The Wrong Kind of Blood Read Online Free PDF

mother inherited the house from your father, and you inherit it from her; indeed, you’ve had a right to one-third of it since your father died.”
    “That’s just it though. My father isn’t dead. Or at any rate, he may not be.”
    “Lob that past me again?”
    “He went missing. They never found him, or a body.”
    “But that was a long time ago?”
    “Over twenty years.”
    “Right. Well, seven years is all you need. And obviously you’re going to need the old death certificate. So the first step is to have your father declared dead.”
    For a moment, I couldn’t speak. I got up, walked to a window and looked down into the street.
    “Ed? Are you okay?”
    “David, I… I’m not sure I’m ready to do this yet.”
    “I understand perfectly. Day after the old funeral, many emotions, not the cleverest to rush into big decisions.”
    “Maybe if I got back to you in a few days.”
    “Absolutely. Take your time. And if there’s anything I can do in the meantime…”
    David was rising, as if the meeting was over. I went back and sat down again, and after a moment, so did he.
    “Well, yes, there is, that’s partly why I… I’m not exactly burdened with cash right now, so I was hoping to get some sort of document from you that I could take to the bank, let me borrow against the value of the house. Strictly short-term, of course.”
    David cleared his throat and looked down at his Montblanc. He tapped it gently on the pad of lined paper.
    “Right. Well, I can state to the bank my opinion of your intention to initiate probate. But only in an individual capacity. In terms of a document on behalf of this practice, I’d need you to have commenced the process, and only then would Doyle & McCarthy be positioned to give them a sensible estimate of how long it would take before you’d have your hands on the deeds.”
    “And that’s the kind of letter the bank would need?”
    “I can’t speak for every bank manager. But in my experience, that’s the only type of assessment upon which they’d be prepared to make, ahm, a cash advance.”
    His voice had taken on a more distant, strained tone, as if the phenomenon of someone needing money was one he had heard of but regretted having to encounter directly. He unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen and then screwed it back on again. I stood up, smiling, as if to reassure him that being broke was really no big deal.
    “Not to worry. Well, listen, thanks anyway, David, and I’ll probably be back in to you soon enough.”
    David walked me to the lift.
    “Thanks indeed, sir,” said David. “See you round the old campus.”
    We shook hands before the doors closed. I took the lift down and walked back the way I’d come, head down, angry and embarrassed with myself. It had never occurred to me that I would need a death certificate for my father. In L.A., I had simply put him from my mind, dead or alive. That’s what L.A. is for, to forget your past. But as soon as I got back to Dublin, I thought I’d see him on every street corner. I expected him to be at the funeral. I wasn’t ready to declare him dead, not yet. Not before I had some inkling of what had happened to him. It looked like I’d have to stick around after all. And since I’d had to borrow the airfare to get here, the first thing I was going to need was a job.
    I walked down Westmoreland Street, crossed onto O’Connell Bridge and stared down into the green water of the river Liffey. It didn’t smell anymore — in my childhood, the only respite from its seemingly perpetual stink was when the aroma of burnt hops from the Guinness Brewery up on James’s Street enveloped the city in a warm narcotic cloud. The North Quays too had changed: there used to be so many abandoned and demolished buildings that Bachelor’s Walk and Ormond Quay looked like a mouthful of ruined teeth; now a row of smart new restaurants and enhanced shopfronts seemed to testify that cosmetic dentistry had finally arrived in Dublin,