The Wrong Kind of Blood (Ed Loy PI) Read online

  “Here, drink this,” I said.

  “I need to get to the hospital, man. I’m in agony. Look at the fuckin’ state of me.”

  His right arm was swollen and inflamed around the break. He cradled it uneasily with his left, like a nervous father with a very small baby.

  “You need to answer some questions first. Drink it down.”

  I leaned over the pool of piss and tipped the glass of vodka to his lips. He knocked it back in one and exhaled in quick bursts, as if his stalled heart had just been revived. Some degree of shame seemed to return to him also; he got slowly to his feet and moved off the ground he’d sprayed; his cheeks blotched crimson. His silver Air Nikes squelched on the tiled floor.

  “Ah fuck sake,” he moaned. “Fuck this!”

  “So what were you looking for, Dessie?” I said. “And how did you come to have the keys?”

  “I don’t have to tell you shit! Now open the door, or I’ll, I’ll ring the cops and tell them I’ve been kidnapped.”

  I looked at him for a few seconds to see if he’d laugh. He didn’t.

  “Off you go then,” I said. “I’m sure they’d be very interested to have you explain what you were doing ransacking a dead man’s flat.”

  “And what are you doin’ here?”

  “I’m looking into Councillor MacLiam’s murder, Dessie. And if I called Detective Sergeant Donnelly and got him over here now, what do you reckon he’d think? ’Cause what it looks like is, you loaded the councillor up on smack, took his keys, dumped him in the ocean, and then, when the heat died down, you came round here to see what you could steal. Why’s Dave Donnelly going to think any different?”

  “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t…didn’t need to take his keys, he, he gave me this set.”

  “He gave you them? Why, because you were his best friend? His P.A. maybe, pop in three mornings a week for a little bookkeeping and light burglary?”

  “The fuck should I tell you anything? You’re gonna call the cops one way or the other, call them and have done.”

  “Depends what you tell me. I need information, Dessie. If I get it, and if you’re not lying to me, then we’ll see.”

  “We’ll see? That’s what you tell your kids when you can’t get them what they want for Christmas. We’ll see means fuck you.”

  Dessie Delaney, at maybe twenty-three, was little more than a kid himself. He grimaced and looked at me quickly, beseechingly, like maybe I could help him. Maybe I could, but I wasn’t going to let him know that.

  “Right now, we’ll see means we’ll see. If you fancy taking your chances with the Guards, be my guest.”

  Delaney looked at the floor and muttered something about people thinking they were very fucking smart going around breaking other people’s arms. Then he began to talk.

  “I done a few jobs for Podge Halligan, right? I wasn’t one of his boys, one of the lads that go round with him, not at first, I was just, I knew a couple of them and they were like, Dessie, you up for this man?”

  “What kind of jobs?”

  “Ah, drivin’ mostly. They done a few ATM jobs, you know, raidin’ the delivery truck. Couple of post offices down the country. I never had a gun or anything. Mad cunts, some of those cunts, shoot you for lookin’ at them. You were lucky that day in Hennessy’s, George Halligan came along, or you’d’ve been fuckin’ done. Anyway, Podge comes over to me one night, has a job for me, this fuckin’ politician cunt he knows has a little smack habit and he’s finding it hard to get a regular supply without goin’ places it’s not a great idea for politician cunts to go. So I get the gig, bein’ MacLiam’s dealer, yeah?”

  “On account of you having your own supply anyway?”

  “I wasn’t using then, man. Swear. E and dope and whatever, but not smack. And the whole thing is, Podge doesn’t deal in it either. So he knew to come to me.”

  “Why?”

  “The girlfriend’s brother used to deal smack out in Charnwood, yeah? So Podge knew I had an in there.”

  Delaney thrust his chin out and a glow of stupid pride lit up his dull eyes.

  “Why doesn’t your girlfriend’s brother deal there anymore?”

  “’Cause these cunts from Drimnagh threw him off a warehouse roof, broke his fuckin’ back. Paralyzed from the neck down. Died soon after. Anyway, the Charnwood heads are sound if they know you, and they were happy to help me out on account of what happened, give me a decent rate an’ all. Only thing was, they had me smokin’ H too, each time I’d come to pick up the gear, just to seal the deal, yeah, and before I knew it I was shootin’ up an’ all.”

  “How did you get in touch with the councillor?”

  Delaney forced a grin.

  “I went to one of his clinics, right? Don’t know why they call them that, full of old dears moanin’ about their neighbors’ dogs shitein’ on their lawns, anyway, came straight out and said I heard he’d had difficulties getting what he needed. He gave me this address there and then, and a couple of hours later, I dropped off the gear. Same story once a week, then a couple of times he couldn’t be there, so he gave me a set of keys, said I could let meself in, have a drink, watch the telly, whatever, leave the gear behind.”

  “And what, was Podge getting you to charge way over the odds?”

  “No, no, that was the whole thing, Podge was givin’ me the cash to buy the H, but we were giving it to MacLiam for nothing, yeah?”

  “No. Why were you doing that, Dessie?”

  “George Halligan runs a book for all these lads who have cash-flow problems and can’t get ordinary bookies to take them on. And the thing about MacLiam is, his wife’s loaded but he’s got fuck all ’cept what she gives him, and she’s some kind of holy Mary who doesn’t want him to be out drinkin’ or gamblin’ or whatever. Anyway, fuck her, soon the councillor’s placin’ bets with George big-time, horses, dogs, football, all on tick. First he does well, up about twenty grand, but George wins all that back. Eventually he’s down about a hundred and twenty, I’m worried for the cunt, you know? But nothin’ happens, George is lettin’ him go further and further down. I reckoned the smack was to get him gambling in the first place, like in a casino the high rollers get free drinks and rooms an’ all.”

  “And did George finally call in the debt? Is that what happened?”

  “Not that I know of. But that’s what I reckoned would happen eventually, he’d take it to the wife and say if she didn’t pay, he’d let the press know about her husband’s heroin habit an’ all, yeah? And she’d probably be payin’ off for years to come, first the debt and then for it all to be hushed up. That’s forward thinkin’, business thinkin’.”

  Except George Halligan might want a little more for his time and money than a cash payoff every week.

  “I mean, they owned him, yeah?” Delaney said. “Eventually, that’s what the Halligans like, to own people. Find a use for them sooner or later.”

  “And if the people object, what do the Halligans do?”

  Delaney looked at me with fear in his eyes.

  “They do what they want man. They do what they want.”

  “What did they do to the councillor then, Dessie? Try and get him to change his vote on the golf club rezoning?”

  Delaney looked blankly at me, then shrugged.

  “I don’t know about any of that, man.”

  “Did you see Podge kill MacLiam?”

  “What makes you think Podge done it? He put too much time and money into the cunt to go wastin’ it like that.”

  “Maybe the councillor wouldn’t do what he wanted.”

  “Sooner or later, he would’ve. Anyway, who said he was taken out? Could have been an accident, or suicide, or whatever.”

  “Did he strike you as suicidal?”

  “No, but…he was a junkie, yeah? You’re never more than a step away from death, know what I mean?”

  “Is that how you live, Dessie? One step away from death?”

  “Ah, I’m all fucked up on it so I am. Sh
aron, the girlfriend, told me, don’t go playin’ the big man, stay away from Charnwood, they’ll just fuck you up, and they have, them an’ Podge Halligan together. I was just a driver, I was gonna get a taxi plate. ’Cause Sharon’s brother had the virus an’ all, if those cunts hadn’ve killed him, he’d’ve died anyway, I says no fuckin’ way are we havin’ the kids grow up round that, so moved out here, near the sea an’ everything, rich cunts be needin’ taxis all day. Course then, wasn’t one of Podge Halligan’s boys only in school with me, he’s all Dessie the Driver like this, ’cause I used to boost cars with him years ago, and I needed the bread, that’s why I agreed to do those jobs for Podge. Otherwise—”

  “Otherwise you wouldn’t be trashing a dead man’s flat to see if there’s anything worth stealing?”

  “I was just lookin’ for his stash, know what I mean? Just lookin’ for…or if there was any dinars lyin’ about…wasn’t as if I was gonna rob the telly, yeah?”

  He glanced at me quickly, a tight smile of shame on his face. The smile faded, and he flushed with the kind of harsh, merciless self-knowledge that only a bottle or a needle could dispel.

  “I wouldn’ve cut you, man, swear. Never use knives, I just reached for it. Just panicked, yeah?”

  I looked at Dessie Delaney, sweating and shivering, and wondered whether he could change, whether he even wanted to. Then I thought of his kids at their party in McDonald’s, smiling as if they didn’t have a care in the world, as if the future looked bright, as if they’d have the same chances the other children whose parents lived by the sea would have.

  I went in the bathroom and checked my throat in the mirror. Delaney had snagged me with the knife, no more; once I’d wiped the blood away, it didn’t look like I’d done much more than cut myself shaving.

  I locked the flat up and put a bin liner on the passenger seat and drove Delaney to the Accident and Emergency Unit at St. Anthony’s on Seafield Avenue. I gave him my mobile number and asked him to ring me if he thought of anything else, or if he needed my help. He looked at his arm and then stared at me, as if to say I’d given him more than enough help for one day. His eyes receded into their sockets, beneath a brow corrugated with mistrust. He walked into the A&E without another word. It wasn’t the last I’d see of Dessie Delaney.

  Thirteen

  I PARKED ON THE COAST ROAD BY SEAFIELD PROMENADE. The midday sun was burning channels of blue through the slush-colored haze that was the regular summer tenant of the Dublin sky; the yachts and the swimmers sported once more on the brimming sea; my shirt clung to my back in the heat. I took my jacket off and wandered across to the bandstand and down the central steps to the lower-promenade walk. Where yesterday a dead man lay, now a gang of scrawny, sunburned boys in green and white football strips stood with fishing rods, casting their lines into the sea.

  I called Linda Dawson, but her mobile just rang off each time, and I couldn’t leave a message. I rang directory inquiries and asked for John Dawson in Castlehill, but the number was unlisted. Peter’s body was being brought to the church this evening, so I’d see Linda there. Strictly speaking, I was no longer working for her. But her husband’s death and Seosamh MacLiam’s death were all part of the same case.

  I still had to speak to Brian Joyce and Mary Rafferty, and I needed numbers for Leo McSweeney and Angela Mackey, but the prospect of listening to more local politicians tell me less than I already knew wasn’t tempting. I made a quick call to Rory Dagg and asked him a question or two about James Kearney; fortified by what he’d told me, I cut up by the Seafront Plaza and turned down the entrance to Seafield County Hall and Civic Offices. In the foyer I headed for the desk and asked to see the chief planning officer.

  “Do you have an appointment?” said the receptionist without looking up. She sounded like she was eating something.

  “Special delivery,” I said, tapping my breast pocket.

  She looked at me then, swallowing, her cloudy blue eyes skeptical. She was a bulky, shapeless woman in her mid-forties with chocolate stains around her mouth; her dyed brown hair was cut in a bob that didn’t suit her broad, pasty face; she looked like she was wearing a hat that was too small for her.

  I tapped my breast pocket again. Her eyes seemed to deepen in color.

  “I can sign for that here,” she said uncertainly.

  “Has to be the man himself,” I said. “That’s what we decided.”

  “And ‘we’ are…?”

  “It’s a family matter,” I said. “Mrs. Joseph MacLiam. Aileen Parland.”

  I watched her face quiver at the mention of the name. She looked nervously around her, picked up a phone and spoke quietly into it, said sorry a couple of times and replaced the receiver. Sighing extravagantly, she hauled herself out from behind her desk, crossed the foyer with a heavy tread and disappeared into an elevator. I leaned over the counter to see what, apart from chocolate, had been absorbing so much of her attention. A puzzle book lay open by her keyboard, its chocolate-stained pages daubed with letters and numbers written in a broad, childlike hand. I felt sorry for her, and then ashamed of myself, an emotional sequence I recalled from all the divorce cases I had worked, where you always found out something about people you wish you hadn’t, usually because you couldn’t stop until you had.

  By the time she got back, I had counted the money in the envelope. Barbara Dawson had been anxious to buy something from me: my silence, my assent to a verdict of suicide on her son, my agreeing to leave Linda alone, whatever; so anxious she’d been willing to pay me twenty grand. Even if you can afford it, that’s still a lot of money.

  The receptionist sat down hard behind her desk, her face flushed, her head down, her breath coming in steady gasps. There was a rustle of paper, and her hand went to her mouth.

  “Top floor, through the glass doors, right down the corridor to the door at the end,” she said, her muffled words rising gradually from the oblivion of chocolate to which she had returned.

  In the elevator, I could hear the rumble and clang from the builders below. I thought of the body that had been buried down there for twenty years, the concrete corpse: could it be my father? The timing fit, but the idea wouldn’t take: he was in Australia, with a completely new family; he was living rough on the streets of London; he was fixing engines in a garage in Brazil. It was only because I was back in Dublin that I expected him to turn up; this was where I had left him, after all, not long after he left me. But he could be anywhere, and he probably was alive; it was morbid and sentimental to imagine otherwise.

  At a desk outside James Kearney’s office sat a slim sixty-something woman dressed in beige with a terra-cotta complexion and a blow-dried orb of pearl-tinted hair. As I approached she rose and said, “Mr. Parland?”

  I didn’t contradict her. She fixed me with a gleam of efficient charm, introduced herself as Mrs. McEvoy and, ignoring the supplicants waiting on the two charcoal couches that flanked her desk, ushered me straight into Kearney’s office, announced me as “Mr. Parland,” and swished briskly out in a cloud of Issey Miyake.

  If you couldn’t be a millionaire, it seemed like the next best thing was to become the county planning officer, at least to judge by the view. From James Kearney’s office you could see past Seafield Harbour to the city, south along the coast all the way to Castlehill, and west across half the county to the mountains, and all over, as the sun burned off the last of the gray, the great cranes stood black against the sky: one here, three there, half a dozen above the largest sites, as far as the eye could see and farther, the cranes swooped and swung and loomed, hovered and turned and rose, until the ground beneath their feet seemed provisional, subject to their imperious whim. It was as if Dublin had become a city of cranes; like great steel titans of the property boom, they delved on the horizon, churning up the city’s past and concreting it over so some unknown but inevitable future could be built, some enticing, elusive dream of the new.

  James Kearney dressed like a national school teacher from the 1950
s, in a tattersall shirt, herringbone jacket, cavalry twill trousers, polished brown brogues and bottle green knit tie. His only concession to the weather was that shirt and jacket were of lighter material than the brushed cotton and tweed they impersonated; otherwise, he looked ready to thrust a shovelful of coal into a classroom stove. He was a tall man with a thin face stretched tight over high bones; his pale hair was side-parted and fell lightly across his forehead, just as it must have done when he was eleven. He gave my hand a damp, loose grip, extended his sympathies on my sad loss and motioned for me to sit at a circular glass-topped table. He sat across from me and began unwrapping a package of sandwiches he had taken from a Tupperware box.

  “Lunch hour. I’d offer you one, but I’ve only sufficent for myself,” he said in a careful, peevish voice, biting into a thick wholemeal wedge filled with ham and egg mayonnaise. “Prices have gone very dear these days. Better to make your own. Safer too.”

  He unscrewed the top of a thermos flask and poured out a cup of steaming brown liquid.

  “You might have a cup of tea—if we could find another cup.”

  “I’m all right, thanks,” I said.

  He looked relieved at this, and put the top back on the flask.

  “Now, Mr. Parland,” he said, “just what is it I can do for you?”