Declan Hughes - The Color of Blood

“You said there’d be no more girls, no more hookers. And what have you been running? Ukrainians? With that pervert scumbag Moon?”

“Eileen love, I’m shot. The cops…we have to get out of here. Where’s that cunt Loy?”

“Tell me about Denis Finnegan.”

“What? What has Denis Finnegan to do with it? Oh fuck, I need a doctor-”

“Stephen, my son. They found the body twenty-one years ago today. And I know Denis Finnegan was involved. Now how would a soft cunt like Finnegan organize a robbery like that? He’d shit his pants. Except you knew him, didn’t you, you grew up with the cunt.”

“Eileen-”

She fired past him, through the door.

“Tell me, Brian, or I’ll do it, I don’t give a fuck anymore, tell me the fucking truth!”

“Jesus Christ, all right. I knew him. He wanted…he had a big thing for the Howard girl, Sandra. But it was all fucked up, how he wanted some other man for her, someone he felt would be better for her. I couldn’t follow it. All I knew was, he wanted the wife dead.”

“And then?”

“And then. Ah Jesus-”

Eileen shot again, closer this time. I didn’t move a muscle; it was as if she’d completely forgotten I was there; she could have caught me with a stray bullet without thinking.

“So that was done-”

“Who did it?”

“A lad who done that kind of work.”

“Did you do it?”

“No.”

A third shot.

“No? You were a fucking mechanic who robbed the odd car. You’d never done anything, you didn’t know any lads who done that kind of work. You had no fucking money, that’s what you did it for, isn’t it? How much did he pay you? You did it, didn’t you, you did it yourself. Tell me, Brian.”

“All right,” he said. “I done it.”

Eileen hadn’t really believed it until he said it; her face seemed to age in an instant; it was suddenly weary, lined with fear. When she spoke again, it was in genuine disbelief.

“How much? How much?”

“Five grand.”

“And Stephen? You killed Stephen?”

“Eileen, I’m bleeding here, it’s serious, the cops are coming, we have to clear out-”

She shot at the floor near his feet.

“Ah for fuck’s sake, all right! We’d’ve been saddled with him. We could never have done what we wanted to do, start afresh, Bonnie and Clyde.”

“You killed him? You killed my son?”

“I ran it past Finnegan, he said it would simplify things, the Howard one was carrying on with him, she didn’t need that, he said.”

Eileen held one hand on her chest. She seemed to be having trouble breathing.

“And then you made me leave Jerry in the church. Both children gone…for this?”

She looked around at the carefully designed room in disgust. Her eyes glistened. I could hear her breathe.

“It’s not just this,” Taylor said. “It’s Woodpark too, and more. When you see what we have coming to us, through the same Denis Finnegan…we’ll be controlling the Howards before long…it’s what we’re due, what you deserve, for all the Howards done to you.”

“What did they do to me? You killed my first son. And made me abandon my second.”

“Your second son? You were raped, Eileen, raped.”

Eileen Taylor set her shoulders back and pointed the Beretta at Brock Taylor’s chest.

“I was raped, yes. But not by John Howard. By you, Brock, by you.”

She shot him three times in the chest; I don’t know if he meant to shoot her or if his finger hit the trigger by accident but he sprayed automatic fire around the upper end of the room and she danced briefly like a puppet in the wind and went down beneath a hail of it.

I WAS STILL STANDING BY THE DOOR WITH THE MARBLEclock in my hand when Tommy Owens clumped through it with a Steyr machine pistol in his hand. He reared back like a bucking horse when he saw the bodies, swinging around so that the SMG was aimed at me.

“You can put that down, for a start,” I said.

I’d never been more relieved to see anyone in my life.

“Come on Ed, the cops are on the way,” Tommy said.

“Where’s Moon?”

“Where do we go when we die man? We can talk about that later. Right now, your chariot awaits.”

“There was a security man knocking around here-”

“He legged it when he saw this. Come on.”

I followed Tommy down two flights of stairs to street level. He ducked into the violet and blue front room we had been in earlier and looked out at the street.

“Okay Ed, there’s a maroon Beemer parked across the road. You go, I’ll get your back.”

The submachine gun was taking Tommy over; he had started to talk like someone in an action movie. I shook my head.

“Tommy, is that the gun that killed the Reillys?”

He nodded.

“Then wipe it down and leave it here, all nice and neat and case closed for the Guards. Come on, we don’t need that class of weapon anymore.”

Tommy conceded with a grimace, gave the Steyr a quick clean with a hand towel from a downstairs loo and tossed it at the bottom of the stairs. We left the door open behind us and ran across to the BMW. I could hear the sirens approaching as we drove away.

I didn’t see Maria and Anita until we were on Strand Road, the sea stretching dark and mysterious to our left, the candy-stripe chimneys of Poolbeg towering above the bay. Then the Kravchenko girls raised themselves from the backseat where they’d been huddled. Neither of them said anything; they were whispering words of what sounded like comfort to each other; each cried occasionally. When I heard what they’d been through, I was surprised they had managed to stop crying at all.

I thanked Tommy for tracking me down, and silently asked forgiveness from whoever runs that department for thinking he had set me up. Looking ever more incongruous with his new face, new hair and his new seat behind the wheel of a luxury German car, and a stark, level expression on his face, Tommy Owens brought me up to speed.

“’Course we might have been able to stop them in their tracks if you hadn’t barged in like a stiff prick, not a thought to where the danger might lie-behind the fuckin’ hedge, you gobshite. I was across the road in the Beemer-I got it from Brock’s lockup in Woodpark-watching and waiting. I’d gone there after I gave you the GHB. Just had a notion Moon wasn’t finished with the ladies yet. I took the Steyr, and I was ready to step out and use it when Moon jumped you. But it didn’t look to me like they were going to take you out there and then; otherwise, why didn’t they, know what I mean?”

“So Brock and Moon had been in the house, they just done the locks with a crowbar, not exactly high security there in Quarry Fields, I warned you about that one, and out come the ladies, in a bad way, too frightened to scream. Moon has another submachine gun, Brock has one too, but he looks very nervous, like he doesn’t want to be there.”

“They argue,” Anita said. “Brock, he doesn’t want to do it, he is saying leave the girls, it’s too much trouble, we have no papers. Moon says girls are loose ends, we know too much, we must be dealt with. I think we are going to die.”

Anita’s voice rose to a cry as she said “die,” and Maria hushed her, and then said, “We don’t die. Fat fucks die.”

“So Brock is in the SUV with Anita and Maria, and there’s a driver, some big shaven-headed heap. After Moon’s kicked the shite out of you, he bundles you into the SUV and they take off, heading north. I follow, fairly close eye, ’cause there’s no way Brock will recognize the motor, and it’s not exactly an exotic route they’re taking, Rock Road, Merrion Road, up Pembroke Road and around onto Fitzwilliam Square. They help you out and get you into Brock’s gaff, then they’re all back into the vehicle and down through Ballsbridge, down toward the railway and a quick turn into this little private cul-de-sac, about a dozen town houses. They head to a house at the far end, and I drive past and park the Beemer outside a big Audi dealership. There’s a laneway by the showroom that leads down to the river, couple of fences and some brambles no bother, then I’m doubling back between the wall that drops to the river and the town house gardens, little river-view patios with paving and newly planted hawthorn and laurel. No lights anywhere except where Brock’s crew have gone. I keep my distance, don’t want to set off any lights, there’s mud and rotting leaves and river rats underfoot but I get there, close enough to see through the big patio doors.”