Blood for Blood Read online

  Anyway, she’d no reason to suspect my motives, since she didn’t know me. So I couldn’t know about Clonkeelin as far as she was concerned. To her, no one knew about it, no one who’d come after her. She’d feel safer there than in town. She’d probably been in such a state that she’d just driven out, closed the bedroom curtains and gone to bed without thinking it through. No reason in the world to suspect I knew all about her.

  That’s all I could come up with. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but very little about this made sense.

  It told me of course that she’d already taken steps into her past. There’d been no need for me to arrange for Gemma to be killed. OK, Picasso saw to her, as it turned out. But if I’d known Lucille had gone to Clonkeelin, I wouldn’t have set Gemma up in that scam. Picasso wouldn’t have found her in the hotel. Don’t think this is conscience talking. That’s not what I’m about. Fuck it, it happened, that’s all.

  I took the laptop back to my place for a spot of late-night viewing. Pleasant dreams, Lucille.

  Now let’s get things in perspective here. Just because you have a laptop that shows Picasso in a hotel room doesn’t mean you know who he is. All you have is a face; possibly even a disguised one. It wasn’t as if I could plaster it on Crimefile asking viewers to call in or go rapping on doors. A face in Dublin, a city of a million faces, was all I had. No name, address, nothing. I could hand it in to Winters, as I’ve said, but I wanted to look at it first and have a think.

  I put my feet up, opened a can of beer and enjoyed the feature.

  On the screen, Gemma came out of the bathroom naked. A knock on the door. She pulled on a dressing gown, and because the camera wasn’t trained on the door it didn’t show her opening it. It had sound though. Sound is handy for blackmailing people. Not only do men not want their wives seeing them fucking around, they don’t want them hearing the embarrassing tripe they come out with either.

  ‘Good evening,’ a man’s voice said. ‘Hotel maintenance.’ It was Picasso.

  Gemma asked him if he could come back later.

  ‘I’m afraid the telephone system is dysfunctional. The fault has been traced to your room. Our other guests are being inconvenienced. May I? Shan’t take a moment.’

  She let him in. The tool bag in his hand made him look like a tradesman. She didn’t ask for ID. For all the good it would’ve done her.

  Big guy, he was – any taller and he’d’ve needed to duck under the light fitting – blonde hair. Hands like baseball gloves. I’d expected him to shut her up with them. But he had other ideas. He put the tool bag on the bed and opened it. Gemma had no sooner turned to go into the bathroom than he drew a spray out of the bag and coughed politely before saying, ‘Oh, just one thing more.’

  She turned back saying, ‘Yes?’ and caught it straight in the face.

  To say the spray knocked her out would not be entirely accurate. It was trying to knock her out though. She was way beyond swooning and heading towards collapsing when he caught her and laid her out on the bed. Next came a look at what lay beneath her dressing gown. He took it off. I thought for a moment he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to sample what he was admiring, but he had other ways of treating women – sitting on top of her, taping her mouth and binding her hands behind her back. Even if she’d been fit enough to put up a struggle by this time, it would’ve been useless. He must’ve had ten stone on her. A weightlifter would’ve had a job shifting him.

  I now got some idea why they’d named him Picasso. Maybe he was a nut who thought he was Picasso. That or he thought he was a geometry teacher. He used a protractor on her chest. Then a scalpel. This was why he’d taped her mouth. The spray would’ve kept her unconscious and therefore quiet. The scalpel brought her round. She was now wide awake and fit to scream the house down and disturb the other guests. He had it all worked out. Oh, there was a lot of holding her face down and generally preventing her from kicking and bucking, but there was still a fair bit of composure in what he was enjoying. He reminded me of a barber with a careful hand on the cut-throat razor. Only he wasn’t shaving her, he was … sketching. There’s no other word for it. It might sound mad, but what I was reminded of was that artists not only paint, they sketch. And Picasso sketched with scalpels. No way could this guy be copycatted; not by any professional killer I knew. The artistic element ruled it out. You’d need to see the flair with which he’d used those blades to know what I mean.

  Next came a saw. He kept his tools surgically clean. This one was pristine. A tenon saw, the kind you’d use for sawing mitre joints. He had other joints in mind. Her groin to start with. She wasn’t objecting now. She was way past objecting.

  I stilled the frame and – now this bit was part speculation; my surveillance gear was good, but it wasn’t good enough to show minute detail – because I was watching this on a computer screen and not on a VCR, I was able to enhance a shot of a cellophane bag he’d taken out of the tool bag along with his camera. I couldn’t tell for sure, but to me it looked like the bag contained a tongue. In clear liquid. A big tongue. I thought of a dog’s, only because I’d expected to see a ‘dog’ element in this. Winters had taken Greg’s. He hadn’t taken it for a walk. It had to have some connection. Fuck knows what it was.

  But it occurred to me that if I were a killer like him, what would I do with a tongue? More importantly, what would he do with it? Working out in the open, he might bring a dog along to lick the victim. He’d be too smart to draw attention to himself by walking into the Top Towers Hotel with one on a lead. Would he bring a tongue instead? Would licking a victim with it be his way of avoiding copycats? If the liquid was saliva, would it come from one mutt in particular? Without that ingredient, no one could copy his work. Flair or no flair. Forensic’d spot it. That’s how I saw this anyway.

  By this time, y’see, I’d been toying with the idea that if I couldn’t catch him, I could copycat him. If a girl turned up carrying his hallmark, Greg’d be released and the pressure’d be off. And if I did manage to track him down later on – I’d come up with one idea – he’d be available to do a bit of work for me now and again. No point wasting a perfectly good scalpeler. Angles. Always see the angles. But copycatting was now definitely a non-runner. Even if I had his expertise, no way could I get hold of that particular saliva, if that’s what it was.

  Getting back to what he was doing to Gemma, Greg Swags interrupted him, knocking on the door maybe. The sound of knocking didn’t come through because of the noise the saw was making. What happened exactly I couldn’t see. Picasso went off camera. My guess is he looked through the peephole, saw Greg, opened the door and caught him unawares. Dig in the gut, something like that. Then dragged him in. I saw that bit. Greg was doubled up, not out. That came when Picasso hit him across the back of the head with the coffee table. Then he put away his tools. Nothing like a neat tradesman. All except for a scalpel – he put that between Greg’s fingers then slung it behind the settee. So that’s why Chilly Winters was still holding Greg. His prints on the scalpel. Strengthened his case nicely. Picasso had set Greg up. That was it. Then he pulled off his bloodstained sweater and surgical gloves and was out the door.

  This bastard was impressing me.

  I got a few hours’ kip then went to see Charlie Swags. I wasn’t sure whether or not to tell him I’d found the laptop. If I did, I’d have to tell him I’d taken it off Lucille. Which meant I’d have to say where she was. She’d be dead if I did that.

  Now things with me and Charlie weren’t the same as they used to be. Years ago, before he got to be as big as he was now, we used to work closely together. I’d do most of the thinking, and he’d supply the muscle. We’d get into a few scrapes, but y’know how it is – it comes with the job. The laughs had gone. These days he’d come to me for a favour, like that thing with Drake, I’d think up a plan, then he’d tell his hired help to carry it out. I’d get a cut, but that would be it. Whether or not he’d see it like that, I don’t know. It was how I saw it though. H
e was above himself.

  I’ll give you an idea of what I mean. Take security. Charlie’s security mad. You have to press the intercom button at the entrance gate and say the magic words ‘Red Dock’ before his honchos’ll let you in the fucking place. Big house with pointy roofs on all sides, big lawns, high perimeter walls. The Irish president has fewer heavies. Charlie even has bulletproof windows in his Merc. And a black Merc too. Maybe the cunt thinks he is the president. You’d understand it if he was forever ducking, but nobody’s taken a shot at him in years.

  Not my type of house though. Didn’t fancy it. Some big-shot bishop used to live in it. All arched windows and grey scabbled stone. Lose your key and you’d need a battering ram to open the fucking door. Imagine living in a house a bishop used to live in, for fuck’s sake. I dunno, some people get grand ideas.

  ‘Red?’

  ‘Kane, how’s it going?’

  Jerry Kane. Charlie’s head man. Give him the wrong answer to ‘Who the fuck’re you?’ and your dentist bills go up. A guy hit him with the head one night and knocked himself out. Just as well – Kane would’ve buried him. He’d called Kane ‘Chinky eyes’. Kane’s what you might call Charlie’s chief clearer-upper. If Charlie says ‘Kane’ll take care of it’, it usually means some insurance company’s about to pay out on a life policy.

  I was wearing my ‘Fuck me, things are bad’ face, in light of the day’s events, Greg arrested and all. So was Kane, though he always looks like that.

  ‘Charlie’s waiting for you, Red. He’s out the back.’

  ‘Right.’

  As I crossed the hall, Charlie’s wife was in what she calls the ‘drawing’ room, tinkling the grand piano, which none of them could play, with one hand, a glass of something in the other. I put my head in the doorway and nodded hello. She looked up and waited, as much as to say, ‘Any news that’d help Greg?’ I shrugged, meaning no. Back she went to Three Blind Mice. They sounded drunk as well. My guess was she was also on Valium.

  Oddly enough, it was she who’d introduced me to Charlie. Years ago when I was in my teens, I fancied myself as a private detective. She’d hired me to see if he was up to anything. So I tailed him and then purposely let him see me. He grabbed me by the throat and said, ‘What the fuck’s the crack?’ and I said, ‘Well, Charlie, we’re all trying to make a few shillings.’ I indicated that his good lady was concerned about their marriage vows in relation to him fucking other women then let him talk me into keeping my mouth shut. For a consideration. I told his wife he was a saint, billed her as well and got paid twice. I had to or she’d’ve wondered why not. A small scam. But there’s always an angle if you go looking for it.

  Sabina her name is – though everybody calls her ‘Bin’. A decent-looking redhead in her prime. But after years of sixty a day and a couple of goes at the facelifting, with the odd tuck here and there, the word ‘prime’ gets relegated. The old story – big shot keeps wife around because she’s the mother of his kids. Any lip and she knows the result. So she keeps her tongue in her head and her position – the wife of Charlie Swags. She’d settled for it.

  The ‘back’ was like the Botanic Gardens’ greenhouse: the love of Bin’s life now that Charlie no longer gave two fucks whether she hired private investigators to follow him. You can always tell when a marriage’s fucked: the humour dies. Once a man stops pulling his wife’s leg, it’s usually because he’s pulling somebody else’s. Ever notice that? A guy goes with a girl, proposes, marries and everything’s great, light-hearted. He’s got a funny side to him. Then stodge creeps in and it’s all very mundane; the only jokes she hears come from the TV. From then on in, it’s sharing everything but sparkle. Fuck that.

  Charlie wasn’t much of an improvement. Everything he came out with had a big sigh on the end of it. ‘Red, how’s it going?’ sounded like ‘Fuck me, poor Greg, what’re we gonna do?’ Depressing. It would’ve taken more than a beauty clinic to lift his face. And he’d been up all night by the look of him. Usually by this time – it was getting on for nine – he’d be turned out like a tailor’s dummy, darting the cuffs and setting the tie. No tie today. A string vest and suit trousers. I could’ve done with taking my shirt off as well. Now I know why Bin hadn’t an ounce on her. It was fucking roasting in there. Tarzan would’ve felt at home.

  Charlie pulled me up a wicker chair and nodded to the booze on the glass-topped coffee table. ‘Help yourself, Red.’

  ‘No thanks, Charlie.’ I didn’t fancy any. As usual, he was on Irish Mist. He downed what was in his glass and poured himself another, then out came the smokes. I don’t touch them. Charlie’s one after the other. He was always the same. They were telling on him too. His chest always sounded like a mouthful of phlegm was on the way.

  I asked him where Ted Lyle was.

  ‘Fuck Ted Lyle. Letting Greg walk in on the like of that. If Winters doesn’t finish the bastard, I will.’

  Which meant Winters had since hauled him in.

  ‘What does your brief say, Charlie?’ Charlie had the best legal firm in Dublin watching out for him. They’d be working on getting Greg bail.

  ‘Winters is putting severe pressure on that son of mine, Red.’

  ‘Oh?’

  The implication was obvious, though not one that I was gonna dress a question around. Not that I couldn’t have. I was one of the few people who could get away with asking Charlie a direct personal question without him taking it as a slight. A fool might’ve asked him if he meant that Greg might squeal on Charlie’s activities in return for a deal. Charlie would’ve taken it like a dig in the mouth, the fool seen as showing no respect and advised to leave. A look would’ve done it. Charlie’s into all that respect stuff. Me, I know what I am: I neither expect nor deserve respect. Charlie thinks he’s entitled because he’s got a chandelier some aristocrat put up before the bishop moved in. It’s all bullshit.

  ‘It’s yer woman I’m thinking of, Red.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bin. It’s hard for a mother to see her son taken away from her.’

  ‘Sure now …’

  ‘Let alone labelled a killer.’

  ‘Desperate.’

  ‘She has visions of being separated from Greg for the next twenty years. What mother can stand that? And him an innocent party.’ Big drag, lips pursed, purple from years of big drags. Charlie was looking old. And creased. Another few years and he’d be seeing a gob like a bloodhound’s in the mirror. But you can see what I’m getting at. He was only using Bin to let me know he wanted action. Which wasn’t like him. That was probably his second bottle he was digging into and, with no sleep, the old brainwaves were going out on the wrong frequency. Letting me know he wanted this cleared up didn’t even need to be said. You could’ve made condensed soup with it it was that thick.

  ‘You know I have every confidence in you, Red. But maybe you going after Picasso is too much for just one man.’ He was telling me that if I didn’t come up with a result soon, he’d put others on it. If I knew him, he already had. ‘No harm in putting a man in Kells’s place to watch for her though.’

  ‘As long as he doesn’t fuck things up, Charlie. You know how I work.’ Alone.

  ‘I know that, Red. Nobody keeps things to himself the way you do. Or sees things the way you do.’

  ‘Still, it is your son we’re talking about here. If you want me to step aside, I’ll give you what I have, and you can have a think.’ I didn’t say, ‘I’ll give you what I have, and you can give it to someone else to run with.’ That would’ve been too firm a recognition on my part that he’d no confidence in me. He also knew that I knew that if he put his heavies, plus an investigator, on to it, they were unlikely to be any more successful than I’d be. He’d then be in the position, further down the line, of having to come back to me to pick up where I’d left off.

  With Charlie, things were often expressed through facial gestures and silences. Little is said but a lot implied. He knew he’d handed me a case even the Garda Síochána co
uldn’t solve. And I had to let him think that I was still his best option. Then there was the guilt factor. The sex scam with Gemma was my idea. If I hadn’t come up with it, Greg wouldn’t be in this mess. Charlie knew I’d be sensitive to that and do my best.

  ‘You think Lucille Kells has that laptop, Red?’

  ‘She’s in the running, Charlie.’ I had to say that.

  ‘Find her, Red. If she has it, take the scam off it and use the rest to get Greg out. Then Kane’ll take care of it.’ There it was. For ‘it’ read ‘Kells’. Bye bye, Lucille. Now you know why I wasn’t giving him the laptop.

  Bin came in, glass in hand. Serious times. Bin never interrupts, son or no son. Interrupting meant she was telling Charlie she didn’t trust his judgement, hadn’t confidence in him to get Greg off.

  He looked at her as if to say: ‘It’s only the morning after, Bin, for fuck’s sake. Things take time.’ On form, I’d expected him to tell her to get lost. Charlie’s family’s complicated. Families aren’t my strong point. You’re into deep feelings. I didn’t say anything. She knew I’d be seeing this as a first for her and what it implied. Charlie stared at his drink, as much as to say fuck it, I’m going to let this pass; she has a right this time. All to keep the pressure on me to clear up the mess he’d brought about through Drake. Not that he’d be looking at it like that. Charlie’s a great one for creating an atmosphere where the blame gets shifted from him onto someone else.

  Bin looked ready for crying, yet determined to fight it back. I wanted out of there. Yappy women get on my tits. Here she was: ‘What does this Lucille Kells look like? Do you even know that, Red?’ Do you even know that? See what I mean? What had been said before I’d arrived, I couldn’t say, but he’d let her think I was more to blame than he was. Not that she was shouting or anything. This was more a case of a mother not being told all the facts and knowing she wouldn’t be. She’d been eavesdropping, had heard the name ‘Lucille Kells’ and grabbed it. She might even have heard the words ‘scam’ or ‘laptop’. Whatever they were linked to, all she wanted was her son back and knew she’d largely be kept in the dark about the circumstances that lay behind it.