Steno had a choice to make, and he made it quickly, with the usual calculation in mind: How will this work best for Steno? Simple answer: clean it up and hold it in reserve; the alternative—the Guards, and charges, and a court case, with all the damage that would be caused to the reputations of McGoldrick’s and the stables, not to mention Steno probably getting caught in the cross fire—was simply out of the question. You didn’t know what calibre of man you were until tested in extreme circumstances. Steno still felt pride at how he had comported himself on that evening. He had instinctively taken leadership positions because he was hardwired to do so.
It had been the work of seconds to gather Folan up—he remembered thinking it was like handling an oversize umbrella—and bundle him in to the walk-in cold room and lock him in one of the individual compartments; they were all padlocked in case the staff got the notion that no one’d miss the odd loin of pork. Steno got hold of that particular key, and insisted on taking full charge of the stocking and maintenance of the cold room thereafter.
Steno realized that this was one of those moments that changed everything, and that if you didn’t want to be led by that moment, you had to be a leader of the change. He got hold of Leo Halligan and Jack Proby and explained that there’d been an accident; he wouldn’t say what had happened, just that the days of the back room were done. Proby was scared enough to do what he was told, which was to get Miranda up to Dublin and make sure she kept her fucking mouth shut. Leo took a little more convincing; eventually Steno just went into the back room and had a quiet word with each of the respectable golfers and married jockeys about what the Guards (and/or their wives and families) would be told if they didn’t clear out right now and never come back. Steno could always clear a bar without raising his voice. That was Leo’s back room business finished.
Pa Hutton was the one who seemed to present the biggest challenge, but as it turned out, he lit on the solution to the problem himself. Himself and Folan hadn’t looked too dissimilar: same blond hair, same whippet build. The eyes were a problem, but tinted lenses would sort that out. And in any case, Iggy Staples was legally blind; he had a bit of vision, but not enough to make out eye colour. Hutton, who had always been a dapper dresser, exchanged clothes with the dead man, and went forth to assume the identity of Bomber Folan, and live up on the Staples property, and the word would go out that Hutton had disappeared, and that would lay the whole thing to rest.
Hutton was eager to do it: he was half mad with guilt over Folan’s death in any case, and saw the whole thing as a way to atone for his sins. To each his own, Steno reckoned, at least it meant Hutton was close at hand.
And there it lay for a lot longer than Steno expected. Steno kept in touch with everyone—isolation breeds discontent, and if there was even the slightest danger that anyone was getting the urge to confess, Steno needed to know before they knew it themselves. He tracked how Proby got himself and Miranda into clinics and off drugs, encouraged Proby to get Jackie Tyrell to employ Miranda Hart, visited Hutton after Staples died to see that all was well, and generally monitored the level of stability surrounding the principals in the incident. And gradually they grew to trust him, he thought, or at least, to rely upon him. And all the time, Steno waited for his opening.
It came when Miranda Hart hired Don Kennedy to investigate Hutton’s disappearance. The first thing Steno knew was when this fucking heap of an ex-cop lolloped into the bar, heaved his fat arse up onto a stool and started asking questions. Steno felt hurt that he hadn’t been consulted, but he knew that his feelings were useful only if he could transform them into something productive. He called Miranda and assured her that all would be well, thereby reminding her that it didn’t have to be. Soon Miranda was ringing him five times a day freaking out about all manner of things Kennedy was digging up. Steno wasn’t sure what those things were, not at first anyway, but they resulted in Kennedy blackmailing Miranda for a couple of years, until they’d hit on the new plan.
He still wasn’t sure he knew all of it—the part about Hutton being Regina’s son wasn’t all of it, he knew that much—but on one level, it didn’t matter: the dead couldn’t blackmail you. But he knew whatever it was had something to do with Hutton and Miranda. Kennedy had gone up to the Staples place and…well, it wasn’t known what was said, but the next thing, Patrick had gone and cut out his own tongue. Steno assessed that one and came up blank, unless you just called him a fucking mental bastard like everyone else: What kind of analysis could you make of a fucker who’d do something like that? But Miranda assured him later that Hutton was sound, and sane enough up there, clean and fit and back in training she said, and Steno had seen the horse, and fair enough, Hutton had his weight down and looked capable enough, and then gradually Miranda presented him with a revised appraisal of Hutton’s and her ambitions: the new plan.
The new plan. Steno had to laugh sometimes at the plan: the symbols, the tongues, the thirty pieces of silver, like one of those movies you watched on DVD, drunk with a pizza. He didn’t know whether it had all been Miranda’s idea, or whether it came from Hutton; the idea had been partly to throw everyone off the scent of what was really happening, but everything they used meant something too, and that appealed to Steno. Miranda had timed it to kick off when Leo got out of jail—she’d been communicating with him when he was inside, Steno believed, playing on his past loyalty to Pa Hutton—in the hope that Leo would join their enterprise. Steno had advised against this, but he was reminded yet again that working with a woman was a hazardous fucking endeavour: she’d sometimes agree completely with what you said and then go out and do the complete fucking opposite, like a monkey or a child. Leo had always been a volatile little fuck, and Steno had had no confidence that Leo would act in concert with them. That shrewd evaluation of the situation turned out to be more than vindicated by subsequent events, not that Miranda Hart had thanked him. But Leo was never gonna be a tout, not even to your man Loy.
Steno still wondered whether he shouldn’t have taken Loy out of the picture that night up in Jackie Tyrell’s. He conceded privately that he’d been troubled by the idea of killing them both in one go, especially since Loy did not appear to present a clear and present danger—although Steno believed he was, and that he should go down. Steno suspected that he had succumbed to the worst kind of initiative deficit; he had weakly allowed himself to be defined as a hired hand, simply carrying out orders. Steno didn’t need reminders from history to understand just what a cop-out that defence was.
He hadn’t particularly enjoyed cutting out the tongues; at least with Folan’s, and even Kennedy’s, there’d been time, and so the blood wasn’t an issue: dead bodies don’t bleed in any significant way. With Jackie Tyrell, Loy was on the premises and there were servants around and he’d had to work fast; he’d started on the tongue when she was still warm, and there was a certain amount of mess. It was a bit of a fucking downer, truth be told. He wouldn’t say it had rattled him, but it took all his concentration to set the body up on the ropes and ring the bells, and lay in wait for Loy and not kill him, and maybe that was how Steno glossed over what deep down he considered a failure on his part: despite everything, he had stuck firm to his purpose, and acquitted himself with distinction. Spilled milk under the bygone bridge, whatever: he was ready now for what was about to ensue. The beauty-and-the-beast malarkey Miranda had been running with Hutton was nearly done. Brian Rowan, the head man up at Tyrellscourt, was bought and paid for: he’d soon be assuming a lot more responsibility at the Tyrellscourt yard.
Jackie Tyrell’s murder hadn’t been part of Miranda and Hutton’s original plan, but Steno demanded it as the only adequate recompense for his services: Jackie’s riding school and lands were all bequeathed to Miranda; Steno had made sure the papers had been drawn up in advance with Miranda transferring the same bequest to a company he controlled. All that remained was the final spectacular. It was that aspect once again that appealed to Steno: the art of it. Provided Beauty and the Beast pl
ayed their parts correctly, and they would, he’d make sure of that. No, it would be spectacular, it would be public, it would bring Tyrellscourt to its knees at last—Steno just wished he could sign his name to it. Maybe that was the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Not that Steno expected anyone else to understand that.
He looked at Miranda Hart before they got in the Range Rover, and mentally shook his head in despair: her lipstick was crooked, her hair was askew and her eye makeup was asymmetrical. What a fucking downer. It was the problem with democracy, as Steno saw it: some fucking people, no matter what you gave them or did with them, they were never going to get their act together. She smiled at him, and he could see she’d been crying. Was he supposed to feel guilty about that? Well he didn’t. She looked scared. At least that showed judgement on her part. She had good reason to be scared. They all had. If there was an enterprise worth the hazard that didn’t strike fear into your heart, Steno wondered what it might possibly be.
TWENTY-SIX
The door swung open and the cold relentless wind brought, first Tommy Owens, his hands on his head and his right eye bruised, then Miranda Hart, wearing riding boots and a long Barbour jacket and carrying a black Adidas sports grip, and finally Steno, who wore a broad-brimmed hat and a long coat like an Australian and had a Heckler & Koch MP5K submachine gun in one hand. I didn’t check to see what he had in the other. Steno pointed the SMG at me, and I held my hands up and out to be searched. Just as the doorknob had creaked, just before the door opened, I had hidden the Glock 17 I was carrying among the cushions on the sofa. Miranda Hart appeared terrified, her hands shaking as she fumblingly unzipped the grip, her lips trembling as she produced hanks of nylon cord and bags of nylon grip ties and rolls of silver duct tape. Regina Tyrell stared at what was unfolding before her eyes in astonishment and fear, then made a rush for the door, only to be brought up short by Steno waving the MP5 at her.
“Karen,” she cried. “Karen! What have you done with her?”
“Calm, calm, she’s all right, she’s fine,” Steno said.
“Where is she?” Regina said.
“She’s locked in her room. Miranda has the key. We’ve left food and drink there for her. It’s just for a short while, until Leopardstown is done. Miranda, why don’t you get things tied up with our friends here?” Steno said. “Take Mr. Loy first, if you would.”
I had quickly calculated that there was no percentage in trying to make a grab for the Glock: it wouldn’t make much of a show against an SMG. But it might come into its own later on. Miranda looked as if she wanted to say several things, but she didn’t say any of them; instead, she got her sports grip and Steno pointed me into a chair with the SMG, and without a word, Miranda tied me up with plastic grip ties around my wrists and ankles and nylon cord around my waist, and then frisked me. When her hand passed over my mobile phone in my jacket pocket, she tensed and looked me in the eye, and I waited for her to come to a decision. It was a moment in which time seemed to slow to a crawl, in which I sensed both her power over me and her powerlessness, now that she was in Steno’s thrall. And the strange thing is, in that instant, I felt so much toward her, such a mix of feelings: compassion, and sympathy, and fear for her welfare, and, despite all I knew then and all I suspected and was subsequently to discover, the hope that she and her daughter could somehow escape together, and put all the bad history behind them. And even as I tried to hold the thought in my mind, it turned to dust, like all dreams that involve fighting the past again and winning this time do, turned to dust and was scattered on the relentless wind. She passed over my phone and leant into my ear.
“Please try and think kindly of me,” she said, and turned to Steno.
“He’s clean,” she said, wafting past me, and I breathed her incense of oranges and salt, and the two things combined, the smell of love departed and the chirping of a tramp on the make, filled me with melancholy.
Miranda moved toward Tommy, but he waved her off and approached Steno.
“Steno, you remember me man,” he said. “The back room of McGoldrick’s, with Leo an’ all. And then I was in with you the other day.”
Steno looked at Tommy’s ruined foot and nodded.
“Sure. Tommy Owens? What’s on your mind?”
Tommy looked at me, then approached Steno and spoke in a hushed, confidential voice, as if he’d been living a lie for a long time and was relieved finally to be able to come clean.
“I’m just a hired hand here man,” he said. “I mean, I don’t have any loyalty to your man Loy, know I mean? And frankly, I put him together with Leo, he beat the shite out of him for no reason, I think he’s losing it man. So if you’re putting something together you need an extra pair of hands, all I’m saying is, I’m here if you want me man, to drive, whatever.”
Steno stared at me, and I stared at Tommy. I knew Steno was trying to work out if Tommy was on the level. I was almost sure he wasn’t. Almost was as good as it got with Tommy, but from where I was sitting, bound if not yet gagged, almost didn’t feel like a lot. I let this curdle naturally into a glare of disgust at his betrayal; Tommy returned this with a shrug of indifferent scorn. We looked like thieves without honour. I prayed that’s not what we were.
“You can drive?” Steno said.
“Sure,” Tommy said.
“All right. Good to have an extra pair of hands along.”
Then he poked the barrel of the SMG hard in Tommy’s face, hard enough to bruise.
“I get so much as a glimmer you’re not down the line with me, you’re sneaking to Loy, or to the cops, you’re gone, understand, and a day, an hour later, I won’t even remember the hole you’re buried in, let alone your name.”
I had to give it to him, Steno was a scary piece of work. He threatened to kill Tommy like he was warning a lounge boy about skimming from the till, and you felt it was of as great, or as little, consequence to him.
“All right Miranda, it’s Regina’s turn,” Steno said.
Regina sat in a chair opposite me, and Miranda fastened her to it in the same way she had fastened me, ties to wrists and ankles, cord around her waist. Both women were trembling, and Miranda kept apologizing for being too rough. Or at any rate, she kept apologizing. When Regina was secured, Steno made a call on his mobile.
“All right,” he said. “We’re ready up here.”
Steno went to the windows and opened the curtains. Gray dawn light trickled quickly in, borne by showers of sleet that pelted against the panes.
Steno stood over me and spoke calmly to my face.
“Whatever happens next, know this: if you contradict anything I say, I’ll take you out immediately. Plan A is the plan we’re working, for Miranda’s sake, for old times’ sake: I don’t claim to understand it myself, but that’s the route we’re taking. But if I think you’re putting that in jeopardy, even for an instant: Plan B, baby.”
“And what’s Plan B?”
Steno almost smiled, his fleshy face heavy and still, his eyes genial and dead.
“Kill every fucker standing, and get out of here fast. And don’t think I won’t.”
I didn’t. Steno gave Miranda a Sig Sauer compact, looked like one of the Halligan cache I’d brought down. There was a knock at the door, and then Francis Xavier Tyrell was led in by a red-faced, straw-haired man I didn’t recognize, but whom I soon found out was Brian Rowan, the Tyrells’ head man. Tyrell looked around the room, his cheeks aflame, his sharp, intelligent features quivering with quiet anger and indignation. He wore a sleeveless padded green jacket over tweeds and a brown fedora. No one spoke. It felt as if a bunch of teenagers had been having a party and the father who had expressly forbidden them such an event had arrived home.
“What the devil is all this?” he said.
Regina’s emotion overflowed into tears; she spoke through them now in a rush.
“Francis, they have Karen, they’re holding her.”
“They have Karen? What do you mean, they’re ‘holding’ her? What d
o they want?”
“They’ve kidnapped her, they want…”
Regina faltered under F.X. Tyrell’s glare. Steno looked to Miranda Hart, who beckoned F.X. Tyrell to the open window.
“Can you see the gallops? See the rider there? How’s he doing, do you think? Do you need binoculars?”
“My sight is perfect,” Tyrell said.
The room fell silent as he watched.
“Good seat. Nice action. Who is that, one of the apprentices? Brian?”
“His name is Patrick, boss.”
“We want Patrick to ride today,” Miranda said. “The third race, the juvenile hurdle for three-year-olds. Barry Dorgan hasn’t made the weight for Bottle of Red. We want Patrick to start in Dorgan’s place.”
Miranda’s voice was shaky but firm; it also, for the first time, expressed for Patrick Hutton an emotion she hadn’t betrayed before, at least, not in my hearing: love. As Miranda spoke, dawn light from the window shifted slowly across her face. F.X. Tyrell transferred his gaze to her as if seeing her for the first time.
“You’re…you’re Mary Hart, aren’t you?”
“Miranda.”
“Yes. Yes. Look at you child. All grown up.”
There was a silence, punctuated by Regina Tyrell’s quiet sobbing; Miranda Hart looked quickly from Regina to F.X. Tyrell and shuddered; F.X. Tyrell shook his head suddenly, as if a ghost from his past had asked him for help and he found he had nothing left to give. Tyrell looked out toward the gallops again, then he pursed his lips and wrinkled his nose.
“You want Patrick to ride one of my horses? Patrick? Who the devil is Patrick?”
“Patrick Hutton, remember?” Miranda said. “You remember Thurles? By Your Leave?”
Tyrell looked out again at Hutton, and the blood drained from his face.
“I remember, yes; I remember what he did to my beautiful By Your Leave.”
His face was creased with sudden pain, and then his small dark eyes blazed.
The Dying Breed Page 26
