The Magdalen Martyrs (21 page)

She gave her radiant smile.

“Exactly.”

I stood, said,

“Thanks for the coffee.”

“You can’t ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances.
You can’t lose what you lacked at conception. It’s time to demythologise
an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars.”

James Ellroy,
American Tabloid

As I left the cafe, the owner said,

“Ciao.”

I didn’t answer him. It wasn’t my day for fostering European unity. As I walked up Eyre Street, coming to Roches, I didn’t meet a soul I knew. Not that there weren’t people. The paths were crowded. Galway had become a city. As a child, if I walked down the town, I knew every single person. Not only that, I knew all belonging to them.

Part of me welcomed the new anonymity, but I felt something had been lost. Not so much familiarity, more a comforting intimacy. Finally a man said,

“Jack?”

A guy I’d gone to school with. Jeez, how long ago was that? I guessed,

“Sean?”

It must have been correct, as he shook my hand, said,

“The last time I saw you, you were going to be a guard.”

I was tempted to say,

“And you had hair . . . teeth.”

But he was friendly, and that was vital right then. I asked,

“How have you been?”

He considered, then,

“I was in hospital.”

“Oh.”

“It’s full of non-nationals.”

“What have they got?”

“Mainly medical cards.”

I smiled at the casual racism. He wasn’t sure v/hich side of a liberal fence I was on, so he ventured,

“Beds are scarce. You leave it, you lose it.”

“And now . . . how are you?”

“Middling.”

This is a classic Irish answer. It shows they’re not complaining, yet leaves the door open for any sympathy that might be on offer. He studied me, asked,

“What happened to the suit?”

I checked the tear, which seemed to have grown, said,

“A difference of opinion.”

He gave the mandatory expression of pain, said,

“They took out my stomach last year.”

“They” could be . . . muggers, passers-by, doctors.

I nodded as if it made any sense. He said,

“You know what’s the hardest thing?”

God knows, various answers came, but I decided not to run with them. Instead,

“I don’t.”

“Chips and chocolate. I was a hoor for them.”

“They’re a loss.”

“Fierce. I could murder a plate of chips and vinegar, then the king size bar of milk chocolate.”

He looked totally desolate, then,

“Course I have my prayers.”

“You do?”

“I’d be lost without them.”

He looked toward the Square, said,

“There’s my bus.”

“You take care.”

“I will, Jack. Eat a bag of chips for me.”

As I watched him walk away, I felt a yearning for a simpler era. Not that I’d ever keep it simple. No matter how plain sailing it might have got, I’d manage to complicate it. Alcoholics patented the concept of snatching defeat from any glimmer of victory. Lit a cig, and a passing woman said,

“Them yokes will kill you.”

“They’ll have to stand in line.”

“What I would call a supernatural and mystical experience has in its very essence
some note of a direct spiritual contact of two liberties, a kind of flash or spark
which ignites an intuition
. . .
plus something much more which I can only
describe as personal in which God is known not as an object or as ‘Him up there’
but as the biblical expression, I am . . . this is not the kind of intuition
that smacks of anything procurable because it is a presence of a Person and
depends on the liberty of the person.”

Thomas Merton in a letter to Aldous Huxley

When I got to the hotel, Mrs Dailey came out from reception,
said,

“You’ve been in the wars.”

“I have.”

“Give me that jacket, I’ll put a stitch in.”

“There’s no need.”

“And what, you’re going to walk around like a vagrant?”

It was easier to concede. I took the jacket off, handed it over. She examined the cloth, tut-tutted, said,

“They get away with murder.”

I left her muttering. Upstairs, I went straight to my stash, got two heavy duty pills, took them fast. I wanted a shower so bad I could scream. First, I rummaged round, found the ban garda’s number, dialled. A few minutes, then,

“Hello?”

“Ridge, it’s Jack Taylor.”

“Oh, I didn’t expect you to call.”

“Me either. You said you wanted to help.”

“I do.”

“OK. Ru n background on Mrs Kirsten Boyle. Lives in Taylor’s Hill. Her husband died recently.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who she is.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

Click.

Jeez, she was a tough girl to like. I lay back on the bed, thought,

“I’ll grab that shower in a minute.”

Slept until late evening. My dreams were vivid. Saw my father with his head hung in shame. Saw the love of my life, Ann Henderson, walking away and heard Danny Flynn say,

“I’m safe.”

Like I said . . . vivid.

“I just wish, though, that the human race was not quite
so often trapped by its own versatility.”

John Arden, Introduction to
Cogs Tyrannic

It took me two days to find Dill Cassell. His usual haunt,
Sweeney’s, remained closed. I trawled through Galway’s late night pubs, hearing a word here, a hint there. He was not some-body people were comfortable talking about.

Since Casey, his bodyguard, was shot, he hadn’t been seen either. Now I learnt he was in Belfast, having his knee rebuilt. The experts in such injuries are there. If you want information and fast, pay for it,

I did.

Found lots of information, including a special piece of Bill’s family history that I knew I could use to manipulate him. I never expected to find this; it just turned up in my search.

Tracked down the barman who’d tended Sweeney’s. He was a bouncer at a club in Eglington Street. When I finally caught up with him, he was on his break, having a drink at the bar. I said,

“How you doing?”

“Fuck off.”

“You know me?”

He didn’t even look at me, said,

“I don’t care who you are, fuck off.”

“Want some money?”

Now he looked, said,

“Taylor . . . yeah, I remember you.”

“So, do you want the money or not?”

“What do I have to do?”

“Tell me where Bill Cassell is.”

I showed him the wad of money. He drained his glass, belched, then massaged his beer gut, said,

“Sure, I can tell you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Bill’s in the hospice. The cancer is in the last stages. Old Bill won’t be coming back.”

I handed over the money, said,

“You don’t sound too sorry.”

“For him? Good fucking riddance. His strong arm guy, he got shot in the knee.”

“Who shot him?”

“Some fuck with a bad aim.”

“Bad?”

“Yeah, he should have blown his head off.”

He stood up, said,

“I have to go back to work, crack some skulls.”

I went to the hospice early in the morning. Had rung first to confirm he was there and to establish visiting hours. You’d expect it to be a dark, depressing place.

It wasn’t.

Full of light, bright colours and warm, cheerful staff. When I asked at reception for Bill, the woman smiled, said,

“You’re here to visit?”

“Yes.”

“Follow me.”

I was carrying flowers, chocolates, fruit and lucozade: all the ingredients of bad karma. We stopped at a bright blue door and she knocked. We heard,

“Come in.”

She said,

“I’ll leave you to surprise him.”

“I intend to.”

I opened the door. At first I couldn’t see him, then realised it was because he’d wasted away to such a degree. His head propped on the pillow was almost transparent. The eyes retained their ferocity.

Wilde said,

“Put a man in a mask, and he’ll tell you the truth.”

I was hoping a hospital bed might have the same effect. I crossed the room, moved the wastebasket with my foot, let the goodies crash into it, said,

“What, you thought that I brought them for you?”

Moved right up to him, caught the front of his pyjamas in my left hand. He weighed nothing. With my right fist, I punched him twice in the side of his head.

Hard solid blows.

The ferocity slipped from his eyes to be replaced by shock. I doubt if any one had ever touched him in his adult life. I let go and he fell back. I pulled up a chair, took out my cigs, said,

“Don’t suppose they like smoking?”

Lit up.

Gradually, his focus returned, and I said,

“Tell me about Rita Monroe.”

His breath came in laboured gasps as he began,

“She was the bitch from hell. Delighted in tormenting the
Magdalen girls. Used to make my mother stand outside wrapped in wet sheets. Shaved their hair off, plus the daily beatings and starvation. Her favourite trick was to stand my mother in boiling water to burn the evil out!”

“Who killed her nephews?”

He gave a tight smile,

“How would I know? But if you wanted to torture somebody, really make them suffer, then take away what they love most. She’d no family, but I hear she adored those boys. I had hoped to meet her face to face, ask her how it felt.”

He indicated his situation, said,

“As you can see, I’m otherwise engaged.”

“You turned my room over?”

“Me? . . . though I hear you’re still at Bailey’s.”

“And the break-ins at her house?”

“Again, I wouldn’t know. I like the suggestion, get her nice and shaky for the main event.”

I pushed the chair back. He didn’t flinch, said,

“What? You’re going to beat me to death. You’d be doing me a favour. Another week, I’ll be dead anyway. You wonder why I employed you? You see, I needed a witness. I could have found that cunt any time. You see how easy it was to locate the nephews, but you had to be convinced it was a genuine search, otherwise what sort of witness would you have made? I wanted her to feel safe, secure, thinking the past was done. But once my own time was measured, it was get the game in motion. I used you to fuck with you. Your room was trashed as a little extra, as I know how precious those bloody books were to you. Did it piss you off, get your motor running? I always hated you, swaggering round as a guard, like you were something special. Getting you involved, how much of a swagger have you now?”

I looked at him, said,

“You hired me because you knew I’d find her, though?”

“Course. It made you an accomplice.”

“Well then, Bill, you won’t be surprised to know I found somebody else.”

He attempted to sit up, apprehension on his face. I said,

“I thought about our schooldays, what I knew about you, then I remembered: you had a sister.”

Spittle forming at the corners of his mouth, he rasped,

“You leave her out of this. It’s nothing to do with her.”

I had his full attention, said,

“Maggie. Quiet girl, never married and . . .”

I paused, as if I wanted to arrange the information in my head, then,

“Lives alone at 14 Salthill Avenue. No visible means of support. You take care of her, don’t you?”

“So what?”

“So, I’d like you to think over this for the next week.”

“You stay away from her, hear me.”

“Imagine, Bill, a delicate person like that, how they’d react to a campaign of harassment and intimidation. I don’t need to tell you how easy it is to frighten a woman alone.”

Rage tore at his wasted body He asked,

“What do you want?”

“Jeez, Bill, I don’t want anything. I don’t think Maggie’s going to do very well when you’re gone.”

“I’ll tell you who the shooter is.”