I paid for the coffee and the girl said,
“Have a lovely day.”
It threw me and I grumbled some vague reply. It’s not easy to carry a cup when you have a cane and it took me a time to reach the table.
The blond guy stood up, said,
“Let me help.”
Took the coffee, set it down then settled himself. He was younger close up, no more than eighteen. I sat down and looked him full in the face. His left eye, there was something off about it. He smiled, said,
“Jack Taylor.”
As if we were old friends. I launched,
“Who the hell are you?”
His smile faded, consternation on his face, as if he couldn’t believe I didn’t know. He asked,
“You don’t remember me?”
“No, I don’t.”
With a frown between his eyes, highlighting the oddness of the left, his act was heavily dependent on my knowing who he was. He said with a hint of desperation,
“I’m Ronan Wall.”
I took out my cigs, did it slowly, a whole ceremony of rooting for my lighter. Impatience was coursing through him, and when I eventually lit up and exhaled, I said,
“You say that like it should mean something. It don’t mean shit to me, pal.”
The “pal” was not received well. His fingers were tapping on the table and he reluctantly said,
“The swans.”
Now I remembered. A few years back, swans were being decapitated in the Claddagh Basin. The Swan Society had hired me to investigate. Not the best period of my life. I was deeply immersed in very heavy events, and it took me a while to focus. It meant nights huddled against a wall, fending off the swans and inner demons. I did catch the culprit, a sixteen-year-old who was seriously deranged. He’d lost an eye as a result. I recalled he came from a privileged background and the whole affair was thus hushed up. Apart from the eye, he bore no resemblance to the lunatic I’d encountered then. I said,
“You’ve changed.”
Now, he was back in the game. He sat up straight, answered,
“Completely.”
A smugness had entered his voice, the tone of someone who has reached the heights, no longer susceptible to petty weaknesses. I stubbed out the cigarette, looked full into his face, said,
“I meant physically.”
He pulled back, hesitated, then,
“I’m cured.”
I could play, went,
“That’s great. No desire to massacre swans any more?”
I saw his fists clench. The recent jauntiness was slipping and he tried a smile, said,
“I wasn’t well then but I got help, the best available, and…I’m a student now, getting A’s.”
I felt an instinctive dislike for this kid. That’s all he was, but something older, malignant, was all around him. I asked,
“What are you studying? I doubt you’re planning on being a vet, or have you changed-sorry, been cured-to that extent?”
He was with the game now; his eyes, or eye, took a more intense focus. A smile at the corner of his mouth, he said,
“I’m doing an arts degree.”
Numbers clicked in my head and my mind joined the dots, raced to a mad conclusion. He’d been stalking me, had a history of violence, and now here he was, presenting what? I took a breath, asked,
“Any Synge required?”
“What?”
“John Millington Synge. Come on, you’re studying literature, any dramatist on there?”
If he was guilty, he wasn’t showing it. I had to tread carefully. The last time I named a killer, I was wrong and an innocent young man had been slaughtered. The reverberations of that horrendous mistake would haunt my days. I couldn’t possibly afford to go down that road again. I went the simple route, asked,
“Why are you following me?”
Now he was animated, as if he thought I’d never ask, answered,
“I wanted to thank you.”
“You what?”
“Honestly, I was very ill, headed down a road of serious trouble, but you came along, and as a result, I got help and here I am, a whole new person.”
There was a mocking edge to his voice, so I said,
“Let me see if I got this straight, I hit you with a stun gun, you went in the water, the swans went at your face and you lost an eye. For that, you want to thank me?”
The recapping of the events had a strange effect. His face seemed to light up, as if the narration had got his juices going. He said,
“Can I shake your hand, Jack?”
The last thing I wanted to do was touch this guy. I went,
“What you could do, you could help me out.”
Suspicion and malevolence danced across his face. He said,
“You name it, big guy.”
I told him about the two dead students, that I was investigating for the insurance companies. Could he ask around, seeing he was on campus, find out about their friends and any relevant information? He reached in his pocket, took out a spiral notebook, pen, asked for their names and details. I said I’d pay him for his time. He shrugged that off; money was not a problem. I asked for his phone number and he handed me a card, saw my astonishment, said,
“I’m a very organised person. You want to give me yours?”
“Mine?”
“Yes, your business card. Does it say ‘Private Investigator, Discretion Guaranteed’?”
Now he was fucking with me. I said I didn’t have one and he nodded, as if he understood. I said,
“You’ve been tracking me so you already know where I live.”
I stood up, got a grip on my cane and he stared, fascinated. For a moment, I wondered what he was seeing? Then he jerked back from the momentary lapse, asked,
“What happened?”
“A hurling accident.”
I walked away and he shouted,
“We’re alike, you know.”
I didn’t look back, said,
“I don’t think so.”
But he had the final word with,
“We’re both injured but moving on-moving on and up.”
Put music to it, you had the making of a country song.
“There are sides of all that western life, the groggy-patriot-publican-general-shop-man who is married to the priest’s half sister and is second cousin once-removed of the dispensary doctor, that are horrible and awful. This is the type that is running the present United Irish League anti-grazier campaign, while they’re swindling the people themselves in a dozen ways and then buying out their holdings and packing whole families off to America.”
J.M. Synge in a letter to Stephen McKenna
For the next few weeks, I gathered information on the dead students. Talked to their friends, classmates, and turned up nothing. Mentioned Synge to them and drew blank faces. Ronan Wall, the swan guy, rang me often and offered no clue as to how I should proceed. If he was the Dramatist, I had no way of proving it. His tone continued to be a mix of baiting, flattery and arrogance. He even said,
“Who’d have expected us to become friends?”
I couldn’t let that go, asked,
“You think we’re friends?”
“Oh yeah, Jack, we’re close.”
I called Ridge and she said there was no evidence of foul play. When I mentioned the book, she said she couldn’t explain that. Perhaps it was a bizarre coincidence, one of those thousand-to-one chances that defy logic. I’d lost patience, asked,
“You really believe that?”
“Does it matter? We have nothing else, or rather you have nothing else.”
“There’s somebody out there, playing a weird game and getting away with murder.”
Changing the subject, she said,
“Write down this number.”
I got a pen and she read the digits. I wrote them down, asked,