We braked suddenly as a BMW Estate pulled out of its parking spot, and then Tommy smartly rolled the Volvo into its place and killed the engine. He flipped a half-smoked roll up from his shirt pocket to his mouth, lit it and exhaled with a grin.
“Of course, by half three, the light will be dying, and the freeze will be kicking in, and half the town will be pissed, and the other half will be getting there, and the blood will be up and the knives will be out, and all of this fucking…Brigadoon will just…”
Tommy held his hand out to the colour and bustle of the town, and raised it in a parting wave.
“See ya…”
EVERYONE PASSES THROUGH McGoldrick’s, Tommy said, so it only seemed right that we did too. It had a traditional frontage and an old mahogany bar with snugs on either side; double doors led through to a larger lounge and restaurant area; at the end of this another set of doors gave onto a vast room that looked like an old warehouse: girders had been painted pillar-box green and floorboards had been waxed and tossed with sawdust and old suitcases and books and vintage bicycles and typewriters were stacked on shelves and in alcoves; lunch was being served from an open kitchen that ran the length of one wall by young staff with the striking looks and excellent manners of Eastern Europeans to tables filled with Christmas Eve revellers, mainly families with supernaturally excited kids. We retreated to the lounge, which seemed to have a more upscale buzz to it, judging by the high-maintenance sheen of its predominantly female clientele. Without even having to look at each other, we found ourselves back in the bar, perched on two bar stools and ordering pints of Guinness and bowls of Irish stew. The greying pony-tailed barman, whose name was Steno, gave Tommy a high five and made fun of his short hair and close-shaven face; evidently Tommy had established a minor reputation down here for himself. I wondered if I should tell Steno about Tommy’s recent career move to the Church. Better to keep that in reserve, I decided. The bar’s customers were on the horsey Barbour side, chomping brown bread and pâté and drinking hot ports and yelping about Leopardstown.
“Later in the day, it all gets a bit…looser,” Tommy said.
The foaming half-poured pints sat by the taps to settle, and I nodded to Tommy to get on with it, and he nodded at the pints, so we waited until Steno had topped them up and gave them another couple of minutes and at last set them down in front of us, the swirling brown now solid black, the heads creamy and firm. We tipped them back. I don’t know about Tommy’s, but mine tasted like the first pint God made.
“All right then, Tommy, I have the drink; now, tell me what you know about Miranda Hart.”
Tommy grimaced, then raised his eyebrows to heaven resignedly.
“All right, Ed, but don’t go blaming the messenger.”
“Just get on with it, will you?”
“Right, I used to come down here a fair bit, ’98, ’99, things weren’t going so well with Paula, better than before they started to go really badly but still, anyway, I was down here, doing, I never told you this, a bit of work for Leo Halligan. Don’t get the wrong idea, Ed, only Leo wasn’t the maniac everyone thought he was, and no one thought he done that young fella, he was covering up for someone else, or something else, and there was a lot of talk that he was happy to do the time, get himself out of the way. Anyway, I was doing a bit of work for Leo—”
“What kind of work was this, Tommy? For a Halligan brother? Painting and decorating, were you?”
“You were away, Ed, so you missed a lot of…when George and Podge Halligan were getting going back in the nineties, Leo was down here, trying and failing as a jockey. Not as if he was morally opposed to his brothers, he just had a different plan. After that plan didn’t work, he hung on down here, and he became a kind of…I don’t know, he was like, at the centre of a whole bunch of guys, jockeys, a bookie or two, even a few racing journalists.”
“At the centre of them how?”
“He’d be buying them dinner, drinks, comping them to events, you know, gigs in Dublin. Lining up women. And a little dope, a little blow, a few E’s.”
“And you were his distribution network for the drugs, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“And so what was it all about? Was it some kind of charitable work maybe? These horse-racing professionals were all-work-and-no-play merchants and Leo stepped in to modify their work–life balance? Or, having given all their lives, they decided it was time they got something back.”
“You may laugh.”
“Some days, I do little else.”
“Leo may be a Halligan, but being gay is like a passport across the classes. And racing has a fair bit of that as well. So you’d be surprised who you’d’ve seen down here. And Leo was always setting up the jockeys to go to these charity balls for MS and the Hospice Foundation and whatever, photographs of them in the Sunday Independent with a bunch of orange-faced models. He knew all these guys who trot around after the ladies who lunch and, you know, go with them to all these events their husbands can’t be bothered going to anymore. And they’re all hoovering up blow any chance they get, so it worked out nicely, all very respectable.”
“Meanwhile.”
“Well, I don’t know, I mean, I have no evidence, no proof. But the story was, it was all about race fixing. Leo was working with George at this stage—George has a place in the Algarve, and a lot of the jockeys were flown out there on golfing holidays, they were given presents, sometimes cash, sometimes cars or whatever. George has been running a book for ages for people who can’t bet legally, usually because their money isn’t clean. So the jockeys were holding up horses mostly, in some cases maybe doping them.”
The Irish stew arrived, and for once, it actually was Irish stew—mutton, potato and onion in a white sauce—and not the brown beef concoction that often masqueraded in its place. I fell on mine in a spasm of lunchtime-after hunger; Tommy peered at his disapprovingly, pushed it to one side and ordered two more pints.
“I need to be back for midnight mass; plenty of time to let these metabolize,” he said.
“What was in it for the journalists and the other bookies? The same?”
“Sure. They knew when to bet, when to lay off. And the journalists could mount a defence of any jockey that made it look too blatant. Every trainer keeps a tame journo or two.”
“Any bookies we know?”
“There was only really the one: Jack Proby. Well, and his old man, Seán, of course. But Jack was the main man, Jack was into everything, Jack—”
Tommy stopped suddenly, and then stared across the gantry at a bottle of Irish Mist, as if it had asked him a question. His face flushed.
“Is this how the girl gets into the picture?”
He nodded, grimacing.
“Spit it out.”
“She was with Proby, but…well, she was doing a lot of coke, and then she got into smack, and…”
”And what?”
“She turned into a total skank, you know? She’d go with anyone. And I think the idea was to pimp her out, because she was a gorgeous-looking woman, but she got too messy for anyone to deal with. Too messy for anyone to pay money for. She got barred out of here, and pretty much everywhere else. And it was really humiliating for her because she was known in the town, you know? Her old man used to run the Tyrellscourt Arms and all. It was almost as if that was why, you know, because she was known that she was doing it. I mean, she didn’t have to. Even on smack, blokes’d queue down the street for a woman like that.”
“What happened to her father?”
“He died not long after Miranda left school, I think. And the Tyrells bought the pub, it’s now a kind of gate lodge to the country club.”
“When you say you think the idea was to pimp her out…whose idea was that? Leo’s?”
“Actually might have been Jack Proby’s. He was a piece of work, that guy…it was like, he was doing these drugs and taking these holidays and all against his will, you know, he was always beefing about it, the coke was cut with bleach
, the champagne wasn’t vintage, know I mean? Like he was being held hostage somehow. And I think he took it out a lot on Miranda. Mind you, I couldn’t swear to this, Ed, I mean, I was doing a lot of drugs at the time.”
“Could you swear to any of it?”
“I don’t know whether Miranda Hart was being forced, or whether she was using her own free will, but I know people paid her money for sex down here. I know that for a fact.”
Fair play to Tommy, he lifted his face to mine so I could see the shame in his squinting eyes and the fear whipping around his mouth. Tommy Owens never lacked guts, even if sometimes it took him quite a while to remember where they were. I took a long drink of my second pint.
“When you say you know for a fact that people paid Miranda Hart for sex, Tommy…just how do you know that?”
“Because I was one of them.”
FOURTEEN
I didn’t want to listen to Tommy’s explanations or excuses, and in truth, he didn’t seem in much of a hurry to offer any. We drank in silence for a while, and then I told him I’d see him later and left. I wasn’t sure exactly how I felt about what he had told me, but I wanted a break from having to look at his face while I worked it out. Everyone’s allowed a past, and if we weren’t able to forgive and forget much of what went on there, our lives would run aground on banks of grievance and resentment. That’s what I told myself, not what I felt in my chest or in my gut.
The crowds were dwindling with the fading of the light, and a north wind dug deep into the bone. I pulled my overcoat tight around my throat and walked back out of town until I came to the gates of the Tyrellscourt Hotel, Health Spa and Country Club, and what must have been the Tyrellscourt Arms, a double-fronted stone bungalow maybe a hundred and fifty years old. It now functioned as a dedicated tourist office for the club and also for the stables and the stud, with brochures and a range of merchandise.
A uniformed security guard came out at my approach and asked me if I was a resident. I said no, but I had business with Regina Tyrell. When the guard found out I didn’t have an appointment, he wouldn’t even lift the phone. He said Ms. Tyrell was seeing nobody that day, and I said she’d see me, on account of how my business had to do with her brother Vincent. He was still reluctant, but when I said Ms. Tyrell hadn’t heard from her brother the priest for a long time but would obviously be anxious to on a day of such pain and distress for the family, he went back inside and made the call; when he came out and gave me the go-ahead, I wondered what she had said to him; he looked like he certainly didn’t envy me my errand.
Hardy souls were still playing on the golf course I could see; the brochure assured me there was another course somewhere to the rear of the hotel, which loomed up ahead, white and sprawling, like a château that couldn’t stop growing, with its multiple bow windows and its Italianate campanile. Landscaped gardens and a three-tiered lawn led up to the grand main entrance; signposts pointed the way to the wings and annexes that housed the tennis and squash courts, the spa, the swimming pools and the gymnasium; as I stood on the threshold, I heard the competing roars of a car and a river; the car was a steel-grey Bentley Continental Flying Spur, and it swept its cargo of laughing blondes past the main entrance as if it could spot the checkered flag; the river was the Liffey, which sprang from here and flowed on into Dublin and out to the sea.
The lobby was the usual nightmare mismatch of expensive styles and fittings common to every luxury Irish hotel: We Can Buy What We Like, And We Will, it screamed. Expensively tanned and scented guests wandered about exuding the relaxed ease of the rich; they seemed absurdly vivid and I an impostor, a monochrome man in their Technicolour world. The cute Scottish redhead at reception directed me to a function room jammed with highly excited children and their parents; in the middle, a red-suited Santa Claus was doing his thing. Regina Tyrell spotted me immediately; I guess since I was the only man in the room not wearing deck shoes or a cardigan, that wasn’t too hard.
The first thing I thought when I saw Regina Tyrell was how much she looked like Miranda Hart, which is to say, how much she resembled my ex-wife: the same coal-black eyes and hair, the same long legs and rangy frame, the same imperious bearing. She was older, of course, but she didn’t look it, or rather, age to her didn’t look like any kind of burden; she was carrying maybe ten pounds, which showed on her body in a series of pleasant curves and helped to keep her face supple and smooth; she wore a black trouser suit and a square-cut black top. Her hair was cut short rather than piled high; her expression grim and resourceful, as if she’d taken all that life had thrown so far, but didn’t expect it to stop anytime soon. Without a word, she indicated that I should follow her up a flight of stairs to a pale pink office that looked out over the rear of the complex. Before I had a chance to take in the fading view, she sat behind a white desk and began to talk.
“I haven’t spoken to Vincent in thirty years, out of choice. What makes you think I’d want to talk to anyone who’d have anything to do with him?”
Her accent was melodious Dublin in its Sunday best, not lazy or glottal-stopped, not affected; unusual to hear it these days spoken by anyone of status, especially a woman; it sounded intoxicating to my ears.
“I don’t know. Why would you? And yet, here we are.”
She turned on a pink-shaded desk lamp and looked past it at me and shook her head.
“She said you’d be cheeky, all right.”
“Who did?”
“Miranda.”
“I got the impression you two didn’t speak either.”
“We don’t. But given the night that was in it…”
She blessed herself, and I noticed the silver cross at her throat.
“Miranda said you were there.”
“I found her. And the murderer—at least, I assume it was the murderer—hit me on the back of the head and knocked me out.”
“Francis is in shock,” she said. “He went up to Dublin this morning to identify the body.”
“What else did Miranda tell you?”
“What are you doing for Vincent?”
“He asked me to find…no, that’s not right, he didn’t ask me anything. He gave me a name. Patrick Hutton.”
I looked closely at Regina, but there wasn’t any visible reaction. There should at least have been a flicker. I looked around the room. The walls were pale pink, the furniture pink and white, the strawberries-and-cream drapes ruched and tasselled; two gold chandeliers hung from the ceiling; the carpet was white. It was a room decorated by a twelve-year-old girl: all that was missing was the stuffed toys. I looked again at the impressive woman before me. Sometimes I felt I could spend a lifetime trying to work people out until they added up, and at the end they’d still be the strangers they began as.
“Did Miranda not tell you that?” I said.
Regina Tyrell set her lips in a wry smile.
“Miranda said there were things she couldn’t tell me. She said it might be harmful to the work you were doing. She said any of us could be next. I asked her was the second body that had been found Patrick’s. She said that I should ask you. And she said it all in this hushed voice, as if she was in a crowded bar and the bad guys were listening. As if she was in a movie. Such a drama queen, our Miranda, always was. I think the bit she liked most was ringing me up and then not telling me anything. Her knowing something I didn’t know. She liked that all right. Was it Patrick?”
“They haven’t identified the body,” I said. “But it sounds like it could be.”
“It makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the rest of it.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I said.
“To ask me questions? To poke your nose into our family affairs? What makes you think we should welcome you with open arms?”
“I’m not used to that kind of welcome. But what Miranda said was true: there seems to be a pattern to the killings, and any of you could be the next victim.”
“And what about the Guards? Why aren’t they here?”
“And how do you know Vincent?”
Every time she spoke his name, it sounded like the twist of a knife in her guts. I explained about growing up in Bayview with Tyrell as the parish priest, and about Tommy’s unlikely job as sacristan providing the connection between us. At this, she visibly relaxed, as if reassured that I wasn’t acting in some sinister manner on Vincent Tyrell’s behalf. She got up from her desk and walked to the window.
“It never looks the same, does it, twilight?” she said. “Or maybe it’s that your eyes never quite get used to it. You look, and everything seems unfamiliar, and by the time you’ve adjusted, the light has changed, and what you saw is past, or the moon is down, and everything is equally visible in its glare, and none of it makes sense.”
As I joined her, I could see a half-moon popping out like a cymbal crash and shedding its silver everywhere. There was another golf course out there, with dramatic bunkers and water features; below it ran the river; in the distance I could see high walls and bare trees ranged around a neo-Gothic mansion; beyond lay the gallops of Tyrellscourt stables.
“Maybe that’s what trying to really look at your life is like, look at your own family,” she said. “That moment between twilight, when everything is strange and mysterious, and moonlight, when you see everything plain, and nothing stands out: everything is clear and nothing has any meaning.”
Maybe I was so struck by her image that I forgot what we were doing, or maybe I had spotted something by the walled house that distracted me; when she next spoke, it was as if to a man who had made his own way to the dining table without waiting for her to lead.
The Dying Breed Page 14