by John Brady
O’Connell Bridge wasn’t crowded. Maybe it was a bit early in the season for the hawkers to be selling their Celtic beadwork and jewellery shite. A lone, middleaged duo dressed in the fawn and khaki colours that Fanning pegged as German was taking pictures. The Liffey was at full tide, and its dull, coral green swill did nothing to awaken the colours about, or the seamless grey sky settled over the city.
He tried to imagine himself in a market, in Morocco say, where these women must have come from. Shadows cut on the high stone walls by a sun in a cloudless sky, stalls, awnings, fruit, coffee and cigarette smoke, and roasting lamb, donkeys waiting in the shadows. A land of simple, harsh choices, stark in its beauty, with burning sands leading south to the empty Sahara. This was where the world outside the city was medieval. Or so he had read in National Geographic probably. At least the tightness in his chest was easing now.
He began to make up a story then. Leaving their country would have changed these women utterly. Then, when they went back to visit, to a cousin’s wedding, say, there’d be the clash with the old world… a marriage arranged by their families, an instruction to come home… a former boyfriend who…?
He took the pencil from the spine of his notebook. Scanning the notes he had from yesterday, he realized that he barely recognized his own writing. Shot: like a door slam? Like heavy books falling on a floor? Blood: lines, gouts? Wet fur, maroon. Smell: B.O., raw meat, cigarettes. Whiskey? Dust, oil? Disinfectant?
A long, deep yawn overtook him, and he gave into it. The tension was ebbing then, and the adrenaline gone. He could almost fall asleep here on the bus. His eyes slid out of focus, and he leaned his head against the window. Outside the glass, Westmoreland Street teemed with traffic and people. Three cranes stood out against the sky of the railings at Trinity College. The bus staggered and braked, wallowed and jerked as the driver fought to get into the lane around College Green. Fanning’s gaze slid over the faces gathered by the bus stops and at the traffic lights. They looked expectant, listless, distracted. He had done this since the time he started university, grabbing images and scenes from the city and dropping them as words in his notebook. Which reminded him.
His fumbled with the notebook and it slid away from him. Dropping everything today, he was. He caught it before it went over the edge of the seat. The sudden movement had caught the eye of one of the three women, the one who sat sideways in her seat, fingering a small earring as she listened to her friends. She seemed so happy, he thought, so at ease with herself. Caramel skin: he must write that down too, caramel. Was caramel from Africa originally?
The closest he had ever gotten to Africa was Spain, that winter with Brid. They taught English in Barcelona before it was a big deal, and then headed for the coast and Majorca — Robert Graves territory. Then in the new year they’d moved to the south of France, and later down to Siena. Returning to plain contradictable Dublin had been a strange pleasure. Unemployment, pasty-faced people, begrudgers and whingers galore, and a shocking lack of colour.
The writing really started after that. Glory years soon followed as Irish film became known. Soon there were film production companies springing up everywhere. Some serious money showed up. The script for Jack of Diamonds took him ten days, and put him in touch with Breen for the first time. He thought of moving to L.A. Brid persuaded him that Ireland was the place to be. She was right, but it became the place to be for financial types and computer scientists — not self-taught scriptwriters.
Things went a bit sideways then, into writing articles on film for a weekend paper. He took it seriously. He wrote about Die Hard and Werner Herzog, Rambo 2 and Bunuel. He and Brid kept at it, Bohemian-style, she teaching English at the institute on Westmoreland Street, he doing his articles and writing on the side. They lived in a flat on the second floor of a house near Beggar’s Bush.
Things had crept up on them somehow. It was a new Dublin, a new Ireland, roaring and heaving all around them. The house they rented was sold, they had to leave. They tried to keep to the city centre but it was hard to find places now. Brid’s friends were starting families. She herself became pregnant when she was studying for her H Dip. She told him only when three months had gone by. He tried to push the gig he had at the paper but he had no leverage. After all, there were plenty of people who could turn a phrase in Dublin. He was glad when his half-hearted plans there came to nothing.
They staggered through six months after Aisling was born until the Blow Up. One night there wasn’t any milk. It had nothing to do with the baby, but it was for a cup of tea and the breakfast in the morning. Hard things were said over a lack of milk. It passed. Things changed a bit. He did some columns for the suburban papers on green spaces and traffic. Brid’s aunt, a Holy Faith nun, got Brid a start at a school the far side of Bray. They needed a car then…
The bus was stopped for more than a minute now. He leaned out into the passageway and saw that traffic as far as the Canal Bridge ahead was stationary. The three women had lapsed into silence, only putting out a word or a phrase occasionally. Those words brought a wry smile, a nod, even a yawn, but seldom replies. They were tired. He imagined them working in restaurant kitchens or McDonald’s, wearily going through the motions, all the while thinking of their village on a stony hillside flattened by the sunlight of North Africa. A bit much, he knew.
But how could they ever make a go of it in Dublin on those wages? Had these women asked to be born poor, to be second-class citizens in some stupid religion they’d probably defend to their dying breaths? To be refugees here, to be homesick, barely getting by? There was no fairness, no justice.
“You don’t get rich from working.”
It was Tony Morrissey who had told him that a few years ago, when he had bumped into him after a film. But then Tony, who had left Political Science in second year and had gone to Economics, climbed into a Beemer — this after nodding and smiling his way through the five-minute walk they shared heading back to Pearse Street. Fanning had thought about that evening a lot afterward, and over time it revealed things to him. Tony and so many more like him were in exactly the right place at the right time. They got on board when the boom started and they surfed it. They seemed to know the ropes, how to get on.
Yes, Tony had said how much he enjoyed reading his reviews, and he had made a little joke too about knowing someone famous like Fanning. Fanning was sure it had been a genuine compliment. If Tony knew how little Mr. Film Reviewer was paid, how precarious this little gig was, how close he was to losing it because he was not twenty-three or twenty-four anymore, how the column only drained him too often of a will to write anything worthwhile. Ideas were nothing. “Creative” meant nothing.
A Garda car went by in a hurry. Fanning thought about getting off and legging it. Forty-five minutes would do it if he moved smartly. But he still felt jaded, spent. He couldn’t decide. He opened his notebook again. The bus began to move.
One of the women had been dozing. Fanning watched her eyelids flutter, and then she frowned. What was it like, he wondered to be shaken awake to find you’re in some strange country? Hardly the promised… That would be the title, and he must write it down: The Promised Land.
She drew her fingers across her eyes, rubbing them slowly. She yawned. Fanning imagined her face on the pillow next to him, her nipples dark against her skin. She let her eyes open slowly. Yes, he said within, you had a dream, but you are still here in this bus, in this strange city.
Her eyes met his. He nodded and made a small smile that he hoped conveyed understanding that she, like he, was tired. Her gaze stayed on him longer than he expected, and it sent a small current around his chest. Maybe she was wondering if she was really awake. Cheer up, he thought. She might have it bad waking up so far from home, but he was continually waking up in this strange place too.
She looked away. The others were craning their necks now to see what the flashing blue lights ahead could mean. Fanning looked down at the car next to the bus. A woman was driving — or rather
not driving: she was on her mobile. In the back seat he saw a child with one of those Nintendos. An ambulance passed on the wrong side of the road.
This Promised Land idea could turn into the kind of thing that Breen expended cliches on: quirky, fresh, heart-felt. There’d be plenty of comedy available in the wings, of course, with Ireland meets the Maghreb. Maybe one of the three would fall for an Irish fella, and the other two would try to persuade her to go back and marry whoever had been picked for her…?
The women were talking again. He stopped writing and looked over. The one who had been dozing was murmuring something to the others. One of the two began to turn her head, but she stopped. When he looked down at the notebook again he was sure that he was now being watched. The dozy one laughed and the others joined her.
Embarrassment flared up in him. So they were amused at him being curious about them. They might even think he was giving them the eye. It was a major crime where they come from, no doubt. He turned back to his notebook and pretended to read what he had written.
One rose slowly and pressed the bell. The others got to their feet then, and followed her to the door. Fanning watched them shifting their grip from the bars overhead to the upright ones by the door, and back. The bus driver braked hard, and the doors hissed open even before the bus came to a full stop. The trio detached themselves from the railings and from one another after their stumbles. One giggled a bit. They stepped gingerly onto the footpath, and then began to walk back alongside the bus. Fanning pretended to be intent on his notebook.
The woman who had been dozing in the bus seemed fresh and energetic now. She cast him a quick glance, a mischievous one, he was certain, in passing. He abandoned his ruse with the notebook, caught her eye and smiled. She tried hard not to laugh outright and skipped ahead followed by the others. Something else began to leak into his thoughts now.
The bus moved off and he turned to look out the back window. They were having a great time of it now, staggering with laughter. They did not bother to hide their glances.
He turned back and closed his notebook. It wasn’t embarrassment now, it was more like a draining feeling.
It was a while before the traffic finally moved again.
Chapter 26
Legal aid was a man in his thirties. He knapsack for a briefcase. Minogue almost heard Kilmartin’s dry, sneering murmur: “Oh, so we’re dealing with one of those, are we now.” The abundance of lustrous, chestnut-coloured hair gathered in his ponytail struck Minogue as an affectation.
“Cormac Mahon,” he said. He seemed to know that handshakes were out of the question.
The Garda who had let Mahon in made sure that Minogue and Wall witnessed his Mona Lisa smile.
“Your client had a cup of tea and a ham roll,” Minogue said. “And a visit to the toilet, into the bargain.”
Mahon unslung his knapsack.
“I’ve been in touch with his parents. His mother is on her way.”
Minogue began to clean up the crumbs from his ham roll. The indigestion was already announcing itself just below his ribs.
“He wasn’t brought for questioning first?”
“No,” said Minogue. He tried not to notice how Mahon flicked his ponytail.
“You went straight for an arrest.”
“Just so.”
“Serious concerns?”
Asked so innocuously, Minogue was nearly caught flat-footed. He decided he had to kick for touch, while he pondered how to deal with any subliminal advantage this ponytail had allowed its owner.
“Ipso facto,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“A sine qua non really,” Minogue added.
“An arrest without a warrant?”
“Yes,” said Minogue, “Section Two.”
“Of the…?”
“Drug Trafficking Act, 1996.”
“The time of arrest?”
“An hour and a half ago.”
“Objections to release?”
“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it, Mr. Mahon. There’ll be other charges in due course.”
“There’s someone else involved?”
“Let’s have a wee chat after you see your client.”
Mahon stopped taking a folder out of his bag to give Minogue a skeptical look.
“I get it,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to sound unhelpful. But we go one step at a time.”
Mahon nodded as if he now understood something vital. He took his jacket off and laid it over the back of the chair.
“Goretex?” Minogue asked.
“I’ll disclose that during our information exchange,” said Mahon.
“Good one. I’m only asking because I’m destroyed half the time with the gorse. Savage growth this year again. It must be global warming.”
“In Wicklow?” Mahon asked.
“ actual fact. I’m nearly ready to stay home.”
Mahon sat down and looked from Minogue to Wall and back.
“What are the other charges you’re considering here?”
“We have several in mind.”
“They would be?”
“Trafficking in drugs. Sexual exploitation.”
“That’s to keep him. What’s the one you want to put on him?”
“I’m thinking Mr. Twomey would have confided that in his phone call?”
Mahon didn’t give any sign he was miffed.
“But in the heel of the reel,” Minogue added then, “it’ll be murder.”
Mahon bit his lip and looked down at his shoes for several moments.
“Well,” he said, “it’ll be a long evening.”
Minogue smiled.
“It doesn’t need to be,” he said.
“You badly want him remanded, don’t you?”
“I certainly do,” said Minogue. “A man was kicked to death. A visitor to our country of Saints and Scholars. Looking for a better life apparently, a wee share of our Irish good fortune.”
“A tragedy,” said Mahon. “You’ll know then that there are plenty of Irish people, people in certain Dublin neighbourhoods especially, looking for the same thing.”
Minogue couldn’t disagree.
“True for you,” he said. “But I don’t see that explaining away a murder.”
“A fairly big leap there,” said Mahon. “From Garda to prosecutor.”
“Drugs involved,” Minogue went on. “Exploitation of a minor: technically rape. Aggravated assault, robbery. Such a person needs to be off the streets.”
There was still no sign of annoyance on Mahon’s face.
“And have you said as much to my soon-to-be client?”
“I have.”
Mahon put his hands on the armrests of the chair.
“All right so,” he said, “I’m going to be working under the assumption that you are serious. These charges you’re telling me you’re going to take to the judge.”
“Why would you imagine that we might not be serious?”
Mahon stood slowly.
“I’d like to know what evidence you have could back up this… barrage of charges. It’s like fishing with sticks of dynamite.”
“A bit early now for seeking disclosure, I’m thinking,” said Minogue.
Mahon shrugged and left.
Minogue watched Wall’s stretch.
“A substantial bee in his bonnet,” said Wall.
“Substantial bonnet.”
“There’s women would kill for a head of hair like that.”
“Figuratively, Kevin. Remember what we’re working at?”
Wall conceded a smile.
“They’re all like that,” he said. “Not the hair. The attitude.”
“Solicitors?”
Wall nodded.
“The law and justice parted company some time back,” he said. ”Don’t mind justice: it’s morality that went south. And here we are, with the results.”
Minogue was a little surprised. He had to make an effort not to parse Wall’s word
s or tone any further into stereotypes.
“As my mother, God rest her, would say, ‘Man proposes, God disposes.’”
The awkward silence lasted several seconds. It ended with Wall clapping his palms on his knees.
“Well I wonder how Mossie’s getting on with the other one,” he said
“Sit in on it, why don’t you,” said Minogue. “I’ll call you, if and when we get our interview with Twomey proper. After he consults with his esteemed counsel.”
Wall closed the door behind him. Alone now, Minogue felt weary. He should be preparing a Charge Sheet to take to the Circuit Court in the morning. He should not care then that Cormac Mahon had tagged him as an overbearing cop, a tough nut trying to browbeat a suspect. He wondered what advice the same Cormac Mahon was giving his new client now. Start preparing alibis? Get off his high horse and realize that the Guards could hang a drug charge on him if that’s what it took to keep him? Ask him straight out if he’d had sex with this kid Tara?
Minogue put his feet up on the table and slid back in the chair until his neck met the top. Against his own grudging efforts, he now let caution to the wind, and fell to imagining that this might be done in a few hours. It’d be up and down the hall between the rooms, playing Matthews off against the Twomey fellow. Then one would run out of nerve. Again he considered putting this Tara kid on the spot. Bring her in this very evening, see if she’d spill the beans now that she’d had a bit of time to see her situation.
But did kids — adolescents — actually feel guilt? The furthest she’d gone was admitting she’d taken Klos’ money. By the time she had conceded this, she’d been almost hyperventilating, beyond hysterics. He’d heard that plaintive wail before, from his own Iseult, at that age. The martyrdom routine: “It’s true, I swear! Why doesn’t anyone believe me?”
Well, then.
All these dramatics had wearied him. The floods of tears and the wrenching sobs had gotten her what she wanted more or less: back into the custody of her parents, and home. He closed his eyes and listened to the faint background hum of the heating. He thought of Kilmartin looking furtively through the Self-Help or New Age shite in the bookshops, fighting off the gloom, waiting for a verdict. Waiting — something that James Aloysious Kilmartin had never been good at.