The Color of Blood (12 page)

I came out through a different door to the one I had entered by, and the air seemed suddenly to intensify the strength of the beer I had drunk, so that I had trouble getting my bearings in the vast wraparound car park. It was still overcast, starless in the black, but the mist had lifted, and my eyes kept getting snared by a spider’s web of fireworks in the sky and bonfires in the hills. The Reillys came quietly, just as I spotted my car, the bulky one behind me to grab my arms and pin them, the smaller one walking quickly up, sniffing and panting and pushing the blue-grey Sig Sauer pistol to my chest and pulling the trigger before I saw a thing. There were cracks in the sky, and bangs from afar, but nothing from the gun, just a series of clicks, each one deafening to my ears.

The gun must have jammed. Small Reilly lifted the Sig to my eyes and grinned, his vivid blue eyes gleaming, and said: “Keep out of the David Brady thing, righ’?” and slashed me down the right side of my face with the blade front of the gun barrel. I felt a smart of pain as Small Reilly raised the Sig again and brought it round to my left. I ran Big Reilly into the car behind me, braced back against him, swung my legs up and kicked Small Reilly full in the chest, heels out, so he went over and his head hit the tarmac with a smack. I came down hard on top of Big Reilly and heard the gun skittering beneath a car and elbowed Big Reilly a couple of times in the stomach. I was on my feet now, and blood was coursing down my face; I could feel it hot in the fold between my neck and collarbone. Big Reilly was coming at me now with a knife. Small Reilly was still on the ground, fumbling to get up, one hand on his head.

“Shank the cunt, Wayne,” he spat. “He’s out of fuckin’ order man.”

Wayne may have been trying to do just that; he was swiping, slashing the air, jabbing at me; or maybe he was just trying to get to his brother; I should have just backed off and let him get away if that’s what he wanted to do, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do; I wiped the blood off my face with the palm of my right hand and I blocked Wayne’s path between two cars, and he lunged at me, and I sidestepped and grabbed his blade wrist with my bloody right hand and twisted it behind his back, up and up until he dropped the knife, and slapped his face down on the hood of the parked car, once, twice and again, until it was a bloody mess, and smashed his blade hand on the hood, once, twice and again, and smashed it some more so he couldn’t hold a blade in it any time soon, or ever, and flung him at his brother, who still hadn’t made it up, and the two went down in a heap and I picked up the knife and moved in, wiping another flush of blood off my face, a roar like the beating of wings in my ears, ready to keep going, to shank the Reillys myself, to atone for the shame of having been caught unawares; even if they hadn’t meant to kill me, they could have, and I wouldn’t have them thinking they could try it again; and then I heard a voice.

“Fuck sake Ed, you don’t want to kill the fucking
Reillys
. That’d only give them ideas above their station.”

TOMMY OWENS, IN AN OLIVE GREEN SNORKEL COAT AND
a black fleece hat, with the Reilly brothers’ gun in his hand, looking like I hadn’t seen him in a long long while: grinning, head bobbing with adrenaline, or speed, probably both, all of a swagger, ready for the fray.

I walked over to Tommy and took the gun. It was the compact Sig, the P225, barely more than seven inches in length, grey-blue and slick with my blood. As I trained it on the Reillys, it weighed surprisingly light in my hand.

“Besides,” continued Tommy, “as a gun, it makes a good set of brass knucks.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Check the magazine,” he said.

The Sig was chambered for 9mm Parabellum, the magazine was eight-shot, and it was empty. The Reillys had come to throw a scare into me, not kill me. Now I was going to find out why.

Tommy looked at my face.

“You’re gonna need stitches for that, Ed,” he said.

“What are you doing here, Tommy?”

“I’ll tell you after. Sketch, sketch.”

I looked around. A few punters were watching from the pub door. It was only a matter of time before we’d have bouncers on the scene, and then cops. I took a clean handkerchief from my jacket and pressed it to my face to stanch the blood flow.

“I want to talk to the Reillys.”

“Talk to Darren, he’s a slimy little cunt, but he’s the brains. Such as they are. Anyway, Wayne’s fucked, isn’t he?”

Tommy took the knife from me and advanced on the Reillys as he said this, separating them with a few flashes of the blade. Darren Reilly looked dazed from the crack his head had taken, still winded from the blow to the chest; Wayne crouched against a car, his good hand cradling his wounded one, clutching both to his bloodied face, as if afraid it might fall off if he released them.

“Stay down, all right?” Tommy said to Wayne.

“You won’t have Loy with you next time,” Wayne Reilly honked through his fingers. Tommy aimed a kick at him, and Wayne cowered beneath the car. Tommy reached inside Darren Reilly’s grey hoodie, grabbed him by the hair and dragged him squealing toward me.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, looking toward the pub door, where more people had begun to gather. “Car?” he said to me.

I pointed toward the old Volvo, and Tommy led Darren Reilly toward it. Tommy’s limp was still there — his ankle had been stomped to shreds back when we were kids — but his energy had changed; now it resembled the kind of go he’d had when we were in our teens, and every trip to shoplift or rob an orchard or a bike or hot-wire a car had been led by Tommy Owens, with me his willing accomplice. I’d thought disappointment and failure had sucked that kind of verve out of him long since, but here he was, bundling Darren Reilly into the backseat of a car and taking his phone away from him and tying a scarf around his eyes: alive and kicking.

“Down at the corner of Pearse Drive and Pearse Rise, Ed,” Tommy whispered in my ear. “There’s a place there that’s just the job.”

The place was a lockup garage on the outskirts of the Woodpark Estate; two metal up-and-over doors were chained and padlocked; graffiti said
FUCK THE POLICE
and
HONEYPARK RULES
and
MARIA AND CHRISTY
4
EVER
.

Tommy produced a bunch of maybe a hundred keys and passed it to me.

“Right-hand door should be good, Ed. One of them fits, can’t remember which. I’ll mind young Darren here.”

After trying a dozen or so keys, I found one to open the door. There was a space directly inside. I got back in the car and drove it in. Tommy got out and shut the door and flicked a switch and fluorescent lights came on. My face had started bleeding again, but slower this time; I refolded the handkerchief and used it as a pressure pad. There were three other cars in the garage, all covered with tarpaulins; the rear of the concrete building had aluminum doors that matched those we’d entered through. There was an office partition with fiberglass windows and dusty, empty shelves; the desk and chair within were tattered and filthy. I looked at Tommy for an explanation.

“Garage owner in town. Used to do a little work for him, fitting up hot cars. He has lockups all over, moves the motors between them, so if one is raided, there’s no connection made with the others. I made copies of the keys when I was doing a job for him. Checked this one the other day, it had a free space. Always come in handy.”

I nodded. Had Tommy gone back into the hot car business? Had he ever left? Catching Tommy in a lie was as difficult as it had ever been, particularly since he often wasn’t sure himself, trusting in the one true faith of Make It Up As You Go Along.

Tommy got Darren Reilly out of the car. The journey had restored his spirits. He lifted the tarpaulin and inspected the navy hood of a Mercedes saloon with no license plates.

“This is what I’m talking about, Tommy.”

“No way, Darren,” Tommy said.

“Nothing you can do about it, when fuckin’ Wayne gets after yiz—”

“Fuckin’ Wayne is gonna need a doctor for his
face
before he does anything else,” Tommy said. “And even if he does get after us, he doesn’t know where we are, does he?”

“I meant, after, when you’re out and about. When you’re on your own man.”

“I wouldn’t be thinkin’ about after if I was you, Darren. Who says there’s gonna be an after?”

Darren laughed, a clattering football rattle of a laugh.

“What are you, hard men all of a sudden? Sure your man Loy there’s in with the cops so he is.”

“He may be, but I’m not.”

Tommy suddenly hit Darren Reilly a backhander across the ear. Reilly squealed, but I could see Tommy wince; the blow had hurt his hand, and he was trying not to show it; I winced myself at the sight of Tommy hitting anyone: violence had never been part of his rogue’s repertoire.

“Tommy,” I said, as sharp as I could make it. Tommy looked up guiltily and almost blushed, and I had to turn to hide my face; I thought I might burst out laughing. I walked to the doors at the far end of the lockup. Tommy followed me, trailing one eye back toward Reilly, who was rubbing his ear and swearing.

“What the fuck is going on here, Tommy? In a lockup, slapping people around? What are we, going to torture the guy?”

“He owes me money.”

“He owes you money how? Low-rent drug dealer skangin’ round the Woodpark Estate and he owes you money, and you unemployed and looking for work on the level, now how could that be?”

Tommy’s lower lip protruded from his reddened face, his brow all furrowed in a schoolboy frown. That was how it went with Tommy and me: first I had to be his older brother, then his father, then his headmaster. And having to be anybody’s headmaster was a bolt upright three
A.M
. nightmare at the best of times, and it never seemed to be the best of times anymore. My face smarted, and the blood was still flowing; I nudged Tommy in the ribs to start him talking.

“Those porno DVDs,” he said. “I got them from the Reillys.”

“Not Brock Taylor.”

“No. So anyway, I paid in advance.”

“Why did you tell me you got them from Brock Taylor?”

“’Cause I thought it would shut you up goin’ on about what a fuck-up I was if I was in with Brock. Anyway, a fiver each I gave the Reillys, reckoned I’d make ten, come out a grand ahead.”

“And Brock Taylor?”

“What about Brock Taylor? He has nothing to do with anything, I told you, I just… thought of him.”

“How did you ‘just’ happen to show up tonight? Right place, right time? You following me, or the Reillys there, or what?”

Tommy looked away, exhaled loudly through his nostrils, shook his head.

“Just coincidence, Ed. Thought I’d go up the Woodpark Inn for a pint. Came out, spotted you in the—”

“Come on, Tommy. At least the Brock Taylor lie had a certain amount of class.”

“I swear on my daughter’s life.”

“I don’t believe you. Tommy—”

“I was following the Reillys.”

“Thank you. Why?”

“I owe them money. Borrowed it for, just, you know. The usual.”

“And?”

“And I can’t afford to pay it back, and the interest is fuckin’ mounting, so I was trying to get something on them I could use.”

“What kind of thing? Use how? Catch them dealing coke, or loan-sharking, then threaten to give witness evidence to the Guards? Not your style. I don’t believe a word that’s coming out of your mouth, Tommy, not one fucking word.”

“I was hanging round the Woodpark, waitin’ there for them. The Reillys are in and out all night so they are. I didn’t know they were going to attack you, didn’t even know you were there.”

But I had stopped listening. My face was aching, and blood had seeped into my right eye, tearing it up. I spat on the handkerchief and wiped it clean. At least the flow of blood had subsided. I was cold and tired; I needed a drink and a hot shower and a decent night’s sleep and a case that didn’t involve first cousins fucking each other. Instead, here I was in a lockup with a torn face and my best friend the compulsive liar and a little scumbag called Darren Reilly, who had threatened me and pistol-whipped me and who was now leering through the window of a stolen Mercedes at himself, or at the image of his idealized self behind the wheel. I thought I’d better give Tommy some time to make up whatever it was he was going to say next. I walked up fast behind Reilly and grabbed him by the collar and tapped his face firmly against the car window a few, maybe half a dozen times and dragged him to the front of the lockup and pushed him at one of the aluminum doors. He saved himself any further damage by bracing his hands against the support struts on the door. There was blood on his face, and he was whimpering.

“All right, all right,” he said. “Fuck sake. What do you want?”

“Who told you to warn me off?”

Darren Reilly didn’t answer immediately, so I pulled him off-balance and stamped on his foot, near the ankle, hard. He screamed and fell to the ground and lay there moaning.

“Who told you to warn me off?” I said again.

“Sean Moon,” he said. “Jesus fuck!”

“Sean Moon? Don’t make a clown of me here, Darren.”

“I swear. Paid us an’ all. Like when we were minding the young ones.”

“What young ones?”

“The Howard kids.”

“Sean Moon paid you to mind Emily Howard and Jonathan O’Connor?”

“Sure. Brady organized it with him. We just done what we were told. Take the money and run.”

Reilly wiped some blood from his face and put a tentative hand to his nose. It didn’t look broken to me. Maybe I was losing my touch.

“So David Brady was in charge of it all then?”

“Moon isn’t the gobshite you think he is. Bit of a fucking brain, could’ve gone to Uni an’ all. Two of them working together, looked like to me. They organized the whole blackmail thing with your one’s oul’ fella, Howard.”

“They organized it?”

“Yeah. I think your one was in on it though. I didn’t care one way or the other. They paid us well, is all I know. Even if they wouldn’t let us watch the riding.”

“And who blackmailed Brady into making the porn in the first place?”