“We better take that.”
The room was in a mess; they’d already searched it. As I fumbled into my clothes, I asked,
“You want to tell me what the hell is going down?”
From a previous era, I’d stashed a Browning Automatic under the floorboards. Thank Christ, it wasn’t that category of search.
Otherwise.
At least I’d quit my cocaine habit and no longer kept a stash. There wasn’t even a bottle of booze. The first guard didn’t answer my question, and when I was dressed, he snapped,
“Let’s go.”
The second one asked,
“Do we cuff him?”
Got the look from us both. As we went past the reception desk, I shook my head at Mrs Bailey and she refrained from comment. A squad car was waiting and a small crowd had gathered. Someone shouted,
“Is it Bin Laden?”
They put me in the back and we moved away. The guards were silent, with grim expressions. I knew from my own career as a guard that silence meant serious trouble. Anything less and the guards would chat, if not freely at least quietly. They didn’t talk if they feared compromising the impending charge. I was rushed into the interview room, left alone. I asked,
“Could I get some tea?”
No tea.
Twenty minutes dragged by, then the door opened and Clancy entered, dressed in full regalia. The title of superintendent was still feeding his ego. His eyes were bleary, his skin mottled. The once formidable body had folded in on itself. He said,
“Taylor.”
The tone was heavy. I asked,
“What’s going on?”
He stared at me, then,
“Tim Coffey has been murdered.”
“What?”
Ann Henderson’s husband, who’d given me my limp.
Clancy asked,
“Where were you last night?”
And I felt relief flood in, said,
“I was with somebody.”
He raised an eyebrow, asked,
“What time and the name?”
He took out a solid black notebook. I remembered those well. You better get everything down, especially times, dates, locations. If you had to do court, it might be your sole line of defence against a rampaging cross-examination. Clancy read through what I’d said, then walked out. Two hours passed and I knew it wasn’t taking that long. The extra was to let me stew. When he eventually returned, he was not pleased, said,
“It checks out.”
“So, I’m free to go?”
He pulled up a chair, turned it round, cowboy style, so he could rest his arms on the support: macho pose.
He said,
“You could have hired someone.”
I let that notion float, then,
“You don’t believe that, and you certainly know you can’t prove it. Otherwise, I’d be hauled off to a cell and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
He rubbed his cheek with his hand and I asked,
“How was he killed?”
“With some sort of heavy metal pole, his skull caved in. I understand you and he had an…altercation.”
He pronounced it with great care, almost delicately. It’s a true guard word, conveying seriousness and an implied grandeur. Not for everyday usage. One you saved, savoured and unleashed at the appropriate time. I repeated,
“Altercation! I must look that up.”
I did, later. The dictionary described it as “vehement dispute”. I sat back in the chair, said,
“He beat the living shit out of me and, yes, with a hurley, but you know this already. Your officers investigated and, gee whiz, superintendent, guess what? Nothing came of it, not a damn thing.”
He smiled and I noticed his teeth had been capped. No doubt it would enhance his media appearances. He was picturing the scene of Tim Coffey towering over me. I asked,
“Would you be interested at all in finding out who did kill Coffey?”
His smile didn’t fade but the wattage had dimmed. He said,
“I like you for it, Jacky-boy.”
I looked at him for a long time, wondering how it was we’d been such close friends and had moved so far from there. I said,
“The Pikemen.”
He laughed out loud, a braying harsh noise, like the essence of nastiness, said,
“Pikemen, me arse. They’re part of what the younger people like to call ‘urban legend’.”
But his body language had shifted, the deliberate casual pose was now on full alert. I said,
“Urban legend with guard shoes.”
He shot off of the chair, snapped,
“Get out.”
I stood up and for a mad moment thought we might shake hands. He flung the door open and I was out of there. I stood on the steps of the station, a brief shaft of sunlight on my face. From my left, a woman approached. Ann Henderson. Before I could formulate a single word, she spat in my face, then turned and walked away.
I was sitting in Nestor’s, a coffee going cold before me. I’d related to Jeff the whole series of events and he never once interrupted. He’d been polishing a glass, his head tilted to the side. The glass was shining. Time to time, I touched my left cheek, under the eye where the spittle had landed.
Jeff put the glass aside, said,
“We’ll go after them.”
“You and me?”
He looked round. The sentry was staring into space. He asked,
“You see anybody else?”
“No.”
When I finally got back to the hotel, it was dark. Mrs Bailey asked,
“Are you all right?”
“I am.”
“Good man.”
I got upstairs and washed my face in cold water. Didn’t help. The spittle had burned beyond the skin. Jeff had said he’d find out the identity of the Pikemen’s leader. I’d asked,
“How?”
He shrugged.
“How hard can it be?”
“Heavy drinkers don’t need to talk or cause trouble. There is a mutual agreement to just sit there and watch things slow down as you go numb, and nobody has anything to add, no commentary or footnote.”
Chad Taylor, Electric
Next morning I felt, as the lines go:
“Drained of all
But memories of you.”
I got the Synge books off the shelf and a pad and pen, tried to put him down on paper.
He was born in Dublin in 1871. His father, a barrister, died when Synge was in infancy. A student at Trinity, he later went to Paris. A meeting with W.B. Yeats was to be hugely influential. Yeats suggested he visit the Aran Islands, to learn how the Irish peasant lived and worked. From 1899 to 1902, he would visit there annually. The result was The Aran Islands in 1907, an account of his time there. Then there were the plays, the first, In the Shadow of the Glen, in 1903.
Riders to the Sea in 1904.
Well of the Saints in 1905.
Then of course, the famous riots in 1907 at the Abbey when The Playboy of the Western World was unveiled. If nothing else, it ensured his fame.
That year, 1907, also saw his diatribe against the clergy, The Tinker’s Wedding.
Synge became a director of the Abbey and 1909 brought Poems and Translations.
From 1897, he had suffered from Hodgkin’s Disease. Deirdre of the Sorrows was begun but never completed as he entered his final days.
His realism and brazenly uncompromising portrayal of his people made him many enemies. You can say anything you like about the Irish, just don’t say it directly.
I read through the notes and tried to grasp what a killer would find in Synge that would lead him to leave the man’s work as his signature. I couldn’t see it. I liked what Yeats said of Synge:
“He was the more hated because he gave his country what it needed, an unmoved heart.”
That description, an unmoved heart, set up a deep chord in my soul. I’d known it all my troubled life.
I sat back, tried to get a picture of what the link could be between Synge and the Dramatist. I felt an idea forming when the phone rang.