Blood for Blood
Praise for J. M. SMYTH
‘Cross my bedraggled heart, just blew me to smithereens. Unbelievable book. Ferocious. Terrifying. Beautifully compassionate. And oh so wonderfully written.’
Ken Bruen
‘Raw, harsh, merciless, as cold as ice and beyond all moral limits. Smyth stages his sinister hero Red Dock as the incarnation of evil with a perfidy that is hard to beat. Except, that is, by the reality that Smyth addresses in his novel: the huge scale of the abuse of children in Irish children’s homes in the name of church and state. This novel holds up a mirror to reality, but even by depicting absolute evil it can only begin to reveal the bottomless pit that opens up in the mirror.’
Ulrich Noller, Funkhaus Europa
‘An appropriately fierce response to systemic abuse.’
Tobias Gohlis, KrimiZEIT-Bestenliste
‘Smyth uses the crime genre to transport social wrongs in his home country. And he does it in a way you won’t easily forget.’
Dietmar Jacobs, literaturkritik
‘Smyth is a febrile and original talent!’
The Times
‘An absolutely dreadful book in the best sense of the word.’
TW, Kaliber38–Leichenberg
‘Smyth is shiveringly superb!’
Image Magazine
‘The main topic of this book, even before its crime element, is the appalling circumstances under which orphans in Irish children’s homes suffered. The Catholic Church had sinned against these young boys and girls so abominably that the Irish Prime Minister even apologised for the collective failure of society in 1999.’
Hans Jörg Wangner, SZ
‘Smyth has written a short, fast-moving story that I’m sure will haunt me for a long time. Smyth can really write. He says a lot with no wasted words. Adrian McKinty has some rough stories to tell and he does it well but BLOOD FOR BLOOD is even stronger stuff. This is a book to be read and thought about. I recommend it to anyone who likes a good mystery with characters like no other in any mystery I’ve yet to read.’
Crime Always Pays
First published 2016
by Black & White Publishing Ltd
29 Ocean Drive, Edinburgh EH6 6JL
www.blackandwhitepublishing.com
This electronic edition published in 2016
ISBN: 978 1 78530 049 3 in EPub format
ISBN: 978 1 78530 047 9 in paperback format
Copyright © J. M. Smyth 2016
The right of JM Smyth to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook compilation by Iolaire, Newtonmore
An Everest of love for my darling wife Phyll, my soulmate since we were sixteen. To know you’re always with me is all I’ll ever need.
And for my mum, Lily, and my granny, Maisie, the two greatest and most supportive influences in my life. If your examples were followed there wouldn’t be an unloved or neglected child on the planet.
Author's Note
The Catholic Church ran Irish orphanages for most of the twentieth century. In the 1990s they were exposed as the ‘gulags’ of Ireland. Justice was removed and there was nowhere to go for it. Some survivors meted out their own. The Irish prime minister made a statement in May 1999: ‘On behalf of the state and of all citizens of the state, the government wishes to make a sincere apology to victims of childhood abuse for our collective failure to intervene, to detect their pain, to come to their rescue.’
Contents
Title Page
Author's Note
Red Dock
Lucille
Red Dock
Lucille
Red Dock
Picasso
Lucille
Red Dock
Picasso
Lucille
Red Dock
Lucille
Red Dock
Lucille
Red Dock
Lucille
Red Dock
Lucille
Red Dock
Picasso
Red Dock
Picasso
Red Dock
Picasso
Red Dock
Picasso
Red Dock
Picasso
Red Dock
11 Months Later
Red Dock
Lucille
Acknowledgements
RED DOCK
Wanna be a millionaire? Then don’t work for a living. Fifty years of that crack and before you know it some joker’s digging a hole and lowering you into it. ‘Oh, he was such a nice man. He’ll be sorely missed.’ A load of bollocks. Take my advice: he who works last lasts longer.
‘Aye, well, it’s all right for you,’ I hear you say. ‘But how do we make a million?’ Fair question. You could try kidnapping, but I wouldn’t advise it. I’ve never seen one yet that hadn’t got something wrong with it. Grabbing the victim’s easy enough; collecting your wages is the hard part. Either the victim calls attention to himself by being unreasonable and trying to escape or there’s a lot of extra coming and going where you’re hiding the bastard, and the next thing you know the TV’s running it and some nosy neighbour’s saying to herself, ‘Here, hang on a minute,’ lifting the phone and it’s, ‘Fuck me, the cops are surrounding the place.’
Nah, the only way to kidnap somebody is to get rid of them as soon as you grab them. No nosy neighbours, no hideout, no coming and going, nothing to worry about. These days it pays to be streamlined.
So I told Charlie Swags that as soon as the baby was snatched, it was to be taken out of the city. (The last thing you want is some squealy kid knocking about the place.)
Then I sent its mother a note; the usual stuff – NO COPS, BRING CASH (in this case a hundred grand) – and the following morning gave her a call. She had to be sitting with her hand on the phone if the speed of her was anything to go by.
Here she was: ‘Yes? Yes? Hello? Hello?’
She must’ve thought I was deaf. I could just imagine the lads there with her whispering, ‘For fuck’s sake, missus, will you give us a chance to get the trace going?’
‘Mrs Winters?’
‘Yes, this is Mrs Winters.’
‘You want your baby back, you bring the money to Kilreed today at two o’clock. Wait in the phone box outside the post office. And come alone.’
It’s hard to tell from a few words, but I got the distinct impression she was suffering with her nerves. Maybe she wasn’t sleeping well.
Of course you’re saying to yourself by now: how’s he