by John Brady
The smell of ashtrays, and the stale reek of clothes infused with smoke, was strong. Aftershave used to suppress it had only made it worse. He stood a foot beyond the threshold and looked around the room. He hadn’t expected the neatness, the bed made, and things arranged sort of square on top of the chest of drawers. But still no sign of bag, a case even. No desk, not even a chair. No sign of any camera stuff, flash drives, cards. And still no damned computer either.
He made his way gingerly toward a wardrobe the same vintage as in the mother’s room. Drawing it open, he ignored the squeak. A too-well-used leather jacket was hanging on a peg half hidden by a white shirt. Holding back the shirt and another behind it, he checked the floor of the wardrobe, pausing for poke around in a shallow cardboard box. Porno mags. Everyone on the covers was blonde, with the usual energetically bored look. Dutch words too – those Js they were so fond of – not Swedish. He found one pair of running shoes, in bad order. The top shelf in the wardrobe was buried in T-shirts. He stood on the bed and looked down at the top of the wardrobe. A Tupperware container had been placed next to the wall.
The lid gave way with a soft crack. He smelled the dope right away. He poked a finger through the brittle leaves, and a bitter, pungent scent came up. He resealed the container, and slid it back on top of the wardrobe.
Next to a haphazard collection of coins on top of the chest of drawers, lay an ashtray with two roll-your-own butts. Matches, two disposable lighters; scrunched-up bits of paper and receipts. Paper hankies, some small screws that they used on electronics. He leaned in to see if there was anything between the chest of drawers and the bed, and then went on his knees and pulled up the edge of the bedspread. Odd socks under the bed, more magazines, a pair of suede shoes hardly worn…and then the small baggies he had expected. All unused, or ready for use, at least. He drew one out and examined it. Not a trace of powder. A careful operator, McCarthy?
The top shelf held a blue-and-silver ghetto blaster next to a stack of discs, and a small MP3 gizmo attached to an over-the-ears headset. Beneath were mostly fat thrillers. He spotted a biography of the most annoying Irish soccer player in history.
“Is it closed in there, the window?”
“I’ll just test it.”
He opened the bottom drawer and went through it. What he imagined could turn out to be small pouches of cocaine turned out to be folds in the socks themselves. McCarthy’s passport turned up predictably enough in an underwear drawer, next to the predictable condoms. Fanning open the passport, a piece of paper fluttered to the floor: a receipt from last year, an airport train from Schipol. His eye lingered on the photo. The mugshot on Pulse was of a much younger McCarthy. Twenty, thirty years even.
“What are you doing up there? Closing windows, or manufacturing them?” “Almost finished.”
The other three drawers yielded nothing, except bringing to the front of Minogue’s mind a deepening dismay at the course of this man’s life.
The bedroom over the front door was as tiny as he had expected. A faint trace of perfume, a floral base he associated with old ladies, hung in the air. Save for an old headboard turned on its side and leaning against the wall, the room was bare of furniture. Coat hooks had been hung on a plank set into the wall, and a woman’s coat hung inside a plastic dry cleaning bag. Three cardboard boxes were stacked in a corner. Delph, or china, wrapped in newspaper.
The voice coming up the stairs was testy.
“That window’s never open. It’s only an old storage room there.”
He took his time coming down the stairs, his thoughts eddying yet around what he had been hoping to find. Still no bag. No papers, no files, no notepads – not even yellow stickies. No memory sticks or data discs either – unless McCarthy kept them mixed in with his music collection. Any mobile phone, he’d have carried with him. Laptops had gone cheap – a netbook maybe, just the right size to slip into a bag and take with him.
He stopped. How easily it happened. Here he was, blithely assuming that McCarthy had been carrying stuff. Stuff: The word rolled around in his mind. He hadn’t even begun to think about email accounts, or stuffhe kept in the so-called cloud. He blinked slowly to clear his mind. Enough: any further, and there’d be trouble. This crap was for someone else to figure out.
Chapter 29
He dipped his head before taking the last of the stairs. “I knew all the windows upstairs were closed, you know,” Higgins said.
“It’s best to be sure though, isn’t it? You were right to get me to check.”
“Well listen to you. Was it me told you to go through drawers and that too?”
Minogue’s answer was to pull his coat closed. He began a survey of the hallway. He hadn’t looked under the stairs. More plastic tubs, stacked; jam jars, a mop in bad order, an old galvanized pail. A vacuum cleaner, a wheelie shopping bag. A frying pan with a broken handle. Wellington boots, a pair of shoe lasts, biscuit tins…
“So now you’ve seen the place,” Higgins said. “It’s something else, isn’t it?” “It is, I suppose.”
“Some people actually think that poverty’s been fixed in this country. They should be made to come out here and see the likes of this. All of them, up to the President, what’s her name.”
Minogue moved to the hall door. This place was giving him the willies. It was something beyond the threadbare look, the make-do, the neglected. It was an air of abandonment, of loss, and it bore down harder by the second.
“We’ll be off now though, I’m thinking. Come on, and we’ll lock up.”
He turned the latch, and drawing open the door open a little, threw a parting glance at the pictures, those spells that led out of an ugly, over-run present and back to an imagined life in the imagined West of Ireland. Dreams.
“She’s not fit to be here on her own,” Higgins said. “But she’ll never let anyone do anything for her. She was always like that, that pride – And now look what’s happened. I thought when Joey came to stay that he had straightened out. That he’d be able to look after his mother now in old age. You hear me?”
“I get it.”
“She can’t come back. A hard thing to say, but decisions have to – where are you going?” “I need to get a bit of air.”
He almost missed the step down. The smell of cooking onions was almost welcome now. Someone was burning rubbish now too. Higgins pulled the door almost closed, and then with a tight pull he yanked it home against the jamb. He tested the lock twice.
“Didn’t I tell you?” he said. “The Guards need to do something before there’s trouble.”
“What trouble?”
“The people mooching around here,” said Higgins. “Joey’s comrades, or whatever you want to call them. Crackheads they’re called. That’s what everyone calls them.” “Is that what they look like to you?”
“Don’t pull that one. They’re hardly dropping by for a cup of tea and a chat.”
“When did you see them?”
“I’m only saying. I don’t know for sure. None around lately, in the daytime anyway.” “Was there stuff going on at night?”
“Didn’t I tell you there was? It was a fortnight or so back. I seen their cigarettes going in the dark out there, out the back by the shed. Except they weren’t cigarettes.” “There was an odd smell off them?”
Higgins pulled at his coat collar and shrugged to get his free arm covered better.
“The shed is locked, is it?” Higgins nodded.
“You might have a way to get in though, I’m wondering…?” Higgins raised his hand. He used his forefinger to wiggle the long barrel key.
“In the interests of security,” Minogue said. “That’s all.”
“Pull the other one. You have to go through the kitchen. Now, have you a torch?”
“Not on me.”
“I thought Guards had torches. Like you were born with one? Only a joke.”
It gave Higgins notable satisfaction to hand him a large 9-volt battery flash lamp.
&nbs
p; Minogue tested the beam, and then fastened the top buttons of his coat.
“You don’t have anything bigger, I suppose. Or heavier maybe?”
“Mind where you put your foot,” said Higgins. “Unless you want to break your snot falling over stuff. It’s Asia Minor back there – and watch for timber and plywood lying around, they might have nails sticking up. Stuff’s lying there these years.”
Minogue made his way with heavy unease through the hallway again, and into the kitchen. The back door out opened easier that he expected, and soon he stood in the doorway, playing the beam on the narrow apron of concrete below. Dark moss lined the joints. Beyond the concrete stood a post for a clothesline. Bundles rose out the grass, reminding Minogue of an untended graveyard. Most of those bundles were wrapped in plastic tarps that had started out as blue, but were now faded and fraying. Plenty of cigarette butts rotted amongst the grasses.
The shed had had a window, but it had been sealed from the inside with what looked like pieces of timber. He placed the key in the lock, but before he tried to seat it, he looked back at the upper windows in Higgins’ house. Sure enough, there he was, framed in the parted curtains.
The lock was trouble. He put the flash lamp on the concrete after a few tries, and used both hands. It wouldn’t be about force, but more about balance. It took a dozen and more tries before the key turned.
Opening outward, the door screeched. Minogue found the pebble at the end of its scratch across the concrete and he hoofed it into the grass. The flashlight beam washed over blackened sections of the walls inside the shed. A coalhouse at some stage then. The sharp tang of petrol had lodged in his nostrils right away, and it soon began to give way to separate smells: the heavy, almost animal smell of engine oil, earth from old planting pots, the ginger hint of turf.
A layer of dust covered a push mower, its blades brown and mottled. A rake had settled and gathered cobwebs alongside a spade. The surface of a workbench made of plywood and scarred two-by-fours was covered with plastic containers and tubs. The black and brown liquids in them reflected the beam feebly back.
He used his biro to find the bottom of one of the tubs, and tilted it until a glistening section of gear chain appeared. Bolts, washers, polished and rusted nuts half-filled the container next to it. Protruding from another was the housing for what he guessed was a fuel pump. A lid held different-sized ball bearings. By a can of WD-40, its long red nozzle bent upwards, a tangle of clips and springs and clamps. Sockets for a wrench were heaped in a shallow tub next to a set of four spark plugs. Two gaskets, one new; rusted steel wool. A short piece of hose – a fuel line. In front of a beer-can-turned-ashtray, the flashlight revealed another chain coiled on a rag. A rechargeable screwdriver lay halfway over an empty cigarette packet.
A three-ring folder had been propped almost upright at the back of the bench. Schematics for an electrical system? The pages were a little offset, with the telltale irregular strips of black around the edges: a photocopy of a mechanic’s manual. He lifted it up and out from where it rested and fingered through a few pages. The few notations he found meant nothing to him.
He realized that he had no paper hankies to wipe down the edges of the folder. He stood again, and looked for a rag. It would have to be the one under the chain. He wrapped it loosely around his hand and then replaced the folder against the wall.
A wet-looking cardboard box on the floor was for rubbish, apparently. Amongst the half-crushed beer-cans were twists of paper, crisp bags, wrappers. He hooked the box with his shoe, and drew it out from under the bench. Settling on his hunkers he pressed his biro into service again to probe amongst the cans. Balled-up pieces of paper revealed receipts from an off-licence, an ad for garden services that had probably been dropped at the door with one for a dry cleaners. One scrap had scribbled numbers, and he was able to make out some of the words: –gasket –brake cable. Bus fares, a DART ticket; torn pieces of what seemed to be a form letter from the Revenue Commissioners; an ad for replacement windows, a furniture warehouse sale. McCarthy, or somebody, had emptied an ashtray here. He apparently liked Cheese ’n Onion crisps the best.
When the flashlight settled on another crushed ball of paper, it clicked with him that he had already primed himself to have an eye out for something like this. His eye was drawn to a detail on it right away: a section of serrated edge where this page had been torn from a coil bound notebook. He laid the flashlight on one of the flatter cans, and he began to open out the ball of paper.
The flashlight’s glare only intensified the mosaic of folds, and threw a strong kaleidoscopic effect at Minogue’s eyes. He tried to flatten it better along the ground. There were numbers, phrases, more printing than handwriting. The writing hadn’t all been done in one go. A Dublin phone number was at an angle to a phrase, and it had been underlined and followed by two question marks. There were plenty of abbreviations, none of which he got, and dates. Aug. 17 1971, with a P.M. next to it but no numbers. A date next to it was Jan. 22 1972, and it was followed by a dash and another abbreviation, S.A. Or was it an S with a small scribbled r? Beside that was ‘Kenya,’ and Nairobi, spelled wrong. Off to the side was ‘Uganda’ followed by a question mark, and another misspelling for the Philippines. Near the bottom of the page was a phone number, with a name. Neary? What was Fr? Frank Neary? And the H.O. was head office?
He turned the page over and looked at the drawing first. It was a map, or directions at least, and some of the scribbles were legible. Finglas Road, and Glas…it had to be Glasnevin. An arrow pointed down off the Finglas Road, and angled sharply several times before it stopped in a small, hand-drawn oval. He couldn’t read what had been written for the names of the roads: he’d check it online later then. There were two more phone numbers.
The glare from the paper was making his eyes itchy. He dialed one-handed. It was answered in the middle of the second ring. Something in the woman’s voice stirred a dim recall of other voices like it. A nun, a teacher?
“A nursing home did you say?” he asked.
“It is. Have you the wrong number, maybe?”
“Well, I don’t know. I have this phone number on a piece of paper.”
“What number are you trying to reach?”
Minogue held the paper up to the light again, and read out the number.
“Well that number is right,” she said. “Tell who are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for a nun. It’s a nursing home for nuns there, isn’t it?”
A hint of suspicion had entered her voice.
“Who is calling, may I ask?”
He slid quickly into his bogman wiles.
“Ah, I’m an old friend of Sister Margaret’s family, and I’m up in Dublin for a couple of days. I thought she might be there? Sister Margaret Mary…?”
“Did someone give you this number to phone?”
“I’m a bit short of information, I have to admit,” he said.
“Is she Holy Faith?”
“Holy Faith? No, she’s not. Sorry about that. She’s Mercy, a Sister of Mercy.”
“You needn’t be one bit sorry. I don’t have their number in my head now, but I know they have a place out near Drumcondra. Would you like me to find it for you?”
It took him five tries with the camera before he was satisfied with the job it did on the sheet of paper. He crushed up the sheet again, and dropped it back into the box. Replacing the beer cans one by one on top, he tried to imagine what Immaculata was doing this time of the day. Mass, he wondered, or prayers of some kind. Nuns were great for prayers, weren’t they? She’d be getting ready for supper maybe, or doing routine jobs around the place. Around what place?
It could wait. He’d drop by Disciples in the morning. He placed the last of the cans on top, and gently toed the cardboard box back under the bench.
The damp, or the cold itself, had found its way to his finger joints. He made sure that he had pocketed his camera and he looked for some spot to park the flashlight while he replac
ed the rag back under that chain. The best he could manage was to balance it over one of the tubs on the bench and train the beam on the wall. The chain was unforgiving with the laws of physics. The moment that he saw a section snake quickly out from his grasp, he knew he was banjaxed.
He made a grab for the flashlight just as the beam jerked up. He got his fingertips to it, giving it help it didn’t need to nudge the edge of the plastic tub and bring it over. His next grab sent the flashlight skittering. It ended with a crunch somewhere in the darkness near his feet.
He drew himself back upright, a glimpse of the escaping black liquid too clear in his mind. Cursing more in reflex than in anger, he let his knuckles find the door behind. Even fully opened, it barely helped. He hunkered down again, and extended his arm to full length, and he began a slow sweep over and back through the darkness.