Long Story Short (9 page)

It did come in the end, of course, and the shops started opening up, and still I was walking, walking, no plans, no idea what I was going to do next.

I was passing this mad hip vegetable shop, see, where they had all these lovely shiny veggies out on the footpath—Galway's like that, thinks it's in the south of France or Sicily or some damn place. They were setting up for the day, and they were in and out with crates and boxes. As soon as the shopkeeper went back in for another box, I sidled by the half-set-up display on the pavement and I nicked this carrot, as you do, 'cos I was hungry. It was the only vegetable I could think of that I would want to eat raw. I never went in much for tomatoes. Flavorless watery old things.

I strode on around a corner and then I took two bites of my carrot—okay, the shop's carrot—and then I looked at it, and I thought, You could be a gun. I have no idea where that thought came from, but it tickled my fancy, so I stuck the carrot in my jacket pocket to see if I could make it work. I was passing a clothes shop with a mirror in the window. I took a look at myself, and I wiggled the carrot and said, “Stick 'em up!” in an American voice, like a gangster in the movies.

This little old man was going past with a stripy shopping bag and he jumped. Then he saw that I was watching myself in the mirror, playacting, and he started to laugh.

“Musha, laddie,” he said, “you had me near convinced. I was all set to give you my pension money.”

He gave this chortle and he patted me on the shoulder as he went by, shaking his head.

“That's a good one,” I could hear him saying to himself. I was imagining him going home to his wife and saying, “Com'ere till I tell you the good one that happened to me today, Mary.”

Anyway, I thought to myself, if that ol' fella got a fright, it must be convincing enough, so why don't I try it out on someone who could hand over a wad of cash? I've always liked that expression, “a wad of cash.” It sounds so
generous
somehow, the way you would have so much, you wouldn't be bothered even counting it, it'd just be a numberless
wad
.

The young one in the petrol station grinned at me when I asked her for the cash. I don't know whether she thought it was some sort of a practical joke, or whether she just knew fine well that the guards'd be all over me in two seconds, but she certainly didn't look very worried. I did get hold of the wad of cash, all right. It wasn't a huge amount, because it was still early in the day, but even twenty euros would have done me. I really just wanted some breakfast and maybe money for a pair of gloves. I nabbed a couple of Lunch Bars and a banana as I left the premises, but I'd only crossed the forecourt when this police car came wailing up and three of them jumped out, and before I knew it, there I was, talking to the lovely Paudge.

There I go again, going on as if things happened in jig time. There was a bit more to it than that. They took me into a local station first, and it was the following day before they sent me back up here to Dublin, when they worked out who I was.

That makes me sound famous. I could do without that kind of fame. I'd rather not be anybody in particular. I'd much rather never have had anything to do with the police.

11

The tea was truly awful. I am not what you would call a connoisseur, but I have to say that anyone who puts in the milk while the teabag is still in the cup really does not know much about tea. There is a kind of gray that you just don't want to drink. And especially not out of polystyrene. Even when we were homeless, me and Julie, those few days in Galway, we got a decent cup of tea.

They gave me a Penguin bar, though, which nearly made up for the tea.

We all settled down again after the unsatisfactory tea break, and Paudge made a valiant effort to take hold of things.

Too valiant.

“Now, son,” he said, inserting his large freckled hand between his fat thighs and pulling his plastic chair forward by the rim of the seat, “tell me, was it you that killed your mother?”

Jesus!

My hands started to tremble.

“Paudge!”
Kate's voice was like a bullet, but a bullet that had been shot somewhere very far away.

My fingertips were slithery with sweat. My heart was pounding in my head. Just as well I'd finished that lukewarm ditchwater they call tea or I'd have splashed it all over myself. I looked down at my lap as I thought this, and I saw that my legs were shaking too. If I'd been standing up, I'd have fallen down.

He'd changed his mind about not jumping to conclusions. Or else he was trying to shock me into some sort of admission.

I didn't answer. I just stared at him. I think I forgot to breathe.

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.

Rooney didn't move. He just stared me down.

Ma
, I kept thinking.
Ma … dead
. Oh, my sweet Christ, they found her, and she
was
dead. It had to be true, or he wouldn't have said so, would he?

I kept seeing her face and it would disintegrate before my eyes, and then reappear, reassemble itself, like a pixilated image. Her eyes were dull and her hair was lank and her mouth was open, as if to say, “Jono, son, why did you…?”

I mean, yeah, she wasn't the best mother in the world, but, hey, you know, she was
my
mother.
You only have one mother.

And as if it wasn't bad enough that she was dead, poor old sot, this fat fool thought I'd killed her.

“I think you might want to rephrase that, Guard,” said Kate acidly.

She put a hand briefly on the back of my hand. That did it. That moment of contact. I felt a sob rising up, and I put my arms out on the table in front of me and buried my head in them. I could smell the clean wool smell of my jumper sleeves—they gave me this jumper, because all my other clothes were in the wash. I kept my eyes closed, and the darkness was like a safe place where I didn't have to think. I could feel Kate's hand resting lightly on my back, between my shoulder blades. She patted a few times, but she didn't push it, you know, she didn't make a meal of it.

Eventually I raised my head. Everything was midnight blue for a moment, and gradually the room came back into focus as I looked at it. I rested my elbows on the table and cupped my jaws in my hands, and I nodded at Paudge, to show I was ready to go on.

“Jonathan, do you want a break?” Kate whispered.

“We've just had tea,” muttered Paudge, as if that was what breaks were for. Tea. Not for understanding that your mother was dead. And that you were suspected of being implicated in it.

I didn't trust myself to speak, but I gave a minimal shake of my head. I had to get through this, and there was no point in putting it off.

“Right, then,” Paudge said. “Sorry, son.”

At last I managed to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth, and I said, “Don't—call—me—that!”

She called me that, on good days.

“Oh, yeah, sorry, s …—Jonathan,” he said. “So, tell me about the night your mother died, then. Will that do you?” The question was directed at Kate, but he kept his eyes on me.

And I said, “I didn't know.” My voice came out really tiny and squeaky, like a kid.

“What didn't you know? That we were onto you?”

“Paudge!”

We both ignored her.

“No! I mean, I didn't know she was…” I gulped. “Dead,” I finished, in a whisper.

“You didn't know, yeah, for sure,” he said sarcastically. Then he muttered something under his breath. I thought it was
You bloody did!
but I couldn't swear to it.

Kate's hand, the one with the big ring, appeared on his sleeve, and gave it a tug.

“All
right
!” he said, and then he turned to her and said in a whisper, “Listen, I know you have to watch out for him. I'm doing my best here, but this is
serious
. A woman is dead here, you know?”

She said, “Yes, and it's his mother. No matter what, that means something.”

“Yeah,” he said shortly. “Yeah, I know. I understand. But … I have a job to do here.”

She said nothing. Didn't even nod.

He clammed up completely then too.

There was silence for what seemed like ages. My vision kept coming and going, black and then in full color, and then totally black again, as if my electrics were faulty.

I was still seeing Ma's face coming and going in front of my eyes, and hearing her moaning at me, “Why, Jono?”

I couldn't stand it. I jumped up from my seat and I said, “Okay. She fell.”

Rooney looked up and raised an eyebrow.

“She was drunk,” I said, and I slapped my hand on the table in front of his fat, self-important bulk as I sat down again. “She was drunk, and she fell. But I didn't know she was dead.”

“Did you push her, Jonathan?” Paudge asked, his voice a raspy whisper.

“Of course I didn't! What sort of a person do you take me for?”

He blinked. He didn't open his mouth, but that blink said it all.
The kind of person who holds up a young girl in a petrol station—and okay, so it was only a carrot, but how was she to know that?

Even his eyelids were freckled, and his eyelashes were so fair they were almost invisible.

“Maybe you were angry with her. She wasn't exactly Mother Teresa, I believe.”

“I was angry with her,” I admitted.

“Understandable,” he said quietly.

Good cop.

“But I didn't push her. She was my
mother
. I looked after her for
years
.”

I felt a tear trickle down my face, and I rubbed at it with my sleeve. I didn't want to cry now, in front of this pig-man.

“I never touched her,” I said, and my voice was hoarse because I was trying not to cry.

“Come on now, Jonathan,” he said. “Are you sure about that?”

“I didn't touch her!” I stood up again and paced the room. “I never laid a hand on her. In fact … it was … she was the one who pushed
me
.”

“Ah, come off it, Jonathan. You're just saying that to confuse matters now. Why would she push you? She comes in drunk and she pushes you. It makes no sense.”

“I … I had been asleep,” I said.

“You were in bed? You're saying you'd gone to bed? So she pushed you out of bed? Is that it? She must have been really up for a fight if she woke you up to have it.”

“No.”

“So where were you sleeping then?”

I closed my eyes.

I'd been sitting on the sofa, after Julie'd gone to bed. Ma was out.

I was sitting there with Julie's phone in my hand, I'd just sent that text message to Pukeball Butler's pukey little sister, and I was puzzling over what to do and the thoughts were whirling in my head, like clothes in a washing machine. We were in the spin cycle now. Foster bruise. Social school. The sleeves were wrapping themselves around the collars, the washing ball had worked its way into a pocket, a glove fingered the toe of a sock. Scum … school … alco … social … Danielle … foster … phone … bruise … cow …

“On the sofa. She woke me up, told me to go to bed.”

“Gotabed. Itsallhours.”

“So what did you do? You went to bed, did you?”

“I…”

“Jonathan, you're stalling. You're making it up as you go along, aren't you?”

My ears rang, my eyes opened, and I jerked awake.

Ma was swaying in front of me. She was smiling maniacally.

“Sssbedtime,” she slurred, like she was a proper mother, only drunk.

“No,” I said. “I'm just trying to remember.”

“Right,” said Paudge. “And what do you remember?”

“Gottagetta beaudysleep.”

“But I thought, see…” I said to Paudge, “I thought
she
was the one who needed to go to bed, so I stood up and I took her arm, and…”

“You just said you never laid a hand on her,” said Paudge sharply.

“That's because I didn't.”

“But if you took her arm, Jonathan, as you've said just there now, then you did lay a hand on her.”

“Forff…” I started, but then I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I said as patiently as I could, “but…”

“So you admit that you did lay a hand on her?”

“NO! I
admit
nothing! But if you want to be so bleedin'
literal
about it, yes, I did literally touch her. I took her by the elbow. I meant, I never laid a
violent
hand on her.”

“That's not what you said.”

“It's what I meant, and you bloody well know it, you bastard.”

I shouldn't have called him that. It was bound to make him tetchy again.

“I know nothing of the sort,” he snapped, “but go on.”

“Well, I was trying to get her as far as the stairs, see, so she would go up and go to bed, but she didn't want to, and she lashed out at me. She hit me a wallop on the chest. I fell back.”

“Onto the sofa? You fell onto the sofa?”

“No-o, not exactly.”

“Onto the floor, then? Did you fall on the floor? Come on, tell me what happened. Or did you stand up to her for once in your life and hit her? Did you? I mean, that would have been understandable, wouldn't it, if you'd lashed out at her.”

“No!”

“You didn't hit her?”

“I … I think I kind of staggered against the sofa, and then I lost my balance and I fell right back onto the floor.”

“You think.”

“I think.”

“You're not sure?”

“No, not a hundred percent.”

“Why not?”

“Concussion,” I said, with sudden relief. That was it. Concussion. “I … I think I must have banged my head, I had a lump like a tennis ball the next morning. I probably passed out.”