Two Kinds of Blood

by Jane Ryan

  A burning rag scorched through my mind, charring everything I knew about my family.

  Did I jerk? Did I deliberately move?

  Crack!

  Flannery fell, the lower part of his left leg all but torn off. They were using hollow-point bullets that expanded on impact. I dragged Flannery back into the building. A mop trail of blood followed us.

  ‘Bridge . . . leave me . . . they’ll kill you . . . if you’re here with me.’

  ‘No!’ I screamed, trying to staunch the blood flow. It was impossible. My hands were red to the wrist.

  ‘Go out the front of the building! Leave me here. They don’t want you.’

  I was sobbing. Yet the rational part of my brain was still working. He was a monster, but not even a monster deserved to die this way. I tried to marshal the reserves of hate I had nurtured for Seán Flannery since the moment I had met him. Nothing, other than a cold fatigue.

  ‘This isn’t right. You have to be brought home – if we get medical help we can save you.’

  We sank down into the emergency exit of the building, holed up in the shadows. I put my head out and saw one of the Mossos d’Esquadra, his tags obscured and face unidentifiable with his red-and-navy beret pulled low and sunglasses covering his eyes. His gait casual, a man on a coffee break. He’d kill us both.

  ‘I never learned to swim, why was that?’ said Seán.

  His leg was the texture of a soggy woollen blanket.

  ‘I don’t know, Seán. I don’t know why you never learned to swim.’

  ‘And me a sailor.’

  Pain had locked his eyes away – he looked at me through frosted glass.

  ‘Can we call O’Connor? Or do you have a tout in the Mossos?’ I wrestled with my burner phone, my chest on fire from the gas.

  Flannery wheezed out a laugh. ‘Here? I never had an informer in the police except Joe –’

  His body leaped in my arms as a bullet fired from a long-range weapon hit him in the stomach.

  ‘Noo!’

  There was no spurting or dramatic exit wounds.

  Specks of blood sparked when he drew breath, the sound of a fire trying to catch. His body lying across me, with life seeping away.

  ‘Guy is Richie,’ said Seán.

  Logic was leaving him, pathogens and toxins had breached his blood-brain barrier. He was raving.

  Seán Flannery searched my face, looking for some understanding or traces of his mother. I never knew which.

  Chapter 51

  The stillness surprised him.

  A webbed brightness in the foamy grey clouds,

  Pinpricked with blue and red fairy lights.

  His sister to one side, her beautiful face contorted into lines and circles, but even that softened.

  Sister Assumpta, her country girl’s laugh, loud and firm.

  The days on Bullock Harbour.

  A flaked white tender, a skillet for cooking fish after landing a catch.

  Joe.

  Waving from the granite harbour, the hopeful cries of seagulls overhead and endless sky racing the dark sea.

  Seán sat in the boat and spent he didn’t know how many hours looking at the horizon.

  Chapter 52

  Three hundred short yards separated me and the first Mossos shooter. Not enough. I eased myself out from under Seán Flannery’s dead body. My badge had fallen as we dived for cover. I grabbed it and made the conscious decision to look right into the guy’s face. Then I ran. Let him and his sniper pal on the balcony explain to An Garda Síochána why I was shot in the back fleeing brother officers.

  A downpour had drenched the city and left it bad-tempered. People ran for shop doorways and back into their offices.

  I ran too.

  Doubling back on myself, using random zigzag patterns until I was lost. All the while looking for people making eye contact in the rain, or a hat where there was none before, a pair of glasses trying to mislead me. Anyone with a gun needed seconds, no more, to snuff out a life.

  I took an FC Barcelona peaked cap from a shop display. Small black birds twittered on balconies, tattle-tattling my location to an unseen foe. My mind folded and knotted over the last minutes, longing to blot out what it had seen. I hummed a song about morning breaking from my childhood in an effort to keep everything live and in place. My burner phone rang.

  ‘Ramon?’

  ‘Bridge! Are you OK?’

  ‘No!’ My voice was charged and the word stung as it came out.

  ‘It’s all over the news. TVE and Sky have reporters at the cordons around Carrer Marquis del Berbera. They’re are saying the body of a male has been recovered. Is it Flannery?’

  ‘Yes, it’s him.’

  A fog of numbness had descended. It wouldn’t help me stay alive.

  ‘Did you see who did it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK, any witnesses?’

  ‘None I could see.’

  ‘Val-eh.’

  The word drawled out of his mouth, but he didn’t sound OK with it and I had a sinking sensation Ramon was of no use to me now.

  ‘Do you want to meet me? Do you need me to contact your people?’

  I needed time and some space. ‘No and no. Mossos were outside the plaza, they chased us into an alley and shooters came at us from an upstairs balcony. I’m done.’

  ‘Suerte,’ he said.

  I would need some of the luck he was wishing me. I hung up on Ramon, appalled at my own rudeness but wanting to be gone. I’d let the embassy make arrangements for getting Flannery home.

  I made my way back to Plaza del Pi.

  I landed on the bed in the apartment and took off the hat, turning my head to the side. My eyes stung from the gas and tears leaked down my face, pooling on the polyester bedspread. I made no sound, didn’t know who I was crying for and had no idea what to do next.

  ‘Liam?’ My voice sounded faint, travelling miles through the dead air in the apartment to get down the phone.

  ‘Jesus! Fuck! I had no idea where you were – are you all right? What the hell happened with Flannery? It’s all over the bloody news! Joe’s shitting himself with worry over you! We all are – thank God you’re OK!’

  Liam’s words were running into one another and his tone was harsh, but it sounded soothing as a waterfall.

  ‘I’m OK. I’m OK.’

  ‘Bridge, what happened? Have you have checked in with anyone? O’Driscoll in the embassy doesn’t know what’s going on, the Spanish police said you never reported into their Headquarters. We’re relying on Sky News. Said a shooting between police and a known Irish criminal happened today at Carrer Marquis del Berbera. Like where the fuck is that?’

  The expletives were pouring out of him as his mind fell into a ravine.

  ‘Calm, Liam. I’m OK. I need to get out of here.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Lumps of gratitude, big as hailstones, hit me. ‘Can you book me a flight on Ryanair out of Girona, please? I’m not flying out of Barcelona on Aer Lingus. Could you book it in your sister’s name and I’ll show my badge to the Ryanair officials. They’ll let me on. I don’t want any record of my name on flight databases.’

  ‘Jesus, what’s going on?’

  ‘The Mossos are the ones who chased Flannery and me. More of them went into buildings and set up sniper positions. If Flannery hadn’t forced me up onto the balcony of one of the buildings, I’d be dead.’

  There was a black silence on the end of the phone.

  ‘The Spanish police are after you?’

  It sounded absurd coming from such a stolid person.

  ‘No, corrupt cartel cops, they’re the ones who shot Flannery.’

  Deep breath.

  ‘They’re not chasing me in earnest, but if they happened on me who knows? I’m not going to walk into Mossos Central with all the tourists on Nou de la Rambla and ask for a police escort to the airport. I’d be expected to take a direct flight from Barcelona – it’s a small subterfuge b
ut I’ll take it.’

  ‘Do they have your passport?’

  ‘Yes. Will you start enquiries our end to get it back?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The bones in my ankles cracked as I rotated them, trying to free the tension binding my body.

  ‘Seán Flannery thought he was my brother.’

  I was weightless in the silence – untethered – stretching until I tore at the edges then came together again.

  ‘Is that possible?’ said Liam at last.

  ‘My mother had a child before she married my father. It could’ve been him.’

  ‘Jesus, I’m sorry, Bridge.’

  I sat up and looked in the mirror.

  My hand moved up to my hairline and scratched at some dry skin near the centre of my forehead. My fingers were rust-red with Flannery’s blood, white lines on my knuckles. My running shirt stiff with the last of his life.

  ‘Bridge?’

  I wanted to tell Liam that Joe was Flannery’s informer, but those words wouldn’t form yet.

  ‘Flannery told me he didn’t kill Kay.’

  Liam grunted. ‘You believe him?’

  ‘Yes. I have no evidence other than he was dying and didn’t want to leave the world with deception on his lips.’

  How to say Flannery had wanted something from me, wanted some of the love I had always received, had the awful human instinct to matter.

  ‘He told me to go, leave him, that they’d shoot through me to get to him. The Mossos were using tear gas.’

  ‘What for! Was there a riot?’

  ‘They wanted to clear the area, stop bystanders filming.’

  ‘Ah, Bridge . . .’ His voice was shot through with worry.

  My eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. ‘He should’ve faced trial for his crimes at home. There’s no justice in this. It’s a dirty cover-up and no closure for anyone.’

  ‘Bridge, this isn’t on you. Anyone else would have left him.’

  ‘How’s my dad?’ I needed to change the subject.

  ‘He’s fine, bearing up. O’Connor’s doing the questioning. He’s no match for your oul’ lad. He has some high-price solicitor in with him – that dude will have your father out by 6pm. You’ll be home by then. Yeah?’

  ‘I don’t want anyone treating my father like a criminal when I’m not around – he’s to be treated with decorum.’

  ‘Muldoon said to treat him like a sitting judge and call him Mr Justice Harney when referring to him.’

  The idea of my father sitting in a musty interview room was an iron weight.

  ‘You need anything else, Bridge?

  ‘No, I’m good.’

  I wasn’t.

  I wanted to tell Liam everything was churned up. The life inside me was no more than a conscience, fighting for its existence against my own sense of inadequacy. Flannery’s cold-blooded murder, Joe being an informer and my father sitting in Harcourt Square, all revolving around and picking up speed.

  I hung up and vomited down the side of the bed.

  Chapter 53

  Café Sol was horseshoed into the basement of a Georgian redbrick coach house near Harcourt Square. The sun was making a rare appearance and Joe Clarke waited for me on the flickering granite steps of the old house, holding two roast-bean Americanos. He stood up and handed me a coffee, black with an ice cube floating in it, the way I preferred. His sell-out was a filleting knife gutting me.

  Flannery was dead, his involvement with the Fuentes cartel clear. I was to be lauded by my own force in exchange for silence on Flannery’s police killers, a bartering of sorts that sat like orange coals.

  ‘You got back OK?’ said Joe.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Bridge, the way Flannery died,’ he said.

  He must have misinterpreted the look on my face.

  We parked our backsides on the cold steps and the sun did a vanishing act.

  I said nothing.

  ‘Wicklow granite, from the 1850s,’ he said, ‘those steps. They hewed it by hand, the workers on Lord Wicklow’s estate in Enniskerry. Read about it when I went to visit the gardens one year. These steps have seen more trouble and blood than you or I ever will.’

  ‘Stop trying to make me feel better.’

  My words slapped his down, recent events bundled up inside me, knotted sheets in a dryer. I was wrung out, my interest pinned on why Joe would have passed information to Flannery.

  Joe gave a hacking cough that spoke of bronchitis.

  ‘How’s your dad faring?’

  ‘Good.’ I moved around on the hard bones of my backside, unsure of Joe’s change of subject but deciding to match him. ‘How’re things at home with your family?’

  ‘Wife is still in Spain costing me a bloody fortune and the girls are in Trinity.’ He nodded towards the Green and my alma mater. ‘Living it large in Dublin, pretending to study and putting their hands in my pockets every chance they get.’

  From the mouth of babes.

  ‘Please, not money.’ It was a whisper, unheard by Joe as he lounged on the steps.

  A formless pain rose inside me and I wanted to tear my clothes from my body screaming but gagged it all down. Instead street noises filled the silence, passers-by, traffic, grey street-water sluicing into a gutter.

  Joe gave my knee a rough squeeze. ‘You blame yourself for Flannery dying. From what O’Driscoll said you were lucky to get out. You might’ve stayed too long with Flannery.’

  ‘He told me to go. Told me they’d shoot him through me.’

  Joe took a swig of coffee and turned his face up to the sky.

  ‘Then it was the best thing he ever did in his life. I’m glad he had that in him, after all the damage he’s done.’

  Tears were lodged in my nose and leaked out. I took cold breaths into my stuffed head.

  Joe fumbled in his pocket, pulling out a clean cotton square and I put it to my face.

  ‘You know if you were ever in trouble you could tell me,’ I said.

  ‘Me?’ said Joe. ‘God, Bridge, you’re the one we’re all worried about! Did Flannery say anything to you when he was dying?’

  His eyes were full of sympathy but a horrible eagerness lurked around his face. It helped me get some distance.

  ‘He thought he was my brother.’ The taste of rot from those tainted words.

  ‘What!’ Joe’s eyes darted around my face looking for something. ‘Why would he think that? Was he deranged? Did the fellahs who caught him have him on drugs?’

  ‘Flannery said it to me when we were holed up in the alleyway. A gunman shot him from one of the balconies.’

  Soft rain started to fall.

  ‘Christ, what a situation to be in. Are you going to get it checked out?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve asked a friend in Forensic Science Ireland to compare our DNA.’

  ‘Hope it’s someone you can trust? You don’t want the world and his wife to know the last thing Flannery did was play you.’

  I said nothing, but his responses puzzled me.

  ‘Wait and see, Bridge – he was lying.’

  ‘He believed it.’

  Joe dipped his head as if deep in thought. ‘What else did he say?’

  His hands had navy veins twisted under spotted skin, and I still expected him to ask the obvious question.

  ‘Not much else.’

  ‘Nothing?’ said Joe.

  ‘Just about my mother being his mother. I think . . . I feel it must be the truth.’

  ‘Now you’re not making sense.’

  Joe’s patronising tone took me by surprise, although I don’t know why – even a canary will peck when its cornered.

  He put the coffee down and brushed droplets off his shoulders. ‘You’re feeling sorry for yourself and believing the words of a man who couldn’t tell the truth if his life depended on it.’

  ‘You weren’t fucking there!’

  ‘Bridget, don’t swear. You let yourself down and you let others around you
down.’

  The street, the noises of traffic, even the rain stopped.

  ‘Say that again, please?’

  ‘What?’ Joe cocked an eyebrow at me, a small smile on his face. ‘You’ve heard me say that before – my old mam used to say to us. Me and the sister.’

  ‘Joe, did you know Seán Flannery when he was a child?’

  The desire for Joe to confess cleaved at my insides, my fingers interlaced of their own accord.

  He gave me a quizzical look. ‘What? Like socially?’ He snorted at the absurdity of my question.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Are you serious, Bridge? Dear God in Heaven, of course I didn’t know Seán Flannery! Wouldn’t I have declared a conflict years ago when he first came to our notice?’

  I was in a fairground hall of mirrors. Joe’s lies were reflections distorted and expanding, laughing at me.

  ‘Are you alright, Bridge? You’re as white as a sheet.’

  ‘I’m fine, Joe.’ I stood up as though basking in the sun. My left leg shook, jiggered with adrenaline. ‘Leg’s gone to sleep,’ I said, over-explaining.

  ‘Come on, we’ll go back inside. Do you want your coffee?’

  ‘No, I’m fine thanks, Joe.’

  I forced myself to walk back to the Square beside the man who’d been Seán Flannery’s informer, who’d hobbled me at every turn.

  At the entrance he turned to me.

  ‘You know, I don’t feel so well. I might head home. Take the rest of the day off,’ he said.

  Chapter 54

  I darted forward, with feet falling over one another, my body a fraction behind my will and stumbling to keep up. If I stopped I wouldn’t go into Muldoon’s office. I’d run home and hide under my bed sobbing.

  ‘Bridge?’ It was Liam O’Shea, his face bent out of shape with concern for me.

  I handed him off. To explain, to stop, to do anything other than get to the sixth floor would be fatal, for whom I was unsure.

  Detective Chief Superintendent Graham Muldoon’s door was shut. Glimpses of him flashed through the sidelights of his door.