The Color of Blood

Fifteen

WE FOLLOWED THE BLUE MERC UP TOWARD WOODPARK, but then they swung right and drove toward the city for a while. I called Shane Howard and told him we were on their trail.

“Fair enough. Little skanger in a hoodie it was.”

“We know who it was. Are you all right? Where are you?”

“I’m still here.”

“You should go home.”

“With all those jackals outside the house? No way.”

“What if Emily wants to come home?”

“Emily’s fine. She called me, said she’s with friends. Last thing she needs is to be splashed all over the newspapers.”

“Don’t go missing now, Shane.”

“I’ll tell you where I’m going. For the next half hour. To mass.”

He ended the call. The Reillys had changed direction again; they crossed the N11 and were heading south and west into the mountains. Tommy took the Sig and offered it to me.

“Here. Make me nervous, fucking things.”

I put the gun in my coat pocket.

“Thanks. You did well tonight, Tommy.”

He looked at himself in the rearview mirror.

“I look like a fucking looper.”

“That was what you were supposed to look like. So you got it right. You made up for fucking up. What more can anyone do?”

I nodded at Tommy, and he nodded back, and that was almost that.

We followed the Mercedes through industrial estates, then climbed through dense pine forests and along narrow roads thicketed with bramble and fern; finally, a road stretched out along foothills of granite and shallow bog, low clumps of heather and marsh grass. It ran about a mile at a slow incline; I thought about pulling in in case we were spotted, but I had no idea whether the Reillys were meeting someone at an outdoor rendezvous or calling at a house, or whether they’d just taken it into their heads to bowl out for an evening spin and count their money. I kept them in our sights, and then lost them as the Merc crested the incline; when we made it to the top, I saw the road drop and cut right against the side of the mountain; far below us the city lay, an irregular blur of lights in the mist and cloud. There was a lay-by halfway along, used as a viewing point; the Reillys, having slowed down near the lay-by, picked up speed again and then turned off to the right about half a mile further on. I kept the car moving slowly, wary of running into them if they were doubling back, wary of blundering about in the dark.

“I know where they are,” said Tommy. “Pull into the lay-by.”

I did as he said. There was a grass verge with picnic tables and purple Hebe and St.-John’s-wort and a framed guide to the flora and fauna and a wooden gate across a rutted lane that led up into a forest of pines. Tommy hopped out and opened the gate, and we ran the car up and off the side of the lane.

“Used to bring a girl up here. There’s a quarry about half a mile along. That’s where they turned in.”

“Wait here,” I said.

Tommy shook his head.

“No way man. I may have made it up to you for getting involved with these cunts. But I haven’t made it up to me yet. Anyway, I know the way.”

Before I had a chance to argue, he set off up the lane, dragging his ruined foot as if it was weightless; I followed. We climbed a couple of hundred feet and then bore left through the trees, picking our way over uneven ground. I kept my balance by hand, steering my way along the densely packed pines; resin clung to my fingers and the pungent smell burned clean in my lungs.

At the sight of light ahead, Tommy began to sidle gradually down the hill; when we began to hear the rumble of voices, we made our movements slower and more deliberate; finally, we reached the edge of the pines, dropped to our knees and moved carefully between clumps of gorse and tangled bramble and fern for about twenty feet, until we were almost at the edge of a quarry. The sheer face, silver grey and orange slashed with purple and white, was to our right; opposite and beneath us, a sloping of mud and heaped stone fell to a dust floor of shale and rubble. There was an orange digger at rest, and an unlit grey and green Portakabin with Norton Excavation written on it; the lights came from the Reilly brothers’ Mercedes and a navy blue Bentley. The Reillys were standing by the Merc, the silver and blue drug company bag full of money between them. A man sat in the front seat of the Bentley, smoking, but I couldn’t make out who it was. Standing near the Bentley was Sean Moon, or someone who looked like Sean Moon might have if he’d had a shower and put on a suit and a dark coat; he was still pretty fat, but he didn’t look like a down-and-out. They were talking, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying; Tommy turned to me and put a finger to his ear to say he couldn’t hear them either.

Darren held up the bag, but when Sean Moon stepped forward to take it, Wayne moved between them. There was another set of exchanges, then Sean Moon called “Maria!” to someone in the Bentley, and a very nervous-looking woman with snow blond hair got out. At first I thought it was Anita, then I realized it wasn’t, but that I had seen her before and she had reminded me of Anita then too. It was the woman who had been in both porn films, the woman Moon had called Wendy, and was now calling Maria.

Maria was shaking, and didn’t want to go to the Reillys, but Sean Moon was insisting, dragging her across the gravel; she stumbled, and broke a heel, and he held on to her and swore and she stood straight, crying now, and he laughed and made an expansive gesture, and said “Women! Jaysus!” and the Reillys laughed too, and Wayne took hold of Maria’s other arm and dragged her across toward the Merc, and Darren handed the bag to Sean Moon, who quickly turned and tossed it in the front seat of the Bentley beside the smoking man, and as quickly shouted “Maria” again, very loudly, and she hit the dirt as quickly and when Sean Moon turned he had a compact submachine gun, the kind you can fire in one hand, and two or three bursts of automatic fire sang out and echoed around the hills, and when it was over, the Reillys lay dead, and all you could hear was the sound of a woman crying.

The man in the car got out. He had a large head of hair in a bouffant style and a mustache and wore a long pale-colored wool coat; he knelt down to comfort the weeping Maria; after a minute she rose to her feet, seemingly unharmed, and he walked her back to the car. Tommy turned to say something to me, but I didn’t hear what it was because in the act of turning he dislodged a clump of earth or a pile of stones, and whatever it was skittered down in a trail, right down to where Sean Moon stood. He trained the SMG in our direction, and before I could do a thing, Tommy said quietly to me, “One man, in the back lane,” and was on his feet, shouting “It’s okay, Tommy Owens, it’s all right.” He began to walk unsteadily down the slope, hands up, repeating the same words over and over, like a prayer.

“Who else is with you?” Sean Moon said when Tommy was about halfway down. I had the Sig in my hand and the slide pulled back, but unless I wanted to take Moon out now, it was useless, and even if I did, he’d still most likely be able to rake us both with a single burst.

“Nobody,” said Tommy. “I’m on my own. After those fucking Reillys.”

He stumbled down to the bottom and walked toward Moon, who gestured first at his clothes. Tommy pointed at the Reillys and then at himself; I guessed he was saying that part of the ransom belonged to him. The bouffant-haired man appeared above the low roof of the Bentley, and Sean Moon went around and explained the situation to him. He nodded Tommy into the back of the car, then pointed up in my direction and whispered an instruction. I eased back on my hands and knees as quietly as I could before Sean Moon pointed the SMG up where I had been and sprayed a few more bursts of automatic fire around.

I jammed myself low behind a charred gorse bush; my irrational prayer was that the more the needles hurt my head and face and ears and neck, the less likely I was to catch a stray slug. The musk of the gorse flowers had long gone; in its place was the smell of charcoal and ashes. The gunfire stopped. In the silence following, I heard the liquid purr of the Bentley and the crunch of gravel as it pulled away. I shinned down the slope and watched it slide majestically down the narrow road like a great sleigh on ice. I flashed on Denis Finnegan: the same luxury class, the same ooze through life. The Punto was well hidden above the lay-by; I decided to take the Merc; it would be better suited to what I had in mind. Even if the Guards found the Punto, chances were the owner had reported it stolen by now. I was halted momentarily by the Reillys’ massacred bodies, bleeding on the shale. Their deaths probably wouldn’t make the front page, or cause the people of Dublin more than a moment’s pause: just another gangland killing, another pair of dead hoods.

I got behind the wheel of the Merc and lorried it down on the Bentley’s trail; I almost drove off the narrow roads a few times until I adjusted to the increased power of the engine. A waft of cheap aftershave and hash smoke and body odor clung to the interior: human traces that now evoked the sickly sweet smell of death. I became aware that I was shaking, and sweat was prickling at my scalp; I found the switch that rolled all the windows down and let the cold damp air into the car. I didn’t catch sight of the Bentley for a while, but I didn’t need to; I was pretty sure I knew where it was headed; I finally caught sight of it ahead of me on Templeogue Road; when I saw it was going on down through Rathmines, I cut right through Ranelagh, running a couple of red lights and piling along Leeson Street, then down Fitzwilliam Place and left along the lane to the rear of the south side of the square, where residents could park their cars if they hadn’t built mews houses in their backyards. Brock Taylor hadn’t. I parked right up against his barred electric gates and cut the engine and got out the passenger side and crouched below it and let the slide back on the Sig. “Brock Taylor” was what Tommy must have said to me, what I hadn’t heard above the sound of the rubble he kicked down. And then, “One man in the back lane.” I thought of the boy who cried wolf. Tommy had invoked Brock Taylor so often, and it had almost all been fantasy. I hoped, for his sake as much as anyone’s, he had it right this time. The gates swung open, and a large uniformed guard appeared and rapped on the driver’s window of the Merc. I stood up and let him see the gun, and said “Hands” and walked around and frisked him. His big pink face was round-eyed with surprise. He didn’t have a weapon, which made sense; this wasn’t some gangster’s ranch in the mountains, this was Fitzwilliam Square, where the big rich kept town houses and solicitors had their offices. No one got shot around here. I took his phone and walked him through the gates and into a little booth on the left of the yard with a heavy metal door and a console and a CCTV screen and an armchair, and I gave him a tap or two on the back of the head with the Sig and pushed him into the armchair. There were no lights on in the house. I went out and reversed the Merc into the yard and around the corner so it wasn’t visible from the street, then I went into the little booth and consulted the console and flicked the switch that shut the gates. I waited for long enough to worry that the Bentley was going to dispose of its extra cargo first. Then lights appeared in the lane, and the gates swung back to admit the great car. Brock Taylor was driving, with Maria in the passenger seat; Sean Moon was behind Taylor, Tommy beside him. Moon pushed Tommy out and walked him toward the house; the machine pistol was loose in one hand, the money in the other. I stepped out between Tommy and Moon and had the Sig in Moon’s neck before he saw what was happening.

“Hold the sub out,” I said. “Slowly.” I dug the Sig deeper into his neck as he extended his arm. The gun was a Steyr 9mm TMP (Tactical Machine Pistol), compact, dark grey, with an angled handgrip and a rotating barrel. It hung in a sling off Moon’s right shoulder, beneath his coat. Tommy went to take it from him, and he started fumbling with the sling.

“Hold up,” I said. “Tommy, step away. Moon, let the sub down and take your coat off, right arm first.”

Moon let the pistol hang by his side. I pressed my gun in behind his ear. He began to wriggle out of the right sleeve of his coat. As the sleeve came off he raised his right fist up by his ear and smashed it back into my wrist.

“Ed, watch it! He’s going for the sub!” Tommy called.

I kept my balance, and before his arm had dropped, I hit Moon on the back of the head with the butt of the Sig, twice, three times, not taps like I’d given the security guard. Moon collapsed in a heap. I detached the machine pistol from him and handed it to Tommy. Brock Taylor was out of the car, but he just stood, watching me. His hair and mustache were dark, except for the streak of white that flashed through both, the natural marking that had won him his nickname. When Tommy went to frisk him, he gave a weary smile, as if he was too grown-up for all this child’s play. He was unarmed. The gates were closing automatically; I went into the hut and hit the switch to open them again. Maria still hadn’t moved from the passenger seat. I opened the door.

“Maria,” I said. “Come with us.”

She got out of the car, looked at Tommy and spat in his face.

“Not with him. Pig!” she said.

“Not with him. You can go where you like now. To Anita?”

She looked at Brock Taylor in panic, then back at me, her eyebrows raised.

“You know where?” I said.

She nodded.

I wanted to ask her what had happened, or rather, how it happened. But all that could wait. I pulled some money from my pocket and gave it to her.

“Go on then,” I said.

She looked around the yard and almost smiled, then walked toward the opened gates. Her heel was broken, so she walked lopsidedly, then on her toes, then she pulled her shoes off and threw them in the dirt and ran barefoot into the lane and disappeared.

I took the Steyr from Tommy and told him to get the money. Then I tossed the Steyr on top of Sean Moon where he lay, blood seeping out of the back of his head. An all-in-one package for the cops. Then I looked at Brock Taylor, who hadn’t taken his eyes off me.

“I don’t much care about the Reillys. Don’t mess with the girl again.”

“I was helping the girl,” he said, in one of those Americanized Dublin drawls that turned “the” into “de” and “girl” into “gurrl.”

“Don’t help her then,” I said. “And don’t fuck with me either, do you hear me?”

“I hear you, Edward Loy,” said Brock Taylor.

I looked at him then, heard the threat, implied if not real, and realized this wasn’t over, that there was no possibility, having witnessed the Reillys’ murders, Tommy and I could just walk away as if nothing had happened. I went into the security hut and closed the gates again, then I came out, retrieved the SMG and showed it to Brock Taylor, who hadn’t moved.

“Tommy, help me get Moon into the hut.”

We dragged his body in and heaved him on the floor beside the security guard; Moon’s head was oozing slowly, but I’m afraid, right at that moment, I simply didn’t care. I pushed the heavy door to and walked over to the Bentley.

“Keys,” I said to Taylor. His face fell.

“You’re not taking this on me,” he said, his accent thickening in panic.

“That’s right,” I said. “We’re all staying here. Keys.”

He handed me the keys. I gave Tommy the Steyr and told him to keep it trained on Taylor. Then I sat in the Bentley, reversed it as far as the gates, and jammed it in alongside the door of the security hut. I got out and nodded Taylor toward the house. Tommy kept the SMG trained on him as we walked.

“Is he safe with that?” Taylor said.

“Guess you’ll have to hope so,” I said.

What looked like a restored kitchen lurked at basement level; at the bottom of the metal steps that led up to the ground floor, I stopped Taylor.

“Lights are on. Is anyone home? Anyone expecting us?”

“No,” he said. “There’s always lights, for security.”

“Because if we’re going, you’re going with us,” I said, showing him the Sig.

“There’s no one. I’m not working like that anymore.”

“You’re not? What was tonight? All you forgot was to make them dig their own graves.”

I nudged him in the back with the Sig, and he climbed the steps, pressed a security code on a panel by the high four-paneled door and pushed through into the house. We followed, shutting the door behind us and walking through a room that had been stripped down to plaster and boards and not yet refurbished, along a narrow passageway and through into a high-ceilinged hallway with a flagstone floor. Paint and paper were peeling off the walls, and cornices and center pieces were crumbling; oilcloths and tarpaulins covered furniture and woodwork; paint color charts and pattern books for wallpaper and upholstery lay strewn about. Fitzwilliam Square, the last of the great Dublin Georgian squares, being bought up by the likes of Brock Taylor. However much the Criminal Assets Bureau had taken off him, it wasn’t enough.

“I haven’t got the restoration work fully under way yet, lads,” Brock Taylor said, like an excited wife showing some pals round her new house. He led us into the front reception room, which was carpeted deep blue and wallpapered in a tatty lavender and violet Regency stripe. “This is still from the previous owner. I’m going room by room, want to live here too. Let the builders in when you’re not around, fuck knows what they get up to.”

Heavy wine-colored velvet curtains were drawn; Tommy and I sat in armchairs of a burly three-piece suite the same shade; Brock Taylor took the couch. Having sat down, Tommy immediately stood up again and began to pace the floor with the Steyr. I found it a little irritating, but from the alarmed looks Taylor was casting Tommy’s way, it was evidently irritating him rather more, so I let it roll.

“Now lads,” Taylor said, “what can I do for you?”

“You could start by telling us why you had Wayne and Darren Reilly murdered tonight.”

Taylor laughed in an expansive, bogus manner he must have practiced at Seafield Rugby Club. He stood up as he was laughing, wriggled out of his biscuit-shaded overcoat, which on closer inspection looked like it was made of cashmere, and sat down again. He wore a pale grey linen suit and a charcoal polo neck and tan Italian loafers with transparent grey silk socks; his back-combed black hair sat high on his head; the white streak through it seemed to glow; there was a plastic sheen to his tanned face, to his groomed appearance, that gave him the embalmed look of a cabaret entertainer from the 1970s.

“Well, don’t work up to it or anything, barge right in there with the leading question.”

He laughed some more.

“I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out how long I’d have to spend giving a witness statement to the Guards, and when I’d be likely to get out. See, I’ve a lot of things to do tonight.”

Taylor looked at me coolly, appraisingly, trying to weigh up whether I was bluffing or not.

“We’ve got the murder weapon. We’ve got Moon’s prints on it. We’ve got two witnesses. I think that’s open-and-shut. What would you say, Brock? ’Cause it’s nothing to me, in fact, it’s about time I did myself some good with the guardians of the peace. Not that I had any special affection for Wayne and Darren, quite the reverse, but even they deserved better than what they got tonight.”

“Well, I wouldn’t agree with you there, Ed. And you might not agree with yourself when you hear the whole story.”

“Well tell it to me then. The whole story.”

There was a sound from the room above, a floorboard creak, a door slam. I went out to the hall and looked up the stairs.

“There’s no one here,” Brock said. “These old houses, they make all sorts of noise. Especially at night. It’s like they’re alive and breathing. Put the fear of God into you if you’re on your own.”

I came back in and nodded at him. Brock looked anxiously at Tommy, leant forward in his chair, and said, “Your friend Tommy’s making me nervous there, with the pacing and all. And since he’s a major part of the story, I wouldn’t like to feel…inhibited while I was telling it.”

I looked around.

“Tommy, stand still, will you?”

Tommy stopped pacing, and instead stood swaying, the energy converted but sustained. I don’t know how much calmer that made Brock feel, but he began to speak anyway.

“As I say, Tommy there starts the whole thing off, there’s been some shenanigans between his daughter and Brady and the Howard one. Now I have nothing to do with this, my connection comes through Sean Moon.”

“Tell us about Moon.”

“Sean Moon is a character. In fact, he’s a bunch of them. That’s his whole thing, he can be a hard man, an earnest office type, round Honeypark he was like a big kid really, wasn’t he, a bit sad, a bit of a loser? That’s a useful one, get into all sorts of situations that way, no one takes him seriously until they have to. He’s the son of an old, of a late…colleague of mine, I always took an interest in him. Had a little bit of spark, of brain, of wit…no surprise to you I’m sure, but that’s so rare as to be unique in my business…my former business. Anyway, I’ve been buying up houses around Honeypark, Woodpark, and I asked Sean in to just keep an eye on them, pick up the vibe in the area, who’s dealing, who’s paying off who, the usual, and I own the pub there now of course, Moon’s a way of…he’s another eye.”

“So what happens, Brady gets hooked up with Moon-”

“Through the Reillys, who are dealing coke there and looking to build, and fair enough, better them inside pissing out than the reverse, but you want to keep them at a distance, which is why Moon is there. Brady has to make this blue movie for head-the-ball here, but he needs a location-doesn’t want to do it in his own place, or the family home, or anywhere people might recognize. Now Brady’s getting his coke from Darren Reilly, and he mentions that he needs somewhere, and Reilly brings it to Moon, who has a few options, houses I’ve bought. He runs it past me, I’m, whatever, don’t draw attention to yourselves, keep the curtains shut and all.”

“And where does Maria come into it?”

“Now, I don’t like this any more than you do. Moon’s weakness is for women-”

“You’re telling me Maria Kravchenko went with Moon…I mean, did you notice she’s a beautiful woman? And he’s a fat fuck.”

“Ah now, way of the world, boys, Moon scrubbed up in his Armani and a roll of bills, you’d be surprised the caliber of trim he can snag. Not saying they’re only in it for the money, but a certain type of bar, a certain type of girl, they’re out for a good time right now.”

“She didn’t look like she was having a good time tonight, did she?”

“Well. That just got out of hand there, that was something that shouldn’t have happened-”

“It was set up to happen. What, did you promise to swap the Reillys Maria for the blackmail money?”

“The blackmail…it should never have gone that far.”

“Blackmailing the Howards, that was Brady’s idea.”

“Right. I think he used it with Moon as an incentive. I said don’t use it, the power lies in not using it, in not making the threat. It’s something to hold down the road, in case you need it. But when the Reillys heard about blackmailing Shane Howard, it was like all their Christmases had come at once, you know, they could screw this rich cunt until the end of time. And Moon strung them along, you know, send Howard a note, all this, careful not to name a place to dump the cash.”

“He named a time: Thursday at noon. What was he going to do?”

“He was getting to it. He was stringing the Reillys along, because of course they got into the whole porno thing themselves, they wanted to be making dirty movies, so Moon was filling them full of all that, he was going to divert them-”

“Using Maria as bait.”

“Yeah.”

“Maria, who he was holding captive. Where was she though, she wasn’t at the house in Honeypark. Was she here?”

“She wasn’t a whatdoyoucallit, a sex slave or anything.”

“In the porn film.”

“She went along with that. I can only tell you what Moon told me, I can’t be certain.”

“She was here, and then you brought her out last night, up the mountains-”

“Darren Reilly wouldn’t let the blackmail thing drop, so he sent his own demand, he let Moon know he was doing it, he told him he’d split it with him fifty-fifty, or Moon could have it all if they could have Maria no questions asked. I wanted Moon to take them out on the street, arrange a hit, motorcyclist at the lights, bang bang and back in the local for last orders. Moon said no, too many leaks. But he wanted me to come too. Impress the Reillys, he said, put them at their ease, make them think they were stepping up in class.”

“And Maria…no wonder she was scared. You told her what to do?”

“That’s what made me nervous, that she’d get caught in the cross fire if the Reillys started shooting. Moon said that’s why he packed the sub, they wouldn’t have time to draw, time to think.”

“Your only concern was Maria, was it?”

“I’m just telling you what happened. I mean, it was one of those fucking situations, suddenly you’re sniffing around, David Brady’s dead, the Howard woman, the whole malarkey. The Reillys had to go, but lesson learned, don’t let the wrong kind of people in on anything. Don’t need that. I’m a publican and a property developer and a businessman.”

“If that was true, you’d need to stop hanging around with the likes of Sean Moon. Who could probably do with a trip to Accident and Emergency, that little head wound of his.”

Taylor’s face suddenly became more animated than it’d been all evening.

“Fuckin’ A &E, fucking four-and five-and ten-hour waits, fucking government. You know the real scandal? No matter what you can afford to pay, you have an accident and you have to go to A &E, you end up with all the muck-savages and lepers and scum who don’t have an arse to their trousers. How can that be fair, that even if you have the fucking cash, they won’t let you jump the fucking queue?”

The chandelier above him gave his hair a sculpted, artificial appearance, as if it were a wig and he were channeling the spirit of some elegant, grasping ghost who once bestrode Fitzwilliam Square with imperial entitlement. I got up and looked at Tommy; he grimaced at me, still shamefaced. I gave him a wink, then turned back to Brock Taylor.

“Are those your cars? The lockup in Woodpark, and around the city? Hot cars made over for the less fussy type of client?”

Taylor grinned, as if I’d touched on one of his roguish but endearing foibles.

“Tommy tell you that, did he? Heard about that. I knew he remembered me. That’s how I knew you too, Edward Loy. I used to work for your da, Eamonn, that garage he ran between Woodpark and Seafield. Years ago. Worked alongside head-the-ball, when he was just out of school. Did he not tell you?”

“Is that where you’re from then, Brock? Woodpark?”

“Nah. Blessington Street. Northside boy me. Come up in the world, haven’t I?” And he beamed expansively around the beautiful elegant old room he now owned.

I paused at the door.

“Eileen Casey. Name mean anything to you?”

Not a flicker.

“No. Should it?”

“Eileen Dalton.”

He shook his large head.

“But you did ride a motorcycle, right?”

“A Norton Commando,” Tommy said.

“It speaks,” Brock said, and laughed his rugby-club laugh again. “A Norton Commando is right. Cross the county in twenty minutes back then. Happy days, lads, happy days.”

Before we left the house, I had Tommy put the Steyr in the bag with the money. We didn’t speak until we were down on Stephen’s Green. Then he said, “I didn’t know she was, you know, being forced. I swear, Ed, I didn’t. And I didn’t take a go myself.”

“Okay,” I said. His face looked like it had taken a few blows. I tried to think of something else that would make him feel better about it all, but nothing came to mind. I gave him something to do instead.

“I need my car,” I said, passing Tommy the keys.

“No problem,” Tommy said. “What about the money? Should I drop it up to Mr. H?”

“Nah, just stick it in the trunk. The press are camped up around his house. But get a cab. You don’t want to get caught on the street with a submachine gun.”

“Where are you going to be?”

“Call me when you’re on the road, and I’ll let you know.”

Tommy rested a hand quickly on my forearm, then turned and walked away.