Declan Hughes - The Price of Blood

"So you're a private detective who used to live in L.A., and you're looking for Patrick, and you can't, or won't say who hired you," she said. Her accent was an Anglo drawl; she said cawn't for "can't" and gave Patrick such a clipped reading she made it sound like a name rarely heard outside South Kensington and Chelsea.

"That's right," I said.

"The last private detective was fuck all use. Or rather, I suppose he was a great deal of use, since he turned up fuck all."

"When was that?" I said.

"About two years ago. I wanted to have Patrick declared dead. More like, needed: I ran out of cash for a while, and couldn't keep the mortgage on this little kip up. We'd bought it together, and he'd been gone longer than seven years."

"And who insisted on the detective, the insurance company?"

"That's right. Big-arsed ex-cop in an anorak, Christ, he was a gruesome old heap, watching him get out of a chair was nerve-racking. Anyway, he went through the motions, checked Patrick's bank records and credit history and so forth, and came up with what we all knew: he vanished off the face of the earth ten years ago. Ten years ago today, as a matter of fact. And now all this is mine."

She rolled her eyes and lit a cigarette, a More, and offered me one, which I refused; I didn't think my system would be up to it yet. I finished the tea and reached for the whiskey; the fumes didn't make me gag: a good sign.

"Lucky to have the place, I suppose, particularly since we bought before the boom. I got left some money in '92, not long after we were married. Girlfriends said, don't put Patrick's name on it, but it's just as well I did. 'Cause I'd still have a mortgage to pay if I hadn't."

"He disappeared ten years ago today?"

"Twenty-third of December, 1996."

"Will you tell me about it?"

"I don't know," she said. She took a hit of her drink, and a drag of her cigarette, and looked around for somewhere to tap the ash, and popped her gum out of her mouth and molded it into a bowl shape and flicked her ash in it and laid it on the arm of her chair.

"I don't know if I want Patrick back. That is, if he were alive and you found him."

"You had him declared dead. Do you think he's still alive?"

She laughed, as if she'd been caught out in some strange but endearing foible, like using her chewing gum as an ashtray.

"I wouldn't put it past the little fucker, put it that way."

"I know F. X. Tyrrell put up a reward for information about him."

"Yes. Well. That was very good of him. Very good of F.X., all right."

Hart's general tone was so brittle I couldn't tell whether she was being ironic or not.

"Did he find out anything?"

"The usual: people who thought they'd seen him on a ferry, or in Spain. Nothing concrete. That was before the detective had a go."

"Were Tyrrell and your husband close?"

"I don't know if anyone gets particularly close to F.X. They were having a good year together, and Patrick was getting a lot of rides; he had three or four big ones at Leopardstown. And then: gone."

"Money trouble?"

"It was all a bit hand-to-mouth. But that's just the life, he was making his way, he was only twenty-three, just the beginning. And he'd been gambling, but don't we all? Everyone in racing gambles. No one came to me with major debts after he'd gone, the kind of debts that would've made him do a runner. And they'd need to have been big, Patrick had a lot of nerve."

"There was talk of his stopping a horse for Tyrrell. By Your Leave? But the Turf Club found there was no case to answer."

Miranda Hart smiled mirthlessly and ran a weary hand through her dark mane of hair.

"The Turf Club are such dears."

"What does that mean?"

"It means they know what goes on and we know what goes on, and they agree to pretend it doesn't go on unless we're too careless about it. And F.X. and Patrick were bloody careless that day."

"What happened? What goes on?"

She drained her glass and looked at me through narrowed eyes. "You're not some asshole of a journalist, are you?"

"I may be an asshole, but I'm no journalist," I said.

That got a laugh; showing her my card got a wary nod. When I produced a press clipping I kept in my wallet (penned by a crime reporter who owed his career to the quality and frequency of the Garda leaks he received, and who showed his gratitude by toeing diligently whatever line the Garda Press office drew for him) featuring a quote from the Garda commissioner himself deploring the rise of "self-styled" private detectives and disparaging their "questionable personal ethics," and using a photograph of me as Exhibit A, Miranda Hart gave me a grin of what looked like kindred outlaw approval. I got up and fixed her a fresh drink, and took a hit of mine. Miranda Hart kicked off her boots and wriggled around until her long legs were splayed with one hanging over the arm of her chair.

"How much do you know about horse racing?" she said.

"Enough to lose betting on it. Not much more."

"Well. First of all, it's not an exact science," she said. "The favorite doesn't always win. If he did, you wouldn't have much of a sport, or a chance to bet. So that gives owners and trainers a certain license. If a horse with a good record is coming back after a rest, or at the beginning of the National Hunt season, no one will be too surprised if he loses a few races he was tipped to win. Maybe he's carrying an injury, maybe he's lost his edge, maybe he hasn't warmed up yet, maybe the jockey isn't giving him the best ride."

"And what's actually happening?"

"The horse is being stopped. So that the odds can drift up, and his owner or trainer or a whole bunch of interested parties can have a big punt in a month or two, when it's barely fancied and the price on the horse-and maybe the prize money-are better. Best to do with a horse that's just made a name for himself, because it could always be a flash in the pan, as far as the authorities-and the punters-are concerned. Harder with an established mount, but you can still get away with it, because there are so many legitimate excuses: one trainer will push a horse to run off an injury, another will insist on rest; if either of those horses is stopped, the trainer is covered."

"So the entire game is corrupt."

"Of course it is, darling. Not all the time-there are the glamour races everyone wants to win fair and square-but quite a lot of the time. And that's just the day-to-day; we haven't even mentioned doping, or when big gamblers or bookies bribe jockeys to throw races."

"And that's what Patrick Hutton and F. X. Tyrrell did with By Your Leave? They deliberately set out to lose the race?"

"Of course. It was evens at Thurles, and the Christmas meeting at Leopardstown was looming, so they wanted to get the price up before then. Unfortunately, By Your Leave was such a great goer, and Patrick ended up being way too obvious. So the whole thing got a little sour. And Patrick got the blame."

"Not from the Turf Club."

"No, from the punters. The footage of it was pretty clear, you could see Patrick checking his placing and holding the horse back when the two front-runners had bolted. A furlong from home and he's still at it, as if By Your Leave could have made up the ground."

"Sounds like he was deliberately drawing attention to what he was doing."

"That's what some people said. That the row was between him and F.X., that Patrick wanted to give the horse a decent ride, that he wasn't happy to be instructed otherwise. And the Turf Club would have caused too much scandal if they'd found anyone at fault. And of course, punters forgive and forget, they know this kind of thing goes on, Patrick would have lost the ride for Leopardstown, but he would have been back on winners soon enough, and everyone would have been happy."