Free The Wrong Kind of Blood by Declan Hughes

seeing him.
    “Not really,” Jenny said. “Friday at six? I mean, the place is black at that hour.”
    She looked again at the photograph, and shook her head. I ordered the Jameson, a double with water. When she brought it, she said, “He wasn’t with your man with the limp, was he?”
    “Maybe. What did your man with the limp look like?” I said.
    “Bit of a mess, to be honest with you. He had a combat jacket on, real scruffy like, not a designer one or anything. Long hair, a little goatee. Bit of a shambles, bit of a dope-head.”
    “And the limp?”
    “Ah it was desperate, poor fella. One of those, you’d think at first he was puttin’ it on, know what I mean?”
    Tommy Owens. The T on the list. I drank half the whiskey neat. It seared the back of my throat and filled my nose with its sweet smoke.
    “And he was with the man in the picture?” I said.
    “I wouldn’t swear to it. But he was a smart-looking, business kind of guy. Big head of curly hair, yeah. I remember thinkin’, they’re an odd couple. Are they cousins, or gay or somethin’?”
    “Well, they’re not cousins anyway. What happened then?”
    “I don’t know, it was black in here like I said, I was runnin’ around like a blue-arsed fly. Next time I noticed, the guy in the photo had gone, and Scruffy was there with this woman, well out of his league I’d’ve thought.”
    “What did the woman look like?”
    “Honey blonde, hair piled high, expensive-lookin’ black clothes. I mean, she was old, must’ve been at least forty, but she looked well on it. Discreet. Tasteful. Most people in here with money, they wear it on their backs, know what I mean like?”
    Linda.
    “And were they here long?”
    “I didn’t see them again. I had a smoke break at seven, when I came back on they were gone. Or she was gone, anyway. I was lookin’ out for her. I was gonna ask her where she got her hair done.”
    I paid for the Jameson with a ten, drank the rest mixed with water and left the change as a tip. Coming out onto the Seafront Plaza, I looked out across the sea toward Bayview Point. There was some kind of commotion down on the promenade, with a crowd gathered, and what looked like flashing lights. I headed that way, and pushed across the grass through the summer throng of joggers, dog walkers and ice-cream eaters. A horde of rubberneckers had gathered behind the bandstand around the second set of white and blue police tape I’d seen that day. There to secure the scene were two uniformed Guards. One looked like he was taking witness statements from about half a dozen people. The other was my blabbermouth friend from the town hall, the Guard with no lips. I marched straight toward him, tapping my mobile phone.
    “Detective Sergeant Donnelly,” I said, nodding meaningfully.
    He threw a glance to his rear, looked at me uneasily, then nodded and lifted the tape to let me through. The tape sealed off the center point of the promenade, where a set of stone steps leads down to the sea. There’s a lower walk beneath the promenade, which gets drenched by the waves at high tide. The tide was turning now, and it was on this lower walk that the burly figure of Dave Donnelly stood, inspecting the body of a man sodden and distended by the sea. I was halfway down the steps when a woman in a charcoal gray suit appeared from the other side of the walk and blocked my passage.
    “Sir, this is a crime scene, you’ve no business here, please leave the area,” she said.
    She was about five five, with short red hair and piercing green eyes; her body was slender but powerful-looking, like a tennis player’s. Dave Donnelly turned around.
    “Move back up the steps, sir, now. Now!”
    I did as I was told. Dave joined us on the upper promenade, an expression of incredulity on his open face.
    “Loy? What do you think you’re doing here?” said Dave.
    The only thing I could think of was the truth.
    “The Guard on duty let me through, so I thought I’d come down