in Tyrrellscourt, but I figured it wouldn't do any harm to be prepared for it. I popped the Glocks in my coat pockets and kept the Sig trained around the room. George Halligan gave me two looks: one included a nod to Leo and an arched eyebrow, meaning all friends now; that was George's way, but I knew I'd have to watch my back with Leo, and resolved to help put him back behind bars as soon as possible, a resolution that I suspected would find favor with his brother. The second look followed the guns into my pockets.
'I'm going to need them,' I said. 'I'm going down to Tyrrellscourt.'
'That was the main reason we wanted to talk to you, Ed,' George said, as if we'd spent the last five minutes chatting about football before getting down to business.
Leo lifted his head, and dabbed his nose: the flow of blood had diminished to a trickle. George leant in and conferred with him in a low voice. Then he looked around and directed the largest of the construction workers, who had a goatee and no neck, to fix three drinks and pass them around. George had caught me like this in the past, so I watched closely to see that the liquid, which turned out to be brandy, was all coming from the one decanter. It was, and when I had a tumbler of it, I waited for George and Leo to drink, and then I did likewise, and we got down to business, Halligan-style.
'We heard you were asking questions,' George said.
'Who told you? Jack Proby, I suppose.'
Leo and George looked quickly at each other.
'Yeah, Jack called me,' George said unconvincingly. 'You see, the festival starts tomorrow, and we don't want anything to get the way of…a good day's racing.'
'Well, let me put your minds at rest,' I said. 'I don't give a damn about what deals you have with F. X. Tyrrell or Jack Proby. I don't give a damn which horse wins or doesn't, although I am always in the market for a sure thing. All I care about is that since I started looking for Patrick Hutton, the bodies have been piling up. Far as I'm concerned, if F.X. is shy about who he sleeps with, that's his lookout. And allowing for the fact that I don't like blackmailing, extorting, scum-sucking sociopaths like yourselves on any level you care to mention, you're not my problem. My problem is finding out what happened to Patrick Hutton. Allied to that, I've inherited the problem of who killed Don Kennedy, Jackie Tyrrell and Terry Folan.'
'Terry Folan?' Leo said, looking up at me. 'Bomber Folan?'
'That's right,' I said. 'Who'd you think that body on the dump was? Patrick Hutton? Or did you not think anyone else'd find out?'
Leo began to say something, then stopped himself. George looked from his brother to me and back, a Cohiba chafing against his still-dark mustache.
'Anything here I should know about, lads?' he said. We both ignored him.
'It wasn't just you at breakfast with Vincent Tyrrell, was it Leo? Miranda Hart was there too.'
Again Leo went to speak, but stopped himself.
'That's why I'm here, is it? In case the inconvenient deaths of three people get in the way of a fucking horse race?'
'And if you go blundering about down there, you could fuck up quite a few fucking horse races, Ed Loy: the last thing we need is the Tyrrell horses being withdrawn because their trainer is up on a charge, Bottle of Red in particular,' George barked from a blue cloud of cigar smoke. A descant of coughing followed; Leo winced and flapped a hand in front of his face.
'Fair enough,' I said. 'Is that what you're telling me, that F. X. Tyrrell is the killer?'
'That's just a for instance,' George spluttered.
'Well, here's another: the killer takes F. X. Tyrrell out. Maybe he already has. Same result to you: no Tyrrell horse at the races.'
George sat still, his black eyes vanishing into his clenched fist of a face.
'I don't think it was Jack Proby you were talking to at all,' I said. 'I think it was either Miranda Hart, or Gerald Stenson.'
George's face didn't flicker. Leo on the other hand, finally spoke.
'I thought I knew what was going on there, but I don't. Your woman's a lying cunt, every disrespect, she's a whore and a pig and she always will be, right?'
He knew I had to take that, and I did.
'I think her and Steno are into the fucking Tyrrells for some fucking score, I don't know what it is.'
'How do you know?'
'Good question. Because she told me: which almost guarantees it isn't true. Steno always was a sly cunt, mind you.'
'Did she know about the bodies?'
'She knew about Kennedy. And she said she thought the other body was Pa Hutton. She said it was nothing to do with her, but she couldn't stop it. Wouldn't explain that. Father Vincent said she needed to call the cops and tell them. She said there was no way she could get out of it. All this, and of course she's crying and wailing and looking up out of her big eyes like a fucking panda, oh poor her.'
'What do you think?'
'That's what I'm telling you. I don't know.'
'What about Steno? He's beginning to sound like an interesting character.'
Leo drew his narrow lips farther into his mouth.
'Steno was a nasty piece of work. People talked about St. Jude's, you know, the abusers on the staff. The one I remember, going around, you had to watch your back, was one of the boys: Steno. And later, when he was dealing smack, he'd take his pick of the junkies. When Miranda Hart was at her worst, that was Steno she was running around with. Pair of them suited each other.'
I thought of Hutton's dumb show of rape and abuse.
'Did Steno ever attack Hutton?'
Leo looked astonished at the question.
'How the fuck d'you know that? Did Father Vincent tell you? Fuck, I don't think even he knew.'
'He raped him, didn't he?'
'I always blamed him. Pa never knew for sure, said he had a blindfold on. I don't think Pa ever really got over it. Seriously, how do you know? Is Pa Hutton alive? Have you seen him?'
George cleared his throat in aggressive distaste.
Leo flung a look at George, and I thought for a moment he was going to show him what aggressive meant; then he turned back to me, his dark eyes suddenly desperate for a word from beyond the grave.
'I think he may be, yes. The more you can tell me, the closer I'll get to him. What about back in the day, you and F. X. Tyrrell?' I said. 'Was F.X. interested in Hutton too?'
'Pa was never into that.'
'Vincent Tyrrell said the pair of you were about to be expelled from St. Jude's for indecent conduct. He said at first, F. X. Tyrrell had his eye on Patrick Hutton.'
'Father Tyrrell is a devious cunt. Father Tyrrell wants you to find things out, but he doesn't want to help you. Father Tyrrell must think you're going to get divine inspiration.'
'How could he have helped me?'
'He could have told you that I was the one F.X. wanted. Sure he had a notion of Pa as a jockey, but I was the one he wanted all along.'
TWENTY-TWO
One of the construction workers drove me back to Quarry Fields, and Leo sat in the backseat beside me. For some reason, the physical threat seemed to have receded, or at least that was what my gut told me. My gut had been wrong before, but this late in a case, it was almost all I had. When we got to the house, he put a hand on my arm.
'As long as Bottle of Red loses tomorrow, George'll be happy. Don't fuck that up, all right?'
I said I wouldn't.
