The edges of Bronagh’s mouth moved downward, and she stifled a sigh that could have become a sob if left unattended. I caught in that sound more than sorrow at my sister’s violation and her own impotence as town sheriff. I also heard ten months of frustration from the shite she took from old Sergeant Murphy and the cumulative effect of never getting respect even from snot-nosed schoolboys. “Because I wanted to tell you I’ve turned over every stone to nab yer man. To do him for anything. He’s too good to be true, I know that. Everybody knows.”
“But you’re still coming to the wedding?” I asked, finding a crushed ciggie in my pocket and trying to reshape enough of it to light up. “Am I right, Lieutenant Columbo?”
“The invitation came today. I can’t see how I couldn’t. . . .” She sent me a pleading look. “Did you all get one?”
“I got my own special one a moment ago, from Herself.”
Bronagh opened the file in her hands.
“The girl’s name was Laura Hilliard, from somewhere near Stoke-on-Trent, in England. That girl murdered over in Kenmare last month?” Bronagh looked out at two men in rubber waders tripping on the slick deck surface and spilling a silver carpet of writhing fish all over the dock. “The murderer left no DNA of his own. Same as with Sarah McDonnell and that Holland woman from Drimoleague way, in case ye’re wondering. You understand? No skin samples, no sperm, not even a shagging drop of blood. So either he’s wearing rubber gloves or condoms the entire time, or nobody really puts up much of a fight.”
I looked at the dying haddock flapping all around the car and thought of the look in those girls’ eyes a day earlier, when Jim had helped them across the street. True devotion. You could have set off a cannon next to their ears and they’d have called it distant thunder. “You see anybody in town putting up a fight, do ya?”
She withdrew one sheet of paper.
“Until today. Someone’s spittle was found on a cup in the Holland woman’s home. Missed it the first time. No match for anyone we know, but it’s a man’s, all right. Forensics said the victim had her head caved in after protected sex. No sperm, either.”
“Sounds like a party.”
“Make Aoife sign an official complaint. Then I arrest the bugger and we can at least get a legal DNA sample and compare—”
“You know she won’t. I do nothing but ask her to come see you. She goes out and listens to her trees, instead.”
“Maybe if we could get some samples of her—”
“Afraid that’s a few showers ago, Sergeant Daltry.”
Bronagh returned the sheet to its folder and stuffed it underneath her seat. We sat there, not saying anything, and listened to the smacking sounds of fish tails against the hot asphalt. I remembered smoking my first ciggie with her not three feet from where we sat. When I looked up, she was crying.
“Hey, easy, Bronagh,” I said, feeling like an awful bitch but not knowing what to say to make her stop. “It will be okay.”
She wiped her nose with the pristine blue sleeve and sent me a glare that revealed she already knew what I dreamed of more than anything else. “You know it won’t.”
“CAN I HAVE another Murphy’s, please, Jonno?”
The voice was mine. I knew it, because of the vibrations in my throat as I said the words. But almost nothing else was, not even the costume. You see, I was acting the part of Mysterious Town Harlot whose myth most everyone was so fond of repeating to one another under their breaths. Especially the part about how I’d never let any man have his way with me. If I couldn’t shake that image, I damn sure was going to make use of it. I’d gone home to my place—after Bronagh finally stopped sniveling—and picked the shortest black skirt I could find, then ripped off another few inches. I’d spritzed something French and expensive on my neck that Evvie had left behind and wondered how far to push the sex-witch look as I baited the hook to land one Jim Quick. Then I’d biked down the hill, taken a deep breath, and opened the pub’s front door.
Wednesday, you understand, was the night everyone at McSorley’s took leave of their senses, because Jim always favored them with a song or a wee story. And it was my one last chance before the wedding to get what was mine.
Jonno had manned the bar at McSorley’s since before I was born, God bless his plastic teeth. He walked across the floor in that unbalanced trawler cowboy way of his and put a glass before me. Sweet Jonno. He looked at my too-heavily-made-up face and was about to ask me why I was acting this way but thought better of it. Jonno shot me one of those brilliant Hollywood smiles as he returned to his post. To this day, I’ll never forget him for that. He could have ruined everything for me that night. Because though wolves aren’t used to prey hunting them, they still get spooked if they sense something’s off.
Instead, I remained inside the booth my sisters and me had practically hung our names on and quaffed my beer slowly. For over an hour, I acted bored as a housewife, when the only set of eyes I wanted on me heralded their arrival by making my skin crawl. I lit up another Marlboro, then broke off the filter to get down to business faster. Not once did I acknowledge the presence of Castletownbere’s favorite son until he practically sat in my lap.
“Drinking alone is bad for the humor, my father always said.”
“Did he really?” I answered, looking at the yellow wallpaper. “Smart man.”
“He also said—”
“Did I hang an invitation on this booth reading Will manky randomers and traveling folk please come inside and have a chat?” I asked, turning my head but careful not to overdo it. Jim would smell a bad actor a mile away, being one himself. I had one ace in my deck. I’d been treating men this way my entire life. And all of them came back for more.
“I don’t suppose you did.” He grinned and nodded, as if realizing something profound.
“Then we understand each other,” I said, turning my head away from his.
The room hummed with chatter and the scraping of boots. But I knew that everyone was hanging on the next words out of the seanchaí’s mouth. Not since he came to town had anybody seen me wipe the floor with someone wanting to get a closer look at my underwear. Besides, half of them had been sent packing already and hated my guts, while fantasizing about me when they were in bed with their wives.
“I know why you’re angry,” he began, in a voice so covered in sugar it was hard, even for me, to hold on to myself and not just break off a piece and lick it.
I pretended to look around the room. “You’re here all alone? What, yer mammy lets you go out all by yourself now? I thought she expected you back for dinner.”
Even the wooden harp on the wall held its breath. I could hear the tinkling of glasses but nothing else, as I took a vicious drag on my ciggie and blew the smoke down toward my green painted toenails. He was going to have to fight for this one. And it was only round one.
“I’m not the one you should be angry at,” he said, in that same Obi-Wan Kenobi voice that apparently was his favorite weapon. “I know what your sister is probably saying, but I had nothing to do with any of—”
“Why are you still talking to me?” I asked, looking him dead between his amber magnets, not having to feign wanting to rip his lungs out of that nice body.
“Aoife and me, we slept together, we did,” he said, hands up as if he expected the law to come bursting in. “And I’m not proud of it. It just . . . happened. But when I left her, God strike me dead, she was fine. I swear to you, Róisín, she was waving at me as I rode away.”
I thought of Aoife’s bruises and dead stare and nearly broke my glass to stick it into his face. But I took another breath and manufactured a surprised, perplexed look.
“I . . . listen, my sister sleeps with several people,” I said, “some of them as manky as you, so it’s not really my affair, if—”
And then he touched me.
Saints in heaven, he put his long fingers right on my knee and gave it a gentle squeeze, like I was one of his little girlie conquests who just didn’t know
it yet. Is that how easy it is? I wondered, as I saw him rest his hand there a moment, then pull it away as delicately as it had appeared. Does nobody realize how staged, how completely unreal, he is? Why doesn’t anyone but me see the mirror he hides behind, blowing green smoke into your eyes as you look? It dawned on me that no one but Gatekeeper knew what that even meant.
“I have enough trouble with your aunt knowing what I did,” he said, looking like a schoolboy caught stealing from the church collection to buy chocolate. “And I’m making amends for that. But the rumors bother me more. Would you please tell your sister I’m so sorry?”
“What are you sorry for,” I asked, no longer acting, myself, “if you did nothing wrong?”
“Look, maybe she made up the story because she regretted what happened. And she knew you and Fiona would rush to protect her.”
“You got that right.” I had my hand in the bag and on the handle of that knife, already seeing his limp body in my mind, slumped over the table.
His eyebrows knotted together, and those gorgeous lips curled in what seemed like real mental agony. “So, I was thinking that maybe . . . you and I could meet up before the wedding, just the two of us,” he said. “Maybe you can act as a go-between of sorts between me and Aoife. Now that we’re going to be family and everything. I don’t want anybody to feel hurt.”
I nearly belly-laughed right in his face but held it back at the last moment. Oh, you clever, clever bastard, I thought, as I pretended to frown and think it over like the caring twin sister I was. I also noticed his eyes resting on my chest for just a bit too long before settling again on my face. Just the two of us. Alone. That would mean either my knickers off or a hammer to the skull. Or both, most likely.
I looked up at him and shrugged, making sure to squeeze my breasts by putting both hands between my legs and bringing my shoulders together. Bingo. It was the only place he looked as I appeared to stumble into some kind of gradual understanding of my role as middleman between my sister and her rapist.
“What are you like?” I asked him, because surrendering right away would have made him suspicious. “Why me?” I caught Jonno sending me a look that said, If he tries anything, you give us a wink. Even with the town’s love for this charlatan, Jonno would have killed him for me, and that’s a fact. But I wanted him all to myself.
“I spent some time with Fiona as well, as I’m sure you know,” he said, smiling again, acting ashamed to have slept with every Walsh woman in town, bar one. “She still won’t speak to me. I’m afraid I left her hanging, a bit. But you and I, we have no bad blood between us. Can we meet? Maybe sometime tomorrow afternoon? I’m sure you can tell me a new place I haven’t been yet. I’ll bring some wine. Okay?”
To this day, I’m not sure whether to call it bravery, audacity, or the most brilliant conjurer’s trick I ever saw. Trying to convince your most recent rape victim’s sister of your innocence by asking her out on a date was probably all three, with a cherry on top. And there was only one answer to the question. I even let him have the ghost of a smile as I grabbed my bag and rose to leave.
“You know the beach down by Eyeries?” I asked. I’d heard he’d been there last week with a bunch of the lads from Sacred Heart, holding a fishing competition. Boys had come back with a new hero and their heads filled to the brim with stories. “To the left, there, just before you reach town?”
“I think I can find it, sure.” He even looked relieved I’d said yes. God, I had to admire his technique. Every Susie homemaker would have fallen for that one ten times over.
“Half one, by the old stone pier,” I said, grabbing my pint and finishing it in one swallow. I hoped he didn’t see my hand shaking as I put it down, although he was narcissistic enough to have taken it for anticipation. “And I drink sauvignon blanc. Cold.”
I walked out of McSorley’s without stopping to hear his exit line, but then I didn’t need to. He’d be there, chilled bottle in hand, and a pair of gloves in his back pocket for when the rough stuff began. He’d be there sure as the apple-sized bruise on Aoife’s thigh.
And so would I.
It’s strange, thinking back on it now, but that’s the last time I can recall touching a drop of alcohol. Never tasted right since.
I nearly threw up with adrenaline shock as I rode back up the hill to my sisters, dodging tourists driving on the wrong side of the road. The sound of waves breaking on the cliffs roared in my head as I saw the warm pinpricks of light in the blue darkness up ahead.
“Soon enough,” I said to myself, and stomped harder on the pedals.
WHY DO I hesitate to tell you the rest, I wonder? It’s not out of shame for what we did, nor is it disgust. No, it feels more like disappointment, to be honest. Because I’d plotted it so well. Stayed up all night before to think it through, back to front. I’d lain there, next to my twin sister, holding her hand, feeling her pulse, and seeing Jim in my mind’s eye, smiling for the last time.
But then, things didn’t quite go as planned, did they?
I was early that next day, by at least twenty minutes. And the first thing I saw, rounding a tricky last bend on the beach road, was that shiny red machine, parked on the pier. I cursed under my breath as I steered Aoife’s Mercer through the wet sand, feeling like an eejit for not anticipating that he would beat me to it. Now it would be impossible to set up a proper ambush.
I couldn’t see the bugger anywhere. There was just his lone motorcycle, buffeted by the wind and surrounded by shrieking U-necked herons. It was as if the seanchaí and tormentor of my sister were dead already or, perhaps, had vanished into the forest primeval of his own fairy tales. A cluster of trees overhanging the water’s edge rustled in the wind, and if they’d tried to warn me, they weren’t speaking loudly enough. I’d wished Jim gone and buried so hard I could almost have believed that God finally smiled on righteousness.
“It’s Chablis, I’m afraid. Couldn’t find the other kind,” said his voice close by.
Jim had chosen one of Harold’s white linen jackets for the occasion and an open-necked shirt, as if we were doomed clandestine lovers from a bad aristocratic romance. He sat cross-legged, hidden by a patch of high grass, a Buddha of destruction. I could smell the mango roast chicken before I was even out of the car, and I hated him for being a good cook, too. He’d not only brought along a picnic basket, and spread out a checkered blanket I recognized as my mother’s, but also the good crystal glasses Aunt Moira never used because they cracked too easily. His delicate fingers held out a chilled flute of white wine for me to take.
“How hard did you try?” I asked, walking slowly over to him, deciding on a neutral expression with just the whisper of a smirk. The tiniest hint of an opening for future forgiveness. My dress was even shorter than the night before, and the breeze did its job just fine. He didn’t look at my face as I sat down.
“Ah, now,” he said, shaking his head and sipping the drink himself. “Give the man a chance.”
I reached into the wicker basket and pulled out a wing. I stared at the burnt skin, knowing there was no earthly way I could sit there and pretend to enjoy it. “Aoife,” I said, nibbling at it. “What’s yer grand plan for her? She hasn’t left the house for over a week.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“Oh, that’s brilliant, muppet. Perhaps you can bring her some white wine, too, while yer at it.” My mouth was dry, but I’d be damned if I was going to drink from the same glass as him. “Maybe I can arrange something with Father Malloy. At the church.”
Jim’s face lit up as if I’d suggested unzipping his fly and having at it. “D’you really think you could—”
“Calm down, Billy Shakespeare, I said maybe. But if you think I can perform miracles before you walk my beloved aunt up the aisle? Yer only dreaming. That’s two days.” I looked around and saw nobody watching us but two squirrels. And they didn’t care.
He smiled in a way I cared for not one bit. “Don’t like her much, do ya—Moira?”
&n
bsp; “She’s family.”
“So were the Mansons. Tell me the truth.”
The glass covered everything but his eyes, zooming in on mine all dark and mysterious like. Oh, this tinker was so septic he deserved for me to end it right there. But that wasn’t the plan. “Me and my sisters have always taken care of each other. Okay?”
“You know, I always wondered something about you,” Jim said, using less of his magician’s voice than he had a moment earlier. “Ever since I met you three at McSorley’s that first night. And it still rattles around my head like a pebble I can’t get out.”
“Enough space for it in there, I think.” My voice was steady, but just barely. I glanced over at the Mercer, pretending to brush some hair out of my face. Far away, beyond the trees, there was the sound of another car, idling. For some reason, I didn’t want it to leave, but it soon did. Even the seabirds were gone as I looked back up at him.
“You’re smarter than your sisters,” he said, shaking his head. “By a mile. Isn’t that right? You never put yourself in any kind of vulnerable situation, even with ten pints inside ya.” He finished the wine and smacked his gums. “And yet here you are, the lesbian love of my life, prancing in front of me like a bad porno actress. So here’s my question. What made you wait so long? Why not just stick that boning knife you have in yer bag into my chest last night?”
I couldn’t move. It was time to act, to pounce, and I just watched my hands immobile in my lap, like some drugged-out granny. “Will he kill her or love her?” I said, but so low the sound of the waves crashed over the words.
“What was that?” he asked, pouring himself another glass like a country gent out with his best girl.
“That’s my question for you: kill her or love her? Wasn’t that the choice Prince Euan had to make? And the decision you make every time you pick a flower you like? What was the matter with Julie Ann Holland, bloom off the rose too quick for ya? Or did she just look at yer real face underneath the makeup and see the wolf?”
Darling Jim Page 20