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, slippier 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
'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 Tyrrell'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
'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 aluminum 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 Tyrrell'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 Tyrrell 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 Tyrrell At This Hour and No I Do Not Remember You and Please Walk Away Or I'll Call The Gardai. 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
'And Miss Tyrrell very kindly lets me have a shower, and finds me clean clothes-I know, 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 postrace 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 Tyrrell.
TWENTY-FOUR
The piano tones were still wafting from above as I retraced my steps to the entrance hall and climbed the wide wood-paneled 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-paneled 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 Tyrrell on a couch at the foot of her bed; the music came from speakers I couldn't see; I flashed on Jackie Tyrrell'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
