Declan Hughes - The Price of Blood

"Miss Tyrrell said if you came in at a reasonable hour, you should go up and see her," Tommy said. "She's a class act, that one."

"Miss Tyrrell?"

" Regina. Miss Tyrrell, I call her."

"What's with the young-country-squire outfit?"

"I needed a change of clothes. Miss Tyrrell kindly-"

"Sounds good. So take me through what you've been up to."

"Go up and see her first. She's playing the piano up there, I think."

"Tommy, you know conventional wisdom? It's always incomplete. Never keep a lady waiting-provided you know what you're going to say or do to her when you meet her. I don't, and I'm relying on you to help me."

I made myself a turkey salad roll, poured Guinness into a glass and sat back on the sofa. Tommy looked at me in dismay.

"What do you think this is, a fucking picnic? That lady up there is at the end of her tether."

"Really? How did that happen? She struck me as a pretty cool customer when I met her. What's happened to get her so panicked?"

"There's no one she can turn to. And the situation is sinking in, you know? And I think someone's been talking to her."

"Who?"

"Your one."

"Miranda? Say her name at least, Tommy."

"Yeah. So…I mean, some of us have been…while you…"

Tommy waved dismissively at me, as if I'd arrived in white tie and tails with two strippers and a big bag of coke. The pain around my right eye suddenly shot out of the gates, neck and neck with the pain in my liver. It was hard to call the odds on which would romp home first: a joint favorite photo finish was my conservative forecast. I popped a few more Nurofen, tipped some Jameson into a glass and threw the lot back. When that didn't immediately help, I turned on Tommy.

"This face came from Leo Halligan, one of your little drug-dealing friends, Tommy. Whose attack was a result of Podge Halligan, who again was a business associate of yours, just like the fucking Reillys or any other number of thugs and scumbags whose affairs you get embroiled in and I end up dealing with, usually with my fucking chin, because you can't cope and come crying to me like the fucking…so I really don't fucking need-"

I stopped then, because Tommy didn't have the heart to take what I would have said, or because I didn't have the heart to say it. I put a hand in the air, and he matched it, and he pointed at the red-and-green Jameson bottle, and I poured us both whiskeys and we knocked them back and that was that. So while I ate my sandwich and drank my beer, Tommy took me through what some of us had been doing.

First off, they've no servants here since Christmas Eve until after Stephen's Day, they give them Christmas off, Miss Tyrrell said it was so Karen can see how Christmas should be in a proper family, without being waited on hand and foot like," Tommy said. "So security-wise, all there is is that fat fuck at the gates. I suppose if they wanted anything, they could send over to the hotel for it, but they haven't, or at least, not since I've been here; there's a big kitchen with an Aga and all in it and Miss Tyrrell was going at it there since eight this morning. I got down here just as they were about to eat and they made me join them, insisted on it. F.X. wasn't around then, I didn't see him until later. Miss Tyrrell just said Christmas Day was always a working day for him, on account of Leopardstown, and horses had gone to Chester as well: he does be out and about all day, checking up on the work, the horses, the boxes, so on. And then it's an early start, he has a lodge over near the stables so he sleeps there.

"Anyway, it was a beautiful dinner, and little Karen said grace and all, and I was dreading it, on account of it's the first time I ever ate Christmas dinner without me ma, know what I mean, and Regina-Miss Tyrrell, I told her about it and she was very…she understood. Wine and pudding and hats and crackers and everything. They were both giddy then, playing games and so forth, but I said I needed to get some work done. I don't know if Miss Tyrrell took me entirely seriously, but that didn't matter, I'm used to that. Anyway, she was kind, and she's a real lady. No question.

"I had the Range Rover in my sights, first off. I counted three around the stables alone. Two of them had UK plates; neither of the registration numbers matched. I had a run-in with Brian Rowan, he's head man here, getting the horses settled for the night. Big curly top, thought I was some skanger on the loose, or a bookie's spy, but he called the house and Miss Tyrrell set him straight. I went through, there's a couple of garages with horse boxes and transporters and so on, but I didn't see any more Range Rovers.

"Next thing was to set up the pinhole camera on Bomber's place. I reckoned the only way was to approach by the river; he's bound to have some way of scoping whoever comes head-on. I packed a little bag and walked the track down from here, there's a path above the river by the trees that runs the length of the golf course. Now, when you meet the lane we drove down, that leads to a bridge across the river; the Staples property lies to the other side, and there's a mesh of chicken wire and barbed wire on that side. I thought about placing the camera there, but it wouldn't really have caught anything except the coming and going of vehicles, and not even them in any great detail. But it was bleedin' freezin' out there, and the one thing I didn't pack was gloves, I did have a pair of bolt cutters though, so I used them to snip the wire, just enough to squeeze through, reminded me of robbin' orchards, don't let the gardener see how you got in and you'll always be able to go back."

Just listening to Tommy was making me feel cold. I poured a couple more Jamesons. Tommy took a hit of his whiskey, then picked up his story.

"Other side of the wire, I can't get enough purchase on the ridge to take me around to the Staples place, there's a dirty big bank sloping down to the riverbed, it's got, you wouldn't call it a waterfall, a bit of a gusher, there's a stream up on the property, anyway, I can't get around it so I've got to climb down, there's a bank of brambles and nettles, then there's elder and sycamore a bit further on, I cling to some ivy and get as far as a sycamore that's trunk is swathed in the stuff and I can scale down the ivy to the riverbed no bother.

"Getting up to the house is a bit more of a problem, because the moon has gone behind a cloud and I don't want to use a torch. I'm also in difficulties because my shoes are soaked and freezing and there's marsh stretching on as far as I go, until I find another sycamore on the Staples side. The ivy only climbs about fifteen feet, and there's a fork in the tree another ten feet up and nothing but the odd whorl and nub to get me there and the bark is all frosted now, slippier than a whore's knickers but I make it, and from the fork there's enough branches to get ten feet above the backyard, which I now see in the moonlight has a fucking fence of palings, so I'm there, sodden, shivering, crackling with the fucking cold, thinking, if this fucker has searchlights, or dogs, or both, I am finished, because I don't see where the extra yard of whatever is coming from. And then I think, fuck it, we're mates, he was gonna step in for me with Ed outside McGoldrick's. And then I'm, yeah, but how friendly is he gonna be, you just dropped out of a fucking tree into his backyard on Christmas night, chances are he's gonna revise his opinion of you downward.

"But to be honest with you, there's only so long you can stay up a fucking tree, by its nature it's a temporary location, so I'm ready to jump, I'm watching the yard, there's a couple of mobile homes, an avalanche of scrap, I can see lights in the stone cottage, Bomber's homemade Jeep and another vehicle, a Range Rover looks like. And I'm watching, and I hear an engine, and lights approaching, and I've leant so far forward I feel I'm slipping, and Bomber comes out of his house and stands in his doorway and I'm jamming myself back against the bough that's above my head and sliding my arse in tight against the trunk as another fucking Range Rover bounces up into view. Out get Miranda Hart and some bloke, can't make him out, expected, it looks like, and they all go into the cottage, five minutes, ten minutes, half a fuckin' hour, great, I'm like, if I fell on the palings, maybe they'd bring me to hospital, where the heat would be on. And then I'm like, maybe they wouldn't."