SLOOT

by Ian MacPherson

  He sat with the headphones on, the living room discreetly lit by a dusty lamp, gazing out on the back garden, and pressed Play. A quick dose of displacement therapy and off to bed. It might be noted at this point that he’d totally forgotten about finding Eddie’s killer. I find myself wondering if this book might be better suited to the literature section. But this is to pre-empt, not to mention digress, which you simply don’t do under Crime.

  The tape he’d chosen was Suffer Little Chizzlers. Chizzlers is a charming Dublin expression which features in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘No Entries Found’. Their loss. The tape in question certainly made a nice change from Eddie’s more artistic offerings. A small boy chortling with delight as Eddie showed him some of his more playful artworks. Example: A Dublin Underground with all the stations marked out on the floor and, under the floorboards, the sound of the Circle Line passing through Tallaght. As Hayden listened to the tape, the memories flooded back, the years fell away. Then this:

  EDDIE: Someday you’ll be a great artist just like –

  Hayden turned the tape off, overcome by a sudden and profound sadness. He sat and thought about the small boy he once was. He thought about Eddie and yes, Eddie was a great artist. Way ahead of his time. And Hayden? He thought about all the artistic compromises he’d made over the years. Only Quotin’: a dreadful TV quiz show with seemingly obligatory swearing.14 Father Brown’s Boys: ‘The paedophile priest thingy.’ Sadly, however, they weren’t the nadir of an otherwise creditable career. Hayden had been on the way up, much like Foetus O’Flaherty. He’d just signed up with hot comedy agent Richard Mann. Hayden was offered an Irish Tourist Board ad.

  ‘Whatever it takes, mate,’ Rich had drawled.

  Hayden whatever-it-tooked. Toadstool. Leprechaun suit. Ignominy. And now he sat with his head in his hands and wept for his tragically compromised past. Pretty standard procedure for those of a comic bent, to be honest. Angst? Don’t talk to me about angst.

  Having said that, the leprechaun suit ad was particularly bad. So, head in hands, salt tears.

  Hayden had been up all night. I too. But Hayden had been on an emotional rollercoaster, while I’d merely been taking notes. He made up the sofa, and was about to plump up the cushions when Rusty barked furiously and raced out into the hall. Hayden followed him, yawning.

  ‘What is it, Rusty?’ he said.

  Rusty barked a response. He was now standing outside the door to Hayden’s childhood bedroom. Maybe, thought Hayden, he’s seen a mouse. Plausible. There was a gap under the door. But this wasn’t just any door. Hayden’s childhood was in there. His hopes, his dreams, his hurt – which is why he slept on the sofa. His head was a mass of warring emotions. He stood frozen for a long moment, then steeled himself and opened the door to the width of a small dog. Rusty raced in, still barking. Hayden stood outside and waited. Silence.

  ‘Come on, old son,’ yawned Hayden. ‘Bedtime.’

  No response. Hayden walked away. He stood by the living room door and waited. Repeated the request. Still no response. He sighed and plodded wearily back to the bedroom door. What was it with aunts and dogs?

  ‘Rusty,’ he said. ‘Out. Now.’

  Nothing. Not a sound. Probably playing a game, thought Hayden, but he really wasn’t in the mood. Poor old Rusty, though. Is a bit of harmless fun with your new best pal too much to ask? Put like that he would have to say no, so he forced himself to face up to his demons and dragged himself wearily in. Put the light on. Stood there, all thoughts of sleep momentarily gone. The room was exactly as it was when he was little. He’d spent most of his teen years here as well, but Eddie had re-decorated it exactly as it had been when he was seven – and what a revelation to his adult eye.

  The lights were a riot of tiny pinpoints, dotted into the ceiling like multi-coloured stars; the Plough and the Milky Way jumbled together in a crazy, playful pattern. Shelves lined the far wall, stacked with Eddie-made, Hayden-friendly toys. The duvet cover was a young Hayden woven abstractly into the fabric, hands behind his head, looking dreamily up at the night sky.

  Hayden was suddenly overcome with an exhaustion he couldn’t fight. He rubbed his eyes and leaned heavily on a small desk by the window, a scaled-down replica of Eddie’s desk downstairs. On top of it, slightly incongruously, sat a thick brown folder, but Hayden was too tired to notice. He yanked himself away from the desk with a groan and flopped down on the bed. He thought of Eddie, re-imagining his room long after Hayden had grown up and gone away, and it filled him with sadness, longing and regret.

  He thought he heard a noise in the living room. Yes. There was no doubt about it. Three tiny voices. Six tiny feet. Why? What could they possibly be doing here at this time in the morning? But he was tired. So, so tired. He curled up on top of the duvet like the child he’d once been, and never would be again. As soon as he fell asleep, Rusty re-appeared from under the bed, hopped up beside Hayden and snuggled contentedly in.

  There never had been a mouse.

  * * *

  13 ‘Abstruse. Recondite. Recherché.’ – PJ O’Malley

  14 Aren’t we Irish terrible?

  23

  Early morning. Beautiful day. I was gazing out the front window, wondering how best to occupy myself while Hayden slept the sleep of the innocent, when the learned Professor flew past on his bicycle. Perfect! I left Hayden to his much-needed sleep, raced outside, grabbed hold of Eddie’s bike and gave chase. A quick internet search had established that there was no such place as UDC; I’d also established that he wasn’t known at CDU, so where exactly was he headed? Professor Emeritus Stern was my guru. I’d applied his comic theories to my own work – indeed life – for years, yet he seemed to exist, at some level, outside what is often referred to as the real world. Where exactly? I had to find out. My mental equilibrium demanded it.

  Stern, his magnificent white head backlit by the early morning sun, was easy enough to follow, and he seemed to be heading in the general direction of CDU and the formidable Áine. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting her again. Her response to my initial enquiry had been terse in the extreme. No such person. No such facility. No bicycles in reception. But perhaps, apart from the bike bit, she’d got it wrong. Perhaps the Department of Comedic Arts was housed in a separate building, outside her administrative jurisdiction. Only one way to find out.

  I dropped the pressure on Eddie’s pedals and kept a safe distance. I began to see myself in the romantic role of the accidental detective, a gumshoe for the modern age. No harm if Stern spotted me, I supposed. He was hardly likely to beat me to a pulp if he caught me. Not physically anyway; possibly intellectually, but I was more worried about my face. I pedalled on, lost in accidental detective thoughts of cigarettes and bourbon and dames, and the thing dames always bring: trouble. It’s hard to escape that golden era of noir when you’re lost in fantasy land, even when you’re panting up Castle Avenue on a superannuated two-wheeler with dodgy gears.

  I came back from fantasy land. Damn. While I’d been dawdling, the Professor had almost reached the top of Castle Avenue. He mounted the pavement, put on a sudden burst of speed I wouldn’t have thought possible in a man of his age, and turned left up Howth Road. I shifted up a rusted gear, pedalled as fast as the rickety bike allowed, and turned left myself. No sign of him. Perhaps he’d turned right into Collins Avenue? I did likewise; still no sign. I arrived at the hallowed entrance to CDU. The learned Professor had totally disappeared. I turned back, cursing myself for that momentary lapse in concentration.

  Dames, huh?

  Hayden woke at midday to find himself staring at the ceiling of his childhood bedroom. It seemed less unsettling in daylight, so he shifted Rusty off the duvet and tumbled out of bed. He now realised that Eddie, in his own undemonstrative way, had loved him. Eddie had given him a home. Eddie had believed he could be a great artist. He’d even preserved his childhood room as a shrine. B
ut Hayden had failed him – until now. Maybe he wasn’t a sloot. Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a detective. But he could write a great detective novel. Make Eddie proud. He had the time, he had the place. All he needed was the inspiration. He’d worked his way through Bram’s charity shop box, so why not pop in to Eason’s, see what sort of stuff was selling? Fact. Fiction. Whatever. Another lovely day, so the walk would do him good.

  A quick pot of tea later, he marched down the driveway in a positive frame of mind. Kincora Road was abuzz with activity. Intertextualities had borne fruit. The Schrödinger house was cordoned off. Garda cars with lights flashing. A sizeable crowd of onlookers. Detective Inspector Lou Brannigan pacing about, his trilby cocked at a jaunty angle. This was a cop in control. He was onto something, and Hayden knew what it was. He was passing on his way into town anyway, so he sauntered over to the scene of the crime.

  The three aunts were already there.

  ‘Isn’t that gas, Hayding? Our young friend in there has been bumping off moggies and burying them out the back.’

  ‘It’s all to do with Herr Schrödinger. Our young friend’s an acolyte, apparently.’

  ‘Aren’t we all? Disciple, votary, call it what you will. I mean, Herrdinger’s ground-breaking experiments in teoretical physics have been called into question in the light of subsequent discoveries about alternative universities and so on –’

  ‘– but what a lover! No question there.’

  ‘He’s welcome trew our cat flap any time.’

  Hayden wasn’t listening. A pale-faced young man with a wispy moustache and matching three-piece tweed was being escorted from the premises by a couple of gardaí. Cameras flashing. The usual media scrum. Lou Brannigan eased the subject’s head down in a self-important way and manoeuvred him into the back of the squad car. He closed the door, fanned himself with the trilby and placed it back on his head, jaunty angle intact. Hayden coughed politely.

  ‘Ah, ’tis yourself.’ Brannigan kept up the pretence for the cameras, but behind the eyes was a chastened look.

  ‘It wasn’t Rusty then,’ said Hayden with a hint of told-you-so.

  ‘Yerr, I suppose we may well close the book on that one.’

  Behind the badge of office, the public show and the satisfaction of a case which had seemingly solved itself, Brannigan was deeply, deeply ashamed, and there was a reason for his shame. This case was Brannigan’s very own Verschiebung. But we’ll get to that.

  For myself, I’m glad it’s resolved. The whole thing was a bit daft, to be honest, and I can’t think that anyone bought Brannigan’s ridiculous theory about Rusty in the first place.

  24

  I love the walk into town myself. A quiet stroll down Castle Avenue to the sea front. Along the promenade to Marino and Fairview park. You then have a choice of route. Straight on to the city centre via the Five Lamps, turn right up Talbot Street just past Amiens Street station, Dinny Guiney’s on the left, on to O’Connell Street, cross at the faux-Eddie statue, left past the GPO and there’s your bookshop.

  Or hang a right to sunny Summerhill.

  Hayden chose the Summerhill option, which brings you deep into the heart of the city from a different angle. He was in excellent spirits. Whistling internally, playing with possible opening lines for his book, when the sound of gunfire cut across the hum of inner-city traffic.

  Crack!

  The doors of Sunshine House, a corner pub with blacked-out windows, flew open, and out stormed several men in balaclavas. Stocky men. Pope-shaped.

  ‘You seen nuhhin,’ barked one, as shocked pedestrians fled in all directions. He stopped and turned to Hayden as he passed.

  ‘How’s the bewke comin, maestro?’

  The man behind him whipped him over the balaclava with a pistol butt. ‘Jayz, Benny, yor supposed ta be ingogneeho. Will ya fucken come on for fuck’s sake.’

  A car screamed around the corner. Benny turned to Hayden as he ducked to get in.

  ‘We’re the good guys, righ?’ he roared. ‘Or fucken else.’

  And off they sped, with sirens wailing in the distance. This was serious, and pretty soon all that remained of the screenplay-friendly scene was a long line of Garda cars, police tape, and Lou Brannigan, fanning himself with his sweat-damp trilby and trudging into the darkened pub.

  Hayden was pretty shaken up when he arrived at Eason’s, but he was also relieved. He’d seen nuhhin. Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. He’d given Brannigan a statement. It was, definitively and unarguably, the Popes. Not that it mattered, because Brannigan wasn’t listening. He knew it was the Popes. With Lou Brannigan, it was always the Popes and this time, for once, he was right.

  But Eason’s. Hayden headed straight for Crime. Now this was interesting. Quilty, the criminal pathologist from the Nautical Buoy, had written a book: Quilty as Charged. Good title. Flattering photo on the front cover, although to be fair he was a pretty good-looking man in the flesh and, according to the back flap, ‘Dublin’s Hottest Pathologist’. Hayden was intrigued. He flicked to the opening page.

  ‘I woke with a thudding head.’

  Good opener. Not surprising, frankly, given how much he drank, but it drew you in. Unfortunately, the next fourteen pages dwelt lovingly, almost pornographically to Hayden’s mind, on the late morning sunlight slanting through the dust-mite-darkened bedroom curtains. Odd way to start your autobiography. Hayden was about to flick further on when he became aware of a woman tutting next to him, the shoplifter-repellent lights accentuating her sharp features and disapproving nose.

  ‘It’s no wonder bookshops are going out of business,’ she sneered, prising the book from him and returning it, sniffily, to the shelf. Hayden held his hands up. Quilty as charged! He pottered about for a while longer, but the sense of her unforgiving eyes boring into the small of his back ruined any enjoyment he might have got from a casual browse.

  Outside, he noticed, there was a ten-cent table. Books that hadn’t made it to the cash register. He glanced up. The assistant had taken her judgemental face elsewhere. He rummaged through the books.

  ‘An elegiac masterpiece’ – The Guardian

  ‘A bona-fide masterpiece’ – The Guardian

  ‘A luminous masterpiece’ – The Guardian

  ‘Quite simply a masterpiece’ – The Guardian

  Difficult to tell why they were on the ten-cent table with endorsements like those, but that’s the modern world for you. Maybe people have just lost their appetite for masterpieces.

  Ah. This was more like it. Lou Brannigan’s all-time favourite, Holy Joe. A snip at the markdown, thought Hayden. He picked it up and had just started flicking through its action-packed pages when he was prodded by a reproving finger. The assistant, seemingly alert to his every move, was back. Hayden rooted in his pocket and produced some loose change.

  ‘There you are, my good woman,’ he said. ‘No bag required.’

  It may have been that she was unused to being called a good woman, but the assistant’s mood changed. Her features softened. Her nose lost its disapproving look and returned to what may well have been its natural state: aquiline. Hayden pocketed the book. The assistant pocketed the money. I say assistant. She didn’t actually work there but that, along with the hyperbolic book reviews, is also the modern world.

  Hayden, fortunately for him, had other things to think about as he made his way back to the bus stop, so he missed this. He also missed the crowd gathered outside the shop window filled with TV screens, not to mention their ecstatic call and response.

  ‘Hey fella, where you from?’

  ‘Termonfeckin!’

  ‘Yow!’

  At the Abbey Street terminal the bus sat ready to depart. Directly opposite Ireland’s National Theatre, which was devoted to addressing an alleged gender imbalance with a season devoted exclusively to male writers. Hayden made a mental note and leapt on boa
rd. The driver? Bram. And he was in bus driver mode.

  ‘Sorry, Haydo, but it’s exact fare only. I’d pay it myself but you know how it is. Where would it all end? Preferential treatment, you know?’

  Hayden pressed a five euro note furiously into the slot. That, he thought, was some markup, but what could you do? Bram tapped his forehead, started the engine and pulled out. Hayden held a copy of Holy Joe up to the glass and was about to ask Bram if he’d read it, but Bram cut him short. He pointed primly to the no-talking-to-the-driver-while-the-bus-is-in-motion sign. Hayden exhaled meaningfully and moved up the aisle in search of a seat.

  Pascal O’Dea was sitting on his own, the vacant seat beside him the only one on offer. Hayden sat down. No hint of recognition.

  ‘I killed my own daddy,’ said Pascal, ‘with the belt of a loy.’

  Hayden made a mental note to check out the Abbey’s all-male Playboy.

  ‘Of course you did, Pascal,’ he intoned. ‘Of course you did.’

  He opened Holy Joe15 and zoned out.

  Here’s the story in miniature. Dublin. The 1970s. Father Johnny Cracken’s entry under hobbies in Catholic Who’s Who: Aytin. Drinkin. Shaggin the housekeeper. He’s a rogue and a wild one, but the more he tells the truth, the more people laugh: ‘You’re cracken me up, Father.’ Orphans left on the church doorstep? They’re all, according to him, the fruit of his priestly loins! Other examples? Read the book. But there’s one person who’s not amused, because Father Johnny dies a slow and painful death when a duty-free box of Capstan Full Strength mysteriously appears in his drinks cupboard. Laced with strychnine. Father Johnny Cracken RIP.