The Dying Breed Read online

  “Come on,” he said. “Come on.”

  The last person to say “Come on, come on” to me was Miranda Hart. My face was deep between her legs and my hands were slipping inside her torn stockings and stroking her firm, yielding, scented flesh. She had wanted me to stay, and if I had, I’d still be there, drinking gin and lemon juice, fucking in the fire’s glow. Instead I had spent time in a morgue with two dead bodies, I had tried to deal with a friend who was apparently having a nervous breakdown and now I was getting to my feet on top of a hill in subzero temperatures at two in the fucking morning so a pawky little maniac could beat the living shit out of me with his bare fucking hands. Come on, come on. Jesus.

  Leo was about five seven, and he couldn’t’ve been more than eleven stone, which meant I had eight inches and fifty pounds on him, but none of that seemed to count because of three things. The first thing was, he was so much faster than me: he had popped my nose and cut my right eye before I had my guard up. The second thing was, he was wearing those rock-and-roll skull and serpent’s-head rings that worked like brass knuckles. And the third thing was, when I finally got a rhythm going and managed to block a few blows and land a few digs of my own, he suddenly reared back and swung into this Thai kickboxing manoeuvre and slammed me in the jaw with the sole of a red leather cowboy boot that, had it been the heel, would have broken it.

  Where the fuck was Tommy Owens? It was all very well his mother dying, but somebody needed to get my back: warning me wasn’t enough. I was reeling like a skittle, finding it hard to keep my head up, and Leo was grinning now, scenting blood, and steadying himself to finish me off, and in my lack of strategy came my opportunity: it wasn’t that I wasn’t falling apart, or that my limbs weren’t having trouble acting on instructions from my brain, but my judgement was unimpaired: I could see exactly when and where I was about to be hit. All I needed was one last great surge from the nervous system, one final synapse flash of a reaction. It came as the heel of his red boot came straight for my nose and I managed to sidestep the blow and to catch Leo’s calf before he regained balance—he had overstretched himself, reasoning justifiably that I was a dead man walking—and pulled back and swung the eleven-stone man around and around by the legs, sensing the humiliation and unwilling to stop, having felt pretty humiliated myself in the past few minutes, until he suddenly shot out of my hands and crashed on the gravel near the ruined church and I was left with a red cowboy boot in my hand. Leo was up in a flash, his biker jacket in large part protection against the spill, a few lacerations down one cheek the only evidence of harm. He seemed far more concerned by the fate of his footwear. As he reached for it, I retreated to the wall above the quarry and held the boot out into the abyss.

  “They’re handmade, Ed. Imported from Texas.”

  “I don’t care. One will do you. You can hop away to fuck.”

  “They cost three grand.”

  “My heart pumps piss. You could have killed me. A fist fight’s one thing, but you could have killed me there, with the heel in the head.”

  Leo shrugged.

  “You sent Podge down. What else could I do? I’ve always had to look out for the kid. And clean up his mess.”

  The kid. Podge Halligan, the steroid-swollen, heroin-dealing sadist who had raped Tommy Owens. Like George, sometimes you could mistake Leo for a human being. But the Halligans were all brothers in the blood, and however plausible an impression of enlightenment any might occasionally give, I guess each was just a version of the same savage when it came to it.

  I extended the red boot to Leo, my hand low, and when he reached down for it, I sucker-punched him with a southpaw uppercut I must have been practising in my dreams, and laid him out cold beneath the stars in the shadow of the old ruined church.

  HE WASN’T OUT for long, although he didn’t look too chipper when he came to: on top of the broken nose, he’d lost a couple of teeth. My nose had stopped bleeding, and I could see out of my eye; a drink would be a help. I found Leo’s Glock where he’d dropped it but I wouldn’t give it back to him, not yet, at any rate. We walked down to the car park, an uneasy truce between us, where lo and behold, Tommy Owens in his green snorkel coat was sitting on a wall by the Volvo, a cigarette in his hand, his ability to confound second to none.

  “All friends now, I hope,” he said. “Did you shake hands?”

  Leaving Leo to tend his face, I walked Tommy to the edge of the pine forest.

  “Did you know I was up there, Tommy?”

  “I’ve been following you all night,” Tommy said.

  “Well. I’m glad to hear it. You know though, Tommy, when some boy threatens me with a knife, and then leads me up a hill at gunpoint, that’s a good time to make your move. Especially when that boy is Leo Halligan.”

  “I knew you’d be able for him, Ed. Better to sort it out now than have it hanging over you. And I knew Leo’d play fair. Nice eye.”

  “Whose fucking side are you on?”

  “Yours, Ed. And mine, of course.”

  “Tell me the truth then. How’d you know Leo was after me?”

  “Father Tyrell. Leo came to see him this morning. They had breakfast together. I reckoned it must have had something to do with whatever Tyrell wanted to see you about.”

  That was what I had smelt in the presbytery: French cigarettes, not cigars, and Leo Halligan’s lemon scent.

  “What did Leo say to you?”

  “Just, I have to straighten Loy out, Tommy. I’m not going to hurt him badly, because he’ll come in useful. But I have to straighten him out.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before I saw Tyrell?”

  “Because Leo didn’t tell me until after, after he had scraped the RIP on the Volvo. I’ll sort that out for you, by the way. So I followed Leo then, caught him staking out your place, texted you.”

  I said nothing. Tommy shrugged.

  “You never asked for my help. You never levelled with me about the case. I mean, I’m not on salary here, am I Ed? Don’t take me for granted here man, I’m looking out for you out of the goodness of my own…so don’t fuckin’ start, all right?”

  Fair enough. Tommy still wasn’t telling me everything he knew, but I couldn’t expect miracles. I nodded, and walked quickly back to Leo, snapping the clip back into the Glock and sliding a round into the chamber as I went. When I got close enough, I fired in the general direction of Leo’s precious red cowboy boots.

  “Fuck sake, watch where you’re pointing that thing!” Leo said.

  “Very difficult to predict where the bullet will go at close range, as we all know,” I said. “And the waiting time in A&E over Christmas is even worse than normal, might not make it home until New Year.”

  “So what do you want?” Leo said.

  “Breakfast with Vincent Tyrell,” I said. “What was that about?”

  “I got a tip-off. Last night. About Pa Hutton, Patrick Hutton. I called Tyrell, he agreed to meet.”

  “Who tipped you off? And what did they say?”

  “I don’t know who it was, a woman, very southside, maybe even upper class, you know, Anglo type of thing. She didn’t say who she was.”

  Miranda. Or Jackie.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said, ‘You were there. In Tyrellscourt. It’s all going to come out now. The truth at last.’”

  “Did she mention Patrick Hutton by name?”

  Leo Halligan shook his head.

  “She said, ‘Ask Vincent Tyrell. Vincent Tyrell knows.’”

  Leo’s hand went in his jacket, and I brought the Glock up. He carefully took a pale blue pack of Gauloises and a brass Zippo from his jeans and lit a cigarette. He offered the pack around. I took one, and so did Tommy. Then Tommy found a noggin of Jameson in the depths of his snorkel coat, and we each had a drink. Silence reigned for a while, an almost contented calm. Perverse camaraderie in the middle of the night, flanked by a petty criminal and a stone killer on the top of Bayview Hill: I almost laughed at how good
I suddenly felt, at the adrenaline surge that reminded me who I was, and why I did what I did, and all the while at the anger I could feel building, anger that was never very far below the surface.

  “And how did you get Patrick Hutton out of that call?” I said to Leo.

  “There was nothing else for me to get. Pa and me were friends, you know? We…we were good friends, yeah? So that was what Tyrellscourt meant to me, above anything else.”

  “So you called Vincent Tyrell.”

  “Me and Father Tyrell go back. I told Father Tyrell Patrick Hutton was coming back to haunt everyone who knew him.”

  “Why did you put it like that?”

  “I thought it had a nice ring to it. I thought it might scare the cunt. Anyway, he asks me to meet him for breakfast, fuck sake, like we’re a pair of suits, you know? And then he was all, oh, I can’t tell you anything, the sanctity of the confessional, all this. So I said, I remember you, baby, back in St. Jude’s Industrial School. I remember.”

  “What do you remember?”

  Leo Halligan grinned.

  “That’s for me to know. That was it, end of.”

  “Do you know how he disappeared?”

  “All I’ll say is, you’re not going to find the answers up here. To any of it. You’re going to find them down in Tyrellscourt.”

  He flashed his eyes at me, with the lubriciousness of someone who knows way more than he’s telling.

  “Anyway, coming out, I met Hopalong here, Mr. Fucking Sacristan, honest to fuck, I thought I was going to burst me shite laughing. So when he said Tyrell had asked you down, I decided to stick around, added a little design feature to your car. I was gonna string it out awhile for you. You know, leave a dead cat on your doorstep, potshot through your living-room window. Just like a regular psycho. But it’s too cold, and I couldn’t be arsed, to be honest with you,” Leo said.

  “All because of Podge.”

  Leo shrugged.

  “Did you know that, Tommy? Leo was after me because I helped get Podge sent away. You remember Podge, don’t you Tommy?”

  “No, Ed.”

  “Ah you do. Very well. Very very well, in fact.”

  “Stop, Ed.”

  “You know Tommy did a little work for Podge? A little courier work in the old import-export trade. And then they fell out, as fellows in that trade will. Over a gun. A Glock 17, in fact, this very model. And you know what Podge did to Tommy here?”

  I could see the unease on Leo’s face.

  “He raped him, Leo. More than once, far as I could make out, although once would be enough for most of us. Did you know that? Or are they too scared to tell you just what kind of a maniac your kid brother is? It’s not as if you don’t really know.”

  Leo stared at the ground and shook his head. Maybe I imagined it, but I thought I saw shame in his face. I was probably wrong. I often imagine people are ashamed when they’re just a little self-conscious, or indifferent, or plain bored. I could feel the anger rising like acid in my chest, singeing the back of my throat. Leo started to say something, very quietly. Then he cleared his throat and said it out loud.

  “George didn’t tell me that. But even if he had. Podge is my brother.”

  He looked up, his face a riot of opposing emotions: there was shame there, or at least embarrassment, and what looked like compassion for Tommy, but mostly there was defiance, the mark of the loyal blood code by which he lived. I had a certain respect for that. But I remembered Tommy after Podge had raped him, remembered the weeping shell of a man he became, and the anger within me erupted. Against my own best interests, against the interests of the case, against everything but the heat of the moment. I had my own blood code too, and sometimes I had to be true to it.

  “Well, in every way it counts, Tommy’s my brother, Leo,” I said, and my hand was on the barrel of the Glock and I brought it up and smashed the butt against the bridge of Leo Halligan’s nose, once, twice and again, just to make sure it was broken.

  TEN

  I offered to drive Leo to the A&E in St. Anthony’s. He told me to fuck off, among other things, and made his way down the hill on foot. George Halligan lived on the other side of Castlehill, ten minutes’ walk away. Tommy joined me on the trip to Jackie Tyrell’s house up among the pine forests off Tibradden Road. The M50 was quiet, and we made the journey in twenty silent minutes. The house, at the top of a gravel drive about half a mile above the road, was a Victorian Gothic detached redbrick-and-stone villa with stained-glass windows and a bell tower, set among bare oaks and elms; within view was the stone farmhouse with paddock and stables that served as the centre of the riding school.

  I asked Tommy if he wanted to come in. He said he’d wait in the car, “and keep an eye out.” When I opened the car door, he put his hand briefly on my forearm, and went to say something and either couldn’t form the words or thought the better of it, and looked me in the eye, and nodded: a Tommy Owens apology, or a Tommy Owens thank-you, or a conflation of the two.

  “What’s the story with Leo?” I said. “History there?”

  Tommy flexed his narrow jaw and winced as if his teeth ached.

  “It’s nothing. I’ll tell you about it later man.”

  “You’ve got to start acting in your own best interest, Tommy,” I said, as sternly as I could. Tommy nodded gravely, but I could see he wasn’t going to let it go.

  “I could say the exact same for you man,” he said finally.

  The ensuing silence held for about ten seconds, and then we both burst out laughing.

  The hall was of double height and featured the kind of Christmas tree you’d expect to find in some corporate HQ: maybe sixteen feet tall, it blazed with light amid the dark marble-floored room. The Brazilian servant (I always ask now: the Philippines and Brazil are the biggest suppliers of staff to the rich Irish, for reasons I don’t pretend to understand: perhaps because they tend to be smaller, they don’t have to be given rooms, but can sleep in cupboards or on shelves instead) led me up the stairs. I asked for a bathroom first, where I looked at the damage: an eye that was red and closing, and a bunch of welts and cuts across my face. I’d seen worse in the mirror. They’d be hilarious company tomorrow. I washed them with lavender-scented liquid soap and dabbed at them with towels soaked in hot water. The maid led me into a white reception room the size of the ground floor of my house; it didn’t look particularly large in the context of Jackie Tyrell’s.

  Jackie Tyrell had changed into wide black silk trousers and a fitted black top with just enough cleavage and black lace on show to ensure I would pay attention. Good for her: a healthy dose of vanity was one of the vital signs of life, particularly in a woman. I joined her on a white couch with a weathered gilt wood finish that I recognized as being French and very expensive; there was a matching occasional table where she sat; the room was full of similar pieces in assorted configurations. Late Romantic orchestral music played through speakers I couldn’t see.

  Jackie knelt up on her knees beside me as I sat down. Her eyes were clearer than before, her manner softer, flirtier, almost kittenish; it was as if she had drunk herself, if not quite sober, then mellow.

  “Your face, my God,” she said.

  “You should see the other girl’s,” I said.

  “What happened?”

  I shook my head.

  “Lassie slaps. Handbags at ten paces,” I said.

  She looked at me for a moment, an appalled expression on her face, then agreed to see the funny side.

  “Their nails, was it?” she said, in an effortless Dublin accent.

  “Going for my eyes, they were.”

  “Fucking bitches. I hate those fucking bitches so I do.”

  She poured me a drink from a pitcher of iced liquid the colour of tea; it had the warmth of tea but more of a kick.

  “Sidecar,” she said.

  “Brandy, lemon juice…Triple Sec.”

  “Cointreau. Same difference. Sláinte.”

  “Up.”

>   I looked at Jackie as she drained the dregs of her glass and poured herself another. She couldn’t drink like this every day, unless her face was a latex mask. I looked closer. No, it was the very moist, unlined skin of a woman in her early fifties: the folds around her throat showed the first signs of the next phase. Could Botox replenish your skin to such an extent if you regularly put away what she seemed capable of drinking? My face must have been an open book.

  “This is a special occasion, Ed. I go for months without touching a drop. I assume that’s what you’re wondering? Why I don’t have a face like a neon prune?”

  “Forgive me.”

  “It’s quite all right, I take the compliment whenever I can. Always take the compliment, girls. I do like to drink though, so I’m being a bit of a glutton today. Tonight. This morning.”

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Nice morning,” she said.

  I drank up, and she refilled my glass. The music changed: low, brooding, ominous phrases filled the room.

  “I know this,” I said. “The Isle of the Dead.”

  “Rachmaninov. You’re not supposed to like Rachmaninov, you know.”

  “Are you not? Who says?”

  “The Musical Powers That Be.”

  “Yeah? Fuck them.”

  “How do you know this? You’re not secretly an expert cellist and a gourmet chef and a published poet and all those other things detectives are supposed to be while preferring not to go on about it?”

  “No. But I was a barman.”

  “And like cabdrivers, barmen are in possession of absolute knowledge.”

  “No. I worked in an Irish pub in Santa Monica called Mother Magillacuddy’s.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Well, I was young. Anyway, Irish music at the weekends, the rest of the time, we could play what we wanted. And there was a music student who worked there, a violinist. And this was one of her favourites. We used to blare it on a Monday night at all the people who didn’t want to admit the weekend was over.”