THERE’S A MOMENT IN EVERY CASE WHEN YOU CATCH A glimmer of the end: not that you know all the answers, but you begin to see the pattern. It often comes when you’re at your lowest ebb, and you’ve nothing but darkness in sight. Eileen Dalton telling me John Howard was Jerry Dalton’s father felt like such a moment. The energy in the room seemed to split apart and flow together again in a new configuration. I was still tied to a chair in Brock Taylor’s Fitzwilliam Square house, but I felt I had been given, if not quite a winning hand, at least something to play for. If Eileen Dalton had been feeding her son clues about the Howard family, chances were she wanted something to happen, and that something had to involve her getting out of Brock Taylor’s, and she might need some help to get where she was going.
There was a knock on the door, and Eileen left the room. When she came back in, she looked me up and down, flashed me a nervous grin, then went to what looked like a plain white wall, pressed on it and a cupboard door swung open.
“What do you drink?” she said.
“Jameson,” I said. “Two-thirds to a third water.”
“I’ll give you half and half. You’ve got to take it easy.”
She poured herself a whiskey too, and came over and sat beside me with both drinks.
“Who was at the door?” I said.
“One of Brian’s…security staff. Checking to see if everything is all right.”
“And is it?”
“Have a drink and see.”
She tipped the glass to my lips and I gulped maybe half of it. She took my glass, clinked hers against it, said “Sláinte” and drank.
“How long have you been with Brock then?”
“I said I didn’t want to talk about him.”
“And then he sends a boy around to check up on you.”
“Checking up on you.”
“What do you think he’s going to do with me?”
“Make sure you’re scared, good and proper, so you keep your nose out of his business.”
“And you think that’s all he’ll do?”
“Brian may have robbed a few banks in his time, security vans, but that’s all; he’s settled with the CAB, he’s moved beyond that now. And no one’s said he ever killed anyone. No one’s ever said that.”
The near repetition of her avowal of Brock Taylor’s innocence seemed to undermine her faith in it. She fetched an ashtray and set it down beside her. She lit a cigarette, and I asked for one. When she lit mine, her hand was trembling.
“You’re very frightened. Why is that?”
She drank some more whiskey.
“I was in London nearly twenty years. St. Thomas’s Hospital. I wouldn’t have come back if I didn’t think Brian was on the level. Don’t make him out to be some kind of gangster.”
“Do you know Sean Moon?”
Eileen flinched.
“There are people he sometimes has to deal with, people from the past who don’t understand who he’s become-”
“Tonight, Sean Moon murdered two criminals from Woodpark, the Reilly brothers. Brian sat there and watched.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I saw it. Afterward, they put a Ukrainian woman called Maria Kravchenko in the Bentley and drove her here. Moon had been holding her against her will, forcing her to have sex against her will. Raping her, I believe it’s called.”
Eileen was shaking her head.
“I took her away from them, and let her and her sister stay in my house. But they broke in and took them, and when I tried to stop them, they attacked me. Did you see the Kravchenko girls tonight? How was I delivered here?”
“I wasn’t…nobody…I didn’t see you arrive. I was upstairs. Brian came up and…”
She was having some trouble forming sentences, or organizing her thoughts.
“What did he tell you? Or are you used to entertaining, what should we call them, business clients of your husband who are beaten senseless and tied to chairs?”
“We know you’re working for the Howards. He thought we might learn something from you. Said you’d been a bit obstreperous and Moon had to knock you into line.”
“Did Tommy Owens set me up?”
“I don’t know who Tommy Owens is, love.”
She looked across at me, took the smoked-down cigarette from my mouth and butted it in the ashtray. Then she brushed some ash from my shirtfront.
“He didn’t say anything about any girls,” she said, in a low, hopeful voice.
I nodded, as if this was understandable.
“What were you and Brock hoping to learn from me? What’s Brock doing out in Woodpark, buying the whole place up? Bought the old house you used to live in, did he?”
“He didn’t have to buy it. It was his, and mine-except I’m dead, of course; Brian had me declared legally dead after seven years.”
“But you’re not dead anymore, are you? You’re coming back to life now, coming back in a big way. Sending hints and allegations about the Howards to your son Jerry, the son who’s never met you. What do you want, Eileen? Is it money? You look pretty well set up here, Fitzwilliam Square, hard to top that. What is it?”
“It’s not the money. I want the truth about my son Stephen to be told,” Eileen said. Her voice was suddenly thick with emotion. “I want the Howards to own up, in public, to what they did, to what they’ve done.”
“What have they done? Why don’t you tell me what the Howards have done? Did John Howard rape you?”
All the lights and lamps in the room were controlled by a panel of switches by the door, and now Eileen stood and walked across the room and dimmed the lights, then stood, dark, by the closer of the two high windows and lit another cigarette. A wash of yellow streetlight flowed through the etiolated off-white glow of the room; I thought of Honeypark, the way it looked in November light, like melting snow smeared with dirt. Eileen looked down into the street, and when she spoke, it was in a voice I hadn’t heard her use before, a high, clear, girlish sound that seemed to come from as far in the past as the events she began to describe.
“We lived in one of the cottages along the road from Rowan House, and my father worked in the gardens there. I think at one time they were tenant cottages, and the Howards still behaved as if that’s what we were, presents at Christmas, patronizing, you know? When I was seventeen, I got into trouble-a local lad, a complete fucking eejit, him and me both. My parents were furious, and there were all sorts of plans about how I should hide the baby and then pretend it was my ma’s and she could raise it, or that I should be sent to a home for unmarried mothers and then the baby would be taken off me and given to a good family. Anyway, one night I had a temperature, a fever, and my parents were very scared, and my father ran down to Rowan House, and Dr. Howard came up and treated me, and discovered I was pregnant. The next day, Mrs. Howard came and made my parents an offer: that if I went into service in Rowan House, I could have the baby safe from prying eyes, in the Howard Maternity Center no less, and I could raise him while living there. I’d have my own quarters, and the Howards’d pay for everything.”
“When was this?”
“Sixty-nine. No, 1970.”
“So you would have been older than Sandra.”
“Oh yes. The idea was that I could look after the children. Sandra was ten, Shane was eight. And little Marian was six.”
“That was generous of the Howards.”
“That’s what my parents thought. I suppose I thought so too. Or maybe I was just relieved I wasn’t gonna be sent to some house full of nuns. I hadn’t banked on a life as a servant though. I thought I could do a secretarial course, move into town, get started, you know? But how was I going to do that with a kid? So I moved in and had the baby, a boy, Stephen.”
“Was the father’s name Casey?”
“No, that was my idea. That there was a father, but he died. I could be a widow at eighteen. I suggested it to Mary Howard, and she liked it. So we had his name put on the birth cert-Noel, I think it was. Noel Casey. And I was Casey to the children from then on. And that was that, Stephen grew up in Rowan House. He went to the local primary, but he was clever, so John Howard paid to have him sent to Castlehill. My own parents took a step back, it was as if Stephen was the Howard’s grandchild, not theirs. And I went along with that.”
“How did the Howard children react?”
“Very well at first. I was like a big sister to Sandra. Shane was all boy, flying about the place. And little Marian was such a cutie, oh she was gorgeous. A real little princess. And they loved to play with Stephen. And then, when he was two or three, it all changed.”
“In what way?”
“In a dramatic way. Mary Howard came to me one morning and said she felt I needed to live on my own, that they had found me a small house I could live in, that I could come in daily.”
“Why did she do that? Was she afraid her husband was getting too fond of you? Did he ever make a pass?”
“Not then, no. He was a perfect gent. No, I just thought Mary was thinking of me, that I might need some independence. And the cottage was the one in Woodpark, there was a bus you could get up to Rowan House. A bit rough there, maybe, but it was nice to have my own front door. Actually, the one I thought was jealous of anyone else having anything to do with her father was Sandra, she would have been twelve, thirteen, in the first teenage flush of it all, and she took against me. Quite subtly, but making it clear I wasn’t really part of the family. Remarks about my hair, my clothes, girls’ school stuff, quite bitchy. Quite cruel really.”
“But Sandra and her father were particularly close?”
“She’d always idolized him. She was Daddy’s little girl. And she and her mother started-it wasn’t exactly fighting, frosting would be a better way to describe it, they avoided each other, and were sharp when they had to be together.”
“It’s not an unusual situation. Adolescent girl fixates on her father, rows with her mother. Happens in a thousand houses, up and down the land.”
“It’s perfectly normal. I’m sure it was.”
She hadn’t turned from the window. I could see the tip of her cigarette glow and fade in the glass, a tiny beacon in the night.
“I’m just telling you what I remember. I said I wanted the Howards to own up to what they did. But I still don’t know the extent of it. That’s why I hoped Jerry might find a way…and maybe now you can help him. Help me. To get to the truth.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. I reckon I could make a better stab at it without these ropes.”
Eileen Taylor turned and looked at me, tied to the chair, and turned back to the glass and continued talking.
“The inquest into Marian Howard’s death didn’t make sense, I remember that. The child had been ill for months beforehand, in isolation at the end of the rear corridor. Scarlet fever, pleurisy, pneumonia. I didn’t see her once. Dr. Howard treated her himself, and a nurse from the clinic came up. That was all I knew; then all of a sudden, she had been in the pool outside and drowned. In November, and with the child ill for so long. I couldn’t believe that.”
“What did you believe?”
“One night, I cooked dinner downstairs for Shane and Sandra, and they went out together to the pictures or something. Marian was still alive at this point, still in her sickroom. I tidied up the meal, and I was preparing to go home. I came upstairs to the rotunda, and Mary Howard was standing there in the darkness, in a dressing gown, her hair unkempt, looking down the long corridor, tears streaming down her face. She was quite a forbidding person, and I normally would have stared at the floor, pretended I hadn’t seen her, passed on by. But she was in such a state, I didn’t even think, I ran to hold her. She wept on my shoulder, and kept saying the same thing, over and over. ‘At least this is the end of it,’ she said. ‘At least this must be the end of it.’ And I thought I heard…I still couldn’t swear to it, and Mary was repeating the words in my ears, but I thought I heard a baby crying. I looked her in the eye, and she pulled herself together, and apologized, and started to fuss around Stephen, who had just come into the hall, and she shooed us both out the door.”
“You couldn’t swear to it. That Marian was pregnant, not ill. That she had a baby, and it was taken off her, or it died, and she what? Killed herself? Was murdered?”
“I couldn’t swear to any of it.”
“What do you think?”
Eileen’s cigarette glowed red, and a cloud of grey smoke shrouded her dark head.
“After Marian’s death, they built the new house, the bungalow. Mary wouldn’t live in Rowan House anymore; she wanted a clean break. But John Howard wouldn’t hear of moving. He had his dream of the three towers, and while only one existed during his lifetime, he thought if he moved away now he’d lose his chance of it coming true. So they compromised by sticking one on the back of the other. And when it came to it, Mary wouldn’t move into the bungalow at all; I think she felt it would somehow downgrade her in the scheme of things.
“I trained as a nurse, with Mary Howard’s encouragement-and with the Howards’ money. I think Mary took me on then, as a project. Sandra and Shane were older, and at university, so she asked Stephen and me to move back in. We lived in the bungalow. John Howard spent most of his time in the old house. Sandra spent a lot of time at home, and we became quite close-it seemed to me she was doing her best for both parents by then, as they took fewer pains to conceal how much they loathed each other.”
“And Stephen went to school.”
“That’s right, to Castlehill, and I worked in the Howard Clinic; and then when John Howard got cancer, I nursed him until he died.”
“Sandra told me she was her father’s nurse.”
“Took more than one. Anyway, she had her hands full keeping the peace between him and the mother. It was fireworks every night.”
“And what happened? Did he rape you?”
“You know, all these years I’ve been saying yes, he did, telling myself, telling Brian. Telling the Howards. But the truth is, it wasn’t rape. He was…a very attractive man, even at seventy. Very charismatic, very powerful. And yes, he was ill, but between bouts of the illness, he’d be fit. Fit enough. And I had had nobody for the longest time. I was susceptible. I mean, it was wrong on just about every count you could think of. But we had a-kind of an-affair. Under everyone’s noses. And I thought nothing would happen, he’s got cancer, he couldn’t be fertile-it’s funny the way you get taken in by old wives’ tales you’d scorn anyone else for believing. And something happened.”
“Was Brock Taylor on the scene at this stage? Or Brian Dalton-what is his name?”
“He was christened Dalton. Still went by that when I met him, around this time. But his da had taken off when he was a kid, Brian never forgave him. After we got married, he started to call himself Taylor, his ma’s maiden name.”
“Handy to have more than one name.”
“Sure, who are you tellin’? Brian was on the horizon at that stage, yeah. He was…hovering around. He seemed to know who I was. I went to see Stephen play rugby and he was there, I became aware of him that way.”
“Was it through Denis Finnegan that you met then?”
“Why would it have been through Denis Finnegan? Brian had been working in a garage in the area, he just came along for the sport. I doubt he ever knew Denis Finnegan. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
“Eileen. Brock Taylor and Denis Finnegan grew up together in the north inner city. Brock in Blessington Street, Finnegan in Wellington Street, a stone’s throw away.”
Eileen Taylor whipped around and began to advance slowly on me.
“What are you saying?”
“That they knew each other, and they kept it hidden from you. Now why would they do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stephen was a good boy, wasn’t he, Eileen?”
“He was growing up to be a lovely young fella. He was strong and brave and good to me and very clever. He could have been a doctor, was hoping to be one.”
“Do you believe for an instant, in your heart, that he killed Audrey O’Connor? Could he have done such a thing?”
“No.”
“Not even if he was under Sandra Howard’s spell?”
“Not if he was under the spell of the devil himself. And he’d never have killed himself either. I couldn’t look at Sandra after she took up with Stephen-took advantage of him. But I can see how it happened. She was mourning her father, he was seventeen, how could he resist if she wanted him, she was absolutely gorgeous. I was angry about it, but I kept my head down, said nothing. I didn’t want to drive him away. I saw more of Brian then. And realized I was pregnant. So I didn’t know what to do.”
Eileen poured two fresh whiskeys and sat beside me, again tipping the glass to my lips. She was possessed by her past, all concentration, burrowing down, channeling it from deep within.
“Brian asked me to marry him. And I burst into tears, and explained what had happened. Except of course, I told him I had been raped. And he said that was fine, he didn’t mind, he’d put his name to the child. And I said I’d have to think about it. Before I got a chance, Audrey O’Connor was murdered, and Stephen vanished. Everyone pointed the finger at him of course, even though there was no evidence, or motive. And then they found Stephen’s body, on All Souls’ Day. It’s his anniversary tonight, twenty-one years.
“I thought Mary Howard wouldn’t believe me when I told her her husband had raped me. But I barely had the words out of my mouth and she was promising this that and the other thing. We settled on the house in Woodpark. And she asked if I had a young man, and if he could be made to understand. I said he’d stick by me, and she arranged everything: the house, the wedding, the whole lot. But all I kept thinking about was Stephen. Who killed him? I had no doubt he had been killed. But everyone believed it was murder and suicide.”
“Sandra Howard didn’t. She still doesn’t.”
“How do we know it wasn’t her? She could have worn a mask, killed the wife, maybe Dr. Rock was in on it with her, and then the next day, or that night, set Stephen up, drugged him or slugged him, stuck him in the driver’s seat with all the robbery junk in the boot and sent it scudding off the pier. She had the only motive I can see: to move in on Dr. Rock.”
I didn’t reply. Of course we couldn’t know it wasn’t Sandra, and there was a strong possibility that it was. But I couldn’t stop thinking of Denis Finnegan, how he said there was nothing he wouldn’t have done for the Howards.
“Did you know Denis Finnegan well?”
“Not really. He followed Shane around like a little dog, worshipped him. And I always used to think he had a crush on Sandra. I don’t think she noticed him, to be honest.”
“And you don’t think it’s strange that Brock Taylor never mentioned how he and Denis Finnegan knew each other?”
Eileen took a long drink.
“Of course I think it’s strange. What do you want me to do about it?”
“What is Brock up to, buying up half of Woodpark? Joining the rugby club? What’s he doing?”
“I don’t know. I thought he was trying to help me.”
“You know he’s been drinking with Denis Finnegan up there?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Why don’t you put your hand in my pocket.”
“That’s a pretty sleazy line.”
“My coat pocket. Go on, there isn’t a gun in there, I’m pretty sure they took that.”
Eileen put her hand in my pocket and shook her head.
“Nothing here at all.”
Maybe I’d been cleaned out completely.
“Try the other one.”
She did so, and came up with a cigarette lighter and a rugby medal.
“Lucky dip. Now what?”
“What name is engraved on the back of the medal?”
“Richard O’Connor.”
“Dan McArdle told me Dr. Rock’s rugby medals were stolen in the robbery. And they weren’t recovered in the boot of the car your son died in, with the rest of the stuff.”
Eileen Taylor’s eyes opened wide.
“Where did you get it?”
“Locked in a drawer in Denis Finnegan’s house in Mountjoy Square.”
“Does that mean he did it? What does that mean?”
“It means he was involved with the robbery and the murders of Audrey O’Connor and Stephen Casey, and he knew Brock Taylor at that time, which means there’s a fair chance Brock Taylor was involved too, and if you want me to find out any more-and if you want to see your other son-you’ll have to untie me and get me out of here. Because as soon as Moon gets back, I’m not going to be in a position to be asking or answering any more questions. They want me dead, Eileen, and they’ve already killed tonight; one more body’s gonna mean nothing to them.”
Eileen looked at me appraisingly, then looked around as if she was afraid we were being watched. Then she crossed the room to the white drinks cabinet and found a small fruit knife and came back and cut the ropes I was bound with.
As she got me free, there was a commotion from below, the sound of raised voices and steps thudding on the stairs. I took the big marble clock from the mantelpiece, killed the lights and positioned myself behind the door. I beckoned Eileen, but a gun had materialized in her hand, looked like a Beretta 950 Jetfire; she shook her head and stood directly before the door. It flew open and a man in a black coat swept in; seeing Eileen before him, he swung round, a Steyr machine pistol in his hands. It was Brock Taylor, badly bruised above one eye, blood seeping from a wound in his side. Before he could turn properly, Eileen began to scream at him.
“You said there’d be no more girls, no more hookers. And what have you been running? Ukrainians? With that pervert scumbag Moon?”
“Eileen love, I’m shot. The cops…we have to get out of here. Where’s that cunt Loy?”
“Tell me about Denis Finnegan.”
“What? What has Denis Finnegan to do with it? Oh fuck, I need a doctor-”
“Stephen, my son. They found the body twenty-one years ago today. And I know Denis Finnegan was involved. Now how would a soft cunt like Finnegan organize a robbery like that? He’d shit his pants. Except you knew him, didn’t you, you grew up with the cunt.”
“Eileen-”
She fired past him, through the door.
“Tell me, Brian, or I’ll do it, I don’t give a fuck anymore, tell me the fucking truth!”
“Jesus Christ, all right. I knew him. He wanted…he had a big thing for the Howard girl, Sandra. But it was all fucked up, how he wanted some other man for her, someone he felt would be better for her. I couldn’t follow it. All I knew was, he wanted the wife dead.”
“And then?”
“And then. Ah Jesus-”
Eileen shot again, closer this time. I didn’t move a muscle; it was as if she’d completely forgotten I was there; she could have caught me with a stray bullet without thinking.
“So that was done-”
“Who did it?”
“A lad who done that kind of work.”
“Did you do it?”
“No.”
A third shot.
“No? You were a fucking mechanic who robbed the odd car. You’d never done anything, you didn’t know any lads who done that kind of work. You had no fucking money, that’s what you did it for, isn’t it? How much did he pay you? You did it, didn’t you, you did it yourself. Tell me, Brian.”
“All right,” he said. “I done it.”
Eileen hadn’t really believed it until he said it; her face seemed to age in an instant; it was suddenly weary, lined with fear. When she spoke again, it was in genuine disbelief.
“How much? How much?”
“Five grand.”
“And Stephen? You killed Stephen?”
“Eileen, I’m bleeding here, it’s serious, the cops are coming, we have to clear out-”
She shot at the floor near his feet.
“Ah for fuck’s sake, all right! We’d’ve been saddled with him. We could never have done what we wanted to do, start afresh, Bonnie and Clyde.”
“You killed him? You killed my son?”
“I ran it past Finnegan, he said it would simplify things, the Howard one was carrying on with him, she didn’t need that, he said.”
Eileen held one hand on her chest. She seemed to be having trouble breathing.
“And then you made me leave Jerry in the church. Both children gone…for this?”
She looked around at the carefully designed room in disgust. Her eyes glistened. I could hear her breathe.
“It’s not just this,” Taylor said. “It’s Woodpark too, and more. When you see what we have coming to us, through the same Denis Finnegan…we’ll be controlling the Howards before long…it’s what we’re due, what you deserve, for all the Howards done to you.”
“What did they do to me? You killed my first son. And made me abandon my second.”
“Your second son? You were raped, Eileen, raped.”
Eileen Taylor set her shoulders back and pointed the Beretta at Brock Taylor’s chest.
“I was raped, yes. But not by John Howard. By you, Brock, by you.”
She shot him three times in the chest; I don’t know if he meant to shoot her or if his finger hit the trigger by accident but he sprayed automatic fire around the upper end of the room and she danced briefly like a puppet in the wind and went down beneath a hail of it.