"All right, that's the first finding. The second is, in the other big mobile home, there's a rake of racing cards and clippings, scrapbooks, and videos and DVDs of races, some of Terry Folan, some of Patrick Hutton, some of both. So I picked up a few to have a look at.
"Third thing, a red Porsche '88 is around the front, tucked in behind an old milk float that's marooned up in front of the house, the car that was outside Miranda Hart's house when I went to pick her up on Christmas Eve.
"Fourth thing, I checked the reg on the Range Rover left behind: it doesn't match the one I saw leaving Jackie Tyrrell's after the murder.
"Fifth thing, I better get this camera fitted and get out of there. There's no way I can get into the cottage short of forcing the door or breaking a window, but I figure if I get it set in, the stonework's crumbling all over, it's a tumbledown, get it wedged in a crevice above the door and we should be good.
"And then I'm, what if the camera's out of range? I didn't check it, and I didn't check the distance I've come, and maybe it's grand, but I don't know, and I haven't gone through all that to end up with four hours of white noise on a videotape. Or worse, they come back before I have the chance to set the thing up and running. Because there's one thing more I want to know, big number six, and I'm not taking the chance.
"There's a corrugated iron lean-to near the front of the property, there's aluminum beer barrels and car doors surrounding it, it's like a hide, maybe that's what he uses it for, to catch the geese and whatever. Anyway, it's cold in there man, and I'm not looking forward to it, but in I slide, trying me best to think about whatever, something good, turkey with cranberry sauce, Miss Tyrrell's roast potatoes, very nice by the way, and I still have Leo's Glock, I slide one into the chamber and wait.
"Long story short, my luck is in; five minutes later they're back to drop Bomber off again, and Miranda gets out with him, they're talking at the door, she looks like she's reassuring him, or stoking him, or whatever shit she's pulling; anyway, she's done and he goes inside; she makes off in the Porsche and then the Range Rover turns and follows. When it turns, I see the driver is the bould Steno, and when it takes off, I clock the plates: we have the UK, and we have the numbers: this is the vehicle that tore out of Tibradden like Michael Schumacher the night Jackie Tyrrell was murdered.
"After all that, I'm too cold and too wrecked for strategy, I give it a few minutes and then I bolt out from under me house of scrap and just leg it down to the road man, Bomber may be after me, but if I don't move I'm gonna be dead. And Bomber isn't after me, and I'm not dead, and I make it to the house, no, first I make it to the gate lodge, where fat fucko doesn't want to let me in, he's giving it No I Cannot Ring Miss Tyrrell At This Hour and No I Do Not Remember You and Please Walk Away Or I'll Call The Gardaí. So I lean into the booth and I shove the barrel of the Glock right up underneath his chin, shove it so hard it's scratching his forehead from the inside. And then he makes the call.
"And Miss Tyrrell very kindly lets me have a shower, and finds me clean clothes-I know, I know, I look like the Brit on holidays who walks into the wrong pub and ends up buried in a ditch, but it's the thought that counts. Like I said, a real lady.
"Another detail from Bomber's place. The paddock that we spied from the road, it has hurdles set out, and there's a small stable yard with a horse in it. So Bomber, or Patrick Hutton, whichever he is, is training.
"So I come down here and check the receiver and yes, we're in business. Nothing happening down there since I got back, but if anything does, we'll see it."
Tommy nodded and picked up his drink and I nodded back and toasted him: job well done. He hadn't finished yet, however. He had a DVD in the MacBook. It was a collection of races Patrick Hutton had run. He fast-forwarded through the action, freeze-framed on two moments from a postrace interview, and pointed out the salient point to me and its relevance. The man who had taken us to St. Jude's, who we thought to be Patrick Hutton, had blue eyes. That was relevant because in his interview, the salient point about Patrick Hutton's eyes was that one of them was blue and the other one was brown-"just like little Karen has," as Tommy put it. Just like little Karen Tyrrell.
TWENTY-FOUR
The piano tones were still wafting from above as I retraced my steps to the entrance hall and climbed the wide wood-paneled stairway to a landing the size of the average house, with couches and easy chairs and occasional tables laid out beneath exposed beams; I could see two corridors, and chose the one I thought the music was drifting from: the acoustics in the house were sound, and I was soon knocking on a dark wood-paneled door.
"Come in," said a woman's voice, and I did, my eyes drawn instantly toward an upright piano from where I assumed the music to be coming, assumed it so strongly that I stared in disbelief at the vacant stool and the covered keyboard, as if I'd been the victim of some devious trompe l'oeil effect. When I came to, I saw Regina Tyrrell on a couch at the foot of her bed; the music came from speakers I couldn't see; I flashed on Jackie Tyrrell's house the night of her murder.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," she said, her Dublin accent adding to my sense of the incongruous: how had she clung on to it after all these years of the Queen's horses, in this old Anglo setup? Maybe it helped her to recall a time when she was young, and her life spread out before her full of nothing but promise and adventure, a time when dressing in pink and listening to the "Moonlight" Sonata were the motifs of an overture, not an elegy.
There were three matching chairs set in a ring around the couch, which was white and gold and enough like Jackie's to maintain the sense of haunted unease I felt. I sat on one of the chairs, and looked tentatively around the rest of the room, as if fearful of other phantoms lurking there. My fears on that score were in vain. On the evidence of this and her office in the hotel, Regina's visual sense had been set in stone, and brightly colored stone at that, when she was a teenager: pink and white, ruched curtains, satins and silks; she wore pale pink satin pajamas and a matching gown; I wouldn't have been surprised to see stuffed animals on the bed. The music was in a similar vein: the "Moonlight" Sonata had given way to the slow movement from Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto in all its glutinous glory. I think I was with the Musical Powers That Be on that one. In contrast, Regina herself looked hard and shrewd and sanguine; her bloodred lips stained the tips of the cigarettes she smoked, and the glass of gin she drank; if she was at the end of her tether, I wondered how Tommy had noticed.
I sat for a long while without speaking. Regina didn't appear unduly bothered; indeed, she seemed grateful for the company. I looked up at one point to see that the music had brought tears to her eyes, or something had; she dabbed at them with a tissue and sat back as if hoping for more. I could think of nothing to ask except the darkest questions, nothing to consider except the most horrific possibilities. Finally, I just produced the copy of the birth certificate of Patrick Francis, born to Regina Tyrrell on November 2, 1976, and passed it to her. She looked at it, and nodded wearily and sadly, and shrugged.
"Patrick Hutton?" I said, and it was as if a wind had blown through the room, leaving everything apparently still and settled and yet altered irrevocably.
"How did you find out?"
"I didn't. Another detective, Don Kennedy, did. And somebody murdered him, either for that, or for whatever else he discovered."
Regina tipped her head back and looked in the direction of the gold chandelier at the center of the ceiling rose.