Ken Bruen
The Emerald Lie
For
Aine and David O Connor
Heroic in a gentle way
and
Marvin Minkler
A true star
Lance Armstrong: “Everybody wants to know what I’m on. What am I on? I’m on my bike, busting my balls six hours a day. What are you on?”
“Grammar!”
Tom Darcy was giving it large about van Graal, the new manager of Man United. He wasn’t shouting.
Yet.
But he was very loud and verging on aggressive. Like this:
“You have to remember Ferguson wasn’t successful when he started.”
His companion, a small man with a small tone, nodded, staring into his pint, hoping it might help.
It didn’t.
Darcy finished his third Jameson, belched, said,
“See, managers do be playing the long game.”
A man farther along the bar, dressed in a black denim shirt, black jeans, visibly blanched. He had a long slender face with a slight scar above the right eye and it seemed to twitch now in annoyance. He lifted his tonic water, took a bitter sip. He wanted a double gin but it could wait. Duty must. Darcy said, more roared,
“Gotta point Percy at the porcelain.”
The man didn’t look but he was fairly sure that Darcy winked. He took a deep breath then followed Darcy. Darcy was zipping up then moved to wash his large hands. He clocked the man enter but he knew not to make eye contact in a men’s lavatory.
Thought,
“WTF?”
As the man stood right by the basin, he snapped,
“Help yah?”
(Not full on but enough to let menace spill over the tone.)
The man seemed to focus, as if collating thoughts, then,
“The Yahoos that make up this city, they can tell you the offside rule but as to what a split infinitive is? Forget it. Now when you were rather haranguing your comrade at the bar, you said...”
He paused, as if ensuring he got it correct, then,
“Do be!”
Darcy laughed, a mix of relief and disbelief, this punter was simply another nutter in a city chockablock with madness. He leaned back, mocked,
“Dooby do bee do.”
The man lashed out with his right hand, throwing Darcy back against the wall, intoned,
“You cretin, you mock? Grammar is with us from the fifth century BC, from India. You probably think the great subcontinent gave us bus conductors and curry. When language is corrupted, it is but a small step to chaos. Look at
X Factor
Fifty Shades of Grey
chick lit
and...”
He had to catch a breath, such was his indignation, then,
“Texting.”
He grabbed Darcy by his hair and began to systematically smash his face against the porcelain bowl, and in an almost singsong voice, said,
“I before e but not after...”
He was still reeling off the rules as his hand released the limp body, which slid to the floor. He looked down at it, as if surprised to see it, then, sighing, pulled himself together, said,
“The center cannot hold.”
He took a single white card from his jacket, laid it almost reverently atop the destroyed face. It had one letter, in bold black:
Extra adverbs, used for emphasis, are called intensifiers.
E.g.... he was very dead.
Superintendent Clancy was as close to apoplexy as it is possible to get short of a brain hemorrhage. Lined before him was the Murder Unit. Among them was the newly promoted Sergeant Ni Iomaire, Ridge. A former ally of Jack Taylor, a rarity in the Guards, openly gay and feisty. Her friendship/alliance with Jack had cost her dear in the past but two years of no contact had fast-tracked her career. Behind her back, she was called, to rhyme with Inspector Gadget,
Inspector Faggot.
Clancy too had once been a close friend of Jack’s but was now his archenemy. He roared at the collected detectives,
“A second murder, the week before the Galway Races?”
The Races mattered; the killings, not so much. He said,
“And the only lead is the cards he leaves on the bodies?”
He had to check his notes, read,
“An a and an e? The sweet Jesus is that about?”
Ridge said,
“Vowels, sir.”
He gave her the Look. He’d picked it up from watching The Armstrong Lie. He said in an icy low tone,
“Don’t fucking tell me he’s working through the vowels?”
Pause.
“Is he going to start on the frigging consonants next?”
The second murder had happened on the promenade in Salthill. In full view of crowds. Many... many witnesses described the killer as
White
Tall
Short
Muslim
A woman
A gang!
Had a small scar under his eye.
A man had been standing right on the edge of the footpath, arguing with somebody, and when the other person left, he’d been approached by a figure who said some words to him, then literally
... threw him under the bus.
One witness said,
“It was as if he was waiting for the No. 24 from Eyre Square, then pushed hard and the victim went under the wheels. The pusher had stopped for a moment, then casually walked over and dropped a white card on the mangled remains, turned, and sauntered away.”
Clancy said,
“Whatever else, he’s a brazen bollix.”
Now the super glared at his troops, asked,
“So, thoughts?”
A thick former hurler from Thurles tried,
“He knows his bus times.”
And another wag threw in,
“Least we know the buses are running on time.”
Not smart.
Clancy had left his sense of humor in 1988. He snapped at the wag,
“Take your smart mouth and canvass all the houses along the prom, and I mean all of them.”
A groan.
This was usually a tedious task for a uniform. Now Clancy asked,
“Any more bright sparks?”
Ridge ventured,
“Do the cards tell us anything? Prints, where they were bought?”
A nod from Clancy, then,
“Get on it.”
I had been given a Labrador pup after my last case. I’d given him a red-and-white bandanna for the Galway team and for Willie Nelson. He whimpered if I didn’t wrap it around him at night. I was going to name him Boru for a departed friend and so he might choose his battles carefully but then, like my life, went with
“Storm.”
Not so much in a teacup as in situ.
In truth I had determined to stay detached from him, not to spare the love but to keep at a distance, like modern parenting. Not that I was necessarily a cold cunt but to protect myself. There was a previous dog whose horrendous death I had to keep at a remove even today. I was still raw from the discovery in my home of his torn remains.
But dogs...
Go figure
Have other plans.
Slowly Storm had melted away my resolve. Most evenings we went to feed the swans and round off that walk by sitting on the rocks and staring at the Atlantic Ocean. The whole of Galway Bay before us, I’d take out my flask of Jameson, have a few considered nips, and I’d be able to let my breath out. Storm slowly chewed his rationed treats. Finally I’d light my one and only daily cigarette, stare at the horizon, and yearn.
For what?
Fuck knows?
Storm would place one paw on my knee. Such tiny gestures signifying, if not hope, then a slanted comfort. Ease from left field as it were. To my back were the remnants of Seapoint. Once a vast ballroom, it was the center of all the social outlet in the city, home to the show bands. A whole generation had grown up with them, my generation, dying slowly and forever.