Himself

by Jess Kidd

Jack smiles at her. ‘It’s too late in the day to ask me that, Merle. I’m off home to my slippers and RTÉ. I’ve not the time to talk crime tales.’

  ‘I’ll only ask you again,’ smiles Mrs Cauley.

  ‘The persistent detective.’ His voice is low, mildly sardonic. ‘Don’t you need a body for a murder inquiry?’

  ‘We will find her.’

  Jack looks amused. ‘Who will? Bridget Doosey with a shovel?’

  ‘We know she was murdered, Jack. Evidence or no evidence.’

  ‘I credited you with better sense.’ He sounds genuinely disappointed. ‘There was no murder. The girl left town and dumped her brat at the orphanage. This crime story you’ve invented is not going to change that.’

  Mrs Cauley narrows her eyes.

  Jack stands up. ‘Forgive me; it’s been a long day. Goodnight, Merle.’

  By the door Jack stops and shakes Mahony’s hand and kisses Shauna on the cheek. He’s telling him he’s done a grand job, no doubt. Mahony’s face is blank, unreadable. As Jack turns to go he looks back at Mrs Cauley and smiles.

  In the kitchen Mahony and Shauna are dancing to a slow song on the radio. Mrs Cauley can see them through the serving hatch. Shauna has her head against his neck and her hand furled against his chest. Mahony rests his cheek against her hair. God help them, thinks Mrs Cauley.

  Alone in a pool of electric light Mrs Cauley raises her glass and toasts the stage. But the stage is empty; there are only a few fallen sequins that will take Michael Hopper a month to sweep up.

  Johnnie isn’t there.

  She closes her eyes.

  Johnnie smiles and kisses her face again and again and again.

  Chapter 48

  May 1976

  Father Quinn wipes his forehead with the curtain. He can’t for the life of him find his handkerchief. He sits back down at his desk and tries the phone again but hears nothing down the line.

  He feels very wrong. He blames the library. He hasn’t liked this room since the frogs took it over. They are very active tonight, arranging themselves in patterns on the hearthrug like synchronised swimmers, leering up at him, kicking out their webbed feet, turning and merging.

  Father Quinn wipes his forehead with the receiver. Wait a minute! If he holds it up to his ear he can hear a voice through it.

  Perhaps it’s God’s.

  Or The God Of The Frogs.

  The frogs nod and grin up at him, melting together into colourful clumps: a horrific kaleidoscope of soft underbellies and reticulated limbs, green and orange, gold and brown.

  There’s another sound inside the receiver: it is hooves, galloping. Father Quinn picks up the phone, wraps it in his jacket for safekeeping and edges along the wall to try to find a door.

  Bridget Doosey looks at the sugar lump on the saucer; she’s tempted to have a go of it herself. She’ll have to ask Shauna how many she put in the priest’s whiskey. Judging by his reaction there’s a rake of fun to be had on the old LSD, what with the babbling and the muttering, the licking of the wallpaper and the swinging from the curtains. But now it’s time for Father Quinn’s trip to take a more unsettling turn, with a little help from last year’s nativity play and the priest’s equinophobia. She’s had a good clop on the coconuts, but now it’s time for the priest to meet his new friend face to face. She picks up the donkey’s head. It’s a work of art, complete with grey fur, foot-high ears and bulbous eyes. The jaw can be animated by way of a string to show off the set of long white teeth to full effect. Bridget stifles a laugh and opens the guestroom door.

  Father Quinn sees the creature even with his eyes closed. He hears it even with his ears closed, haw-hawing at him. It has chased him through walls and over bedposts, around tables and through letterboxes, with its eyes swirling and burning. He holds his head in his hands and his fingers go straight through into the mush of his brain. He cries like a baby and cradles his telephone against him. From time to time he kisses it and dribbles into the mouthpiece.

  In the kitchen of the parochial house, in the first grey light of morning, Bridget Doosey takes off her mask and pours herself a piña colada. She wipes her eyes and drinks. This is the best fun she’s had in a very long time.

  She takes off her tail and puts on an apron. Later she’ll fix Father Quinn a coffee, carefully stirring in two more special lumps, then she’ll phone the Bishop and tell him that Father Quinn is acting strangely. In the meantime she’ll tie the priest to his bed frame. Just so that he doesn’t damage himself by jumping out of the window or doing anything stupid.

  Then she’ll go over and visit Teasie to see if she can’t get Mary Lavelle freshened up a bit.

  Chapter 49

  May 1976

  A flannel would be wasted on Mary Lavelle. That much is obvious to Bridget Doosey.

  Bridget sends Teasie out of the room for a clean pillowcase then she gets up on a stepladder to cover Mary’s face. For she is certain that Mary wouldn’t have wanted her daughter to see such an expression. Blue tongued and pop-eyed, like a mouse Bridget once found strangled in a hairnet. Luckily Teasie only caught the back view of her mother swinging gently from the light fitting.

  By the time Dr McNulty and Jack Brophy arrive Teasie has stopped being sick in the sink for long enough to make tea for the gentlemen, although she forgets to boil the water. Jack Brophy cautions Bridget for disrupting the scene of death but the doctor pats him on the back.

  ‘It’s OK, Jack,’ he says. ‘Isn’t it a straightforward case of suicide? The poor woman was unravelled.’

  A meddlesome wind plays about the bay today. It came in on the back of the wild Atlantic. It’s curious and coy, jaunty and teasing. It slinks through the town, licking at the walls and rooftops with its salty tongue. It hustles through doors and windows and capers uninvited into hallways. It dances the washing and bounces the spiders on their webs. It fidgets Mary Lavelle’s bedroom curtains and caresses Teasie’s hair as she rocks on the floor by the side of the bed.

  It’s a ghost-ridden wind today that opens and shuts Mary’s bedroom door, whistles down the stairs and rattles right out of the letterbox. It rushes past Bridget Doosey and she holds on to the brim of her fedora as she hurries up the road to Rathmore House.

  Chapter 50

  May 1976

  Mrs Cauley contemplates the button on the table. ‘So Jack had a hand in this?’

  Bridget shrugs. ‘Well, I found that in Mary Lavelle’s hand and it’s from a guard’s uniform, isn’t it?’

  Mahony nods. ‘I’d say so.’

  ‘And I’d say Mary had a bit of help,’ says Bridget. ‘Unless she flew up to the light fitting.’

  ‘There was no chair or furniture nearby?’

  ‘Exactly, Mahony. And she probably didn’t bruise her own wrists or tear her own slip either.’

  Mrs Cauley raises her eyebrows.

  Bridget frowns. ‘To say nothing of the teeth marks on her left breast and the broken clavicle.’

  Shauna shudders by the sink as she washes the teacups and wonders why things have to get so grisly whenever Bridget Doosey is around.

  Bridget picks up the button with the sugar tongs. ‘He had to shut her up; she was trying to tell us something at the play.’

  Mrs Cauley shakes her head. ‘We should never have left her alone. What were we thinking? She was identifying him as the killer.’

  Bridget drops the button into a plastic bag. ‘And so now we have a body, only not the right one.’

  Shauna turns to them, drying her hands on a tea towel. ‘This is terrible, but what can any of us do?’

  ‘You’re right, Shauna, what can we do?’ agrees Bridget. ‘There’s Jack, a real lightning bastard who’s been getting away with murder for years.’ Bridget taps the side of her nose. ‘But it’s made him cocky and that might just be his downfall.’

  Mahony looks at her. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean something important was missing from the body.’ Bridget leans forward and whispers. ‘Mary wasn
’t wearing any drawers.’

  Shauna stares at her, horrified.

  Mrs Cauley ponders this. ‘How do you know that Jack took them? Maybe Mary hadn’t put any on? Maybe she was having a bit of an airing?’

  Shauna is without words.

  Bridget turns to Mrs Cauley with a venomous expression. ‘Are you trying to provoke me, old woman?’

  Mrs Cauley hides a smile.

  ‘Now, I’m no expert,’ says Bridget. ‘But sometimes they just can’t help themselves, these murderers; they have to keep something.’

  ‘A souvenir?’ asks Mahony.

  Bridget nods. ‘And I’m betting that if he kept something of Mary’s he’ll have kept something of Orla’s.’

  Mahony thinks of the river, of Ida coming across Jack getting rid of evidence, something he’d kept, drowning it like a sack of kittens. But why there and why then, all those years later?

  Bridget puts her hand on Mahony’s arm. ‘There’s something we need to do, son.’

  Shauna glances at Bridget with a look of growing panic. ‘What?’

  ‘Search Jack’s house.’

  Shauna waves the tea towel at her. ‘Are you crazy? He’s a killer, a cold-blooded upfront killer. We should leave him to the guards.’

  ‘He is the guards,’ says Bridget.

  Shauna scowls. ‘All right, I meant go above him.’

  ‘And we will, Shauna,’ reassures Mrs Cauley. ‘But you have to remember that the moment he’s threatened with an investigation Jack will be covering his tracks. We have to take him down, truss him up and hand him over to them. Case opened, case closed.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ says Mahony. ‘Cover me, and I’ll go.’

  Shauna glares at Bridget. ‘Now look what you’ve done.’

  Chapter 51

  May 1976

  In the parochial house Father Quinn is experiencing the mother of all comedowns. He has managed to chew through his restraints and is now stealing down the stairs. He stops every now and then to make sure that the hell-donkey isn’t following him. With profound dismay he realises the keys to the front and back doors are missing and his trembling hands will not allow him to open the temperamental kitchen window catch. For a while all he can do is curl up, sobbing brokenly, under the table.

  Then from some place, some inner resourceful place, a memory comes.

  It is of Mahony. Striding the stage in his tight britches with his dark eyes smiling. He is laughing at him.

  By degrees Father Quinn crawls out from under the table and, seeing Michael Hopper’s bag of tools lying next to the back door, arms himself with a hammer. He edges over to the countertop, drags himself up and summons all his remaining strength.

  By mid-morning Father Eugene Quinn slithers from a broken window into a rose bush. It’s a difficult birth.

  The priest lies blinking up at the clouds, froth collecting at the corners of his mouth. Then he turns himself over, drags himself up and limps off down the garden path.

  Drugged, trouserless and howling for revenge.

  Chapter 52

  May 1976

  In the village hall Shauna switches on the tea urn and butters a few scones. Just because they’re running a covert operation there’s no reason not to be comfortable. The others pull chairs around the foot of the stage. No one smiles.

  Mrs Cauley lends a funereal air to the proceedings, dressed in black bombazine like an elderly crow, her bandaged face pale and regal above a lace collar. She has taken one of her most dramatic wigs out of retirement; it is her judgement day wig, she says. Johnnie steps down off the stage and, with a look of concentration, tries to pet it. The wig, a formidable black beehive, edges away of its own accord until Mrs Cauley reaches a hand up to straighten it.

  She peers out through her dressings. ‘So, Doosey, can you confirm that our target is currently ensconced in the garda station?’

  Bridget pats the binoculars on her lap. ‘He is, the murdering bastard.’

  ‘Then let’s synchronise our watches.’ Mrs Cauley draws an ancient pocket watch from the folds of her cape and passes it to Mahony.

  Mahony turns it over in his hands. It’s gold, remarkably fine and engraved with the initials J. M. S. When he flicks the catch with his thumbnail, the casement opens as smoothly as a beetle’s wings.

  He glances up at Mrs Cauley. ‘It reads half past five.’

  Behind her Johnnie withdraws his watch from his waistcoat pocket. He taps it and gives it a shake.

  Shauna rolls her eyes. ‘It’s a quarter past eleven.’

  Mrs Cauley nods. ‘Mahony, are you ready?’

  ‘I am.’

  At twenty minutes past eleven, refusing a package of sandwiches and a flask of tea from Shauna, Mahony exits the west-facing door of the village hall. He takes the back road to Kerrigan’s Bar and sees no one. He enters the saloon door at twenty-four minutes past eleven. Tadhg is stacking bottles of lemonade behind the bar. Mahony asks the crack of Tadhg’s arse if he can have a lend of the car. The crack says he can of course but it’s full of chickens. Mahony thanks the crack and runs out of the back door.

  At twenty-seven minutes past eleven, Jack Brophy receives a visit, in person, at the station, from Mrs Cauley and Bridget Doosey. Bridget Doosey, having manoeuvred Mrs Cauley’s wheelchair in the door, takes a seat in the corner of the room and clamps a pair of interrogatory eyes on the guard. From time to time she whistles in an attempt to appear nonchalant.

  At thirty-four minutes past eleven, Mahony is still attempting to start Tadhg’s car. Chickens are falling out of the open door and skidding along the bonnet. There’s a cockerel in the footwell shitting on the accelerator and two hens roosting on the dashboard. Mahony ignores them; he is listening to the engine in despair. This time it really is terminal.

  At thirty-eight minutes past eleven, Mahony goes back inside Kerrigan’s and grabs a set of keys from the hook behind the bar. He cuts out and around the back of the pub and runs to the garage, passing the doorway where Father Eugene Quinn sits sucking his fingers and rocking. Father Quinn opens his eyes and clocks Mahony. It is twenty to twelve.

  Mahony has the garage door open in moment.

  And time stops.

  There, in front of him, is Tadhg Kerrigan’s 1956 Cadillac Eldorado Seville: a two-door coupé the blue of a cloudless afternoon. Her headlamps widen in surprise as Mahony reaches out to touch her bright flank. She is polished to a mirror, all curves and dazzling chrome.

  She starts first time and turns over with the bass purr of a chain-smoking tiger. She is halfway out of the garage when Father Quinn jumps in front of her like a bollox.

  The car clips the priest and sends him spinning, so that when Mahony looks in his rear-view mirror he sees the priest flat on his arse with his fist up in the air, like a figure from a comic book.

  To his credit, Father Quinn picks himself up and gives chase as Mahony swings the Eldorado out onto the Castleross road wondering why the priest is wearing little more than his underpants.

  Shauna is manning the headquarters at the village hall. She has drunk six cups of tea and broken a milk jug. She has swept and washed the floor and cleaned the windows. She has had a good go at the cobwebs with a tea towel tied to a broom and has restacked the chairs. She has cut a mountain of sandwiches and rinsed out the dishcloths.

  She resumes her position behind the serving hatch, where she eats another biscuit, absentmindedly, with her eyes riveted to the door.

  The statement is taking far longer than anyone would expect, given that Mrs Cauley didn’t see the suspect properly, can’t remember the precise look or contents of her purse and has no real idea regarding the time of the theft.

  Nevertheless her recollection of theatrical anecdotes is second to none today.

  It is well known that Mrs Cauley is an expert conversationalist with a multitude of subjects at her disposal, from politics to poker, billiards to tractor mechanics. And it’s all entirely bespoke.

  So Jack Brophy shows little surpri
se when Mrs Cauley launches into a detailed account of the time she hung a door with Noël Coward and his comprehensive set of chisels. Bridget sits quietly in the corner of the room, sucking her teeth and narrowing her eyes.

  Not only does Jack seem oblivious of Bridget Doosey’s stony glare but he also appears to be genuinely enjoying Mrs Cauley’s exhaustive description of Ivor Novello’s tool bag. He listens and nods with an attentive smile on his face, without even a hint of murderous intent.

  Emboldened by the effortless success of their plan, Mrs Cauley embarks on a rambling anecdote involving Alfred Lunt and a rotary lathe. And Bridget Doosey starts to relax a little and finger the leaflets on wife beating and vehicular speeding.

  Then Father Quinn bursts limping into the station, unshaven, red-eyed and gibbering softly. The moment he lays eyes on Jack Brophy he starts to cry.

  ‘Now are you sure about what you saw, Father?’ Jack takes off his jacket and passes it to the priest to put around himself for decency.

  Mrs Cauley talks low. ‘He’s not sure of anything. Can’t you see he’s cracked?’

  Father Quinn fixes her with a wide-toothed sneer. ‘Mahony took a car and tried to run me over, I’m sure of that.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ says Mrs Cauley. ‘And an ass with burning eyes was chasing you around your house all last night. Remember?’

  ‘It was you.’ Father Quinn points at her with a shaking finger. ‘You and her are behind it. I knew it. You’re despicable.’

  Jack leans forward and pats the man on the arm. ‘Settle down now, Father. I just need to know which direction Mahony was driving in.’

  The priest nods. ‘He drove out onto the Castleross road.’

  ‘Did he now?’ says Jack, looking dead at Mrs Cauley.

  Jack leans forward and pats Father Quinn on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry yourself now, Father,’ he says. ‘Just take yourself home and leave everything to me. I’ll deal with Mahony.’

  Chapter 53