Purgatory (5 page)

In time for the Angelus.

I know, dammit, I should have gone right then but I was complacent. It had been too easy. My history told me,

“I don’t do easy.”

The next day, Brennan was there, without the statue. He’d imbibed something to make him a whole new deal, said,

“We’ve moved the statue to a new place.”

Jesus.

I eyeballed him, asked,

“Not the church, I’m guessing.”

His faint smirk now blossomed, said,

“Ten large by Saturday or the dame goes in the river.”

“The dame!”

I was so surprised I did nothing, and he strutted off. I’d have admired him for his sheer brass if it didn’t piss me off so much. I did something I thought I’d never do.

I called the Guards.

Ridge met me in the GBC, one of the few remaining Galway cafés, not only surviving but thriving. They kept it real simple. Good food and cheap. Ridge was in plainclothes, a promotion since the last case we’d been on. Dressed in a new navy tracksuit, white stripes, she looked healthy, less intense. Few could simmer like her. She said,

“Word is you’re still off everything: cigs, dope, booze.”

I gave her my second-best smile, no relation to warmth. She said,

“After the party, you know, what Reardon said, I thought, you know . . .”

I knew.

I told her about the statue, gave her Brennan’s name, said,

“You were to visit now, I think the statue would still be there.”

She stared at me, then,

“Why are you not doing this your own self?”

Told the truth.

“I’m getting old and makes you look good with the church.”

She smiled and I actually felt good.

Forgetting smiles are prelude to nothing good.

Ever.

She said,

“I’ve been watching the video of
The Bodyguard
all weekend.”

Whitney Houston had been found dead in the Beverly Hills Hilton. I wondered if Ridge’s interest had been helped by the gay innuendo that had followed Houston. I was too cute to ask, cute in the Irish sense of sly hoor.

I nodded sagely, as if I understood.

I didn’t.

How do you blow 100 million?

Ben Gazzara died the same week and no fanfare. Ridge said,

“That clip, she sings,
I Will Always Love You,
and pauses. You know, her lip quivers, she’s going for the high note and nails it.”

I went,

“Hmm.”

But Ridge was going philosophical.

“Whitney never hit that note again.”

I said,

“Apropos of nothing, some of us never hit that note.”

Got,

As she stood to leave,

“Some of us just never got the right song.”

I’d recently come across
The Psychopath Test
as compiled by the FBI. Jon Ronson had written a book of that title. I’d been compiling my own variation, the AT, as in

The Asshole Test
.

I was pretty sure that anyone who used

Apropos

Made the list.

Late that evening, before she clocked off work, Ridge decided to call at the garage, the one holding the statue. Knocking at the main house, she got no reply, then walked around to the garage. She was hit from behind with some form of iron bar, left in a heap on the ground. Either then or in the next few minutes, her Claddagh ring was torn from her finger. Her watch, twenty euros, and her warrant card were all taken.

I didn’t hear until next morning, Stewart shouting into my mobile,

“Why don’t you answer your fucking phone?”

I said,

“I had an early night.”

He was fighting for air, control, spat,

“Yeah? While you were sleeping, Ridge was being wheeled into the ICU.”

Jesus.

That was all the detail. I asked, Where?

Heard, with a sinking heart, the address I’d given her. Stewart picked up on my tone, accused me,

“You know something about this. Ah, no, you sent her on one of your fucking jobs.”

My silence was assent.

He said,

“You bollix, you’re a . . . a . . . plague.”

Rang off.

I didn’t go on the piss.

I went ballistic.

7

A Mind of Winter

—Shira Nayman

My hurley was almost bent from previous outings. Made by a man in Prospect Hill; he still used the ash: cut, honed, and polished the wood to a sheen and, if asked, would add the metal rings around the end of the stick, for traction.

Kidding about the traction.

Since the loss of the fingers on my right hand, I’d become adept at compensating, had wound a tight leather strap on the handle of the hurley. It had been a while since last I’d employed the stick. Ridge, then horrified at the use I’d put it to, had made me swear to never use it again.

I swore.

Swearing is easy.

I placed it in a sports bag that proclaimed,

Mervue United.

Shucked into my all-weather Garda coat, item 1834, that the Department of Justice continued to try to repossess. From habit, I reached for the staples: the Xanax, a lethal shot of Jay, pack of cigs.

Nope.

Going to dance this reel with plain old-fashioned rage, bile, and bitterness.

Fuel of a whole other hue.

I checked my breathing: level, not what you’d expect for a guy with edged murder in his soul. I slung the bag over my shoulder, headed out. Ran into a man I used to know in my cop days. He’d been a player, became one of those predators they called
speculators
:
had him, he told me once, a portfolio of quarter of a billion.

On paper.

And with Anglo-Irish.

As wiped and gone now as the promise of poverty eradication.

I thought then, what I thought now, on his losses.

“Fuck ’em.”

He stopped, peered at my sports bag, asked,

“Going to the gym?”

Of course gyms, saunas would have been part of his tycoon’s life, then. I said,

“Well, a workout, sort of.”

He said,

“So sad about Eamonn Deacy.”

Our most cherished local sporting hero; what Messi was to Barcelona, he was to Galway.

Made me pause. When we didn’t have heroes anymore, just poisonous celebrities, Eamonn was that quiet unassuming figure that a hero was meant to be. The man before me shuffled, looked to his left, so a touch was imminent. He said,

“Heard you were doing good.”

Not health or emotional well-being, no.

Cash.

I said,

“Getting by.”

He gave a bitter laugh, went,

“Fuck, in these days, that is doing brilliant.”

I reached for a note, saw it was a fifty.

Mmm.

Bit large for a street encounter, few of them and I’d be street me own self. I palmed it over as discreetly as these things can be. He stared at it. Yeah, hadn’t figured on me for that largesse.

Wrong.

“The fuck is this?”

Not gratitude then. I began to move off, tempted to get the hurley out. He shouted,

“Last of the big fucking spenders, eh, Taylor? Don’t let it break the bloody bank.”

You give a few notes to a guy on the street, you’re hardly going to go back, kick the living crap out of him, take the money back, but Jesus, it was tempting.

Brennan’s house was on the side road that runs parallel to Snipe Avenue, Newcastle. A line of five majestic homes, built from Connemara granite, built to last. With large front gardens and signs that proclaimed

No accommodation
.

Translate that,

Students, fuck off.

In the heartland of the university. Balls, if naught else. Saint Martins, name on the house. I readjusted the bag on my shoulder, ready to unleash the hurley. I felt the mix of adrenaline fused with rage as I moved up to the front door. In the next garden, a little girl was standing, staring at me. Dressed in dungarees, with a flow of red hair, she looked like an urchin from a Dickens stage adaption or a refugee from the abominable
Annie.

Before I rang the doorbell, she said,

“Nobody home.”

I stepped back, trying to rein in the rush I was feeling, asked,

“Yeah?”

Her face, freckled like a Spielberg extra’s, minus the bike, squeezed up. She said,

“
Yeah
is very impolite.”

The fuck?

She stepped closer to where I was standing. I was very conscious of . . . an old guy talking to a young girl.

Jesus.

Lynch mobs would meet for a whisper. Her accent was upper middle class; that is,

Posh

Moneyed

Condescending.

She said,

“You are probably the new poor.”

What?

I asked,

“Are you on medication?”

She said,

“I’m nearly a teenager.”

Good to know. I asked,

“You didn’t by any chance see the Virgin Mary?”

Realizing how daft that sounded, though in Ireland we did have a history of moving statues, as if the Mother of God were on tour. She duly scoffed, said,

“Hardly, I’m a Protestant.”

Accounted for the accent and probably the attitude. She asked,

“Do you have a business card?”

I let the exasperation leak on my words, said,

“What would you do with a business card?”

She sighed, said,

“Pretty obvious you never heard of LinkedIn.”

I made to push off and she asked,

“Your name, sir?”

Christ, she’d make a great cop.

I wasn’t sure of the etiquette of formally meeting teenagers. Do you go,

“Yo”?

And, like, high-five?

I said,

“Jack Taylor.”

She mulled that over, then gave,

“I’m Dell.”

“What, like the comics?”

Exasperated her.

“Don’t be silly, Jacques, it’s from Odell.”

Truth to tell, she made me veer between incredulity and laughter. I echoed,

“Jacques, seriously?”

And got a look of such withering contempt takes most people half a lifetime to learn, nigh spit,

“One tried to give you some class refinement, Mr. Taylor.”

Seeing as I’d made the trip, was here, I asked,

“You didn’t see what happened to the Ban Garda, the female police officer yesterday?”

“Hardly. One doesn’t snoop on one’s neighbors.”

Whatever the fuck that meant. I said,

“Okay, see you then.”

As if it just struck her, she asked,

“Have you been very old for a very long time?”

Did cross my mind that I might find a use for the hurley after all.

I didn’t ring Brennan’s door as a strong instinct urged me not to.

I was walking down the Newcastle Road, students to the left of me, winos to the right.

A blue Datsun pulled up, almost on the curb, a burly ape emerged, and I thought,

“Guards.”

In a bad suit but with the thick-soled shoes you never forget, matches the crust of the spirit. The guy stonewalled me, I knew him. We were almost related by beatings. Usually him doling them out. Named Lee, he gave bullying the X Factor. Worked at it, constantly.

“Get in the car.”

He rasped.

Smoker’s voice, waylaid by second-rate whiskey. The bell for the Angelus rang from the cathedral and no one seemed to bless himself but me. I asked, staring at the car,

“Not buying Irish, then?”

Got bundled into the car, my holdall thrown in with me. The driver glanced at the hurley, muttered,

“A concealed weapon.”

Lee said,

“Super needs a word.”

Clancy.

My onetime close friend, brother Guards on the force until I got bounced and he got promoted all the way. Recently, he’d been honored by the university: honorary doctorate, flash dinner, photo on front page of
The Galway Advertiser
, all the glittering prizes. We’d clashed many times over the befuddled years, his loathing of me growing in proportion to my defects.