The Price of Blood

ejecting the offending elf, but she was accompanied off the premises by one of the Santas, although possibly not the one she favored.

The lounge was calmer and tonier, with a crowd that looked bored by their money and keen to get rid of it; you could sell a lot of blow here tonight, and someone no doubt was. In the warehouse, it was as if everyone we had seen on the street earlier today was crammed inside; indeed, when I pulled open the double doors, three people stumbled back into the lounge; Noddy Holder was shrieking 'It's Chriss-miss' on a jukebox as I made my way back to Tommy. I assumed he had been drinking all this time, but in fact he was stone-cold sober, or as stone cold as Tommy ever got; he nodded at me and introduced me to the short, slightly built guy on the stool next to him, who wore an olive-green flight suit and looked like a shaven-headed heroin addict: his taut flesh was mottled and pocked; his drawn cheeks had tight vertical folds like stiletto scars; his tiny eyes were recessed deep beneath heavy brows: dark blue and bloodshot, they glowed like hot coals.

'Ed, Bomber Folan. Bomber, Ed.'

Bomber promptly stood up and left the bar. Tommy got to his feet to follow.

'Come on, Ed, we've a trip to make. Bomber's driving.'

I followed reluctantly. If I had learned anything over the years, it was not to do business with anyone called 'Bomber,' and especially not to get into a vehicle with him. Besides, I wanted a drink. I needed a drink.

Outside, Tommy grinned.

'The expression on your face man.'

He started to laugh. I didn't like being laughed at, especially not by Tommy Owens. Coming on top of what he had told me earlier this afternoon about Miranda Hart, I liked it even less. Without pausing for thought, I hit Tommy a dig in the mouth that send him skidding on the frosted ground. The smokers in McGoldrick's porch stiffened and a murmur of interest ran through them. Bomber drove up in a Jeep that looked like it had been fashioned from a corrugated iron shed and some old scaffolding. He jumped out and came at me, his hands up.

'No, Bomber, it's all right.'

Tommy was on his feet, wiping blood from his mouth. He brought his face close to mine, close enough that I could see the anger in his eyes.

'Fair enough, Ed. I probably would have done the same. But you left before I could explain. Earlier.'

'Explain what?' I said, knowing already I was in the wrong, and fearing it was only going to get worse. Tommy looked around at Bomber and nodded him back to the Jeep.

'I paid Miranda money. But I didn't get my money's worth. I didn't…she was so out of it that it wouldn't have been right. And anyway, I…I was never into that, into paying for it…I was kind of goaded into it…'

'You don't have to tell me this, Tommy,' I said.

'I do, actually. Because you're the only one who…who even half believes I'm…you know…and the look on your face today when I told you about your one…I didn't want you thinking I'm some kind of fuckin'-'

'I don't, Tommy. All right? I don't.'

Tommy nodded, and I put my hand on his shoulder. He looked me in the eyes, and I thought I saw tears in his. And then he hit me, a smack to the left cheek that dropped me to my knees and left my head jangling. I laid my palms on the cold ground to steady myself, and then I got slowly to my feet. The smokers were all beaming at the prospect of what this pair of out-of-town clowns might do next.

'Gonna have that drink now,' I said.

'We'll wait for you.'

I went back inside and Steno poured me a double Jameson and I added a third of water and he nodded approvingly at me as I drank it down like breakfast juice. The adage about being able to choose your friends but not your family ran through my mind. It wasn't true though, or at least, not as you got older. Unless you were the choosy type, or you went on a lot of cruises. No, you were stuck with your family and you were stuck with your friends, and you'd better just make the best of it. I thanked Steno, who had the solemn confessional gravity I prized in a barman, or at least the appearance of it, and went out to join Tommy in the back of a Jeep driven by a man called Bomber.

SIXTEEN

Bomber was a good driver, given the vehicle, and he had been a promising jockey until the heroin whose ravages still showed in his face had worked its way mercilessly through body and soul, calling a halt to his burgeoning career. Now he 'did something with scrap,' Tommy assured me. As we crossed a humpbacked bridge across the river at the far end of town and the suspension rattled and clanked like a mechanical press, I concluded that one of the somethings with scrap he did had become the Jeep we were sitting in. We turned in along the river and pulled up briefly outside a set of high iron gates. Bomber unlocked the padlock and uncoiled the chain and opened them and we drove up the short gravel drive to a large granite building with a slate roof that looked like a cross between a church and an asylum. The windows were all boarded up, with the exception of one stained-glass pane high on the rectangular bell tower; the grounds were overgrown; broken glass and beer cans and the dead embers of fires lay strewn about.

'St. Jude's,' Tommy said.

Bomber, who hadn't spoken and didn't look like starting anytime soon, produced flashlights from a toolbox in the Jeep and gave us one each. He set off up the steps and unlocked a further three padlocks and set aside three iron bands and pushed the door open, and we followed him inside.

We found ourselves in a blue-tiled entrance hall. Bomber used his flashlight to guide our eyes. On the turn of the stairs, the Blessed Virgin Mary stood in matching blue; facing us, Christ hung from the cross, minus a hand but otherwise intact. Bomber set off down a corridor to the left, flashing the light from side to side to illuminate classrooms still filled with desks and blackboards. Cobwebs hung like lace curtains and dust clung to every surface, but the classrooms were intact, as if their occupants had stepped out in a hurry, expecting to return at their leisure. At the end of the corridor Bomber flung open a heavy oak door and waited for us to pass through. We were in a small chapel, with rows of plain wooden pews and, near the altar, individual mahogany chairs with padded seats and matching kneelers. Bomber hoisted one of the kneelers on his shoulder, wheeled around and headed out of the chapel again, turning at the door to indicate that we should follow. I looked to Tommy for some explanation, but he wasn't talking either.

We followed Bomber upstairs past the Blessed Virgin Mary and onto the first floor, where we filed through a spartan dormitory; the beds were separated into small cells by means of wooden partitions; a small locker stood adjacent to each bed, with a chamber pot beneath. Bomber had paused by one of the cells; he shined his flashlight on the side of the locker nearest the bed, where the occupant had carved some hieroglyphics; I crouched down close to see what they were. Bomber stared at me until I nodded to confirm that I had understood what I had seen; then he was up and off, through a communal bathroom and down a carpeted passageway paneled in dark wood. He stopped outside a door, nodded to us and went in.

The first thing I saw was the reproduction of Poussin's Last Supper, one of the paintings Father Vincent Tyrrell had hanging in his Bayview presbytery. Then I took in the thick-pile red carpet, the burgundy-and-gold-flock wallpaper, the luxurious eiderdown on the queen-size bed, the red velvet seat on the mahogany carver chair, the gilt-framed mirror above the marble fireplace, and the image of the Sacred Heart watching it all, although His light had been extinguished. Bomber's light was burning bright: he waved his flashlight and fixed his eyes on us as if to check he had our full attention. We nodded, and then he presented what amounted to a kind of grotesque pantomime. He took a black scarf from his pocket and wrapped it around his eyes, then he took the kneeler and set it down so that it faced the Sacred Heart; this left him with his back to us. He knelt down and rested his elbows on the arm rail of the kneeler and brought his hands together ready for prayer; he raised his flashlight toward the Sacred Heart and brought forth the first sound I had heard him make. I thought he was cawing like a crow, but soon it was clear he was making a sheep's baa. After a bit of this, he clapped his hands together and blessed himself, then bent down until he was on all fours, with his head beneath the kneeler; he brought his hands up to hang from the kneeler's rail, and with his rear end extended toward us, proceeded to squeal and roar and scream, like an animal in pain. He rocked back and forth on the kneeler until it