A thousand footprints in the sand... reveal the secret no one can define.
(Craig McDonald)
Keefer suggested that Sara hide out at his farm until we dealt with Benjamin J. He looked kind of bashful as he added,
“I, um, have somebody there at the moment.”
This was news. I pushed,
“Yeah, you didn’t think to mention that? Who is it?”
He didn’t meet my eyes, said,
“Ceola. She came to attend to the horses, and, um, then turned out she’s a massive Stones fan.”
He trailed off.
God forgive me but I was getting a kick out of baiting him, accused,
“Remember the rules you laid down for me, no stories, no anecdotes about the Stones. Different deal if it’s a woman. That’s almost gender bias there, pal.”
He was packing a small holdall for Sara, said,
“Good for Ramona to have a woman around.”
Watching his face, I thought,
“Oh, hello!”
Asked,
“What age are she and Ceola? Never heard that name.”
Sensing a mild diversion, he followed,
“Ceola. It’s Gaelic for music, or melody, so you know, with my life with music, it seemed meant to be, you think?”
Undeterred, I asked,
“Age?”
Again, he was uncomfortable, tried,
“Age. Too much is made of age. I mean, if two people like each other...?”
I was having a high old time, guessed,
“So, young?”
“Youngish.”
Now I laughed, said,
“Great Stones legacy, eh? Young chicks for old farts.”
He looked hurt, which was rare. I’d seen him beaten by thugs, saddened by death, but this particular hurt, no. He said,
“Even for you, Jack, that’s a low blow.”
And it was.
Not for the first time, I wondered, The fuck was wrong with me? People who were close to me, had been close to me, sooner or later, I drove them from me. I tried,
“Come on, buddy, I’m just fucking with you.”
He asked,
“Are there not enough shitheels out in the world for you to vent on, you have to bring it home?”
I was saved from answering, Sara appearing with her rucksack packed. She asked,
“Are you fighting?”
I was ready with a platitude but Keefer got there first, said,
“Our friend here, he can be a real nasty piece of work sometimes.”
Sara allowed herself a small smile, said,
“I know.”
After they left, I felt a mix of grief, regret, guilt.
Grief for the little girl Sara, seemingly tossed on the waves of a world that could care less.
Regret for the nasty words I’d laid on Keefer.
Guilt, for every damn thing.
The day before, I’d gone to an ATM, taken out a few hundred euros to help with the goods Sara would need but, in the bad vibe of them leaving, I forgot.
Went to get my wallet, maybe I could catch them up, took my jacket from the bedroom. The wallet.
Empty.
Not a fucking note left.
Worse, a gold miraculous medal that had belonged to my daughter that was folded in a small secure pocket of the wallet, it was gone too.
Sara.
The thief.
The thief who knew Aramaic.
Thing is, I had a sort of sneaking admiration for her.
How fucked is that?
I should have phoned later, maybe told Keefer, but I wasn’t sure he would react too well to me calling a young girl a thief, especially after I’d flat out insulted him already.
So I didn’t.
Didn’t call.
One lethal error of judgment that would inform all that was to come.
Later in the day, I watched as Theresa May finally resigned, after three years of fuckhawking with Europe. It was now the time of true idiocy as Farage seemed likely to ascend to power. Another fool, the dangerous braggart Boris Johnson, vied for leadership of the Tories.
Johnson, like his eerie twin Trump, was born in New York.
Odd thing, if you looked at the initials of the deadly three, it was almost uncanny.
Donald Trump. D.T. Delirium Tremens.
Boris Johnson. B.J. Which was pretty much self-explanatory.
Nigel Farage. F.T. The National Front.
The country was in the grip of claim fever.
The slightest of what were once simple accidents in the course of life were now cause for legal recourse and payouts. Reached a crescendo when a member of the government claimed a fall from a swing in a fashionable hotel was grounds for a major claim. That she managed to run a 10 km race two weeks after the fall didn’t help her creditability. The media had a riot of coverage, and celebrities of every hue were photographed on swings without injury.
Amid a storm of outrage she withdrew her claim but her image was forever linked to that swing.
A former Rose of Tralee, who was the first gay Rose, decided to run for a seat in Europe despite having no political experience. Someone, someday, would look back and ask reasonably,
“What the fuck happened to Ireland?”
I was catching up on the local papers, reading Kernan Andrews in the Galway Advertiser. He was reporting on the suicide/drowning of a local man. Something nagged at me. I read further. The man had recently lost his wife and son and, at one stage, had been a person of interest in the deaths of his family.
Fuck, wait a minute.
Keefer had stressed we had three cases.
The miracle children.
The troll case.
And.
The one he took over, the guy who might have thrown his wife through a window, the woman who had come to me begging for help against her husband. The guy had an alibi but Keefer was convinced he had killed his wife and their child. Keefer had met with him, told me,
“The scumbag is guilty as hell.”
I had said that there was little we could do if he was alibied. Now I remember Keefer saying,
“Well, nothing legal can be done.”
I’d shrugged it away.
I muttered to myself,
“He wouldn’t, no, no way. He wouldn’t go off on his own bat, take action, and not tell me?”
I called him, laid out what I’d read in the papers. He was silent, then,
“I heard when he was pulled from the water he was wearing a T-shirt.”
What? So what?
Keefer gave what sounded like a nasty chuckle, said,
“It’s what they say the logo on the T-shirt was.”
I was afraid to ask, as I had a bad feeling it wasn’t going to ease my dread. I asked,
“Yeah, what was that?”
A pause.
Then,
“Life.”
Took me a minute, then,
“Oh my God, that’s the name of Keith Richards’s memoir.”
I could hear him chuckle. He said,
“I’m impressed. You have learned your Stones lore very well.”
There was silence, the implication writ large, then I asked,
“That would suggest you might have had some involvement in his demise.”
He laughed outright, said,
“You sound like a frigging lawyer. Spit it out, pilgrim. The bad cunt was murdered.”
I said nothing. I was dumbfounded, so he added,
“Aren’t you the hardass who said the law was for courts, justice was in the alley?”
I managed,
“But murder?”
Now his tone changed. He said,
“What would you do, carve his initials in his desk?”
That landed.
How he knew that was how I’d dealt with the troll was a whole other question.