The books culminated in the astonishing I Was Dora Suarez, He wrote of his novel In Mourning,
If I had no guilt to purge, I would not have known where the road to hell was.... she was my atonement for 50 years indifference to the miserable state of this world, a terrible journey through my own guilt, and the guilt of others.
Liver cancer and booze took him out of the game at the age of sixty-three. I’d lined up his works by the wall, like a series of bullets I had to simply load. His final years, he lived in a Spartan bedsit in Willesden.
If I hadn’t known to mourn him back then, I was making up for that now.
I could feel his finger on the trigger of my Heckler & Koch.
In my previous case, I’d enlisted the help of a hard man named Bill Cassell. I asked him to protect a young girl and he did so. Then I further indebted myself by asking him to eliminate a killer. Such help doesn’t come cheap. Gave him a shitpile of money, but it was the favour he’d call in one day that was most worrying. You owe a man like him, you have to deliver, and the dread is waiting to see what it is he will ask. At the time, he does warn you, but I went ahead and made the trade. He is your seriously hard man; even the guards give him a wide berth. He doesn’t have perimeters, there is no line he won’t cross, and you better hope you are not the one he is crossing that line to see. The call came on a Sunday night. He opened with,
“You’re a hard man to find.”
“You managed.”
Low chuckle.
“Yeah.”
“How is your health, Bill?”
With liver cancer, how could it be? But I felt I should at least make an effort. He said,
“Fucked,”
“I’m sorry, Bill.”
“You’ll know why I’m calling,Jack.”
“My chit’s due?”
“Right.”
“What do you want?”
“Not on the phone. Sweeney’s at twelve, tomorrow.”
“I’m off the booze.”
“I heard. You won’t be there long.”
“I suppose that’s a comfort.”
“Take it where you find it.”
“I’ll try”
“Twelve, Jack, don’t be late.”
Click.
The depression sat on me like cement. I knew Bill’s call had to come, but now I couldn’t even rise to anxiety. All dealings with Bill required a high level of unease. Forced myself to put on my coat, get out for a walk. What I wanted was to curl up in a corner and weep. As I passed reception, Mrs Bailey said,
“Mr Taylor!”
“Jack, please.”
I knew she’d never get that familiar. Her face was concerned. She asked,
“Are you all right?”
“Touch of flu.”
We let that float above our heads for a moment. Then she said,
“You could do with a tonic.”
“Right.”
She looked like she’d a ton to add but let it slide, said,
“If there’s anything I can do...”
“Thanks.”
I walked to Eyre Square.
Gangs of young people milling about, all with cans of lager, flasks of cider.
Booze
Booze
Booze
I went to Nestor’s. Jeff was tending bar. He was the picture of health. He and his girlfriend Cathy had recently had a baby, a Down’s syndrome baby. He said,
“Jeez, Jack, where have you been?”
“Low profile.”
“Are you doing OK? You look, I dunno, kind of haunted.” I juggled that expression, repeated,
“Haunted, now there’s a term. I’m off cigs, coke and booze. Why on earth would I be less than par?”
He was astonished, said,
“Even the cigs... the coke... Christ,Jack, I’m impressed.”
The sentry, in a semi-stupor since Christmas, raised his head, said,
“Good on yah,”
and slumped back on the counter.
In the days I drank in Grogan’s, there were always two men propping up the bar, one at each end, dressed in identical donkey jackets, cloth caps, Terylene pants. Sentries, I called them. They never spoke to each other. No acknowledgement ever. In front of them, always a half drained pint; no matter what hour you came upon them, the level of the glass never varied. When Grogan’s changed hands, one had a heart attack and the other moved to Nestor’s. Jeff said,
“There was a young guy, looking for you.”
“How young?”
“Twenty-five maybe.”
“That’s young. What did he want?”
“Something about work.”
“Did he give a name?”
He rooted through a pile of papers, found it, read,
“Terry Boyle.”
“What did you make of him?”
“Um... polite. Oh yeah, he had a good suit.”
“And that tells us what?”
“I don’t know. If he comes in again, you want me to ask him anything?”
“Yeah, ask him where he got the suit.”
I went back to the hotel, muttering,
“See, was that so difficult? You were in a pub, didn’t drink, you did good.”
As I lay on my bed, I asked myself,
“Did that make you feel better?”
Did it fuck?
“We have read many times, that you are the Civic Guards, responsible for the
preservation of order, of public peace and security... a disarmed Guard.
Disarmed indeed, in the sense that you are provided with no material arms,
but you are armed with the far more valuable weapons of vigilance,
diligence, and dutiful courage.”
I’d read Alvarez’s study of suicide, The Savage God. Got to the chapter where he discussed his own failed attempt.
Whatever else, I didn’t want to screw it up. Read what the medical experts had to say.
This.
Most suicides will communicate their intentions, verbally or nonverbally.
I reached for a cigarette, realised I wasn’t smoking any more. Continued.
In America, they have QPR intervention: questioning, persuading, referring. I was reading about it in the paper.
How it worked was you listened, then talked the PS, the potential suicide, into getting professional help, fast. The hot phase of a suicide crisis was three weeks. Potential suicides make predictions, like “I’ll be dead before Christmas” or “I’ll never see the summer.”
I then waded through a mess of medical terminology, until I came to
Gatekeepers are the first people to realise the potential suicide is serious. They are the first “finder”. It’s their duty, responsibility, to direct the potential suicide towards help.
I stopped reading. So at last I could call myself something. A “PS”, ending up like an afterthought to a letter.
Gatekeepers! The pity was I hadn’t anyone to fill the role.
Sweeney’s is a hard pub. Anyone who strays in there is quickly shown the door.
Welcome is not part of the deal. Bill Cassell had held court there for as long as I remember. When I walked in, the place went quiet. Then, as it registered who I was, conversations resumed. I was at least familiar. Bill was at his usual table, looking even worse than before. The eyes, though, they were as bright and unyielding as ever. He said,