Текст книги "Purgatory"

Автор книги: Ken Bruen

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

Ken Bruen

Purgatory

Part 1

The Men

The skateboarders had that peculiar blend of Irish self-consciousness, dumb persistence. The unusually good weather in early January had led to a makeshift ramp that was ambitiously steep and high. The Council would have removed this but had its hands full with the Occupiers, who had a large tent perched to the left side of Eyre Square.

Too, the skateboarders kept the locals from lynching the Council over various charges.

Water

Refuse

Home

And just about damn everything else.

Three Guards were deemed sufficient to watch the growing crowd for what was rumored to be a spectacular attempt.

A double flip in midair from Joseph, a sixteen-year-old whiz flier from Tuam. He was small. Undistinguished, with the revamped grunge look that owed more to the new poverty than to fashion. Quiet seeped as he took his run at the ramp. A slight ah from the crowd as he accelerated faster than they’d expected, then he was airborne, high above the ramp, left the board, was in mid-turn when the single shot rang out.

He seemed to hang for a moment, the top right side of his brain scattering in a slow mist, then a loud scream from the crowd as his body hurled to the concrete.

Two people were hurt in the panic.

A skater had the presence of mind to steal the almost-famous board.

1

“Your crazy daughter is on our short list.”

“There’s nothing wrong with her.”

“She talks to people who aren’t there.”

“No she doesn’t, she only listens.”

– Carol O’Connell, author of The Chalk Girl

My life seemed to have reached a time of calm. New home, new(ish) habits, new people.

Prize bonds.

Who knew?

Who the fuck knew?

A staple of my father’s generation. People bought them for their family’s future. The Lotto and lotteries of every ilk came down the greed pike and these forgotten bonds languished in drawers or the pages of family Bibles never opened.

I had, owing to a threat to my father’s reputation, rummaged among his few possessions.

Kept in a Lyons Tea chest, his few papers scorched my heart. A certificate of loyalty to the Knights of Columbanus, an Inter-Counties semifinal medal in hurling, now as tarnished as the country. A fade to faded picture of the family at

Get this

The fucking beach.

Not exactly a Californian scene. Didn’t evoke a Beach Boys theme.

No.

My parents, in their street clothes, with a summer concession of my father’s, sleeves rolled up. My mother was wearing what might have then been called

A summer frock.

Save they didn’t do seasonal.

She wore the same item in winter, with a cardigan added. She did have her one habitual trait.

The bitterness.

Leaking from her down-turned mouth to every resentful fiber of her being. I was maybe eight in the photo, an ugly child who grew to embrace ugliness as a birthright. Tellingly, my father’s hands were on my shoulders, my mother’s were folded in that

“What are you looking at?”

Pose she perfected every day of her miserable life.

My mother wasn’t a simple bitch.

She was more evolved, a cunning sociopath who hated the world under the guise of piety.

Dead for years now, so did I finally, Oprah-like, come to understand and, yes, alleluia,

Forgive?

Yeah, like fuck.

And, oh my God, she would spin in her grave to know those prize bonds were sitting there. There may not be justice but there is sure some cosmic twisted karma. Took a while for the bonds to be processed but, when they were, I was stunned.

Cash.

Lots of it.

So.

I stopped drinking.

How weird is that? When I couldn’t afford it on any level, I went at it like a famished greyhound. Now, I quit?

Go figure.

Three months in, I was doing okay, not gasping, hanging in there and feeling a whole lot healthier. I’d been down this road so many times, but something had altered. My last case, I literally lost two fingers, and witnessed some events that shadowed me in a new way. I finally figured out booze wasn’t easing my torture but fine-tuning it. Would it last? Who knew?

I was sitting in Garavan’s, just off Shop Street. It still resembled the old pubs: an Irish barman, snug, no bouncers, decent slow-pulled pints, and memories of the bearable kind. Pat, a middle-aged guy, was tending the pumps, brought me a black coffee, glass of sparkling water. He was off the booze his own self, so no gibes. Said,

“I’m off the cigs.”

He was an old-school smoker, mainlined nicotine. I said the usual hollow things, ended with,

“Did you use the patches?”

“Fear,”

He said.

Whether of health, economics, his wife, I didn’t push.

Life needs a touch of mystery and not everything requires an answer.

2

Some people, I saw, had drowned right away. And some people were drowning in slow motion, drowning a little bit at a time, and would be drowning for years. And some people, like Mick, had always been drowning. They just didn’t know what to call it until now.

– Sara Gran, The City of the Dead

Purgatory is the pit stop en route to hell.

The woman sat opposite me, didn’t ask, just sat. This used to happen a lot. People believing I had some inside track for finding things, people, solutions, and maybe answers. I’d found some answers, over the years, and they were always the wrong ones. Or right but for the wrong reasons. I’d given it up with the booze, the cigs, the Xanax.

Before she could speak, I said,

“No.”

Knocked her back.

Her mouth made a small O of surprise. I knew the gig.

The touching photo.

Some heart-kicking story.

Her son/brother/husband

Missing

Was a great/caring/lovable

Individual

And

Could I find him, what happened to him?

The whole usual awful parade of misery.

She tried,

“But, they said, you care.”

I said,

“I don’t.”

And I didn’t.

Not no more.

Sorry.

My new home was a steal.

Galway, in the boom years, the most sought-after location for housing in the country. Plus the most expensive. Now the new austerity, the bankruptcy, and you couldn’t give away property. I rented a two-bedroom, ground-floor, bright, open apartment in Merchants Road, not a spit from the Garda station.

Flat-screen TV, modern kitchen for all the cooking I’d never do. Large pine bookcase. I’d given Vinny a shout at Charlie Byrne’s bookshop and he’d stacked the shelves. He knew my books, sometimes, even knew me. Plus, he’d handed me an envelope, said,

“It was left in the shop for you.”

No, he hadn’t seen who dropped it off.

My name on a deep blue envelope, almost the color of a Guard’s tunic. Inside

A photo of a young man, on a skateboard, high in the air, looking like an eagle against the sky. Then a piece from The Galway Advertiser which read

. . verdict due on January 10th in vicious rape case. Tim Rourke, accused in the brutal rape and battery of two young girls, is due in court for the verdict. Controversy has surrounded the case since it was revealed the Guards had not followed procedure in obtaining the evidence.

There was more, about this being the latest high-profile case likely to be thrown out over some technicality. And still

The bankers

Developers

Clergy

Continued to fuck us over every way they could.

A single piece of notepaper had this printed on it

You want to take this one? Your turn, Jack.

Signed

C33.

3

“Right,” she thought, “I’m just having a little attack of metaphysics.”

– Fred Vargas, The Chalk Circle Man

Philosophy is for the man of private means.

Stewart was more a reluctant ally than a friend. A former yuppie dope dealer, he’d been sent to jail for six years, hard full sentence. I’d solved the murder of his sister; he felt an enduring debt since. After his release, he’d reinvented himself as a Zen-spouting entrepreneur. And seemed to make shitloads of cash. Even in the depths of the current bleak economy. We’d been thrown together on numerous cases and he’d developed a strong friendship with my other ally.

Ridge.

Sergeant Ní Iomaire.

A gay Guard, married to a bollix. She was currently out of the marriage but moving up the ranks, slowly, in the all-male hierarchy of the police. They seemed to believe I was redeemable.

Not yet.

Stewart was sitting in the lobby of the Meryck Hotel. It fed his posh aspirations and served herbal tea. A crime in any venue. Wearing an Armani suit, he sat at ease, like a cat with breeding. I was drinking black coffee, bitter as my heart. I showed him the note, article, photo I’d received. He gave his full focus. Said,

“Let me check on this photo. It looks familiar.”

Then he read aloud the message, which was

“Your turn, Jack.”

Looked at me, asked,

“What do you figure?”

I told the truth.

“No idea.”

He pushed.

“And?”

“And. . nothing. I don’t care.”

He let out a small sigh, stole a glance at my mutilated hand. I wore a glove, gave the appearance of all the fingers. He pushed his tea aside, made a gesture with his head.

Annoyance?

Asked,

“Why are you showing it to me then?”

“You see, Stewart, you have the tendency to want to know the answer to. . Jesus, everything. I thought this might keep you off the streets.”

He didn’t rise to the bait, asked,

“If I work it out, am I to tell you, am I to report back?”

I said,

“Tell Ridge. She might give a fuck.”

He scanned the note again, asked,

“C33?”

And before I could take a shot, he said,

“Right, you don’t give a toss.”

I was moving fast away, despite my limp, acting up less these days, when Stewart shouted,

“What about that dude Reardon?”

Let him shout

Bí cúramach!

Indeed.

The Reardon Riddle?

Talk of the town. One of the rarities, a dot-com billionaire who’d survived the current global meltdown, had come to Galway, set up headquarters, and, according to rumor, was going to save the city. Not yet forty, the guy was allegedly a blend of Steve Jobs, Gandhi, and Putin. Didn’t hurt he looked more like a roadie than a star, gave that edge vibe.

When priests had to disguise their clerical collars owing to public ire, it helped that this whiz kid didn’t look like the other loathed species, bankers.

His trademark jeans, trainers, were more Armani than Penney’s but, hey, who was judging?

Was he too good to be true?

We were about to find out. But the buzz was all good thus far. I mean, fuck, he’d even said he’d like to save Galway United. On the smart board, this was cute twice over. Swear to God, our previous manager’s financial adviser had been Nick Leeson! Yeah, the same fella who took Barings Bank for a scorching hike.

When I was a child, the nearest family we had to royalty were the Hunters. They made prams-I shit thee not-but had the Anglo-Irish gig down. Owned a large, get this, White Mansion, at the rear of Galway. They were steady employers, reputed to be decent folk, i.e., they’d actually greet a person, if sparingly.

Like our economy, belief, decency, they were in the wind.

Reardon had bought their old home and extensive rebuilding, renovations were under way.

See, employment right there.

I’d watched a rare interview he’d given. Long, tangled,

“Dude, just got out of the shower. .”

Hair.

The aforementioned jeans and a sweatshirt that was just faded enough to read,

Pogues. . Rule.

This guy had his shit down.

He’d given one of those rambling monologues, ablaze with sound bites, signifying nothing. But he had a way of doling out this crap, you could believe it made some sense. His accent was a hybrid of surfer dude, Michael Flatley version of Irish brogue, geek.

Somewhere in this mess, he’d been asked about his single status.

He. . winked. . fucking winked, went coy about hoping to meet an Irish girl. That’s when I threw up.

Ridge phoned me as I was reading about the former hangman, Albert Pierrepoint. The state had released papers previously sealed from the public and all sorts of weird, startling data were flooding the news. Pierrepoint had offered to hang two people with the deal,

“Ten pound for the first and I’ll do the nephew for half price.”

Jesus.

The forerunner of all those offers,

Buy one, get one free.

Ridge asked,

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Tales of the hangman.”

A pause.

The question hovered,

“Are you drinking?”

But it passed and she asked,

“Will you help me out?”

Uh-oh

As they say in literary novels,

No good would have come of it.

Ridge had married Anthony Hemple, an upper-class Anglo-Irish bollix. He wanted a mother for his daughter, she wanted juice for promotion to sergeant. They were now separated. I said,

“Well, sergeant, spit it out.”

“I’ve been invited to a party. I want to go, but I need a partner.”

I let her stew, then,

“How come you didn’t ask Stewart?”

“He’s already going with a young lady.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“The Reardon party.”

The party.

Reardon had altered the Hunter house to accommodate his reputation. Up to a helipad on the extended roof. The setting remained spectacular, not one other property nearby and the golf links spreading out to reveal the whole of Galway Bay. It made even the bloody rain look attractive. I was dressed in my one suit, the funeral job. Black and from a charity shop. I was suffering a panic attack, no Jay, no X, no cigs, thinking,

“Am I out of me fooking mind?”

I was loath to attend public events as just recently a newspaper, in lieu of anything new or out of sheer bollocks laziness, rehashed the story of, as the headline put it,

The Tragedy of Serena May.

Replayed all those terrible events. My closest friends, Jeff and Cathy, had a daughter with Down syndrome. The light of their lives and mine. I adored that child, spent many hours as the bedraggled excuse for a babysitter. Until, Jesus, a terrible accident and the child was killed. Years later I was exonerated of blame but the mud stuck, the thinking was

“Taylor was there.”

And true, as the Americans say, it happened on my watch. The article didn’t scream

“Taylor did it.”

But published a furtive photo of me and you thought

“The fucker did something.”

All it took.

Suggestion.

Ridge asked,

“You all right, Jack?”

Given that I’d never in me whole bedraggled, befuddled existence been all right, I had to bite down on the sarcasm, always bubbling under, then,

“Yeah, not using anything, it’s a trip. Like Richard Fariña. I’ve been down so long, maybe it will seem like up.”

Being Ridge, she asked the wrong question.

“And Richard Fariña, how did he fare?”

I could have been tactful, lied, but I don’t do nice, not ever, said,

“O.D.”

Shut that baby right down.

* * *

The Hunter place was ablaze with light, like a beacon of false hope to the city. As we got out of the car, Ridge handing over the keys to a parking guy, she said,

“Tis rumored the Saw Doctors might show, play their number one hit, with Petula Clark’s Downtown.”

Now that would seem like up.

The best and the brightest

Were not at the party.

They’d emigrated.

What we had was the shoddy and the smiles. The Galway celebrities, who’d yet to make it to The Late Late Show but claimed they’d gotten the call. Waiters in livery, I kid you fooking not, were dispensing champagne. Ridge took a glass and the waiter, familiar in a bad way, said to me,

“It’s free, Taylor.”

I said,

“It’s a lot of things, but free ain’t one of them.”

I heard him mutter,

“Kent.”

And no, he didn’t think I was from the county.

Stewart approached, a dark girl in tow, looking like Beyoncé in her younger days. He had, as the Brits say, an impeccable evening suit and I hope I’m wrong, but what appeared to be a maroon cummerbund.

Jesus wept.

He introduced her as

“Tiffany.”

Of course, no chance we’d be running into too many named Mary. Out of absolute zero interest, I asked,

“And do you work. . um. .?”

Couldn’t quite bring myself to utter the name. She gave a champagne giggle, said,

“How droll.”

I’ve been called every variety of bollix but this was a first. She countered,

“And you, John, do you?”

Great.

“It’s Jack. I insult people.”

She was game, went with it.

“And does it keep you?”

“Off the streets, at least.”

Stewart whisked her away, fast. Ridge glared at me but a man was coming up on her right, dressed in ratty jeans, battered Converse, and a sweatshirt with the logo

I’m a gas.

Yeah.

Reardon.

He hugged Ridge, said,

“Sergeant Ní Iomaire, great to see you.”

Then turned to me. Ridge said,

“Jack Taylor.”

He didn’t take my extended hand and it hung there, like a government promise, sad and empty. His eyes were dark brown, close to black with a curious light at the corner, as if he’d had them high-lit. The guy had presence, no denying that, but a pity he was the one most impressed by its glow. He asked,

“You the guy who got the handicapped kid killed?”

Tim Rourke was born nasty, got worse. He’d been in trouble all his life; liked trouble. Liked to hurt people. He should have just been lost in a lost system but the social workers discovered him. The workers with

Awareness.

The ones who cared in italics.

Julie Nesbit in particular. All of twenty-six years of age, with accreditation from London. And determined to make her mark. Rourke charmed her. A serial rapist with a dirty soul, he’d managed to con her into the belief that if only someone would believe in him, ah, he’d be gold.

Like that.

She had that rare ability, given mostly to judges and priests, to completely ignore all the evidence. They didn’t think outside the box, they were fucking buried in it. A measure of Rourke’s psycho charm borne out by Nesbit’s description of this spawn of Satan as

“A cheeky monkey.”

Her impassioned plea before the judge, in what the Guards had believed was a slam dunk, turned the verdict. Rourke walked, rather strutted, free.

Was he grateful?

Yeah.

Nesbit, rushing to him on the courtroom steps, expecting a wave of gratitude, got,

“Fuck off, cunt.”

4

She can be delicately morbid.

– Alice Blanchard, The Breathtaker

Purgatory is seen as hell light.

Rourke should have been a good-looking kid. Tousled blond hair like a character in a chick-lit novel, delicate build, but the eyes. . the eyes contained an essence that had come from a place of eternal dread. They conveyed the black energy that drove on hate. He never wondered why he had more of this emotion than all others; he learned early to conceal it, used a knife charm to evade responsibility, and derived almost ecstatic bliss from the inflicting of pain.

His type does well in

The army

And

The church.

Now, late on a Friday night, thrown out of a pub on the Quays, he’d ended up near Nimmo’s Pier. He’d trolled here before, robbing gays, penny-ante dope dealers. He’d been downing the working stiff’s cocaine, vodka and Red Bull, not that Rourke and work had ever met. His acquittal was blurred in his mind, owing to the amount of booze he’d taken, and a hit of the new solvent doing the rounds added a level of confusion to his head.

All he felt was the usual compulsion to wreak damage. He moved to the end of the pier and looked up at the lone light hanging above the rim. The bulb was gone so he was in virtual darkness. Saw the figure weaving toward him and his body went into attack mode. Then a moment of confusion.

Was the figure moving very fast and. . moving in a direct line toward him?

WTF?

Then thought,

“Good, come to Momma.”

Then a hand was reaching out and he felt the full voltage of the taser. His brain briefly registered

Born to Be Wild.

I was on a female mystery kick, reading only lady crime writers. My contribution to equality. Had asked Vinny to stack my new bookshelves with them.

He did.

I skimmed through the authors.

Sara Gran

Zoë Sharp

Margaret Murphy

Wendy Hornsby

Lynn S. Hightower

Megan Abbott

Cornelia Read

Alafair Burke

Hilary Davidson

Jan Burke

And was content.

A further two boxes were yet to be opened and I kept the anticipation of that for the dire days of February. The radio was tuned to Jimmy Norman and he was playing the new album from Marc Roberts. You could think that most was okay in my narrow world. Apart from a desperate yearning to get hammered but I knew how those demons roared. Could see clearly in my mind

The double Jameson

Two tabs of Xanax

Pack of Major.

Almost in sync, I scratched the patch on my left arm. Muttered not today; was reaching for a book when my mobile shrilled.

Stewart.

Said,

“Need to talk to you urgently.”

“Thought you Zen masters didn’t do. . you know. . urgency.”

He sighed, then,

“Jack, it’s serious, about the note you received.”

We met in Crowe’s bar in Bohermore. My choice. A sign in the window declared

Bohermore’s first Mayor.

Michael Crowe, one of the brothers who owned the bar, was indeed the mayor and a good one. Stewart was from a middle-class family, reared in Devon Park, which in my day said,

“You’re posh.”

Not really, but the notion was there, still lingered. Meant that Stewart didn’t know the family and Stewart made it his business to know almost all the players. I was sitting at the bar, groaning at a sparkling water, discussing hurling with Ollie Crowe, when Stewart arrived. In yet another fantastic suit. Coming in the swing door, he brought the sun with him. Ollie muttered,

“Hell of a suit.”

Moved off.

After the usual fandango about Stewart’s herbal bloody tea, we moved to a table. Stewart had a serious expression, laid out the clippings I’d given him, the note. Said,

“Take another look.”

“Why? I remember the damn thing and C33, or whatever the fooking number is.”

He leaned on the notes so I reached, took them. Made a show of concentrated interest. Stewart took a genteel sip of the tea, then said,

“Rourke, the guy due in court?”

I said,

“Sounds like a nasty piece of work.”

“Not anymore.”

“Why?”

“Apparent suicide, from the lonelamp post on Nimmo’s Pier.”

“Apparent?”

“I had a chat with Ridge.”

I sneered, bile leaking over my tone.

“And ye concluded what?”

“He’d been tasered first.”

I digested this, mulled over a few ideas. PIs are renowned for mulling. I said,

“Either way, the bad bastard is no loss; good riddance.”

Stewart never quite came to terms with what he saw as my cold heart. If he only knew the half of it. He asked,

“What about the note, the phrase Your turn?”

I had a longing for a short sharp jolt of Jameson, so intense I could taste it. Tried to shuck it away, said,

“Another eejit, the city is full of them; some of them are even running it.”

Stewart had that light in his eyes, meant he’d done some digging, gone that extra mile. He said,

“The skateboarder who was shot? He was dealing dope.”

I took the shot.

“You dealt dope.”

He took the hit, not well but ran with it, said,

“This guy dealt to schoolkids.”

I finally got it, did a double take, asked,

“You think somebody took out. . killed. . those wrongdoers?”

Made a mental note to seriously stop thinking in italics, added the dreaded word, in mocking fashion,

“Vigilante?”

He stayed the course, said,

“Worse.”

Surprised me, and before I could speak, he added,

“And I think he wants you to play.”