by Ken Bruen
“The bloodletting is coming.”
Then she reached beneath her shawl, took out a tied piece of leather with a small stone cross, put it around my neck, said,
“Bheannacht leat.”
“Bless you.”
Then she was gone and, like the narrator of the poem by Padraig Pearse,
I was left wondering.
Some months later, I was walking through the Galway market. A guy from Lithuania was selling a whole row of exactly the same item.
I asked, hoping that maybe Brid had a small cottage industry going, where he got them. He said,
“We import them from China.”
*
Scott, after I left, looked out the window, saw two suited men approaching his door, ran to the roof and, in utter silence, threw himself off.
The men were Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Amy Fadden, mother of the girl who had been murdered, waited patiently for the bus that normally took her daughter to school. As it accelerated to turn from the roundabout, she stepped in front of it.
Her estranged husband, drinking a combo of brandy and cheap wine, suffocated on his own vomit.
Did the above qualify as the bloodletting?
*
I had given the recording of Scott to Owen Daglish, expecting
1. Stapes would be released.
2. Jericho would be arrested.
Despite my years of experience to the contrary I thought justice would prevail.
Bollocks.
Here’s what happened:
Stapes was charged with aggravated burglary and as a coconspirator in the Guards killings.
Jericho would not be charged. Hearsay from the recording of a dead man was not evidence.
Daglish quipped,
“See, a burglar in the nick is worth two in the wind.”
I said to Daglish,
“This is such bullshit.”
He smiled, said,
“No, simply Galway.”
23
How to succeed in Galway
Without really trying:
1. Drink in O’Connell’s bar on Eyre Square.
2. Have three interchangeable shirts—
a. Galway Hurling shirt
b. Connacht Rugby shirt
c. Galway United shirt
3. Marry a Galway girl.
Father Malachy’s sister,
The Duchess Jess—
I had to talk to her without Jericho around.
So I sat outside the house, waited.
Round noon, Jericho appeared with, from her demeanor, not a care in the world. She got into a dark Audi, no doubt belonging to Jess, drove off like a woman who had the world by the balls.
I was dressed in semi-respectable mode: even a Masonic tie I’d beaten off a Mason, the jacket of my funeral suit, near white shirt, 501s and the Docs with the closest thing to a sheen on them there’d ever be.
I had the look of a failed accountant who moonlighted as a morgue attendant.
I knocked on the door, waited.
Took five minutes, then the door opened to Jess.
Jess, reeking of gin and a powerhouse perfume, the make-you-gag type.
She was dressed in what seemed to be the curtains from the Abbey Theatre. She nigh whispered,
“Have you come to fix the TV?”
I said,
“Malachy sent me.”
Seemed to take a moment for her to recall who he was, then,
“Weren’t you here before?”
“Yes. Might I have a word?”
As she hesitated, I added,
“I might be able to fix the TV.”
I was in.
She draped herself on what theatrical people refer to as a chaise longue.
Ordered,
“Pour us some drinkies, like a good man.”
I poured her a sizable gin, asked,
“Ice?”
Got,
“You silly man.”
So, no, then.
I allowed myself a single malt, like a character in a serious novel, sat opposite her, waited.
She demolished the drink, asked,
“Who are you again?”
“Jack Taylor.”
I laid out the whole sorry story of Scott, Stapes, and the lethal Jericho. Took a while and I think she dozed. When I was done, I took her glass, filled it with tonic, handed it over, said,
“So, bottom line, Jericho is going to kill you.”
She seemed to ponder this, then,
“Are you married?”
I said,
“I was.”
This seemed to please her and she asked,
“Couldn’t cut it, huh?”
I tried again to get her attention.
“Your little house pet, roommate, is going to kill you.”
She made an effort to stand, motioning me to leave, said,
“I tire of you.”
I near pleaded,
“What about your TV?”
She gave a nasty chuckle, said,
“I don’t watch television.”
Outside, I stood to take a breath.
Jericho was leaning against the car, a lollipop in her mouth.
She was the essence of smugness wrapped in a sneer.
She offered the pop, asked,
“Wanna suck?”
I asked,
“You abandon your mates, leave them to rot in jail, shoot a barman, now are planning to get rid of the old lady who has been kind to you.”
I paused.
Then in a kind of desperation, asked,
“Who are you?”
She gave a wide smile, said,
“But you know who. I’m a Galway girl.”
24
The younger Thomas Kroon leaned forward on the
Client’s desk
And said,
“There’s no real polite way to say this.
Mr. Drayton, someone’s fucking our corpses
And we’d like it to stop.”
Sam Wiebe, Last of the Independents
Come the end of June and a third heat wave on the way.
In Galway.
They were forecasting a shortage of CO2 (no, me neither).
Which is what puts the kick, fizz, varoom in beer, soft drinks.
Ireland without beer, in a heat wave.
In line with this madness, the World Cup kicked off in Russia with the Spanish manager being fired twenty-four hours before kickoff.
Ronaldo scored a goal of such beauty for Portugal and we watched with wonder. It brought his European tally to eighty-five.
Messi missed a penalty that allowed Australia to look creditable.
Iceland nearly beat the hot favorite, France, which sent that little country into wild jubilation.
And Trump
Caused chaos with the policy of taking children from their immigrant parents and placing them in separate camps. Worldwide condemnation had him reverse the policy but the photos of the distraught children would haunt for a long time.
Melania visited the camps with a jacket that had the large white message:
I
Really
Don’t care.
Do you?
Back home Drumm, the architect of the seven billion frauds for AIB, had been hiding out in the U.S., then served five months in high-security jail there and that seems to have prompted him to risk his chances with the Irish legal system.
I mean, how bad could it be?
This asshole was on tape pouring scorn on people, wishing he could punch the finance minister in the face and making other taunts that epitomized his contempt for the people who would lose everything.
On the day Drumm was to be sentenced the press spent hours attempting to see the title of the book he was buried in.
It turned out to be a book about war journalists.
Go figure.
He was sentenced to six years.
Plenty of time to finish that book.
&
nbsp; Much speculation, too, on what Trump and the North Korean leader had for lunch the day of their historic meeting.
Popcorn and ice cream.
I was grabbing some sun on Eyre Square when a man approached, gave me a long look, then put out his hand, said,
“I’m Gerry Dunne. Could I talk to you?”
He was mid-thirties, wearing chinos, crisp white shirt, moccasins, no socks, shades perched in his wavy black hair, the new Irish cool generation.
His face was tanned and in a certain light he might pass for good looking save for the air of seriousness that hovered round him, like a priest in civvies.
He checked,
“You are Jack Taylor?”
“I am.”
He had an English accent and it sounded like Manchester, like Oasis tone. I asked,
“What’s your problem?”
“My wife, she’s missing.”
Before I could form some sort of reply, he said,
“See, thing is, it was kind of a whirlwind gig.”
More and more like Oasis.
He continued,
“I was in a club in Manchester and this girl, she asked me to dance.”
Sense of wonderment in his voice.
Added,
“It was like fate, the Ed Sheeran song was playing.”
Even I could guess at that one, hazarded,
“Perfect?”
He looked vaguely annoyed as if I wasn’t keeping up, snapped,
“ ‘Galway Girl.’ ”
And the alarm began to ring in my head. He said,
“I’m not an impulsive guy but, phew, we were married within six months.”
Then head down, shamed, he said,
“She skipped town with our—well, really my—entire savings.”
He produced an envelope, said,
“These are her details.”
I asked,
“What’s her name?”
“Jericho.”
Took me a moment to digest this, then I asked,
“When you decided to hire an investigator, how long were you figuring it would take to find your wife, or how long were you prepared to pay for the time looking for her?”
He scratched his head, said,
“Depends on the daily rate.”
Cute.
I said,
“Your rock-bottom guy, the very cheapest dude, would run to at least two hundred a day, plus he’d run you for expenses. So, again, how long could you afford to pay?”
He was torn: he didn’t want to look like a cheap fuck but, on the other hand, how reckless was he prepared to be? He tried,
“Two weeks?”
I took out my notebook, wrote in it. He guessed I was doing the math. He guessed wrong. I said,
“Found her.”
He was as close to speechless as it gets, then,
“How?”
I said,
“This is her address.”
I stood, began to move off, he said,
“I don’t know what to say.”
I said,
“Thanks never hurts.”
25
“That’s what an execution is like. It’s what I witnessed thirty-five years ago, what I remember of every sight, and sound and smell.
I’m not against the death penalty but anyone who ever suggests I get a morbid thrill from it—
Fuck you.”
Becky Masterman, A Twist of the Knife
I got back to my apartment a few days later, knew instantly someone was there, moved cautiously inside, expecting just about anything.
Got . . .
Jericho.
Sitting in my armchair, the bottle of Jameson at her elbow, dressed in shorts, tight silk T-shirt, flip-flops, she asked,
“Wanna blow job?”
The heat wave was in its second week and already the government was warning of water shortages. I opened all the windows, trying for any trace of wind. As if reading my mind, she asked,
“Hoping for an ill wind?”
I looked at her, said,
“I think you pretty much cover that.”
She laughed, raised the bottle, asked,
“Join me?”
I asked,
“Who’d you kill today?”
She stood, did a yoga stretch, letting me see the curves of her, smiled, said,
“I want to call a truce.”
I laughed, a long way from feeling a trace of humor, asked,
“Oh, like, if you don’t kill Jess, I forget about you?”
She nodded, said,
“That work for you?”
“No.”
She pulled a mock petulant face, said,
“You’re getting the better deal. I mean, you did kill my sis.”
I said,
“I don’t know you, how the hell would I know your sister?”
She looked like she might knife me, then,
“My sister was Emerald, who you killed. We were sisters in blood.”
I said,
“And in madness, it seems.”
She ignored that, said,
“I was a total wreck when she found me, strung out on crystal, no hope, and she saved me. She made me promise if anything happened to her, I was to go after you, you, who she worshipped, removed all the bad shit in your life.”
There’s very little point in arguing with your out-and-out crazy, save a bullet in the head. I asked,
“That’s your grand design, kill me?”
A sly malignant smile. She said,
“But you have to suffer first.”
I said,
“You’re overlooking one tiny detail.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll deal with you first.”
She sneered,
“You’re not in my class.”
I opened the door, waved her out, said,
“Funny, Emerald thought the same thing.”
*
She was halfway down the corridor when I said,
“Gerry is looking for you.”
Stopped her. She asked,
“Who?”
“Your husband, Gerry Dunne.”
She gave a nasty laugh, said,
“Oh. He found me, gave him a quick blow job, he gave me the loan of six hundred euros but, odd thing is, he decided to go swimming.”
Paused, then,
“Must be the heat but Gerry . . . he never could swim.”
I stared at her, then her face lit up as if a brilliant thought had occurred to her. She asked,
“Maybe I could hire you, Jack, you being a PI”—the sneer she managed to inject here was nearly admirable—“Do you think you could find him? Oh, that would be such a relief. I’m, like, so worried I could, you know, like scream.”
She was still laughing as she skipped away.
*
The tape of Scott I had recorded was finally acted on by the Guards.
Jericho was arrested.
I let out a sigh of relief, thought,
“That’s the end of that madness.”
If only.
Her husband caught up with me in Garavan’s as I was working on my first pint. I might have felt relief that she hadn’t in fact drowned him but he was becoming more than a nuisance.
I wasn’t expecting gratitude that my information had helped him find her but perhaps I expected a certain amount of relief.
Nope.
“You asshole,”
He launched.
Nope, not gratitude.
I gave him the slow look, asked,
“Who are you again?”
Threw him, but he rallied.
“Gerry Dunne. I hired you to find my wife.”
I ordered another pint, asked him,
“You found her?”
Tentatively,
“Well, yeah.”
“Did I charge you?”
“No.”
I said,
“Word of advice, don’t go swimming.”
He was baffled, said,
“So what else?”
I let out a breath, said,
“So fuck off.”
*
Later, a few pints to the worse, I left the pub, and waiting outside was
Gerry Dunne.
I muttered,
“Aw, for fuck’s sake.”
He kneed me in the balls.
Very few levels of actual agony reach the height of that pain; it soars straight to your brain as it roars.
“This is going to hurt like almighty.”
It does.
Luckily, he then kicked me in the face.
I say luckily as it momentarily distracts your brain, which wonders,
“What fresh hell is this?”
Then they join forces to form a symphony of such utter white heat that nothing else matters save the scalding universe of hurt.
He bent down, said,
“Your nose is broken. Now I’m going to blind you.”
He was grabbed from behind by someone who effortlessly tossed him across the street, then helped me to a kneeling position; standing was so out of the question. I could hear Dunne wailing,
“He had the love of my life arrested.”
My helper was Sheridan, who said,
“The broken nose will give you some hint of character.”
I managed to whimper,
“Just what I needed, some character.”
*
The doctor who examined me, said,
“It’s broken.”
I looked at him, said,
“Wow, you’re good. I’d never have known if you hadn’t examined me.”
He looked at my mutilated fingers, my discreet hearing aid, said,
“You’ve lived a rather . . .”
Searched for a description, got
“Full life.”
No argument.
He said,
“You need rest. I will prescribe some painkillers for your nose and, um, various ailments.”
He peered at the chart doctors seem to have attached to them, said,
“No drinking.”
I prepared to leave and he stood in front of me, said,
“I’m serious, Mr. Taylor, no alcohol.”
I gave him a lopsided smile. It hurt my nose. I said,
“As if.”
26
None of them knows
How then shall we lure her back?
From the way, she goes.
Francis Thompson, “July Fugitive”
The mail next day delivered this:
The Mayor of Galway