The Price of Blood Read online

  The Irish stew arrived, and for once, it actually was Irish stew—mutton, potato and onion in a white sauce—and not the brown beef concoction that often masqueraded in its place. I fell on mine in a spasm of lunchtime-after hunger; Tommy peered at his disapprovingly, pushed it to one side and ordered two more pints.

  "I need to be back for midnight mass; plenty of time to let these metabolize," he said.

  "What was in it for the journalists and the other bookies? The same?"

  "Sure. They knew when to bet, when to lay off. And the journalists could mount a defense of any jockey that made it look too blatant. Every trainer keeps a tame journo or two."

  "Any bookies we know?"

  "There was only really the one: Jack Proby. Well, and his old man, Seán, of course. But Jack was the main man, Jack was into everything, Jack—"

  Tommy stopped suddenly, and then stared across the gantry at a bottle of Irish Mist, as if it had asked him a question. His face flushed.

  "Is this how the girl gets into the picture?"

  He nodded, grimacing.

  "Spit it out."

  "She was with Proby, but…well, she was doing a lot of coke, and then she got into smack, and…"

  "And what?"

  "She turned into a total skank, you know? She’d go with anyone. And I think the idea was to pimp her out, because she was a gorgeous-looking woman, but she got too messy for anyone to deal with. Too messy for anyone to pay money for. She got barred out of here, and pretty much everywhere else. And it was really humiliating for her because she was known in the town, you know? Her old man used to run the Tyrrellscourt Arms and all. It was almost as if that was why, you know, because she was known that she was doing it. I mean, she didn’t have to. Even on smack, blokes’d queue down the street for a woman like that."

  "What happened to her father?"

  "He died not long after Miranda left school, I think. And the Tyrrells bought the pub, it’s now a kind of gate lodge to the country club."

  "When you say you think the idea was to pimp her out…whose idea was that? Leo’s?"

  "Actually might have been Jack Proby’s. He was a piece of work, that guy…it was like, he was doing these drugs and taking these holidays and all against his will, you know, he was always beefing about it, the coke was cut with bleach, the champagne wasn’t vintage, know I mean? Like he was being held hostage somehow. And I think he took it out a lot on Miranda. Mind you, I couldn’t swear to this, Ed, I mean, I was doing a lot of drugs at the time."

  "Could you swear to any of it?"

  "I don’t know whether Miranda Hart was being forced, or whether she was using her own free will, but I know people paid her money for sex down here. I know that for a fact."

  Fair play to Tommy, he lifted his face to mine so I could see the shame in his squinting eyes and the fear whipping around his mouth. Tommy Owens never lacked guts, even if sometimes it took him quite a while to remember where they were. I took a long drink of my second pint.

  "When you say you know for a fact that people paid Miranda Hart for sex, Tommy…just how do you know that?"

  "Because I was one of them."

  FOURTEEN

  I didn’t want to listen to Tommy’s explanations or excuses, and in truth, he didn’t seem in much of a hurry to offer any. We drank in silence for a while, and then I told him I’d see him later and left. I wasn’t sure exactly how I felt about what he had told me, but I wanted a break from having to look at his face while I worked it out. Everyone’s allowed a past, and if we weren’t able to forgive and forget much of what went on there, our lives would run aground on banks of grievance and resentment. That’s what I told myself, not what I felt in my chest or in my gut.

  The crowds were dwindling with the fading of the light, and a north wind dug deep into the bone. I pulled my overcoat tight around my throat and walked back out of town until I came to the gates of the Tyrrellscourt Hotel, Health Spa and Country Club, and what must have been the Tyrrellscourt Arms, a double-fronted stone bungalow maybe a hundred and fifty years old. It now functioned as a dedicated tourist office for the club and also for the stables and the stud, with brochures and a range of merchandise.

  A uniformed security guard came out at my approach and asked me if I was a resident. I said no, but I had business with Regina Tyrrell. When the guard found out I didn’t have an appointment, he wouldn’t even lift the phone. He said Ms. Tyrrell was seeing nobody that day, and I said she’d see me, on account of how my business had to do with her brother Vincent. He was still reluctant, but when I said Ms. Tyrrell hadn’t heard from her brother the priest for a long time but would obviously be anxious to on a day of such pain and distress for the family, he went back inside and made the call; when he came out and gave me the go-ahead, I wondered what she had said to him; he looked like he certainly didn’t envy me my errand.

  Hardy souls were still playing on the golf course I could see; the brochure assured me there was another course somewhere to the rear of the hotel, which loomed up ahead, white and sprawling, like a château that couldn’t stop growing, with its multiple bow windows and its Italianate campanile. Landscaped gardens and a three-tiered lawn led up to the grand main entrance; signposts pointed the way to the wings and annexes that housed the tennis and squash courts, the spa, the swimming pools and the gymnasium; as I stood on the threshold, I heard the competing roars of a car and a river; the car was a steel-gray Bentley Continental Flying Spur, and it swept its cargo of laughing blondes past the main entrance as if it could spot the checkered flag; the river was the Liffey, which sprang from here and flowed on into Dublin and out to the sea.

  The lobby was the usual nightmare mismatch of expensive styles and fittings common to every luxury Irish hotel: We Can Buy What We Like, And We Will, it screamed. Expensively tanned and scented guests wandered about exuding the relaxed ease of the rich; they seemed absurdly vivid and I an impostor, a monochrome man in their Technicolor world. The cute Scottish redhead at reception directed me to a function room jammed with highly excited children and their parents; in the middle, a red-suited Santa Claus was doing his thing. Regina Tyrrell spotted me immediately; I guess since I was the only man in the room not wearing deck shoes or a cardigan, that wasn’t too hard.

  The first thing I thought when I saw Regina Tyrrell was how much she looked like Miranda Hart, which is to say, how much she resembled my ex-wife: the same coal-black eyes and hair, the same long legs and rangy frame, the same imperious bearing. She was older, of course, but she didn’t look it, or rather, age to her didn’t look like any kind of burden; she was carrying maybe ten pounds, which showed on her body in a series of pleasant curves and helped to keep her face supple and smooth; she wore a black trouser suit and a square-cut black top. Her hair was cut short rather than piled high; her expression grim and resourceful, as if she’d taken all that life had thrown so far, but didn’t expect it to stop anytime soon. Without a word, she indicated that I should follow her up a flight of stairs to a pale pink office that looked out over the rear of the complex. Before I had a chance to take in the fading view, she sat behind a white desk and began to talk.

  "I haven’t spoken to Vincent in thirty years, out of choice. What makes you think I’d want to talk to anyone who’d have anything to do with him?"

  Her accent was melodious Dublin in its Sunday best, not lazy or glottal-stopped, not affected; unusual to hear it these days spoken by anyone of status, especially a woman; it sounded intoxicating to my ears.

  "I don’t know. Why would you? And yet, here we are."

  She turned on a pink-shaded desk lamp and looked past it at me and shook her head.

  "She said you’d be cheeky, all right."

  "Who did?"

  "Miranda."

  "I got the impression you two didn’t speak either."

  "We don’t. But given the night that was in it…"

  She blessed herself, and I noticed the silver cross at her throat.

  "Miranda said you
were there."

  "I found her. And the murderer—at least, I assume it was the murderer—hit me on the back of the head and knocked me out."

  "Francis is in shock," she said. "He went up to Dublin this morning to identify the body."

  "What else did Miranda tell you?"

  "What are you doing for Vincent?"

  "He asked me to find…no, that’s not right, he didn’t ask me anything. He gave me a name. Patrick Hutton."

  I looked closely at Regina, but there wasn’t any visible reaction. There should at least have been a flicker. I looked around the room. The walls were pale pink, the furniture pink and white, the strawberries-and-cream drapes ruched and tasseled; two gold chandeliers hung from the ceiling; the carpet was white. It was a room decorated by a twelve-year-old girl: all that was missing was the stuffed toys. I looked again at the impressive woman before me. Sometimes I felt I could spend a lifetime trying to work people out until they added up, and at the end they’d still be the strangers they began as.

  "Did Miranda not tell you that?" I said.

  Regina Tyrrell set her lips in a wry smile.

  "Miranda said there were things she couldn’t tell me. She said it might be harmful to the work you were doing. She said any of us could be next. I asked her was the second body that had been found Patrick’s. She said that I should ask you. And she said it all in this hushed voice, as if she was in a crowded bar and the bad guys were listening. As if she was in a movie. Such a drama queen, our Miranda, always was. I think the bit she liked most was ringing me up and then not telling me anything. Her knowing something I didn’t know. She liked that all right. Was it Patrick?"

  "They haven’t identified the body," I said. "But it sounds like it could be."

  "It makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the rest of it."

  "That’s why I’m here," I said.

  "To ask me questions? To poke your nose into our family affairs? What makes you think we should welcome you with open arms?"

  "I’m not used to that kind of welcome. But what Miranda said was true: there seems to be a pattern to the killings, and any of you could be the next victim."

  "And what about the Guards? Why aren’t they here?"

  "They’re conducting their own investigation. A lot of it would depend on forensics, on what they can deduce from the crime scene. And since they’ve got three to examine, that is probably where the bulk of their focus lies at the moment. They’ll get here presently."

  "And how do you know Vincent?"

  Every time she spoke his name, it sounded like the twist of a knife in her guts. I explained about growing up in Bayview with Tyrrell as the parish priest, and about Tommy’s unlikely job as sacristan providing the connection between us. At this, she visibly relaxed, as if reassured that I wasn’t acting in some sinister manner on Vincent Tyrrell’s behalf. She got up from her desk and walked to the window.

  "It never looks the same, does it, twilight?" she said. "Or maybe it’s that your eyes never quite get used to it. You look, and everything seems unfamiliar, and by the time you’ve adjusted, the light has changed, and what you saw is past, or the moon is down, and everything is equally visible in its glare, and none of it makes sense."

  As I joined her, I could see a half-moon popping out like a cymbal crash and shedding its silver everywhere. There was another golf course out there, with dramatic bunkers and water features; below it ran the river; in the distance I could see high walls and bare trees ranged around a neo-Gothic mansion; beyond lay the gallops of Tyrrellscourt stables.

  "Maybe that’s what trying to really look at your life is like, look at your own family," she said. "That moment between twilight, when everything is strange and mysterious, and moonlight, when you see everything plain, and nothing stands out: everything is clear and nothing has any meaning."

  Maybe I was so struck by her image that I forgot what we were doing, or maybe I had spotted something by the walled house that distracted me; when she next spoke, it was as if to a man who had made his own way to the dining table without waiting for her to lead.

  "What I’m saying is, maybe an outsider’s eye is just what we need, Mr. Loy."

  She went back to her desk and sat down and turned the light off. Her face in the shadows immediately looked older, gray and tired, her great dark eyes pools, inviting strangers at their own risk.

  "Tell me about the family, then. Tell me about the Tyrrells," I said.

  "I don’t know about the Tyrrells. But I can tell you about myself," she said. "My mother died giving birth to me. I think that was hard on the boys. I never knew any different, but boys need a mother if they’re to avoid…a certain kind of coldness. Anyway, I grew up here, went to the local school, boarding school in Dublin."

  "Is that where you got the accent?"

  She grinned.

  "I got the accent in Dublin, but not at boarding school. Everyone told me to get rid of it. Maybe that’s why I hung on to it. Too late now."

  "I like it a lot."

  "Listen to you. Say anything so you would. Say mass if you were let."

  She laughed, an uneasy laugh, and it struck me that, beneath the brittle sheen, she was an uneasy woman. Maybe when you sat opposite a detective, only fools and knaves weren’t. Or maybe she had a lot to be uneasy about.

  "So this would have been sixties, seventies?"

  "Left school in ’74."

  "F.X. would have been running the show here by then?"

  "For ten years. Francis trained his first winner at nineteen. Won the Gold Cup the following year, ’65. And on and on."

  "And what about you? University? London?"

  "Nah. I came back here. I missed it like mad. And the horses. I was one of those pony girls. In boarding school up in the Dublin mountains…Jasus, Mother Borgia, that was the mother superior’s name, Mother Borgia, you wouldn’t believe it now, but back then…anyway, I hated the place, all these snobby southside bitches, but there was a riding school nearby, and a couple of local lads who’d sneak me in and sneak horses out…oh, we had such a time of it. I think that’s where I got the accent. And of course, it gave the nuns conniptions, it went against everything they stood for, which wasn’t education at all, it was how to arrange flowers and give a dinner party and get into a sports car without showing your knickers so you could nab some young businessman and make him a fragrant wife. And certainly not be letting him down in front of his boss talking like some common-as-muck Dublin Chrissie. We’ve got over that now, at least. Anyone in this country with a few bob in his pocket’s as good as anyone else."

  "And anyone without a few bob?"

  "Let them go out and work for it. That’s what the Poles and Latvians and all are doing, and fair play to them. If there’s a generation of Irish too lazy to work, that’s a shame for them, but what are we supposed to do about it? Sponsor them to drink all day and go to the shops in their pajamas?"

  "So you came back to Tyrrellscourt, and trained?"

  "Not really. You have to be…touched by God to be able for that."

  "Touched by God?"

  "Laugh if you like," she said. "But it is a kind of vocation. I’ve often watched Francis during the day, inspecting the horses and the lads in the morning before work begins, checking the earth and watching the sky, supervising the feeds, right the way to patrolling the yard at night, listening for a restless horse, the wrong kind of cough, and all in silence: there’s a kind of devotion to it, it’s…I used to think he was like a monk. Only the horses had called him, not God."

  "Your brother Vincent said much the same: the horses knew F.X., they didn’t like Vincent at all."

  "Good sense they had," she said, the wistful look she had had in talking about F.X. curdling when it came to her other brother.

  "What caused the falling-out between you and Vincent?" I said.

  Regina simply shook her head. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to hear it from her. She looked quickly at her watch, and I pressed ahead before I was cut o
ff.

  "So you didn’t have a similar vocation?"

  "No. The only thing I can compare it to is a musician. The kind who, they make the records, they give the concerts, they have the career, but the only time they’re truly alive is when they’re playing, is in the music. And F.X. was like that, at race meetings, he’d be hiding behind the horses, and when they won, there were no fists in the air, no big shite talk to the crowd like some of the knackers you see masquerading as trainers these days, it was just a quiet nod, the sense that this was as it should be. And I loved to play piano, classical, my favorite thing now, but if you think you can play the piano, and then you hear a Barenboim, a Rubinstein, well if you’re not a total idiot, you understand immediately what you don’t have. And to try would be futile, really. But you want to do something, you believe in what’s being done. So I did what I could. I ran the house for him. I took night courses in bookkeeping so I could keep an eye on the money. I took cookery courses so when owners came to visit, they could bring their wives and children. I made sure the gardens were kept up. And I dressed up and went with him to Cheltenham and Ain-tree and Leopardstown and all, chatting to the Queen Mother and so forth."

  "Like a wife."

  "It wasn’t unusual where we came from. Eldest son inherits the farm—"

  "Youngest becomes a priest, unmarried sister comes home and keeps house for the brother—"

  "Not unusual at all."

  "She never married."

  "Nothing like that," Regina said sharply. "There was more than one fella, over the years. But none of them…I don’t know, unless you’re going to settle for less. And I had all this, I didn’t need any man’s money."

  She gestured toward the window, and then around the room.