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

  “Kay Preston, but yes, I’m the youngest Burke. Thank you, eh…”

  “My name is Loy. My parents grew up here.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Quarry Fields, you lived in. And then your da…”

  She left it unfinished.

  “That’s right. I’m not long home. My own mother died a few days ago,” I said.

  Kay insisted I come in for a cup of tea. If she noticed my disheveled appearance, she didn’t mention it. We sat in the dusty, fuggy living room, and I told her I had visited her mother, and she started to cry: she hadn’t seen her since last Christmas, although they spoke regularly on the phone; she drove up from Cork yesterday. Meals on Wheels had found her; she’d died in her sleep. The dog was up in the room, wouldn’t leave it, not a bark out of him. I talked a bit about my mother, and we drank the tea, and she said a couple more of the family would make it over for the funeral, but not all of them: it was too far, and even if you could get time off work (and not all of them had the kind of jobs that allowed that), you couldn’t always afford the fare. That was when my mobile made the double bleeping sound it makes when you receive a text message. I didn’t look at it, didn’t think it could be urgent, not urgent the way a call is. Kay raised her eyebrows as if to say it was all right by her if I checked it; I shook my head and asked her about Peter Dawson, whether her mother had mentioned him visiting. She said she had, she was quite excited, one of the Dawsons, although of course she knew his da when he was nothing.

  “Did she say why he had visited her? Was there something in particular about the past he wanted to know?”

  My question had been a little direct, and for a moment I thought she was angry with me, but she was too caught up in her own grief to be suspicious. I was just someone from the old neighborhood, another local, and I knew from my mother’s funeral what a comfort their mere presence could be.

  “She said he wanted her to look at a load of old photographs. His da, and yours, probably, and a load of others. Ma said she got a bit bored, other people’s photographs and all that, even if they had all grown up together, so she got out hers, but he was thrilled, started to ask loads of questions about everyone, even the Daggs she said.”

  “Even the Daggs? Are you sure she said that?”

  “Absolutely. Because when we were growing up, she’d always say, Oh if you don’t eat this or wear that, you’ll end up walking the roads, a tramp like one of the Daggs. Which I always thought was unfair, because Rory Dagg, the son, was a fine thing, always was, you wouldn’t have minded, put it that way. Anyway, Ma said she had to practically throw him out, you’d swear he was writin’ a book he asked so many questions.”

  I finished my tea, and declined a second cup, said I would have to go. Kay clearly wanted company, but just as clearly realized that she couldn’t expect me to stay. She bustled about for a bit opening windows, then said in an improbably bright tone that she had to go to the funeral home shortly to pick out a coffin. Then she sat down hard on the old sofa with the red throw and the patchwork cushions and began to cry like a child that needs her mother, a convulsive, inconsolable sound. I tried to say something, but she waved me away; I wanted to tell her where the vodka was hidden, but I’m sure she found it; as I left, the dog—Mr. Burke—scuttled downstairs and across the living room floor, only to stop, screeching, when he saw it wasn’t his mistress; he slid beneath the sofa and began to whimper.

  I sat outside in my car and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. I felt exhausted, and like nothing I had done since I had got back had made a difference, like all I was doing was wandering among the dead, like Dublin was a city of the dead, a vast necropolis, and if I couldn’t shake them off my trail, I’d be next. And then I looked at my text message. It read: “Gone to house, meet me there NOW! Love LXxx.”

  I was there in four minutes. I rang her number on the way, but it went straight to voice mail. I still had the keypad to open the security gates, the key to her house; I got sixty-six out of the old Volvo on the way up Castlehill. Four minutes.

  I was too late. When I got to Linda’s house, her beautiful corpse was still warm, but as dead as if it had lain in the cold earth for a thousand years. Outside, the police car sirens howled a Dies Irae that blew about the hills like dust on the wind.

  Blood

  SOMETIMES IT’S ALL DOWN TO BLOOD.

  Blood can be wrong in itself.

  The presence or absence of A and B antigens (molecules found on the surface of your red blood cells) helps to determine whether your blood is type A, type B, type AB or type O. The Rh (Rhesus) factor is another antigen present in 85 percent of the population, meaning they are Rh positive; the remaining 15 percent are Rh negative. Rare blood types are defined by the presence of uncommon antigens, or more usually, the absence of minor antigens commonly found in most people’s blood. About one-tenth of 1 percent of the population have a rare blood type; about one-hundredth of 1 percent of the population have a very rare blood type. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with that—unless you are seriously injured and need a blood transfusion. If two incompatible blood types are mixed, the results can be deadly. In general, everyone can receive type O blood. But the other antigens you possess or lack go to determine how rare your blood is, and the rarer your blood, the more likely it is that you’ll need a transfusion of blood of that precise type. And if you don’t get the right blood, you’ll die.

  Blood can go wrong so easily.

  These are the diseases of the blood: anemia, which is low red blood cell count; leukemia, which is cancer of the white blood cells; hemophilia, where your blood won’t clot properly; and hepatitis, a viral disease of the liver. Some forms of them are treatable, even curable. Some forms are simply death, pulsing in your veins.

  Blood can be wrong from the very beginning.

  Your blood type is your genetic inheritance. You have two genes, one of which you inherit from your biological mother and one from your father. A and B genes dominate, while O is recessive. That means that if you have type O blood, your parents must each have possessed at least one O gene, and that must have been the gene you inherited from each of them. If you inherit an A and an O, the A dominates; similarly with B. So for example, if you have type O blood, and you discover the man you thought was your father has type AB blood, or if you have type AB blood, and your child has type O blood, then the man cannot be your father, the child cannot be your child. The blood was never right in the first place.

  Part Three

  Lost but not forgotten, from the dark heart of a dream.

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, “Adam Raised a Cain”

  Twenty-one

  D.I. REED WAS THE FIRST OFFICER ON THE SCENE. I thought she was going to arrest me—the Guards at the scene certainly seemed to feel that someone should be arrested, and that I was the most likely candidate, and I agreed with them—but they don’t make you a detective inspector for nothing. Fiona Reed was cool and careful, and she wasn’t going to waste an arrest if she didn’t have enough evidence to bring charges. She listened to a brief, highly edited account of how I’d spent the night with Linda in a hotel, how I’d had to go to my house for clean clothes, how I’d met Kay Preston née Burke and commiserated with her on the death of her mother, how I’d responded to Linda’s text by driving here to meet her, only to find her dead body. I showed her the text on my mobile, and she noted the time of the call. Then she asked if I would accompany one of the Guards to Seafield Garda Station to make a voluntary statement.

  Maybe neighbors didn’t turn out for a hearse anymore, but you can depend on a crowd if the cops show up. As I walked down Linda’s drive alongside a uniformed Guard, and got into a blue, white and yellow marked squad car, it must have looked like I was being arrested anyway: the sporty blonde stood by her black Mercedes convertible in a pink jogging suit, a manicured hand to her open mouth; the bloated tanned man in the white bathrobe had come right down to the pavement and stood with his arms folded on top of his protruding belly,
his lips compressed in a righteous smirk; two men in business suits were frozen on their lawns as the car swept around the development and drove up the walled slip road. The sky was low with clouds and darkening; I could feel the damp air cold in my bones.

  The Guard took my statement from me, and then I spent the rest of the morning in an empty interview room at Seafield Garda Station. Dave Donnelly came in early on and asked for my mobile, which I gave him. For a while I was moved to a cell, but they kept the door open, to make it clear I wasn’t under arrest. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything except the fact that Linda was dead. I sat and stared at the dirty ocher walls, numb to everything except the sense of outrage I felt. I could still smell her on my fingers, on my arms; her scent clung to me like grief. My face was in my hands when Dave Donnelly stuck his head around the cell door. He came in and stood by me and gave my shoulder a brisk rub with his knuckles.

  “That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” he said, his tone as dry as an undertaker’s. I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk to him, or anyone else. But it wasn’t really up to me. When I looked up, his face was blank.

  “The NBCI are here, and they’d like to ask you a few questions,” he said.

  “The NBCI?” I said.

  “The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation,” he said. “They’re coming in to, uh, lend us their assistance. With the Linda Dawson murder. And with cases associated with it.”

  I couldn’t tell whether Dave was annoyed or relieved, or whether he had given up altogether. And then he winked at me, and I had a pretty good idea.

  I was led to the interview room I had been in when I was told that Peter Dawson’s body had been discovered. Two plainclothes detectives were waiting for me. D.S. Myles Geraghty was about medium height, heavy build, maybe three stone overweight; he had salt-and-pepper hair the consistency of wire wool and a shiny tan suit that looked like he had slept in it. D.I. John O’Sullivan was lean and tall with close-cropped brown hair; he wore cream chinos, an olive green linen shirt and a bottle green cord jacket; his shoulders and arms were powerfully built. O’Sullivan nodded and Dave left the room.

  Their routine was: Geraghty played the clown, while O’Sullivan was strict but fair. I had already decided I wasn’t going to tell anyone about how the Halligans’ men were all over John Dawson’s house, maybe not even Dave: I wanted to take this case down alone. Dave could take any credit he wanted afterward, especially if it helped his career, but this case was about my dead now, and I needed to put them to rest myself. Geraghty had already started his shtick; when I tuned in, he was on his feet, riffing on the subject of private detectives.

  “A private dick, is it? Fast cars and bourbon chasers and a forty-five, what? Is that the way it is, Ed, shoot-outs and double-crosses and dames?”

  He turned up the collar on his tweed jacket, narrowed his eyes and bared his teeth. He looked like something carved out of stone on the roof of a medieval church.

  “No,” I said, “that’s not the way it is.”

  “Ah, go on out of that,” he said, “there must be some crack to be had. Did you ever say, ‘I’m taking this all the way to City Hall?’”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you ever crack and take the bribe and say to hell with the job, or is it mostly a case of settling in for the long lonely nights alone, just you and your integrity?”

  “Mostly it’s a case of sitting in a car all night drinking stale coffee and eating damp sandwiches and pissing in a bottle so you can photograph a husband leaving his girlfriend’s apartment and give his wife the shots in the knowledge that the only ones with a happy ending coming are the lawyers,” I said.

  I raised my eyebrows in O’Sullivan’s direction. I’d had as much of Geraghty as I could take. Maybe O’Sullivan felt the same.

  “I take it you were licensed to work as a private investigator in Los Angeles,” he said.

  “In California, yes.”

  “Is that license valid for the whole state?”

  “It is.”

  “And who’s in charge of that?”

  “The Bureau of Security and Investigative Services. It’s in Sacramento.”

  “And do you have to be a U.S. citizen?”

  “A green card will do.”

  “Are you going back? We understand you came home to bury your mother.”

  “Yes. I don’t know. I…a lot has happened since I got here.”

  “You might say trouble follows you.”

  You might say that all right. How could I disagree?

  “That license doesn’t entitle you to work here. As a private investigator. Not in this jurisdiction.”

  Geraghty, bullying now, the brow furrowed, the clown after-hours.

  “No, I don’t suppose it does,” I said.

  “So you admit, you’ve been working in this jurisdiction, accepting money as a private investigator, when you’ve no legal entitlement to do so,” Geraghty said.

  “I admit it, yes.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “Well—you tell me where I can get a license, and I’ll apply for one.”

  “You should have thought of that before you started sticking your nose in, shouldn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “What?”

  “I did. I rang the Private Security Authority. They’re in charge of regulating the industry. Or at least, they will be, once they’ve reported back from all their committees and worked out how they want to go about it. For now, there’s no such thing as a license for a private investigator in this ‘jurisdiction.’ But sure, you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  Geraghty stared at me a moment, the eyes all fire and menace, then he threw his head back and snorted like a bull, whether in laughter or rage it was impossible to say.

  “What happened to your face?” said O’Sullivan.

  “I tripped,” I said.

  “You tripped?” said Geraghty, getting his leering face close into mine.

  “That’s right. What happened to yours?” I said.

  “Did you kill Linda Dawson?” he yelled.

  “You know I didn’t.”

  “You’re the great man for what I know and don’t know, aren’t you now?”

  “How do we know you didn’t?” said O’Sullivan.

  I looked at them across from me: Geraghty’s bloodshot gray eyes bulging, O’Sullivan’s tired blue eyes watching me with interest and full attention. I couldn’t tell whether I was a suspect or not.

  “I had no motive, for a start. I had no way of getting away with it, number two. And number three…”

  My voice faltered, maybe from emotion. Or maybe because I couldn’t believe what I’d actually been about to say. Was I really about to tell these cops that the reason I couldn’t have murdered Linda was because I loved her? How they’d laugh about that down at the CopBar. They’d include it for light relief in CopSchool. Because the prime suspect is always the husband, always the lover. And he always says, But I loved her. Geraghty was grinning. He wanted me to say it.

  “And number three?” he leered.

  “You were in a relationship with Linda Dawson?” said O’Sullivan.

  “Yes, I…we were only at the beginning, really.”

  Get out of there, Loy, there’d be time to mourn what might have been. Plenty of time.

  “Did Linda drive herself or take a taxi?” I said. “From the hotel.”

  Neither of them said anything.

  “Because if she drove herself, then that’s your line of inquiry: Find her car. It’s a red Audi convertible, and it wasn’t there when I got to her house, and it wasn’t in the carport when I was leaving, so the chances are the killer drove away in it.”

  “And how did the killer arrive, on foot?”

  I shrugged.

  “Hey, I don’t even have a license. You’re the guys in charge around here. In this ‘jurisdiction.’”

  Geraghty’s eyes flared;
O’Sullivan gave me a thin smile. He picked up my statement and tapped it on the table between us.

  “We spoke to the night manager at the hotel, and to Mrs. Preston in Fagan’s Villas. They bear out your story. And of course, there’s the text message Linda sent you.”

  “He still could have done it,” Geraghty said.

  I looked from one to the other.

  “You’re right,” I said to Geraghty. “I made it from the Burke house to Linda’s in four minutes. When I got there, she was dead. But she could still have been alive. And I could have strangled her as the police sirens were approaching. Technically, I’m a suspect. But it doesn’t look likely, does it?”

  “What can you tell us about Peter Dawson’s death?” said O’Sullivan.

  “Anything I find out, I tell Detective Sergeant Donnelly,” I said.

  “Like shite you do,” Geraghty snapped.

  We sat in silence for a while. I didn’t know whether Geraghty had taken against me, or whether it was an act, whether O’Sullivan’s pained expression was embarrassment at Geraghty’s carry-on or simply concentration on the job in hand. Then something occurred to me.

  “Who phoned it in?” I said. “Do you know?”

  “It was an anonymous call. No caller ID.”

  “What time did the call come through? Was it before the text message was sent to me?”

  Geraghty and O’Sullivan looked at each other.

  “It was, wasn’t it? And if it was, that text wasn’t written by Linda at all. It was written by the killer. Because—and this has been bothering me—who could have known about the killing? There was no one else in the house. A neighbor might have complained about a car being driven too fast. But that’s not going to bring squad cars with their sirens wailing, is it? And she was strangled, so no gunshots or screams.”

  Geraghty didn’t want to give up.

  “That means you could have sent the text from Linda Dawson’s mobile to yours. Still puts you in the frame.”