She dropped the facecloth in the plastic bowl and took them away someplace, then sat back down opposite me and lit a fresh cigarette.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, Eileen…is it Dalton? Or Taylor?”
She looked pleased and anxious at the same time, as if she had finally got her wish and instinctively realized living it wasn’t going to be as simple as wishing for it had been.
“Taylor,” she said. “Eileen Taylor.”
“But Brock’s name was Dalton when you married. Did he change it or fake it?”
“Let’s leave Brian out of it.”
“I wish we could, Eileen. But we wouldn’t be having this little chat without him and his pal Sean Moon. Do you think I might have a drink?”
She raised her eyebrows and smiled to herself, as if in praise of folly.
“Not recommended, Ed Loy. Not in the state you’re in.”
“Did Father Massey give you my name?”
“He told me you were snooping around.”
“So you’ve kept in touch, you two. He knew all about your disappearing act, did he?”
“Not before, no. I wrote him a letter a little while after. Asking for his forgiveness.”
“He must have given it.”
“He was very good to me. Not many priests of that time would have been so sympathetic.”
“Explain something. You left a baby in the porch of the church. Father Massey takes it to the Howards, who arrange for it to be adopted. All very hush-hush. How did that work? I mean, it was 1986, in a city. He was a priest, he must have had…legal obligations.”
Eileen Dalton stood up and walked to the window, a fussy dark shadow once again. From there she looked around at me pityingly, reprovingly, as if I were some impossibly naive idiot she was a fool to be wasting her time on. I had a feeling she’d used that look before.
“I thought you’d know why.”
“I think I do. Was it because you somehow told Father Massey-”
“I left a note with the baby. A sealed envelope, addressed to him.”
“Telling him who the boy’s father was.”
“That’s right. So you do know.”
“I think I know. But I’d like to hear you say it.”
She looked out through the dark glass. I could see her reflection. She was shaking. When she turned, she held on to the shutter handle for balance.
“All right,” she said, throbbing with passion, as if every moment of regret for the long years of missing her son was laced through the words. “All right then. Jerry Dalton’s father was Dr. John Howard.”
Twenty-five
THERE’S A MOMENT IN EVERY CASE WHEN YOU CATCH A glimmer of the end: not that you know all the answers, but you begin to see the pattern. It often comes when you’re at your lowest ebb, and you’ve nothing but darkness in sight. Eileen Dalton telling me John Howard was Jerry Dalton’s father felt like such a moment. The energy in the room seemed to split apart and flow together again in a new configuration. I was still tied to a chair in Brock Taylor’s Fitzwilliam Square house, but I felt I had been given, if not quite a winning hand, at least something to play for. If Eileen Dalton had been feeding her son clues about the Howard family, chances were she wanted something to happen, and that something had to involve her getting out of Brock Taylor’s, and she might need some help to get where she was going.
There was a knock on the door, and Eileen left the room. When she came back in, she looked me up and down, flashed me a nervous grin, then went to what looked like a plain white wall, pressed on it and a cupboard door swung open.
“What do you drink?” she said.
“Jameson,” I said. “Two-thirds to a third water.”
“I’ll give you half and half. You’ve got to take it easy.”
She poured herself a whiskey too, and came over and sat beside me with both drinks.
“Who was at the door?” I said.
“One of Brian’s…security staff. Checking to see if everything is all right.”
“And is it?”
“Have a drink and see.”
She tipped the glass to my lips and I gulped maybe half of it. She took my glass, clinked hers against it, said “Slainte” and drank.
“How long have you been with Brock then?”
“I said I didn’t want to talk about him.”
“And then he sends a boy around to check up on you.”
“Checking up on
“What do you think he’s going to do with me?”
“Make sure you’re scared, good and proper, so you keep your nose out of his business.”
“And you think that’s all he’ll do?”
“Brian may have robbed a few banks in his time, security vans, but that’s all; he’s settled with the CAB, he’s moved beyond that now. And no one’s said he ever killed anyone. No one’s ever said that.”
The near repetition of her avowal of Brock Taylor’s innocence seemed to undermine her faith in it. She fetched an ashtray and set it down beside her. She lit a cigarette, and I asked for one. When she lit mine, her hand was trembling.
“You’re very frightened. Why is that?”
She drank some more whiskey.
“I was in London nearly twenty years. St. Thomas’s Hospital. I wouldn’t have come back if I didn’t think Brian was on the level. Don’t make him out to be some kind of gangster.”
“Do you know Sean Moon?”
Eileen flinched.
“There are people he sometimes has to deal with, people from the past who don’t understand who he’s become-”
“Tonight, Sean Moon murdered two criminals from Woodpark, the Reilly brothers. Brian sat there and watched.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I saw it. Afterward, they put a Ukrainian woman called Maria Kravchenko in the Bentley and drove her here. Moon had been holding her against her will, forcing her to have sex against her will. Raping her, I believe it’s called.”
Eileen was shaking her head.
“I took her away from them, and let her and her sister stay in my house. But they broke in and took them, and when I tried to stop them, they attacked me. Did you see the Kravchenko girls tonight? How was I delivered here?”
“I wasn’t…nobody…I didn’t see you arrive. I was upstairs. Brian came up and…”
She was having some trouble forming sentences, or organizing her thoughts.
“What did he tell you? Or are you used to entertaining, what should we call them, business clients of your husband who are beaten senseless and tied to chairs?”
“We know you’re working for the Howards. He thought we might learn something from you. Said you’d been a bit obstreperous and Moon had to knock you into line.”
“Did Tommy Owens set me up?”
“I don’t know who Tommy Owens is, love.”
She looked across at me, took the smoked-down cigarette from my mouth and butted it in the ashtray. Then
