The Color of Blood

Thirteen

I BOUGHT AN EVENING HERALD AT A SET OF TRAFFIC lights coming out of Tallaght from a vendor weaving between the lanes. Its headline didn’t need much deciphering: Above shots of Jessica Howard, Shane Howard and David Brady blared the words “Deadly Triangle?” The phrase was prime tabloidese, as banal as it came, yet it set off a geometrical ricochet in my head, resonating across twenty years to the deadly triangle that haunted Dan McArdle to this day. I tried to remember what I had seen in Sandra Howard’s eyes the first time I mentioned Stephen Casey’s name: fear, or grief, or deception; I wondered whether she had acted on her attraction for me to quash her own sad memories, or whether she had fucked me on the stairs to tame me and draw my sting, whether, having run the Howard family for twenty years, she thought she could run me too. And I wondered, at some base level I didn’t much like thinking about, which of those motives I found the greater turn-on.

Nearing Seafield, the Jameson started setting off chemical explosions in my stomach. I parked below the Seafront Plaza, got a roast beef and pickle bagel and a bottle of beer and took them back to the car. Fog was rolling in now; I couldn’t see either of the great piers, let alone the water in the bay. I made some calls between bites: leaving a message for Martha O’Connor at her newspaper to call me on the subject of Dr. John Howard; and asking David Manuel to check in with me once he had spoken to Emily Howard. There was a message from Denis Finnegan waiting when I hung up: Shane Howard had been released. I drove through Bayview and up the hill by the harbor and parked a little way down from the surgery. I navigated the narrow road with difficulty; there were two Mercedes S-Series saloons and a BMW parked outside. Irish people loved announcing their newfound prosperity through bigger and wider cars; it was a pity they hadn’t spent a few shillings building roads for the cars to fit on, or wondered whether, if they wanted to live in old houses on quaint, windy roads, they should consider sizing their cars accordingly.

I walked up between the borders of rowan trees. Their gleaming berries seemed swollen, fit to burst. Before I knocked, Anita opened the door, her face rigid with fear; the red gems in her ring seemed a link with the berries, and I felt I followed them rather than her, the stones glowing, arterial, blood the sunken trigger to it all. At reception, Denis Finnegan appeared, and I began to reel slightly at the parallel to the previous morning’s events. I showed him the cover of the Evening Herald, and he rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“It says a file is being prepared for the DPP,” I said.

“They’re in no position to press for a prosecution. They can place him at both scenes, but there is no physical evidence so far, and, despite tabloid tittle-tattle, no motive, and therefore, in my opinion, from the Latin, fuck-all case,” Finnegan said. “I’m afraid Shane-”

Shane Howard emerged from his office. He wore a tweed jacket and brown cords that looked like he had slept in them; his face, drawn and pale, announced that he hadn’t slept at all.

“Speak of the devil!” Denis Finnegan announced brightly, as if Howard’s appearance was a delightful if unexpected surprise; his face registered irritation.

“Come in, Mr. Loy. Denis, wait here.”

“Shane, I think it would be prudent if I were in the room-”

“Denis, you’re giving me a pain in the hole. I trust Loy. Come in, man.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to talk outside. In the back garden?”

“Oh yeah?” Shane Howard said dubiously.

“Walls have ears,” I said. He smiled and tapped his nose.

“Right you be. Just find a coat.”

Shane Howard went into his office. Denis Finnegan came close to me.

“I take it what Shane tells you doesn’t find its way into the ear of a certain Detective Inspector in Seafield,” he said.

“Take it how you want,” I said. “You do your job, and I’ll do mine.”

Finnegan’s face lost composure momentarily, and a flash of dark rage creased his brow and glowed in his bulging little eyes. I pulled away from him as Shane Howard emerged from his office wearing a tan suede car coat.

“Let’s go then,” he said.

I followed him downstairs through the stone-floored kitchen and out into the garden. He shut the back door behind us, turned to me and laughed.

“Dinny’s face! Fucking priceless. Seen too much of that bollocks the last twenty-four hours.”

“I’m sure he’s only trying to look out for you.”

“Are you? I’m not so fuckin’ sure, not so fuckin’ sure at all.”

“What do you mean? Do you think he’s more interested in Rowan House, in your mother’s will?”

Howard looked at me in astonishment. His large face had a tendency to pantomime his emotions: anger, surprise, amusement, all vivid as a cartoon character.

“How’d you know about the will?”

“That’s why he was here yesterday morning. He thought you wanted me to spy on Jessica, get something on her to maybe coax her into accepting less of a settlement. I told him the truth: I didn’t know anything about the will.”

“Rowan House all comes to me. And you know something, I wish it didn’t. Sandra’s being very good about it, but I know how I’d feel if it all went to her.”

“Why don’t you split it then, yourself?”

“That’s what I might do, you know? I mean, how many houses can you live in? Jaysus.”

“Did Jessica have a plan for it?”

“She thought it should be razed to the ground, build apartments and houses there. Yield a fortune in this climate.”

“And Sandra disagreed?”

“We all know she wants to build a fourth tower. That’s the dream. And the only place for it is where the house is. I just wanted to avoid the whole issue, to be honest, I wouldn’t discuss it with anyone.”

Howard turned to me suddenly.

“Listen, I didn’t kill them, all right? David Brady, Jessica. I didn’t kill either of them. Not saying I didn’t want to. Not even saying I wouldn’t have if I’d caught them together, if it had been true. But someone got to them first. I swear that’s the truth.”

“Tell me what happened. You bolted out of the surgery like a madman.”

“Someone called me-”

“Man, woman?”

“Couldn’t tell. Low voice, but light. Odd.”

“As if they were trying to disguise it?”

“Could have been. Tell the truth, what they said put out of my mind any thought of the way it was said.”

“And what did they say?”

“Your wife’s sleeping with David Brady. She’s at his flat right now.”

“And what did you do?”

“What I was supposed to do, I suppose. Someone’s played me for a right cunt in all this-”

“What did you do?”

“Got in the car. Blemmed round to Brady’s place. Up in the lift. And there he was, brains on the floor, great fucking knife in the chest.”

“So what did you do then?”

Howard exhaled, a massive sound, like a sleeping horse in the still night.

“Nothing. I was upset. I made a run for it. And then…like I told you. Wandered around Castlehill forest. So on. Got to Rowan House.”

“Did you not worry about Jessica’s safety? Ring and see if she was okay?”

“I should have. I don’t know why I didn’t. I just panicked, you know? I couldn’t think straight.”

“But the person who called you-they were trying to put you in the frame, right?”

“It looks that way.”

“Who do you think killed David Brady?”

“I don’t know. Now I know what he got up to with Emily, I think I could have killed him myself.”

“Could Emily have done it?”

Howard shook his head.

“Not the girl I know.”

But, as we were finding out, that left a lot of room for maneuver.

“Who killed your wife, Shane?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

We had reached the ornamental pond. I looked at the stones embedded in its walls.

“Do you know about those?” I said. “Bloodstones?”

“Ah, that’s that oul’ crystals shite. Sandra put them in.”

“Sandra? Not Jessica?”

“No. Sure Jessica wouldn’t spend a night in the surgery after we were married. She thought it was creepy. She insisted on the new house.”

“So this garden-”

“When I opened the surgery, Sandra had the pool set in. Mid-eighties, after the old man died. Said it was some kind of memorial.”

“To whom?”

“The old man, I assumed. Truth? I was playing rugby and trying to get established, get some patients, I didn’t have the time to worry. In other words, I didn’t give a shite.”

“And the stones?”

“I told you, it’s some kind of New Age malarkey. Sandra was big into it. There was a while there, they’d all be going on about it, crystals with healing powers, and aromatherapy and all this. Terrible shite. In the chair, had to argue a few around, the women of course, how this or that natural healing gemstone or potion was all well and good but the old local would still be her best bet if she didn’t want to pass out with the fucking pain.”

“Sandra told me Jessica had been sexually abused as a child. And Emily wears rings on her fingers with these bloodstones. They’re supposed to make the wearer invisible. That’s what people who’ve been abused say: either they feel invisible, like they’re not real, or they wish they could feel that way.”

Shane Howard’s face had shifted completely: his reddening face was a mask of aggression, mouth and eyes bulging, like the second-row he had been, hurtling into a maul. I braced myself and kept on talking.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m asking: the apparent lack of sexual inhibition, the full-on exhibitionist relationship with David Brady, the casual sex with her cousin, the precarious emotional and psychological state your daughter is in: is there a possibility she was abused too?”

Shane Howard came at me big but slow, full of rage but with no strategy; his arms were spread out and flailing at my head; I ducked and grabbed his left forearm as he slapped my head with his right; I bent his left at the elbow and drove it hard behind his back and up, fast and hard until he dropped to his knees and tried to scream but couldn’t, he was in such pain, held it just before the break.

“I’ve had just about as much as I can take on this case; I’ve been slapped and bitten and pistol-whipped, and all because I’m trying to help you and your fucking family, so don’t think about coming at me again, because you’re too slow and you’re too old and I’ll have you, do you understand? DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

He grunted a yes.

“Are you going to try and answer my questions?”

He nodded. I released his arm and shoved him away. He half walked, half ran to the rowan tree border and hung on one of the trees, shaking a hail of bloodred berries through the cold misty air, then turned, head bowed, massaging his left arm and shoulder. I looked back at the house, and saw Denis Finnegan’s face looming out from an upstairs window; we locked eyes briefly, and then he vanished like steam on a pane. Shane Howard loped back toward me, grinning, like we had just clashed on the rugby field, and he wanted to reassure me there were no hard feelings.

“Fair play. Lost it, understandable enough. Know you’re only doing your job.”

“Answer the question please.”

“Jessica abused, I never heard that. She never told me that. Why she’d tell Sandra and not me I don’t know, unless it was one of those women’s things. I mean, I knew she started early, thirteen or fourteen. She was always boasting about what she’d got up to as a teenager. And maybe that was an example for Emily. Started her off early too, the way her mother used to talk about…men, sex, all that. Pushed her into all this stuff she was doing with Brady, films and so forth. But in terms of…well, I never laid a finger on the child. And if someone else did…”

Howard shook his head, his body quivering with anger and unhappiness at the thought. I put a hand on his shoulder to signal that line of questioning was over. I was as relieved as he was. I believed him when he said he hadn’t killed his wife, or David Brady. And I thought he was telling the truth about Emily, at least as far as he knew it. Before I had a chance to say anything else, he produced an envelope and handed it to me. Inside was a sheet of white A4 paper, on which was typed:

In sympathy for your time of trouble, we extended the time allowed to you to pay the fifty grand. But we still have the film, so be outside the main door of St. Anthony’s Church in Seafield at six with the money in a shopping bag. No cops-and that means Ed Loy. Or watch your little girl become a worldwide porn star!

“How did this arrive?”

“By hand, just like the last one. Anita said it came this morning. She didn’t see anyone.”

There were only two possible candidates stupid or reckless enough to keep pushing a blackmail attempt on a murder suspect; I thought it was the Reillys; I hoped it wasn’t Tommy; either way, I felt I could handle it.

“Right. This is all right. Provided you can stay out of jail. It’s about three now. Can you get the cash?”

“I arranged it the day before yesterday; it’s ready to be collected today.”

“All right. Take it out, and we’ll make a plan. The bad news is, I don’t think these people are the real threat. The good news is, I think we can take them down.”

Howard nodded, eager to play an active part to protect his daughter.

“Just remember though, I don’t care about the money,” he said. “I just want to help my little girl.”

“Well, you just might start to care about the money when they ask for it once a week. But I’ll figure something out on that side of it too.”

He patted me on the shoulder. It hurt.

“There’s one other thing,” I said. “Sandra told me about Stephen Casey. Who he was, what he did. It’s very sad. I can understand why none of you wanted to dredge that particular memory up. It’s just that I’m worried about his mother. Eileen, I think her name was. Sandra told me she was in service at Rowan House, then she left to get married.”

“Why are you worried about Stephen Casey’s mother?” Shane Howard asked. His voice was careful and clear, and I was conscious that he was very wary of the subject.

“I think she might have something to do with all this. Just a hunch. That she might blame you-the Howards-for her son’s death.”

“That’s…why would she?”

“Chances are she doesn’t. I’d just like to make sure. Eliminate her from my inquiries, as your friends the Guards say.”

Howard almost smiled at that.

“I don’t really know much. As I say, I had the rugby, and the practice…it was one of those times, Sandra ran the show. What do I remember? She wasn’t bad-looking, say that. Very upset about the son, we all were, tragic for her. And then she got married…she moved to Woodpark, somewhere…Pearse something, Drive or Villas or whatever, everything’s called Pearse there. Married to a bloke she’d been going out with a while, once got a backer on his motorbike, what was his name?”

Like an old vinyl record, I seemed to hear Shane Howard’s next words in my head split seconds before he spoke them, like a ghostly premonition of worse to come, or the dead-bolt realization that, deep down, you knew the worst all along.

“Dalton, chap’s name was. Some kind of nickname, don’t remember that. His second name though was definitely Dalton.”