She returned home and put on the kettle to make herself a cup of coffee. John appeared from the bedroom, bare-chested, scratching and yawning. She put her arms around him and held him close.
‘I love you, you know,’ she told him. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so tied up lately. It won’t always be like this, I promise.’
John stroked her hair. ‘You smell of fresh air,’ he said. ‘You smell of Ireland.’
She looked up at him. ‘Are you still wanting to go back to America?’
He shrugged. ‘Let’s see how the job goes. It wasn’t exactly an ideal first day, but I’m sure I’ll find my feet. You know what it’s like being a newbie. Everybody resents you, especially if you tell them that they’re stuck in the Stone Age.’
‘You didn’t say that, did you?’
‘Not in those words. But I implied it. Because they are.’
‘Oh, John,’ she said, and kissed his chest. She didn’t say, ‘Please make this work, for my sake.’ She knew that it had to work for him, and him alone.
Thirty-five
Almost the whole of the next day was taken up with paperwork. Just before lunchtime, Katie had completed her file on last night’s forcible entry into the house on Lower Glanmire Road, and she took it in to Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy.
He flicked through it, and sniffed, and then he said, ‘I’d also appreciate up-to-date reports on all your ongoing cases.’
‘All of them? Serious? That’s going to take a few days.’
‘The thing of it is, Katie, I need to know that our manpower and our finances are being deployed in the most efficient way possible. I’ve already started to go through Dermot O’Driscoll’s files and I’m sorry to say that I’m less than impressed. Far too much wastage and inefficiency. I need to assess which current cases of yours are worth pursuing and which ones we could drop. There’s a few that I’ve earmarked already.’
‘For instance?’ asked Katie.
‘Take this Mayfield Lodge Care Home case. It’s not worth going after a care home for mistreating old folk if those old folk have all passed away and can’t testify against them. The owners have promised to make improvements, so there’s no real point in prosecuting them. Or this alleged bribery by Finbar Construction. It’s a waste of resources to chase a council planning officer for accepting a sweetener from a developer if the development has turned out to everybody’s satisfaction. Society has a way of curing its own ills, Katie. People are prepared to mend their ways if you point out to them what they’ve done wrong. It’s not up to us to be too punctilious.’
‘If society can cure its own ills, Bryan, that pretty much makes us redundant. We might as well pack it in and go home.’
Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy looked up at her with his eyes bulging. ‘Was that supposed to be humorous?’ he said. ‘It’s a truism, isn’t it, that women don’t know how to be funny?’
‘It wasn’t supposed to be humorous, no. But I can tell you a joke if you want me to.’
‘I don’t need any more jokes from you, Katie. The way you’ve been handling these Angel homicides is already a joke. I admit you saved us some media embarrassment by not shooting your suspect when she threatened to kill herself, but you should have shot her the second you saw that she was armed. You said, “Drop it,” didn’t you? When she didn’t, you should have instantly taken her out, blam, end of story. Then nobody could have complained.’
He picked up the file that she had just put down on his desk, and then dropped it again.
‘From what Sergeant Mulligan’s told me, you made a right bags of last night, too. Before you go smashing people’s doors down looking for suspects, it’s always worth checking that your suspect is actually inside.’
Katie kept her eyes on his forehead so that she wouldn’t have to look into his eyes. ‘There was every likelihood that she was there, and we had no other way of telling for sure. Besides, she’s armed and dangerous, and when a suspect is armed and dangerous you don’t go politely ringing the front doorbell and asking if they’re home.’
‘All right, let’s leave it like that for now,’ said Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy. ‘Let me have those case updates by Thursday.’
‘I’ll do my best, sir, so long as nothing more important comes up.’
Katie could see that she had irritated him by calling him ‘sir’, but he let it go. She was quite aware, however, that he wouldn’t forget it. He was notorious for bearing grudges, sometimes for years, and she had already annoyed him, on a daily basis, just by being a woman.
Detective Dooley came into the station in mid-afternoon, with his left ankle in plaster and on crutches. Katie gave him a hard time for not informing her immediately what had happened to him when he had fallen off the gate, but then she set him to work preparing reports on all of their current cases.
‘In that shape you can’t go running after bank robbers,’ she told him, dropping a stack of files in front of him. ‘So, here – you might as well make yourself useful.’
Detective Dooley looked at the files and his shoulders sagged.
Just before 5 p.m., John texted her and said, ‘Will u b l8 2nite?’
‘Don’t think so,’ she texted back. ‘All quiet so far.’
‘Gd,’ he replied. ‘We need 2 talk.’
She knew what he was going to say. She had expected it ever since she had let it slip that she had only managed to set up his interview with ErinChem because Aidan Tierney owed her a personal favour. Even if the job had gone well from day one and Alan McLennon had thought his proposal was the berries, John was too proud and too independent to have accepted that he hadn’t been offered the position on his own merits. He had left the family farm to go to America and started his dot.com pharmaceutical business because he had been too proud and too independent to work for his father, so what could she expect from him?
As she drove home, though, she had a feeling that was close to being grief.
It was still warm and sunny, so they sat in the back garden with a drink while Barney sat close to Katie’s chair with his tongue hanging out, panting.
John said, ‘I know I haven’t really given ErinChem much of a chance. The position is perfect for me, and all of ErinChem’s products are excellent. But I know that it’s not going to work out.’
‘You said that they’re backward when it comes to their marketing strategy,’ said Katie. ‘But surely you can modernize their thinking, can’t you, given time? Can’t you give it just a month or two? Then, if you’re still not happy, we can put our heads together and think of something else you can do. Tyco are going to be starting up again in Cork, maybe you could work for them. Or maybe you could set up on your own, like you did in San Francisco.’
John leaned forward so that his basketwork chair creaked and held her hand. She was still wearing the emerald-set ring that he had bought her to celebrate his decision to stay in Ireland. ‘Katie, I’m in love with you, darling, and I know you can’t leave your job. But the problem isn’t with ErinChem. It’s with me.’
‘You feel belittled because I called in a favour to get you the interview.’
‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘It’s much more profound than that.’
‘It’s us? There’s something wrong with our relationship? I’m never at home, is that it? You know that I have to work unpredictable hours.’
‘It’s not that, either, although of course I’d like to see much more of you. It’s not you, darling. It’s Ireland.’
‘I don’t understand. What do you mean, it’s Ireland? You’re Irish. You were born here. This is your home.’
John shook his head. ‘Once you leave Ireland and make a life for yourself someplace else you always fondly think that you can come back. You remember your pals, and the craic, and the pubs. You can almost smell that damp peaty smell, even when you’re thousands of miles away.
‘But what I’ve found out is, Katie, that you can’t go back. Once you’ve left, you’ve left, and no matter how no
stalgic you feel, it can never be the same again. I feel like I’ve come back to the house that I grew up in, but I’ve got my nose pressed against the window and I can see all of my family and my old friends inside, laughing and dancing and having a good time, but I can never go back in to join them.’
Katie blinked, because she didn’t want John to see that she was close to crying. ‘So what are you saying?’ she asked him. ‘You want to go back to America?’
‘I don’t even think that it’s a question of wanting to. I have to. That’s where my future is. I just can’t stay here, in my past.’
Katie said nothing for a long time, her head bowed, staring down at the orange brick paving with the groundsel growing up between the cracks and listening intently to the bees that swarmed around the buddleia, and Barney’s endless panting. High above her a plane was scratching its way across the sky. Perhaps by saying nothing and concentrating on the ordinary world around her she could make time come to a stop. But she had known from the beginning that it would come to this. She had never wanted to face it, but now the day had arrived.
At last, still holding his hand, she said, ‘I’ve turned this over in my mind so often. Over and over and over.’ She didn’t look at him. She didn’t want to see those agate-brown eyes.
‘And?’
‘And you know what the answer is, John. I can’t leave any more than you can stay.’
‘What if I begged you?’
‘Don’t beg me. Don’t ever beg me to do anything. You’re too proud a man for that.’
‘What if I asked you to marry me?’
She couldn’t answer. Her mouth puckered and the tears started to run down her cheeks. He stood up and tried to take hold of her, but she flapped her hands and waved him away. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Just don’t.’
‘Katie, the last thing in the whole world I want to do is hurt you.’
‘You can’t help it,’ she said. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s life. It’s what life does to us.’
She stood up and went into the kitchen, tearing off a sheet of paper towel to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. John followed her and laid his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t push it off, but she didn’t turn round, either.
‘Look,’ said John, ‘I’ll stay at ErinChem a while longer. You’re right. I haven’t even given it a chance. Maybe I was a little sore about your fixing it up for me.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You know what you have to do. I shouldn’t have tried to make you stay here in Ireland. I was being selfish.’
John put his arms around her and held her close. He kissed the crown of her hair and said, ‘I love you, Katie. I adore you. I will never find anybody else like you, ever.’
‘Yes, you will. And you’ll marry her and have fifty-five kids and you’ll live happily ever after.’
It was then that John started to cry too. ‘Oh, shit, Katie. What am I going to do?’
Katie tore off another sheet of paper towel and dabbed his eyes. ‘You’re going to go, John. You know you are. Like you said, you have to.’
She smiled at him, and gently touched his cheek. ‘It’s going to hurt, boy,’ she said in her strongest Southside accent. ‘But only for a while.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, trying to get his breath back.
‘Listen,’ she told him, ‘I think I’ll go over and see my father for a bit. I won’t be too long, only a couple of hours. The last ferry’s at ten o’clock anyhow.’
‘Okay,’ said John. ‘Maybe that’s a good idea. I’ll see you when you get back.’
She kissed him, and then she kissed him again. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to be with you,’ she said, very softly, her face so close that she couldn’t even focus on him. ‘It’s just that if I stay here, I’ll have to be brave.’
Thirty-six
She took the car ferry from Carrigaloe Pier across the river to Glenbrook. The crossing took only four minutes and it saved a circuitous half-hour drive on the N25 and N29. She stood by the railing with her face turned towards the setting sun and her eyes closed. In fact, she was praying. Oh dear God, why are you doing this to me?
She had called her father in advance to let him know that she was coming. As soon as she turned into his driveway and parked behind his old brown Volvo estate, he opened up the front door and waved. She climbed the front steps and gave him a hug. He was looking so much better since he had announced that he and Ailish were going to be married. His eyes looked brighter and he seemed to be standing up straighter, as if the pain that he had felt after the death of Katie’s mother was easing at last.
Ailish appeared from the kitchen and hugged her, too. She was wearing a splashy summer dress in yellows and reds and a necklace of giant red beads.
‘Well, to what do we owe the pleasure?’ said Katie’s father. ‘We only just saw you on Sunday. This is an honour!’
‘Have you eaten, Katie?’ asked Ailish.
‘No, I haven’t yet. It’s been one of those days – as if every day isn’t one of those days.’
‘I should have brought that lamb stew I made this morning,’ said Ailish. ‘I was going to freeze it for the weekend so I left it cooling off at home. I only live two minutes away and it wouldn’t take long to heat up.’
‘That’s a great idea,’ said Katie’s father. ‘Why don’t you nip back home and fetch it? I think I could do considerable justice to a bowl of lamb stew. How about you, Katie?’
‘I’m not all that hungry, Da, to tell you the truth.’
‘Oh, you wait till you smell it! Here, Ailish, here’s my car keys.’
Katie said, ‘Really, Ailish, you needn’t trouble yourself. I wasn’t going to eat tonight anyway.’
‘Oh, behave!’ said Katie’s father. ‘There’s nobody comes round to my house now without being fed. Ailish has made sure of that, haven’t you, darling? You should taste her sausage coddle!’
‘All right,’ said Katie. ‘But look, why don’t you take my car? It’ll save me having to move it.’
She opened her bag and handed Ailish her keys. Ailish said, ‘You’re sure?’
‘Of course. It belongs to the Garda and it’s fully insured for anybody to drive it.’
Ailish said, ‘All right, then, thanks. I won’t be long!’
When she had left, Katie and her father went into the living room.
‘Drink?’ asked Katie’s father.
‘I wouldn’t say no to a glass of red wine if you have one.’
He stopped and frowned at her. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her.
‘What do you mean, “What’s wrong?” Nothing’s wrong.’
‘You don’t normally come across to see me on the spur of the moment like this.’
‘Oh, I can’t pay a visit to my own father without something being wrong?’
He came up to her and laid his hand on her arm. ‘You’re upset about something,’ he said.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because I used to be a detective inspector, that’s what, and I can read people’s body language. You’re tense, you’re fidgety, and you’re dying to tell me something but at the same time you’re not at all sure that you want to because if you do you’ll burst into tears.’
Katie said, ‘I’m not going to cry, Da. Crying isn’t going to change anything.’
‘It’s your John, isn’t it?’ he asked her.
‘Yes.’
He nodded and said, ‘I thought so. I could tell that, when you came round on Sunday. He kept saying how happy he was, but I could sense that he was very stressed. I mentioned it to Ailish afterwards.’
‘He wants to go back to America. He says he’ll never settle here. He wants me to go with him. He even asked me to marry him.’
‘So why don’t you?’
Katie sat down. ‘Come on, Da, we’ve been through this before. There’s something in life called a sense of duty and unfortunately I’ve been born with it. I probably inherited it from you.’
Katie’s father looked at
her sadly. ‘There’s something in this life called happiness, too, but not many of us get to enjoy it. I was lucky enough to find great happiness with your mother, and I’ve been extra lucky a second time to find it with Ailish. You should grab it while you have the chance.’
‘How about that glass of wine?’
Katie and her father had been sitting and talking together for nearly half an hour before Katie glanced up at the clock on the mantelpiece and said, ‘Ailish is taking her time.’
‘I think her daughter’s staying with her at the moment. They probably got chatting.’
‘How old is her daughter?’
‘Thirty-one. And she’s a big girl, too. Not surprising, with Ailish for a mother. That woman never stops putting food in front of you.’
‘Well, you be careful. I don’t want a fatso for a father.’
Another ten minutes went past but there was still no sign of Ailish. Katie’s father said, ‘I hope she hasn’t had a puncture. That hill where she lives is absolutely riddled with potholes.’
‘Give her a call on her mobile,’ said Katie.
Her father picked up his iPhone and touched Ailish’s number, but immediately they heard a ringtone in the kitchen. Next he tried her home number, twice, but nobody answered.
‘So where the devil has she got to?’ he demanded. ‘It’s only a minute there and a minute back. I think I’d best go look for her.’
‘Why don’t I go?’ said Katie. ‘It’s beginning to get dark now and you know what your eyesight is like.’
Katie’s father took his car keys from the table in the hallway and gave them to her. ‘Give me a call if she’s had a flat tyre or something else is holding her up.’
‘Of course, Da.’
She climbed into her father’s Volvo estate and gave him a wave as she backed out of the driveway. The sun had gone down behind the houses now and the sky was damson-coloured. Katie couldn’t help hearing John’s words in her head. ‘It’s not you, darling. It’s Ireland.’
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