The Bloomsday Dead

by Adrian McKinty

  The big sopping city retreating behind. Belfast receding in the mirrors for what could be the last time in my life.

  I could just keep driving north to the ferry port at Larne.

  I could. But I won’t. Bridget, Moran, the cops, everybody wanted me to stay out of it now. Time pressing and the kidnappers couldn’t have been more explicit. But Moran was wrong. I had never fucked up anything I’d tried. Clumsy sometimes and I’d taken hits, but I’d always seen things through. Maybe that’s why she’d asked for me. She understood that. Her speaking voice might be saying “I want everyone to pull back, to keep out of it, we should all do what the kidnappers say,” but the secret message to me was “Michael, I love you, I trust you, you can do this. Do it for me, Michael. Find my girl. Find her. . . .”

  I let this thought sit with me for a moment, and then I laughed at my reflection in the windshield.

  “Always the fantasist,” I said.

  Still, I’d had it up to here with words and memories. I was full. There wasn’t any room for insults or accusations. From Moran or Bridget or anyone.

  Slán agat, mudflat city.

  Slán abhaile. I won’t be returning. I know that.

  But I wasn’t so proud that I wouldn’t look back in the rearview mirror.

  And I was eager to know how things were playing out. What were they doing there? Had Bridget convinced the cops to stand down? Of course she had. That imperious red hair and that cold smile and bending body. She could be the offspring of Elizabeth and Essex. She could be Queen Boudica. She could be . . . Fuck it, she could be the most powerful female mobster in the United States.

  Aye, she’d tell them to get lost and it would just be her at that phone box near the Albert Clock. I could see the scene. The rain’s stopped. The streets are slick. She’ll pull up in a rented Daimler. She’ll get out. She’ll be wearing a raincoat and carrying the briefcase full of cash. Her face haunted, worried, cautious, pale. You ever see Odd Man Out or The Third Man?—it’ll be like that. It’ll be in black and white.

  That clock, the touchstone for someone. Not a Belfast native. Unlikely anyone from the city would pick an exposed location like that, even for a preliminary phone call. But I’d bet a little money that that old man on the phone, that first voice we’d heard, had thought of that famous landmark as a good place to have Bridget wait. An old man, who maybe was from here originally but had spent many decades abroad.

  Speculation.

  In any case, now when I looked in the mirror, the city was almost completely gone. Only the choppers landing and the lights distorting on the black lough water. Even the traffic diminishing. Everything easing down on this, another wet Wednesday night in June.

  Good.

  A green Toyota taxi weaving up into the hills. Farms dotted around the fields. Stone-made. Whitewashed. Buttressed against the elements. Slurry pits and green plastic over the hay crop. The road narrow. The low gears having difficulty on the higher inclines. The driver’s side: bog and black bags tangled on the wire, lights weaving down to the Irish Sea and eventually dissipating into the hazy outline of the island of Great Britain. It’s pretty, sickeningly so in the present circumstances. For I’m close now.

  Toy boats on the lough. The outlands of the islands and the hills that make up southern Scotland. A green backdrop, a Celtic sky, and the indigo water setting everything in place like a quilt or jigsaw map of this portion of the world.

  Big sky, big land, big sea, and then, suddenly, it’s all just too much. Overwhelming. Those lights in front of my eyes, my head pounding, my cracked ribs throbbing, a dazzling feeling of vertigo. I dry heave. I put my foot on the clutch, slide the gear stick into neutral, slam back the handbrake, open the door, and climb out of the car.

  I stumble to the grassy verge, sit, and try to get a breath. Hyper-ventilating. I lie backward on the grass, my arm falling in a sheugh. Not that it matters. I suck in the damp Irish air, rip my jacket off.

  Get back in the car, get back in the car, the voice commands.

  But still gasping, I lie on my chest and spread my arms. The over-powering smell of slurry, silage, and sheep shit.

  I begin to breathe easier.

  Where am I?

  The hill country leading up to the Antrim Plateau. On the way to Knockagh Mountain. Aye, that’s right. A slight drizzle and the sky its usual lowkey gray-green shading into black. The stars when they all come out will be different from those I’ve become accustomed to in the last few months.

  Gusts of wind wheedling their way down from the peaks. A williwaw. I stand and walk a little along the road, away from the car. My breathing almost under control.

  Are you ok now? What happened there? Were you losing it? You can lose it at 12:01, but not now. After it’s done, but not yet. Get a grip, you son of a bitch. It’s not just your life at stake. Another human being might be depending on you. A girl. A mother.

  “Just another minute,” I say, sitting again, reaching for the pack of cigarettes in my jacket pocket. Flies buzzing at the puddles in the ditch. Clegs and midges. And that smell. That dungy brew of cows and damp. I’m underdressed and cold. But the fag will help. Marlboro Lights, weak-kneed, but I hardly ever smoked now anyway. I light a ciggy and hold it between my thumb and my fingers, the way I used to before I quit, feeling the anticipatory heat of it in my nostrils in contrast to the crisp cold air on my fingertips. I drink in the smoke, cough, close my eyes. Oh yeah, that’s what it was like. I remember. The tobacco warming my lungs, toasting them with its flavor. Burnt and sharp like ocher. Aye. Is that the ticket to keep away the cold.

  I take another hard draw and walk back to the car.

  I’m ready.

  That won’t happen again No . . .

  I drove deeper into the Belfast hills and eventually found a sign pointing to a narrow single-lane track that might be the Knockagh Road. An old lady with a Scotty dog.

  I leaned out the window.

  “Excuse me, does this go up to the Knockagh?”

  The dog was taking a dump and the old lady was trying to pick up the droppings with a cellophane bag over her hand. She couldn’t bend down too well because of osteoporosis and the dog wasn’t too happy about her interfering with its rear end before it was done with the business. A man in less of a hurry would have been amused.

  “Does this go up to the Knockagh, this road?” I asked again.

  “Where are you trying to go?”

  “There’s an Orange Lodge near the Knockagh, I need to be there for a meeting.”

  “There’s no Orange Lodge up there, I can tell you that,” she said.

  “Well, is this the right road, at least?”

  “Aye, this’ll take you there,” the old lady said, and breathtakingly slowly got out of my way. I resisted the temptation to run her over. She gave a friendly wave, and I sped up toward the mountain.

  After a few turns, I saw that it was indeed the right road. Blocks of managed forest began appearing next to the farms. Dense, fast-growing pine trees, where you could probably hide out for months without anyone ever finding you. I hoped the mysterious lodge wasn’t buried deep within one of those.

  I drove higher still until I was right at the top of the plateau. The big granite war memorial was hard to miss standing up about a hundred feet from the mountaintop. I got the car as close as I could, parked it, and ran to the monument. The view was of the whole of Belfast Lough and the surrounding countryside. From up here in the western hills you could see a lingering, fragmented sunset, but in the east, down to water the sky was black and already most of the settlements around the lough had turned their streetlights on.

  I climbed on top of a wall, scanned the surrounding fields. No ruined buildings, no parked cars, no secret hiding places, no arches, no fucking lodge. Nothing.

  I’d cocked it up.

  Moran was right after all.

  I should have taken the kid with me. Dinger. Should have made some fucking excuse and grabbed the wean. Oh Christ. He could hav
e shown me exactly where his brother had taken him.

  Shit on a stick.

  “You eejit. You brainless twat.”

  I railed at myself for thirty seconds, got a handle on it.

  Ok, calm it, cool it, what if I went and got him now? Aye. Get him. Get the wee shite. His ma would fucking sell him to me for a hundred quid.

  I looked at my watch. Nearly ten. There was no way I would ever make it to Bangor and back before midnight.

  “Damn it.”

  And now, just for good measure, a haar fog was descending over the plateau, coating everything in wetness and a damp cloak of invisibility. Not that there was anything to see: scrub grass, heather, and bog.

  A complete dead end. In the dying light, I desperately tried to find a building, but there was nothing that even remotely resembled an Orange Lodge. There were some ruins, but not Orange Lodges; these were little crofts that had lain bare and deserted since the time of the Great Hunger: all that remained were four gray walls. The whitewash long gone, the thatched roofs caved in. They weren’t for human habitation and farmers used them now as sheep pens.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. To get so bloody close,” I cursed and sat down. Took out the pack of cigarettes. Changed my mind, threw it away.

  Ok, what now? No point lingering around here. Back to the car. Somebody must know about an old Orange Lodge nearby. Yeah, ask around. There might have been a few funny comings and goings the last few days.

  I ran to the Toyota and drove back to the main road.

  But it was just a country track and there were no signs of life. No houses, no cars, no tractors; now and again an insomniac cow wandering along munching at the verge.

  The fog grew thicker, the night descended.

  Taking no chances on an accident, I slowed to five miles an hour.

  Not a single bloody farm.

  I crossed a stone bridge over a stream and turned into a bleak wetland that no longer had fields or fences or any trace of a life at all. I drove up and down looking for anybody, anything. Getting farther and farther away.

  Hit the brakes.

  Holy shit, this was all wrong. I was just driving aimlessly. Had to get a plan. Had to get help. I rummaged for my cell phone and dialed the operator. I couldn’t get a signal, but when I climbed out of the car and onto the roof, mercifully, I got through.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hi, I’m driving and I’m lost. I need the number of the car help people,” I said rapidly.

  “You’re driving and you’re lost? Do you want the AA?” the operator asked.

  “Bloody hell, is that your solution to everything in this country? Alcoholics Anonymous? I said I was lost, I’m not bloody wasted.”

  “The Automobile Association,” the operator said with a hint of world weariness.

  “Oh, yeah, AA, aye sure, terrific, fire it on over, love,” I said.

  She gave me the number. I dialed them up and explained my predicament.

  “Look, I don’t know if you can help me, but I’m completely lost; I’m up somewhere in the hills near Belfast. Two minutes ago I was at the Knockagh Mountain; I’m looking for a pub or a hotel or a police station or anyone who can give me directions. Is there anything you can do to help? You must have a big map of Ireland with a list of pubs and gas stations and stuff. Is there anywhere like that around here?”

  The man had a soothing County Kerry accent.

  “Well, can you tell me what road you’re on, while I call up the map on the screen here.”

  “I don’t know what the road is, it’s a very narrow road, single lane.”

  “Is it a B road?” he asked.

  “That’s very possible,” I said.

  “Ok, I think I see roughly where you are. You say you were at the Knockagh viewpoint a few minutes ago?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well then, you must be on the B90.”

  “Ok. So what do I do? I need a gas station or a bar or something. Anything.”

  “Well, if it really is the B90, you should go north and turn left at the very first junction you see. About a quarter of a mile down that road, there’s a place here on our map that we’ve given a star to,” the man said.

  “Yeah, mate, unfortunately I can’t tell north from south, it’s dark and there’s a fog,” I explained.

  “Just keep going the one direction. If you don’t come to the junction within, say, ten minutes, turn round and go the other direction. It’s called the Four Kingdom View Pub and Restaurant.”

  I thanked the man, got his name in case I had to call again, and hung up. I climbed down off the roof, got in the car.

  I put the fog lights on and followed the road as it grew narrower, the car weaving between and almost touching bramble bushes. I was about to give it up as a bad job, do a U-y and try the other bloody direction, when I saw the junction. I turned left and almost immediately came to a large posthouse-style mansion. White walls, a thatched roof, hanging baskets of flowers under the eaves, and tiny stained-glass windows on the ground floor. A small hand-painted sign said “Four Kingdom View Pub and Restaurant.” Thank God. I pulled into the driveway and parked the car.

  The path around the side of the restaurant ended on a rocky out-crop that overlooked a garden of neat hawthorn hedges and a pile of garbage.

  “Charming,” I said, and went inside.

  A low-ceilinged, timber-framed room. A tiny kitchen giving off a smell of old socks and rat poison.

  Through the tobacco haze I could see that I was in yet another sinister little pub, with unhelpful-looking locals eyeing me from the shadows. Barely half a dozen people in the place. All of them farmers wearing tweed jackets and flat caps. No one sitting next to anyone else. Everyone left to their own morose thoughts and reflections. It was your typical suspicious, superstitious, closemouthed, dour Irish country pub. The sort of pub you never see in the tourist ads for Ireland but which are just as common as the singing-and-dancing happy pubs celebrated on the screen.

  The only way the Automobile Association could have given this place a star was if the proprietors had threatened the reviewer with a ritual murder.

  It certainly wasn’t the sort of place to come blazing in, asking questions about a ruined Orange Lodge. Asking any questions, come to that. They wouldn’t kill me like they would have earlier in the Rat’s Nest, but they wouldn’t rush to give me the Heimlich maneuver, either.

  “What’ll ye be having, sir?” a barman asked in a not unfriendly manner. He was a tall, ungainly man in a filthy smock who moved so incredibly slowly that he was either in a partial body cast or he was drunk out of his mind and trying not to show it.

  The locals were all nursing hot whiskies. That would be one way to ingratiate myself.

  “Oh, I’m driving. Just a lemonade. But I’ll give everyone in the bar the same again. Have one yourself.”

  “Very good of you, sir.”

  “My pleasure,” I said. The barman stared at me.

  “And for you, sir, what kind of lemonade?” he asked.

  “There’s different kinds of lemonade?”

  “Aye, there’s white or there’s brown.”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked with mounting irritation.

  “One’s white, the other one’s brown.”

  “I’ll take white, then.”

  “Fine.”

  He brought me a glass of white lemonade. I put a fifty-pound note on the counter. He took it greedily.

  “Drinks are on this gentleman,” he announced when he had thoroughly examined the bill.

  A few of the old codgers nodded, but the rest kept their own counsel, disdaining to even look in my direction. They certainly didn’t seem a cooperative bunch despite my largesse. I’d have to try the barman. You couldn’t just ask him outright, though. I’d work my way around. At the very least, I’d try and do this without making a scene, but if things went on for more than five minutes without progress, I was willing to shoot every one of these old
bastards until they told me what they knew.

  “What are the Four Kingdoms?” I asked the barkeep.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re called the Four Kingdom Restaurant,” I said quickly.

  “Oh, that. Supposedly that’s the view from the top of the Knockagh. Kingdom of Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and, of course, the Kingdom of Heaven.”

  “That’s fascinating. Fascinating stuff. I bet you know a lot of local geography and stuff like that,” I said.

  “Not really,” he replied.

  “Well, uh, listen, uh, I was wondering, I was looking for this old lodge that was supposed to be around here, did you ever hear of anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “No old Orange Lodge, around here, nothing like that?”

  “No.”

  “No ruins of any kind?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Perfectly sure.”

  A man came out of the toilet and sat back down at the bar. He grabbed a pint of Guinness as if it were a life belt, nodded to me. He was a younger man, thirties, wearing a tweed suit but with a yellow silk waistcoat. His slightly wild blond hair was unadorned by a flat cap. It was a stroke of luck; this level of unconformity might also stretch to the possibility of being open for questions.

  “How do?” I asked.

  “Not too bad,” he said.

  “Well, a bad pixie must be following me around because I am completely banjaxed,” I said, coming straight to the point.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  I summoned over the barkeep.

  “Another pint of Guinness for my friend here,” I said, and offered him my hand. He shook it.

  “Brian O’Nolan,” I said.

  “Nice to meet you, Brian, my name’s Phil, thanks for the pint,” he said.

  “My pleasure, Phil.”

  Phil looked at me, eager to hear the nature of my difficulties.

  “Ach, I’m in a wee spot, Phil,” I said, trying not to appear too anxious.

  “What do you need?” Phil asked, finishing his own pint and starting on mine.