by John Brady
“So you told the Guard, did you, Joe?”
What was she on about now?
“Yes, I did.”
Modern medicine, of course. They could do anything nowadays. Maybe it had been psychological. But why was it that men could go at it all the way up until they were ninety? Even thinking about it still got him going. Did Mary notice? What the hell was Timmy nosing around there in the reeds? He pulled hard; the dog yelped. Dirty? No. That’s what was so wrong. The church. You couldn’t enjoy yourself without thinking you’d go to hell for it. All that was changing, of course. A bit bloody late for him though, wasn’t it?
“The night it happened, I meant, Joe.”
They were out from under the trees now. The sun felt like hot liquid on his head. He looked at the rows of windows on the new offices. Mirrors. The buildings reminded him of blind people but he didn’t know why.
“What are you on about?”
“Oh, all right then, leave it. You’re too annoyed, I can tell.”
“Leave what, for the love of God?”
She tightened her grip and looked up into his eyes. It was something she’d always done when the going got rough. He used to think it was a move she’d seen in a film, that she wanted to be cuddled or something. It was her way of getting her way, he had learned.
“The oul hip might be shook, Joe, but the head is still working.”
“Well, maybe it is, but it’s certainly coming out with queer things, let me tell you.”
“Where else would you take the dog? I mean to say, where else would you go?”
“What are you saying?”
“I know you go out later on, Joe. Sometimes, I mean. After I’m gone to bed, like.”
He let his eyes wander from hers across the water to the reeds. The plastic bags caught there looked full. A black rubbish bag looked like the coat on someone floating in the water.
“It’s just that I was thinking of the girl, Joe.”
She’d known all along? She pulled at his arm. He turned to her.
“I don’t care, Joe! I know you’re a good man and all. Don’t get me wrong.”
“My God! What are you saying? What are you thinking?”
“Ah, there you go. You can’t listen.”
“Listen to what? You’re telling me I go down here every night looking at them?”
She shook his arm.
“I did not. All I’m saying is that she was a girl and-”
“I’ll tell you what she was, if you really want to know! A brasser, that’s what she was!”
A pained expression crossed her face. She spoke in a murmur now.
“She has a mother and father, Joe. My God, I have to sit down again. I’m locking up.”
The anger fled from around his heart. He helped her into a seat. The drill resumed its clatter. They watched the traffic on the far side of the canal. Even the dog seemed to get the message. He sat down and looked up at him. Didn’t want to move, that was odd for Timmy. He patted him on the head, lingered and began rubbing under his jaw. Timmy began to pant.
“Look,” she said as the drill fell silent again. The swans had landed up near Baggot Street bridge. They were keeping to the middle of the canal.
“That’s what I thought it was at first, you know.”
“What, Joe?”
He folded his arms.
“Well, they ought to do something with the bloody lights, shouldn’t they? If they were really going to get serious with what goes on around here. I mean there are parts of the bloody canal where it’s nearly pitch-black.”
“Up near the bridge there?”
“And down by the railings too. It’s only common sense! If they’re broken, fix them.”
“But the young lads are always fecking stones up at the lights and breaking them, Joe.”
He looked up beyond the swans at a double decker bus going over the bridge. He couldn’t read the ad on the side of the bus. The eyes definitely weren’t this poor last year. A wave of despair washed over him. Soon the strength would be gone from his arms even. He’d end up hobbling around like Mary or something.
“By the bridge, was it, Joe?”
“A white thing,” he murmured. “I only seen it for a moment. Moving.”
“What was it, Joe? The white thing.”
“My God, I don’t know! It could have been anything.”
He pointed at a passing van.
“Sure, I have trouble reading that. That’s the way the eyes have gone with me, for God’s sake. What could I tell a Guard about anything I might’ve seen with them eyes?”
Mary Byrne said nothing.
“Look,” he said. “When’s the last time you were down there on the bank, by the railings there? You can’t see a bloody thing! I thought to meself, well, maybe it’s a swan taking shelter there or something-God, I don’t know!”
“But they never stay, Joe, they never sleep on the canal. Not any more.”
“I know, I know. You know how they used to stay the nights years ago, how they’d sleep with their heads in under their feathers. Like they were hiding their faces. Ashamed of something, you used to say. Remember? Then I think to meself, maybe it’s a ball belonging to a child. Then I hear language. Oh, language like you wouldn’t hear outside of a jail or something. It was a woman’s voice too. So take a guess at what she was up to, like, what her line of business was, I says to myself. Do you think I was going to go back and get right down there to see if I knew her maybe? Not on your life!”
“How long was that going on?”
“Do you mean how long was I standing there listening? What do you think I am?”
She sighed and rubbed at the back of her hand.
“Sure where would you start telling them stuff, Mary? If we told them everything we saw down here over the years, sure we’d be there talking to them all day and all night. I know what I should be telling them, and that’s the class of person what comes down here-I mean the clients, the ones who come by here. Married men and all, business types. Fancy cars.”
He sat forward on the bench.
“Should I be telling them about the fancy cars that I see here? Didn’t a Mercedes go up and down here the other night, didn’t I point it out to you? Going up and down there? The type of creature what comes by here isn’t just your average chancer.”
She frowned.
“I don’t remember you saying that to me, Joe.”
“Ah, sure! You and cars, Mary. What am I starting here…”
“Maybe you saw it the other night.”
A retort was on his lips but it didn’t come out. She was right. Surely to God, the memory wasn’t going on him. It was her getting up his back, confusing him, caused that slip.
“I think it’d do no harm,” she murmured.
“For God’s sake, Mary! Sure it’s only trouble. They’d twist things around. ‘How long were you there now, Mr. Byrne,’ and ‘What were you doing there anyway, Mr. Byrne.’ They could make anything out of it. Anything! Put you under pressure and you wouldn’t know what you’d be saying.”
The swans were drifting their way now. He looked down at his wife again. Her lips were set in a tight line, her eyes on something far off. Her lips hardly moved.
“They’re not going to think you’re a… you know, Joe.”
He glared at her now but she wouldn’t look back. She leaned forward. Her eyes were on the swans now, he saw. He wanted to tell her a thing or two, so he did. But why keep this bloody conversation going? It’d only give her ideas. Her voice was gone soft now.
“Look, Joey, here they come.”
Even with drops of sweat rolling down his spine he felt cold. His ear hurt from pushing the phone against it.
“Ma! I swear to God! You know me, Ma! Come on now.”
His mother interrupted again. He began rapping his knuckles against the doors of the telephone booth. He stopped listening to her and studied the faces of the passers-by. He got his chance when he heard her sob.
“I can prove it to you, Ma!” he broke in. “Just give me the chance! Honest! It’s just a big screw-up! Someone thinks that I-ah, it’s too complicated. It’s probably someone has it in for me, telling lies or something. I don’t know-”
She interrupted again. He tapped his knuckles harder on the Perspex to stop from shouting at her to shut up and just fucking listen. No one wanted to listen.
“No, I won’t, Ma. Are you joking? Go to the fu-to the cops! Sorry. I mean, what have I done? Nothing! You know them, though, they’ll never believe the likes of me. What if the lads get to hear I talked to the cops. You know what that’d look like? Which? The lads? Come on, you know who I’m talking about. The cops’d never take my word for anything.”
He listened again. She needed to get over this part, he knew, to get really worried about him. A shadow fell across the dusty Perspex panels of the booth. He started and squinted into the glare. It was nobody he knew.
“Please, Ma! All I’m asking you is to take the stuff with you going to work. Just throw it all in a plastic bag. The chalk, the rolls of paper… What? All right, two bags. Yeah! I need some clothes. Just a change, like. It’s only for a couple of days. Aw, Jesus, Ma! Please! Don’t ask me again. I’ll tell you when it’s over. You wouldn’t understand it. It’s so stupid anyway.”
She told him again about the Guards calling to the house looking for him. Couldn’t she cop on that his only chance was to keep away from the bloody house until this mess got sorted out?
“Look, Ma! Ma! Listen! Will you listen for a change, Ma? Okay, look. I’m totally innocent. No. Yes. Totally. I’m not mixed up in anything. Listen, I’m going to do a job search. Really. And while I’m waiting, I’m going to do the pictures again. Remember the summer when I was pulling in fifty quid a day when I had the stuff up by the Green? The Madonna? Yeah, that’s your favourite. See? I remember, Ma. You always liked that one, didn’t you, Ma?”
That set her crying again. He wanted to scream at her. He bit his lip. Christ, he was the one in a jam and here he was trying to calm her down.
“Show a little bit of faith in me, Ma. Please! You know I have the talent. I’ve let you down, I know. But I’m going to stay at a mate’s house for a while until this gets sorted out. No, I can’t tell you! I really want to get back to the art and everything. So will you bring the stuff around, will you?”
She had stopped crying. He heard her rubbing a hanky against her nose.
“Ace, Ma! Make sure no one’s, you know, following you. And leave it in the lane-way right next to a pile of stuff. Yeah, I want to suss out the place. There’s a whole load of black rubbish bags out there. Just drop the stuff in behind them.”
He placed the receiver back on the hook. The sweat was just pouring out of him. He felt proud that he hadn’t asked her for money. He had standards. He could have phoned his sisters but all he would have gotten from them would be lectures. It didn’t matter now. He could handle this on his own. But maybe he should have asked the Ma anyway? No way. She only made a hundred and twenty or so in the restaurant kitchen.
He slapped the door open and headed down toward Capel Street, moving fast. The fear had woken up something in him. He wasn’t hungry; his senses were sharp. He still felt that quivery pressure in his chest, but he knew that something had left him too. The streets were crowded but he moved nimbly, his eyes on everything. He watched for fellas standing around streetcorners. He’d always been a good runner. Brennan, the teacher that had started him on it all those years ago, had told him that he had the ability. What did he call it? Raw talent, yeah. He went through names as he walked, wondering who he could lean on for a couple of nights. Only Jammy Tierney had stood by him, sort of: until today.
He stayed close to the edge of the footpath and kept looking to his sides. He went through the names again and that sinking feeling got worse. The money that Jammy’d given him could get him a few nights in a bed and breakfast. If he scored a few hits… Forget it. A Garda car sped through the lights at Capel Street. Mary was dead. Dead. The shock came to him as dizziness now, disbelief. He looked around at the shops, the traffic, the hordes of people. The sky was yellow, not blue. He ran his fingers through his hair. Greasy, sweating. Maybe this isn’t happening. Maybe this was some kind of a bleeding dream.
The woman slid the mug of coffee across the table toward Sister Joe and folded her arms. High up by the sleeve of her t-shirt, Minogue spotted part of a tattoo. She was gone forty and had dyed her hair. Her stare told Minogue that traffic with Garda officers was not something she liked. He gave himself odds of five-to-one-on as regards her former vocation. She was studying Malone.
“I know you from somewhere,” she said to him. “Seen you before, so I did.”
Malone poked at the salt and pepper containers.
“Thanks, ’Vonne,” said Sister Joe. “Look after yourself.”
The woman broke her stare on Malone and turned on her heel.
“Thanks for taking the time, er, Sister,” said the Inspector. “I hope we didn’t…?”
“Joe will do fine. It’s all right.”
Sister Josephine Whelan tore the sachet of sugar.
“Theresa is going to live. She overdosed. There seems to be a more potent form of heroin coming into Dublin this last few months. She was lucky.”
“I, em, hope…”
Minogue couldn’t find the words. She looked up from her cup at him.
“It’s as well we didn’t meet back at the centre anyway. Girls won’t come in if there are Guards there, will they now? Even if they are from Clare.”
“Ah, go on with you. Are you…?”
A smile flickered about her face.
“Kilbaha,” she said. “Via London for eleven years. The Irish emigrant community.”
Sister Josephine Whelan had the complexion of a waxed Macintosh apple. Her blue eyes became points when she wished to communicate without words. Forty-odd, Minogue decided-young as nuns go-and she had a stiff, assured abandon about her. Did she argue with God, he wondered while he took in her spare and well-considered words, and upbraid Him for leaving his flock to spawn those who hunted and destroyed others? Had it been Kilmartin grumbling that nuns had gone very militant this last while? Sister Joe’s accuracy and slow production of words had made the Inspector cautious. He expected pointed words from her about Guards before they parted.
“Now,” she said. “Tell me what happened to Mary.”
Minogue took his time. He was distracted by the stares of the group of women sitting at a table at the far wall of the restaurant where Yvonne had moved to.
“So that’s as far as we are now. Have I forgotten anything there, Tommy?”
Malone shook his head. A waitress began removing plates from the next table. Sister Joe pushed her glasses against the bridge of her nose.
“She had not been raped,” she said.
“No.”
“But she had been pregnant.”
Pregnant: in a nun’s vocabulary? He could tilt at Kilmartin with this later on.
“Yes. We’re taking it into account here. Motives, pressure, expectations. Anger.”
She cocked her head as though listening to another conversation. Her glasses reflected the skylight.
“Your Garda Doyle can tell you more than I can,” she said. “Mary came by twice as I recall since the centre opened. She pretended she was inquiring for a pal.”
“Two years ago, you said?”
“About that. Yes. Then she was gone.”
Sister Joe sat back and looked high up on the walls of the restaurant.
“God look down on her and her poor family. You’ll find her boyfriend then?”
“We don’t have a clear view of her companions. We have a high priority on a fella called Liam Hickey, nickname Leonardo. He has a criminal record. He’s gone on the run.”
Sister Joe nodded. “I’ll bear that name in mind then.”
“It’s possible that Mary was in the life all along, er, Joe. Since you last sa
w her, like.”
“On the game, you mean?”
“Indeed. We’re not able to locate her very well that night. Or where she spent her time outside her flat. She had a part-time job up until several weeks ago. She seems not to have taken it very seriously. I think the job was a prop.”
“Her job didn’t support her, you’re saying.”
Minogue nodded.
“Girls sell themselves and hold down jobs too,” she said. “Married women even.”
“Mary had some connection with a gang called the Egans.”
“Ah.” Her gaze moved down the wall and arrived over to meet his.
“Yes, indeed,” she murmured. “I know nothing of them beyond their reputation.”
She looked down at her cup and closed her eyes. Was she ill, Minogue wondered.
“Are you all right there now, Joe?”
She opened her eyes, smiled and sat up and looked around the restaurant.
“I was just using Bewleys as a church there for a moment. I came up here to Dublin to do social work, you know. I used to come in here every Saturday morning for a cup of coffee. It was my reward for surviving the week. I read up on the history of the Bewleys.”
“Quakers, were they not,” said Minogue.