"And so what was it all about? Was it some kind of charitable work maybe? These horse-racing professionals were all-work-and-no-play merchants and Leo stepped in to modify their work-life balance? Or, having given all their lives, they decided it was time they got something back."
"You may laugh."
"Some days, I do little else."
"Leo may be a Halligan, but being gay is like a passport across the classes. And racing has a fair bit of that as well. So you'd be surprised who you'd've seen down here. And Leo was always setting up the jockeys to go to these charity balls for MS and the Hospice Foundation and whatever, photographs of them in the Sunday Independent with a bunch of orange-faced models. He knew all these guys who trot around after the ladies who lunch and, you know, go with them to all these events their husbands can't be bothered going to anymore. And they're all hoovering up blow any chance they get, so it worked out nicely, all very respectable."
"Meanwhile."
"Well, I don't know, I mean, I have no evidence, no proof. But the story was, it was all about race fixing. Leo was working with George at this stage-George has a place in the Algarve, and a lot of the jockeys were flown out there on golfing holidays, they were given presents, sometimes cash, sometimes cars or whatever. George has been running a book for ages for people who can't bet legally, usually because their money isn't clean. So the jockeys were holding up horses mostly, in some cases maybe doping them."
The Irish stew arrived, and for once, it actually was Irish stew-mutton, potato and onion in a white sauce-and not the brown beef concoction that often masqueraded in its place. I fell on mine in a spasm of lunchtime-after hunger; Tommy peered at his disapprovingly, pushed it to one side and ordered two more pints.
"I need to be back for midnight mass; plenty of time to let these metabolize," he said.
"What was in it for the journalists and the other bookies? The same?"
"Sure. They knew when to bet, when to lay off. And the journalists could mount a defense of any jockey that made it look too blatant. Every trainer keeps a tame journo or two."
"Any bookies we know?"
"There was only really the one: Jack Proby. Well, and his old man, Seán, of course. But Jack was the main man, Jack was into everything, Jack-"
Tommy stopped suddenly, and then stared across the gantry at a bottle of Irish Mist, as if it had asked him a question. His face flushed.
"Is this how the girl gets into the picture?"
He nodded, grimacing.
"Spit it out."
"She was with Proby, but…well, she was doing a lot of coke, and then she got into smack, and…"
"And what?"
"She turned into a total skank, you know? She'd go with anyone. And I think the idea was to pimp her out, because she was a gorgeous-looking woman, but she got too messy for anyone to deal with. Too messy for anyone to pay money for. She got barred out of here, and pretty much everywhere else. And it was really humiliating for her because she was known in the town, you know? Her old man used to run the Tyrrellscourt Arms and all. It was almost as if that was why, you know, because she was known that she was doing it. I mean, she didn't have to. Even on smack, blokes'd queue down the street for a woman like that."
"What happened to her father?"
"He died not long after Miranda left school, I think. And the Tyrrells bought the pub, it's now a kind of gate lodge to the country club."
"When you say you think the idea was to pimp her out…whose idea was that? Leo's?"
"Actually might have been Jack Proby's. He was a piece of work, that guy…it was like, he was doing these drugs and taking these holidays and all against his will, you know, he was always beefing about it, the coke was cut with bleach, the champagne wasn't vintage, know I mean? Like he was being held hostage somehow. And I think he took it out a lot on Miranda. Mind you, I couldn't swear to this, Ed, I mean, I was doing a lot of drugs at the time."
"Could you swear to any of it?"
"I don't know whether Miranda Hart was being forced, or whether she was using her own free will, but I know people paid her money for sex down here. I know that for a fact."
Fair play to Tommy, he lifted his face to mine so I could see the shame in his squinting eyes and the fear whipping around his mouth. Tommy Owens never lacked guts, even if sometimes it took him quite a while to remember where they were. I took a long drink of my second pint.
"When you say you know for a fact that people paid Miranda Hart for sex, Tommy…just how do you know that?"
"Because I was one of them."
FOURTEEN
I didn't want to listen to Tommy's explanations or excuses, and in truth, he didn't seem in much of a hurry to offer any. We drank in silence for a while, and then I told him I'd see him later and left. I wasn't sure exactly how I felt about what he had told me, but I wanted a break from having to look at his face while I worked it out. Everyone's allowed a past, and if we weren't able to forgive and forget much of what went on there, our lives would run aground on banks of grievance and resentment. That's what I told myself, not what I felt in my chest or in my gut.
The crowds were dwindling with the fading of the light, and a north wind dug deep into the bone. I pulled my overcoat tight around my throat and walked back out of town until I came to the gates of the Tyrrellscourt Hotel, Health Spa and Country Club, and what must have been the Tyrrellscourt Arms, a double-fronted stone bungalow maybe a hundred and fifty years old. It now functioned as a dedicated tourist office for the club and also for the stables and the stud, with brochures and a range of merchandise.
A uniformed security guard came out at my approach and asked me if I was a resident. I said no, but I had business with Regina Tyrrell. When the guard found out I didn't have an appointment, he wouldn't even lift the phone. He said Ms. Tyrrell was seeing nobody that day, and I said she'd see me, on account of how my business had to do with her brother Vincent. He was still reluctant, but when I said Ms. Tyrrell hadn't heard from her brother the priest for a long time but would obviously be anxious to on a day of such pain and distress for the family, he went back inside and made the call; when he came out and gave me the go-ahead, I wondered what she had said to him; he looked like he certainly didn't envy me my errand.
Hardy souls were still playing on the golf course I could see; the brochure assured me there was another course somewhere to the rear of the hotel, which loomed up ahead, white and sprawling, like a château that couldn't stop growing, with its multiple bow windows and its Italianate campanile. Landscaped gardens and a three-tiered lawn led up to the grand main entrance; signposts pointed the way to the wings and annexes that housed the tennis and squash courts, the spa, the swimming pools and the gymnasium; as I stood on the threshold, I heard the competing roars of a car and a river; the car was a steel-gray Bentley Continental Flying Spur, and it swept its cargo of laughing blondes past the main entrance as if it could spot the checkered flag; the river was the Liffey, which sprang from here and flowed on into Dublin and out to the sea.
The lobby was the usual nightmare mismatch of expensive styles and fittings common to every luxury Irish hoteclass="underline" We Can Buy What We Like, And We Will, it screamed. Expensively tanned and scented guests wandered about exuding the relaxed ease of the rich; they seemed absurdly vivid and I an impostor, a monochrome man in their Technicolor world. The cute Scottish redhead at reception directed me to a function room jammed with highly excited children and their parents; in the middle, a red-suited Santa Claus was doing his thing. Regina Tyrrell spotted me immediately; I guess since I was the only man in the room not wearing deck shoes or a cardigan, that wasn't too hard.