The Wrong Kind of Blood (Ed Loy PI) Page 18

  The letter box snapped shut, the door opened and a tiny old woman with a meringue of white hair stood there, her arms stretched open as if to enfold me in them.

  “I saw you at the church. God love you, son,” she said, “and poor Daphne not cold in the ground.”

  The dog, a Jack Russell, nipped around my ankles. The television blared something about blood types and postmortem putrefaction.

  “Inside, Mr. Burke!” snapped the woman, and the dog scuttled back into the house.

  “Will you come in, son?” she said. “I’ve nothing in the house, but you could have a cup of tea.”

  “If it’s not too much trouble. I thought…since you must have known my mother—”

  “Didn’t we all grow up together, me, your ma and your da, God help him. Come in out of that.”

  Fluorescent striplights made the house fantastically bright, and exposed the worn, frayed carpets and the torn, peeling wallpaper; there was a sharp smell of damp and dust and cleaning fluid and gravy. A gallery of photographs in cheap frames stood on a veneer sideboard in the living room.

  “Eleven children we raised in this house, Mr. Burke and me,” she said. “Scattered all over now: Germany, Holland, the States, a couple in Cork. Grandchildren too, so many I lose track. There’s a birthday present to send off every week, sometimes two.”

  “Mr. Burke?” I said, pointing at the Jack Russell, who had retreated beneath the sofa.

  “Ah, bit of a laugh, you have to, don’t you? And he reminds me of him, to be honest with you, sometimes, grumpy little shite that he is.”

  The dog yapped. Mrs. Burke went out to the kitchen. The television was still blaring, advertisements now: property investment opportunities in Budapest and Sofia. The English absentee landlord who exploited his tenants was a much-vilified figure in Irish history; little wonder, I suppose, that we had internalized our colonial master’s methods and sought now to emulate them, buying up cheap property in recovering countries so we could make a profit at the local population’s expense. It was our turn now.

  Mrs. Burke reappeared with a gold metal tray laden with tea things. She held the tray out to me; I reached to take it from her, but she shook her head.

  “Underneath,” she snapped, “the legs swing down.”

  I reached underneath the tray and swung the legs down. She set it on a threadbare orange hearthrug and began pouring tea. The television began to shout about the urgent need to have a hot tub installed in your home today.

  “Do you mind if I turn the TV off?” I said.

  Mrs. Burke looked as if I’d suggested tossing the set out the window.

  “Me program is on,” she said in a quiet, hurt voice, and passed me a cup of tea. She sat on the sofa, which had a red throw on it, settled some patchwork cushions around herself and sighed. Her thin legs barely reached the ground; her eyes were improbably large behind her glasses; in her beige cords and fawn polo-neck, she looked like a small child in a granny costume. Mr. Burke scraped out from underneath and leapt up beside her. I sat on a stiff-backed chair by the window. The television was showing the victim’s coffin going into the ground.

  “Poor Daphne,” she said. “She was quite a beauty, you know. Broke a lot of hearts, so she did, but she was a good girl. Oh yes.”

  “Whose heart did she break?”

  “Johnny Dawson’s, for one. He set his cap at her. But she only had eyes for your father. Still, no harm done. A gang of them there was, all friends really. Those lads were a holy terror, the Three Musketeers.”

  “My father and John Dawson?”

  “And the other lad, what’s this his name was? Kenny? Kenny, that’s it. But they were just lively young fellas, there was no harm to them, not like the other tramps, the Daggs.”

  “Rory Dagg, was it?”

  “Rory Dagg was all right. But his brother, Jack. Big Jack, they called him. That thrilled him, he’d strut about like a king to know someone was calling him Big Jack. Big eejit, more like.”

  “I thought Rory Dagg was from Clondalkin.”

  “He was originally, but he landed here when he was five. Some family trouble, brought up by the granny. Anyway, Rory done all right for himself, foreman for Dawson’s, but the other blackguard? In and out of reformatory and jail and so on. And of course, some say Jack wasn’t as bad as he was painted, that Rory did his fair share, at least when they were younger. There was no real way of knowing, I suppose.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Sure, even their granny couldn’t tell them apart. None of the teachers could either.”

  “Twins?”

  “Peas in a pod. But what do you care about the Daggs, sure it’s your mother you want to hear about. Very stylish young one now, course she had the job in Arnotts, all the girls on that counter had to look after themselves. But she was a dote. I used to mind her sure, and then she’d babysit the young ones for me.”

  “And Barbara Dawson?”

  “Barbara Dawson? Barbara Lamb as was?”

  She gave a shrill, forced, anxious laugh, the kind of laugh women give when they’re about to slight a rival, and know they risk making themselves look bad, but can’t stop themselves.

  “Barbara Lamb. The airs and graces of her. When you think of where she came from. She never had much time for babysitting, I can tell you. Not that a married woman’d want her in the house. Some cheek, that one had.”

  Mrs. Burke continued to speak, but silently, to herself, her head nodding vigorously, her eyes fixed on the TV screen. The forensic pathologists were pleading with the coroner to be allowed to exhume the recently interred body.

  “Barbara was a fisherman’s daughter, just like my mother, wasn’t she?”

  But Mrs. Burke wasn’t listening.

  “In a red swimsuit in our back garden, because her da had theirs dug up for vegetables he couldn’t make grow, the eejit. And Mr. Burke home on his dinner hour, and me coming in from the shops with the three youngest dragging off me, and the pair of them flinging water at each other and laughing away, and she soaked through, soaked now, in a red swimsuit, with the big red lipstick lips and painted toenails on her and all. I sent her across the road fast enough, I can tell you. The nerve of her.”

  She laughed again and looked around as if for support from some invisible jury. Then she foostered around beneath the cushions until she surfaced with a naggin bottle of Smirnoff and, as if I wasn’t there, poured a shot into her teacup and drank it down.

  “Running round with Johnny Dawson one week and the Kenny fella the next. Never could tell that pair apart either. At least your da had the sense to steer clear. The airs and graces of her, that’s what I could never get over. When everyone knew…”

  Mrs. Burke stopped herself. She looked across at me as if she had forgotten I was there.

  “Another cup of tea, son?”

  “No thank you. What were you about to say?”

  “What’s that?”

  “About Barbara Dawson? That you couldn’t get over the airs and graces of her, when everyone knew…?”

  “Everyone knew what, son?”

  Mrs. Burke’s mouth had set in a slight smile; her eyes were sharper; her voice had a note of cunning about it once more. She had said enough, more than enough, when the national motto had always been, “Whatever you say, say nothing.”

  “And you’re still in America, are you, son? You’re doing very well there, aren’t you? What’s this you are, a doctor? Everyone knew Daphne Loy’s son got a very good Leaving and was going to be a doctor. Fair play to you now. Bless us and save us, they get up very early in America, don’t they? Mine are out the door at six every morning.”

  I asked a few more questions, but she answered blandly, in platitudes: my father was a decent man, and a hardworking man, and wherever he was, she prayed God he was happy; she thought Kenny had moved out of the area; any photos she had from that time were of her family only, and she wasn’t sure where half of those had got to. I thanked her for the tea, and Mr. Bu
rke bounded from the sofa and nipped around my ankles when I rose from my chair. On the television, the grave had been dug up, and the lid of the coffin raised, only to find the corpse gone. In the hall, Mrs. Burke dipped her finger in the small holy-water font by the front door, and marked my forehead with a cross. As I left, she smiled and mouthed a silent prayer.

  Seventeen

  I LIVED IN A CITY WHERE THE GRAVES HAD ALL opened, and the dead arose and walked the streets and fields until they came to the houses in which they had once lived; their families opened the doors and the living and the dead looked at one another like strangers; then the dead moved off again, not permitted to find rest, while the living pursued them, trying to see in their faces some marks of familiar character, some bones of recognition. I thought I saw my mother and father, but when I caught up with them, neither had a face, or at least, a face I could discern; there were dead children too, but they were impossible to catch; I followed the legions of the dead as far as the coast, but when they reached the shore they changed course, in perpetual motion toward some unknown destination, and I was left alone, staring at the sea.

  I awoke soaked in cold sweat, my hair matted to my head. Someone was hammering on the front door, and my heart pounded in sympathetic refrain. By the time I got down the stairs, the hammering had stopped; there was a brown Jiffy bag on the doorstep and the sound of a car pulling away. The dawn air was almost cool; dew shone on the scorched grass; I shivered and went inside.

  I had a hot shower, dressed and ate breakfast while I worked my way through the contents of the Jiffy bag. Peter Dawson’s bank statements made interesting reading. As far as I could make out, he seemed to be pulling down about eighteen thousand a month from Dawson’s, plus another six or seven from assorted standing orders, presumably income from his rental properties, but his account was never less than forty grand overdrawn. There were continual cash transfers and withdrawals, along with many five-figure checks. His outgoings otherwise were modest: the properties seemed to have been bought outright, without mortgages; there were no standing orders to building societies; he had utility bills to pay but little else. It looked not only as if Peter shared Councillor MacLiam’s penchant for gambling and hard drugs, but that he spent the rest of his time tossing his money out the window. Or as if someone was bleeding him and good. In the last year, the situation had intensified: three properties were sold, the proceeds—between three and four hundred thousand at a time—were lodged, and then, within weeks, the money hemorrhaged from the account in tens, twenties and fifties. The sums were vast, way larger than what would be needed to bribe local councillors to vote in favor of rezoning a golf club.

  I tried Linda’s number, again with no success. I rang Rory Dagg’s wife on her mobile.

  “Caroline Dagg?”

  Her voice sounded strained and wary. I pressed ahead.

  “Hello, this is Edward Loy here, I was wondering if I could talk to you about your uncle by marriage, Jack Dagg? Rory’s father’s twin brother?”

  “Mr. Loy. I…hold the line a moment, would you?”

  After a muffled exchange, Rory Dagg came on the line.

  “He’s dead,” he said.

  “Your uncle, Jack Dagg, is dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “You see, I was talking to someone who remembers your family from Fagan’s Villas—”

  “It’s not a good time to talk, Mr. Loy,” Rory Dagg said, and hung up.

  I rang a body called the Private Security Authority, and asked them a few questions which they were happy to answer. I rang the airline to ask about my luggage, and was told there’d been “no sign of it” for days by someone who made it clear she felt I was being an unreasonable pest by expecting them to find it in the first place; finally she hung up on me. I slammed down the receiver and the phone rang immediately, as if on contact. It was Aileen Williamson, and she wasn’t happy.

  “Mr. Loy, as far as I’m concerned, you have breached the terms of our contract; I want you to cease all further investigations on my behalf.”

  “Why the sudden change of heart?”

  “The office of Seafield County manager contacted me yesterday, claiming that you presented yourself as my brother—”

  “They chose to believe I was your brother.”

  “With no assistance from you?”

  “I didn’t contradict them until they found out otherwise.”

  “They said you were rude and abusive to the point of slander. That it could be highly compromising for me and for my father if it emerged that I had hired you—”

  “Sounds like a threat. Was Kearney looking for a bribe, do you think?”

  “Mr. Loy, I can’t afford any more negative comment to surround the name of Parland!”

  “I thought it was the MacLiam name you were anxious to clear.”

  “Don’t be insolent. Did you assault a person called Desmond Delaney?”

  “I broke a person called Desmond Delaney’s arm. But there was a knife on the end of it at the time, pressed up against my throat. What, is Dessie Delaney putting the bite on you too?”

  “He said he felt I should know what was being done in my name. He said my husband had been a good friend to him.”

  “Dessie Delaney kept your husband supplied with heroin. How much money did he squeeze out of you?”

  “He said the only course open to him was to go to the press. I can’t—”

  “I know, you can’t have the good name of MacLiam Parland Williamson dragged through the mud—”

  “How dare you speak to me like that? Do you know who I am?”

  “I know who you are all right, and how many names you have too, although I don’t know yet if you have a different personality for each of them. The problem is, you don’t know who I am. Because you hired a private detective, and no one wants to know who a private detective is. He’s too shabby and disreputable and hustle-a-buck ordinary to make the grade at your charity balls and grand-a-plate dinners, and that suits him fine, because that way, he can get on with what he’s been hired to do. That’s the only point of him really, like a dog that’s been bred to work, he can’t relax by sitting around. He’s got to be prying and poking and stirring things up until somehow, out falls the truth, or enough of it to make a difference. Now, so far, I’ve found out that a criminal gang were supplying your husband with heroin via Dessie Delaney, that he’d run up huge gambling debts to the same gang; what they hoped to get for their time and money I can’t say yet; possibly they wanted to bribe him, or blackmail you. I know it was the heroin overdose that killed him, but not what he was doing in the water. But I’m going to find out; his death is connected to at least two other deaths, and one of them is my father’s. And if you’re so upset about the bad press your late husband’s getting, why don’t you take it up with your father: if he can’t mount a little press campaign on behalf of his widowed daughter, either he’s not much of a father or he’s no kind of newspaper baron—or Superintendent Casey’s decision not to dig too deep on this and the Dawson case suits a lot of those powerful people you claimed you didn’t mind me upsetting. And by the way, you can’t fire me. I work until your check runs dry, and it’s got plenty of juice in it yet.”

  I stopped for breath, ready to hang up. Aileen Williamson was too quick for me.

  “You haven’t lodged the check yet,” she said.

  “Not yet, no.”

  “I’ve canceled it. Good-bye, Mr. Loy.”

  And she hung up on me too. It was the latest craze, people hanging up on me. Three of them this morning, and it wasn’t ten o’clock yet. Dead bodies piling high, but God forbid anyone should help me find out why. Well, it didn’t matter anymore if I didn’t have a client. I had a stake in this that went beyond the job. It was time to stop waiting for this case to solve itself. It was time to stir things up.

  I dialed another number.

  “Who are you and what do you want?”

  George Halligan had a crisp Dublin voice with a dangerous
edge, matured in whiskey and smoke and casual brutality.

  “It’s Ed Loy,” I said. “Isn’t it time you bought me that lunch?”

  Strictly speaking, it was accurate to say Podge and George Halligan were neighbors, but the six properties that went to make up the exclusive development called “Redlands” where the brothers lived had gardens the size of football fields, with mature broadleaf trees dotted throughout, so not only were the chances slim of hearing the couple next door have a row, the chances of seeing them at all were pretty remote. The land was a chunk the golf club had sold off ten years earlier, when the commercial rates they had been avoiding finally caught up with them. Building starts had been at a low ebb back then, so there wasn’t much fuss about the development.

  We were seated at a black glass table on a black marble deck shaded by lime trees. A South American girl, dressed in pretty much the same servant’s livery as the Filipina in Aileen Williamson’s house, served champagne and orange juice. An eastern European blonde who looked like Grace Kelly’s hard-faced sister and whom George introduced as one of his “wives” appeared briefly, and giggled dutifully at the assorted lewd propositions George made to her. George counted off fifteen hundred Euro from a platinum billfold and she clipped off on steel-heeled stilettos, trailing all manner of intoxicating odors in her wake. A couple more women in bikinis, who looked like models and might well have been “wives” also, were sunbathing by a marine blue swimming pool. There would be scallop and clam salad for lunch, followed by lobster. I could see an enclosure with a couple of horses down the way, and a tennis court over by the pool. It looked like it might be fun to live in George’s world. The major drawback was, George’d be living right there alongside you.

  “Orange juice with it? Do you know what you call that, Ed? Mimosa. Sounds better than Bucks Fizz, doesn’t it, mimosa? Bit of class. Cristal this is, none of your sparkling rubbish. No juice for me. Wine we’re having with lunch now is French, from the Loire Valley, a Château…Château…ah, Château whatever-the-fuck. I like wine and all, spend a lot of dinars on it these days, but, in my not very humble opinion, it’s impossible to talk about wine without sounding like a cunt.”