One said,
“’Tis marvelous. First time Ireland has been in a World Cup.”
Silence.
Then the second fellah said,
“But women?”
A third said,
“The Dutch do nothing else but play hockey and the team is professional, our crowd are part-timers.”
A fourth asked,
“What’s the difference between hockey and camogie?”
Good question, I thought.
A woman said,
“Camogie is for ladies.”
Echoing Queen Victoria, who said ladies are not lesbian.
Utter silence.
Then the bar guy said,
“Camogie is hurling for chicks.”
Where this would have gone is beyond me, but then Owen Daglish came up to the counter, ordered a large Jay.
I joked,
“Bad day on the beat?”
He said,
“It is for you.”
Took the glass and motioned me to a quiet corner, asked,
“How do you know a nun, Sister Maeve?”
Jesus.
I said,
“Why?”
My heart in my mouth.
He took a slug from the Jay, gulped, said,
“She was stabbed.”
He had to stop, take a deep breath, then added in horror,
“Forty-eight times.”
I barely managed to ask,
“Why come to me?”
He drained the glass, said,
“A book was shredded over her.”
Reached for his notebook, checked, said,
“Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. A page near saturated in blood had a dedication on it.”
Again the notebook.
“To my favorite actress.”
Signed, he said,
“Jack Taylor.”
And scrawled on it, in black marker, was,
“Act dead, bitch.”
On the walls, in blood,
“Lucifer’s sister”
Was scrawled.
I was outside the pub, puking my guts out. Owen asked,
“You all right, mate?”
Like, hello.
I asked,
“Any witnesses?”
He considered how much he could disclose, then,
“A few people saw two young women in Arts Festival T-shirts.”
I thought,
“Same duo as killed Jess.”
I nearly said,
“That’s what happens when you cut the arts funding.”
I managed to say,
“... sometimes with the heart,
Seldom with the soul,
Scarcer once with flight,
Few... love at all.”
He went,
“Wot?”
It was a poem on the wall of her home. I didn’t even know I knew it, said,
“Nothing, just drink rambling.”
I told the Guards everything about Jericho but, with the logistics of
The papal visit,
A huge influx of tourists,
There was not a whole lot they could do.
They figured the nun’s death was by some deranged junkie.
I went to see the Mother Superior of Maeve’s order.
She was stoic but I could see the deep distress etched on her face.
She said with trepidation,
“We don’t assign blame, accepting God’s will in all things.”
But
“We do feel that your friendship with her was...”
Long tense silence, then,
“Culpable.”
Sounded like assigning blame to me.
I asked,
“May I attend her burial?”
No fucking way.
She didn’t, of course, put it that way but same song, did say,
“That would not be our wish.”
Crushed, I turned to go when she relented a tad, handed me a small red rosary, said,
“To remember Our Sister with.”
I knew it, had been blessed by Padre Pio as a tag on the end said, so
You don’t get much holier links.
I said,
“That would not be our wish.”
And got the fuck out of there, my heart in flitters.
I went to the Protestant church of St. Nicholas, my second visit there.
Dated back to 1320. Despite being not exactly a church where Catholics flock, it is held in great affection by Galwegians. Maeve once confessed to loving the calm of its medieval churchyard.
She had said to me,
“I’m still shocked by what happened all those years ago.”
She meant hundreds of years ago, when Cromwell’s army defaced it, desecrated it, and stabled their horses there.
Of all the characteristics I loved about Maeve, it was that pure naive innocence that she never lost.
Her delight in chocolate.
The wicked joy in sipping Jameson.
Her childlike delight in receiving presents.
I sat in a pew, tears coursed down my face.
I thought of desecration, her terror, her cherished rosary beads that they had strangled her with, in addition to the forty-eight stab wounds.
I could see it
Hear it
Smell the blood
I howled.
Howled like a beaten dog that cannot be consoled.
I said to myself, I will wreak havoc on Jericho.
31
When you buy a bouquet of flowers for
A dead nun,
A Galway girl,
You leave them on the altar
In
A Protestant church.
Why?
Because you are half mad with grief.
You buy Black Bush instead of Jameson
As it’s the Protestant choice.
You burn the only photo
You ever had of the beloved nun,
Then you pour the fine whiskey
Off the end of Nemo’s Pier.
The pope came, and although he didn’t outright admit liability for the pedophiles he did say they were filth.
I had one aim: find Sean Garret, the guy who destroyed the life of
Alice Bennet, the young woman who came to me and asked,
“Will you find me?”
I’d sure as fuck find him.
I did.
He was the son of wealthy parents (aren’t they always), a star rugby player, had the looks of a young Sean Penn, which might account for the mean streak.
I did as they do in contemporary crime fiction: I hacked his social media outlets.
Okay, I paid a young student to do it.
Garret was very active in/on
Snapshot
And a date app called
Gogetim.
Cute.
I followed him for a week. He did desultory attendance at the construction firm part owned by his father but played a lot of rugby and clubbed — a lot.
I finally cornered him alone one Friday evening as he strolled from his car, Ray-Bans perched on his head, white sweater tied loosely round his shoulders, a cut-rate Gatsby.
I swung my hurley and took out his right knee; there went the rugby career. He crumpled, agony on his face, screeched,
“Why?”
I was raising the hurley to smash his nose when he pleaded,
“Tell me what I did?”
I was ablaze with rage, snarled,
“Alice, remember her?”
His face changed from total agony to incredulity. He gasped,
“My ex?”
Then he stared at me, said,
“You have to be Taylor. She said she’d get you to come after me.”
WTF.
A terrible comprehension was dawning in his eyes. I could see it. He held up his hand to shield himself from the hurley, said,
“I can’t believe she did it. It’s that fucking lesbian who put her up to it.”