Scorcher was making an even better first impression than I had expected. I said, “Kennedy’s no mate of mine. He’s just a little poxbottle I have to work with every now and then.”
Shay said, “I bet you’re good enough mates that he told you what happened to Rosie.”
I glanced around the pub. The conversations had cranked up a notch—not louder, but faster and more focused: the news had made it in at last. Nobody was looking at us, partly out of courtesy to Shay and partly because this was the kind of pub where most people had had problems of their own and understood the value of privacy. I said, leaning forward on my elbows and keeping my voice down, “OK. This could get me fired, but the Dalys deserve to know whatever we know. I need you to promise me it won’t get back to Kennedy.”
Shay was wearing a thousand-watt skeptical stare, but the other three were right with me, nodding away, proud as Punch: our Francis, after all these years still a Liberties boy first and a cop second, sure aren’t we all great to be such a close-knit bunch. That was what the girls would pass on to the rest of the neighborhood, as the sauce to go with my little nuggets of tasty info: Francis is on our side.
I said, “It looks a lot like someone killed her.”
Carmel gasped and crossed herself again. From Jackie: “God bless us and save us!”
Kevin was still looking pale. He asked, “How?”
“No news on that yet.”
“But they’ll find out, right?”
“Probably. After all this time, it could be tough, but the lab team knows what they’re doing.”
“Like CSI?” Carmel was round-eyed.
“Yep,” I said, which would have given the useless tech an aneurysm—the Bureau all loathe CSI to the point of sputtering incoherence—but which would make the old ones’ day. “Just like that.”
“Except not magic,” Shay said dryly, to his pint.
“You’d be surprised. Those boys can find just about anything they set their sights on—old blood spatter, tiny amounts of DNA, a hundred different kinds of injury, you name it. And while they’re figuring out what happened to her, Kennedy and his crew are going to be figuring out who happened it. They’ll be talking to everyone who lived around here, back then. They’ll want to know who she was close to, who she argued with, who liked her and who didn’t and why, what she did every moment of the last few days of her life, if anyone noticed anything odd that night she went missing, if anyone noticed anyone else acting funny around then or just after . . . They’re going to be very bloody thorough, and they’re going to take all the time they need. Anything, any tiny thing, could be crucial.”
“Holy Mother,” Carmel breathed. “It’s just like the telly, isn’t it? That’s mad.”
In pubs and kitchens and front rooms all around us, people were already talking: thinking back, dredging up old memories, comparing and contrasting, pooling them to come up with a million theories. In my neighborhood, gossip is a competitive sport that’s been raised to Olympic standard, and I never diss gossip; I revere it with all my heart. Like I told Scorch, info is ammo, and there was bound to be plenty of live ammo being tossed around, in with the dud stuff. I wanted all that good gossip to be focused on dredging up the live rounds, and I wanted to make very sure they would get back to me, one way or another—if Scorcher had snubbed the Dalys, he was going to have a hard time extracting any kind of info from anyone in a half-mile radius. And I wanted to know that, if someone out there had something to worry about, he was going to be worrying hard.
I said, “If I hear anything else that the Dalys should know, I won’t let them get left out of the loop.”
Jackie put out a hand and touched my wrist. She said, “I’m so sorry, Francis. I was hoping it’d turn out to be something else—some kind of mix-up, I don’t know, anything . . .”
“That poor young one,” Carmel said softly. “What age was she? Eighteen?”
I said, “Nineteen and a bit.”
“Ah, God; that’s barely older than my Darren. And left on her own in that awful house all these years. Her parents going mad wondering where she was, and all the time . . .”
Jackie said, “I never thought I’d say this, but thank God for your man PJ Lavery.”
“Let’s hope,” Kevin said. He drained his pint. “Who’s ready for another?”
“Might as well,” said Jackie. “What d’you mean, let’s hope?”
Kevin shrugged. “Let’s hope it turns out OK, is all I’m saying.”
“Janey Mac, Kevin, how’s it going to turn out OK? The poor girl’s dead! Sorry, Francis.”
Shay said, “He means let’s hope the cops don’t turn up anything that makes us all wish Lavery’s boys had dumped that suitcase in a skip and let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Like what?” Jackie demanded. “Kev?”
Kevin shoved back his stool and said, with a sudden burst of authority, “I’ve had this conversation right up to my tits, and Frank probably has too. I’m going up to the bar. If you’re still talking about this crap when I get back, I’m leaving you the drinks and I’m going home.”
“Will you look at that,” Shay said, one corner of his mouth lifting. “The mouse that roared. Fair play to you, Kev; you’re dead right. We’ll talk about Survivor. Now get us a pint.”
We got another round in, and then another. Hard rain gusted up against the windows, but the barman had the heating up high, and all the weather we got was the cold draft when the door opened. Carmel plucked up the courage to go to the bar and order half a dozen toasted sandwiches, and I realized that the last food I’d had was half of Ma’s fry-up and that I was starving, the ferocious kind of hunger where you could spear something and eat it warm. Shay and I took turns telling jokes that made G&T go down Jackie’s nose and made Carmel squeak and smack our wrists, once she got the punch lines; Kevin did a viciously accurate impression of Ma at Christmas dinner that sent us all into convulsions of hard, helpless, painful laughter. “Stop,” Jackie gasped desperately, flapping a hand at him. “I swear to God, my bladder won’t take it, if you don’t stop I’ll wet myself.”
“She’ll do it,” I said, trying to get my breath back. “And you’ll be the one that has to get a J-cloth and clean up.”
“I don’t know what you’re laughing about,” Shay told me. “This Christmas, you’ll be right there suffering with the rest of us.”
“My bollix. I’ll be safe at home, drinking single malt and laughing every time I think about yous poor suckers.”
“Just you wait, pal. Now that Ma’s got her claws back into you, you think she’ll let go with Christmas just around the corner? Miss her chance to make all of us miserable at once? Just you wait.”
“Want to bet?”
Shay held out a hand. “Fifty quid. You’ll be sat across the table from me for Christmas dinner.”
“You’re on,” I said. We shook on it. His hand was dry and strong and callused, and the grip flicked a spark of static between us. Neither of us flinched.
Carmel said, “D’you know something, Francis, we said we wouldn’t ask you, but I can’t help it—Jackie, would you ever stop that, don’t be pinching me!”
Jackie had got her bladder back under control and was giving Carmel the evil stare of doom. Carmel said, with dignity, “If he doesn’t want to talk about it, he can tell me himself, so he can. Francis, why did you never come back before this?”
I said, “I was too scared that Ma would get the wooden spoon and beat the living shite out of me. Do you blame me?”
Shay snorted. Carmel said, “Ah, seriously, but, Francis. Why?”
She and Kevin and even Jackie—who had asked this question a bunch of times and never got an answer—were gazing at me, tipsy and perplexed and even a little hurt. Shay was picking a fleck of something out of his pint.
I said, “Let me ask yous something. What would you die for?”
“Jaysus,” Kevin said. “You’re a barrel of laughs, aren’t you?”
“Ah, leave him,?
?? Jackie said. “The day that’s in it.”
I said, “Da once told me he’d die for Ireland. Would you do that?”
Kevin rolled his eyes. “Da’s stuck in the seventies. No one thinks like that any more.”
“Try it for a second. Just for the crack. Would you?”
He gave me a bemused look. “Like why?”
“Say England invaded all over again.”
“They couldn’t be arsed.”
“If, Kev. Stay with me here.”
“I dunno. I never thought about it.”
“That,” Shay said, not too aggressively, aiming his pint at Kevin, “that right there, that’s what has this country ruined.”
“Me? What’d I do?”
“You and the rest like you. Your whole bloody generation. What do you care about, only Rolexes and Hugo Boss? What else do you think about, even? Francis is right, for once in his life. You’d want to get yourself something you’d die for, pal.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Kevin said. “What would you die for? Guinness? A good ride?”
Shay shrugged. “Family.”
“What are you on about?” Jackie demanded. “You hate Ma and Da’s guts.”
All five of us burst out laughing; Carmel had to tip her head back and knuckle tears out of her eyes. “I do,” Shay acknowledged, “yeah. But that’s not the point.”
“Would you die for Ireland, yeah?” Kevin asked me. He still sounded a little miffed.
“I would in me hole,” I said, which set everyone off again. “I was posted in Mayo for a while. Have yous ever been to Mayo, have yous? It’s boggers, sheep and scenery. I’m not dying for that.”
“What, then?”
“Like my man Shay says,” I told Kev, waving my glass at Shay, “that’s not the point. The point is that I know.”
“I’d die for the kids,” Carmel said. “God forbid.”
Jackie said, “I’d say I’d die for Gav. Only if he really needed it, mind. Is this not terrible morbid, Francis? Would you not rather talk about something else?”
I said, “Back in the day, I would’ve died for Rosie Daly. That’s what I’m trying to tell yous.”
There was a silence. Then Shay raised his glass. “Here’s to everything we’d die for,” he said. “Cheers.”
We clinked our glasses, took deep drinks and relaxed back into our seats. I knew this might well be because I was about nine tenths hammered, but I was fucking delighted that they had come in, even Shay. More than that: I was grateful. They might be a spectacularly messed-up bunch and what they felt about me was anyone’s guess, but the four of them had dropped whatever they could have been doing this evening, put down their lives at a moment’s notice and come in here to walk me through this night. We fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, and that felt like a warm gold glow wrapped all around me; like I had stumbled, by some perfect accident, into the right place. I was just sober enough not to try and put this into words.
Carmel leaned in to me and said, almost shyly, “When Donna was a baba, there was something went wrong with her kidneys; they thought she might need a transplant. I told them straight off, not a bother on me, they could take the both of mine. I didn’t think twice. She was grand in the end, sure, and they’d only have needed the one anyway, but I never forgot that. D’you know what I mean?”
“Yep,” I said, smiling at her. “I do.”
Jackie said, “Ah, she’s lovely, Donna is. She’s a wee dote; always laughing. You’ll have to meet her now, Francis.”
Carmel told me, “I see you in Darren. D’you know that? I always did, from when he was a little young fella.”
“God help him,” Jackie and I said, together.
“Ah, now; in a good way. Going to college, like. He didn’t get that off me or Trevor, we’d have been happy enough to see him go into the plumbing with his daddy. No, Darren came up with that all by himself, never said a word to us: just got all the course forms, decided what one he wanted, and worked like mad to get himself into the right Leaving Cert classes. Went after it bullheaded, all on his own. Like yourself. I always used to wish I was like that.”
For a second there, I thought I saw a wave of sadness rise up across her face. “I remember you doing just fine when you wanted something,” I said. “How about Trevor?”
The sadness vanished, and I got a quick mischievous snippet of giggle that made her look like a girl again. “I did, didn’t I? That dance, the first time I saw him: I took one look and I said to Louise Lacey, I said, ‘That one’s mine.’ He was wearing them flares that were all the rage—”
Jackie started to laugh.
“Don’t be making fun, you,” Carmel told her. “Your Gavin does be always in them raggedy old jeans; I like a fella that makes a bit of an effort. Trevor had a lovely little arse on him in the flares, so he did. And he smelled only gorgeous. What are yous two laughing at?”
“You brazen hussy, you,” I said.
Carmel took a prim sip of her Babycham. “I was not. Things were different back then. If you were mad about a fella, you’d sooner die than let him know. You had to make him do the chasing.”
Jackie said, “Jaysus, Pride and bleeding Prejudice. I asked Gavin out, so I did.”
“I’m telling yous, it worked; better than all this rubbish nowadays, girls going to the clubs with no knickers on them. I got my fella, didn’t I? Engaged on my twenty-first. Were you still here for that, Francis?”
“Just,” I said. “I left about three weeks after.” I remembered the engagement party: the two families squeezed into our front room, the mammies eyeing each other up like a pair of overweight pit bulls, Shay doing his big-brother act and shooting Trevor the filthies, Trevor all Adam’s apple and terrified bug-eyes, Carmel flushed and triumphant and squeezed into a pink pleated horror that made her look like an inside-out fish. Back then I was even more of an arrogant prick; I sat on the windowsill next to Trevor’s piggy little brother, ignoring him and congratulating myself fervently on the fact that I was getting the hell out of Dodge and would never have an engagement party involving egg sandwiches. Careful what you wish for. Looking at the four of them around the pub table, I felt like I had missed something in that night; like an engagement party might have been, at least in the long run, something worth having.
“I wore my pink,” Carmel said, with satisfaction. “Everyone said I looked only smashing.”
“You did, all right,” I said, winking at her. “If only you weren’t my sister, I’d have fancied you myself.”
She and Jackie squealed—“Yeuch, stop!”—but I wasn’t paying attention any more. Down at their end of the table, Shay and Kevin had been having a chat of their own, and the defensive note in Kevin’s voice had ratcheted up enough to make me tune in. “It’s a job. What’s wrong with it?”
“A job where you work your guts out licking yuppie arse, yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, and all for the good of some fat corporation that’ll throw you to the wolves as soon as the going gets tough. You make thousands a week for them, and what do you get out of it?”
“I get paid. Next summer I’m going to Australia, I’m going to snorkel around the Great Barrier Reef and eat Skippyburgers and get pissed at barbecues on Bondi Beach with gorgeous Aussie babes, because of that job. What’s not to love?”
Shay laughed, a short scrape. “Better save your money.”
Kevin shrugged. “Plenty more where that came from.”
“There is in me arse. That’s what they want you to believe.”
“Who? What are you on about?”
“Times are changing, pal. Why do you think PJ Lavery—”
“Fucking bogger,” said all of us in unison, except Carmel, who now that she was a mammy said, “Fecking bogger.”
“Why do you think he’s gutting those houses?”
“Who cares?” Kev was getting irritated.
“You should bloody well care. He’s a cute hoor, Lavery; he knows what way the wind’s blowing. He buys those th
ree houses last year for top whack, sends out all those pretty brochures about quaint luxury apartments, and now all of a sudden he’s dropping the whole idea and stripping them for parts?”
“So what? Maybe he’s getting a divorce or having tax hassle or something. How is that my problem?”
Shay stared Kevin out of it for another moment, leaning forward, elbows on the table. Then he laughed again and shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you?” he said, reaching for his pint. “You don’t have a fucking clue. You swallow every bit of shite you’re fed; you think it’ll be all sunshine and roses forever. I can’t wait to see your face.”
Jackie said, “You’re pissed.”
Kevin and Shay never did like each other very much, but there were whole layers here that I was missing. It was like listening to the radio through stiff static: I could pick up just enough to catch the tone, not enough to know what was going on. I couldn’t tell whether the interference came from twenty-two years or eight pints. I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open.
Shay brought his glass down with a flat crack. “I’ll tell you why Lavery’s not wasting his cash on fancy apartments. By the time he’d have them built, no one will have the money to buy them off him. This country’s about to go down the tubes. It’s at the top of the cliff, and it’s about to go over at a hundred an hour.”
“So no apartments,” Kev said, shrugging. “Big deal. They’d only have given Ma more yuppies to bitch about.”
“Yuppies are your bread and butter, pal. When they become extinct, so do you. Who’s going to buy big-dick tellys once they’re all on the dole? How well does a rent boy live if the johns go broke?”
Jackie smacked Shay’s arm. “Ah, here, you. That’s disgusting, that is.” Carmel put up a hand to screen her face and mouthed Drunk at me, extravagantly and apologetically, but she had had three Babychams herself and she used the wrong hand. Shay ignored both of them.
“This country’s built on nothing but bullshit and good PR. One kick and it’ll fall apart, and the kick’s coming.”
“I don’t know what you’re so pleased about,” Kevin said sulkily. He was a little the worse for wear, too, but instead of making him aggressive it had turned him inwards; he was slouched over the table, staring moodily into his glass. “If there’s a crash, you’re going down with all the rest of us.”