Declan Hughes - The Color of Blood

I walked up between the borders of rowan trees. Their gleaming berries seemed swollen, fit to burst. Before I knocked, Anita opened the door, her face rigid with fear; the red gems in her ring seemed a link with the berries, and I felt I followed them rather than her, the stones glowing, arterial, blood the sunken trigger to it all. At reception, Denis Finnegan appeared, and I began to reel slightly at the parallel to the previous morning’s events. I showed him the cover of the Evening Herald, and he rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“It says a file is being prepared for the DPP,” I said.

“They’re in no position to press for a prosecution. They can place him at both scenes, but there is no physical evidence so far, and, despite tabloid tittle-tattle, no motive, and therefore, in my opinion, from the Latin, fuck-all case,” Finnegan said. “I’m afraid Shane-”

Shane Howard emerged from his office. He wore a tweed jacket and brown cords that looked like he had slept in them; his face, drawn and pale, announced that he hadn’t slept at all.

“Speak of the devil!” Denis Finnegan announced brightly, as if Howard’s appearance was a delightful if unexpected surprise; his face registered irritation.

“Come in, Mr. Loy. Denis, wait here.”

“Shane, I think it would be prudent if I were in the room-”

“Denis, you’re giving me a pain in the hole. I trust Loy. Come in, man.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to talk outside. In the back garden?”

“Oh yeah?” Shane Howard said dubiously.

“Walls have ears,” I said. He smiled and tapped his nose.

“Right you be. Just find a coat.”

Shane Howard went into his office. Denis Finnegan came close to me.

“I take it what Shane tells you doesn’t find its way into the ear of a certain Detective Inspector in Seafield,” he said.

“Take it how you want,” I said. “You do your job, and I’ll do mine.”

Finnegan’s face lost composure momentarily, and a flash of dark rage creased his brow and glowed in his bulging little eyes. I pulled away from him as Shane Howard emerged from his office wearing a tan suede car coat.

“Let’s go then,” he said.

I followed him downstairs through the stone-floored kitchen and out into the garden. He shut the back door behind us, turned to me and laughed.

“Dinny’s face! Fucking priceless. Seen too much of that bollocks the last twenty-four hours.”

“I’m sure he’s only trying to look out for you.”

“Are you? I’m not so fuckin’ sure, not so fuckin’ sure at all.”

“What do you mean? Do you think he’s more interested in Rowan House, in your mother’s will?”

Howard looked at me in astonishment. His large face had a tendency to pantomime his emotions: anger, surprise, amusement, all vivid as a cartoon character.

“How’d you know about the will?”

“That’s why he was here yesterday morning. He thought you wanted me to spy on Jessica, get something on her to maybe coax her into accepting less of a settlement. I told him the truth: I didn’t know anything about the will.”

“Rowan House all comes to me. And you know something, I wish it didn’t. Sandra’s being very good about it, but I know how I’d feel if it all went to her.”

“Why don’t you split it then, yourself?”

“That’s what I might do, you know? I mean, how many houses can you live in? Jaysus.”

“Did Jessica have a plan for it?”

“She thought it should be razed to the ground, build apartments and houses there. Yield a fortune in this climate.”

“And Sandra disagreed?”

“We all know she wants to build a fourth tower. That’s the dream. And the only place for it is where the house is. I just wanted to avoid the whole issue, to be honest, I wouldn’t discuss it with anyone.”

Howard turned to me suddenly.

“Listen, I didn’t kill them, all right? David Brady, Jessica. I didn’t kill either of them. Not saying I didn’t want to. Not even saying I wouldn’t have if I’d caught them together, if it had been true. But someone got to them first. I swear that’s the truth.”

“Tell me what happened. You bolted out of the surgery like a madman.”

“Someone called me-”

“Man, woman?”

“Couldn’t tell. Low voice, but light. Odd.”

“As if they were trying to disguise it?”

“Could have been. Tell the truth, what they said put out of my mind any thought of the way it was said.”

“And what did they say?”

“Your wife’s sleeping with David Brady. She’s at his flat right now.”

“And what did you do?”

“What I was supposed to do, I suppose. Someone’s played me for a right cunt in all this-”

“What did you do?”

“Got in the car. Blemmed round to Brady’s place. Up in the lift. And there he was, brains on the floor, great fucking knife in the chest.”

“So what did you do then?”

Howard exhaled, a massive sound, like a sleeping horse in the still night.

“Nothing. I was upset. I made a run for it. And then…like I told you. Wandered around Castlehill forest. So on. Got to Rowan House.”

“Did you not worry about Jessica’s safety? Ring and see if she was okay?”

“I should have. I don’t know why I didn’t. I just panicked, you know? I couldn’t think straight.”

“But the person who called you-they were trying to put you in the frame, right?”

“It looks that way.”

“Who do you think killed David Brady?”

“I don’t know. Now I know what he got up to with Emily, I think I could have killed him myself.”

“Could Emily have done it?”

Howard shook his head.

“Not the girl I know.”

But, as we were finding out, that left a lot of room for maneuver.

“Who killed your wife, Shane?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

We had reached the ornamental pond. I looked at the stones embedded in its walls.

“Do you know about those?” I said. “Bloodstones?”

“Ah, that’s that oul’ crystals shite. Sandra put them in.”

“Sandra? Not Jessica?”

“No. Sure Jessica wouldn’t spend a night in the surgery after we were married. She thought it was creepy. She insisted on the new house.”

“So this garden-”

“When I opened the surgery, Sandra had the pool set in. Mid-eighties, after the old man died. Said it was some kind of memorial.”

“To whom?”

“The old man, I assumed. Truth? I was playing rugby and trying to get established, get some patients, I didn’t have the time to worry. In other words, I didn’t give a shite.”

“And the stones?”

“I told you, it’s some kind of New Age malarkey. Sandra was big into it. There was a while there, they’d all be going on about it, crystals with healing powers, and aromatherapy and all this. Terrible shite. In the chair, had to argue a few around, the women of course, how this or that natural healing gemstone or potion was all well and good but the old local would still be her best bet if she didn’t want to pass out with the fucking pain.”

“Sandra told me Jessica had been sexually abused as a child. And Emily wears rings on her fingers with these bloodstones. They’re supposed to make the wearer invisible. That’s what people who’ve been abused say: either they feel invisible, like they’re not real, or they wish they could feel that way.”

Shane Howard’s face had shifted completely: his reddening face was a mask of aggression, mouth and eyes bulging, like the second-row he had been, hurtling into a maul. I braced myself and kept on talking.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m asking: the apparent lack of sexual inhibition, the full-on exhibitionist relationship with David Brady, the casual sex with her cousin, the precarious emotional and psychological state your daughter is in: is there a possibility she was abused too?”