The Wrong Kind of Blood (6 page)

“I am hosting an antiques event at two forty-five in the Commodore’s Room,” said Cyril haughtily. “As to the question of Mr. Dawson’s boat, I’m afraid it’s a very busy day today, and I wouldn’t dare take one of our boatmen away from his duties. Perhaps later in the season, and if you were accompanied by Mr. Dawson himself. And if there’s nothing else, Mr. Loy, I have work to do.”

Cyril had been treading a fine line between amusing irritant and pain in the neck. He had just crossed it. I slapped my hands down on the reception desk, leaned into his face and hit the volume control.

“No, Cyril, what you have to do is listen to me. Peter Dawson’s wife, Linda, is concerned about her husband’s whereabouts. She has authorized me to act on her behalf by searching his boat. Both she and I wish to conduct this business without worrying her father-in-law, who is as you know a loyal and generous friend to the Royal Seafield. But if you continue to obstruct me, I’ll call John Dawson and let him know all about it. I’m sure the Commodore will be interested to hear from Mr. Dawson on the subject. Now are you going to get a boatman to take me out to Peter’s boat, Cyril, or do I have to strip down and swim out there myself?”

It’s fair to say that by the end of this little speech, I was shouting. Looking around, I was glad to see that we had attracted something of a crowd. On top of the navy blazers and sweaters, there was a younger contingent, the men in rugby shirts, the women in navy-and-white-striped tops. Maybe there was a club uniform, graded by age. I wasn’t thinking about them, however, or about Cyril Lampkin, who was staring goggle-eyed at me, his jowls working like a bullfrog’s, or even about the tall, wiry, dark-haired guy in shorts and a life jacket who had materialized at my side, and who looked like he could make life difficult for me if he felt like it.

What I was thinking was, This is what I do, and I haven’t done it for far too long. It had been eighteen months since I had worked a case, eighteen months during which I had lost my daughter, my wife, my apartment and my job. I ended up tending bar in a dive in Venice Beach, sleeping on a friend’s floor, drinking every cent I made, thinking little and feeling less, trying to make connections between events that don’t connect and probably never would. I would never make sense of why my daughter had to die. I probably never would discover what happened to my father. But I had a fair chance of finding Peter Dawson, and if I did, it would close one broken circuit, remake one connection that had been broken. And even if I didn’t, at least it was good to feel the stir of blood in my veins again.

Cyril Lampkin said, “You leave me no option, Mr. Loy; I’m going to telephone the Commodore.”

I thought of school, and being threatened with the headmaster, and I began to laugh. A hand nudged my arm.

“It’s all right, Cyril, I’ll look after this. Come on, Mr. Loy, I’ll take you out to the Dawson boat.”

It was the tall dark fellow with the life jacket.

Cyril Lampkin said, “Colm, ah, indeed, well, Colm, I didn’t want to distract you from your duties, but if you think it fit for a nonmember, ah, to be summarily authorized…”

But Cyril’s voice had already begun to fade. Colm led me through the Club Room, down two sets of stairs, and out onto a dock. We sat into a small wine-colored launch, he started the motor and we set off across the harbor. We crossed a number of swinging moorings at the front of the clubhouse until we came to a medium-sized cruiser. At the fore of the boat, the
L
had dropped off, leaving it named the
ady Linda
.

“Here we are,” said Colm, grinning at me. “You were having fun, weren’t you?”

“I hope I didn’t get you into trouble with your boss,” I said.

Colm laughed scornfully. “Lampky? Lampky’s no one’s boss. Lampky’s just the club wanker. His mummy’s left the club some huge sum of money in her will, but in return they have to employ Lampky, and he just blunders around, getting in everyone’s way. Normally it’s not a problem, he doesn’t interfere with the sailing, and as for all those blazers in the clubhouse, well, they’re just wankers too, they deserve someone like Lampky telling them when to wear a tie and what hand to wipe their arses with.”

“I’d’ve thought the club would be keen to keep John Dawson onside.”

“Dead right they are. But Lampky doesn’t like the idea that anyone might gain influence through money. Apart from him of course. But it’s all right when he does it, because Lampkins back to Queen Victoria’s time have been members of the Royal Seafield.”

Colm laughed again, and shook his head.

“Ah, the wankers like all that though, portraits on the wall, the glorious tradition, all that codology. Still, they pay their fees, and half of them never sail at all, they just sit around eating and drinking, so the more the merrier to be honest. If I want a drink I’ll go up the town a stretch; the pint is shocking in the club bars. Not to mention all those double-arsed old dears and wankers in rugby shirts braying in your ear.”

I laughed. “Is that how the club divides up: sailors and wankers?”

“That’s how the world divides up, far as I’m concerned. Speaking of which, are you going to take a look around the boat or what? ’Cause Lampky was right about one thing: it is a busy day.”

I slipped Colm a twenty and said I’d be five minutes. He looked at the money for a few seconds, and I wondered whether he was going to hand it back. Then he nodded at me, and said, “It’s a Hunter 23. Twenty-three feet, four berths, and it sits here all summer, waiting to be used. I’m not religious, but it’s a sin to own a craft like this and not sail her.”

“Is Peter much of a sailor?”

“He knows his way around a boat. Quiet chap, you wouldn’t talk much with him. But he can handle himself well, always places in competitions. Or used to, he hasn’t been out in a while.”

“Has anyone been out in the boat recently?”

“Anyone else? Not that I know of. I could ask the other lads, if you like.”

I told him I’d like, climbed on board the cruiser and went below. There were sofa berths at the fore of the boat, behind the anchor well. These berths had a saloon table between them, and their brown cushion seats lifted off to give stowage space beneath. Fore of the engine well on the port side, there were lockers, a small toilet and four pine shelves running the length of the boat. There was a cooker halfway back on the starboard side, and aft of this, a double-berth cabin. And there wasn’t a single other thing on board: no cutlery or crockery, no waterproofs or sweaters, no blankets or bedding, no books or maps, no compasses or navigational instruments, no clock, no radio. There wasn’t even any dust. I ran a finger over the table. It smelled of ammonia and pine. Someone had cleared the place out, and recently, and cleaned up afterward. They’d made a thorough job of it too, like they were scared of what they might leave behind. But you can never cover your tracks, not entirely. There’s always a human trace remaining. The job is to find it.

I felt about in the engine and anchor wells, and checked to see if there were any flaps or pockets in the storage pods beneath the sofa berths. I looked beneath the mattress in the aft cabin, and knocked to see if either of the bedroom lockers had false backs. I checked the hanging wall lockers on the port side, and the floor-to-ceiling locker aft of it — and finally spotted something. In the tight space between the locker and the wall, a few tiny fragments of blue plastic were caught on the corner of the locker at about chest height. A few more scraps lay on the floor. It looked like a plastic bag had been wedged behind the locker and then ripped out. I could see more scraps a bit further in. I tried to reach my hand into the space, but it wouldn’t fit.

I went up and asked Colm if he had any tools, but those he had — screwdrivers, spanners, wrenches, and so on — were too bulky to be of any use. I borrowed a torch though, went back down below, and shone it behind the locker. In addition to the blue plastic scraps, I could see something else, what looked like a scrap of glossy paper.

My belt was new, and the leather in it was still quite stiff. I took it off, doubled it and, holding it like a rod, dragged it behind the locker a few times. It brought out more blue plastic, and some dust, and finally the scrap of paper.

It was a fragment of an old photograph. On the back, written in red felt-tip pen, was

ma Courtney
3459

The photo was of a mixed group, all dressed up and very young, two men and four women. It looked like one of those shots they take after the wedding photographer is done, when everyone crams into the picture around the bride and groom. I didn’t know whose wedding it was, and I didn’t know any of the women, but I recognized the two men. Someone had drawn a circle around their heads, again with a red felt-tip pen. One man looked like John Dawson. The other was Eamonn Loy, my father.

SEAFIELD TOWN HALL STANDS AT THE TOP OF THE MAIN
street. You can see it from the harbor, and walking right up the town toward it gives you a sense of how the town used to fit together. It’s a substantial late nineteenth-century granite-clad building with a clock tower, council chambers and public reception rooms. At least, it once was all those things. Now, it’s a McDonald’s. I stood outside it feeling utterly bewildered, like George Bailey in Pottersville. My heart had been pounding since I had found the photograph of my father and John Dawson; now sweat sparked on my face and down my back, and my throat was dry as cardboard.

An old man in a black beret and a tightly belted navy raincoat divined, in part, the source of my confusion, commiserated with me, and directed me to the “new” town hall, which he assured me was, in fact, over twenty years old. I thanked him and followed his directions as far as the nearest pub. Hidden down a side street, the Anchor wasn’t the kind of place that did food, not even sandwiches; the barman didn’t catch your eye; the exhausted-looking men huddled in silence over their pints looked at you once and turned away. I ordered a double Jameson, topped it up with water and drank it off in three or four swallows. I could hear the rustle of newspapers, and the ticking of an old clock. When I walked back onto the street, my hands had stopped shaking.

I had arranged to meet Rory Dagg, the project manager of Dawson Construction’s town hall refurbishment, but I still had some time. I stopped off and bought a prepaid mobile phone in a main street shop and had it loaded with call credit. I called Linda and Colm the boatman and Tommy Owens and left my number with them. Then I walked back down to the Seafront Plaza and bought a roast beef and horseradish bagel from one of the cafes ranged along the walkway. I sat at an aluminum table with two Chinese girls and washed down the food with a bottle of the Dublin Brewing Company’s Revolution Red Ale. The sun was out, and the plaza was thronged with people: office workers grabbing lunch, young mums with buggies passing the time over lattes and iced teas, tourists poring over maps or writing postcards. I felt strangely at home there. And then I realized why: because this scene reminded me more of Santa Monica, of West L.A., of California, than of the Ireland I had left. The only thing that felt truly Irish was the shambling couple with the baby in the buggy and the toddler walking alongside. They were both in their early twenties: the guy had heroin cheekbones and gray skin, and he used his full arm to smoke, as if his cigarette was a barbell; the girl’s hair was dyed copper and her eyes were pinched against the smoke from the cigarette she held in her mouth. The baby cried and the toddler whined, and as the guy shouted variations on “He wasn’t fucking there” into his mobile phone, the girl kept her head down and tried to placate the now-howling toddler at her side, and as they weaved through the prosperous, cosmopolitan crowd, jostling other buggies and lurching against tables, spitting and swearing, I reflected that this did not remind me at all of California. In California, they would have employed security to ensure that people who have money to spend never have to look at people who don’t. I couldn’t remember whether it was better never to see people like that at all, or to see them and pretend they aren’t there.

I sat and looked at the two photographs I had collected. Linda had given me a shot of Peter Dawson, his face engorged and glistening. His deep blue eyes were shot with blood, his cheeks flecked crimson, his damp lips swollen into an anxious pout. For all the ravages of alcohol though, he looked like nothing so much as a startled boy, as if he had lost control of his life, and had no idea how to get it back.

The fragment I had found on Peter’s boat had presumably come from one of his empty “Family” box files. My father and John Dawson looked young and slim and careless in it, their pints of stout held aloft, their eyes shining, their mouths open in song or celebration. I stared at the photograph and cast down the years, trying to recall a time when I’d seen my father’s eyes shine like that. I came up empty.

I finished my beer and walked down to the car park near the yacht club. I found my rental car and fed the meter and took a flyer exhorting me to “Save Our Swimming Pool” from beneath the windshield wiper and put it in my pocket, then I went back up the hill and turned down a slip lane into the County Hall and Civic Offices, a set of three seven-story concrete and glass bunkers ranked parallel to, but out of sight of, Seafield Main Street. Two cranes flanked the central bunker, and a builder’s sign informed me that Dawson Construction were undertaking this refurbishment with the help of the European Union Structural Fund and the National Development Plan, that Rory Dagg was project manager and, in a spray-painted addendum, that Anto sucks big dicks.

And that looked like it was going to be as far as I would get. White and blue police tape ran from both legs of the builder’s sign to surround the town hall bunker, assorted police vehicles were parked in the forecourt and a Guard in uniform stood by the sign.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Police business,” said the Guard, his thin lips sucked in over his teeth.

“I have an appointment with Rory Dagg, the project manager,” I said.