"Strictly speaking, neither did we, Dave. We think it's Hutton, but jockeys look a lot alike. I say we keep it that way for now. We don't know what the killer wants. I'm heading down to Tyrrellscourt today. I think whatever this is about, it has its roots down there. But look, if you want to tell Geraghty who you suspect it might be…"
There was pause during which Dave digested that one. He sounded like he was chewing on a twig.
"We'll play it our way for now," Dave said gruffly. "I have enough friends at court to keep the information coming, so I'll get it to you as I hear it. You might like to let your lady friend know what's happening though. I hear they questioned all the employees up at Tibradden this morning, then let them go. They start first thing up there."
"Will do."
"And Ed, listen, about last night, in the house…you know-"
"It was very cold, wasn't it? Did you find that?"
"I made a bit of a mountain out of a molehill."
"And now you have to live on top of it. You'll need a hat. Maybe even a scarf."
"Thank you."
"Thank you."
"Leo was connected to Hutton. You don't figure him for the murders, do you? Now he's out, revenge type of thing."
"Not if one of the dead is Hutton himself. They were friends, maybe more than friends."
"But-"
"Look, Dave, I'm a private detective. I find missing persons. Solving murders, that's just not my job. What you want to do with murder, you want to get the Guards in."
MIRANDA HART WAS distraught.
"I can't believe it. Who would want to murder Jackie?"
"She said you were like a daughter to her."
"And she was like a mother to me. Oh Jesus, Ed-"
"Miranda, are you at home?"
"Yes. I'm not long here, I was up in Tibradden, but everything's canceled for the day."
"I want you to pack a bag and get out here. In fact, I'll have you collected."
"Why?"
"Because I don't think you're safe. Jackie Tyrrell is not the only one dead-"
"What, is this the Omega Man that was in the papers? Who else is dead? Patrick? Have they found Patrick? Is he one of the bodies out in Roundwood?"
"They don't know. But the deaths seem to be connected…look, I'm sending someone for you. We'll talk soon. Okay?"
"Okay."
I FOUND TOMMY in the sacristy, brought him up to date with the case, gave him Miranda Hart's address and asked him to pick her up. Before he left, I checked over some recent church history with him.
Father Vincent Tyrrell was sitting at his table with a fountain pen and a lined pad in front of him and a cigarette in his hand, exhaling two blue plumes of smoke into space, or at The Taking of Christ, which was directly ahead of him. I had knocked on the presbytery door and it gave against my fist. I announced myself and he told me to shut the door behind me. He sounded like he wished he had done that in the first place, and turned the key. He didn't look at me when I joined him at the table.
"Of course, Judas had his part to play," he said. "Had he not betrayed our Lord, who would have? And if Jesus had not been betrayed, maybe He would never have been taken. And who would have died for our sins then? Who would have been our redemption?"
"Peter did betray him. I'm sure others would have as well. Seems to me there was quite a queue. When powerful people want someone dead, they generally get their way."
"That is true. Maybe too much is made of Judas, and his blood price. Maybe we're falling for the great-man theory of history."
"I heard that was back in vogue."
"Maybe it is. I don't keep up. It's better not to. Stay where you are, and everything comes back to meet you. Provided you wait long enough."
"This all sounds to me like an Easter sermon, not a Christmas one."
"You're right, of course. Incarnation, not redemption. The beginning, not the end."
"On the other hand, we know that the last words Patrick Hutton had to say to anyone-to anyone who's prepared to talk-were something like, 'They won't make me play the Judas.'"
Tyrrell brought his steely-blue eyes around to meet me. A faintly appalled smile played around his tiny mouth, as if he had just learnt afresh what fools these mortals be.
"That would have been Miss Miranda Hart who told you that."
"Yes. But you could have told me that without violating the secrecy of the confessional. You could have told me you visited her that night-after you'd heard Patrick Hutton's confession-and insulted her, impugned her character and generally scared the living daylights out of her. You could tell me about it now."
"Could she not recall in detail what I told her?" Tyrrell said, as if astonished that his words hadn't seared themselves verbatim on Miranda's brain. "Well, I don't think I can remember either. I may have spoken abruptly-as I remember it, I may have held her responsible for…well, for some of Patrick's…misfortune. No doubt I was harsh. I believe the young lady…gave as good as she got, that night. I was sent from the house with a flea in my ear."
"Of course, you knew her before, didn't you? You knew Patrick before. And Leo Halligan, your breakfast companion of yesterday morning."
Tyrrell smiled in what almost looked like delight.
"Well, I must say I feel vindicated in my choice of sleuth; nothing seems to have slipped past you yet. Am I to take it from the marks on your face that you managed to rendezvous with the unfortunate Leo?"
"You are. And the unfortunate Leo told me to ask you about your years at St. Jude's Industrial School. See I thought he must have got that wrong. I thought you were here all along. But I checked it out with Tommy, and he said no, you'd gone down there for a few years. How did that happen? Did you run into a little trouble up here?"
"Nothing of the sort," Tyrrell said, his cheek beginning to pulse. "I went down to Tyrrellscourt, I…it was at the request of Francis…my brother…he wanted masses said in the house regularly, more often than the local priests could manage, or were willing to, and the archbishop at that time was a great racing man, he was reared not far from Tyrrellscourt, and he arranged it that I could serve there, and that if and when things changed, I would find a place again in Bayview."
My bewilderment must have been obvious.
"It's not unusual at a racing stables where there's a good number of staff for the local priest to come and say mass before big meetings, and bless the horses, and so on. Or at least, it wasn't. And Francis went through a phase of taking this very seriously indeed, and wanted…no exaggeration to say, he wanted his own priest. And for a time, he got one."
"This was before you two fell out."
"Yes, this was…this would have appealed to me. I was wearying of parish work, of the pastoral round of wayward youths and despairing women and their shiftless husbands. It had…I suppose it had another kind of pastoral appeal, that of paradise regained. The childhood we had shared, among horses, always horses. I missed the horses most of all."
"And when would this have been?"
"Much of the nineties: 1990 until '98, I'd say."
"You were there for the By Your Leave episode then, you were at Tyrrellscourt when Patrick Hutton vanished."
"Oh yes."
"But I thought Patrick Hutton came here, made his confession here."
"I never said that. I said he made his confession to me. But he made it in the chapel at Tyrrellscourt."