The Price of Blood by Declan Hughes

reveal a large male head with an unruly thatch of gray hair. The strangulation marks around the neck were similar to those on what Dave had called "my body." Dave lifted the sheet now on the blond gentleman farmer with the Church’s shoes I’d found upended in a dump. I looked at the face, wondered how closely I wanted to work with Dave and decided I needed him at least as much as he needed me.
    I took the photograph Miranda Hart had given me from my coat pocket and showed it to him. The hair was blond, whether dyed or not I couldn’t say, but the face looked very similar: same lined skin, same sunken cheeks, same tiny point of chin. I took a latex glove from my jacket and fitted it over one hand and pointed to the vivid blue of Patrick Hutton’s eyes in the photo. Dave nodded. With index and middle fingers, I tugged the corpse’s eyes open. They were far from vivid, but they were blue. We weren’t in a position to be definitive, but as far as we could tell, the dead man was Patrick Hutton, missing for ten years, dead for forty-eight hours. Without thinking, I turned to the crucifix on the wall and blessed myself. When I looked back, I saw Dave doing the same. I don’t know if Dave was thinking about the Four Last Things. I couldn’t tell you if I was either. Maybe we were just two spooked Paddies in the house of the dead. But we both had faith in this much: after violent death, there must come judgment.
     
     
     

EIGHT
     
     
       Dave didn’t say a word on the drive back. The sleet had stopped, and when we got out of the car in Quarry Fields, the air was fresh and crisp, and a star-flecked fissure had cleft the sky. The ground was snapping underfoot as we walked up the drive.
    I checked my phone. Tommy had sent me a text message, all in capitals:
WATCH OUT! LEO’S AFTER YOU!
I figured having a high-ranking Garda detective as my guest was a reasonable precaution against anything Leo Halligan might do.
    I brewed a pot of coffee and we sat at the kitchen table. Dave started by saying that Aidan Coyne, the Guard who’d been on duty at the mortuary, had worked with him at Seafield, that he was a good lad and that he wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone about our visit. It was known in Bray station that Dave had served with Don Kennedy, and nobody was very happy about how Dave had been sidelined in the investigation. And there was always resentment when the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation started throwing their weight around with the local force, especially if Myles Geraghty had anything to do with it. Dave had told Aidan a version of the truth: that he wanted to say a few quiet prayers for a fallen comrade.
    When the coffee was ready I poured two mugs. I had put the heat on, but Dave was shivering, and he asked if he could have some Jameson in his. That struck me as a good idea, so I had some in mine too. We drank for a while in silence. I knew he was waiting for me to spill all I knew. I was happy enough that we had made a deal. We just needed to check the small print before we took it any further.
    "Dave, I’m not looking for a partner here. I want to be free to do things the way I would do them. And if that means withholding information, or taking a risk by following a hunch—"
    "Or riding the arse off one of the chief suspects, or all of them; yeah, I know how you work, Ed."
    Dave guffawed in what struck me as a rather forced manner, and I pretended to, hoping my laughter would spare my blushes, or his; I’d never heard him make that kind of remark before, and he didn’t seem relaxed about having made it. I wondered briefly if Dave had been the one tailing me tonight. Not that Miranda Hart was a suspect. I didn’t even know what the case was yet—another reason I didn’t want anyone looking over my shoulder.
    "Don’t worry—you won’t have to answer to me. I’ll feed you whatever you need, and you can go your own way."
    "If I didn’t trust you, Dave, I’d think I was being set up.