gay, you’re straight, you’re somewhere in between, who cares? Miranda didn’t, she was always playing games back then anyway, it wasn’t as if she was a little girl whose heart was rent in twain. No, what it was about was, Leo Halligan—acting for George—bribing a whole bunch of jockeys of the day to…well, to anything from holding a horse up to doping horses and all points in between. And obviously Patrick’s…special relationship with Leo put him center stage for all this."

"And what, the idea was that Leo was just fronting for George, that he was using Hutton to get the scoop on F. X. Tyrrell’s horses?"

"That was one possibility. Another was that Patrick and Leo were working together, Patrick a willing and devious agent in it all."

"And then what, at Thurles, F. X. Tyrrell wanted By Your Leave held back, and Patrick was under orders to win, so he compromised by making it clear he was acting against his will?"

"That’s what some people were whispering behind their fans."

"And not long after, he vanishes. Jesus!"

I involuntarily plunged my head into my hands. I had known Leo Halligan had a crucial role in this story, and all I had had to do was remain patient with him. After all, who required the most patience? Devious little sociopaths like the Halligan brothers. Now I find he could be the key to the whole thing. And how patient had I been with him? Patient enough to break his nose. Twice.

"Done something you shouldn’t have?" Jackie Tyrrell grinned.

"Everything, all the time," I said. "Can you draw a line to connect F. X. Tyrrell and George Halligan?"

"Not back then. Now—I don’t know. How respectable has Halligan become?"

"Very, if you go by appearances. But he’s still a gangster, we think he’s still moving big shipments of coke into the country. Is there any reason why F.X. would want to be involved with that business?"

"The gang business?"

"The illegal-drugs business."

"Not that I can think of. I mean, he has more money than he knows what to do with. A life in racing…if you stay in the saddle…is not without its compensations. As you can see."

"What about…Miranda said you had no children…were there any issues there? That might have led to an extortion opportunity?"

"Was Frank gay? Was I his beard? God, no. No, he…oh dear, I really would rather not talk about this. I don’t think Frank was gay. I never saw any evidence of it. I suppose he just wasn’t the most…demanding man. I mean, he simply didn’t have much of an appetite for…’that sort of thing’…and what we did have wasn’t particularly…anything…for me, at any rate…and then that dwindled to nothing much. I suppose it sounds odd…but when you work as hard as we did, dawn till dusk…no, it still sounds odd. But I wasn’t terribly experienced, and I mustn’t have had much of a sex drive back then…we just…did without, by and large. It wasn’t a good thing, it certainly didn’t help when we began to drift apart. But Frank was very good about that, he set me up here, he paid all the bills. Very amicable, isn’t that what they call it? Well, it was. How could it not be, really? There was no blood, no sex, no passion. That’s what causes all the trouble. Isn’t that right, Ed Loy?"

"I imagine you’re right," I said. "I understand that to be the case. I wouldn’t know, myself. So you weren’t aware of any extortion attempts? Any way in which he could have been blackmailed by a gangster keen to beat the bookies? Not to mention launder vast sums of drug money through the Tyrrellscourt coffers?"

"No."

"What about Miranda? She told me she dropped out of sight after Patrick Hutton disappeared, went through what she called a few…’situations’. You’ve been something of a mentor to her, haven’t you, you persuaded her father to let her work at Tyrrellscourt in the early days, you offered her work up here when she resurfaced. What happened to her in between?"

Jackie shook her head.

"I don’t know. I think she might have been in London. She didn’t stay in touch. Her parents were dead, she had no living relatives…and I had left Tyrrellscourt, I was keeping my head down, working hard to make a go of this place…for a time, it seemed as if her disappearance and Patrick’s might have been connected. And then she just reappeared, out there on that doorstep. She never really told me what had happened. I thought drugs, maybe a miscarriage, but that was all guesswork on my part. I was just happy to have her back, and if no questions asked was the deal, that’s how it had to be. I’ve always…I love Miranda, like a daughter, you know? Like the daughter Frank and I never had. And with grown-up daughters…well, you’ve got to be careful. You’ve got to keep your distance."

"Leo Halligan…I didn’t really get a lot out of him…but he said if I wanted to know what happened to Patrick Hutton, I wasn’t going to find the answers up here, I’d have to go down to Tyrrellscourt," I said.

What happened then took me aback. Maybe because I had gotten to like Jackie Tyrrell, I had somehow forgotten she was involved in the case, and was therefore likely to have something to hide. Maybe it was because my judgment was skewed on account of the booze. Whatever it was, you’re always waiting for the shutters to come down, but when they came down for Jackie, I couldn’t quite believe it. She nodded, and inclined herself away, and did something tight with her lips that I hadn’t seen before.

"I guess he meant, I’d have to talk to F. X. Tyrrell directly."

"You’ll be lucky," she snapped. "Why would he talk to you? More likely to have you arrested for trespassing. Of course, there’s someone there who’ll be only too happy to fill your head full of whatever fairy stories pass for reality in her mind."