The Color of Blood

Nineteen

I HAD NEVER BEEN IN SEAFIELD RUGBY CLUB BEFORE, but I suppose I thought it would be like a golf club or a yacht club. Maybe the clientele was, but the surroundings were far from upscale; the place looked more like a school hall or a community center than the playpen for south county Dublin rugby boys of all ages. There were two bars upstairs at either end of the clubhouse, one above each dressing room, with a hall in the center that looked out over the pitch. Tonight a twenty-first birthday party was in full swing, although to me the celebrants all looked about fifteen, the boys drenched in hair gel, the girls in their underwear, so God knows how ancient I looked to them. I suppose I could have walked past the bouncer, who was also younger than me, if a good deal wider, but I didn’t want to scare anyone; nor did I want to risk losing Jerry his job by alluding to police business, so I told the bouncer I had a lecture schedule for Jerry from the university, and was allowed wade through the bubbling sea of pheromones to one bar, only to be told, inevitably, that Jerry Dalton, or JD, as he was apparently known here, was manning the other. “Dani California” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers had suddenly brought the entire room out on the floor, which made the return journey a little trickier, but I made it with the loss of just a few pounds in sweat.

“JD! Point of Heino!” I yelled in my best rugby voice, and Dalton pulled the pint of Heineken and brought it to me in a plastic glass before realizing I didn’t have a turned-up collar or a spiked-up fin.

“Thought if you had any more pointers for me, you could give them in person. Alternatively, I’ve left my car down there, so if you want to slip down and stick something under the wipers, I’ll hang here and watch the taps for you.”

Dalton’s dark eyes flashed.

“This all some kind of joke for you, is it?”

“I think you can see from the scar on my face how much fun I’m having,” I said. “Heard from your friend Anita Kravchenko?”

Dalton nodded.

“She texted me. She said you’d helped Maria to escape. You’ve put them up. Thank you.”

“So what about you? Do you want to try and get to the bottom of this?”

“The bottom of what? What do you think I’m looking for?”

“At a guess, your father. How’m I doing?”

Dalton looked at me, then walked up the bar to serve Bacardi Breezers to two hot, red-faced girls in plaits. More orders crammed in, and soon he had several pints on the go. He gave the girls their change, came down to me, and said, “I’ve a break in ten minutes’ time, meet you outside, okay?” and went back about his business.

I finished the Heineken, which had no taste or purpose that I could discern, went outside and lit a cigarette. When Dalton joined me, we wandered around and sat on a slatted bench outside the dressing room nearest the main exit.

“How’d you know I was looking for my father?” he said.

“You told me who you think he is, at least indirectly,” I said. “You pointed me to Stephen Casey, who you believe was your half brother. From him, we get to Eileen Harvey, or Casey, or, eventually, Dalton. And the boy, Jeremiah John Dalton, born March 1986. And the father on the wedding certificate, Brian Patrick Dalton. Who took off before the baby was born. That’s all we know, isn’t it? Well, apart from the fact that Eileen Harvey, or Casey, or Dalton, killed herself a month afterward.”

“We believe she killed herself. The body was never found.”

“I thought…the priest in Woodpark, Father Massey, told me she had gassed herself in the house, the house you’re staying in now.”

“No. The story I was told, they found her clothes on Seafield Pier, the East pier. She’d apparently jumped into the sea. There was an eyewitness who saw her jump, apparently, he phoned the emergency services, there was a big hunt, but they never found her.”

“And who told you this?”

“Would you believe, the same Father Massey?”

“I asked him had you been to see him, and he said no.”

“Looks like one of us needs to talk to Father Massey again,” Dalton said.

“How do you know about any of this in the first place? How did you find out? I mean, what was your name, for example?”

“What do you mean, what was my name? My name was Jeremiah Dalton-”

“No, I mean, what did your adoptive parents-the ones who did the easy stuff like bringing you up-what did they call you?”

“Don’t disrespect me, Mr. Loy-I have full regard for what my par-I call them my parents, because they behaved like they were-full regard for what they did for me, I’m not dishonoring or disowning them-”

“All right, all right. So what did they call you? What was your name for most of your life?”

“Scott. Alan Scott. Son of Robert and Elizabeth. Robert no longer with us, cancer, doctor, gastroenterologist, hill-walker, nice man, Elizabeth thriving in her prayerful way, housewife, bridge, church, garden. Sutton, by the sea.”

“How did you find out? Did they tell you when you were eighteen or something?”

“This is the…the only bit that made me angry…and my father, Robert, was dead by then, and getting angry with Elizabeth, it’s not a place she can go, she doesn’t have the muscle. It’s pointless. But apparently, the Howards swore them to secrecy, they were to do everything they could to preserve the fiction that I was their child.”

“So how did you find out?”

“I began to get this stuff in the post. Stuff about Stephen Casey. Loads of stuff about the Howards, I couldn’t really make sense of any of it. That went on for a while, and then one morning, I got a copy of Jeremiah Dalton’s baptismal certificate, from the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Woodpark. Well, one of the things about being no good at anger is, Elizabeth is no good at lying either, so as soon as I showed it to her, she told me everything, or at least, everything she knew.”

“How much further have you gotten?”

He shook his head, ran a hand through his dark, wavy hair.

“Not much. I’ve been trying to sound out the Howards. I proceeded from the position that they wanted to keep it a secret, so I’ve avoided confrontations.”

“Did you work through Emily? Do you think she might have been the person who was sending you the information?”

“No. I was the one who told her about Stephen Casey. I think I might be responsible for getting her agitated about the whole…family plot. I don’t know. It’s pretty hard to tell with Emily. She’s got a lot of stuff going on herself, many issues.”

I sensed his caginess. He wanted to find out more without giving too much away. I understood that, it was practically my job description. I certainly wasn’t going to tell him who Brian Dalton had turned out to be, at least not while there was the chance he could still be his father.

“So you’re looking at the possibility that this mystery Dalton character-”

“Brian Patrick Dalton.”

“Was your father.”

“Jessica Howard doesn’t remember him. Didn’t remember him. She said Shane’s mother didn’t like her, so she avoided Rowan House. Whether she would have met him up there, I don’t know. And the subject of Stephen Casey was avoided by everyone.”

“Shane told me he remembers getting a lift on Casey’s motorcycle.”

Dalton nodded.

“Some of the Woodpark oul’ ones, I got talking to them down the pub, the ones who remember love to rabbit on about how awful and tragic it all was, and they said he was this guy in a leather jacket with a motorbike.”

“How did you come to rent the same house?”

“Again, it was sent to me in the post, the item in the newspaper advertising it for rent.”

“So there’s someone pulling your strings.”

“It feels like that. But I feel I’m ready to push hard now, to start confronting people.”

“When you say people, you mean Shane and Sandra.”

“There’s no one else, is there?”

“Emily. Jonathan. If you’re a part of that family…Denis Finnegan…someone has been feeding you the information, it must be that one of them wants you to get at the truth. For their own reasons, as much as yours.”

“I guess that’s right.”

The bouncer came over to where we were sitting.

“JD, Barnesy said to give you the call, okay?”

Dalton got up.

“Two things before you go. Jonathan O’Connor ever drink here?”

“Sure. He comes in with Denis Finnegan. And I’ve seen him with the Reillys as well, out in the car park. Last question.”

“If your father’s not Dalton, who might it be?”

He shrugged.

“Who were the available males in the Howard household at the time? Shane? John Howard himself? Which is why Emily and me never got it together, or at least, haven’t yet.”

“Howard was a dying man.”

“Stranger things have happened. I mean, there are too many unanswered questions: Why did the Howards go to the lengths they did to cover things up? Why did they buy a house for Eileen Casey? She’d been living on her own for a long time with her son Stephen, seems to have been a tough cookie. Why did she suddenly crack up and commit suicide?”

“Postnatal depression, abandonment by another partner, on top of the grief around losing her first son. It’s not an impossible place to get back from, but even the toughest cookie would find it hard.”

Dalton looked out over the fog-drenched night.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should just think of him as a black rider who took off into the dark, never to be seen again, and leave it at that. Is that what you’d do?”

I thought about it. I didn’t have to think very long.

“No, that isn’t what I’d do.”

“Well, it isn’t what I’m going to do either. ’Course, the possibility that Emily and I are blood relations has something to do with it too. Because I really like her. So I’m kind of hoping the old black rider option is true.”

“JD! People’re dying of thirst here!” called the bouncer.

“All right, I’m coming.”

He turned back to me.

“The funny thing is, you’re searching for one thing, and it eventually becomes about everything, do you know what I mean?”

I nodded. I knew only too well what he meant.

“So the thing is, if I were you, I’d check the graveyard.”

I drove through Woodpark to the Church of the Immaculate Conception. On the way, I called Martha O’Connor.

“Martha, it’s Ed. Just wanted to check you’re okay. Hope it’s not too late.”

“I’m in the office, working. Didn’t see how I was going to sleep after the load you dumped in my lap.”

“I’m sorry. But-”

“No, it’s my fault. I’ve dealt with it by avoiding it for so long. One of the downsides of therapy, you can make yourself feel okay, or at least, less bad, just by talking. But you don’t get anywhere. I thought the only way I could survive living here was by avoiding it all. Hey, it seems to work for most Irish families, right?”

Her laugh seemed tiny over the phone, like a struck match against the night sky.

“I think maybe you were ready to head in that direction anyway,” I said. “I mean, the investigation into John Howard, the fact that you looked at him at all…that could only have been the start of something.”

“Mmm. Maybe. Anyway, what’s up? I value your concern for my welfare, but what the fuck do you want?”

“Two things, if you can get to them. Where’s John Howard buried? Is it a family plot?”

“Can do that, it would have been in the death notices. Thing two?”

“I’m looking for the name of an eyewitness to a suicide by drowning. It would have been off Seafield Pier, late April 1986.”

“Not much of a story.”

“Apparently there was a big search and rescue attempt, all the emergency services were out.”

“That would have guaranteed coverage. Tonight?”

“If you can.”

“Does this mean we’re partners?”

“Long as you give me a cocredit when you write it up.”

“A cocredit? What kind of sick fuck are you?”

“How’d it go with Jonathan, did you see him?”

“We had a drink. He’s not a happy boy. Doesn’t like you at all.”

“I was kind of hard on him.”

“Do him no harm, he’s a bit of a spoiled brat.”

“Did he seem, when you left him, I don’t know, stable?”

“Yeah. Sure. Why? You think he’s likely to top himself? Let me tell you, he’s a lot more depressed about my life now than he is about his. Leave ’em thanking God they’re not you. That’s the therapy to give ’em. I’ll call you back…whenever?”

“As soon as you get anything, no matter how late. Thanks, Martha.”

The lights in the church were still on, and I remembered there was a vigil tonight. There were three old ladies and two old men on their knees in the pews, and one woman hauling herself around the stations of the cross on a red four-wheel walker. On the altar, the Monstrance was prominently displayed, with its inner circle to expose the consecrated host, which Catholics believe is the actual body of Christ, and its surrounding ring of silver spikes; I flashed on the Halloween fireworks that had lit the heavens; maybe they were both faces of the same impulse. I thought I saw the sacristy door to the right of the altar slam shut; I walked down the aisle and tried the side door, but it was locked; I genuflected at the altar and went up to the door and tried it; it was locked too. I came down off the altar, soaking up the disapproving looks I was getting from a couple of the old ladies; the old men were asleep, or rapt in devout prayer, whichever is the greater. I knelt at the side altar near the sacristy to give myself a moment to think. The altar was devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and there was a statue of Mary with the infant Jesus in her arms. I reached for a prayer but didn’t get very far. I stood up and genuflected again, the old training ingrained, and set off down the side aisle when something I had seen but not fully taken in made me turn around. There was a brass plate on the wall beside the altar, and I went back and read it properly.

It read: The restoration of this Marian Altar was made possible with the generous assistance of the Howard Family, 1986.

The presbytery was an old Victorian villa to the rear of the church. There were no lights on. I knocked on the door. Either Father Massey wasn’t there, or he wasn’t answering.