Declan Hughes - The Color of Blood

I stopped off at the Woodpark Inn to check the list of bands scheduled to play there that night. Workers from the nearby industrial estates and retail warehouses were sitting down to soup and sandwiches and carvery lunches; balloons that looked like Halloween pumpkins and luminous plastic skeletons hung above their heads. The smell of food made me queasy; I wanted another drink, but I had work to do first. I found the posters advertising the night’s lineup: The Golgotha Pyre, Emily Howard’s boyfriend Jerry’s band, were third on the bill.

I walked back out into the mist and fading light and drove down into the sprawl of Honeypark. Every house had been painted white twenty years ago, and very few of them had been painted since, so the whole estate had an eerie sheen to it; dirty and wan, and furled in white cloud, it resembled a grimy snowdrift. Pearse Avenue was a long, meandering road that twisted and forked like a maze; I got lost two or three times until I took my bearings from the three sets of lads who were building bonfires on the paltry scraps of green the council had allocated for the tenants’ recreation and parked not far from the biggest of the three. The boys building it were excited, throwing the occasional banger at each other as they piled car tires and burst mattresses on top of packing crates and builders’ pallets. Pearse Avenue curved in a horseshoe oval on the far side of the green, and 452 was the center house of the five houses that made up the oval. As I put my hand on the gate, someone threw a banger that exploded a few feet away from me. I twisted my head, startled by the explosion, and heard the baying laughter of the boys who had thrown it; when I turned back, there was a short fat man with greasy black hair and a black tracksuit and heavy black shoes standing in the doorway of 452, flanked by two lads of about twenty in grey hooded tops and grey track pants, one tall and bulky, one short and slight. The hoodies started to approach me. It looked like I was in the right place. I preferred not to carry a gun, but I was wondering whether I should have overcome my scruples for Honeypark’s sake. On the other hand, these boys did not exactly look officer class. I vaulted the gate, reached in my breast pocket and pulled out an ID card. No one reached for a weapon when it looked like that’s what I might have been doing.

“Seafield Garda,” I said in a very loud voice, moving toward them, “investigating the murder of David Brady.”

The two grey hoodies looked at each other, then back at me. I said David Brady’s name and the word “murder” again, and the hoodies turned and nodded and ran fast in separate directions, leaping over the walls of the neighboring houses; the greasy fat guy looked like he wished he could join them, but now I was standing in his way. He backed toward the house, but I moved quickly to put myself between him and the door.

“Is this your house, sir?” I said.

“No. Yes. No,” he said, his voice ragged with tension.

“Which is it?”

“Yes.”

“Name?”

“Sean Moon.”

“What can you tell me about David Brady’s murder, Mr. Moon? What do you know about the disappearance of Emily Howard?”

His pale green eyes burned red; I could smell the whiskey in his open pores; sweat coursed down his acne-ravaged brow.

“I don’t know, I…I don’t know anything.”

I heard muffled sounds from upstairs: thumping on a floor or a plasterboard wall, then a muffled scream.

“They made me, I didn’t have any choice,” Sean Moon said.

I pushed past him and went straight up the stairs. The back bedroom door was shut, but it wasn’t locked. I opened the door to find two people locked in a struggle on the bed. One was Emily Howard, and the other was the skinny blond boy who’d been in the film and in the photographs, the one with the eagle tattoo on his shoulder. I could see it now; he was bare-chested, wearing only a pair of jeans; Emily wore a short red kilt and a black bra. They didn’t notice me for a few seconds, and I didn’t announce myself. Their struggle wasn’t much more than a play fight; in fact, it looked like foreplay; either Emily was stronger than the boy, or he was letting her dominate; she had straddled his chest and pinned his arms behind his head when she saw me.

“Who the fuck are you?” she said.

“My name is Ed Loy,” I said. “Your father hired me to find you.”

Using a hand flat on the boy’s hairless chest for balance, she swung a bare leg over his head and stood in front of me, head back, chest thrust forward. Her pupils were dilated until they seemed to stain her brown eyes black; her lips were so engorged they hung open; I could feel her hot breath in my face.

“What are you, some kind of private dick?” she said, her voice a sustained jeer on the edge of a laugh. I nearly laughed myself, her derision was so incendiary.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Well you’ve found me. Now fuck off. Oh, no, wait, there’s one message you can take back to Daddy: tell him his nephew Jonny is here.”

The boy flinched when she said this, and turned away toward the window. Emily either didn’t notice, or didn’t care. She didn’t look like she was on drugs; or rather, she did, but I didn’t believe she was. Her eyes had the recklessness I had seen in her mother’s, but none of the coldness; they were aflame with passion and young-girl bravado; something about them looked not entirely sane.

“That’s right, Mr. Loy. I’ve been fucking my cousin Jonathan, Aunt Sandra’s pride and joy. Tell Daddy, tell Jonny’s mummy. Let them incorporate that into the illustrious fucking chronicle of the Howard family. Maybe then they’ll leave us both the fuck alone.”

Emily’s voice was quite high by the end of this, teetering on hysterical. In the olden days, I suppose I would have slapped her across the face. It would probably’ve been easier for her than having to hear what I did say.

“Emily, I’ve got some bad news. Your ex-boyfriend David Brady was found dead this morning. He was murdered.”

Emily’s face went perfectly still, and her eyes rolled back in her head. The blood left her face, and she began to shake. I thought she was having a convulsion, so I reached my hands out to steady her. She slapped them away and began to pummel me with her fists, raining blows on my chest and face. I caught hold of her arms below the elbow until she stopped and stood still for a while, her breath coming in quick bursts until she went limp and dropped her head onto my shoulder and let the tears flow. Jonathan leapt to his feet and came around the bed toward us. I held out a hand to keep him at bay. In a voice that sounded like a shrill, highly strung version of Denis Finnegan’s, he screamed, “This is all your fault, you devious whore, you filthy fucked-up bitch!”

I THOUGHT I HAD JONATHAN CALMED DOWN, AND THEN Emily started up at him and the two of them let fly and it was you always you never your dad your mum fuck the Howards for a while, with Emily decidedly having the upper hand. It was an oppressive little room to share with two half-dressed cousins having a bitter lovers’ quarrel. Finally they subsided again. I suggested they put some clothes on, and said I’d see them downstairs. Sean Moon was waiting in the living room. I looked around the kitchen first: full of pizza boxes and microwave meals, it looked like people had been camping there for a while. When I went into the living room, the first thing I noticed was that it matched the room the porn had been shot in. The second thing was that Sean Moon appeared keen to talk but anxious that he might be overheard.

“It’s okay, they’re still in the room,” I said. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’ve never been in trouble with the police,” Moon said.