The Price of Blood Page 20

  "Good digs," I said. "Can I be your boyfriend?"

  "You come with the wrong bits. Have you been drinking already? Jesus Ed Loy, you’re falling apart."

  "Business. Seriously, how’d a pointy-headed journo like you afford a place like this?"

  "I didn’t. My mum and dad bought it for a song in the eighties, when it was a total shambles; thinking ahead, I’d just been born; it was left to me when Daddy died in ’99, by which time it was already worth ten times more; now…"

  Handel’s Messiah blared in the background, a melodramatic underscoring of the unspoken truth between us: that both Martha’s parents had been murdered, and that I had helped solve the case.

  "Just lucky, I suppose," I said, and Martha laughed.

  "Well, yes, and it’s vitally important for pointy-heads like me to have a nice place to begin with, preferably one you bought before the boom, or even better, with the mortgage paid off. That way, we can bemoan the dreadful property bubble and sneer at everyone’s obsession with house prices and cheerlead for a bust in the market so that ordinary people can afford houses in the areas they grew up in and be impeccably liberal and PC about it all at absolutely no cost or risk whatever to ourselves."

  "Not just a pointy-head, a self-loathing pointy-head. Is that cooking I smell?"

  "It is cooking. I figure the kind of woman who falls for you, or on you, only knows her way to one room in the house, so I thought you might like your lunch."

  "I did have a dinner offer, you know. She’d bought the turkey and everything."

  "And what happened?"

  I shook my head. I couldn’t quite keep the brittle ball in the air; it was too soon, and I was too disturbed by what I thought I’d discovered about Miranda and Patrick Hutton. Martha vanished and reappeared with a tumbler of whiskey and a smile.

  "Fiona Reed spoke warmly of you when I told her you were coming here."

  "I’m sure she did. Was she here?"

  "She’s just gone. She’s here most nights now."

  "Listen to you, Anaïs Nin. How warmly did Superintendent Reed speak of me?"

  "She said you were a total fucking bollocks who needed to have his legs broken. But I could tell she meant it with affection."

  "Is that a diesel thing?"

  "We’ll do our own jokes, thank you. Me kitchen, you TV. It’s all lined up."

  St. Jude’s was one of three industrial schools Martha looked at in the documentary, which was called Say Nothing. It was the least severe case, in that nobody had actually been killed and anonymously buried there, say, but it wasn’t easy viewing. The basic components were all in place: half-educated Christian Brothers, some of whom had themselves been physically and sexually abused, inflicting that abuse on others; abuse among the boys themselves, as the old turned on the young; a collective disbelief among the wider community, including priests, teachers, the Guards, a justice of the peace, and even journalists on the local paper, that amounted to denial; harrowing testimony from a man in his midforties who looked about sixty, red-faced and swollen, about the serial abuse he had suffered from the age of five, by religious brothers he named and others he said he never saw; a caption ran underneath his interview saying he had hanged himself before the program was shown; a bland nonapology apology from the archbishop of the diocese with a semolina face and a prissy, sibilant voice, who barely conceded that any abuse had been committed by priests or religious at all, in such a hurry was he to condemn "the wider decline in standards among society as a whole, particularly in the area of chastity"; a wheedling excursion in self-justification and evasion from the minister for something or other, keeping the shit from sticking to the government of the day, probably, that kept insisting, eventually in a rather menacing fashion, that what we had to remember was that these events, terrible though they were, all took place in a different time. The St. Jude’s section ended with a bunch of apparently happy boys swarming around the front lawn with the river view, and the announcement that St. Jude’s was now being run as a boys’ home under the joint control of the departments of education, health, and social welfare.

  I finished my drink by the window, looking out at the same river and wondering how many tales of ruined lives and broken hearts it carried from its source through the hard-knock city of Dublin to the sea. Martha joined me with a refill, which by now I badly needed, and a drink for herself, and I toasted her achievement in silence.

  We ate mostly in silence, too. Martha had cooked pretty much everything you could: turkey, ham, roast potatoes, sprouts, bread and cranberry sauces, the lot; there was plenty of wine, and Christmas pudding to finish. It all tasted good, and I was glad to have it. But I didn’t feel like celebrating, and Martha, usually relentlessly upbeat, didn’t either. Maybe it was the documentary, maybe it was the case, maybe it was just that, when you’re alone, you eat your Christmas dinner at a table full of empty chairs.

  Afterward, Martha made some coffee and took out a red-and-black bound A4 notebook.

  "Right, that’s Christmas done," she said.

  "Thanks for me dinner," I said.

  "Easy for you, only have to eat it once. I’ll have leftovers until February. Okay, Say Nothing covered the first incarnation of the school, ending in the late eighties. Subsequent to that, it reopened staffed by lay people, supervised by social workers, but there were two abusers among them, one from a care center in Wales where there had been systematic abuse."

  "This would have been through the nineties."

  "It finally closed in ’98. That was to have been the second part of the film: how, when the Church’s influence declined or was removed, the conditions in residential homes did not improve; in fact, in certain cases, they got worse."

  "And why didn’t you make that film?"

  "Because people involved—doctors, civil servants, care workers and others—refused to cooperate, and in several cases threatened us with legal action. And there was a marked reluctance on the part of the national broadcaster, all of a sudden, to tangle with so many different forces. So what you get at the end of Say Nothing is basically this complete fucking lie, these happy boys gamboling about on a front lawn they were still forbidden to walk across. I could tell you three of those boys at least whose lives were ruined by the abuse they suffered during that time, after the Church had withdrawn from St. Jude’s."

  "Not completely though. I mean, there was still a chapel, it was still basically a Catholic institution. It had its own chaplain pretty much. Didn’t it?"

  Martha sat back and smiled.

  "You tell me," she said.

  "Father Vincent Tyrrell," I said. "But he says he had nothing to do with anything."

  Martha poured herself another glass of red and looked through her notes.

  "All right. The way it happened, the abusers in the nineties, they found a couple of older boys happy to serve as willing helpers. And they got to join in, too. But most importantly, they helped to conceal the identities of the chief perpetrators."

  "Including people from outside the school."

  Martha sat forward and looked at me keenly. "What makes you say that?"

  "I don’t know. Did you find people in the town would talk to you about it all?"

  "No way. All they want to talk about is horses, or that fucking country club for rich Americans and golfers. It’s like it never existed."

  "Despite the fact that the casualties were wandering around Tyrrellscourt for years afterward, doped or smacked out of it, the walking wounded of the town."

  "I know. They turn that into almost a badge of pride, you know, oh yeah, it’s not just the Celtic Tiger down here, we have our share of Characters. And because a couple of burnt-out musicians from the sixties decamped there, they try and sell the whole package like, you know, Haight-Ashbury on the Liffey. A few of the people in McGoldrick’s will talk, but more in general, and it always goes back to the Church, you know, it has to be some priest to blame. I mean, fair enough, the Church did its share, but it’s a fraction o
f what went on."

  "Was your film instrumental in getting St. Jude’s closed down?"

  "No, it was already shut. It might have thwarted any possibility of it ever opening again, but I don’t know. What did you mean by the chief abusers being people outside the school?"

  "Can I have a look at that last scene again, all the boys by the river?"

  "I have an image of it here," Martha said, and showed me a scanned photograph of the boys of St. Jude’s by the river.

  "This would be about ’92," she said. "And here’s the legend—sorry, you have to keep turning over." On the next page, there was a pencil tracing of the photo with each face numbered, and a list of the names to match the numbers beneath it. I flicked back and forth, and quickly spotted Leo Halligan, who was fully grown then. Patrick Hutton’s name was there, but his head was almost completely hidden behind another boy’s: that boy had vivid eyes and blond hair, and his name was Terence Folan. And there was a fourth boy, whose face I had difficulty matching with the one I knew, but whose name rang a bell: Gerald Stenson.

  "Did you come across this guy?" I said. "Steno?"

  Martha nodded.

  "The barman in McGoldrick’s. He reminded me of a hippie from the first time ’round, actually, someone who you think must be really sweet and love and peace because he’s got the hair, then you find out he deals bad acid, or he’s a rapist."

  "Anything concrete to base that on?"

  "Nah. Except for extreme prejudice against guys with ponytails."

  "Extreme prejudice means you kill them."

  "What jury’s gonna convict? What did you mean by abusers coming from outside the school that’s the third time I’ve asked and I gave you your dinner so if you don’t answer you can fuck away off with yourself."

  "If you give me any more publicity, I won’t be able to do my job."

  "So I won’t give you any more publicity."

  "Promise. Swear."

  "I swear, if I get anything I can use that won’t land me with a libel action, I’ll take full credit and cut you out totally. If you had a lawyer, he’d fire you."

  "I do have a lawyer."

  "Where is he?"

  "He fired me. It was the practice, apparently stretching back I don’t know how long, but an earnest little researcher like yourself should be able to find out, for a couple of likely lads a year from St. Jude’s to be taken on as apprentices at Tyrrellscourt stables."

  "By whom? F. X. Tyrrell?"

  "That’s what I was told. But the lady who told me—"

  "Wouldn’t stick around to cook your dinner."

  "It may have been the head man who picked them out, I don’t know. But F.X. still takes credit for horses from his stables, he’s still hands-on there, so there’s no reason to suppose he wouldn’t handpick potential jockeys."

  "Nobody said anything to me directly about this. But when it emerged that there was no interest in making a follow-up film, the decision came wrapped up in a ribbon that said Bloodstock-Industry-Tyrrellscourt-Stud-National-Good-News-Story-Irish-Win-At-Cheltenham-Shut-The-Fuck-Up-You-Fat-Troublemaking-Shit-Stirrer."

  "You’re just big-boned."

  "I have a horrible personality, though."

  "F. X. Tyrrell’s late ex-wife, Jackie, told me that they hadn’t had much of a sex life of any kind. She put it down to a kind of neutered quality in him, an absence of a sex drive, rather than anything else. F. X. Tyrrell personally requested that his brother, Vincent, come down from Bayview, where he had been parish priest for twenty years, to serve as his own personal prelate in Tyrrellscourt: say private masses, bless the horses and the jockeys before races, take care of all that. The archbishop of the time—"

  "The one who looks like a nun’s granny—"

  "Apparently was happy to facilitate this request, so down Vincent went to perform these arduous duties. And also to pay pastoral visits to St. Jude’s."

  "Is there more? You say Vincent claimed he wasn’t involved in anything."

  "This is a family that seems to specialize in looking the other way. It was Father Vincent Tyrrell who hired me. I didn’t think he was…in the front line, so to speak. Now I’m not so sure."

  "Is there more?"

  "I was in St. Jude’s last night. There was a guy who let me in. One of Tyrrellscourt’s walking wounded. He brought me up to a room—a room I think belonged to, or at least was furnished by, Vincent Tyrrell, and basically simulated being raped. It was pretty grotesque."

  "Who was the guy?"

  "That’s a very good question."

  "Ed, don’t fuck me around."

  "I’m not. He’s a strange-looking guy, I was given one name for him, I suspect he might be someone else. I don’t know which is the truth, and until I do, I don’t even want to tell myself, let alone you. Do you understand? Because that’s how I work, I feel my way through the dark until there’s a ray of light. And no light yet."

  Martha took that. By her smile, she even seemed to like it.

  "The impression he gave though was that he hadn’t seen who had done it to him. Or that he had, but he couldn’t tell any one."

  "So what, F. X. Tyrrell, facilitated by his brother, plus one or two of the older lads, was coming in to rape selected boys, grooming them or training them in or assessing them and then selecting them as apprentices for his stables."

  "Is one possible version."

  "Or Vincent Tyrrell himself doing it all, with the promise to F.X. that he’ll pass the best ones on when he’s done."

  "Is another."

  My phone rang. It was Dave Donnelly. At first, I thought I wouldn’t answer it; I figured I deserved a day off from the Donnelly maritals; then I remembered he’d promised to check out Don Kennedy’s place for case files.

  "Dave?"

  "Ed. You’re going to want to see this yourself."

  "Where are you?"

  Dave gave me an address in Ringsend, and I said I’d see him there.

  "There’s one other thing, Martha," I said. "Tyrrellscourt. I assume that’s some Anglo family from the eighteenth century or before. Is it just a coincidence that F.X. has the same surname?"

  "And this would rank in priority where?" Martha asked.

  "Low, I guess. But it would be nice to know."

  "I’ll see what I can dig up, Ed."

  I thanked Martha O’Connor for the dinner, and she thanked me for the company. Part of me regretted leaving her alone for the evening, but it was overwhelmed by the part that was relieved I didn’t have to stay; I suspect she felt the same way: when I left, she was clutching a box set of Barbara Stanwyck movies. Loneliness is sometimes easier solved alone than in company, and especially on Christmas Day.

  TWENTY

  I told Martha O’Connor I needed to see Dave Donnelly urgently, but I didn’t want to see him yet; I was haunted by the spectral memory of Vincent Tyrrell on the altar that morning, afraid he would die before the light I was searching for would come. It would have been quicker to stop off in Ringsend before heading out to Bayview, but at this stage in the case, in any case, I needed the time that driving brought, the sense that as I watched the dark road, the case was smoldering at the back of my mind: when I reached my destination, with luck, another spark would be lit.

  On the coast road into Seafield, I reached for the radio, and came in on a Bothy Band tune as it was starting, "Martin Wynne’s/The Longford Tinker," from the first album. I’d never been much for trad growing up in Dublin, seeing it as the preserve of beardy blokes in jumpers and the women who looked like them, but a Donegal barman at Mother McGillicuddy’s gave me an education that showed me the error of my ways. (He’d got the job because he used to come in every Monday night, one of the terminal cases, and demand we play "Coinleach Ghlas An Fhomhair," a beautiful, melancholic song from Clannad’s second album, before they turned into a kind of musical backdrop to aromatherapy; he’d sit and drink and pretend he wasn’t crying until the owner took pity on him and offered him a job on condition he didn’t
cry behind the bar. He was still desperately homesick, and left at the first opportunity, but not before he had he taught us all a thing or two about Irish music.)

  The Bothy Band played like a runaway horse you’d just about clung on to; the delirium of pipes and fiddle on "The Longford Tinker" was euphoric and tortured, swaggering and mournful all at once; it felt like the sound track to the case, where the exhilaration of progress told an increasingly tragic tale; like any case, it was absorbing and relentless; by the end of the tune, I was thirty kilometers over the limit and had to brake hard just to get my bearings.

  The church car park was locked, so I parked up near the new houses on the other side and hopped over the hedge into the church grounds. I don’t know what I expected Father Vincent Tyrrell to be doing on Christmas night. At best I thought he’d be drunk on Manzanilla and full of bile. But there he was, alive and possessed with energy, darting around his table, blue eyes flashing. The table was covered with a chart made out in different colored inks. At the top was the legend:

  Leopardstown Festival—

  St. Stephen’s Day, December 26th

  Below, there were seven columns, one for each race, each with a title and a time:

  FIRST RACE: 12:25—Maiden Hurdle for Five years old and upward

  SECOND RACE: 12:55—Maiden Hurdle for Four years old only

  THIRD RACE: 1:30—Juvenile Hurdle for Three years old only