The Price of Blood

by Declan Hughes

  Before I went inside I played a hunch. I called the bookie whose mobile number I had found in Hutton’s pocket.

  "Yes, friend?" came the reply.

  "Jack Proby?" I said.

  "Who wants to know?"

  "Edward Loy. I’m a friend of Miranda Hart’s. I’d like to talk to you about a horse called By Your Leave."

  "Yeah? What are you, friend, some kind of journalist?"

  "No, I’m some kind of detective. Friend."

  "Well, I’m kind of busy at the moment, friend. How did you get this number anyway?"

  "If I told you, you’d have to kill me."

  "That’s very funny, friend, but I’m here at home with my family and I really don’t appreciate—"

  "I hear you, friend. That’s what I’m calling about actually, the unappreciated. The jockeys who disappear because they won’t carry out orders. The women who sell their bodies because the men they love are scumbags who’d rather pimp them out than care for them. The men whose fathers are gay and vulnerable to blackmail, who end up working for gangsters to keep the family secrets. Unappreciated, every one. We really should do something for them, don’t you think? In this season of goodwill."

  "What do you want?"

  Proby’s voice had lost the hail-fellow-well-met tone; now he sounded edgy and dangerous, like a rat in a trap.

  "Where do you live?" I said.

  "Foxrock," he said.

  "Foxrock? Nice up there."

  "I worked for every penny," he said.

  "So do most people. They just don’t seem to end up with as many pennies. A shame, isn’t it?"

  "Keeps me awake at nights."

  "I’m sure it does. I’ll see you at midday tomorrow down in Seafield. The West Pier."

  "Tomorrow’s Christmas Day, friend—"

  "So it is. Where are my manners? Merry Christmas. Friend."

  It was called pushing the boat out. The cops would be all over this case soon, if they weren’t already. But what lay beneath it might never come out in their investigation. It would in mine. Call it justice. Call it curiosity. Whatever it was, it came down to this: I needed to know that nine-year-old girl had a future, one in which she would not be betrayed. And I wasn’t convinced that, without my help, she would.

  TOMMY OWENS WAS sitting on the same stool he’d been on when I left the pub, but it was as if a carnival had erected itself around him: face painters and street performers in clown costumes; folk musicians wearing bad hats; bearded bikers in leathers and their women in lace and feathers; three Santa Clauses and several drunken helpers in green-and-red elf costumes and, holding the line at the bar, a phalanx of little old men in jumpers of all ages, drinking seriously and devotedly and steadfastly resisting the temptations of excessive gaiety, even if one or two couldn’t resist a stray look in the direction of the drunken elves, particularly the one who kept threatening to get her tits out unless one of the Santas promised to "do" her in his costume. Steno the barman, who had a reassuring aura of calm authority, finally brought this seasonal tableau to a close by ejecting the offending elf, but she was accompanied off the premises by one of the Santas, although possibly not the one she favored.

  The lounge was calmer and tonier, with a crowd that looked bored by their money and keen to get rid of it; you could sell a lot of blow here tonight, and someone no doubt was. In the warehouse, it was as if everyone we had seen on the street earlier today was crammed inside; indeed, when I pulled open the double doors, three people stumbled back into the lounge; Noddy Holder was shrieking "It’s Chriss-miss" on a jukebox as I made my way back to Tommy. I assumed he had been drinking all this time, but in fact he was stone-cold sober, or as stone cold as Tommy ever got; he nodded at me and introduced me to the short, slightly built guy on the stool next to him, who wore an olive-green flight suit and looked like a shaven-headed heroin addict: his taut flesh was mottled and pocked; his drawn cheeks had tight vertical folds like stiletto scars; his tiny eyes were recessed deep beneath heavy brows: dark blue and bloodshot, they glowed like hot coals.

  "Ed, Bomber Folan. Bomber, Ed."

  Bomber promptly stood up and left the bar. Tommy got to his feet to follow.

  "Come on, Ed, we’ve a trip to make. Bomber’s driving."

  I followed reluctantly. If I had learned anything over the years, it was not to do business with anyone called "Bomber," and especially not to get into a vehicle with him. Besides, I wanted a drink. I needed a drink.

  Outside, Tommy grinned.

  "The expression on your face man."

  He started to laugh. I didn’t like being laughed at, especially not by Tommy Owens. Coming on top of what he had told me earlier this afternoon about Miranda Hart, I liked it even less. Without pausing for thought, I hit Tommy a dig in the mouth that send him skidding on the frosted ground. The smokers in McGoldrick’s porch stiffened and a murmur of interest ran through them. Bomber drove up in a Jeep that looked like it had been fashioned from a corrugated iron shed and some old scaffolding. He jumped out and came at me, his hands up.

  "No, Bomber, it’s all right."

  Tommy was on his feet, wiping blood from his mouth. He brought his face close to mine, close enough that I could see the anger in his eyes.

  "Fair enough, Ed. I probably would have done the same. But you left before I could explain. Earlier."

  "Explain what?" I said, knowing already I was in the wrong, and fearing it was only going to get worse. Tommy looked around at Bomber and nodded him back to the Jeep.

  "I paid Miranda money. But I didn’t get my money’s worth. I didn’t…she was so out of it that it wouldn’t have been right. And anyway, I…I was never into that, into paying for it…I was kind of goaded into it…"

  "You don’t have to tell me this, Tommy," I said.

  "I do, actually. Because you’re the only one who…who even half believes I’m…you know…and the look on your face today when I told you about your one…I didn’t want you thinking I’m some kind of fuckin’—"

  "I don’t, Tommy. All right? I don’t."

  Tommy nodded, and I put my hand on his shoulder. He looked me in the eyes, and I thought I saw tears in his. And then he hit me, a smack to the left cheek that dropped me to my knees and left my head jangling. I laid my palms on the cold ground to steady myself, and then I got slowly to my feet. The smokers were all beaming at the prospect of what this pair of out-of-town clowns might do next.

  "Gonna have that drink now," I said.

  "We’ll wait for you."

  I went back inside and Steno poured me a double Jameson and I added a third of water and he nodded approvingly at me as I drank it down like breakfast juice. The adage about being able to choose your friends but not your family ran through my mind. It wasn’t true though, or at least, not as you got older. Unless you were the choosy type, or you went on a lot of cruises. No, you were stuck with your family and you were stuck with your friends, and you’d better just make the best of it. I thanked Steno, who had the solemn confessional gravity I prized in a barman, or at least the appearance of it, and went out to join Tommy in the back of a Jeep driven by a man called Bomber.

  SIXTEEN

  Bomber was a good driver, given the vehicle, and he had been a promising jockey until the heroin whose ravages still showed in his face had worked its way mercilessly through body and soul, calling a halt to his burgeoning career. Now he "did something with scrap," Tommy assured me. As we crossed a humpbacked bridge across the river at the far end of town and the suspension rattled and clanked like a mechanical press, I concluded that one of the somethings with scrap he did had become the Jeep we were sitting in. We turned in along the river and pulled up briefly outside a set of high iron gates. Bomber unlocked the padlock and uncoiled the chain and opened them and we drove up the short gravel drive to a large granite building with a slate roof that looked like a cross between a church and an asylum. The windows were all boarded up, with the exception of one stained-glass pane high on the rectangular
bell tower; the grounds were overgrown; broken glass and beer cans and the dead embers of fires lay strewn about.

  "St. Jude’s," Tommy said.

  Bomber, who hadn’t spoken and didn’t look like starting anytime soon, produced flashlights from a toolbox in the Jeep and gave us one each. He set off up the steps and unlocked a further three padlocks and set aside three iron bands and pushed the door open, and we followed him inside.

  We found ourselves in a blue-tiled entrance hall. Bomber used his flashlight to guide our eyes. On the turn of the stairs, the Blessed Virgin Mary stood in matching blue; facing us, Christ hung from the cross, minus a hand but otherwise intact. Bomber set off down a corridor to the left, flashing the light from side to side to illuminate classrooms still filled with desks and blackboards. Cobwebs hung like lace curtains and dust clung to every surface, but the classrooms were intact, as if their occupants had stepped out in a hurry, expecting to return at their leisure. At the end of the corridor Bomber flung open a heavy oak door and waited for us to pass through. We were in a small chapel, with rows of plain wooden pews and, near the altar, individual mahogany chairs with padded seats and matching kneelers. Bomber hoisted one of the kneelers on his shoulder, wheeled around and headed out of the chapel again, turning at the door to indicate that we should follow. I looked to Tommy for some explanation, but he wasn’t talking either.

  We followed Bomber upstairs past the Blessed Virgin Mary and onto the first floor, where we filed through a spartan dormitory; the beds were separated into small cells by means of wooden partitions; a small locker stood adjacent to each bed, with a chamber pot beneath. Bomber had paused by one of the cells; he shined his flashlight on the side of the locker nearest the bed, where the occupant had carved some hieroglyphics; I crouched down close to see what they were. Bomber stared at me until I nodded to confirm that I had understood what I had seen; then he was up and off, through a communal bathroom and down a carpeted passageway paneled in dark wood. He stopped outside a door, nodded to us and went in.

  The first thing I saw was the reproduction of Poussin’s Last Supper, one of the paintings Father Vincent Tyrrell had hanging in his Bayview presbytery. Then I took in the thick-pile red carpet, the burgundy-and-gold-flock wallpaper, the luxurious eiderdown on the queen-size bed, the red velvet seat on the mahogany carver chair, the gilt-framed mirror above the marble fireplace, and the image of the Sacred Heart watching it all, although His light had been extinguished. Bomber’s light was burning bright: he waved his flashlight and fixed his eyes on us as if to check he had our full attention. We nodded, and then he presented what amounted to a kind of grotesque pantomime. He took a black scarf from his pocket and wrapped it around his eyes, then he took the kneeler and set it down so that it faced the Sacred Heart; this left him with his back to us. He knelt down and rested his elbows on the arm rail of the kneeler and brought his hands together ready for prayer; he raised his flashlight toward the Sacred Heart and brought forth the first sound I had heard him make. I thought he was cawing like a crow, but soon it was clear he was making a sheep’s baa. After a bit of this, he clapped his hands together and blessed himself, then bent down until he was on all fours, with his head beneath the kneeler; he brought his hands up to hang from the kneeler’s rail, and with his rear end extended toward us, proceeded to squeal and roar and scream, like an animal in pain. He rocked back and forth on the kneeler until it tumbled over and brought his head crashing down on the floor, where he stayed, whimpering now, like a dog that’s been beaten too much.

  After a while, he picked himself up and turned to us, his face wet with tears and snot and smeared with dust and blood where he’d torn his forehead. He came toward us then, the beam of the flashlight pointing up from beneath his chin; in its glow, amid the falling dust, he looked like his skull was smoldering; when he took his blindfold off, his tiny blue-black eyes burned like red Christmas berries. He came up close and opened his mouth wide, and showed us exactly why we hadn’t had a word out of him. Like Patrick Hutton, like Don Kennedy, like Jackie Tyrrell, Bomber’s tongue had been cut out. His work done, Bomber smiled, and almost bowed.

  As it had begun, so it ended: Bomber picked up his wooden kneeler and put it on his back and made his way down the stairs and out into the night. While he replaced the bars and padlock on the doors, Tommy Owens and I lit cigarettes and smoked them as if they were the eighth sacrament. The moon was down, and you could see across the road to the riverbank. From the upstairs windows too, from the dormitory cells, you would have seen the river flowing, keeping its secrets all the way to Dublin and out into the sea.

  "Monasteries, convents, fuckers always arranged it so they’d have themselves a nice view, didn’t they?" Tommy said.

  I nodded, hearing Bomber moaning to himself as he fumbled with the locks, and suddenly found myself shaking with rage, my head hot and pounding; I walked down the drive and crossed the road, shouting something at the sky, I don’t know what, nothing like a prayer, and stood by the river until Tommy came out and Bomber locked the gates and gave us a lift back into town. He dropped us off at the Volvo and nodded solemnly to me, as if we had made a deal; I felt like we had too, but the difference was, he seemed to trust me, whereas I was far from sure I could say the same. I held his gaze though, and he gripped my hand and used it to roll up his sleeve, and show me the tattoo he had on his forearm. The runes were familiar to me now; I had already seen them carved on the nightstand in the dormitory cubicle Bomber had singled out; they had been tattooed or carved into each of the murder victims; now here they were on Bomber’s arm: † Ω

  "Your tongue," I said. "Who did it to you?"

  He grinned, and threw his hands in the air, and pointed at me, as if I should know.

  "What does the tattoo stand for?"

  He grinned again, and this time flung his arms wide as if to embrace the world around. Then he got back in his rickety vehicle and drove away.

  Tommy wanted to set off for Dublin, but I didn’t want to leave before I had more information on Bomber, so we sat in the car and Tommy told me what he knew.

  "His name is Terry Folan. Bomber Folan, they called him. I got to know him slightly down here, he used hang around at the fringes of that crowd Leo and Jack Proby ran with. There was smack going around, not through me, I don’t know who was dealing it, Miranda Hart would know. Folan had come through St. Jude’s in the nineties, just after Leo and Hutton, and then he’d been given a start as an apprentice in Tyrrellscourt stables, too. He was given a few rides, he moved up, he was still around when Pa Hutton vanished, the odd ride here and there, and then it all started to fall apart for him, he was drinking, he couldn’t keep the weight off, he was just doing yard work and then not even that. He used to be one of the drunks in McGoldrick’s and then he was barred from there. You’d see him stumbling along the main street, you know, half ten in the morning with a can of Dutch Gold and a rough sleeper’s tan? That was as much as I knew, ’98, ’99 that would have been, I dropped out of sight here then. Paula wanted me home. Those were the days, right Ed?"

  Paula was Tommy’s ex-wife, and the divorce had been far from amicable; the marriage hadn’t been very amicable in the first place. After years of Paula’s utter disdain at his uselessness, Tommy cheated on her at a party with a drunk woman who Tommy thought was in love with him; he then made the mistake of telling Paula, whereupon she promptly threw him out, and then proceeded to sleep with everyone either of them had ever met, and to make sure everyone else knew about it. When the drunk woman sobered up, she told Tommy that it hadn’t been love, not even lust, just drink.

  "Steno filled me in on what happened then, insofar as he knew. Apparently Folan befriended this old scrap-merchant character, Iggy Staples, who lived out of town a couple of miles, he…lived on a dump, was how Steno described it. It’s actually Staples collected scrap but he never really did anything with it, he lived off his pension in a cottage that was falling in on top of him. Anyway, Bomber used to go up there and sleep
, there was enough shelter, he’d pull together some kind of shed for himself. And Staples got used to the company, enjoyed it, and when he died, hadn’t he left the place to Bomber."

  "And what about the keys to St. Jude’s? Is he the caretaker?"

  "It’s not a good question to ask around here," Tommy said. "Even Steno, the first time I asked, he just walks off, didn’t see him for an hour, piano-stops-playing type of thing. There’s a lull in the afternoon, he asks me through to the warehouse, you know the restaurant there, they’re changing over from lunch to dinner. The way he put it, St. Jude’s is a scar on the town? Like, everyone knew what was going on there, but nobody did anything. And there wasn’t just one Bomber Folan, every year there’d be casualties, a lot of them’d go to England, but a lot stayed, and those that went away usually came back, because they weren’t fit for anything, and there they’d be, Tyrrellscourt’s standing army of drunks and drug addicts, of misfits and losers, getting barred from the pubs and shambling round the streets, a living reproach every one to the town’s puffed-up image of itself. Eventually they got St. Jude’s closed down, there was one more scandal…no, I know what it was, your friend did a documentary on it. Your woman, the dykey one."