“Yeah?”
“They’ve arrested him for the girl’s murder. As the Brits say, ‘they’ve got him bang to rights.’”
I really believed I had lost the capacity to be shocked. The life I’d lived, I could no longer really tell the difference between a shock and a surprise. Like Owen’s Brits. . I was flabbergasted, asked,
“How, I mean. .?”
He caught my confusion, cut past it, said bluntly,
“Bloodied underwear was found under his mattress. Sick little fuck.”
I finished my Jameson, hoping to blast the bile in my mouth, the acid in my gut, said,
“He didn’t do it.”
For a moment it seemed as if Owen would punch me on the shoulder, swerved, settled for,
“Come on, Jack, you liked the kid but, let’s face it, you obviously had no idea who he was or what he was capable of.”
I stared straight at Owen’s eyes. Whatever he saw there, he flinched. I said,
“You know history, buddy. I’ve looked into the faces of
Rapists,
Psychos,
Stone killers,
Priests
and
Bankers.
Trust me, I know when someone is feral.”
Owen’s eyes got that shadow tint. He wanted another drink, his blood sang for it, he just didn’t want it with me. It’s always a revelation, a short, intense chat can bury a friendship cold. He knew too we’d come to a standoff but tried to wrap, said,
“I know that, Jack, but there’s something else out there now, something new.”
I shrugged,
“Evil is never new, simply a different shade.”
He put out his hand, we shook, almost meaning it. I headed back to town, went into a hardware store. Bought a pack of six-inch nails. The guy in the store had remarked,
“Some mild weather, huh?”
Indeed.
December 1 and no rain, no real cold weather. We weren’t complaining. He asked,
“You know Mike Diviny?”
I didn’t. Said,
“Sure.”
“He caught forty mackerel in the docks this morning.”
He pronounced them in that distinctive, flat-vowel Galway tone,
Mac — ker — el.
One of the reasons I still had a gra for the town. Farther down Shop Street a group of carol singers were seriously massacring “Jingle Bells.” A woman with a collection box shoved it in my face, and not politely. I asked,
“Who are you collecting for?”
Figuring I’d gladly help the Philippines Typhoon Fund. She said,
“Girls’ basketball team.”
I had to take a breath, rein in my disbelief, then,
“You got to be kidding me.”
She was up for it, challenged,
“And what do you suggest they do with their leisure time?”
“Would fishing be out of the question?”
The Ruger was delivered that evening. I paid over the odds; helps the discretion. I was sitting at the table, cleaning the gun as Jimmy Norman’s show played on Galway Bay FM. A song rooted me to the chair,
“Mary”
by Patty Griffin.
My memory kicked in, sometimes supplying arcane and, in truth, useless information. She’d been married briefly to Robert Plant. The lyrics of the song touched me in all the broken places. Heaving the gun amid a mess of bullets, I stood, poured a liberal Jay, toasted Patty, said,
“Your voice is the perfect bridge between Emmylou Harris and Nancy Griffiths.”
I tried to get my head around the notion of Boru being a killer. Wouldn’t fly. I’d spent enough time with the kid to get his measure. Then a thought hit. I grabbed my mobile, got Owen, said,
“I’m sorry to be bothering you so soon.”
“That’s OK, Jack. I enjoyed the pints, we should do it more often.”
That hovered for a moment but we knew it was never going to happen. I asked,
“The murdered girl, you said she was a part-time student?”
“Yeah.”
“Literature, by any chance?”
“Yes. In fact I heard the professor told the investigating officers that Kennedy had been stalking the girl. A college security guard even remembered moving him along.”
Fuck, this wasn’t good.
He said,
“Leave it alone, Jack. It’s cut-and-dried.”
I had one last question,
“Who is in charge of the case?”
“A hotshot named Raylan. A man going places, they say.”
I didn’t know him, said,
“I don’t know him.”
“You might know his assistant?”
“Yeah?”
“A certain Sergeant Ridge.”
Over many turbulent years I have returned to my variety of apartments/flats to find
Ransacking,
Burglary,
Fires,
but never a. .
Goth.
Sitting on my sofa, apparently at ease, was a young woman in full Goth regalia. The white makeup, black mascara, spiked black hair, and, of course, all-black gear. I said what you’d expect me to say,
“What the fuck?”
She’d helped herself to the Jameson, raised it, said,
“Slainte.”
Her utter composure suggested she was one cool lady or on heavy medication. I stayed by the door, asked,
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m Emerald, like the isle, I suppose, but mostly I prefer Em, less formal.”
I said,
“Before I sling you out, you want to tell me why you’re here, stealing my booze?”
She stood up, I tensed. A moment, then she said,
“Relax, if I was going to hurt you, would I have sat waiting?”
“Been known to go down exactly like that.”
For this I got a brilliant smile, sheer fucking radiance. It warmed something deep in my core that had been dead a long time. Whatever else, I felt she wasn’t a threat, leastways not a physical one. She was small but moved with that grace given only to dancers and felines. She said,
“See, you’re lightening up already. OK if I call you Jack?”
Before I could answer, she continued,
“Need to alert you, hombre, that I have a form of accent Tourette’s. Means I flip from down-home through posh to ni-gg-ah. .”
She stretched out the final word provocatively. Almost but not quite wetting her lips. She was a piece of work. I tried again,
“Before I knock your multiethnic arse out, you want to give me a hint as to what this is?”
She mimed a gunslinger stance, said,
“It’s all about the love, Pilgrim. . well, no. . revenge, actually, and that gig is cold, dude.”
Jesus!
I went and poured myself a drink, a large one, didn’t offer her. She had more than enough of whatever it was drove her batmobile. Was she finished?
Was she fucked.
More.
“So, Jacques, it’s all about the endgame and I’m your wingman.
“You wanna know who’re we’re taking DOWN?”
She pronounced it thus, dropping in register to the last syllable.
I said,
“Maybe before the new year, you’ll actually tell me?”
She threw open her arms in a grand salute, exclaimed,
“El Jefe, the professor, Señor de Burgo, his own badass self.”
Got my attention.
As she headed for the door, she stopped, listened, said,
“That wind they’ve been threatening is finally gathering force.”
As to whether this was a metaphor or a weather forecast, who knew? She gave another blast of the wattage smile, said,
“We’ll go biblical on the prof’s ass, right?”
She looked up at the sky, said,
“Goth in the wind.”
The death of Nelson Mandela met with a profound sadness not seen since the death of John F. Kennedy. Alas, the cash vultures were already swooping. Mandela’s famous handprint being sold for upwards of twenty thousand euros. It made you want to seriously vomit.
The week before, the incredibly affable, apparently full-blessed Paul Walker, only forty, star of the hugely successful movie franchise Fast amp; Furious, was killed instantly when the Porsche he was a passenger in was wrapped around a tree.
Some weeks it seemed only funerals marked the successive days.