Declan Hughes - The Color of Blood

I called Tommy, and he answered while handing out his wares.

“Mother Meera, God bless! Padre Pio, his dripping wounds, his blood-soaked mitten.”

“I thought the miracle was, it wasn’t blood soaked,” I said.

“Fuck do you know?” Tommy hissed. “God bless, terrible night, isn’t it?”

He had a lisping, almost whistling voice he was using, one I hadn’t heard since it had nearly got him expelled at school, when he reduced a very timid student teacher to hysterics by convincing her that the voice, which he used only when her back was turned, was the ghostly emanation of a dead child.

“Fuck Darren, they took the Merc” was the next thing Tommy said, very low, followed by “Mother Meera, Padre Pio, thanking you!” back up in the lisp again. I waited a few seconds, and then, “Darren Reilly picks up bag, Wayne in midnight blue Merc S-Series Padre Pio Mother Meera God Bless! ’O6 REG G67Y. Bag in car, Merc signaling to pull out. Mother Meera, Sacred Mitten! Merc barges into traffic, heading your way, Ed.”

“Good work. Thanks Tommy. Keep your phone on, I’ll call you when I’m done.”

The traffic was a slow rush-hour drift in both directions. I looked in the rearview, which had two mini-Bratz dolls hanging from it, waited until the Merc was passing, then signaled-and no one would let me out. A blue Mercedes could slide into any line of traffic, but a Fiat Punto? If a grown man was such a loser as to be driving a chick’s car (and a teenage chick’s at that)? Forget it, my friend! I tried to keep one eye on the Merc up ahead; the lights were still red, but I had lost sight of it. And then there was a loud crash on my roof: Tommy Owens, waving his pamphlets in the middle of the street, horns blaring at him, giving me enough room to pull out, and him enough time to hop in. The lights went green, and Tommy flashed two fingers at the boy racer behind us with his hand on his horn, and leaned out the window to keep tabs on the Reillys (“Left, Ed, left, the Woodpark Road”), and we were still in the game.

I had long been used to Tommy saying the last thing you expected him to say, so it should have come as no surprise when he said, “I think we should call the Guards.” But it did.

“We have them with the money, Shane Howard can give his side of it, yous have the ransom note, what’s the problem?”

“The problem is, we have a gun, we’ve set this up and we didn’t tell them…the problem is me, Tommy. Unfinished business. Anything less than the whole thing tied up with a ribbon, and they’ll do me for something, anything. And I am going all the way on this one.”

“You always do, Ed. All right man. Just thought I’d say it. First time for everything.”

There is indeed. Within the hour, I’d be wishing for the very first time that I’d taken Tommy Owens’s advice.

WE FOLLOWED THE BLUE MERC UP TOWARD WOODPARK,but then they swung right and drove toward the city for a while. I called Shane Howard and told him we were on their trail.

“Fair enough. Little skanger in a hoodie it was.”

“We know who it was. Are you all right? Where are you?”

“I’m still here.”

“You should go home.”

“With all those jackals outside the house? No way.”

“What if Emily wants to come home?”

“Emily’s fine. She called me, said she’s with friends. Last thing she needs is to be splashed all over the newspapers.”

“Don’t go missing now, Shane.”

“I’ll tell you where I’m going. For the next half hour. To mass.”

He ended the call. The Reillys had changed direction again; they crossed the N11 and were heading south and west into the mountains. Tommy took the Sig and offered it to me.

“Here. Make me nervous, fucking things.”

I put the gun in my coat pocket.

“Thanks. You did well tonight, Tommy.”

He looked at himself in the rearview mirror.

“I look like a fucking looper.”

“That was what you were supposed to look like. So you got it right. You made up for fucking up. What more can anyone do?”

I nodded at Tommy, and he nodded back, and that was almost that.

We followed the Mercedes through industrial estates, then climbed through dense pine forests and along narrow roads thicketed with bramble and fern; finally, a road stretched out along foothills of granite and shallow bog, low clumps of heather and marsh grass. It ran about a mile at a slow incline; I thought about pulling in in case we were spotted, but I had no idea whether the Reillys were meeting someone at an outdoor rendezvous or calling at a house, or whether they’d just taken it into their heads to bowl out for an evening spin and count their money. I kept them in our sights, and then lost them as the Merc crested the incline; when we made it to the top, I saw the road drop and cut right against the side of the mountain; far below us the city lay, an irregular blur of lights in the mist and cloud. There was a lay-by halfway along, used as a viewing point; the Reillys, having slowed down near the lay-by, picked up speed again and then turned off to the right about half a mile further on. I kept the car moving slowly, wary of running into them if they were doubling back, wary of blundering about in the dark.

“I know where they are,” said Tommy. “Pull into the lay-by.”

I did as he said. There was a grass verge with picnic tables and purple Hebe and St.-John’s-wort and a framed guide to the flora and fauna and a wooden gate across a rutted lane that led up into a forest of pines. Tommy hopped out and opened the gate, and we ran the car up and off the side of the lane.

“Used to bring a girl up here. There’s a quarry about half a mile along. That’s where they turned in.”

“Wait here,” I said.

Tommy shook his head.

“No way man. I may have made it up to you for getting involved with these cunts. But I haven’t made it up to me yet. Anyway, I know the way.”

Before I had a chance to argue, he set off up the lane, dragging his ruined foot as if it was weightless; I followed. We climbed a couple of hundred feet and then bore left through the trees, picking our way over uneven ground. I kept my balance by hand, steering my way along the densely packed pines; resin clung to my fingers and the pungent smell burned clean in my lungs.

At the sight of light ahead, Tommy began to sidle gradually down the hill; when we began to hear the rumble of voices, we made our movements slower and more deliberate; finally, we reached the edge of the pines, dropped to our knees and moved carefully between clumps of gorse and tangled bramble and fern for about twenty feet, until we were almost at the edge of a quarry. The sheer face, silver grey and orange slashed with purple and white, was to our right; opposite and beneath us, a sloping of mud and heaped stone fell to a dust floor of shale and rubble. There was an orange digger at rest, and an unlit grey and green Portakabin with Norton Excavation written on it; the lights came from the Reilly brothers’ Mercedes and a navy blue Bentley. The Reillys were standing by the Merc, the silver and blue drug company bag full of money between them. A man sat in the front seat of the Bentley, smoking, but I couldn’t make out who it was. Standing near the Bentley was Sean Moon, or someone who looked like Sean Moon might have if he’d had a shower and put on a suit and a dark coat; he was still pretty fat, but he didn’t look like a down-and-out. They were talking, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying; Tommy turned to me and put a finger to his ear to say he couldn’t hear them either.

Darren held up the bag, but when Sean Moon stepped forward to take it, Wayne moved between them. There was another set of exchanges, then Sean Moon called “Maria!” to someone in the Bentley, and a very nervous-looking woman with snow blond hair got out. At first I thought it was Anita, then I realized it wasn’t, but that I had seen her before and she had reminded me of Anita then too. It was the woman who had been in both porn films, the woman Moon had called Wendy, and was now calling Maria.