Declan Hughes - The Color of Blood

“So you’re looking at the possibility that this mystery Dalton character-”

“Brian Patrick Dalton.”

“Was your father.”

“Jessica Howard doesn’t remember him. Didn’t remember him. She said Shane’s mother didn’t like her, so she avoided Rowan House. Whether she would have met him up there, I don’t know. And the subject of Stephen Casey was avoided by everyone.”

“Shane told me he remembers getting a lift on Casey’s motorcycle.”

Dalton nodded.

“Some of the Woodpark oul’ ones, I got talking to them down the pub, the ones who remember love to rabbit on about how awful and tragic it all was, and they said he was this guy in a leather jacket with a motorbike.”

“How did you come to rent the same house?”

“Again, it was sent to me in the post, the item in the newspaper advertising it for rent.”

“So there’s someone pulling your strings.”

“It feels like that. But I feel I’m ready to push hard now, to start confronting people.”

“When you say people, you mean Shane and Sandra.”

“There’s no one else, is there?”

“Emily. Jonathan. If you’re a part of that family…Denis Finnegan…someone has been feeding you the information, it must be that one of them wants you to get at the truth. For their own reasons, as much as yours.”

“I guess that’s right.”

The bouncer came over to where we were sitting.

“JD, Barnesy said to give you the call, okay?”

Dalton got up.

“Two things before you go. Jonathan O’Connor ever drink here?”

“Sure. He comes in with Denis Finnegan. And I’ve seen him with the Reillys as well, out in the car park. Last question.”

“If your father’s not Dalton, who might it be?”

He shrugged.

“Who were the available males in the Howard household at the time? Shane? John Howard himself? Which is why Emily and me never got it together, or at least, haven’t yet.”

“Howard was a dying man.”

“Stranger things have happened. I mean, there are too many unanswered questions: Why did the Howards go to the lengths they did to cover things up? Why did they buy a house for Eileen Casey? She’d been living on her own for a long time with her son Stephen, seems to have been a tough cookie. Why did she suddenly crack up and commit suicide?”

“Postnatal depression, abandonment by another partner, on top of the grief around losing her first son. It’s not an impossible place to get back from, but even the toughest cookie would find it hard.”

Dalton looked out over the fog-drenched night.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should just think of him as a black rider who took off into the dark, never to be seen again, and leave it at that. Is that what you’d do?”

I thought about it. I didn’t have to think very long.

“No, that isn’t what I’d do.”

“Well, it isn’t what I’m going to do either. ’Course, the possibility that Emily and I are blood relations has something to do with it too. Because I really like her. So I’m kind of hoping the old black rider option is true.”

“JD! People’re dying of thirst here!” called the bouncer.

“All right, I’m coming.”

He turned back to me.

“The funny thing is, you’re searching for one thing, and it eventually becomes about everything, do you know what I mean?”

I nodded. I knew only too well what he meant.

“So the thing is, if I were you, I’d check the graveyard.”

I drove through Woodpark to the Church of the Immaculate Conception. On the way, I called Martha O’Connor.

“Martha, it’s Ed. Just wanted to check you’re okay. Hope it’s not too late.”

“I’m in the office, working. Didn’t see how I was going to sleep after the load you dumped in my lap.”

“I’m sorry. But-”

“No, it’s my fault. I’ve dealt with it by avoiding it for so long. One of the downsides of therapy, you can make yourself feel okay, or at least, less bad, just by talking. But you don’t get anywhere. I thought the only way I could survive living here was by avoiding it all. Hey, it seems to work for most Irish families, right?”

Her laugh seemed tiny over the phone, like a struck match against the night sky.

“I think maybe you were ready to head in that direction anyway,” I said. “I mean, the investigation into John Howard, the fact that you looked at him at all…that could only have been the start of something.”

“Mmm. Maybe. Anyway, what’s up? I value your concern for my welfare, but what the fuck do you want?”

“Two things, if you can get to them. Where’s John Howard buried? Is it a family plot?”

“Can do that, it would have been in the death notices. Thing two?”

“I’m looking for the name of an eyewitness to a suicide by drowning. It would have been off Seafield Pier, late April 1986.”

“Not much of a story.”

“Apparently there was a big search and rescue attempt, all the emergency services were out.”

“That would have guaranteed coverage. Tonight?”

“If you can.”

“Does this mean we’re partners?”

“Long as you give me a cocredit when you write it up.”

“A cocredit? What kind of sick fuck are you?”

“How’d it go with Jonathan, did you see him?”

“We had a drink. He’s not a happy boy. Doesn’t like you at all.”

“I was kind of hard on him.”

“Do him no harm, he’s a bit of a spoiled brat.”

“Did he seem, when you left him, I don’t know, stable?”

“Yeah. Sure. Why? You think he’s likely to top himself? Let me tell you, he’s a lot more depressed about my life now than he is about his. Leave ’em thanking God they’re not you. That’s the therapy to give ’em. I’ll call you back…whenever?”

“As soon as you get anything, no matter how late. Thanks, Martha.”

The lights in the church were still on, and I remembered there was a vigil tonight. There were three old ladies and two old men on their knees in the pews, and one woman hauling herself around the stations of the cross on a red four-wheel walker. On the altar, the Monstrance was prominently displayed, with its inner circle to expose the consecrated host, which Catholics believe is the actual body of Christ, and its surrounding ring of silver spikes; I flashed on the Halloween fireworks that had lit the heavens; maybe they were both faces of the same impulse. I thought I saw the sacristy door to the right of the altar slam shut; I walked down the aisle and tried the side door, but it was locked; I genuflected at the altar and went up to the door and tried it; it was locked too. I came down off the altar, soaking up the disapproving looks I was getting from a couple of the old ladies; the old men were asleep, or rapt in devout prayer, whichever is the greater. I knelt at the side altar near the sacristy to give myself a moment to think. The altar was devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and there was a statue of Mary with the infant Jesus in her arms. I reached for a prayer but didn’t get very far. I stood up and genuflected again, the old training ingrained, and set off down the side aisle when something I had seen but not fully taken in made me turn around. There was a brass plate on the wall beside the altar, and I went back and read it properly.

It read: The restoration of this Marian Altar was made possible with the generous assistance of the Howard Family, 1986.

The presbytery was an old Victorian villa to the rear of the church. There were no lights on. I knocked on the door. Either Father Massey wasn’t there, or he wasn’t answering.

I APPROACHED ROWAN HOUSE FROM THE BUNGALOWside, but there were no lights on in the modern building, so I climbed the hill and swung the Volvo down the long drive and up through the red-berried trees to park beside Sandra Howard’s black Mercedes. I’m not sure what I had in mind, if I thought I was going to confront Sandra Howard with what I had learned, or try and catch her in a lie like a barrister with a defendant, or simply brief her on my progress so far and watch her reactions, but when she opened the door in a dark green silk robe that barely reached the tops of her pale, freckled legs, my mind fought a brief tussle with my blood and lost. She wore a silver chain around her neck with a bloodstone that nestled between her breasts; her nipples were red and full, as were her lips; her green eyes looked clouded with lust; her hair was outstretched on her head like a fiery halo, and between her legs a red band glowed like a tongue of flame. She turned and led me through the hall and up the dark stairs, and we might have made it to a bed this time, but her scent, the tang of sweet earth spice in my nose, and her walk, the sway of her hips and the roll of her buttocks, robbed me of everything but urgency and instinct; I pulled her to me and kissed the back of her neck and her cheeks, and the clefts below her ears, and ran my hands slowly up her rib cage to her breasts, and then kissed her back, slowly down her spine, and she wouldn’t turn, just sank to her knees and raised herself in the air, and reached a hand back for me, and guided me inside, and she screamed with the first thrusts, and then steadied in rhythm, and then stopped and turned and showed her face, and she sat above me and steadied again, and we drove and ground at each other hard and long and came, blood beating in my ears and the sweet sound of her screams.