The Bloomsday Dead (31 page)

I’d cocked it up.

Moran was right after all.

I should have taken the kid with me. Dinger. Should have made some fucking excuse and grabbed the wean. Oh Christ. He could have shown me exactly where his brother had taken him.

Shit on a stick.

“You eejit. You brainless twat.”

I railed at myself for thirty seconds, got a handle on it.

Ok, calm it, cool it, what if I went and got him now? Aye. Get him. Get the wee shite. His ma would fucking sell him to me for a hundred quid.

I looked at my watch. Nearly ten. There was no way I would ever make it to Bangor and back before midnight.

“Damn it.”

And now, just for good measure, a haar fog was descending over the plateau, coating everything in wetness and a damp cloak of invisibility. Not that there was anything to see: scrub grass, heather, and bog.

A complete dead end. In the dying light, I desperately tried to find a building, but there was nothing that even remotely resembled an Orange Lodge. There were some ruins, but not Orange Lodges; these were little crofts that had lain bare and deserted since the time of the Great Hunger: all that remained were four gray walls. The whitewash long gone, the thatched roofs caved in. They weren’t for human habitation and farmers used them now as sheep pens.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. To get so bloody close,” I cursed and sat down. Took out the pack of cigarettes. Changed my mind, threw it away.

Ok, what now? No point lingering around here. Back to the car. Somebody must know about an old Orange Lodge nearby. Yeah, ask around. There might have been a few funny comings and goings the last few days.

I ran to the Toyota and drove back to the main road.

But it was just a country track and there were no signs of life. No houses, no cars, no tractors; now and again an insomniac cow wandering along munching at the verge.

The fog grew thicker, the night descended.

Taking no chances on an accident, I slowed to five miles an hour.

Not a single bloody farm.

I crossed a stone bridge over a stream and turned into a bleak wetland that no longer had fields or fences or any trace of a life at all. I drove up and down looking for anybody, anything. Getting farther and farther away.

Hit the brakes.

Holy shit, this was all wrong. I was just driving aimlessly. Had to get a plan. Had to get help. I rummaged for my cell phone and dialed the operator. I couldn’t get a signal, but when I climbed out of the car and onto the roof, mercifully, I got through.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hi, I’m driving and I’m lost. I need the number of the car help people,” I said rapidly.

“You’re driving and you’re lost? Do you want the AA?” the operator asked.

“Bloody hell, is that your solution to everything in this country? Alcoholics Anonymous? I said I was lost, I’m not bloody wasted.”

“The Automobile Association,” the operator said with a hint of world weariness.

“Oh, yeah, AA, aye sure, terrific, fire it on over, love,” I said.

She gave me the number. I dialed them up and explained my predicament.

“Look, I don’t know if you can help me, but I’m completely lost; I’m up somewhere in the hills near Belfast. Two minutes ago I was at the Knockagh Mountain; I’m looking for a pub or a hotel or a police station or anyone who can give me directions. Is there anything you can do to help? You must have a big map of Ireland with a list of pubs and gas stations and stuff. Is there anywhere like that around here?”

The man had a soothing County Kerry accent.

“Well, can you tell me what road you’re on, while I call up the map on the screen here.”

“I don’t know what the road is, it’s a very narrow road, single lane.”

“Is it a B road?” he asked.

“That’s very possible,” I said.

“Ok, I think I see roughly where you are. You say you were at the Knockagh viewpoint a few minutes ago?”

“That’s right.”

“Well then, you must be on the B90.”

“Ok. So what do I do? I need a gas station or a bar or something. Anything.”

“Well, if it really is the B90, you should go north and turn left at the very first junction you see. About a quarter of a mile down that road, there’s a place here on our map that we’ve given a star to,” the man said.

“Yeah, mate, unfortunately I can’t tell north from south, it’s dark and there’s a fog,” I explained.

“Just keep going the one direction. If you don’t come to the junction within, say, ten minutes, turn round and go the other direction. It’s called the Four Kingdom View Pub and Restaurant.”

I thanked the man, got his name in case I had to call again, and hung up. I climbed down off the roof, got in the car.

I put the fog lights on and followed the road as it grew narrower, the car weaving between and almost touching bramble bushes. I was about to give it up as a bad job, do a U-y and try the other bloody direction, when I saw the junction. I turned left and almost immediately came to a large posthouse-style mansion. White walls, a thatched roof, hanging baskets of flowers under the eaves, and tiny stained-glass windows on the ground floor. A small hand-painted sign said “Four Kingdom View Pub and Restaurant.” Thank God. I pulled into the driveway and parked the car.

The path around the side of the restaurant ended on a rocky out-crop that overlooked a garden of neat hawthorn hedges and a pile of garbage.

“Charming,” I said, and went inside.

A low-ceilinged, timber-framed room. A tiny kitchen giving off a smell of old socks and rat poison.

Through the tobacco haze I could see that I was in yet another sinister little pub, with unhelpful-looking locals eyeing me from the shadows. Barely half a dozen people in the place. All of them farmers wearing tweed jackets and flat caps. No one sitting next to anyone else. Everyone left to their own morose thoughts and reflections. It was your typical suspicious, superstitious, closemouthed, dour Irish country pub. The sort of pub you never see in the tourist ads for Ireland but which are just as common as the singing-and-dancing happy pubs celebrated on the screen.

The only way the Automobile Association could have given this place a star was if the proprietors had threatened the reviewer with a ritual murder.

It certainly wasn’t the sort of place to come blazing in, asking questions about a ruined Orange Lodge. Asking any questions, come to that. They wouldn’t kill me like they would have earlier in the Rat’s Nest, but they wouldn’t rush to give me the Heimlich maneuver, either.

“What’ll ye be having, sir?” a barman asked in a not unfriendly manner. He was a tall, ungainly man in a filthy smock who moved so incredibly slowly that he was either in a partial body cast or he was drunk out of his mind and trying not to show it.

The locals were all nursing hot whiskies. That would be one way to ingratiate myself.

“Oh, I’m driving. Just a lemonade. But I’ll give everyone in the bar the same again. Have one yourself.”

“Very good of you, sir.”

“My pleasure,” I said. The barman stared at me.

“And for you, sir, what kind of lemonade?” he asked.

“There’s different kinds of lemonade?”

“Aye, there’s white or there’s brown.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked with mounting irritation.

“One’s white, the other one’s brown.”

“I’ll take white, then.”

“Fine.”

He brought me a glass of white lemonade. I put a fifty-pound note on the counter. He took it greedily.

“Drinks are on this gentleman,” he announced when he had thoroughly examined the bill.

A few of the old codgers nodded, but the rest kept their own counsel, disdaining to even look in my direction. They certainly didn’t seem a cooperative bunch despite my largesse. I’d have to try the barman. You couldn’t just ask him outright, though. I’d work my way around. At the very least, I’d try and do this without making a scene, but if things went on for more than five minutes without progress, I was willing to shoot every one of these old bastards until they told me what they knew.

“What are the Four Kingdoms?” I asked the barkeep.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re called the Four Kingdom Restaurant,” I said quickly.

“Oh, that. Supposedly that’s the view from the top of the Knockagh. Kingdom of Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and, of course, the Kingdom of Heaven.”

“That’s fascinating. Fascinating stuff. I bet you know a lot of local geography and stuff like that,” I said.

“Not really,” he replied.

“Well, uh, listen, uh, I was wondering, I was looking for this old lodge that was supposed to be around here, did you ever hear of anything like that?”

“No.”

“No old Orange Lodge, around here, nothing like that?”

“No.”

“No ruins of any kind?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Perfectly sure.”

A man came out of the toilet and sat back down at the bar. He grabbed a pint of Guinness as if it were a life belt, nodded to me. He was a younger man, thirties, wearing a tweed suit but with a yellow silk waistcoat. His slightly wild blond hair was unadorned by a flat cap. It was a stroke of luck; this level of unconformity might also stretch to the possibility of being open for questions.

“How do?” I asked.

“Not too bad,” he said.

“Well, a bad pixie must be following me around because I am completely banjaxed,” I said, coming straight to the point.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

I summoned over the barkeep.

“Another pint of Guinness for my friend here,” I said, and offered him my hand. He shook it.

“Brian O’Nolan,” I said.

“Nice to meet you, Brian, my name’s Phil, thanks for the pint,” he said.

“My pleasure, Phil.”

Phil looked at me, eager to hear the nature of my difficulties.

“Ach, I’m in a wee spot, Phil,” I said, trying not to appear too anxious.

“What do you need?” Phil asked, finishing his own pint and starting on mine.

“Well, I’m a bit disappointed, to tell you the truth.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Uh, it’s not important,” I said with a sigh.

But the man’s interest was piqued. I had him on the hook now.

“No, tell me,” he said.

I laughed.

“It’s probably a stupid thing. But me dad, we live in America now, he moved us out there in the seventies when I was just a wee boy. And, well, he used to be in the Orange Order. You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“No, go on.”

“Well, he used to go to an Orange Lodge round here, and I was coming over to Belfast for business and so he asked me if I could find his old lodge and take a picture of it for him. Well, wouldn’t you know it, business took me a little longer than I thought it would in Belfast and now it’s dark out and I’ve been driving around for a couple of hours and I haven’t been able to find it and, ach, I’m just a bit upset for me da.”

The man nodded solemnly. I had hit all the right buttons. The Orange Order, family, tradition, a son’s duty, if only I could have worked a dog in there it would have been a home run. Phil looked upset for me and gulped down his pint. I put a fiver on the counter and nodded at the barman. He started pouring another.

Phil cleared his throat.

“Well, Brian, you shouldn’t be giving up yet. I don’t know too much about that sort of thing; I’m not really from around here, but Sam Beggs over there, he knows this area like the back of his hand.”

“That guy in the corner?” I asked, looking at a haggard, blue-nosed yokel chain-smoking his way through a packet of loose tobacco.

“Yeah, that’s our Sam.”

“Thanks very much, I’ll go ask him,” I said.

Phil shook his head.

“You better not, he’s not exactly a big fan of strangers; you know how it is with some of those culchie types, wee bit sleekit, you know. I’ll just go over and ask him for ya,” Phil said.

“I would be much obliged.”

“Sure, ’tis no problem at all. What’s the details?”

“All my dad said was that he used to go to an Orange Lodge within a stone’s throw of the Knockagh; he said it might be a ruin now, could be an arch over the gate or something,” I explained.

Phil walked to the character in the corner of the room while I sipped my lemonade and tried desperately not to look at my watch. Five agonizing minutes went by as the two men chatted.

Phil came back with a smile on his face.

“See, never say die, he knows the very place. The arch you’re talking about must be what’s left of the old narrow-gauge viaduct, the lodge is the next field over. About two miles up the road from here, a wee lane you turn off and go down. The lane has a big sign on it that says “Trespassers Prosecuted, No Shooting.” You can’t see the old lodge from the road, you have to go down the lane a good bit. He says that he thinks it is a ruin, mind, but if you’ve a flash on your camera it might come out.”