SLOOT

by Ian MacPherson

  I’ll leave it there for now. The denouement is responsible for Hayden’s big breakthrough. Don’t want to give it away. But Hayden was riveted; so riveted, in fact, that he almost missed his stop. The plan was to get off at the Nautical Buoy and speed-read the book to its tragic conclusion over a cold drink and, luckily for him, Pascal stood up timidly. Pascal’s stop, Hayden’s stop too. Pascal was chattering away, something about Martin Luther King, but Hayden continued reading and missed out on the solution to one of the iconic murders of the mid-twentieth century. His head buried in Holy Joe’s penultimate chapter, he felt his way up to the front of the bus.

  ‘What’s the book?’ Bram said, as he pulled over to the stop.

  Hayden pointed absently at the no-talking sign. The doors swung open and Hayden and Pascal got off. Pascal had now moved on to Julius Caesar16, but Hayden didn’t catch his eyewitness update on a shameful miscarriage of justice. His head was still stuck in the book.

  * * *

  15 ‘A noir masterpiece’ – The Guardian

  16 ‘Et tu, Pascal?’

  25

  The lunchtime specials, if Voot O’Rooney’s laid-back jazz was to be believed, were Crayfish Salad & Melon Meringue. They weren’t. Nice rhythm, though.

  Hayden took a seat and waited for table service. The Nautical Buoy didn’t do table service, but he didn’t mind waiting. He was deeply engrossed in the plot twists and turns of Holy Joe as it reached its heart-rending finale. Fiendishly clever stuff. I’ll be the first to admit that Sloot has no such twists and turns. Or am I being unnecessarily humble?

  One thing about Holy Joe, though. The narrator doesn’t continually interrupt himself with lengthy asides on subjects as diverse as the nature of comedy, the healing properties of Assam, and the merits and demerits of the book in question as literature on the one hand, crime thriller on the other. Valuable lesson there if I decide to stick to genre fiction for my next outing. Bit late for this one, though.

  Holy Joe hit the home stretch in taut, lean prose. One-syllable words, apart from ‘guilty’ and ‘mother’. Shorty Sminks was flummoxed. Shorty, as pulp aficionados will doubtless know, is an orphan detective with a speech impediment, two club feet and a rejection letter from the Harlem Globetrotters simply because he isn’t black. The speech impediment, and this may upset certain readers, is a Limerick accent, and boy! This is one case he wishes he hadn’t taken on! Shorty is, as I say, floundering, so – and here’s where Hayden took note – he calls everyone together for the classic perp-is-in-this-very-room denouement. But here’s the twist: Shorty hasn’t a clue who the guilty party is, so he counts them off one by one. The Parish Priest. Check. The local tobacconist. Check. The deceased reprobate’s housekeeper and four of his ‘waifs and strays’. To wit, the fruit of his aforementioned loins disguised as homeless orphans left on the also aforementioned doorstep. Fathered by Father Johnny. Mothered, as it turns out, by several housekeepers. Check. Here’s where the breakthrough comes.

  No sooner has he established the pitiful housekeepers’ collective innocence than the only person left in the room cracks. The late departed cleric’s beloved mother! Her son is a priest. She’s the only woman in his life. Except she isn’t! She’s sharing him, it seems, with half the housekeepers in Dublin. Worse. All those little orphans and not one of them hers! Which explains the tagline: ‘Mother love is a two-way street.’ Case solved. She’s dragged off to a life of penal servitude but hangs herself in the non-gender-specific prison lavatory with a skilfully removed thread of Dinny Guiney’s reinforced corset elastic.17

  Hayden finished the book with the curiously empty feeling you get when you find out who perped it. It all seems a bit obvious in the end. The mother. Of course. Who else? He smiled wanly at the predictability of it all. Then it hit him: he’d do the same for Eddie’s killer! Hold a memorial bash for Eddie. Invite the suspects. Flush the perp out. Because the perp was sure to come. They always did.

  He tossed Holy Joe on the table and returned from the fictional world of 1970s Ireland to the lounge of the Nautical Buoy. The place had been filling up. Quilty, Dublin’s hottest pathologist, stood beneath the skylight in meditative mood. A shaft of sunlight refracted off his tumbler at an obtuse angle. He drained the glass and swayed unsteadily to the counter. The shaft followed him over, the angle decreasing to acute as he approached his goal.

  He slapped the empty glass down. ‘A double helping of your finest Isle of Ulay single malt, my dear, and a little of what you fancy for your exquisitely lovely self.’

  Declan closed the till and turned to face him. ‘Don’t you think you may have had enough, Mr Q?’

  Quilty, crestfallen, caressed his glass like a comfort blanket, and in his sorrowful expression Hayden saw his chance.

  Quilty swayed unsteadily on the pavement outside the Nautical Buoy as he waved his empty glass at a passing cab. The cab swerved and turned.

  ‘It’s less than a ten-minute walk,’ protested Hayden, but Quilty was already pouring himself into the back seat. Hayden, overruled by Quilty’s alcohol intake, opened the other door. Quilty squeezed the cab driver’s shoulder affectionately.

  ‘Home, James,’ he slurred, ‘and spare not the horses.’

  The driver winked at Hayden through the rear-view mirror. ‘Any advance on thah?’ He switched his gaze to Quilty. ‘Dryin ouh clinic, is ih?’

  Should be, but wasn’t. Hayden almost laughed. ‘The opposite,’ he said. ‘I promised him a top-up.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said the taxi driver. ‘If I was thah way inclined, I’d fancy him meself.’

  Hayden left it there. You never knew where these things might lead. Besides, he had other plans for Quilty. If he wanted to establish beyond reasonable doubt that Eddie had been murdered, Quilty was the man to do it, and there was no way he was going any further down the single malt alphabet at the Nautical Buoy in his present condition. He’d lured Quilty on the promise of Eddie’s generous stock of Scotland’s finest A to Zs. He gave the cabbie Eddie’s address in a gruff manner intended to close the conversation down, but the driver was in talkative mood.

  ‘You’ll never guess who I had in the cab las nigh. The wife’s cousin Lorelei. See? Ih’s noh all pop stars, fillum stars an world fucken leaders. Off to the airport she was. Didn charge her a course. The wife’d a killed me.’ He wiped an eye and may have sniffled quietly. ‘Still feel a bih guilty abouh her fella. Two bulleh job. Finglas. Wha a way to go, you know? Last thing you see. Finglas.’ He reached a stubby hand over the back. ‘Grego Pope, by the way, on’y I seen you up the hills the other nigh. Lovely spoh.’ Hayden shook the hand. It seemed, on balance, the safest bet. ‘Thing is, there’s no point takin thah shallow grave stuff too serious. Sure those lads is all bluster. Well, aparh from the hold ups an the gang feuds an the savage internecine warfare. Righ, thass you here. Four euros eigh’y. To be honest, there’s more money in bank jobs. Thass the wife’s take, anyway.’ He glanced at the meter and set it back at nought. ‘She migh be righ abouh thah.’

  ‘Await my imminent return, my estimable if unlovely friend,’ slurred Quilty, as he worked out the mechanics of the door handle. ‘Busy day, busy day.’

  Hayden fumbled for a note. The driver nodded towards Quilty, who swayed gently up the drive, empty glass in hand. ‘Isn’t yor man someone?’

  Hayden passed a five euro note to Grego and waved away the change. He got out, closed the door and leaned in at the driver’s open window.

  ‘In the broadest meaning of the term,’ he said, ‘I suspect he probably is.’

  Quilty had now reached Eddie’s front door, supporting himself precariously on his glass. The relationship seemed somehow symbiotic. Hayden followed and they went inside. That was the easy bit. Getting Quilty to switch to Uncle Eddie’s Sweet Ambrosia might be a different matter; Hayden had lied about the single malt. He yanked the cork from the bottle and held it out.


  ‘Not sure I’m best advised to drink that, old fruit,’ said Quilty, thrusting his glass out eagerly. ‘Bit out of character for a single malt man. Not, as it were, me.’ He took a quick slurp nonetheless. ‘Hmn. Interesting notes. Hint of –’

  ‘Apple?’ said Hayden, who wanted to get on. ‘Sweet Ambrosia. It’s a local brew.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Quilty. ‘Sweet Ambrosia. Hmnn. Sherlock’s sister, unless I’m much mistaken. Could add a whole new dimension to my – tell you what. Worth a try.’ He held his glass out for a top-up. Hayden obliged. Quilty then swayed around the room, fingering the worktop for dust, peering into the teapot, and generally looking for clues, which wasn’t much help to Hayden. He hadn’t told him what the crime was yet. Quilty swayed over to Eddie’s desk and ran his fingers along the tape boxes as if they were piano keys.

  ‘Missing tape,’ he slurred. ‘Could mean something, could mean nothing.’

  Hayden hadn’t noticed it before, but now was not the time. He was beginning to regret his decision to ask Quilty over in the first place. He seemed to be ambling around the room mumbling nonsense. Hayden slammed the cork into the bottle and crossed to the cellar door. He pulled it open and flicked the light on.

  ‘Here’s the scene of Eddie’s final moments,’ he said. ‘And this,’ – he held his mobile out – ‘is Eddie post mortem. Thoughts?’

  Quilty reeled over, topped-up glass in hand, and bowed over the mobile. He then teetered alarmingly over the drop to the cellar before bending back over the phone. He stopped teetering and bending as if sobering up momentarily.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Contusions to the left vertebrae suggest a mallet dropped from a great height. Or similar. So where might we find the deceased?’

  ‘Cremated,’ said Hayden.

  Quilty stroked his chin with his free hand. ‘Quinteresting,’ he said. ‘Most, most quinteresting. We could, one supposes, reassemble the corpse from his ashes for a closer look. And now’ – he jerked his watch free of his sleeve – ‘I really must get on. Busy day. Busy day.’ He drained his glass and held it out for a refill; Hayden retrieved the bottle and slopped more liquid in. Quilty took a quick slurp and moved towards the door. ‘Sweet Ambrosia of the Gods,’ he said as Hayden ushered him out of the house. ‘Could be the very thing. Slight change of emphasis. Younger image. Yes indeed. Could be the very thing.’ His brow furrowed in concentration. ‘Or, and this would be an interesting departure for my next outing, embrace sobriety. Thoughts?’

  Hayden hadn’t a clue what he was on about, so he held his own counsel as Quilty reeled down the driveway and hailed the stationary cab. He clambered in beside the driver, the cab did a quick u-turn and they were off. Hayden closed the door and ruffled Rusty’s head. What a waste of time that had been.

  Or had it? The missing tape. Hayden hadn’t noticed it before. He noticed it now. Could mean something, could mean nothing. He filed it away for future reference. Quilty’s seeming gibberish also contained within it an interesting clue as to his character, or rather his identity, which comes into play later. Page one-nine-three if you can’t wait, but it really spoils the build-up. Besides, Hayden knows nothing about it until the page in question, and neither, for the purposes of sticking to the quasi-linear Inquisitive Bullet narrative, do I.

  Hayden set about applying the lesson of Holy Joe to the next stage in his real life murder investigation. I won’t go into detail, but all interested parties were contacted, including an email invite to his parents, who declined – and not, I might add, very graciously. Bad blood was hinted at. We’re staying right where we are thank-you-very-much.

  I’ll draw an authorial veil over the melancholy twinge Hayden felt at their frankly dismissive tone. Okay, he was a man in his forties and he hadn’t seen them since he was one day short of seven, but that was hardly the point. Your parents were your parents and they were supposed to love you, but not so much as an ‘xxx’. He sighed and pressed Delete.

  ‘I have no parents.’ He didn’t pout as he said it, but he would have if they’d been there, and then he would have left the room with a flounce. Rusty, who sat quietly at Hayden’s feet, nuzzled in close. He may have been a mongrel of no fixed parentage, but he certainly wasn’t lacking the empathy gene.

  It made sense to hand-deliver the three aunts’ invitation. The old fashioned way. He crept across the road late at night; he didn’t want to get into one of those long, convoluted conversations that have been such a feature of the narrative thus far. He toyed with the idea of excluding them from the general invite, but no. They were, incontrovertibly, not on the same wavelength as other mortals. Tuned, if you will, to a different dimension, but that could work to his advantage. The sheer lunacy of their particular channel, to risk labouring the radio metaphor, might help flush the guilty party out.

  He wanted them there. He wanted action. He wanted the perp banged up. Eddie deserved, nay, demanded, justice. He was about to ease the invitation through their polished brass letterbox when the door opened.

  ‘Howaya, Hayding.’

  ‘We seen you coming over.’

  ‘On tippytoe.’

  ‘Very consideracious, Hayding. We could have been asleep.’

  ‘Except we weren’t. We were looking out the window.’

  ‘All tinking the same ting. We wonder what Hayding is up to all on his ownio over there.’

  ‘And here you are, as if to answer our question in your very own words.’

  ‘Would it, perchance, involve this envinglope?’

  Hayden passed it over and explained his farewell-to-Eddie idea in as few words as possible, interrupted by several ‘That’s beautiful, Hayding’s and ‘What a toughtful boy you really are’s.

  ‘We can wear our Bewley’s uniforms.’

  ‘Which haven’t been used since the late fifties.’

  ‘Outside the bedroom anyway.’

  ‘We can help out.’

  ‘We’ve even got a spare one for your lovely lady.’

  Hayden bridled. ‘What lovely lady? I don’t have a lovely lady.’

  ‘Oh now, Hayding. No need to be coy. She uprooted from Londing to be closer to the object of her heart’s desire.’

  ‘As you well know.’

  ‘So putting her up was the least we could do in her straitened circumstances.’

  ‘The lowly checkout girl being woefully undervalued in dese neo-liberal times, Hayding.’

  ‘But enough of revolutionary political teory.’

  They turned their heads as one and yelled back into the house.

  ‘Hear that? You’re invited to a do.’

  They turned back.

  ‘We don’t tink she can hear, Hayding.’

  ‘She’s having a quick soak in the baignoire.’

  ‘We’ll pass the message on.’

  No point arguing with the aunts. Hayden should have left it at that, but he was annoyed. How could they have the gall to give succour, not to mention board and probably lodging, not also to mention baignoire, to his stalker?

  He shouldn’t have said the following, but he did. He should have stuck to the pretence that the invitation was for a celebratory farewell to Eddie, but he didn’t. ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘I’ve set up the whole thing to flush out Eddie’s killer.’

  The aunts seemed to shrink into themselves, heads retracted like tortoises sensing peril.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘We see.’

  They normally operated on the rule of three, but not this time. They fell silent. A silence that followed Hayden as he walked down their drive, past the cotoneaster, across the road, up Eddie’s gravel drive and into Eddie’s house. He closed and locked the door. Too late. The silence had followed him in.

  * * *

  17 ‘Cherchez la maman,’ raved Le Monde. ‘Très irlandais.’

  26

&nb
sp; Hayden was a busy man. The invites were out. He looked up ‘baignoire’ and found out what it meant. He went back over his plan. Several times. Without Bram. Big help. He also splashed out on some fizzy water. Oh, and nuts. Nothing else to be done, so he sat back and let the invitations do their work. Three days later –

  But before that…

  27

  My own aversion to golf is well documented elsewhere. Hayden, in his defence, hated the so-called sport too, but the fact that he agreed to meet Bram for ‘a quick round’ tells its own story. A sentimental attachment to childhood friendship? Let’s be charitable here. He lost by the odd hole in three – well, something along those lines – and accused Bram of switching his balls in the rough. But that’s by the by. The important point is that I was to be cast adrift from my own novel for the duration. I had no intention of monitoring their progress in case one of them said something of interest. They were hardly likely to; this, after all, being golf.

  I was outside Eddie’s pondering my options – and savouring the smell of freshly mown grass, the tang of the sea, the glorious late June sunlight, the temporary absence of my main character – when the learned Professor flew past, his white hair dancing crazily in the breeze. I had to think quickly. How long is a game of golf? Would I manage to solve the CDU conundrum if I set off in hot pursuit immediately? This may be one of those mysteries – did Stern disappear from the leafy suburb of Clontarf into another dimension and, if so, how could I possibly find out? – of more interest to me than to others, plus it was a beautiful day, there was a break in the narrative, and – golf?

  My mind was made up. I hurried around the side of the house and grabbed hold of Eddie’s bike. I wheeled it quickly down the gravel driveway and hopped on. The ageing tyres had already gone a bit soft. No Pascal, no pump. Still, bit late to do anything about that now, so I redistributed my weight to minimise the effect and set off.