Declan Hughes: The Color of Blood

The second book in the Ed Loy series, 2007

THE LAST CASE I WORKED, I FOUND A SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD girl for her father; when she told me what he had done to her, I let her stay lost. The case before that, I provided a husband with evidence of his wife’s infidelity; that night, he beat her to death, then hanged himself in the marital bedroom. Now I was calling on a man who by nightfall would be the prime suspect in two murder cases. Maybe one of these days, I’d get a better class of client. Maybe someday. Maybe not today.

The late October sun hung low in the grey morning sky, a silver glare behind the mist that had blown in south of Seafield. At Bayview Harbour, I swung sharp right up a steep lane and parked by a double-fronted stone Victorian house with a brass plaque on the wall that read “Shane Howard-Dental Surgeon.” I opened the low gate and walked along a cobbled path bordered by glistening rowan trees, their berries flaring blood orange through the mist. Crows on the roof beat their wings and made their low tubercular moan. At the heavy green front door, I looked back and breathed in air that was dank and clogged with salt and the musk of rotting leaves. It was the cleanest breath I’d draw until it was all over.

The hall was dimly lit by a dust-stained chandelier with only two working bulbs. Framed photographs of green-shirted Irish rugby players in action hung from the picture rail. The receptionist had snow blond hair and high cheekbones and midnight blue eyes and an engagement ring with red stones that made me think of a crab claw. I gave her a card with my name and what I did for a living printed on it and her eyes widened with anxiety; she compressed her lips and nodded at me gravely and reached for the phone.

“It’s all right, Anita, I’ll deal with Mr. Loy.”

The speaker was a swollen man in his midforties encased in a charcoal three-piece wool suit that bulged like a bull’s pelt. He had a port glow to his full jowls, a plume of dark grey hair swept back from his oily brow and a complacent expression in which boredom and self-satisfaction vied for supremacy. He inclined his head to one side and flexed his protuberant eyes and fleshy mouth in a brisk rictus of acknowledgment. The gesture made him look fleetingly like a gigantic Oriental baby. I looked at the floor and noticed his feet: like those of many fat, self-important men, they were very small.

“Denis Finnegan, Mr. Loy. Mr. Howard’s solicitor. I wonder if I might have five minutes of your time.” His voice was like the quiet oily purr of an expensive car.

“Mr. Howard spoke to me himself,” I said. “He didn’t say anything about a solicitor.”

Finnegan did the Oriental thing again with his face, this time with a lot of blinking and sighing, as if to deplore the free will with which his client had unaccountably been gifted.

I raised an upturned palm toward him and nodded; Finnegan turned on his heel and, beckoning with a nod of his huge head, began to climb the stairway halfway down the hall. Through a glass door, three patients sat around a large mahogany table, leafing through magazines. I followed Finnegan up the stairs and into a small dark sitting room off the first-floor return. A bare yellow bulb hung from the cobwebbed ceiling; there were concertina files and drug company cartons piled against the ocher walls and a dusty three-piece suite arranged around a low table. Finnegan sat on the couch; I took one of the creaking chairs; it was the kind of antique furniture you felt might break if you shifted in your seat.

“I assume my client has told you everything,” Finnegan said, and waited for me to reply. I waited for him to continue. We sat for a while in the ensuing silence. Finnegan crossed an ankle over one knee. His socks were red silk, and his tiny polished brogues gleamed in the yellow light. He raised his eyebrows expectantly, as if it was only a matter of time before I told him what he wanted to know. I stood up and made for the door.

“Mr. Loy, I understood we were going to talk,” he said, his voice yelping a little.

“So did I. But you’re not talking.”

I opened the door. Finnegan stood up surprisingly quickly and waved his hands at me. They were pudgy hands, and they matched his socks.

“Please sit down, Mr. Loy,” he said. “I won’t take up too much of your time, I assure you.”

I shut the door behind me but stayed standing. Finnegan crossed the room, handed me a business card, then retreated to his seat and nodded briskly, ruefully, as if conceding his ill-judged choice of tactics.

“Mr. Howard didn’t ask me to, ah, intercede with you today.”

“No kidding. I guess he hasn’t told you why he wants my intercession either. Well, if he hasn’t, I’m not going to.”

Finnegan pursed his lips and raised his eyes, if not quite to heaven, at least to the dirty yellow bulb above his head, and steepled his index fingers together; after an interval of meditation, or silent prayer, he exhaled loudly through his nose and began to speak.

“My client’s mother recently passed away. She leaves a substantial property on several acres adjacent to the Howard Medical Center. That property, and the lands surrounding, are currently the cause of some contention between my client and his wife.”

“And between your client’s wife and your wife. You are married to Shane Howard’s sister, Sandra, aren’t you?”

Finnegan nodded slowly, thoughtfully, his eyes vanishing momentarily into the folds of his crimson jowls.

“You do your homework, Mr. Loy.”

“This is Dublin, Mr. Finnegan. I just keep my eyes and ears open.”

“Yes, I am Mr. Howard’s brother-in-law, but I have no interest-no beneficial interest-in his mother’s estate: the property and lands were left solely to Mr. Howard; his sister is not named in the will.”

“So what do you want?”

“My client’s wife, Jessica Howard, is, ahm, a highly spirited personality. If she were to discover that her husband had, for example, hired a private detective to spy on her, in the hope of gaining evidence that might be used against the lady now or at some future date, in proceedings intended to undermine her claim to what she is legally and morally entitled to consider her due…”

“She wouldn’t see the funny side.”

“She might pursue a litigious course which in the short-to-medium term would probably benefit no one except my colleagues in the legal profession. And while strong collegiate impulses are not alien to me, the bonds of family are more tightly drawn; for my late mother-in-law’s estate to dwindle while disputatious solicitors spar, Jarndyce and Jarndyce-like, would, for the family, be to find ourselves in a very bleak house indeed.”