The Wrong Kind of Blood (Ed Loy PI) Page 17

  I was eighteen, and had spent the summer working behind the bar in the golf club in Castlehill, listening to men lie about themselves and their lives and watching women pretend to believe them. Sometimes I’d try out my own lies on their daughters, and by the end of the summer, they were pretending to believe me too. I had money saved, and once I got my exam results, I was going to stay for a month with Kevin O’Rourke’s brother, Brian, who had moved to California and was managing an Irish pub called Mother MacGillacuddy’s on Main Street, Santa Monica. Then I’d come back and start at university.

  The Leaving Cert results came out on a Friday late in August, and we all went into school to get them. My physics teacher reckoned mine were good enough to secure me my first choice, which was a place studying medicine at Trinity College, Dublin. She was pleased for me, and she gave me a hug and kissed me on the mouth. Miss Stephens wore tight pencil skirts and heels and sheer blouses through which you could see her bra, and everyone was scared of her, and I remember thinking that if Miss Stephens could kiss me, anything was possible.

  We got to Hennessy’s by about midday, and fed the jukebox and shouted and laughed and drank our way through the afternoon. At around five, a couple of the lads had been sick, and some of us went across to the chipper and sat eating our cod and chips in the church car park, watching girls from the local convent school playing tennis on the public courts and yelling half-witted remarks at them. Then it began to rain, and we went back to Hennessy’s, but after I had a mouthful of my pint, I started to feel queasy. I told the lads I’d see them after, and walked home. In the house, I called out for my mother, but there was no sign, and I figured she hadn’t made it home from work yet. I decided I’d have a shower, that that would sober me up enough so I could go back to Hennessy’s and drink some more. After all, you didn’t get your Leaving results every day.

  The immersion had been left on, unusually, but at least that meant there was hot water. We didn’t actually have a shower, but you could attach a plastic shampoo spray to the bath taps and it did much the same job. I washed my hair and sprayed the grime of Hennessy’s off my body and thought of how proud my mother would be when she heard my results. My father had walked out in April, and the house had been quiet without his drunken rages, his tantrums and sulks and peevish, embittered ranting. It wasn’t the loss of his business that caused him to behave so obnoxiously. He had always been like that. “Your father is a very disappointed man,” my mother used to say, as if that somehow explained it. Neither my mother nor I had admitted yet that we were relieved that my father had left, that we didn’t much care where he had gone, and that we hoped he would never come back, but I think that was what we both felt. My mother in particular seemed happier than she had ever been, younger and more alive.

  I put clean clothes on in my room. My rucksack was packed, and my passport and plane ticket were in my desk drawer, along with dollars and some traveler’s checks. I was counting the twenty-dollar bills again, just to make sure a very selective thief hadn’t broken in and stolen a couple of them, when I heard a noise from my parents’ bedroom. I went out onto the landing and knocked on their door. There was no answer. I tried the handle, but the door was locked. I called my mother’s name, and banged on the door, and shook the door handle. I heard urgent whispers, and movement inside, and then my mother came to the door. She wore a pale pink satin robe I had never seen her in before. He hair fell in strands across her face, her lips were full and smeared with red and she had tears in her mascara-smudged eyes. She was frightened, and kept swallowing and trying to speak, but the only word she could get out was my name. I stepped into the room and saw a man on the other side of the bed. He had his back to me, and was pushing the tail of his white shirt into his navy suit trousers. He had a plume of gray-white hair, and smelled of musk and fresh-cut pine.

  I looked at my mother. Her eyes were trying to explain, pleading with me to understand. But I didn’t want to understand why John Dawson had been in her bed. I turned and went into my room, got my rucksack, passport, money and ticket and hurled myself downstairs.

  That night I slept on a bench in the airport; the next morning I flew to London, and then to L.A. The night after I arrived in California, I was serving beers and shots in Mother MacGillacuddy’s. I never went home.

  I was still in the Gut, smoking a cigarette, staring at the photograph of John Dawson and my father, when my mobile rang. It was Rory Dagg.

  “I need to talk to you. I made a mistake earlier. Now I’ve checked it out, I’ve realized that the new Seafield County Hall was a Dawson job,” he said.

  Of course it was. I nodded, and suddenly felt a little light-headed. My hands began to shake. I put the photograph back in my pocket, threw my cigarette away and took a few deep breaths.

  “Hello? Mr. Loy? Are you still there?”

  “I’m still here. Where are you, Mr. Dagg?”

  He gave me his address. I said I’d be there in five minutes.

  On my way back to the car, I let the thought I’d been suppressing since I’d seen the concrete corpse take shape: Did John Dawson murder my father and hide the body so he could be with my mother? Did my mother play her part in my father’s death? And if they had spilled blood together, why did they remain apart?

  Sixteen

  RORY DAGG LIVED IN THE OLDER OF THE TWO ESTATES that surrounded the Gut. His road was built over a period of about twenty years; detached villas and bungalows built in the late thirties had segued into spacious semidetached houses by the 1950s; mature horse chestnut and sycamore stood at intervals along the street.

  Dagg’s house was a semidetached about halfway along; the attic had been converted, and there was an extension above the garage. His black Volvo Estate was hidden behind an enormous silver SUV. A pale, petite woman in her forties with straw blond hair swept back in a navy hair band was in the front garden, doing something tentative to some lavender plants. She wore a black trouser suit and shoes with heels and looked like she should be behind a desk or at a business meeting or anywhere but out in a hot summer garden. She smiled at me, a smile that did nothing for the anxiety in her small blue eyes.

  “Gardener,” she said with a sigh, as if staff would one day be the death of her.

  “Edward Loy,” I said.

  “Rory’s in his office. The entrance is around the back.”

  Her voice was high, nervy, schoolgirl-elocuted. She pointed toward the garage. A black tongue-and-groove door opened onto a narrow lane around the side of the house. The back garden was scattered with tricycles, scooters and other toys; a paddling pool in the shape of a big green car sat in the middle; a rusty old red swing took up the rear.

  I knocked on the rear door of the garage and Rory Dagg let me in, stumbling as he shut the door behind him. The front of the room had computers and year planners and box files and all the other components of a modern office. Step behind a green felt partition, however, and it was like stepping back in time. A pair of battered brown leather armchairs sat in one corner with a low oval coffee table between them; there were slatted blinds and angle-poise lamps and a wooden ceiling fan. There were two wooden drawing boards, with an inlaid covering of what looked like olive green lino, several old filing cabinets and a worn oak desk and chair. Beneath the window at the far end there was a row of shelves; above that, a wire-frame daybed. Everything in the room was weathered and seasoned and redolent of the past. Dagg bustled about, tidying up papers and files and straightening pieces of furniture. He rubbed his hands and exhaled loudly, as if we’d just come in after a long walk on a very cold day.

  “Like a drink? I’m having a beer. But there’s whiskey, gin, vodka. We have all the major booze groups covered.”

  “No thanks.”

  There was nothing I’d’ve liked more than a good belt of whiskey, but I figured one of us might as well be sober. Dagg smiled blankly at me for a few seconds, as if I’d set him some moral conundrum by refusing a drink, then shrugged, went to a small fridge by the
door, and got himself a bottle of Warsteiner. While he was looking for the opener, which seemed to have gone missing, I turned my attention to the office walls, which were hung with draftsman’s plans, all framed. Each was signed “R. Dagg” in exquisite copperplate.

  “These are very fine,” I said. “Are they yours?”

  “My dad’s. I’m named after him.”

  “I thought you said he was a foreman.”

  “So he was. But a cat may look at a king. He had dreams, Mr. Loy, dreams of rising in the world. Knew he couldn’t make it himself. But here I am, the living embodiment of all those dreams.”

  Dagg found the bottle opener and flipped the top off the beer. Foam spewed up over his hand and his tan chinos. He tipped the bottle to his mouth, drying the back of his hand on his green plaid shirt. Beer leaked onto his cheeks and trickled down his chin.

  I looked around the room again. Almost everything in it looked like it had belonged to his father, or it could have, like his memory was being preserved. Dagg had sprawled in an armchair, legs and arms spilling out at angles, his beer in his fist and a bored look on his face. He looked like he had regressed from capable family man to sullen adolescent.

  “How’d you get on with Jim Kearney?” he asked, a satirical edge to his voice.

  “He was very keen to claim some money that had nothing to do with him. But he lost his nerve at the last minute.”

  “He doesn’t usually. Mind you, the person doing the bribing should have something at stake too. Like adultery, isn’t it, bribery: to keep it safe, both parties must have something to lose. You should ask Caroline about that sometime.”

  “Caroline?” I said, stupidly, reflexively, already knowing who it would be.

  “My wife, Mr. Loy, my much better and for worse, till death do us mercifully part amen.”

  I needed to press on, before Dagg vanished into the bottle for good.

  “So you say Dawson’s built the town hall,” I said. “How did you find out?”

  Dagg reached for some of the papers he had tidied away earlier.

  “Dad kept everything. And I haven’t thrown any of it out yet. For reasons I don’t like to dwell on.”

  He riffled through a pile of papers and extracted a brown daybook.

  “It was my dad’s last job for Dawson’s. This is the daily report book for the job. Who worked, what they did, what supplies they need, any expenditure, and his comments.”

  A note of pride had entered Dagg’s voice.

  “Was that usual?” I said.

  “It was for my father.”

  “Is it conceivable that someone could have buried a body in the foundations of the building without your father’s knowledge?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so. I mean, he wasn’t there twenty-four hours a day, but there would have been security. And in any case, if someone had stolen in at night and done it, he would have seen the work in the morning, there would have been an investigation, he wouldn’t have let it slide.”

  “Not even as a personal favor to John Dawson?”

  “No. He was a meticulous man. He raised me on his own, after my mother left him. Because things were tough when they started out, and she didn’t like having to scrape along. And he raised me, you know, as well as any mother could have. I never had the wrong clothes, I never went without, he’d check my homework, he knew in detail what I was doing in school. In detail. And the thing was, you couldn’t…he wouldn’t let something go. If I stayed out when I shouldn’t have, or didn’t try with an essay, he’d pursue me, you know? Cross-question me until he had the truth. And he was the same on the job. So…no, not even for John Dawson.”

  “Why was it his last job?”

  Dagg drained his beer and sighed.

  “Because I failed, for the second time, to get enough points to do architecture. And I took a course in civil engineering instead. And I…well, it sounds ridiculous, but I broke his heart, Mr. Loy. His dream for me was to be an architect. It didn’t allow for any deviation…he gave up his job, and…gave up on life, basically. He drank, and sat around, and waited to die. He died…of a broken heart.”

  Dagg shook his head. His eyes were damp. His reasons for building a museum in his father’s honor were becoming clearer. He went to a filing cabinet, took out a bottle of Jameson, poured himself a slug and knocked it back. When he spoke again, it was in a drunk’s voice: peevish, slurring, embittered.

  “I mean, he was out of order, know I mean? But we could have worked it out. But I just said, forget it, man; I was out of that house. We barely spoke for five years. And when we did…he was gone, know I mean? Just…gone.”

  Dagg rested his forearms on the filing cabinet and hung his head.

  I looked through the daybook; each day had been filled out in a neat printed hand, and signed “R. Dagg.” I looked at the signatures and then compared them to those on the framed plans. They were identical. The shelves beneath the bed contained tens of identical brown-covered daybooks. I took one out: the same neat printed hand, similar details, all signed by R. Dagg. But in this case, the signatures were freer and less meticulous.

  “Where were these daybooks kept?” I asked Dagg.

  “At home,” Dagg said.

  “And these plans? Where did he keep those?”

  “In his office at Dawson’s. They used to have premises down on Victoria Terrace. Why?”

  “I don’t know why. Where was your father from?”

  “Where was he from?” Dagg repeated.

  “Yes. Don’t you know?”

  “From Clondalkin. Monastery Road.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Any family? Brothers or sisters?”

  “No.”

  “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  There was plenty, but I wasn’t going to hear it tonight. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. I left him there, pouring more whiskey in his glass, lovingly tending his own pain.

  The sun had dropped below Castlehill. The front garden was empty. I snipped a cone of lavender between finger-and thumbnails, rubbed it between my hands and inhaled; I needed to get the stench of self-pity out of my nostrils: Dagg’s and mine. There was an entire history of feeling about my father that I had beaten down; I felt it welling up when Dagg was talking. I remembered his pride in my achievements at school, mingled with bewilderment that his son should shine where he never had. And I wondered whether he’d be prouder of me now—and was astonished that I wondered.

  There was a sheet of notepaper tucked beneath my windshield wiper. It smelled of lavender too, or maybe my hands made everything smell that way. It had a mobile phone number and, at this stage it seemed, inevitably, the words fagan’s villas written in capitals underneath. I walked back as far as the gate. The lights had gone off in the garage, and the blinds were shut; I guessed Dagg was settling in for the night. His wife stood at an upstairs window. I saluted her with the notepaper, and she turned away.

  It all went back to Fagan’s Villas, and finally, so did I. I walked around the horseshoe-shaped cul-de-sac with its ugly, boxlike semidetached houses. When they were built, they were two-up, two-down affairs clad in dirty gray pebble dash with no bathroom and an outside toilet; now almost every house had an extension as big as itself slapped on the side, and a roof window for the attic room, and decking in the back garden, and an SUV or a brand-new hatchback on the curb, or both.

  I couldn’t remember which house had been my mother’s, which my father’s, which John Dawson’s or which his wife Barbara’s. But they had all grown up here, tarred with the brush of hailing from “the Villas,” burning to move out and move up and leave it all behind. Now the houses sold to families who counted themselves fortunate to get them, and who saw Fagan’s Villas as a destination, not a starting point. Home at last.

  There were two houses that didn’t have extensions, or new windows; the first was at the center of the horseshoe, and its missing wing made its neighbor look lopsided. I walked
up the path, but before I reached the front door, I saw a “Sale Agreed” sign lying on the ground by the side gate. The front door was opened by a blond woman in her thirties with a baby in her arms and another on the way; the small hallway was piled high with brown cardboard boxes sealed with moving company tape. I couldn’t remember if I had a cover story, or even if I needed one, so I told her the truth: that my late mother used to live around here, and I wondered whether there might be any of her old neighbors left. The woman said she had just moved in, that it was mostly young families, but that she thought she’d seen an old lady in the corner house on the left, the one with the absolutely gorgeous garden.

  The corner house on the left had no extension either, but I suppose it did have an absolutely gorgeous garden, if you were an old lady or planned on being one eventually: there was a central circular bed of red and orange dahlias, yellow and pale pink begonias and purple sweet pea, the lawn was well watered and thick with clover, and it was bordered on four sides by beds of pale blue delphiniums, white snapdragons and yellow-spotted orange lilies. I could hear the television from the road; by the time I got to the front door, I could practically follow the plot; it was one of those cop shows where male and female forensic pathologists trade flirty one-liners as they delve about in dead people’s entrails. I rang the bell and thumped on the door for good measure, but the letter box snapped open immediately. I knelt down to see in. Amid the yapping of a small dog, a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles peered out.

  “I’m not deaf, you know,” an elderly woman’s pert voice said.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you at this late hour,” I said.

  “What do you want, love? Only, me program is on, I’ve been waiting all day for it.”

  “My name is Edward Loy,” I said.