The Wrong Kind of Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

as no doubt it had. There was money on these streets, after all, and the people who had it were wearing it on their backs, and around their wrists and necks: why not in their mouths too? What was the point of having money if no one knew you had it? For too long, the Irish knew the shame of not having an arse to their trousers; no one could ever be allowed to think that again, and if that meant a carnival of ostentatious vulgarity and greed, well, didn’t we wait long enough for it? Wasn’t it no more than we deserved? Didn’t it prove we were as good as anyone else? And anyone who said different was only a begrudger.
    I followed the river down Burgh Quay to Butt Bridge and looked past the gray limestone dome of the Custom House to the new cathedral of economic prosperity in Dublin: the International Financial Services Centre, a gleaming complex of blue-tinted plate glass and gray steel. It was a powerhouse for banks and brokers and all manner of moneymakers, and it made Dublin look like any other city. I guess that was the point: at one stage in our history, we tried to assert a unique Irish identity by isolating ourselves from the outside world. All that did was cause half the population to emigrate. Now we preferred to avoid distinctive national characteristics of any kind. Having once been anxious to prove that Ireland was not a colonial province called West Britain, we were now sanguine about our recolonization, resigned to our fate as the fifty-first state of the USA.
    There was a noise behind me and I turned. Three gray-faced, snuffle-nosed wraiths in grimy navy and white sportswear had encircled me. Maybe if I hadn’t heard them above the traffic’s roar, they would have made a move, but head-on, their eyes fell away. They were carrying fast-food restaurant cups full of bright yellow liquid you were supposed to think was lemonade, but which everyone knew was methadone. The woman was nudging the taller of the two men, but he was staring fixedly at the ground. The smaller man was nodding and grinning vacantly at me. He had scabs on his eyebrows and beneath his lower lip where his piercings had become infected.
    I took a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and said, “All right for smokes, are you?” They each took a couple, and I nodded at them and walked off toward Tara Street station.
    “Big fucking deal. Think you’re it now, do ya? State of ya,” the woman shouted at my back.
    “Thinks he’s fuckin’ it now, so he does,” one of the men agreed.
    Dublin, where no kindness goes unpunished.
    I got the DART back and walked down to my mother’s house. I didn’t feel comfortable about keeping a gun belonging to Podge Halligan there, whether what Tommy Owens had told me about it was true or not. I took the Glock 17 and the ammunition from the sideboard, wrapped them in an old towel and put them in the scuffed leather bag I’d managed to keep from the airline’s clutches. Coming out of the house, I could hear Tommy at work in the garage. I locked the gun in the trunk of the rental car and headed for Castlehill.
     
     
    Pale hardwood floors and bare white walls made the open-plan ground floor of Linda Dawson’s house look even larger and emptier than it already was, like an art gallery waiting for an exhibition. A floor-to-ceiling plate glass window ran the length of the curved back wall. Through it you could see half the county, from the mountains to the sea, all over Bayview as far as Seafield Harbour, and beyond it to Dublin Bay itself.
    Linda’s hair was wet, and her face glowed; she wore a short black silk robe and her feet were bare. She stood at a granite counter beside a stainless steel double-doored fridge. A crystal jug of mint leaves and a bottle of Stolichnaya rested by her elbow; a bunch of keys hung on a hook above the counter, with a small sign that read: “Car keys, you idiot.” Linda threw ice cubes and mint leaves and grapefruit juice into a tall glass.
    “I’m having a drink.