The Color of Blood by Declan Hughes

corner by the window, where he sat on the floor and looked alternately out at the night and down at the floor, his great head tipping between his bent knees.
    “I’ll need to talk to Emily again tonight,” I said to Sandra.
    “She may already be asleep,” Sandra said. “Dr. Hoyle gave her something.”
    “Then I’d better see her now,” I said.
    I followed her down the white corridor to Emily’s room. She knocked on the door, then opened it cautiously. The bedside light was still on.
    “Emily? Emily, it’s Sandra. Ed Loy needs to talk to you again.”
    Emily moaned and grunted a little, then said, “Okay.”
    Sandra went in and I followed. She sat down in a chair in the corner of the room, and I stayed where I was and shook my head. She looked at me quizzically, and I shrugged. She got up and said, “Emily, I’m going to leave Ed here. I’ll be outside.”
    Emily didn’t say anything until Sandra left. Then she said, “I suppose she looks sexy, but she’s a nun, deep down. Deep deep down, she’s a nun.” Her voice was a Valium blur. “Do you like sexy nuns, Ted?”
    “Ed,” I said. “I’m not sure if I would. I don’t think I’ve ever met one, but then again, I’ve never been in the habit of checking nuns out for their sex appeal.”
    Emily considered this for longer than it deserved. Free of makeup, her eyes were red and swollen; blue veins lined her pale face.
    “Well, maybe you should,” she said. “Her and Denis don’t live together anymore. Maybe she wants a man who doesn’t have a head like a boiled ham. A man like you, Ted.”
    “I’m not in the market for marriage.”
    “Neither is anyone in this family, haven’t you noticed?”
    “I need to ask you a little more about the threesome you had with David Brady after the rugby-club party, about the underage girl. Did you get her name?”
    “No names, that’s the way to do it. Except, if they turn out to be thirteen, it obviously isn’t the way to do it.”
    “You must have called her something.”
    “Called her c’mere. Called her c’mon. Called her see ya.”
    “What was she like? Older than her age, obviously, was she clever, educated, what class was she?”
    “She was smart. A smarty-pants. She made us laugh. And her accent was middle middle, could have been anything, working class reaching, upper middle relaxing, hard to know. Snow blond porn hair though, makeup a bit on the skang side, but not a pram face.”
    “What about her father? How did that happen? Did he approach David Brady directly, or did the girl do it?”
    Emily pulled the covers over her face.
    “Why don’t you ask him, Ted?”
    “Ask who?”
    “David, of course. Ask him what happened.”
    I didn’t know if it was the Valium, or if she was affecting some kind of mental confusion, or if she was genuinely disturbed, but I felt I couldn’t take the time to find out; the Howards seemed to be falling apart, and I was going to have to work hard and fast to stop the entire family from going under. I pulled the duvet cover away from Emily’s face.
    “David Brady’s dead. You know that. Stop messing around and tell me what else you know.”
    Emily flinched, as if the narcotics of shock and tranquilizer were wearing off and grief was finally seeping through.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know that David knew either. Jerry Dalton must have known. He told David… he was the go-between, I suppose you’d say. He told David what the threat was, what he had to do.”
    “Jerry Dalton… is that your new boyfriend?”
    “My new boyfriend? Jerry Dalton’s not my… who told you Jerry was my boyfriend?”
    “Your mother.”
    “What the fuck would that fucking whore know? What does she care who I’m going out with, except to shove her tits in his face and try and fuck him like she does with every man she meets?”
    Emily’s eyes were spilling tears; her face was twisted with bitterness and grief, red raw and swollen ugly. She looked better