Declan Hughes - The Price of Blood: An Irish Novel of Suspense

Whats in a name? Apparently everything for Ed Loy, because thats the only information Father Vincent Tyrrell, brother of prominent racehorse trainer F. X. Tyrrell, offers when he asks for Eds help in finding a missing person. Even the best private eye needs more than just a name, but hard times and a dwindling bank account make it difficult for Loy to say no.

He is not without luck, however. While working another case, Loy discovers a phone number that seems linked to F.X. found on an unidentified body. Thinking it more than a coincidence, he begins digging into the history of the Tyrrellsa history consumed with trading and dealing, gambling and horse breedingand soon realizes there is more to the family than meets the eye, a suspicion confirmed when two more people with connections to the Tyrrells are killed.

On the eve of one of Irelands most anticipated sporting events, the four-day Leopardstown Race-course Christmas Festival, all bets are off as Loy pursues a twisted killer on the final leg of a reckless master plan.

In The Price of Blood, Declan Hughes once again paints an arresting portrait of an Ireland not found in any guidebooks. Deadly passions beget dark secrets in a chilling story that will have readers on edge right up to its shocking conclusion.

Three weeks before Christmas, Father Vincent Tyrrell asked Tommy Owens to fill in for George Costello, who had been the sacristan at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Bayview for thirty years until he was rushed to the hospital with inoperable stomach cancer. A lot of Father Tyrrells parishioners were outraged, to put it mildly, since Tommy was known as a dopehead and a malingerer and a small-time drug dealer, one of the die-hard crew who still drank in Hennessys bar, and not a retired Holy Joe shuffling about the church in desert boots and an acrylic zip-up cardigan like George Costello, God have mercy on him. And fair enough, the first time I saw Tommy on the altar in cassock and surplice, it was a bit like something out of a Buuel film.

But what a lot of his parishioners didnt know was that Tommy had been one of Father Tyrrells most devout altar boys until he was eleven, when the sacrament of confirmation had the unintended reverse effect of enfeebling his faith entirely, or that since Tommys mother had dropped dead of a stroke a month ago, Tommy had been haunting the church, the only soul under seventy at ten mass every morning. Now he was standing by to clear the altar after eleven-thirty mass on the last Sunday in Advent as I stood and made the best fist I could of rejoicing with the rest of the congregation about Emmanuels imminent arrival.

The altar cloths and hangings were purple; the tree was decorated and the great crib was installed in a side altar; the fourth candle on the wreath had been lit. Christmas hadnt meant much to me in a long while, never mind Emmanuel, but I had always liked Advent, the way the anticipation was so intense it could make you clean forget the inevitable letdown in store, just like a bottle, or a woman. Although when a priest sends for a private detective the day before Christmas Eve, the distinction between anticipation and letdown tends to blur; the only thing you can properly be prepared for is the worst.

Looking at Tommy, now he had stowed his vestments in the sacristy, I wondered if those graying parishioners streaming past me with their damp winter coats and their filmy eyes and their scent of lavender and pan stick and dust had revised their opinion of him; certainly he was a far cry from the goateed, straggle-haired neer-do-well of just a few months ago. The haircut and beardless chin came from the Howard case he had worked with me (a case he was in no small way the cause of; a case in which, not incidentally, he saved my life), but the rest of itthe multicolored acrylic jumper that was not a zip-up cardigan but may as well have been, the relaxed-fit cords, the soft-soled shoeswas close enough to George Costello to reassure even the most doctrinaire old biddy of the strength of his devotion. And of course, Tommy dragging his ruined footthe result of a stomping from George Halligan for stealing his brother Leos bike back when we were kidssurely completed the picture of harmless piety. To my eyes, it looked like nothing but the antic shades of mourning, the haphazard motley of confusion and grief.

Tommy came down the aisle toward me; I stood out from the pew and genuflected; he turned and I trailed after him to the altar, where there was another genuflection from us both, old enough to have had it bred into our bones. For all the Godless years I worked in L.A., people found it strange that I could never break the habit of crossing myself when I passed a hearse, or heard the tolling of a church bell. I still cant. I stepped up onto the altar to make for the sacristy, but Tommy turned left and exited through the side door. I followed out into the bright, cold morning and Tommy led me down a path to the rear of the churchyard. We stopped at a low metal gate beneath a row of bare sycamore and horse chestnut trees glistening with frost and Tommy, still determinedly avoiding my eyes, pointed over it to a redbrick Victorian villa fifty yards away.

"I know where the presbytery is, Tommy," I said. "Sure didnt we once have thirty sacks of pony nuts and four dozen bales of hay sent there, for the crack?"

"And Father Tyrrell knew it was us," Tommy said. "Down to the school the next day with him."

"He knew it was you," I said. "You know why? Because you gave the deliveryman your real name."

"I didnt," Tommy said. "I said Timmy Owens, not Tommy."

"Yeah. A mystery how he caught on to us, really."

"I never gave you up, Ed."

"You didnt need to, sure everyone knew we hunted as a pair. Jasus, the clatter he gave us."

"He went easy on you. They always did. They knew deep down you were a good boy. You were just easily led, thats all, by tramps the like of me."

I laughed at that, my breath pluming in the crisp air, and Tommys face creased into something like a grin. It was the longest conversation wed had since the funeral.

"Howre you making out with this sacristan thing, Tommy?" I said, half fearing hed say something like Tis a great comfort," or "Sure tis the will of God," in reply.

Tommy grimaced, looked over his shoulder at the last of the oul ones straggling out of the church, shrugged and lit a cigarette.

"Its not exactly me, is it?" he said. We both laughed at that, furtive, back-of-the-class laughter in the chill noon sunlight.

"But yeah, its keeping me out of trouble. Out of the house. I cant face the whole, all her clothes, her paintings, the whole gaff just reminds me of her. Feels like its haunted. You know what I mean, Ed."