Declan Hughes - The Color of Blood

Finnegan stood against the window, swaying now, slopping the whisky in his glass. He leant over from the waist and let gravity trundle him toward the fire, where he slapped his crystal tumbler down above his chin on the high mantelpiece and left his arm there, as if his glass was a peg he was hanging from. I hardly dared breathe, waiting for him to continue; from my neck to my rib cage, wave after wave of chill ice rippled; I was shaking with it. Finally, because he seemed lost to dreams, and I was afraid the drug would kick in before he said any more, I spoke.

“And her sister?” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Sandra’s sister. You were remembering seeing John Howard for the first time, and his two angel girls.”

Finnegan stared at me as if I had set him a riddle. Then he shook his head slowly, and gingerly lifted his glass of whisky down from the mantelpiece, brought it to his lips and held it there a moment before moving it away from his head and holding it at arm’s length. The glass seemed to have taken on a life of its own, and Finnegan appeared mesmerized by it.

“What was she like?” I said. “Sandra’s sister.”

“No no no,” he said. “Sandra’s mother.”

“Sandra’s mother? You said ‘two girls,’ ‘John Howard’s two girls.’”

“That’s right.”

“Her mother was one of the girls?”

“Yeah. Fine-looking woman she was too, for her age. That’s when I saw the Howards first. And you know, to this day…there isn’t a thing I wouldn’t do for them…to this day…”

Finnegan pulled the glass back in toward his face, tipped it up to his mouth and emptied it, then staggered across to pour himself another. On the way, he was intercepted by his chair, which soaked up his great bulk without a sound. He waved his glass vaguely in the direction of the Macallan on the drinks table, then dropped it on the arm of the chair, where it tumbled silently to the floor. His head came down to rest where the glass had just been.

Within seconds, he was snoring, and I could do what I came to do. The attic floor was full of old case files and law books. On the first floor, there was a master bedroom and two guest bedrooms, one of which looked to be in regular use. With a collection of men’s magazines-FHM, Loaded , Maxim-and a shelf full of mathematics textbooks, it wasn’t too difficult to work out that Jonathan O’Connor stayed here. As with his rooms in Trinity, a portrait of John Howard and a photograph of the Howard Medical Center hung on the wall. There was a laptop computer on a pine desk, and I wondered whether he had been here tonight. But Jonathan’s laptop was silver; this one was white. I switched it on, opened Entourage and saw that it belonged to Emily Howard-and I remembered there had been a laptop dust outline in her room. I worked through the in-box until I came to an e-mail address I recognized: maul@2ndphase.ie. I opened the mail. It was a note of congratulations to Emily for getting a place in Trinity to study medicine, and it came from Denis Finnegan.

The other guest bedroom contained a display cabinet that was like a shrine to Seafield and Irish rugby, with photographs and press cuttings and Finnegan’s own schoolboy and club medals. Shane Howard and Richard O’Connor featured prominently; there were several shots of David Brady, even a few of Finnegan himself, younger and slimmer and not quite as red.

I went next door to examine Finnegan’s bedroom. I trawled through wardrobes and chests of drawers. There was nothing but clothes and shoes and volumes of political biography. I began to feel like this was a wasted trip, that anything I needed would be fast in a safe. I went back into the rugby shrine. There were two drawers beneath the glass cabinet that I hadn’t noticed. The first one opened to reveal all manner of memorabilia: tickets stubs to games from the sixties and seventies; autographs of JPR Williams and Tony O’Reilly and other rugby greats of the past; programs and lapel badges and so on. The second drawer was locked. I went up to the second floor to check on Finnegan: he was solid. I tipped his head to one side in case he vomited in his sleep and went down to the kitchen on the ground floor. I was looking for tools, but there weren’t any; there was a lot of expensive kitchenware that looked like it was never used. I got a mallet and a pointed steel used for keeping knives sharp and brought them upstairs and, using the steel like a chisel, I smashed my way into the locked drawer, breaking off every now and again to make sure Finnegan was still asleep.

The drawer was lined with green velvet. Rugby medals were laid out on the velvet. I looked at the medals, and pocketed one of several with a name engraved on the back. I also took a silver ID bracelet. Then I pushed the drawer back in and tried to minimize the apparent damage. I took Emily’s laptop and went downstairs and replaced the mallet and the steel in the kitchen. On the counter there was a block with a number of sharp Sabatier knives. There were two knives missing. As I walked to my car, I fingered the medal and the bracelet in my pocket. The name engraved on the back of the medal was Richard O’Connor’s. The words engraved on the bracelet were Diabetes Type 1.

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE OLD GRAVEYARDS UP IN THEmountains, with a small ruined church within the high granite walls, and an archway with a locked gate that had a sign pinned to it with the name and address of the caretaker. You’d call it an old country graveyard, except the city had come to meet it: there were redbrick cul-de-sac developments on either side, and a line of new bungalows across the road. There were no lights on in any of the houses, and no light in the sky either. But the ivy-clad wall was old and broken enough to offer as many footholds and handholds as I needed to scale it with relative ease, and I took a torch from the car to check the names on the graves, limiting my search to those that looked relatively new; there were many old stones and crosses on the uneven ground, and a scurrying underfoot that might have been rabbits, or rats; I didn’t want to be there at two o’clock in the morning and yet, as soon as I had received the text from Martha with the directions, I knew I had to go there at once.

The Howard plot was in a corner, shaded by yew trees and a single rowan; a big Celtic cross of black marble marked where John Howard lay; I assumed his wife had gone into the same grave; her name hadn’t been added to the headstone yet. The other grave had a stone of white marble and gold lettering and a photograph that fitted into a plastic cover. The photograph was of a girl of twelve, with strawberry blond hair and large blue eyes and a slight overbite and a cheeky smile on her face that said she knew she had been naughty but she was sure she could get away with it. She was holding a blue pig with one ear beneath her arm; her school pinafore was red and green tartan. What was written on the grave was:

MARIAN HOWARD

BORN MAY 15, 1963

DIED NOVEMBER 2, 1975

REQUIESCAT IN PACE

I thought of what Sandra said about her parents, that they hadn’t slept in the same bedroom “since Ma…” She had been going to say “since Marian died” but had stopped herself. I thought of Denis Finnegan tonight, drunk on fine scotch and a dream of the Howards, recalling the first time he’d set eyes on John Howard and his two angel girls. Two angel girls, only one still living.

I went and looked out the gates onto the road after that, in the hope that a car might drive by, or a truck, or a plane might fly overhead, or anything to take my thoughts away from here. But there was nothing but black cloud and mist and coal black night. I thought that this was right, with a dead child: there is no escape from it, and there is no prayer that can ease the pain of it. Then I thought of how little my feelings were worth in the scheme of things, and how little time I had to waste if I wanted this all to end. And then I turned around and went back to work.