The Dying Breed

by Declan Hughes

  “I do have a lawyer.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He fired me. It was the practice, apparently stretching back I don’t know how long, but an earnest little researcher like yourself should be able to find out, for a couple of likely lads a year from St. Jude’s to be taken on as apprentices at Tyrellscourt stables.”

  “By whom? F.X. Tyrell?”

  “That’s what I was told. But the lady who told me—”

  “Wouldn’t stick around to cook your dinner.”

  “It may have been the head man who picked them out, I don’t know. But F.X. still takes credit for horses from his stables, he’s still hands-on there, so there’s no reason to suppose he wouldn’t handpick potential jockeys.”

  “Nobody said anything to me directly about this. But when it emerged that there was no interest in making a follow-up film, the decision came wrapped up in a ribbon that said Bloodstock-Industry-Tyrellscourt-Stud-National-Good-News-Story-Irish-Win-At-Cheltenham-Shut-The-Fuck-Up-You-Fat-Troublemaking-Shit-Stirrer.”

  “You’re just big-boned.”

  “I have a horrible personality, though.”

  “F.X. Tyrell’s late ex-wife, Jackie, told me that they hadn’t had much of a sex life of any kind. She put it down to a kind of neutered quality in him, an absence of a sex drive, rather than anything else. F.X. Tyrell personally requested that his brother, Vincent, come down from Bayview, where he had been parish priest for twenty years, to serve as his own personal prelate in Tyrellscourt: say private masses, bless the horses and the jockeys before races, take care of all that. The archbishop of the time—”

  “The one who looks like a nun’s granny—”

  “Apparently was happy to facilitate this request, so down Vincent went to perform these arduous duties. And also to pay pastoral visits to St. Jude’s.”

  “Is there more? You say Vincent claimed he wasn’t involved in anything.”

  “This is a family that seems to specialize in looking the other way. It was Father Vincent Tyrell who hired me. I didn’t think he was…in the front line, so to speak. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Is there more?”

  “I was in St. Jude’s last night. There was a guy who let me in. One of Tyrellscourt’s walking wounded. He brought me up to a room—a room I think belonged to, or at least was furnished by, Vincent Tyrell, and basically simulated being raped. It was pretty grotesque.”

  “Who was the guy?”

  “That’s a very good question.”

  “Ed, don’t fuck me around.”

  “I’m not. He’s a strange-looking guy, I was given one name for him, I suspect he might be someone else. I don’t know which is the truth, and until I do, I don’t even want to tell myself, let alone you. Do you understand? Because that’s how I work, I feel my way through the dark until there’s a ray of light. And no light yet.”

  Martha took that. By her smile, she even seemed to like it.

  “The impression he gave though was that he hadn’t seen who had done it to him. Or that he had, but he couldn’t tell any one.”

  “So what, F.X. Tyrell, facilitated by his brother, plus one or two of the older lads, was coming in to rape selected boys, grooming them or training them in or assessing them and then selecting them as apprentices for his stables.”

  “Is one possible version.”

  “Or Vincent Tyrell himself doing it all, with the promise to F.X. that he’ll pass the best ones on when he’s done.”

  “Is another.”

  My phone rang. It was Dave Donnelly. At first, I thought I wouldn’t answer it; I figured I deserved a day off from the Donnelly maritals; then I remembered he’d promised to check out Don Kennedy’s place for case files.

  “Dave?”

  “Ed. You’re going to want to see this yourself.”

  “Where are you?”

  Dave gave me an address in Ringsend, and I said I’d see him there.

  “There’s one other thing, Martha,” I said. “Tyrellscourt. I assume that’s some Anglo family from the eighteenth century or before. Is it just a coincidence that F.X. has the same surname?”

  “And this would rank in priority where?” Martha asked.

  “Low, I guess. But it would be nice to know.”

  “I’ll see what I can dig up, Ed.”

  I thanked Martha O’Connor for the dinner, and she thanked me for the company. Part of me regretted leaving her alone for the evening, but it was overwhelmed by the part that was relieved I didn’t have to stay; I suspect she felt the same way: when I left, she was clutching a box set of Barbara Stanwyck movies. Loneliness is sometimes easier solved alone than in company, and especially on Christmas Day.

  TWENTY

  I told Martha O’Connor I needed to see Dave Donnelly urgently, but I didn’t want to see him yet; I was haunted by the spectral memory of Vincent Tyrell on the altar that morning, afraid he would die before the light I was searching for would come. It would have been quicker to stop off in Ringsend before heading out to Bayview, but at this stage in the case, in any case, I needed the time that driving brought, the sense that as I watched the dark road, the case was smouldering at the back of my mind: when I reached my destination, with luck, another spark would be lit.

  On the coast road into Seafield, I reached for the radio, and came in on a Bothy Band tune as it was starting, “Martin Wynne’s/The Longford Tinker,” from the first album. I’d never been much for trad growing up in Dublin, seeing it as the preserve of beardy blokes in jumpers and the women who looked like them, but a Donegal barman at Mother McGillicuddy’s gave me an education that showed me the error of my ways. (He’d got the job because he used to come in every Monday night, one of the terminal cases, and demand we play “Coinleach Ghlas An Fhomhair,” a beautiful, melancholic song from Clannad’s second album, before they turned into a kind of musical backdrop to aromatherapy; he’d sit and drink and pretend he wasn’t crying until the owner took pity on him and offered him a job on condition he didn’t cry behind the bar. He was still desperately homesick, and left at the first opportunity, but not before he had he taught us all a thing or two about Irish music.)

  The Bothy Band played like a runaway horse you’d just about clung on to; the delirium of pipes and fiddle on “The Longford Tinker” was euphoric and tortured, swaggering and mournful all at once; it felt like the sound track to the case, where the exhilaration of progress told an increasingly tragic tale; like any case, it was absorbing and relentless; by the end of the tune, I was thirty kilometres over the limit and had to brake hard just to get my bearings.

  The church car park was locked, so I parked up near the new houses on the other side and hopped over the hedge into the church grounds. I don’t know what I expected Father Vincent Tyrell to be doing on Christmas night. At best I thought he’d be drunk on Manzanilla and full of bile. But there he was, alive and possessed with energy, darting around his table, blue eyes flashing. The table was covered with a chart made out in different coloured inks. At the top was the legend:

  Leopardstown Festival—

  St. Stephen’s Day, December 26th

  Below, there were seven columns, one for each race, each with a title and a time:

  FIRST RACE: 12:25—Maiden Hurdle for Five years old and upward

  SECOND RACE: 12:55—Maiden Hurdle for Four years old only

  THIRD RACE: 1:30—Juvenile Hurdle for Three years old only

  FOURTH RACE: 2:00—Handicap Hurdle for Four years old and upward

  FIFTH RACE: 2:35—Novice Steeplechase for Four years old

  SIXTH RACE: 3:10—Handicap Steeplechase for Four years old and upward

  SEVENTH RACE: 3:40—Flat Race for Four-year-old colts and geldings only

  Each column had a list of the runners and riders drawn up like a race card, with owner, trainer and form recorded; even the jockeys’ silks had been drawn in a variety of inks. Tyrell had a series of coloured pencils with which he was making what I assumed were preliminary selecti
ons; he’d compare this with a form book he had compiled himself, a black hardback journal filled with figures and swollen with clippings from newspapers and racing journals. It was the first time I’d really understood what an exile he felt himself to be: this was more than a hobby or a passion, this was the liturgy of a lifetime calling, a vocation, as Regina had seen it in F.X. Tyrell. F.X. had been chosen, but Vincent, the younger, had felt the call too.

  “Any tips for tomorrow?” I said.

  “The big trainers have good selections running,” Tyrell said coldly, like a cartoon Englishman talking to a foreigner. “Noel Meade, Dessie Hughes, Eoin Griffin.”

  “F.X. Tyrell.”

  “Indeed. And I think the worst we’ll get is sleet, so the form book will be a reliable guide,” he said, caressing the black-bound volume like it was holy writ.

  “Did you ever…I wonder, when you were back in Tyrellscourt in the nineties, did you ever get the urge to train yourself? Did you get out among the horses? Watch the morning work? Or did F.X. not want you interfering?”

  Vincent Tyrell stared hard at me through icy blue eyes and I had to stand firm not to be reduced to a shivering ten-year-old in line for a thrashing.

  “It seems to me, Edward Loy, that since I hired you, I should be able to fire you. You’ve been paid more than generously, and I don’t want any of the money back. I think it would be best for all concerned if you’d kindly just fuck off.”

  I had often wondered if the word fuck would ever acquire force again; Father Vincent Tyrell had just imbued it with some. Not that I was going to let him know that.

  “But I’ve come to report,” I said. “You’re my client, yet you don’t seem remotely interested in how the case is going. You had affairs to set in order, and the main one was Patrick Hutton. Well, the good news is, I think I’ve found him.”

  Vincent Tyrell almost smiled. That was usual with him, the almost: his smile always looked as much like it was congratulating himself on his superior intelligence or his steely detachment from the little people or his conviction that whatever you were going to say, it couldn’t possibly surprise him, as it did like a smile. Once again, I wanted to wipe that smile off his face.

  “He was on a dump near Roundwood, and I had identified him to my satisfaction, and it was only a matter of time before the Guards ID’d him too. At least, that was what I thought. But of course, I turned out to be completely wrong: that wasn’t Patrick Hutton at all. It was someone called Terence Folan, who was a jockey at Tyrellscourt, too; indeed he took over when Hutton was sacked by your brother. He was at St. Jude’s as well: who knows, perhaps you picked him out for F.X. I’m not really sure how that side of it was handled, but it must have been very difficult to turn a blind eye. Patrick Hutton, alive. Have you known all along?”

  “She said—” he started to say, and then stopped. His eyes flickered across the table, and my mind went back to the first time I saw it, with the remnants of three breakfast plates. One of them had had two cigarette butts stubbed out in bacon rind. I flashed on Miranda Hart in my kitchen this morning, stubbing her cigarette out in her half-eaten breakfast, and in that instant, I knew she had been the other breakfast guest, along with Leo Halligan. Her elaborate fear of Vincent Tyrell must have been, in part at least, a charade.

  “She said what? That Hutton was dead? Or gone? That it would be safe? You knew people were being slain. Two men. Your brother’s ex-wife? Did it not matter to you? What did Miranda Hart tell you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Tell me about St. Jude’s, Father Tyrell. You must have known what was going on there. I think I was in your room. The red one, with the Sacred Heart, and the Poussin Last Supper. That’s a tasteful atmosphere in which to rape a teenager. Did you do it yourself, or did you let F.X. come in and sample the wares?”

  “I’m not going to rise to this.”

  “What did you think you were going to achieve by digging all this up? What did Miranda Hart promise you? That everything could be buried? Or was it not her idea? Maybe she didn’t have any choice in the matter. Yes, that’s more like it: Patrick Hutton was back, and he had a plan. I don’t know what that plan is. Maybe none of us does. We’ve seen what the first three instalments are, but the rest of it? Who can say?”

  “Have you seen him?” Tyrell asked quietly.

  “Yes, I think I have.”

  “How…how does he look?”

  “He looks…like he’s suffered a lot. He looks quite mad.”

  “Mary…Miranda…God help the poor child…she feels loyal to the creature…”

  I didn’t expect Vincent Tyrell to astonish me, but spontaneous compassion for a fellow human being was enough to do it.

  “There are a lot of questions you could answer,” I said. “Is Regina Miranda’s mother? Is Karen Tyrell Miranda’s child? Was Patrick Hutton the father of that child?”

  “Why is any of that any of your business?”

  “I think you know why. And to know and do nothing makes you just as guilty.”

  Tyrell ran his fingers over his Leopardstown chart.

  “See here, the third race. Francis has Bottle of Red running, she’s a fine filly, but her rider will be lucky to make it. Fillies are allowed an extra five pounds over the ten-stone-nine, but Barry Dorgan is a greedy little boy, I remember him from St. Jude’s distinctly, round face full of sweets, a smiler and a crybaby. Francis has persisted with Dorgan, but to my mind it’s a sentimental attachment that has no place in the game: it’s unfair to the punters, it’s unfair to the horse and it’s unfair to the sport.”

  “A sentimental attachment.”

  “Dorgan has a plump wife and two plump babies. I think Francis is simply fond of the boy.”

  “Like a son.”

  “Well, perhaps. I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Neither would he. You don’t deny that F.X. Tyrell had sexual relationships with boys from St. Jude’s?”

  “I wouldn’t deny that he had an unfortunate relationship with young Halligan, which has brought nothing but complications upon his shoulders. I wouldn’t deny that. As to the others: I really couldn’t say.”

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

  “It all amounts to the same thing. It will come out eventually, I have no doubt. Bottle of Red, that would be my strongest tip for St. Stephen’s Day. The uncertainty about the rider has seen the odds drift satisfactorily; I’d say you could get it for nine to two, even five to one if you were up early. I imagine you get up early, Edward Loy.”

  “Patrick Hutton—the man I believe to be Patrick Hutton—gave the strong impression that he had been raped, in that room at St. Jude’s—it was your room, wasn’t it?”

  Tyrell shrugged and nodded.

  “He made it clear he had been blindfolded, that he hadn’t seen his rapist.”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t rape. Perhaps it was consensual, and now he’s decided to cavort as if it wasn’t.”

  “Cavort?”

  “Hutton and young Halligan were…well, they were about to be expelled for indecent conduct. I thought Hutton would fare well in the stables, I thought he had the makings of a jockey. I knew F.X. liked the look of him. And Leo…Leo was part of the deal. For Hutton and, eventually, for Francis. To the ultimate cost of each.”

  “Two of the care staff at St. Jude’s were known abusers.”

  “Have you been talking to your burly lesbian friend again? No charges were ever laid, no case was ever brought. I’ve always found it curious, these liberals, they have a very illiberal concept of justice: they seem ready to destroy a person’s life on the basis of one accusation.”

  All of this came from the side of his mouth as he pored over his chart. I had rattled him, but not nearly enough. I put my coat on and joined him at the table.

  “When we spoke last, you talked about By Your Leave. Said it was something of a freak. What did you mean by that?”

  “I told you to ask someone who knew.”

  “I did. I asked
your brother. He said he’d stick to his discipline and you should stick to yours.”

  Tyrell didn’t flinch.

  “Martha O’Connor—you know, the burly lesbian you’re so fond of—her documentary about St. Jude’s was halted because nobody wanted to speak ill of F.X. Tyrell. I don’t think anyone has the same sensitivity when it comes to his estranged brother, the Catholic priest. Maybe you are dying of cancer. You’re not dead yet. I could make your last days here a misery. Given the degree to which, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve obstructed this case—Jackie Tyrell might be alive were it not for you—all because of your bullshit about what you know being told to you in confession.”

  “But it was,” Tyrell said. “It’s not bullshit at all. That part of it is God’s truth.”

  He leant his hands on the chart.

  “Very well. See here.”

  He pointed to Bottle of Red.

  “Below the name of every horse, there’s a list with the year of foaling, colour, sex, and then the name of sire and dam. That’s the horse’s father and mother. Bottle of Red is by Dark Star out of No Regrets. Now, Francis went through a phase of experimenting with extremely close breeding. That means mating between parents and offspring, or siblings. Siblings are the most volatile in any pedigree breeding, and you have to use the very finest mares and stallions, but even then, it’s discounted for everything except genetic research purposes: to breed out abnormalities, say, or uncover hidden gene types.”

  “And are Dark Star and No Regrets brother and sister?”

  “Oh Lord, no. No, Francis has stopped all that. Or it was stopped for him.”

  “With By Your Leave. A thing of beauty, like a Grecian urn.”

  “What?”

  “You said By Your Leave was all we know on earth, and all we need to know. Keats. ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’”

  “I didn’t think you’d get that reference.”