Declan Hughes - The Price of Blood

"That you took money for sex. That you were available to a whole circle of men that formed itself around Leo Halligan and Jack Proby. He said he didn't know whether you were doing it of your own free will or not. That you were doing so much heroin you maybe didn't even know yourself."

I found myself trying to make it easy for her. To her credit, she didn't want that. She popped some gum in her mouth, lit a cigarette and exhaled.

"No, I wasn't forced. The opposite. I was with Jack Proby at the time, nothing serious, just for laughs-funny how relationships that are just for laughs quickly run out of them-and we were doing a lot of drugs, too much coke, and then I got into smack to take me down, I couldn't sleep, and then I needed the coke to get me back up, and that became a cycle. And that became expensive. And it had gotten so I didn't much care what I did-I can't quite explain how that happens, but when it does, it seems so simple and so realistic, you know: there's a rich golfer, or a trainer, or a jockey, why don't I just fuck him for five hundred quid, or spend the night for a grand. I won't feel anything anyway, the smack guaranteed that, so why not make a profit, you know?"

"And what was this about? This was all after Patrick disappeared: Was it a kind of grief, a distorted mourning for him?"

She bowed her head, and I thought she was crying. When she looked up at me, there was laughter in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh, it's just…I didn't really give you the full picture before, Ed. Not sure that I should have, worried I'd scare you off. 'I really like you, come in for coffee, but first listen to my life as a smackhead and a hooker.' Above and beyond on a first date, don't you think? But…I don't know, is the answer. I don't know what happened then. What I can tell you about is what happened with Patrick. What happened to By Your Leave."

"I thought you already had."

"That was a version."

"Let me try my version," I said. "Patrick Hutton was getting paid by Leo Halligan, possibly fronting for George, possibly acting on his own, to hold various horses back, dope them or otherwise interfere with them. At Thurles that day, Leo wanted a winner; F.X. wanted to lengthen the odds for Leopardstown; Hutton was caught between them, so he made it obvious he was holding the horse up to throw the blame onto F.X., but also to show Leo he couldn't be bossed around."

"Sort of, but not quite. In a way, Patrick did exactly what he was told to that day; he just did it too well, too publicly, he brought down too much attention on the sport. And on the fix. In truth, at this stage, F.X. and Leo were pretty much in league. F.X. didn't feel you could hold a horse like By Your Leave back, it was better to use her as a flagship for the other Tyrrell rides, you know, let her win, to hell with the odds, and let the glory drip through to the other horses in the stable. And Leo agreed. But this particular race, George had a lot of money laid against By Your Leave. So the word came down to hold the horse back."

"And Hutton rebelled?"

"Patrick was a hothead. He was a bit of a fucking eejit. In fairness to him, it was never going to be easy, unless you out and out doped the horse, and they'd heard she was going to be drug-tested. But Patrick didn't even try."

"Why would F. X. Tyrrell put up with this? What did George Halligan have on F.X.?"

Miranda grinned, and stubbed her cigarette out in some bacon rind. I stared at this picture, trying to remember where I had seen it before.

"Leo was a busy boy in those days. F. X. Tyrrell picked him and Patrick from St. Jude's to be apprentices. And then he wanted extra ser vices. Well, Patrick wasn't into that. But Leo was."

"And F.X. was, you're saying."

"Oh yeah. Did Jackie not tell you?"

"She just said it never really happened for them."

"And that's the reason. She was probably being loyal. She knew what was going on. Leo and F.X., Leo and Seán Proby, too. And Leo got it all on film. Photographs of F.X. and Leo in some position or other. Shots that wouldn't look well on pages three to ten of the Sun during Cheltenham week. So F. X. Tyrrell belonged to the Halligans. Still does, I imagine."

"And so what do you think? Did the Halligans get rid of Hutton for rocking the boat?"

"I don't know. They could have. Not because Leo wanted it, but George might have decided to cut him out. Either way, he had become a liability. So the Halligans gave the word that F.X. could cut him loose."

"So George Halligan controls F. X. Tyrrell?"

"To a certain extent. I mean, the thing about George is, he's not stupid. It's like, if you have a restaurant and you can eat free there. Well, if you go every night, if you bring all your friends, if you take the piss, there's not going to be any restaurant. So George played it cute, a few scores here and there but nothing that's going to make the headlines, or push F. X. Tyrrell over the edge."

"And do you have anything to add to how you parted, you and Hutton?"

"It was…more emphatic than I told you. On my side, I was so fucking pissed off, we could have had it both ways: we knew what Leo had on F.X., and we knew which races were crooked; plus, we had the Halligans offering to make side deals with us. We had an insurance policy, all we had to do was play it smart."

Miranda seemed to wake up in the middle of saying this, wake to the realization that it made her sound like a cheap chivvying little piece of work. Again, to her credit, she held her hands up.

"I imagine this makes me sound pretty bad," she said.

"I imagine you wouldn't make yourself sound like that if it wasn't true."

"It's just, it was hard to draw the line. If a jockey pulls a ride for his own trainer, why is that better than pulling it for a gangster? It's the same thing, just a question of degree. And if you get more money from the gangster, and if your trainer is already in league with him…"

She shrugged, and flicked her hair, and pouted the way she did, and I could feel my heart breaking. I'd built her into a princess, and she was just a tramp on the make. Merry Christmas, Edward Loy.

"Ask me anything else, please. I really want to…to set the record straight, Ed."

She looked at me, unblinking, as if nothing had changed. And maybe nothing had. Maybe Carmel Donnelly was right, and I had fallen for another fucked-up woman I couldn't possibly have, or didn't want in the first place. I still didn't want to believe that. And I tried not to, right up until she heard me ask the next question.

"Did you ever come across a guy called Terry Folan? Bomber, most people call him."

"No," she lied, so quickly I almost didn't hear her. "No, I don't…I don't think so, I…or maybe… Bomber Folan, that rings a bell…"

She said a lot more in that vein, until she arrived at the lie she was happy with: that she vaguely remembered him riding for F.X., and that he could have been around afterward, hanging out with Leo in McGoldrick's. At that stage, I was on my feet. I told her I had to go, I had to meet someone, and she asked me if I'd make it up to Tommy's for the Christmas dinner she was going to cook today, and I said I wouldn't miss it, and she kissed me and held me in the way you would if you loved him, or if you wanted him to love you, and again I tried to believe in her, and got my coat, and just when we were at the door she asked me if I still had the photograph of Patrick Hutton she gave me. It was the only one she had. No, it wasn't that, it was quite special to her, in a way she didn't want to tell me. Or wouldn't. Or hadn't made up yet. I said I didn't have it anymore. I don't know if she believed me, or pretended to believe me. I pretended I didn't care anymore. I left her at Tommy's, looking so beautiful and so forlorn I couldn't bear the sight of her. I think she knew what had happened; she couldn't figure out how. I wasn't sure I could either. I just knew that the next time we met, we'd be on opposite sides. You think you're never going to fall in love with anyone again, and sometimes the only way you know you did is because she's just broken your heart.