by Nicola White
‘You’re going back already? We’re your family too.’
‘I can’t go on living off your mother.’
‘I do.’
Davy laughed and poured himself another drink, pointed the bottle at her. Ali put her hand over the top of her glass.
‘Thanks, but it’s disgusting.’
‘Two ninety-nine: it should be disgusting.’ He hit his glass against hers forcefully, a dull thunk. ‘Brendan’s got this business thing’ – Davy spun a hand in the air, looking for words – ‘gaming machines in pubs. He needs a hand. He’ll pay.’
She watched his hand come to rest on the table and thought about touching it.
‘Can I come with you?’
‘Don’t know if you’re strong enough; those machines are bloody heavy.’
‘Seriously. I’d like to get away from Dublin, Davy, far away from Mary O’Shea.’
‘I wouldn’t run away from her.’ He leered over the rim of his glass.
‘Shut up. Will you ask Una if I can come and stay?’
‘No need to ask, sure. Her darling niece. You haven’t visited them in years …’
She swirled the last of her whiskey and water round the glass. ‘I was talking to Ma just now about the time we stayed with you, you know.’
Davy frowned into the depths of his drink.
‘Do you remember, Davy?’
When he looked up, his eyes swam with the effort of focusing. Ali left him at the table, kissing the top of his head as she passed and making him promise to go to bed soon.
At the sink in her bedroom she held on to the edge while waiting for the water to run hot. It didn’t. She turned it off and went to bed with her make-up on.
10
The cat would be raging – it was way past his usual breakfast time. Swan shoved his newspaper and packet of rashers under one arm while he struggled with the front-door mortise lock. It took him a moment to realise it was already unlocked, that’s why he couldn’t turn the key. He slipped the Yale into the lock above, clicking the door open easily.
Benny was sitting in the middle of the hall, licking himself, a back paw sticking up over his shoulder like a Nazi salute. He’d obviously had his breakfast and was onto the next task of the day. Beside him was Elizabeth’s small blue case. The smell of coffee beckoned from the kitchen.
‘Vincent?’
His wife didn’t sound worried or annoyed, just calmly checking that it was her husband rather than a key-toting stranger. She was sitting at the kitchen table, the garden a blaze of greens behind her.
‘I stayed at my mother’s,’ he said. ‘She needed the bit of company. When did you get back?’
‘Aunt Bridie was driving up early to the sales. She dropped me off half an hour ago.’
‘You should’ve phoned.’
Elizabeth shrugged. Swan placed the paper in front of her, put the bacon in the fridge and helped himself to coffee from the pot on the table.
‘How’s Aunt Josie?’
‘Oh, you know … up and down.’ Elizabeth was scanning the front of the paper, didn’t look at him as she spoke. ‘How are things with you?’
‘I guess “up and down” would cover it,’ said Swan.
They never talked much about his work – a rule she instituted early in their marriage that he had grown to see the wisdom of. She was wearing a pale-lilac jumper he couldn’t recall having seen before.
Not for the first time, he wondered whether there was a secret part to her life. He had absolutely no reason to doubt her. Elizabeth had always been close to her posse of Enniscorthy aunts. As they entered their fragile years, frequent health crises naturally pulled their only young relation back to them. But it was hard to judge the urgency of their calls, why they needed her to stay so often.
‘It isn’t as though I’ve much to do here,’ Elizabeth had said as she packed. Her voice was apologetic, but somewhere in that statement another intention lurked – something dark and pointed.
‘That film you wanted to see is on at the Carlton,’ she said now, ‘the one with the gangsters.’
‘I have to go into work for a while – but I should be free in the evening.’
She took her eyes from the paper and studied him. ‘They should give you a proper weekend. You look tired.’
‘It’s been busy.’
The light shifted in her eyes. ‘It’s not the baby case, is it? Oh, Vincent …’
This was why it was better not to tell her things. Especially on this case. Now she was upsetting herself. Oh, Vincent … like he’d brought the corpse home in his briefcase.
‘I think we should look at the garden after coffee – talk about that arch-thing you said you wanted.’
Elizabeth produced a patient sigh. ‘If you like.’
Swan was changing into his work clothes when the doorbell rang. Elizabeth went to answer it and he heard a woman’s voice in the hall. By the time he got downstairs, Gina Considine was sitting at his kitchen table and Elizabeth was asking if she wanted tea or coffee.
Considine was only a bit younger than his wife, but they made such a contrasting pair that he felt like he was looking at women from different eras: Elizabeth subtle and airy in her pale clothes, a vase of garden flowers beside her; Considine with angled cuts in her black hair, shiny leather boots, jacket belted tight against all-comers.
They hardly acknowledged his arrival, caught up in beverage choices and niceties. They’d met before, in passing. Considine often picked him up from the house, but Elizabeth had never asked her in before.
‘So where are you living now, Gina?’
The mug that Elizabeth put in front of Considine was sprigged with little pink roses.
‘I’m in a flat in Rathgar. Managed to get on the property ladder at last.’
‘Not Rathmines?’ asked Swan, surprised.
‘That was before,’ said Considine, taking a quick sip of her tea.
‘Are you on your own there?’
‘Elizabeth …’
‘We’re just having a chat. Stop being so uptight.’
Considine’s eyes darted between them. ‘It’s fine. I don’t mind. I … I live with a friend. Probably couldn’t afford it otherwise.’ She fiddled with her watch and stood up. ‘Hey-ho.’
‘Do you have to rush off?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘Why don’t I meet you in the car?’ said Swan.
‘Thanks for the tea – it was lovely.’
Considine hurried away. Elizabeth raised an eyebrow as the front door closed. Swan walked across the kitchen to her, drew her close.
‘Stop it, nosy.’ He kissed her neck.
Swan apologised to Considine as he got into the car. ‘My wife can be overly curious.’
‘I don’t mind at all. Your house is very nice.’
‘Thanks, but we don’t usually do the personal thing, do we?’
‘No, we don’t.’
‘I’m glad to hear about your flat. Is it a new-build?’
‘Shall I tell you about my trip to Clare or not?’
Swan laughed. ‘Carry on.’
‘Buleen’s a cute little town, I suppose. The Garda station’s about the size of your kitchen, and the Garda I met had been posted there for decades, which was really helpful. He brought me to see a doctor who knows the family, and the doctor recalled being asked to their house on Christmas Day in 1972. He says the baby was stillborn.’
‘The doctor saw it?’
‘I think so. He definitely said he examined the mother. She wasn’t a member of the Devane family – that’s their name – she was a girl who cooked and cleaned for them. Joan Dempsey was her name, but I’ve written it all up for you. It’s on your desk.’
‘How did our girl come to find the baby?’
‘He couldn’t tell me anything about that. I think he was called in afterwards.’
‘Did you talk to the family or the mother?’
‘I didn’t have that much time. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. If it’s worth
looking at, we’d need to do a proper investigation. Can I give you a lift into the office?’
‘Seeing as I’m in your car.’
Considine drove fast through the dawdling weekend traffic, nipping into gaps, her hand always on the gearstick.
‘Barrett said you got the post-mortem results yesterday,’ she said.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘He said he didn’t have time to tell me about them.’
‘He’s a cocky one. There were no huge surprises. Cause of death was the severing of the spinal cord from a single blow to the nape. The bruising on the back was also caused by trauma from some kind of blunt weapon – a bar or heavy stick. The skin was broken in places.’
She was silent for the rest of the journey. Swan knew they were both doing the same thing: playing out scenes of violence in their heads, imaginations reaching into the dark for actions that could fit the consequences.
11
Ali watched Davy sleep, his cheek vibrating against the train window, his skin the colour of lard. She ate crisps and drank tea from a plastic cup, gazing idly at the hedges and fences scrolling by. In an hour or so she would be at her aunt and uncle’s, see her cousins for the first time in years. She had four cousins in Buleen: Roisín, married the year before; Brendan, the eldest, who now worked the farm with his dad; and the twins Michael and Gerard – rowdy boys who teased her when she was small and made her cry. She hadn’t seen them enough over the years to think of them as friends now.
A man passing down the aisle turned his head to stare at her, and she wondered whether he recognised her from the telly. There was no way of telling how conspicuous she had become. She kept her eyes on the window as much as she could. After a long time, she shook Davy’s arm.
‘Hey, we’re almost there.’
He stretched and rubbed at his mouth, frowned at the passing view and executing a wailing yawn that gave her a full view of his gullet.
‘My, what a big mouth you have.’
‘All the better to regurgitate my innards, through,’ he said.
‘You shouldn’t have drunk all that whiskey. Tell me what Una said on the phone. Are you sure it’s okay?’
‘She said you were more than welcome. She’s making up Roisín’s old room.’
‘Davy?’
‘Mmm?’
‘I’ve only ten pounds with me, and I don’t know how long I’m staying. I feel I should give her something.’
‘Nonsense, she’s your aunt. Buy her some Milk Tray. You might need a bit more for drinking money, though. Maybe Brendan will pay me up front and I’ll give you a favourable loan.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
Her cousin Brendan was leaning against a pillar on the platform at Kinmore. Last time Ali had seen him he was an almost-mute adolescent. He still looked grumpy, still wore glasses, but was as tall as a drainpipe now and, in his narrow black trousers and wrecked denim shirt, somehow more youthful than he had been as a child. She was immediately conscious of wanting him to think well of her.
He greeted Davy with an open-handed blow to his shoulder.
‘All right?’
Davy just winced.
‘Travel sickness,’ said Ali.
‘Me arse,’ said Brendan, ‘looks self-inflicted to me.’ He looped his arms around Ali in an awkward hug. ‘Saw you on the telly!’
She groaned.
‘You’re not to mind Mam, if she gets at you for some of the things you said. She’s old-fashioned.’
‘She’ll probably have the priest waiting to exorcise you,’ Davy said.
Brendan gave a short laugh. ‘Not everyone gets called a slut on the Late Late. It’s quite an honour for us.’
A faded red van stood outside the station and Brendan urged them to praise it, even though rust frothed at the door corners. He found space for their bags among a collection of bulky gaming machines in the back. Their fake-wood sides made Ali think of coffins.
They sat in a high row behind the windscreen, Ali sandwiched in the middle. Brendan drove fast out of Kinmore and along twisting roads with high hedges heavy with summer’s growth and the dust of the road. The Clash sang about Spanish bombs on the tape deck, and Brendan shouted along, thumping the steering wheel. Davy was leaning out the open side window, jaw clenched against nausea.
They turned onto a main road, and Ali could see fields stretching out around her, rising and falling in gentle humps. Between two hills the bright-silver pan of Lough Dreena appeared briefly.
‘Why are we going this way?’ asked Davy.
‘A little side trip, Big D.’ Brendan pointed ahead to a large ochre-coloured building. It sat naked on empty ground like a box fallen from the sky. Big red letters made to look like rustic logs spelled out ‘Red Rock Saloon’ on the gable end.
He pulled the van into the vast car park, executing an unnecessarily tight turn into one of its empty bays. They could feel the machines tip and bang as they bumped to a halt.
‘Give us a hand here – I’ll run you in gently.’
Davy grunted and climbed out of the van.
Ali followed, standing on the hot tarmac while Brendan hooked a wooden ramp to the back of the van and manoeuvred one of the machines down it on a porter’s trolley.
‘Get the plug, will ye?’
Davy picked up the trailing flex and walked after Brendan. Ali waited, glad of the stillness and sunshine. A liver-coloured spaniel walked along the side of the road, all on its own. When it spotted Ali it increased its pace, looking over its shoulder as if it didn’t want to be associated with the likes of her. Maybe it had seen the Late Late. The word slut wouldn’t leave her ears.
The boys finally appeared again, bickering loudly. Davy had staged some kind of miraculous recovery. His colour was better and he was laughing. Brendan carried a cloth bag in his hand, heavy with coins. When they got back in the van she smelt the beer.
‘We had to,’ protested Brendan, banging the gearstick into reverse, ‘you can’t be stand-offish in this business.’
It wasn’t long until they came to the grotto on the outskirts of Buleen. Ali craned forward to look at the town. They passed the church first, a big Italian-style basilica the colour of strawberry ice-cream.
‘I see God’s sticking with pink,’ said Ali.
‘Man!’ said Davy. ‘I could sell a machine to Father Philbin to put in a side chapel. That’d bring in the young folk all right.’
‘In your arse.’
They drove down the wide village street. Brendan slowed the van and stopped outside a tiny pub with the name Melody over the door.
‘Won’t Auntie Una be waiting for me?’
‘No rush,’ said Davy, opening the door.
‘It’s business,’ said Brendan. ‘I’m trying to persuade them into a CD jukebox. C’mon.’
Ali let them go ahead. She wanted to just look at the place. Buleen hadn’t changed much from her last quick visit, down for Granddad’s funeral five years before. A little fancier maybe – the hotel had been freshly whitewashed, and frothing hanging baskets flanked the door. A blackboard was propped beside it with a list of dishes that made her mouth water: poached salmon, chicken casserole, lasagne. She’d eaten nothing but a packet of crisps since breakfast.
When she went into Melody’s she had to stop for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dimness. Brendan was at a back table with two pints and a glass of lager. Davy was at the counter, talking with Mr Melody. She went to sit with Brendan.
He put his pint down, adjusted the beer mat under it, cleared his throat with a cough. ‘Are you all right? After what happened … are you okay in yourself?’
‘Yeah, thanks. I’d rather forget about it, though.’
Brendan nodded, pushed the beer mat again.
Davy was shaking hands with the barman, telling him, ‘You won’t regret it.’
‘I don’t fucking believe it,’ said Brendan under his breath.
Davy joined them, lifted his pint and gave Brendan a toothy grin.
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br /> ‘You bastard,’ said Brendan, ‘he’s going to take the jukebox?’
‘Nothing to it – this is why you need me: persuasion is my particular gift.’ Davy sank his lips into the cream of his pint.
‘You couldn’t manage to get a job for yourself in Dublin,’ said Ali, lighting up a fag.
Melody’s was not the kind of pub where a jukebox would look at home. Dusty bottles of lime and lemon cordial stood beside a ceramic Johnnie Walker striding out in his top hat and cane, and the lino was studded with decades of cigarette burns. Through the door at the back of the bar you could see tea towels and pillowcases hung to dry over a range in the Melody family kitchen.
‘I said he could select his own music from a list of thousands of CDs and I’d give him his own free code, so he could play it to himself whenever he wanted.’
Brendan struggled to keep his voice down. ‘Then he’ll tell the regulars and we’ll make nothing.’
‘He won’t – he hates giving anything away.’
Ali looked up at the bit of blue sky visible through the clear panes of glass above the window shutters. Brendan was telling Davy about the record decks he’d got cheap, how he was setting up as a DJ on the side. Mr Melody polished the bar surface with a cloth. It was so still that her smoke settled in a thin layer just above their heads.
Davy rippled through it as he went up to get another round.
‘Business is going to boom, Bren, now that I’m on board,’ he said on his return. ‘The old Davy Brennan magic touch.’
‘Not so magic in all areas, is it?’
Davy gave his nephew a cool look, took a deep swallow of his pint.
‘What?’ said Ali. ‘What?’
‘Didn’t he tell you he’s been unlucky in love?’
‘Shut the fuck.’ Davy turned his face away. He hadn’t mentioned anything about a girlfriend, ever.
When Brendan suggested a third drink, she managed to persuade them against it, insisted she needed to eat. The light was already fading when they got outside. She was wondering where she had left her purse, when Davy thrust it into her hands.
‘The food in the hotel looks nice,’ she said.
‘Dunno,’ said Brendan, ‘never been in – it’s just for tourists.’