Declan Hughes - The Color of Blood

“He owes me money.”

“He owes you money how? Low-rent drug dealer skangin’ round the Woodpark Estate and he owes you money, and you unemployed and looking for work on the level, now how could that be?”

Tommy’s lower lip protruded from his reddened face, his brow all furrowed in a schoolboy frown. That was how it went with Tommy and me: first I had to be his older brother, then his father, then his headmaster. And having to be anybody’s headmaster was a bolt upright three A.M. nightmare at the best of times, and it never seemed to be the best of times anymore. My face smarted, and the blood was still flowing; I nudged Tommy in the ribs to start him talking.

“Those porno DVDs,” he said. “I got them from the Reillys.”

“Not Brock Taylor.”

“No. So anyway, I paid in advance.”

“Why did you tell me you got them from Brock Taylor?”

“’Cause I thought it would shut you up goin’ on about what a fuck-up I was if I was in with Brock. Anyway, a fiver each I gave the Reillys, reckoned I’d make ten, come out a grand ahead.”

“And Brock Taylor?”

“What about Brock Taylor? He has nothing to do with anything, I told you, I just…thought of him.”

“How did you ‘just’ happen to show up tonight? Right place, right time? You following me, or the Reillys there, or what?”

Tommy looked away, exhaled loudly through his nostrils, shook his head.

“Just coincidence, Ed. Thought I’d go up the Woodpark Inn for a pint. Came out, spotted you in the-”

“Come on, Tommy. At least the Brock Taylor lie had a certain amount of class.”

“I swear on my daughter’s life.”

“I don’t believe you. Tommy-”

“I was following the Reillys.”

“Thank you. Why?”

“I owe them money. Borrowed it for, just, you know. The usual.”

“And?”

“And I can’t afford to pay it back, and the interest is fuckin’ mounting, so I was trying to get something on them I could use.”

“What kind of thing? Use how? Catch them dealing coke, or loan-sharking, then threaten to give witness evidence to the Guards? Not your style. I don’t believe a word that’s coming out of your mouth, Tommy, not one fucking word.”

“I was hanging round the Woodpark, waitin’ there for them. The Reillys are in and out all night so they are. I didn’t know they were going to attack you, didn’t even know you were there.”

But I had stopped listening. My face was aching, and blood had seeped into my right eye, tearing it up. I spat on the handkerchief and wiped it clean. At least the flow of blood had subsided. I was cold and tired; I needed a drink and a hot shower and a decent night’s sleep and a case that didn’t involve first cousins fucking each other. Instead, here I was in a lockup with a torn face and my best friend the compulsive liar and a little scumbag called Darren Reilly, who had threatened me and pistol-whipped me and who was now leering through the window of a stolen Mercedes at himself, or at the image of his idealized self behind the wheel. I thought I’d better give Tommy some time to make up whatever it was he was going to say next. I walked up fast behind Reilly and grabbed him by the collar and tapped his face firmly against the car window a few, maybe half a dozen times and dragged him to the front of the lockup and pushed him at one of the aluminum doors. He saved himself any further damage by bracing his hands against the support struts on the door. There was blood on his face, and he was whimpering.

“All right, all right,” he said. “Fuck sake. What do you want?”

“Who told you to warn me off?”

Darren Reilly didn’t answer immediately, so I pulled him off-balance and stamped on his foot, near the ankle, hard. He screamed and fell to the ground and lay there moaning.

“Who told you to warn me off?” I said again.

“Sean Moon,” he said. “Jesus fuck!”

“Sean Moon? Don’t make a clown of me here, Darren.”

“I swear. Paid us an’ all. Like when we were minding the young ones.”

“What young ones?”

“The Howard kids.”

“Sean Moon paid you to mind Emily Howard and Jonathan O’Connor?”

“Sure. Brady organized it with him. We just done what we were told. Take the money and run.”

Reilly wiped some blood from his face and put a tentative hand to his nose. It didn’t look broken to me. Maybe I was losing my touch.

“So David Brady was in charge of it all then?”

“Moon isn’t the gobshite you think he is. Bit of a fucking brain, could’ve gone to Uni an’ all. Two of them working together, looked like to me. They organized the whole blackmail thing with your one’s oul’ fella, Howard.”

“They organized it?”

“Yeah. I think your one was in on it though. I didn’t care one way or the other. They paid us well, is all I know. Even if they wouldn’t let us watch the riding.”

“And who blackmailed Brady into making the porn in the first place?”

“Sorry? Lost me there man,” Darren Reilly said. He worked his foot around in a circle. “At least it’s not broken. I wouldn’t give much for your chances once Wayne gets his nose sorted out, he’s a tendency to bear a grudge, so he does.”

“David Brady was blackmailed into making the porn by someone whose daughter he had sex with when she was underage. Do you know who that was?”

“The dirty fucker. No, I don’t know.”

“I do,” a voice said.

When I turned around to look at Tommy, his head was bowed and he was shaking. He lifted his head and swung an unsteady finger at me, and I was taken aback to see tears in his eyes. He said something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. I went closer, and he spoke into my ear.

“My daughter, Ed,” he said. “Naomi.”

And suddenly, it all made sense. I took the note that had been passed to Jerry Dalton in Seafield Rugby Club out of my pocket and looked at it. Jerry, please see David Brady gets this. That was why the handwriting had looked familiar. Because it was Tommy’s surprisingly elegant hand, not quite copperplate but not far off. The first time I’d had a note from him, aged about nine, it read: You are dead at breaktime. Best joined-up writing in the class. We fought in a ring of shouting boys, huddled against the granite wall at the far end of the schoolyard, and I was winning when Tommy switched positions and sidestepped, and I slapped a right hook into the rough granite and my knuckles exploded in crimson. Smarter than he looked, often smarter than me. Underestimate Tommy Owens at your peril.

Tommy subsided onto the tarp-covered hood of another German saloon at the far end of the garage, a BMW by the shape. I left Darren Reilly and walked across to Tommy.

“Tell me,” I said.

“She stayed over, that time you were on that bar fraud thing in Wicklow. We’d been getting on well, you know, even if her mother has done her best to turn her against me. Not to mention letting her run wild, the mouth on her, fucking this, fucking that, thirteen years old. And makeup, and hair bleached blond, wearing this pink velour tracksuit with ‘Juicy’on her arse, and a black thong sticking up over it, and a tattoo at the base of her spine, you know, a fucking tramp stamp, two bolts of lightning it looked like, pointing down toward her hole, I mean fuck sake, is Paula on drugs letting her get that done? But I said nothing. I mean, she’s doing well at school, she’s a good laugh, and she’s always stuck up for me with Paula. Even when there wasn’t a lot to stick up for.”

I turned to check on Darren Reilly, who looked away quickly; he had come closer to us since Tommy started talking.

“Let’s dump head-the-ball here before you tell me any more, Tommy,” I said.