The Wrong Kind of Blood (25 page)

“Oh, Ed,” she said. “You came for me.”

She pulled me close, and pressed her face to mine; I could feel her tears damp on my neck. When she looked up at me, her face was smeared red; I made to rub it off, but she shook her head, and kissed me; her tongue darted into my mouth and caressed my broken teeth, my torn gums; it hurt, but it was worth it. She looked up at me again and smiled; her lips were black with blood, like the rose leaves on her dress.

“Where can we go?” she said.

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure what’s happened yet.”

There was a sound above us, a crackle of gorse, a rustle in the ferns. A rat or a rabbit, maybe. Maybe not. Linda’s eyes flickered with excitement and fear.

“Ed, we have to keep moving. Where can we go?”

“We’re not far from your house.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No. Come on,” I said.

We ran along the cliff path about a quarter of a mile, until it turned inland and we reached the base of the quarry. Linda blocked my path.

“What do we do now, scale the quarry face with our bare hands?”

“It can be done,” I said.

“Don’t you think they’ll be watching my house?” Linda said.

“We’re not going to your house. Come on.”

And I tramped down the mud path that led to the road, hoping Linda’s red Audi would still be there. It was. I started to explain how it got there, but she interrupted me.

“Have you got the keys?” said Linda.

I checked my pockets: phone, keys, wallet, change, even the twenty grand in its brown envelope, all there. Maybe Podge preferred to rob people after he had murdered them.

I gave Linda the keys. She opened the car, turned to me and burst into tears.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right.”

“Oh, Ed, it’s not all right,” Linda said. “It’s never going to be all right again.”

She looked up toward the quarry.

“We’ve got to get out of here. They’re probably searching for us now.”

“What’s Podge Halligan doing in John Dawson’s house, Linda?”

“I’ll tell you everything once we’re on our way. Can you drive? I’m still whacked out on whatever shit they were feeding me,” she said. “And I’ve been drinking all the time. Can you see properly?”

“One eye’s fine,” I said. “But I’ve got to get home, get cleaned up.”

“We can’t. They’ll be watching your place too.”

“I can’t go anywhere else. Look at the state of me.”

“I’ll get you fixed up. Come on.”

We sat into the car and I drove down to Bayview and pulled over behind the trees at the back of the public sports field.

Linda had an assortment of makeup bags scattered around the car. She found some cotton wool in one, took a half-full bottle of Stoli Limon from the glove compartment and cleaned me up. The vodka stung like hell, but it felt good: like every trace of the Halligans was being wiped from my face. Linda laughed each time I winced.

“You’re fine,” she said. “The eye will be grand, and I don’t think this gash needs stitching, it’ll knit together itself. Don’t think you’ll need a doctor. A dentist, maybe.”

She passed me the bottle, and I rinsed my mouth and spat blood and crumbs of teeth into the street. The pain was suddenly excruciating, and I knocked back a hefty slug of vodka to chase it away.

“A dentist, definitely,” she said. “In the meantime…”

She found a pack of Nurofen Plus in a silver-sequined bag and handed me four. I washed them down with another slug and passed her the bottle. She took a long drink, and wet her glistening lips with her tongue. I could smell her again, deep inside, that tang of grapefruit and summer sweat and smoke. She took my hand and placed it on her breast; I could feel the rise and fall of her breath, the rustle of her dress as she shifted in her seat and moved her legs apart, her tongue hot as she whispered in my ear.

We drove south and west, past lead mines and through dense pine forests until we were in the mountains. We climbed as high as we could, on roads where gorse and ferns gave way to marsh and shallow bog, and parked in the shadow of the communications masts that dotted the summit of the highest peak. We started kissing in the car, tearing at each other’s clothes, hoarse with silent lust, but it was too hot and too cramped, so we got out and I sat on the car hood and Linda sat above me. I could see the lights of the city beneath us, see them over Linda’s shoulder as she moved with me in the night, sense them pulsing in the haze as I came inside her and she cried out and I held her bright head close to mine. We stayed like that for a while, for as long as we could, until a white van blazed past, with the horn honking and its loutish occupants yelling cheerful obscenities out the windows. We dressed and lit cigarettes and smoked them in the precarious still of the night. Linda didn’t want to talk at first, and I didn’t want to force her, didn’t want to dispel whatever it was we had summoned up, so we sat on the hood and looked out at the city below, at the glowing channels of heat and light that coursed through its arteries like blood.

When Linda began to speak, it was in a low, steady voice.

“It didn’t feel like I’d been kidnapped,” she said. “I mean, it was right that I should be with the Dawsons, after Peter’s body was found. And I needed the downers, God knows, Barbara has a pet doctor who gives her anything she wants, he was feeding me them with a spoon. But it went from Valium to something stronger, I don’t know what. And I ended up in a total fog. So it wasn’t as if they had to lock me up or anything. Though there always seemed to be someone around, someone watching. And then that evening, there wasn’t. I walked out of the house, and I got some air, and I heard sounds from the outbuildings, and I pushed open the shed door, and there you were.”

We drove to a hotel Linda knew, where sympathetic staff seemed used to her arriving at unusual hours with unfamiliar men; a dapper manager with a camp Dublin manner called Val took her aside and they embraced and commiserated; soon they were laughing, and Val was casting appraising looks at me. I pulled the lapels of my coat over my bloodied shirt as we rode the elevator. Linda said Val would see to it that a clean one was sent up. Food was sent up too: steak sandwiches and tiger prawn salads with Thai dressing and bottles of ice-cold Staropramen. It was a nice setup, so I felt an overpowering need to fuck it up.

“Come here often?” I said, almost wincing at how pinched and unpleasant my voice suddenly sounded.

“I come here when I want to,” Linda said. “Or at least, I did, when my husband was alive.”

“But you didn’t bring him here, did you?”

“No, I brought other men here, Ed. That was then. Now could be something else. That depends on you, as much as me.”

She looked at me straight, unashamed of who’d she’d been, ready for who she might become. At forty-three, I’d be lucky to find anyone else with half what she had. I couldn’t hold her gaze, and turned away, and muttered something about a shower.

I stood under the hottest water I could bear for as long as I could stand, until my body had begun to forget what had been done to it. Then I ran it cold until my head felt numb and the throbbing in my temple had almost abated.

Linda was on the phone when I came out of the bathroom.

“Could we have some vodka? Stoli, or Absolut, and a jug of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice? And some ice and lemons, room 146. Dawson, thanks.”

I took a long hit on what remained of my beer, and Linda began to talk.

“They don’t let Podge in the house. But they let George in the house. George Halligan, chatting to Barbara Dawson, helping himself to John’s scotch, walking around as if he owns the place. For all I know, he does. And Podge and his pack of savages lurking around the grounds, sitting in their vans smoking and barking at each other.”

“What are they doing up there, Linda?” I said. “What are the Dawsons doing with the Halligans?”

“It started with Peter, I think. Because Peter needed help. And instead of asking his father, he asked George Halligan. John Dawson owns the golf club lands. And he presented it to Peter as a gift. Well, he meant it as a gift, but it ended up being a test.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think John felt sorry for Peter: the way he tried so hard to impress him. John tried to let him know he didn’t have to, but of course, Barbara made it very clear she thought he was a failure, not a patch on his father. That’s why John wanted Peter to have the golf club lands. So he could make his mark. Barbara wasn’t supposed to know about it, but she found out. And she said that this was his last chance, that if Peter didn’t come good this time, she was finished with him.”

“Meaning what? That he’d have no job? Or that she wouldn’t see him again?”

“Maybe both. Maybe neither. Barbara always argued like it was the last throw of the dice. She’d cry, or rage, slam doors, the whole Joan Crawford routine. Sometimes she’d turn the tables and apologize to Peter, beg his forgiveness. That was even scarier. But soon enough she’d be sniping at him again. So it could have meant anything. But Peter took it seriously: he was going to do it this time.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes. It was his last chance. And I think… I know… that he hoped it would give us one last chance too.”

“Would it have? Or were you too close to his father for that ever to have worked?”

Linda’s lip quivered in hurt surprise, and I thought she was going to cry. She looked at me as if I had betrayed her. I had, but that had started when I took her money, and then fell in love with her, and then made myself believe I could do both.

“I saw his car on its way to meet you the night they found Peter’s body. You were dressed for…”

“Yes, Ed? Dressed for action, is that what you thought? Not so evolved after all, are you, you can form the thought but you don’t have the spine to say the words.”

“This is not about you and me, this is about the case: if you were having an affair with your father-in-law—”

“Is that what you think of me?”

“I don’t think. I ask questions.”

“Ask your question then.”

Linda’s face was flushed but defiant, so beautiful it made my pounding heart sore. Maybe if I’d stopped there, and taken her in my arms, and let the case fade away, maybe she’d still be alive. But how could I have done that?

The vodka arrived. Linda drank a shot straight off, then made herself a screwdriver. She gestured to the bottle, as if to say, If you want one, make it yourself, walked to the window and looked out at the night.

“All right, Ed. Shoot.”

“Were you having an affair with John Dawson?”

Her voice, when she spoke, was low and melancholy.

“John Dawson is a lost and lonely man. His marriage has been dead for years. In a way, it’s like
he’s
been dead for years, he seems to take no pleasure in the present, in living, in his achievements. He and Barbara exist in a kind of total war. But it’s a cold war. He… I could never work it out, him and Peter: John seemed to like him so much, you know? He’d sympathize with him that Peter hadn’t made the big impact he thought he should. It wasn’t like… well, you hear about successful men giving their sons a really hard time if they don’t live up to their expectations. John wasn’t like that. Barbara was. Actually, it was like John wanted Peter to do well so they could get Barbara off both their backs. But beyond all that, there’s something… detached about him. As if John was dealing with Peter, with Barbara, with the day-to-day of his life, but that it was all faintly unreal. I don’t know, I guess a lot of people get like that when they’re older, like the people they knew in the past are their true reality. But with John, maybe there was something more. One night a few months back… they were just starting the work on Seafield Town Hall, and Peter was working late all the time, and John arrived. Just, out of the blue… and asked me to sit with him, and… make him tea, or a drink, and sit and listen to him, you know? Like I was his daughter.”

“His daughter?”

“That’s what it felt like. And then it became a regular thing, he’d come over when Peter was out. He’d want me to dress up, and then he’d sit and talk. It was… it was really weird, I suppose. An affair, you could call it. A family affair. I liked it. I liked being a daughter. Never got the chance, my dad walked out when I was five. And he spoke as if he had a daughter, or that one day he hoped to have one. About the funny little games and songs they’d sing, and how she liked her hair in plaits, not pigtails.”

“You said he talked about people from the past. What people? Did he talk about my mother?”

“Not your mother, no. He talked about your dad. And a guy called Courtney. Kenny, I think it was. How they were the wild boys, the Three Musketeers, all this stuff. That was actually pretty boring, how they robbed this orchard, or bunked into this cinema, or how they set a goat free once.”

The Three Musketeers. My father, John Dawson, and Kenneth Courtney. And Courtney Estates, directors Kenneth Courtney and Gemma Grand.

“Did he say what happened to Courtney?”

“He died. Wouldn’t tell me how. As if it upset him too much. Your dad disappeared, and Courtney died, and that was the end of that. End of everything.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, apart from the fact that he asked me to hire you.”

“He what?”

“Peter disappeared around the same time your mum died. By the time you got home, and the funeral was set and everything, there was still no sign of him. We knew about you in L.A., that you were a private detective and everything. John said I should hire you, that you’d find Peter. And more besides.”

“And more besides. Did he say that?”

“Yeah. That you were your father’s son, and you’d know what to do.”

Linda stepped away from the window and stumbled as she crossed the room. She made another screwdriver, lit a cigarette and sat on the bed, looked up at me beneath long lashes.

“Do you, Ed? Do you know what to do?”

“What about the Halligans? You said Peter turned to them for help.”

Linda shook her head and sighed.

“The sins of the fathers. You know all the talk about John Dawson with those houses on Rathdown Road, how Jack Parland helped get him the votes on the council to get the land rezoned? And how that help was doled out of John’s back pocket? Well, that was Peter’s first idea: bribe everyone. Only trouble was, he didn’t want to use the money he earned from Dawson’s.”