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

  Excluding MacLiam/Williamson, that left eight calls. Local politicians the world over resent the fact that the national media doesn’t report their many opinions and activities in the detail they believe they deserve, or at all, so I identified myself as Sean O’Brien of the Irish Times, ringing to get their reactions to the death of their Seosamh MacLiam. The reactions in the first six cases were similar: shock, dismay, a brief tribute, its generosity proportional to the political persuasion of the speaker. In each case, I asked whether they felt MacLiam’s close relationship with Peter Dawson of Dawson Construction was unusual for an antidevelopment candidate; Noel Lavelle, Conor Gogan, Christine Kelly, Tom Farrelly, Eamonn Macdonald and Brendan Harvey all denied any knowledge of the relationship, with Lavelle and Harvey going on to say they’d be amazed if any such relationship existed: they had worked closely with MacLiam on many planning and rezoning appeals, and on the recent campaign to save the swimming pool; indeed, Lavelle said MacLiam was antibuilder “to a fault,” echoing Rory Dagg’s verdict.

  The next call I made was to Eithne Wall, but someone had got to her first. She had rung the Irish Times and been told they had no reporter by the name of Sean O’Brien working for them. She said she had caller ID on her telephone, and she was going to report my mobile number to the Guards. I had blocked my number from showing on a caller ID display, but I hung up anyway. At least one of the first six councillors I had spoken to had something to lose. I needed to get to my last man before he was got at.

  John O’Driscoll had a wavery, slightly camp Dublin accent, and a precise, formal manner, as if he were dictating to a secretary. He sounded nervous, so I decided to see if I could work out why.

  “Sean O’Brien of the Irish Times here, Councillor O’Driscoll. We’re just wondering in the wake of Councillor MacLiam’s murder why your name keeps coming up, linked with Peter Dawson of Dawson Construction?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Councillor O’Driscoll?”

  “I have always been happy to listen to the public when it comes to any planning and development decisions, and to act in the interests of the common good, and that remains the case in relation to Seafield Swimming Pool, Castlehill Golf Club, or indeed any other proposed development.”

  I had found an empty file in Peter Dawson’s office marked “Golf Club.” I asked O’Driscoll why he had mentioned Castlehill Golf Club, but he was in mid-flow.

  “I have no special connection with Peter Dawson. Nor had I any with Councillor MacLiam, whose tragic death is a blow to us all. My thoughts are with his wife and children at this sad time.”

  I tried again.

  “Councillor, could you expand on your remarks about Castlehill Golf Club?”

  But O’Driscoll had hung up.

  Carmel Donnelly (O’Rourke as was) gave me a hug, looked me up and down, grinned and said, “Jesus, Ed Loy, you look like shit.” She was a big-boned woman with wide, knowing eyes and full lips. Her face had a few lines now, her chestnut hair was threaded with gray, and her clothes were flecked with milk and children’s food, but she had a crooked, crinkle-eyed smile and a way of looking at you that made you feel like you’d missed your chance with her, but only just. Carmel and Dave had been together since they were sixteen; like Dave becoming a cop, it was one of those things you knew was meant to be.

  “I’m sorry about your ma, Ed. Mine died last April. No one tells you how awful it’s going to be, doesn’t matter what age you are. For a year, I’d wake in the middle of the night and cry my way toward dawn. Dave had to sleep downstairs, he couldn’t handle it.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. She raised her palms in the air, shook her head and smiled. There were kids’ paintings on the walls, holiday snaps in frames, the remnants of a meal on the table. In the divorce cases I’d worked, they always talked about “the family home” and they were almost always lying; the parents hadn’t had enough love, or luck, or guts, or whatever it is you need to create one. Dave and Carmel had managed it though. I looked at photographs of the children: three boys of about four, six and eight, and a little girl with a shock of fair curls.

  “What age is the girl?”

  “Sadie’s just two. You’ve not been tempted?”

  I shrugged, and gave what I hoped looked like a wistful smile.

  “Never too late, for men anyway,” Carmel said. “Although it gets much harder on the knees.”

  There was a loud crash upstairs, followed by shouts of glee and howls of pain.

  “I wouldn’t always recommend it but. Dave’s out back. I hope you have some good news for him; he told me you were behaving like a prick.”

  Carmel swept upstairs to calm the mayhem that had erupted. I went out to the back garden, where Dave was having an argument with an eight-foot rosebush. As I approached, Dave freed the last root, picked the bush up and heaved it in my path. I went down fast and, after pricking my hands on the rosebush’s thorns, lay there beneath it.

  “That’s for making a clown of me today, you bollocks you.”

  “Are you happy now?” I shouted.

  “No,” Dave said. “But at least I don’t look as fucking stupid as you do.”

  He picked the massive rosebush off me and offered me his hand. I got up without his help and brushed petals and leaves from my clothes. Blood oozed from my torn hands. Dave was far from being a stupid man, but he had an amazingly stupid grin on his big open face.

  “Fiona Reed take a dim view then, did she?” I said.

  Dave was on me in a flash. He grabbed my lapels in his huge fists and pulled my face up to his. I held his wrists hard.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Ed. I’ve been on the Force since I left school. I’ve been Detective Sergeant for five years, looking at Inspector pretty soon. And I’ve got where I’ve got through results, through police work, not politics. Being known as a good cop, not an office jockey—that’s what matters to me. So when you compromise me in front of a senior officer, when you risk contaminating a crime scene as if you’ve got my say-so, it’s bad. You can fuck off back to the States and do whatever it is you do there, but this is my life here, so don’t make a mock of it. Understand?”

  “I understand. Now get your fucking hands off me.”

  Dave let go of me, and I shoved him away and turned back toward the house. Carmel was watching through the kitchen window. I flung her a big false smile, and turned to see Dave doing the same. Caught rapid. For the second time that day, a woman rolled her eyes, shook her head and left us to it. Dave’s face subsided into a bulldog scowl.

  “What do you want, Ed?”

  “Was Seosamh MacLiam murdered? When was he reported missing?”

  “That’s police business.”

  “So is this. I think the last person Peter Dawson met before he disappeared was Councillor MacLiam. I know Dawson was carrying a lot of money at the time, money that came directly from George Halligan. I think that at least one, probably more, of Seafield County Council were involved with Peter Dawson. And I think it might have something to do with Castlehill Golf Club.”

  “That it?” Dave said, breathing heavily.

  “So far.”

  “That’s a lot of thought and fuck all else.”

  Dave turned his back on me and went toward the house. But Carmel hadn’t left us to it after all; she came out with two bottles of beer and put them on the patio table. She said something to Dave and went back in the house. Dave sat down at the table and grabbed a bottle. I joined him and tipped the other bottle to my lips.

  “Carmel says I should be patient with you, seeing as how you’ve just lost your mother,” Dave muttered.

  “I’m not asking for any favors,” I said.

  “You are, though.”

  Dave tipped the bottle back and took a mighty swallow. It was Czech beer, Staropramen, cold and very strong. He wiped the foam off his mouth with the back of his broad hand.

  “Also, Carmel thinks I don’t have any friends.”

  “Why does she thin
k that?”

  “Because I don’t.”

  He didn’t have to explain. Cops seldom had friends. They had the tribe of other cops, who understood, and they had marriages, and that should be enough, although it rarely was. We drank in silence for a while.

  “Give me a fact, Ed,” Dave said, his tone the opposite of expectant.

  “I know for a fact Halligan gave the money to Dawson.”

  “The Halligans have run Dawson’s site security for years. All aboveboard.”

  “What, are the Halligans legitimate now?”

  “Not exactly. But they’ve businesses that are. Every cent of drug money they bring in gets laundered so quickly—rental apartments, taxis, a hairdresser’s, a pub—even the Criminal Assets Bureau weren’t able to touch George Halligan.”

  “They’re still drug dealers, aren’t they?”

  “You should know. Isn’t your old mate Tommy Owens a mule for them?”

  “And you just let them operate?”

  “That’s what the National Drug Unit said a few years ago. My superintendent, Casey, was happy to keep the relative peace, but the NDU barge in, ‘zero tolerance, let’s get the drugs off the streets,’ you know, to fill this month’s political quota. So a couple of dealers do two or three years, they get Podge sent down for five on possession of firearms, and what happens? Headbangers from all over the city see a gap in the market, come out here sniffing round the Halligans’ patch. Blanchardstown, Blackcross, Clondalkin, Charnwood, they’re all trying to take over. Result? Total mayhem. Fifteen killings in two years. Course, the NDU have fucked off to do good elsewhere, you know, some big splashy half-a-million-worth-of-cocaine-seized news item, oh well, that’ll be the drug problem solved forever then, thanks lads. Meanwhile, we have to wait for Podge to get out. When he does, he sorts the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong, Podge Halligan is a scum-sucking piece of rubbish and I can’t wait to see him moldering in his grave, but until we get the resources—and the laws—to sort the drug problem, we just have to handle it. Which means turning a lot of blind eyes. Which is by and large what the public wants—I mean, who buys all the coke and E? Middle-class people. If we cut the supply there’d be an outcry.”

  “What about heroin?”

  “The Halligans don’t sell heroin. Different story if they did.”

  “You sound as cynical as Tommy Owens.”

  “Dozy gobshite. He’s not sharp enough for this carry-on, he wants to get shot of it. Tell him I said that.”

  “What’s the story with Castlehill Golf Club?”

  Dave shrugged.

  “It was sold to an outfit called Courtney Estates, along with the surrounding land. About forty acres, all told. They’ve applied for it to be rezoned high-density development.”

  “What is it at the moment?”

  “Agricultural. If it goes through, Courtney Estates will make a profit of about one hundred and eighty million.”

  “Nice. And who are these lucky Courtneys?”

  “No shortage of lucky Irish property developers these days.”

  “Is there much opposition to their imminent good fortune?”

  “Sure. The Greens, Labour, all the usual suspects. And MacLiam most of all. That’s why, if you’re saying Peter Dawson was paying him off, forget about it. MacLiam’s whole deal was No Development: he was the comfortable classes’ darling. Woolly jumpers, traditional music, the bit of Gaeilge. And his legalize cannabis thing fitted with their ex-hippie image. No way would he want to risk blowing that.”

  “Maybe he needed the money.”

  “His wife is a trust-fund girl. Remember Jack Parland? ‘Ireland’s First Millionaire’?”

  The beaming man in the waxed jacket and tweed cap.

  “There’s a photograph of him and John Dawson on Peter’s desk,” I said.

  “Sure he was Dawson and all’s hero. Anyone who wanted to make a few bob out of property and didn’t mind the corners they cut looked up to Parland. He’s into all sorts now, banks, airlines, newspapers, everything. Anyway, Aileen is Parland’s youngest daughter. MacLiam didn’t need money.”

  “Was MacLiam dead before he went into the sea?”

  “They haven’t done the autopsy yet. He was bruised and battered, but that could have been the rocks. They don’t have a time of death either. Now, what else have you got?”

  I told him about the stolen files in Peter Dawson’s office, including the empty file marked “Golf Club,” and about John O’Driscoll’s automatic linking of Seosamh MacLiam and Dawson to the proposed development at Castlehill Golf Club. It sounded a little flimsy in the retelling, and Dave was openly skeptical.

  “An empty box file?”

  “All of his financial and phone records were cleaned out. And Linda said Peter doesn’t play golf.”

  “I’ve seen him in Bayview Golf Club many’s the time,” Dave said. “And I’m not saying local councillors aren’t bent, but there’s been so much scandal recently about money changing hands in return for votes and tribunals investigating planning corruption that councillors all over Dublin are running for cover. I’d be surprised if they were taking major backhanders in Seafield.”

  Dave shrugged.

  “Doesn’t sound like much yet, Ed.”

  “What time was Seosamh MacLiam reported missing?”

  “He wasn’t. But he didn’t come home on Friday night. His wife never heard from him again.”

  Same night as Peter Dawson. It had to be more than coincidence. Not that I believed in coincidence.

  On my way out, Carmel said I must come round soon for a spot of dinner. Dave grunted some unenthusiastic agreement. Then there was a loud crash from upstairs, followed by high-pitched cheers and squeals.

  “If those shaggers wake little Sadie…” said Dave, and he bounded into the house.

  “‘Little Sadie.’” Carmel smiled. “She has him wrapped around her finger. That girl’ll break his heart.”

  I muttered something about women wearing the trousers, and gave what I intended as a knowing grin, but something in my eyes must have betrayed me.

  “Ed? Are you all right?”

  “Ah, you know,” I said. “The funeral and everything.”

  I turned away and waved and made it to my car before Carmel could ask me any more. Because it wasn’t my mother’s funeral, but the funeral eighteen months before of my two-year-old, Lily: the tiny white coffin, the stricken face of my wife, the ashes vanishing onto the ocean, and nothing to make it right, nothing.

  That girl’ll break his heart.

  Night was falling as I drove down to Bayview. I took a left off Strand Street opposite the Catholic church, parked in Hennessy’s car park, walked in the back door of the pub and ordered a double Jameson with water on the side from a barman in a black Nirvana T-shirt with a shaved head and metal studs in his nose, cheek, eyebrow and tongue. The last time I had been in Hennessy’s I was still at school, I was going to university to become a doctor, I was learning about women, and how to drink, and talk, how to live, I had two parents and, even if I didn’t get along with one of them, it was nothing that couldn’t be solved or survived. I was looking forward to my life. Everything had changed in the years since. Hennessy’s seemed pretty much the same though: the exhausted, threadbare carpets, the brown leatherette seats split and slashed and oozing foam, the jukebox playing, still, unbelievably, “Hotel California.” A haze of patchouli oil, cheap perfume and sweat hung in the air. Despite a ban on all smoking in pubs, the smell of tobacco and dope still clung to the walls. Dazed-looking people in plaid shirts and bikers’ leathers sat drinking abstractedly, as if they were waiting for something to happen. Two women with tattooed arms and un-focused eyes drank pints of cider and spoke to each other in intense whispers while three grimy infants swarmed on the disintegrating rug beneath their feet. A party of teenage Goths in green-hued whiteface, all spiked hair and black velvet and lace and crows’ feathers, were nursing identical sticky dark burgundy drinks—rum and black curran
t, I guessed—and stroking pale blue packages of French cigarettes. None of them spoke, or even looked at each other.

  The barman brought me my whiskey. I sploshed water in, drank half of it, and asked him for a pint of Guinness. By the time my pint was ready, I had finished the Jameson, so I ordered another.

  “Another double?” the barman said, looking me in the eye.

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  “Drinking to forget?” he asked.

  “I can’t remember,” I said.

  I chased the second whiskey with the stout and had to stop myself from nodding my head and clapping my hands. The booze was doing its work, throbbing its adrenaline backbeat at the base of my chest, shooting its crystalline connections around my brain. For a brief moment, I was exactly where I wanted to be: sitting on a barstool in the narcotic blear of Hennessy’s lounge, in plain sight and completely invisible.

  Hennessy’s had always been Bayview’s little secret. Never mind the drugs and the underage drinking, Hennessy’s was simply where you came if you didn’t fit in. Daddy’s little princess never came here, but her sister did, and she came with something to prove. It was the one place guaranteed to be free of rugby, golf, of competitive sport of any kind, and of the people who played it. Hennessy’s clientele was pretty ambivalent about basic functioning, let alone competition. Now, when Bayview was being transformed into a theme village of real estate agents and overpriced restaurants, of art galleries and bijou shops selling designer chocolates, New World wine, French furniture and Italian shoes, Hennessy’s was more than ever an antidote to the piss-elegant gentility of it all.

  From where I stood I could see across the gantry to the public bar, as it would have been called years ago. Little more than a broad corridor, the bar in Hennessy’s made the lounge look like a Holiday Inn. It was in part a class thing. When my old man moved out of the council house in Fagan’s Villas and bought his own home, he vowed that he would never be seen in Hennessy’s bar again. He was leaving all that behind. But it was also a no-class thing. The bar had always had a bad reputation. We grew up hearing of it as a place full of people who would stab you for looking at them. I remembered it lined with sullen, beaten, vicious men, their faces purple and grimacing from alcohol and cigarettes and hopelessness. It didn’t seem much different now. Gusts of joyless laughter drifted across the gantry. The man I was looking for stood with his back to me, at the center of a ring of snickering sycophants. He was broad-shouldered and thick-necked, and the muscles in his overdeveloped back and massive arms rippled beneath his tight white T-shirt. He wore a white baseball cap, and every inch of visible flesh was sunburned and tattooed in those Celtic designs that look like a lattice of black metal tridents.