Declan Hughes - The Color of Blood

Sandra found her voice again.

“Denis? What is he saying? What bodies?”

Denis Finnegan had set his little feet down beside each other on the floor. I stroked the Sig with one hand, just to remind me it was there. Finnegan wasn’t going to speak, so I had to.

“Denis had a crush, no, more than a crush, a kind of blind, overwhelming interest in your future, Sandra. He was benevolent, all-powerful, like God, really. And just like God, he didn’t mind if a few bodies got in the way, so long as it was to serve what were considered your best interests. I don’t know why he decided on Richard O’Connor-maybe he felt you needed a father figure, maybe Denis loved Dr. Rock himself and hoped to channel his sublimated passion through you. Fuck knows, I’m not a psychologist, what I do know is that he paid a man who called himself Brian Dalton-who we know as Brock Taylor-to murder Audrey O’Connor and carry out a bungled robbery at Richard O’Connor’s house, and then to plant the proceeds of the robbery on Stephen Casey, Eileen Harvey’s first son, and murder him too. Which he duly did. And in due course, presumably encouraged on both sides by Denis Finnegan, romance blooms and Sandra and Dr. Rock marry, and have a son. Jonathan.”

“I must warn you that legally, you are on the flimsiest of grounds here, Mr. Loy. The law of slander-”

“Legally, I live in a cell with cockroaches and rats and no running water; when the Seafield cops are done with me, I won’t have a legal bone left in my body,” I said. “So let’s just skip the legalities for a while and continue with our nice cozy family chat. After all, Brock Taylor used to work for my father once, so I think I can consider myself part of the family too, even if I come in through the servants’ entrance.”

I looked around the room. Sandra was staring alternately at me and Finnegan, her green eyes sick with fear. I took the rugby medal out of my pocket and gave it to her.

“See, Rock’s name is engraved on it. The Guards never recovered Rock’s medals after the robbery. I found them in a drawer in the spare bedroom of your husband’s house in Mountjoy Square.”

Sandra Howard thrust the medal into my hand, flung herself off her chair and vomited into the fireplace.

“I heard Brock Taylor admit to killing Audrey O’Connor and Stephen Casey tonight. And then his wife killed him.”

Finnegan was squirming in his chair, but he seemed to have lost the power of speech. Sandra got to her feet and breathed deeply.

“Keep going, Ed,” she said. “Tell it all.”

“So then, having set you up for marriage with Dr. Rock, Denis goes off and completes his legal training and starts his practice, representing many of the prominent criminals of the day including, of course, his boyhood pal, Brock Taylor. But he keeps a hand in on the Southside, the bit of coaching for Castlehill, the bit of attention paid to Sandra, and a spot of rugby sevens on a Saturday morning with the guys. Including Dr. Rock. And then one Saturday morning, Dr. Rock collapses, a suspected heart attack. Maybe he hasn’t taken his insulin, maybe he’s hung over and the exercise is getting to him. And Denis says he’ll take him to hospital, which he does. Now I can’t be sure-the only one who knows is Denis-but I think what happened was, Rock asks him to inject him with insulin. And Denis does, only he gives Rock an overdose. By the time they get to hospital, Rock is slipping into a coma, and Denis neglects to mention that Rock is a diabetic, and Rock is treated as if it’s a regular myocardial infarction, a heart attack, and he dies in a couple of hours.”

Finnegan was shaking his head.

“I didn’t know he was a diabetic,” he said. He appealed to Sandra. “I swear I didn’t.”

Sandra wouldn’t look at her husband’s face.

“I spoke to the doctor who admitted him. He remembers you. He’ll be happy to make a complaint to the Guards.”

Finnegan got to his feet.

“I don’t have to stay here and be subjected to this-”

Shane Howard pushed him back into his chair.

“Yes you do, Dinny, yes you fucking do.”

“Along with the medals in Finnegan’s house, I found one other item,” I said, and produced the silver ID bracelet from my pocket. Again I gave it to Sandra for inspection. She let loose a howl of pain and sank to the floor.

“What does it say?” a shrill voice asked. It was Jonathan O’Connor, in black coat and baseball hat and wraparound shades. I didn’t know how long he had been in the room. Long enough, it looked like. Jonathan crossed the room toward his mother, who held out her arms in an embrace he avoided. He took the bracelet and examined it.

“It says ‘Diabetes Type 1,’” I said. “If your father had been wearing it-”

“He took it off for the game,” Finnegan said. “He took it off whenever we played sevens. He was in his gear when we went to the hospital.”

“How do you have his bracelet then? Where did you get it? Why did you keep it?”

“I had nothing but respect and admiration for Rock O’ Connor,” Finnegan said. “He was my friend, he was everything to me.”

Jonathan laughed, a forced, mirthless sound like static from a badly tuned radio.

“Your friend? Yes, but who are you?” Jonathan said. “You’re not who you claimed to be at all. You’re a fraud, a fabrication. You’re not fit to be a part of this family.”

“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for the Howards’ sake. For Sandra’s sake.”

Finnegan’s voice was thick with a sincerity I’d never heard in it before. He looked pleadingly at Sandra, and I saw the Northside boy he’d been, and the dream that had sustained him, and the ties of history and of blood that had laid him low.

“You killed her husband,” Jonathan said, his voice shrill with excitement. “You killed my father. If that was for the Howards’ sake, then so is this.”

I still don’t know if Jonathan was too quick for me, or if I just stood back and let it happen. Both, perhaps. He had been inching toward Finnegan gradually, and Finnegan had risen to his feet again, and then Jonathan was upon him. The blade whipped out of his coat and sparkled in the drear and then buried itself in Denis Finnegan’s chest, twice, three times, straight in the heart. By the time the Sig was in my hand, Finnegan was as good as dead. Jonathan sprang back, still holding the knife; I waved the gun at him, and he tossed the bloody weapon on the floor. The knife was a Sabatier, the same as the knife that had killed David Brady; the method was the same as that used to murder Jessica Howard; the knife was probably the second of the two I had found missing in Denis Finnegan’s kitchen. I wondered whether Finnegan was Jonathan’s fourth victim. But the knife used to kill Jessica had not been found.

And then Shane Howard crouched by the body, and felt for a pulse, and turned to me and shook his head. It reminded me that he had a medical training, that he would have known there is very little blood when someone was stabbed through the heart, that the bleeding was largely internal. He wouldn’t have asked where his wife’s blood was. He would have known.

Jonathan stepped back from us all and pulled his shades off; his eyes blazed with what could have been fear but looked like triumph. He cast around for his mother, but she was hanging one-handed on the mantelpiece now, her breath coming in quick bursts, her worn face drained of life, of hope.

“He killed my father,” Jonathan cried, as if there had been no other route open to him. “He was nothing. Nothing but scum.”

He seemed exhilarated, almost gleeful. What I had thought was weakness in his eyes now looked like something else: a delirium of violence, a killing rage.

“How many others did you kill, Jonathan?” I said.