"Fuck sake, watch where you're pointing that thing!" Leo said.
"Very difficult to predict where the bullet will go at close range, as we all know," I said. "And the waiting time in A &E over Christmas is even worse than normal, might not make it home until New Year."
"So what do you want?" Leo said.
"Breakfast with Vincent Tyrrell," I said. "What was that about?"
"I got a tip-off. Last night. About Pa Hutton, Patrick Hutton. I called Tyrrell, he agreed to meet."
"Who tipped you off? And what did they say?"
"I don't know who it was, a woman, very southside, maybe even upper class, you know, Anglo type of thing. She didn't say who she was."
Miranda. Or Jackie.
"What did she say?"
"She said, 'You were there. In Tyrrellscourt. It's all going to come out now. The truth at last.'"
"Did she mention Patrick Hutton by name?"
Leo Halligan shook his head.
"She said, 'Ask Vincent Tyrrell. Vincent Tyrrell knows.'"
Leo's hand went in his jacket, and I brought the Glock up. He carefully took a pale blue pack of Gauloises and a brass Zippo from his jeans and lit a cigarette. He offered the pack around. I took one, and so did Tommy. Then Tommy found a naggin of Jameson in the depths of his snorkel coat, and we each had a drink. Silence reigned for a while, an almost contented calm. Perverse camaraderie in the middle of the night, flanked by a petty criminal and a stone killer on the top of Bayview Hilclass="underline" I almost laughed at how good I suddenly felt, at the adrenaline surge that reminded me who I was, and why I did what I did, and all the while at the anger I could feel building, anger that was never very far below the surface.
"And how did you get Patrick Hutton out of that call?" I said to Leo.
"There was nothing else for me to get. Pa and me were friends, you know? We…we were good friends, yeah? So that was what Tyrrellscourt meant to me, above anything else."
"So you called Vincent Tyrrell."
"Me and Father Tyrrell go back. I told Father Tyrrell Patrick Hutton was coming back to haunt everyone who knew him."
"Why did you put it like that?"
"I thought it had a nice ring to it. I thought it might scare the cunt. Anyway, he asks me to meet him for breakfast, fuck sake, like we're a pair of suits, you know? And then he was all, oh, I can't tell you anything, the sanctity of the confessional, all this. So I said, I remember you, baby, back in St. Jude's Industrial School. I remember."
"What do you remember?"
Leo Halligan grinned.
"That's for me to know. That was it, end of."
"Do you know how he disappeared?"
"All I'll say is, you're not going to find the answers up here. To any of it. You're going to find them down in Tyrrellscourt."
He flashed his eyes at me, with the lubriciousness of someone who knows way more than he's telling.
"Anyway, coming out, I met Hopalong here, Mr. Fucking Sacristan, honest to fuck, I thought I was going to burst me shite laughing. So when he said Tyrrell had asked you down, I decided to stick around, added a little design feature to your car. I was gonna string it out awhile for you. You know, leave a dead cat on your doorstep, potshot through your living-room window. Just like a regular psycho. But it's too cold, and I couldn't be arsed, to be honest with you," Leo said.
"All because of Podge."
Leo shrugged.
"Did you know that, Tommy? Leo was after me because I helped get Podge sent away. You remember Podge, don't you Tommy?"
"No, Ed."
"Ah you do. Very well. Very very well, in fact."
"Stop, Ed."
"You know Tommy did a little work for Podge? A little courier work in the old import-export trade. And then they fell out, as fellows in that trade will. Over a gun. A Glock 17, in fact, this very model. And you know what Podge did to Tommy here?"
I could see the unease on Leo's face.
"He raped him, Leo. More than once, far as I could make out, although once would be enough for most of us. Did you know that? Or are they too scared to tell you just what kind of a maniac your kid brother is? It's not as if you don't really know."
Leo stared at the ground and shook his head. Maybe I imagined it, but I thought I saw shame in his face. I was probably wrong. I often imagine people are ashamed when they're just a little self-conscious, or indifferent, or plain bored. I could feel the anger rising like acid in my chest, singeing the back of my throat. Leo started to say something, very quietly. Then he cleared his throat and said it out loud.
"George didn't tell me that. But even if he had. Podge is my brother."
He looked up, his face a riot of opposing emotions: there was shame there, or at least embarrassment, and what looked like compassion for Tommy, but mostly there was defiance, the mark of the loyal blood code by which he lived. I had a certain respect for that. But I remembered Tommy after Podge had raped him, remembered the weeping shell of a man he became, and the anger within me erupted. Against my own best interests, against the interests of the case, against everything but the heat of the moment. I had my own blood code too, and sometimes I had to be true to it.
"Well, in every way it counts, Tommy's my brother, Leo," I said, and my hand was on the barrel of the Glock and I brought it up and smashed the butt against the bridge of Leo Halligan's nose, once, twice and again, just to make sure it was broken.
TEN
I offered to drive Leo to the A &E in St. Anthony's. He told me to fuck off, among other things, and made his way down the hill on foot. George Halligan lived on the other side of Castlehill, ten minutes' walk away. Tommy joined me on the trip to Jackie Tyrrell's house up among the pine forests off Tibradden Road. The M50 was quiet, and we made the journey in twenty silent minutes. The house, at the top of a gravel drive about half a mile above the road, was a Victorian Gothic detached redbrick-and-stone villa with stained-glass windows and a bell tower, set among bare oaks and elms; within view was the stone farmhouse with paddock and stables that served as the center of the riding school.
I asked Tommy if he wanted to come in. He said he'd wait in the car, "and keep an eye out." When I opened the car door, he put his hand briefly on my forearm, and went to say something and either couldn't form the words or thought the better of it, and looked me in the eye, and nodded: a Tommy Owens apology, or a Tommy Owens thank-you, or a conflation of the two.
"What's the story with Leo?" I said. "History there?"
Tommy flexed his narrow jaw and winced as if his teeth ached.
"It's nothing. I'll tell you about it later man."
"You've got to start acting in your own best interest, Tommy," I said, as sternly as I could. Tommy nodded gravely, but I could see he wasn't going to let it go.
"I could say the exact same for you man," he said finally.
The ensuing silence held for about ten seconds, and then we both burst out laughing.
The hall was of double height and featured the kind of Christmas tree you'd expect to find in some corporate HQ: maybe sixteen feet tall, it blazed with light amid the dark marble-floored room. The Brazilian servant (I always ask now: the Philippines and Brazil are the biggest suppliers of staff to the rich Irish, for reasons I don't pretend to understand: perhaps because they tend to be smaller, they don't have to be given rooms, but can sleep in cupboards or on shelves instead) led me up the stairs. I asked for a bathroom first, where I looked at the damage: an eye that was red and closing, and a bunch of welts and cuts across my face. I'd seen worse in the mirror. They'd be hilarious company tomorrow. I washed them with lavender-scented liquid soap and dabbed at them with towels soaked in hot water. The maid led me into a white reception room the size of the ground floor of my house; it didn't look particularly large in the context of Jackie Tyrrell's.