Declan Hughes - The Color of Blood

“Maria,” I said. “Come with us.”

She got out of the car, looked at Tommy and spat in his face.

“Not with him. Pig!” she said.

“Not with him. You can go where you like now. To Anita?”

She looked at Brock Taylor in panic, then back at me, her eyebrows raised.

“You know where?” I said.

She nodded.

I wanted to ask her what had happened, or rather, how it happened. But all that could wait. I pulled some money from my pocket and gave it to her.

“Go on then,” I said.

She looked around the yard and almost smiled, then walked toward the opened gates. Her heel was broken, so she walked lopsidedly, then on her toes, then she pulled her shoes off and threw them in the dirt and ran barefoot into the lane and disappeared.

I took the Steyr from Tommy and told him to get the money. Then I tossed the Steyr on top of Sean Moon where he lay, blood seeping out of the back of his head. An all-in-one package for the cops. Then I looked at Brock Taylor, who hadn’t taken his eyes off me.

“I don’t much care about the Reillys. Don’t mess with the girl again.”

“I was helping the girl,” he said, in one of those Americanized Dublin drawls that turned “the” into “de” and “girl” into “gurrl.”

“Don’t help her then,” I said. “And don’t fuck with me either, do you hear me?”

“I hear you, Edward Loy,” said Brock Taylor.

I looked at him then, heard the threat, implied if not real, and realized this wasn’t over, that there was no possibility, having witnessed the Reillys’ murders, Tommy and I could just walk away as if nothing had happened. I went into the security hut and closed the gates again, then I came out, retrieved the SMG and showed it to Brock Taylor, who hadn’t moved.

“Tommy, help me get Moon into the hut.”

We dragged his body in and heaved him on the floor beside the security guard; Moon’s head was oozing slowly, but I’m afraid, right at that moment, I simply didn’t care. I pushed the heavy door to and walked over to the Bentley.

“Keys,” I said to Taylor. His face fell.

“You’re not taking this on me,” he said, his accent thickening in panic.

“That’s right,” I said. “We’re all staying here. Keys.”

He handed me the keys. I gave Tommy the Steyr and told him to keep it trained on Taylor. Then I sat in the Bentley, reversed it as far as the gates, and jammed it in alongside the door of the security hut. I got out and nodded Taylor toward the house. Tommy kept the SMG trained on him as we walked.

“Is he safe with that?” Taylor said.

“Guess you’ll have to hope so,” I said.

What looked like a restored kitchen lurked at basement level; at the bottom of the metal steps that led up to the ground floor, I stopped Taylor.

“Lights are on. Is anyone home? Anyone expecting us?”

“No,” he said. “There’s always lights, for security.”

“Because if we’re going, you’re going with us,” I said, showing him the Sig.

“There’s no one. I’m not working like that anymore.”

“You’re not? What was tonight? All you forgot was to make them dig their own graves.”

I nudged him in the back with the Sig, and he climbed the steps, pressed a security code on a panel by the high four-paneled door and pushed through into the house. We followed, shutting the door behind us and walking through a room that had been stripped down to plaster and boards and not yet refurbished, along a narrow passageway and through into a high-ceilinged hallway with a flagstone floor. Paint and paper were peeling off the walls, and cornices and center pieces were crumbling; oilcloths and tarpaulins covered furniture and woodwork; paint color charts and pattern books for wallpaper and upholstery lay strewn about. Fitzwilliam Square, the last of the great Dublin Georgian squares, being bought up by the likes of Brock Taylor. However much the Criminal Assets Bureau had taken off him, it wasn’t enough.

“I haven’t got the restoration work fully under way yet, lads,” Brock Taylor said, like an excited wife showing some pals round her new house. He led us into the front reception room, which was carpeted deep blue and wallpapered in a tatty lavender and violet Regency stripe. “This is still from the previous owner. I’m going room by room, want to live here too. Let the builders in when you’re not around, fuck knows what they get up to.”

Heavy wine-colored velvet curtains were drawn; Tommy and I sat in armchairs of a burly three-piece suite the same shade; Brock Taylor took the couch. Having sat down, Tommy immediately stood up again and began to pace the floor with the Steyr. I found it a little irritating, but from the alarmed looks Taylor was casting Tommy’s way, it was evidently irritating him rather more, so I let it roll.

“Now lads,” Taylor said, “what can I do for you?”

“You could start by telling us why you had Wayne and Darren Reilly murdered tonight.”

Taylor laughed in an expansive, bogus manner he must have practiced at Seafield Rugby Club. He stood up as he was laughing, wriggled out of his biscuit-shaded overcoat, which on closer inspection looked like it was made of cashmere, and sat down again. He wore a pale grey linen suit and a charcoal polo neck and tan Italian loafers with transparent grey silk socks; his back-combed black hair sat high on his head; the white streak through it seemed to glow; there was a plastic sheen to his tanned face, to his groomed appearance, that gave him the embalmed look of a cabaret entertainer from the 1970s.

“Well, don’t work up to it or anything, barge right in there with the leading question.”

He laughed some more.

“I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out how long I’d have to spend giving a witness statement to the Guards, and when I’d be likely to get out. See, I’ve a lot of things to do tonight.”

Taylor looked at me coolly, appraisingly, trying to weigh up whether I was bluffing or not.

“We’ve got the murder weapon. We’ve got Moon’s prints on it. We’ve got two witnesses. I think that’s open-and-shut. What would you say, Brock? ’Cause it’s nothing to me, in fact, it’s about time I did myself some good with the guardians of the peace. Not that I had any special affection for Wayne and Darren, quite the reverse, but even they deserved better than what they got tonight.”

“Well, I wouldn’t agree with you there, Ed. And you might not agree with yourself when you hear the whole story.”

“Well tell it to me then. The whole story.”

There was a sound from the room above, a floorboard creak, a door slam. I went out to the hall and looked up the stairs.

“There’s no one here,” Brock said. “These old houses, they make all sorts of noise. Especially at night. It’s like they’re alive and breathing. Put the fear of God into you if you’re on your own.”

I came back in and nodded at him. Brock looked anxiously at Tommy, leant forward in his chair, and said, “Your friend Tommy’s making me nervous there, with the pacing and all. And since he’s a major part of the story, I wouldn’t like to feel…inhibited while I was telling it.”

I looked around.

“Tommy, stand still, will you?”

Tommy stopped pacing, and instead stood swaying, the energy converted but sustained. I don’t know how much calmer that made Brock feel, but he began to speak anyway.

“As I say, Tommy there starts the whole thing off, there’s been some shenanigans between his daughter and Brady and the Howard one. Now I have nothing to do with this, my connection comes through Sean Moon.”

“Tell us about Moon.”

“Sean Moon is a character. In fact, he’s a bunch of them. That’s his whole thing, he can be a hard man, an earnest office type, round Honeypark he was like a big kid really, wasn’t he, a bit sad, a bit of a loser? That’s a useful one, get into all sorts of situations that way, no one takes him seriously until they have to. He’s the son of an old, of a late…colleague of mine, I always took an interest in him. Had a little bit of spark, of brain, of wit…no surprise to you I’m sure, but that’s so rare as to be unique in my business…my former business. Anyway, I’ve been buying up houses around Honeypark, Woodpark, and I asked Sean in to just keep an eye on them, pick up the vibe in the area, who’s dealing, who’s paying off who, the usual, and I own the pub there now of course, Moon’s a way of…he’s another eye.”