Declan Hughes - The Price of Blood

"All right, I've been seeing her obsessing about it all, I've probably entered the argument at a more heated level than was wise."

"What argument?"

"The whole…look, there is nothing to be gained by raking over the whole business with Patrick Hutton, believe me. It can only cause Miranda needless upset. It happened ten years ago, it's ancient history, Miranda desperately needs to get on with her life. Let the dead bury the dead."

"That's interesting. How do you know Patrick Hutton is dead?"

"I don't. I simply assume…if you vanish off the face of the earth like that, chances are you're dead. But for all I know, he could be on the Costa del Sol, or in Australia. As good as dead, one way or the other."

I heard the clink of ice in her glass again. I kept silent. She clearly wanted to talk; whether she had anything to tell me remained to be seen.

"Look, I don't want to talk on the phone. You'd better come up here. You can be trusted, of course."

The last without a glimmer of uncertainty. I could be trusted how? To lie to the cops? To keep rich people's secrets and carry their bags? To do what I was told, provided the price was right? No harm in letting Jackie Tyrrell believe I was corruptible. As long as she told me all she had to tell.

"Of course," I said.

She gave me directions, I shut up my house and stepped out into the night.

In the car, the first thing I noticed was the smell: French tobacco, Gauloises, or Gitanes, mixed with a lemony aftershave. It seemed to me that I had smelt that combination before. I could always have asked Leo Halligan, but since he held the point of a blade at the back of my neck, I decided now was neither the time nor the place. I looked in the rearview mirror. Leo Halligan, rail thin in a motorcycle jacket and black shirt with dark hair gelled into something not unlike a DA, his dark eyes glittering in a chalk-white face, silver sleeper earrings in both ears, cheekbones like polished knives, thin lips drawn in the mockery of a smile. Tommy had warned me he was coming, but I hadn't paid enough attention.

"Hello Leo," I said.

"Hello Ed," he said. "No sudden moves now."

He pressed the blade sharply against my neck until the skin broke. There was a little pain and then the unpleasant sensation of blood leaking down my collar.

"Just to show you I'm not fucking around, yeah?" he said. His voice was not exactly camp, but it had a bored, eye-rolling drawl to it, as if he was exhausted dealing with the endless supply of fools and imbeciles sent to annoy him.

"I would have taken that as read," I said.

"Smart. You were always smart, Ed Loy."

"So were you, Leo. Four years for a hit on a nineteen-year-old. That's a sentencing policy to get concerned citizens onto the streets."

"Alleged eyewitness said he was bullied into making his statement by the Guards. Alibi witness ignored. No forensic evidence."

"So we're supposed to think you're innocent?"

"Do I see you in a courtroom, Mr. Justice Loy? I couldn't give a fuck what you think. Start the car."

"Were you going to wait here all night long?"

"If the lights in the house went out, I would have come in to you."

"It'd be warmer in the house. Do you want to come in?"

"No, I want you to drive. I have a gun as well."

He showed me what looked like a Glock 17 semiautomatic, a gun his brother George favored. Whatever it was, I had to assume it worked.

"Good for you. I don't."

"Just in case you were in the mood for heroics."

"Never."

"Shut up and drive. Up towards Castlehill."

I did as he said. I hatched various heroic plans along the way, supposing he was going to kill me: I could reverse the car into a wall; I could stop at traffic lights, jerk away from the blade and roll out my door; I could smash into the rear of another vehicle and trust in the public to rescue me. I didn't act on any of them, not because I thought they wouldn't work. No, the reverse adrenaline of inevitability was working its phlegmatic spell on me. If Leo wanted to kill me, he would; if I had the chance to kill him first, I could try; as it stood, he had the stronger hand, and it seemed wiser to wait and see how he played it. Anyway, he could have done me in my driveway: there wasn't a sinner about, or a light in the neighboring houses. He had something to say, that much was certain. And I was curious enough, now I knew he had a part in the Patrick Hutton story, to hear what it was.

Leo directed me up toward the old car park near the pine forest, midway between Bayview Hill and Castlehill. It was quite a beauty spot, with views stretching out to the harbor of refuge at Seafield. The stars had spread until the sky was almost free of cloud. There were usually a few cars parked late here, lovers enjoying the seclusion. But it was too cold tonight, or too late, or too close to Christmas; there was nobody to see Leo Halligan wave a Glock 17 at me to walk ahead of him up the steps and around the edge of the quarry to the ruined church on the top of Bayview Hill, or to prod me in the back of the neck with the gun if I didn't move fast enough. The view here was even more spectacular, from the mountains to the sea, past the candy-stripe towers of the Pigeon House to Dublin Bay, and then north to the great promontory of Howth; the city lights flickered as if they were reflected stars: as above, so below, a gauze of light stretched out across the dark.

Leo stopped at an open patch of grass used for picnics, just below the ruined church, hard above the old quarry, where the granite for the harbor had been hewn. With the gun trained on me, he held the knife, a hunting blade with a gutter and a serrated edge, in front of my face and, looking me in the eye, nodded and lifted his arm. I braced myself to dodge it, knowing he could shoot me anyway, thinking I should try and argue with him but scared it would sound like pleading, wondering if I should run away but not wanting to be shot in the back. The knife flew over my shoulder and over the granite wall and out into the quarry and I thought I could hear it landing but I couldn't be sure. When I looked back, Leo was holding up the Glock. He snapped out the clip and handed it to me and brandished the gun in his right hand.

"Okay, Ed?"

"One in the chamber, Leo."

"Good point, Ed. Hope that's not the last thing you remember."

He pointed the Glock at me and grinned, and I saw he had more gold teeth than white ones, and I hoped that wasn't the last thing I'd remember, then he tipped the barrel up into the sky and pulled the trigger. For a second, on the ground where I'd fallen, I thought he had shot me, classic fashion, one behind the ear. Then I realized as he dropped the gun with his right he'd brought his left around in the mother and father of all haymakers and laid me out like a drunken girl. And there he was now, crouching above me, bobbing from foot to foot, fists up, gold teeth flashing.

"Come on," he said. "Come on."

The last person to say "Come on, come on" to me was Miranda Hart. My face was deep between her legs and my hands were slipping inside her torn stockings and stroking her firm, yielding, scented flesh. She had wanted me to stay, and if I had, I'd still be there, drinking gin and lemon juice, fucking in the fire's glow. Instead I had spent time in a morgue with two dead bodies, I had tried to deal with a friend who was apparently having a nervous breakdown and now I was getting to my feet on top of a hill in subzero temperatures at two in the fucking morning so a pawky little maniac could beat the living shit out of me with his bare fucking hands. Come on, come on. Jesus.

Leo was about five seven, and he couldn't've been more than eleven stone, which meant I had eight inches and fifty pounds on him, but none of that seemed to count because of three things. The first thing was, he was so much faster than me: he had popped my nose and cut my right eye before I had my guard up. The second thing was, he was wearing those rock-and-roll skull and serpent's-head rings that worked like brass knuckles. And the third thing was, when I finally got a rhythm going and managed to block a few blows and land a few digs of my own, he suddenly reared back and swung into this Thai kickboxing maneuver and slammed me in the jaw with the sole of a red leather cowboy boot that, had it been the heel, would have broken it.