Purgatory (23 page)

—Håkan Nesser,
Hour of the Wolf

Finally did a detective thing—found the apartment Kelly lived in when she wasn’t staying at Reardon’s place. Knew she had to have a separate, if not peace, then territory.

How?

I asked the ESB.

Light bills have caught more villains than the Guards.

The apartment was in Devon Park, formerly a rich enclave for hidden and hiding consultants who’d be hiding even more after the needless death of the young Indian woman. The whole of the bottom floor was in Kelly’s name. I had a clipboard and a puzzled expression, basically the only tools essential for burglary. Those and a bent key. I got in without triggering alarms and, it struck me, this was my second break-in in a week, maybe a whole new line of work.

The living room was spotless, I mean, vacuumed to within an inch of its fiber. Leather easy chairs and a large lived-in sofa.

One massive bookcase.

Wilde.

As in, hundreds of Oscar volumes. A top shelf devoted to true crime and psychology.

Ann Rule.

People of the Lie.

Books on Bundy and all the boyos. But, most telling, a three-volume
Study on Women Psychopaths and Sociopaths.

One volume seemed to be especially well thumbed so I took that. And must have triggered something in the shelf as suddenly all the lights came on, the radio, the huge-screen TV. Put the shite crossways in me. I literally jumped. Moved quickly around, turned off everything save the TV.

I found the drinks cabinet, and phew-oh, a veritable wet dream for an alky. I settled for a fine old single malt. The TV was tuned to Setanta, our version of ESPN.

Showing Sweden versus England and Ibrahimović’s spectacular scissor goal. It was in a loop play and I watched, mesmerized, as

1. He focused on the ball, bent his knees to prepare.

2. The non-kicking left foot leaves the ground first.

3. The left foot’s rapid upward swing gets him airborne.

4. In midair! . . . He brings the kicking boot into play.

5. The right foot strikes the ball in a looping goal-aimed trajectory.

6. The sheer power rush of the strike somersaults his body as he then lands on his feet to punch the air.

He knew that baby was going to goal.

“Jesus,”

I muttered,

“What a thing of beauty.”

I checked the bedroom: neat, tidy, and brand-new clothes, still in their wrappers. Ten pairs of expensive shoes, lined up, and I knew the prices, as the tags were still intact. A Michael Mortell coat on the door peg, also unworn. I stepped back, thought,

“A life waiting to be lived, truly on hold, but for what?”

Bathroom. Usually a treasure of medication, you can at least hope for a slew of Valium. Nope, just a bottle of Joop!

Jesus—with the tag, real men wear pink. Surely an Oscar link. If you ignored the bookcase, there was nothing to say anyone lived here. This was vacancy writ large to largest. I’d learned absolutely fuck all. I took one final sweep through, not even sure what I hoped to find. In the kitchen, on top of the fridge, was a
TV Guide
and I flicked the pages.

One series heavily underlined.

The Booth at the End.

Of the myriad of things I longed to share with Stewart, to discuss, fight over, this series was prime. Had begun as a twenty-minute Internet sensation, now a five-part series, directed by Adam Arkin, it was
The Twilight Zone
meets
The Zen of the Diner
.

It was punk, street metaphysics, and I no longer could watch it as, every line, I wanted to shout,

“Stewart, get a load of this.”

Fuck to fucked loss.

Why she’d marked that didn’t provide a whole lot more light. The bitch was a stone-cold psycho, unraveling faster than a propeller cycle backward kick. I sat on a hard cane chair, put my head in my hands, and wondered when the grief would ebb. I mused on the five stages of grief they extol and said,

“Hey, I took the shortcut, rage to outright violence.”

The nine was in my jacket and I withdrew it, shot the fridge four times. Childish, indeed, but, you know, it felt better to actually let rip.

Got ready to leave, stared at the now dripping fridge, muttered,

“Soul on ice.”

I met a woman outside, elderly, not carrying rosary beads but had the look of it. She asked,

“Did you hear . . . shots?”

I said,

“Only the one heard round the world but that wasn’t recent.”

Asking myself,

“Where would Oscar go?”

Not London. Not after they’d jailed him. Paris? Hmmm . . . He’d lived on

The fake and humiliating kindness of strangers
.

Italy?

I’d need to check that out. I was standing on the Salmon Weir Bridge, where the salmon no longer leaped, the water still, five years on, poisoned. Like the fucking country. The cathedral to my left, noon Mass letting out, and sparse—not too many attending these days. A forlorn priest outside, shaking the hands of the measly faithful, grateful they weren’t, I suppose, a lynch mob.

I turned my back on them, headed to town, stopped in the Cellar; used to be the students’ joint. But they, like everyone else, were getting takeout, bringing it on back home. Cider and Red Bull, instant wasted, from A to out of your fucking head in jig time. The Cellar had a flash coffee dock, with even a barista.

You’ve truly lived too long when an Irish guy, in a mock mid-Atlantic accent, asks,

“How would you like your java, sir?”

Way too tempting a question to answer truthfully. The bar was way too flash, too brightly lit. No hiding of blemishes here, every dark mark of my existence on neon. About to turn when a guy sitting on a stool went,

“Jack?”

Took me a second, then, Tremlin, joined the force just as I was about to get my arse handed to me. Had run into him a few times, not the worst, which in Ireland is a huge compliment. He liked his pint so he couldn’t be all rotten. I moved back, shook his large calloused hand, like the hand of a man who’d tilled fields—and recently. I recalled he’d a rep as a brawler. An essential if increasingly discreet part of most police forces. He asked,

“Buy you a jar?”

“Great.”

The barman, obviously related to the barista, judging by his fake tan and delicately tied ponytail, asked,

“Like to try the new concoction?”

Fuck.

Concoction.

The pubs I frequented, that word usually came with a phone warning, going,

“You have five minutes to clear the premises.”

I asked,

“What is it?”

“Lager and Guinness blended.”

“Holy fuck, you’re kidding.”

He wasn’t.

We’d got past, somehow, that we no longer owned our national beverage, even tried to forget the whole Guinness-Lite nonsense, and let’s never mention the White Guinness, but with lager?

Fucksake.

He did manage to pour a half-decent pint and Tremlin and I took it to a table. He sighed, said,

“God be with the days we could smoke.”

In a spirit of misguided camaraderie, I joked,

“And beat the be-Jaysus out of the public.”

Phew-oh, that sank.

Cloud of utter darkness flitted across his features. I could sense his whole body tense. I lied quickly, added,

“You’re looking fit, my man.”

Lame, huh?

He downed his shot and I signaled for another. I tried,

“Not your usual pub, this?”

He gave me a long look, then,

“Nothing is usual no more.”

He managed to include the whole of life’s rich tapestry in this. The drinks came. I handed the guy a twenty, wondering if in these days of baristas that even covered one drink. Tremlin hugged the glass with both hands, said,

“Your girl is making waves.”

Threw me.

Kelly?

Nope.

He continued.

“She was responsible for that major drug gig, you know, got some serious points there.”

I nodded, implying,
a good un indeed,
then he added, as if it was a throwaway,

“Pity she’s a fucking lezzie.”

As I took a moment to grasp this casual slice of ice bigotry, he knocked back his drink, said,

“My daughter, Oonagh, she finished college and, like every other young wan, looks like she’ll have to emigrate so I was wondering . . .”

Let his wonder hang there, like a sad dead prayer. I asked,

“What?”

He fidgeted, took a whiskey breath, said,

“If you’d . . . ask Mr. Reardon. She’s a great girl, real go-getter, he wouldn’t regret it.”

Fuck.

I asked,

“Reardon, why would you think he’d listen to me?”

He gave a sly smile, ugly in its nicotine blemish, said,

“You’re his go-boy. Jesus, no shame in that, we all have to eat some shite, right? Am I right, boyo?”

Go-boy.

Count the ways I was phrasing to tell him to fuck his own self when he said,

“Course, no one eats for free, right Jack-o? So I could put some info your way, as a . . . sweetener.”

For once, I bit down, said nothing, waited.

He looked around, as if the pub were hanging on our every golden word, then,

“I know where the cunt is.”

You had to admit, the guy had new ways of using the language to foul and besmirch. I stared at him and he said,

“The American nutter, I know where she went.”

At least I figured his toilet mouth had wound down and I asked,

“Why would I want to know?”

He said, staring me right in the eye,

“Sure, the whole town knows you were riding the bitch.”

34

Manson was a crazy fucky, tipsy with demons which paced him a degree higher than Nick Copeland because Nick had everything to live for, had put his family first (so had Manson, well, in a way) and Nick had failed without even a hint of notoriety.

—J. P. Smith,
Airtight

Prince Paul: “I would much sooner talk scandal in a drawing room than treason in a cellar.”

—Oscar Wilde,
Vera

Time ago, in
The Killing of the Tinkers,
a former priest said to me, bitterness leaking over every measured word,

“Jack, a terrible darkness is hovering. It’s going to be the passing of the priests, where once they trod on hallowed ground, now they will tread on the thinnest ice. Lunch parties will be replaced by lynch ones. To wear the Roman collar will be to wear a bull’s-eye on their back.”

I’d had a few, the Jay sinking nicely, whispering nice warm lies to me, and I trivialized his prophecy, said,

“Arrah, go on, they will always pull off the ecclesiastical smoke and mirrors.”

He’d stared into a dwindling pint of the black, seeing nothing but demons, howling ones, said,

“You will see, not so much the end of days but a rise in such as

Scientology

The Black Arts

Sham clairvoyants

Fundamentalism.”

He’d stood abruptly, shot out of the pub, and, in those days, I cared enough to follow him. He was huddled in a doorway, gulping down a cigarette as if it were Holy Communion, he coughed, and I asked him,

“What will
you
do?”

He gave me a look of utter surprise, as if the thought never occurred to him, said,

“I’m going the Irish way.”

I mused on that, then tried,

“Pretend it isn’t happening or, worse, confined to the U.K.”

He laughed, no relation to joy or humor, said,

“I’ll slow-drink myself to oblivion.”

I made light of it, said,

“I doubt that.”

He nodded, crushed the butt into the ground with vehemence, said,

“You’re right. Scratch the
slow
shite.”

Call it serendipity or just sheer shite bad luck. That priest was running through my mind

. . . for reasons