The Price of Blood (34 page)

Regina screamed at this, and began to shake her head, wailing. While I listened to that sound, and to Miranda talking, I was aware again of Karen calling for her mother, over and over again, sometimes through tears, sometimes angrily, rattling the door or banging on it. I hoped the sash windows in her room were too stiff for her to open, and if they weren’t, that she didn’t do anything foolish. Regina was still wailing, keening like a banshee. Miranda leant across and slapped her hard across the face, and she stopped.

"Listen to me," she said. "This is the beginning. This is just the beginning. Don’t forget what you did to him, Regina. Don’t forget you dumped your son into an orphanage, no, a torture chamber, then took him into your house while never acknowledging him. Do you know what that did to him when he found out? That you were his mother, but you had never treated him like a son?"

It couldn’t have been much after nine in the morning then, but that was the point where I thought: I could really do with a drink.

"Kennedy got Patrick a doctor he knew, avoided a hospital situation where the police would have been involved. Setting me and Patrick up, getting us to trust him, so he could blackmail the fuck out of us. But you know what Patrick told me? He wrote it down, he couldn’t speak at all back then. Because I kept asking, in the days and weeks after, pleading with him to tell me why he had done it. And eventually he took a piece of paper and he wrote two things on it. The two things were: ’Tell No One,’ and ’Say Nothing.’

"I knew what that meant. When Patrick had been in St. Jude’s, he’d been raped twice. He didn’t know who the rapists were. He wasn’t even sure there were two, but he thought there were, he said they smelled different. He said sometimes he thought it might have been Vincent Tyrrell, sometimes Leo, sometimes even Steno. I asked Steno and he swore he hadn’t touched Patrick."

I intervened at that point.

"You didn’t believe him, did you? I know you didn’t believe him. Leo Halligan always thought it was Steno who raped Hutton."

Miranda looked at me and swallowed, and continued from where she left off.

"And Patrick said, they’d each said that. Each of the perpetrators—and the other boys who were victims were told the same thing too. Tell no one. Say nothing."

Tell no one. Say nothing. The secret history of Irish life.

"I asked you what was in it for Steno. Looks like you won’t answer. Explain something else to me, Miranda," I said. "I can understand Folan—a row, or a brawl, or some messy accident that got covered up. I can understand Kennedy, the blackmailer. What I don’t get is Jackie Tyrrell. She was your friend, in many ways your champion. You clearly revered her. Why did she have to die?"

Miranda began to nod her head very quickly, as if someone was disagreeing with her but she had right on her side, and if only they’d stop talking, she’d set them straight.

"It’s the same answer to both questions. Patrick wanted to return. He wanted one last race, that was all. And I felt…because of how I’d treated him, the way I’d abandoned him, given up our child…I felt I had a lot to make up for. I felt I’d betrayed him, and I needed to atone. Patrick killed Bomber Folan years ago, and I was there. It was an accident, but Steno knew we were both involved. He cleaned up afterward, and then we were both in Steno’s power. When Kennedy started the blackmail, we both wanted him to die. I don’t feel guilty about Kennedy, he was a piece of filth, extorting money out of our unhappiness and shame. But I couldn’t do it myself, and neither could Patrick, as it happened. So Steno did it for us."

"And Steno’s price was Jackie Tyrrell. Why?"

Miranda stared at the floor.

"I said no harm could come to Regina. And…as you said, Steno wanted to know what was in it for him. I was…I am Jackie Tyrrell’s heir. Her estate: the riding school, the house, everything, it all goes to me."

"And now it all goes to Steno."

"I couldn’t argue him out of it," she said. "I begged him, I said I could get her to advance me enough to keep him going…it wasn’t enough. Steno went his own way. It frightened me."

Miranda looked at me with tears in her eyes, and everything I had felt for her brimmed to the surface again. Complicity in Jackie’s murder had pushed her beyond the pale; now I knew she was not directly responsible, my flexible moral code longed to find some clause that would welcome her back to the fold. Regina Tyrrell looked between us, her face closed to everything but her own pain. The sleet had picked up to hail now; it pounded needle sharp against the windowpanes; I had to raise my voice to compete.

"What else had Kennedy on you, Miranda? I mean, it couldn’t’ve just been Regina as Patrick’s mother, there must have been more to it. Otherwise he would have been blackmailing Regina, or F.X., not you."

Miranda took a page from her coat and unfolded it. It was a long-form birth certificate.

"Kennedy was a predator. He was real scum. He wanted more money. He threatened to go to Regina, to tell her what he had found out. I didn’t think she knew…I reasoned that no one but me knew, that Regina had a better chance of…of bringing up my little girl properly if she didn’t know either."

"I think Regina suspected, at the very least," I said.

"You can suspect, and go on living. You can suspect, and keep lying to yourself, and survive. That’s what people do every day. But you might not make it past knowing. Anyway, this pig wanted more to keep the secret. I couldn’t afford it. That kicked the whole thing off, really. Steno helped us then. Helped us to scare the daylights out of Kennedy until he gave us the key to a safe in his house where this was kept. Helped us to kill him. And good riddance."

"What’s the secret?" Regina asked.

And Miranda Hart said: "That you are my mother. That Patrick and I are brother and sister. That our daughter, Karen…"

She didn’t need to continue. Regina nodded her head wearily. She had said to me earlier that she had dreaded this day, but prayed for it, too. I think dread was the dominant emotion in the room, especially because of what Miranda Hart said next.

"Maybe we could have gotten past that," she said. "Maybe…I don’t know…but when Patrick…when Patrick went to confession with Vincent Tyrrell…it was after By Your Leave, and all the shenanigans with the Halligans and so forth, and Patrick was sick to his stomach, he didn’t like the cheating, that side of the game, he was straight as a die, really. And he went to confess his sins. And he told Vincent Tyrrell he was worried about getting another job, with a bad reputation, because his wife was pregnant. Tyrrell got very angry, and Patrick was confused: he knew he’d been in the wrong, but surely these things happened to everyone at one time or another. Surely even a Catholic priest could be more understanding than that.

"And Vincent Tyrrell told him that this child would be an abomination. It would be against nature. Patrick asked why. And Vincent Tyrrell said, because its mother and father shared the same mother, and their fathers were brothers."

All you could hear when Miranda stopped speaking was the hail against the windowpanes and the slow, steady wailing of Karen Tyrrell.

   Tommy witnessed what happened in Leopardstown that day at first hand, and this is the way he told it to me:

"I was the driver, Steno in the back with Hutton. Hutton kept drizening this tune to himself, over and over, driving me mad so it was. Steno seemed as ever, you know, Mr. Chill. I was trying to get something out of him on the whole operation, find out what the plan was: giving him a lot of excitement and enthusiasm, not laying it on too thick ’cause he’s obviously not a fucking plank. Telling him I’d had it up to here with fucking Ed Loy taking me for granted and paying me shit and expecting me to watch his back all the fucking time. But Steno played it cool and steady: is that right, no really, Tommy, all this. Pretty soon I gave it up. The driving was taking up all my attention anyway, the hail and the sleet, our number one weather choice, and cunts in Mercs and boy racers still pissed from the night before cutting me up in a poxy dribble of muddy water morning light, you wished you were in your bed with nothing more taxing than a trip to the pub ahead. Stephen’s Day, a few bets, a few jars, and home to see what’s on the box. Turkey sandwich, bottle of beer. Not this year.

"We’re on the M50, heading south, Steno says to keep going on past Leopardstown, and then to cut down toward the sea, onto the N11 and down into Bayview. Father Vincent Tyrrell, I’m thinking, and sure enough, we get to the church car park and Steno nods me out. He leaves Hutton in the backseat, still singing away to himself, sounds like a Christmas carol to me, but I’ve heard so fucking many the past few weeks I can’t remember which is which. We head into the back porch, there’s a mass on, I look at Steno and he shrugs, and I’m thinking, this cunt would strafe the fucking church now not a bother on him, and then I’m like, calm the fuck down, this is a barman from Tyrrellscourt, not a fucking suicide bomber for al-Qaeda. I open the door and it’s Father Lyons, home from the missions, and the beady-eyed cunt clocks me instantly, caught rapid, where the fuck were you? I can see he spots me, well, pity about him. Twenty women and three men over seventy in the church, you have to feel sorry for them, sorry for Lyons too, I mean, six masses between them yesterday, and Stephen’s morning these ’oul ones and ’oul fellas are back for more. I know they’re probably lonely and they’ve fuck-all else to be doing, but come on, Jesus knows you love Him by now, He got the message big-time on His birthday, relax there or He might start to think yiz are all laying it on a bit thick.

"We go around to the presbytery, knock away, nothing doing. Steno looks at me like I have the inside story.

“Maybe he’s gone to Leopardstown,’ I say.

“Maybe he has. Two birds,’ he says.

"I don’t like the sound of that.

"And we’re back in the Range Rover, back up and onto the M50, heading for Leopardstown. The hail and sleet have dwindled to a scuttery rain now, and the air is warming a little, and there’s a crack in the sky that, if it’s not exactly blue, it’s at the silver end of gray, and I can see Steno nodding out the window.

“The day is coming together,’ he says. ’The day is going to happen.’

"F. X. Tyrrell has gone ahead with the head man, Brian Rowan, in the last horse box. Always goes with the horses, Rowan says, still in awe, and Steno checks him, is he sure he’s with the program, and Rowan reassures Steno he’s onside, well in there, bought and paid for. Horses’ll be up in the stables with all the lads looking after them, and Tyrrell too. We turn off for the course and the Garda checkpoints are already in place, waving punters into the car parks about half a mile from the track. Steno’s given me some kind of official pass he’s got from Rowan and they nod us through. And part of me is, why didn’t I just call a halt, tell the Guards I’ve a madman with a submachine gun in the back, not to mention a madman with no tongue who thinks he’s Lester Piggott? Why don’t I tell them about you, tied to a chair in Tyrrellscourt? I could pretend I think nothing bad is gonna happen here, like it’s just a sentimental old debt being paid: Hutton gets to run a prestige race, ten years after everyone thought he disappeared. What a story! But I know that’s not all there is. Maybe it’s that I want to know what happens next. Like it’s their story, and I want to see how they play it out. And maybe it’s because I still don’t like talking to the fucking cops. And maybe there’s a second, just a glimmer, when I roll down the window and show the Guard the pass, and he sees it’s Tyrrellscourt stables, and he looks in the back and sees Hutton, and you know what he says?

“Is that him? Is that Hutton?’

"Fuck sake, it’s out already. And of course, I know Tyrrell has to tell them Barry Dorgan is being replaced by Hutton. Maybe I just don’t expect everyone to remember who he was. But why not? Fuck, I do. There’s lads in Paddy Power’s who talk about By Your Leave and Hutton vanishing still. So it’s out there, the return of the prodigal: they’re building the fucking myth already. And maybe there’s a glimmer: tell him. Tell him. And then he’s beaming at us, his eyes twinkling with excitement, in such a fucking hurry to wave us on it would’ve seemed like bad manners to disappoint the cunt. In for a penny. And I thought, what would Ed do? He’d follow it to the end. Follow it to the end, Tommy, and see where it takes you.

"We park close enough to the entrance, and Steno goes off to the stables; he’s got to get passes for us all. While we’re sitting there waiting, I finally pick up on what it is Hutton is humming.

Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel…

"I join in on the chorus, and he gives me a big smile when I’ve done, and nods his head, like, at last, here’s someone who understands me.

"Mental, totally fucking mental.

"When Steno comes back, he tells us Hutton needs to go to the weigh room, and then we can hang on in the jockeys’ changing room—but not to go yet, or we’ll be in there too long, and the other jockeys’ll be hassling us.

“We?’ I say.

“Yeah, you can be his valet, all right?’ Steno says to me.

"Not as if I have a great deal of choice in the matter.

"Steno rolls his eyes then.

“You’ll never guess who’s up there with the animals.’

“Dr. Doolittle,’ I say, before I can stop myself. Then, ’Rex Harrison, not Eddie Murphy,’ as if that’s gonna help. It doesn’t: he gives me the base of his hand smack in the jaw and sets my teeth scraping and my head clanging like an anvil, the fucker.

“Don’t get smart with me, you mangy fuck,’ Steno says, side of the mouth, all smiles, like he’s chatting to a friend. ’You’re still on probation. And Rex Harrison is dead.’

"I nod, trying to look sorry, which is no great stretch, ’cause after the clatter he’s given me, believe me, I am.

“Vincent Tyrrell. He knows all the stable lads of course, half of them were in St. Jude’s, so he’s at home up there. Him and the brother pretending they don’t see each other. Said he’s particularly keen to see how Bottle of Red gets on.’