“Does that mean he did it? What does that mean?”
“It means he was involved with the robbery and the murders of Audrey O’Connor and Stephen Casey, and he knew Brock Taylor at that time, which means there’s a fair chance Brock Taylor was involved too, and if you want me to find out any more-and if you want to see your other son-you’ll have to untie me and get me out of here. Because as soon as Moon gets back, I’m not going to be in a position to be asking or answering any more questions. They want me dead, Eileen, and they’ve already killed tonight; one more body’s gonna mean nothing to them.”
Eileen looked at me appraisingly, then looked around as if she was afraid we were being watched. Then she crossed the room to the white drinks cabinet and found a small fruit knife and came back and cut the ropes I was bound with.
As she got me free, there was a commotion from below, the sound of raised voices and steps thudding on the stairs. I took the big marble clock from the mantelpiece, killed the lights and positioned myself behind the door. I beckoned Eileen, but a gun had materialized in her hand, looked like a Beretta 950 Jetfire; she shook her head and stood directly before the door. It flew open and a man in a black coat swept in; seeing Eileen before him, he swung round, a Steyr machine pistol in his hands. It was Brock Taylor, badly bruised above one eye, blood seeping from a wound in his side. Before he could turn properly, Eileen began to scream at him.
“You said there’d be no more girls, no more hookers. And what have you been running? Ukrainians? With that pervert scumbag Moon?”
“Eileen love, I’m shot. The cops…we have to get out of here. Where’s that cunt Loy?”
“Tell me about Denis Finnegan.”
“What? What has Denis Finnegan to do with it? Oh fuck, I need a doctor-”
“Stephen, my son. They found the body twenty-one years ago today. And I know Denis Finnegan was involved. Now how would a soft cunt like Finnegan organize a robbery like that? He’d shit his pants. Except you knew him, didn’t you, you grew up with the cunt.”
“Eileen-”
She fired past him, through the door.
“Tell me, Brian, or I’ll do it, I don’t give a fuck anymore, tell me the fucking truth!”
“Jesus Christ, all right. I knew him. He wanted…he had a big thing for the Howard girl, Sandra. But it was all fucked up, how he wanted some other man for her, someone he felt would be better for her. I couldn’t follow it. All I knew was, he wanted the wife dead.”
“And then?”
“And then. Ah Jesus-”
Eileen shot again, closer this time. I didn’t move a muscle; it was as if she’d completely forgotten I was there; she could have caught me with a stray bullet without thinking.
“So that was done-”
“Who did it?”
“A lad who done that kind of work.”
“Did you do it?”
“No.”
A third shot.
“No? You were a fucking mechanic who robbed the odd car. You’d never done anything, you didn’t know any lads who done that kind of work. You had no fucking money, that’s what you did it for, isn’t it? How much did he pay you? You did it, didn’t you, you did it yourself. Tell me, Brian.”
“All right,” he said. “I done it.”
Eileen hadn’t really believed it until he said it; her face seemed to age in an instant; it was suddenly weary, lined with fear. When she spoke again, it was in genuine disbelief.
“How much? How much?”
“Five grand.”
“And Stephen? You killed Stephen?”
“Eileen, I’m bleeding here, it’s serious, the cops are coming, we have to clear out-”
She shot at the floor near his feet.
“Ah for fuck’s sake, all right! We’d’ve been saddled with him. We could never have done what we wanted to do, start afresh, Bonnie and Clyde.”
“You killed him? You killed my son?”
“I ran it past Finnegan, he said it would simplify things, the Howard one was carrying on with him, she didn’t need that, he said.”
Eileen held one hand on her chest. She seemed to be having trouble breathing.
“And then you made me leave Jerry in the church. Both children gone…for this?”
She looked around at the carefully designed room in disgust. Her eyes glistened. I could hear her breathe.
“It’s not just this,” Taylor said. “It’s Woodpark too, and more. When you see what we have coming to us, through the same Denis Finnegan…we’ll be controlling the Howards before long…it’s what we’re due, what you deserve, for all the Howards done to you.”
“What did they do to me? You killed my first son. And made me abandon my second.”
“Your second son? You were raped, Eileen, raped.”
Eileen Taylor set her shoulders back and pointed the Beretta at Brock Taylor’s chest.
“I was raped, yes. But not by John Howard. By you, Brock, by you.”
She shot him three times in the chest; I don’t know if he meant to shoot her or if his finger hit the trigger by accident but he sprayed automatic fire around the upper end of the room and she danced briefly like a puppet in the wind and went down beneath a hail of it.
Twenty-six
I WAS STILL STANDING BY THE DOOR WITH THE MARBLE clock in my hand when Tommy Owens clumped through it with a Steyr machine pistol in
“You can put that down, for a start,” I said.
I’d never been more relieved to see anyone in my life.
“Come on Ed, the cops are on the way,” Tommy said.
“Where’s Moon?”
“Where do we go when we die man? We can talk about that later. Right now, your chariot awaits.”
“There was a security man knocking around here-”
“He legged it when he saw this. Come on.”
I followed Tommy down two flights of stairs to street level. He ducked into the violet and blue front room we had been in earlier and looked out at the street.
“Okay Ed, there’s a maroon Beemer parked across the road. You go, I’ll get your back.”
The submachine gun was taking Tommy over; he had started to talk like someone in an action movie. I shook my head.
“Tommy, is that the gun that killed the Reillys?”
He nodded.
“Then wipe it down and leave it here, all nice and neat and case closed for the Guards. Come on, we don’t need that class of weapon anymore.”
Tommy conceded with a grimace, gave the Steyr a quick clean with a hand towel from a downstairs loo and tossed it at the bottom of the stairs. We left the door open behind us and ran across to the BMW. I could hear the sirens approaching as we drove away.
I didn’t see Maria and Anita until we were on Strand Road, the sea stretching dark and mysterious to our left,
