“Next thing was to set up the pinhole camera on Bomber’s place. I reckoned the only way was to approach by the river; he’s bound to have some way of scoping whoever comes head-on. I packed a little bag and walked the track down from here, there’s a path above the river by the trees that runs the length of the golf course. Now, when you meet the lane we drove down, that leads to a bridge across the river; the Staples property lies to the other side, and there’s a mesh of chicken wire and barbed wire on that side. I thought about placing the camera there, but it wouldn’t really have caught anything except the coming and going of vehicles, and not even them in any great detail. But it was bleedin’ freezin’ out there, and the one thing I didn’t pack was gloves, I did have a pair of bolt cutters though, so I used them to snip the wire, just enough to squeeze through, reminded me of robbin’ orchards, don’t let the gardener see how you got in and you’ll always be able to go back.”
Just listening to Tommy was making me feel cold. I poured a couple more Jamesons. Tommy took a hit of his whiskey, then picked up his story.
“Other side of the wire, I can’t get enough purchase on the ridge to take me around to the Staples place, there’s a dirty big bank sloping down to the riverbed, it’s got, you wouldn’t call it a waterfall, a bit of a gusher, there’s a stream up on the property, anyway, I can’t get around it so I’ve got to climb down, there’s a bank of brambles and nettles, then there’s elder and sycamore a bit further on, I cling to some ivy and get as far as a sycamore that’s trunk is swathed in the stuff and I can scale down the ivy to the riverbed no bother.
“Getting up to the house is a bit more of a problem, because the moon has gone behind a cloud and I don’t want to use a torch. I’m also in difficulties because my shoes are soaked and freezing and there’s marsh stretching on as far as I go, until I find another sycamore on the Staples side. The ivy only climbs about fifteen feet, and there’s a fork in the tree another ten feet up and nothing but the odd whorl and nub to get me there and the bark is all frosted now, slipperier than a whore’s knickers but I make it, and from the fork there’s enough branches to get ten feet above the backyard, which I now see in the moonlight has a fucking fence of palings, so I’m there, sodden, shivering, crackling with the fucking cold, thinking, if this fucker has searchlights, or dogs, or both, I am finished, because I don’t see where the extra yard of whatever is coming from. And then I think, fuck it, we’re mates, he was gonna step in for me with Ed outside McGoldrick’s. And then I’m, yeah, but how friendly is he gonna be, you just dropped out of a fucking tree into his backyard on Christmas night, chances are he’s gonna revise his opinion of you downward.
“But to be honest with you, there’s only so long you can stay up a fucking tree, by its nature it’s a temporary location, so I’m ready to jump, I’m watching the yard, there’s a couple of mobile homes, an avalanche of scrap, I can see lights in the stone cottage, Bomber’s homemade Jeep and another vehicle, a Range Rover looks like. And I’m watching, and I hear an engine, and lights approaching, and I’ve leant so far forward I feel I’m slipping, and Bomber comes out of his house and stands in his doorway and I’m jamming myself back against the bough that’s above my head and sliding my arse in tight against the trunk as another fucking Range Rover bounces up into view. Out get Miranda Hart and some bloke, can’t make him out, expected, it looks like, and they all go into the cottage, five minutes, ten minutes, half a fuckin’ hour, great, I’m like, if I fell on the palings, maybe they’d bring me to hospital, where the heat would be on. And then I’m like, maybe they wouldn’t.”
Tommy stopped then because I was laughing so much; he did his best to look indignant, poured himself a fresh drink and waited until I’d composed myself before continuing.
“Anyway, if good things don’t come to all who wait, something does: the three of them pile out, all business, and into one Range Rover, at this stage I’m fucked if I can remember which one is which, and off they go. I give it a minute or two before I jump, and all I’m thinking is, if I’ve actually frozen solid and I shatter into, you know, blocks, fragments, whatever, then that’s it, much relief, I Can Do No More man, know I mean?
“I don’t shatter, but I go on me ear, literally because one arm is so cramped and numb I can’t bring it up to break my fall, but it’s just mud and sand I fall on, so I’m grand. And I’m on my feet and moving to keep warm and moving to get the fuck out of there. First thing is, I go through what I can, the house is locked and bolted but the mobile homes just slide open. And what’s important for us, there’s one that half of it’s like a big cold room, I mean a freezer, and there’s all, there’s rabbits, chickens, salmon, there’s a fucking larder. And room to spare. It’s the size, a side of beef or whatever you fucking call it, both sides of the fucking thing, you could keep something that size—like a body—in there, long as you liked.
“All right, that’s the first finding. The second is, in the other big mobile home, there’s a rake of racing cards and clippings, scrapbooks, and videos and DVDs of races, some of Terry Folan, some of Patrick Hutton, some of both. So I picked up a few to have a look at.
“Third thing, a red Porsche ’88 is around the front, tucked in behind an old milk float that’s marooned up in front of the house, the car that was outside Miranda Hart’s house when I went to pick her up on Christmas Eve.
“Fourth thing, I checked the reg on the Range Rover left behind: it doesn’t match the one I saw leaving Jackie Tyrell’s after the murder.
“Fifth thing, I better get this camera fitted and get out of there. There’s no way I can get into the cottage short of forcing the door or breaking a window, but I figure if I get it set in, the stonework’s crumbling all over, it’s a tumbledown, get it wedged in a crevice above the door and we should be good.
“And then I’m, what if the camera’s out of range? I didn’t check it, and I didn’t check the distance I’ve come, and maybe it’s grand, but I don’t know, and I haven’t gone through all that to end up with four hours of white noise on a videotape. Or worse, they come back before I have the chance to set the thing up and running. Because there’s one thing more I want to know, big number six, and I’m not taking the chance.
“There’s a corrugated iron lean-to near the front of the property, there’s aluminium beer barrels and car doors surrounding it, it’s like a hide, maybe that’s what he uses it for, to catch the geese and whatever. Anyway, it’s cold in there man, and I’m not looking forward to it, but in I slide, trying me best to think about whatever, something good, turkey with cranberry sauce, Miss Tyrell’s roast potatoes, very nice by the way, and I still have Leo’s Glock, I slide one into the chamber and wait.
“Long story short, my luck is in; five minutes later they’re back to drop Bomber off again, and Miranda gets out with him, they’re talking at the door, she looks like she’s reassuring him, or stoking him, or whatever shit she’s pulling; anyway, she’s done and he goes inside; she makes off in the Porsche and then the Range Rover turns and follows. When it turns, I see the driver is the bould Steno, and when it takes off, I clock the plates: we have the UK, and we have the numbers: this is the vehicle that tore out of Tibradden like Michael Schumacher the night Jackie Tyrell was murdered.
“After all that, I’m too cold and too wrecked for strategy, I give it a few minutes and then I bolt out from under me house of scrap and just leg it down to the road man, Bomber may be after me, but if I don’t move I’m gonna be dead. And Bomber isn’t after me, and I’m not dead, and I make it to the house, no, first I make it to the gate lodge, where fat fucko doesn’t want to let me in, he’s giving it No I Cannot Ring Miss Tyrell At This Hour and No I Do Not Remember You and Please Walk Away Or I’ll Call The Gardaí. So I lean into the booth and I shove the barrel of the Glock right up underneath his chin, shove it so hard it’s scratching his forehead from the inside. And then he makes the call.
“And Miss Tyrell very kindly lets me have a shower, and finds me clean clothes—I k
now, I know, I look like the Brit on holidays who walks into the wrong pub and ends up buried in a ditch, but it’s the thought that counts. Like I said, a real lady.
“Another detail from Bomber’s place. The paddock that we spied from the road, it has hurdles set out, and there’s a small stable yard with a horse in it. So Bomber, or Patrick Hutton, whichever he is, is training.
“So I come down here and check the receiver and yes, we’re in business. Nothing happening down there since I got back, but if anything does, we’ll see it.”
Tommy nodded and picked up his drink and I nodded back and toasted him: job well done. He hadn’t finished yet, however. He had a DVD in the MacBook. It was a collection of races Patrick Hutton had run. He fast-forwarded through the action, freeze-framed on two moments from a post-race interview, and pointed out the salient point to me and its relevance. The man who had taken us to St. Jude’s, who we thought to be Patrick Hutton, had blue eyes. That was relevant because in his interview, the salient point about Patrick Hutton’s eyes was that one of them was blue and the other one was brown—“just like little Karen has,” as Tommy put it. Just like little Karen Tyrell.
TWENTY-FOUR
The piano tones were still wafting from above as I retraced my steps to the entrance hall and climbed the wide wood-panelled stairway to a landing the size of the average house, with couches and easy chairs and occasional tables laid out beneath exposed beams; I could see two corridors, and chose the one I thought the music was drifting from: the acoustics in the house were sound, and I was soon knocking on a dark wood-panelled door.
“Come in,” said a woman’s voice, and I did, my eyes drawn instantly toward an upright piano from where I assumed the music to be coming, assumed it so strongly that I stared in disbelief at the vacant stool and the covered keyboard, as if I’d been the victim of some devious trompe l’oeil effect. When I came to, I saw Regina Tyrell on a couch at the foot of her bed; the music came from speakers I couldn’t see; I flashed on Jackie Tyrell’s house the night of her murder.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, her Dublin accent adding to my sense of the incongruous: how had she clung on to it after all these years of the Queen’s horses, in this old Anglo setup? Maybe it helped her to recall a time when she was young, and her life spread out before her full of nothing but promise and adventure, a time when dressing in pink and listening to the “Moonlight” Sonata were the motifs of an overture, not an elegy.
There were three matching chairs set in a ring around the couch, which was white and gold and enough like Jackie’s to maintain the sense of haunted unease I felt. I sat on one of the chairs, and looked tentatively around the rest of the room, as if fearful of other phantoms lurking there. My fears on that score were in vain. On the evidence of this and her office in the hotel, Regina’s visual sense had been set in stone, and brightly coloured stone at that, when she was a teenager: pink and white, ruched curtains, satins and silks; she wore pale pink satin pyjamas and a matching gown; I wouldn’t have been surprised to see stuffed animals on the bed. The music was in a similar vein: the “Moonlight” Sonata had given way to the slow movement from Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto in all its glutinous glory. I think I was with the Musical Powers That Be on that one. In contrast, Regina herself looked hard and shrewd and sanguine; her blood red lips stained the tips of the cigarettes she smoked, and the glass of gin she drank; if she was at the end of her tether, I wondered how Tommy had noticed.
I sat for a long while without speaking. Regina didn’t appear unduly bothered; indeed, she seemed grateful for the company. I looked up at one point to see that the music had brought tears to her eyes, or something had; she dabbed at them with a tissue and sat back as if hoping for more. I could think of nothing to ask except the darkest questions, nothing to consider except the most horrific possibilities. Finally, I just produced the copy of the birth certificate of Patrick Francis, born to Regina Tyrell on November 2, 1976, and passed it to her. She looked at it, and nodded wearily and sadly, and shrugged.
“Patrick Hutton?” I said, and it was as if a wind had blown through the room, leaving everything apparently still and settled and yet altered irrevocably.
“How did you find out?”
“I didn’t. Another detective, Don Kennedy, did. And somebody murdered him, either for that, or for whatever else he discovered.”
Regina tipped her head back and looked in the direction of the gold chandelier at the centre of the ceiling rose.
“I suppose it explains a lot. Why you mightn’t have wanted him as a match for Miranda. On the other hand, it explains nothing. Why you haven’t tried to find him. Why you didn’t help him more when you could.”
“I offered the reward. When Miranda was looking for him. It was in Francis’s name, but it was my offer. And what more should I have done? He was taken on as an apprentice, his career was growing fast, if he hadn’t been so bloody headstrong—”
“He was raised in an orphanage, worse, a boys’ home where there had been serious allegations of abuse—worse than allegations, it had been closed down once already. A home just down the road from here, from your country house, your country club, your exclusive country life.”
“I couldn’t raise that child. I couldn’t raise that child. His father…I couldn’t’ve raised that child.”
“Why not? His father…explain.”
Nothing from Regina but the ability to meet my eye.
“So you couldn’t raise that child. You could have afforded better than St. Jude’s, where the kids nobody wanted were dumped.”
“It wasn’t as bad as it was painted, that place. The boys who came through to the yard, they were good lads, they seemed to have survived all right. I thought it would give the child a spine.”
She nodded, as if she had somehow been vindicated by events, then blinked hard and turned away.
“You could have fostered him—”
“And lost him.”
“Did you not lose him anyway? What did you gain?”
Regina hugged herself as if the wind was still blowing chill, and shivered.
“What is it, Edward Loy? What do you want, to tear the Tyrells asunder? If I told you now that we’ve suffered enough for everything we’ve done, and it’s not over yet, every sin I’ve committed has been paid for ten times over and will be until the end of time. Would that be enough? Would that make you leave, drop this and go?”
“It’s not up to me anymore,” I said. “There are people out there…some of them your children…they’re angry. They want you to pay more, and to go on paying.”
Regina shook her head, scorn in her eyes and in the curl of her lips.
“Children of mine? Who?”
“Patrick Hutton. Miranda Hart.”
“She’s not my child,” Regina said.
“I couldn’t help noticing your daughter Karen’s eyes. Very unusual. Unless of course she was Patrick Hutton’s daughter by Miranda Hart. He had that feature, too, didn’t he? Heterochromia, is that what it’s called? I suppose it’s genetic. Can it be inherited?”
Regina Tyrell’s head was in her hands. I thought she was weeping, and I hoped she was too; if she was, maybe I could stop torturing her like this, and maybe she could think of something that would satisfy me, and bring the whole hateful saga to a close, make it vanish into thin air. She wasn’t weeping though. When she sat up, she had something filmy glistening between finger and thumb, and one of her brown eyes was now blue. A tinted lens could give a blue eye the look of a brown. And if it could do it for the mother…
“Yes it can be inherited. Karen Tyrell is my daughter,” she said. “She is my daughter.”
“I don’t believe you, Regina. I think Karen is Miranda Hart’s daughter by Patrick Hutton. And because she was incapable of looking after the child, she gave her to you. And you’ve brought Karen up as your own, protected her from the truth. But now it’s too late, and the truth is crowding in like wind.”
Regina got to her feet. Shaking one hand at me, she stretched the other out toward the door and began slowly to gravitate toward it, as if being tugged gently by an invisible cord.
“I think you better leave now, Edward Loy, or I’m going to call the Guards—”
“That’s increasingly looking like our safest bet,” I said. “You see, Patrick Hutton isn’t dead. He’s out there, living like a wild man on the old Staples place—”
“That’s Bomber Folan.”
“That’s not Bomber Folan, Bomber Folan was murdered years ago and Patrick Hutton took his place, he kept Folan’s body on ice and then made it appear on a dump in Roundwood two days ago. Alone, or with Miranda Hart, and a fellow called Gerald Stenson, Steno, another former inmate of St. Jude’s. Between them, they murdered Folan, and the detective Don Kennedy, because whatever he found out when he searched for Hutton two or three years back was not something they wanted revealed. Kennedy was blackmailing someone—maybe Miranda, maybe you, maybe Francis. I don’t know. All I do know is, he’s not blackmailing anyone anymore. And then they killed Jackie Tyrell; Tommy saw the car they drove from Jackie’s house the night of her murder up at the old Staples place tonight, and all three of them in it: Steno, and your son, Patrick. And your daughter, Miranda.”
“She’s not my daughter.”
“I’ll take your word for it. She does look awfully like you.”
“She’s not my daughter. She can’t be.”
Rachmaninov gave way to Schubert now, a piano impromptu, the yearning, plaintive one, regret for the life not lived. Regina moved toward me, as if fixing her gaze and holding mine could insulate her from what she feared most.
“She can’t be your daughter?”
“Francis promised.”
“Francis promised? What had he to do with it?”
“He…I wouldn’t stop working…but I couldn’t…not have the child…”
The Dying Breed Page 24