I was eating out my guts, too, as Jim escorted Kelly home half an hour later. She jumped on the back of the Vincent while I followed behind as casually as I could. Yes, you heard me right. What the hell else would you have had me do? Go home and cry about it? At this point, he was under my skin, and I couldn’t help it. I looked for the white van as I pulled out in the green Mercer, but saw only Jim’s adoring crowd headed for home on the footpath, talking eagerly among themselves like trained penguins at the fair.
The red motorcycle rode down the coastal road toward Glengarriff, then took a left up into the hay-colored Caha Mountains, where houses are a bit thin on the ground, so I had to hang back as much as I could. The car bucked and yawed as I took the hairpin turns worse than the racer, dodging blue-gray cliffs as large as Volkswagens. Irises ripped from the ground by the strong wind tumbled across my bonnet in a yellow spray. The summer evenings were almost upon us, and on any other night than this I would have called it beautiful.
Jim pulled into a stone gate, behind which I could see a small cottage in better shape than most. Two stories of limestone, with new windows and doors and a spanking new Audi out front. She must have left the spare in town, I figured. New money, no doubt. They kissed before the engine had gone silent. I looked around for a suitable rock to plant in his head but stayed my hand. I waited until they’d gone inside before I parked the car down a blind dirt road and approached the house like a thief.
I should have worn better shoes than these heels, I thought, as I stole behind the house and stepped in mud up to my ankles. I heard sounds from upstairs I’d rather not tell you about, but I’m sure you can guess. Didn’t take him five minutes to get in her knickers, did it? I was again thinking about doing something drastic, when I heard the soft whine of an engine coming nearer. I looked up the hill and saw a white van pulling behind a boulder and stopping. Tomo walked quietly but quickly down to the front door and put his ear to the pine. Apparently satisfied, his gloved hand touched the handle and turned it. He let himself inside without a sound, leaving the door wide open.
The thrusting sounds from upstairs grew louder as I saw my own feet following Tomo inside and trying to keep my heartbeat from getting noticed.
“My darling . . . darling Jim,” she moaned, the cow, while I kept an eye out for Tomo. If Jim’s Chinaman had been mostly immobile before, he wasted no time here. I hid behind the kitchen counter and watched him sweep silver candelabras, iPods, jewelry, gobs of cash, and what looked like a real Cartier watch into a leather satchel without making a sound. The ceiling was creaking as Jim apparently really put his back into it; Tomo could have set off hand grenades and she wouldn’t have noticed. With a graceful last sweep of the right hand, he checked to see if he’d nicked it all before ducking back out.
I waited a full minute before following him. Upstairs, the show was nearing the rousing finale, and I still don’t like thinking about it too much, to be honest. I waited until I saw the leather-faced man carrying the heavy satchel up past the rock to the left before leaving the house myself. I can recall my sense of satisfaction that the price Kelly had just paid for a piece of Jim’s charms was everything in the house that wasn’t nailed down. And be honest, now, you would have felt that way, too.
I had the car key in the door when I felt the knife at my throat.
“Why can’t you people ever be satisfied with just the one time?” Tomo hissed in my ear, smelling of wet wool. “I keep telling him it’s too dangerous to keep doing it this way, but will he listen? Take a guess.”
“I don’t . . . know who you are, so you don’t have to—”
He grabbed my hair with the other hand, twisting my head backward like a pig in the abattoir. “Sure you do. I’m the last mad gook you’ll ever see this side of the Resurrection, and old Jim in there can’t have girlies like you crying to some sketch artist down at the Garda station, now, isn’t that right?”
I made a fist around my keys and tried to breathe. I haven’t a clue where I found the courage, but Jim had put enough anger in me to say it. “Is that what you told that poor creature over in Drimoleague?” I yelled back. “Or little Sarah McDonnell? What had she done to you, anyway, you oogly fooker, steal yer rice bowl? I’ll buy ya a new one!”
He hesitated long enough after that insult for me to reach back and jam the key into what I suppose was his eye, for he howled and yelled like the damned as I unlocked the car and drove out of there without looking back.
It’s either the cops or my sisters next, I thought, and I wasn’t in doubt about where to go.
“YOU’RE MAD, YOU know that?” said Aoife, as she cast a weary glance at her mud-splattered car. She wore one of our father’s tweed racing caps, back to front, which made her look like a newsboy from one of those Hollywood gangster films. I could tell she was angry, because she smiled too much for the occasion, and her voice was covered in something sharper than cut glass.
“But I saw that Tomo fella clean her out, and—”
“Grand so; now you can tell Bronagh and her fellow uniforms that you’ve solved a burglary. I’m sure they will get right on it—soon as they’ve finished their lunch.”
“You’re not listening,” I said, exasperated, while a nasty feeling was prickling inside me. It wasn’t like my youngest sister to be this skeptical in the face of bald evidence. “He had a blade to my throat, right? He’s the one who killed Sarah, and that woman over in . . . wherever it was. You know I’m right. And Jim is in on it. It’s how they operate. Tomo practically told me so his own self.”
Aoife took her time fixing the garden hose to the outside faucet and turning it on. While she demonstratively sprayed the Mercedes, I could see she had already made up her mind.
“Did he, now? So you’re assuming”—God, how she loved to drag that word out to the ends of the earth—“that yer man Jim and his proper criminal friend finish each show with a festive murder? How does that make any sense at all?” Some of the muddy water hit me on the cheek. By accident, I’m sure. “Besides, Jim’s hot buns was in your sack the night Sarah was killed, wasn’t he? You saw to that. And how do you even know he performed the night of the first murder? Give it a rest. I think you’re seeing things.”
I was about to protest when I saw the look in her baby sister eyes as she brought the hose around the rear bumper.
It was the same look of undiluted jealousy I’d seen in our aunt Moira’s face the night before, accompanied by a tight little smile that said, “Don’t look to me for pity, now that Jim has gone and found himself someone better. You made your own bed.” She put the hose away and went in her house without asking me inside for tea.
So much for sisterly love.
“Give you a bell later,” I said, and got a self-pitying mumble in return. I stood there awhile, dumbstruck, happy about only one thing.
Our father’s sawed-off shotgun now rested snugly inside my bag. And I’d sleep with it in my arms that same night, praying for that ugly bastard to come try his luck again.
I’M NOT A coward, no matter what you might think of me by now.
That’s why I got up before dawn, when I couldn’t sleep a wink anyway, and went over to see Finbar. The flood of his text messages had abated, but the ones still trickling in were shorter and more plaintive. WHERE R U? and PLS CALL had a better ring to them than I’M HEARING THINGS I DON’T LIKE BUT STILL LUV U and, a second later, WHAT THE FUCK DO U THINK YER DOING, F?!
By now, they could have emptied all of Bantry Bay and poured my guilty conscience into it instead, and there still wouldn’t have been enough room. Truth of it is, I cheated on him the moment I laid eyes on Jim, not when Jim finally put his hands on me.
I walked across town to Finbar’s front door with the chip in it, from the time Rosie threw a six-inch-heel shoe at last New Year’s party, and waited a moment. Tallon Road led up a hill where a cluster of houses had the best seaside view, of course, and my boyfriend had the one with double-paned glass and the kind of burglar alarm I’ve
only ever seen in films. You know, the one where some American white fella’s actor-voice tells you the “system is armed,” as if that was supposed to make burglars compliment him on his nice language or something.
The streetlights shone on Finbar’s car, which was spotless next to two others that looked like they just had fresh mud poured over them. I could see him through the kitchen window, drying the dishes and toweling them off, even though he had spent a fortune on a German dishwasher that cost more than me and my sisters’ Mallorca vacation way back when. From the way he cocked his head, I could tell he was doing it because he was angry enough to come down the hill and kick in my door, and this kind of meditation made him rethink his plan. His hands moved efficiently, without any real joy or irritation, the way he did everything. Like he had lukewarm water for blood. I felt like hauling off and throwing a rock through his window to get a different reaction.
Instead, I wiped my feet, listened to the sound of my own breath, and rang the bell.
“Fiona,” he just said, as if I’d forgotten the name myself. He had shaved his face so often and so close over the last handful of days I counted three nicks that had barely healed. I could smell the lemon soap, which hung about the place like hospital disinfectant and made my eyes water.
“Can I come in?” I said, smiling wanly like I sometimes do at Father Malloy in the street. Lots of teeth and no real eye contact. Because I knew what Finbar’s eyes looked like without having to see. They’d be filled with questions instead of recrimination, and I’d have taken the anger any day. Because the last thing I felt like giving him were answers to where the old Fiona had gone off to.
“I was just doing the dishes,” he said, in a voice I didn’t recognize as his. It was too thick, as if he’d just eaten honey and forgotten to swallow.
I sat down on one of the white IKEA couches he’d spent a load of cash to have delivered all the way from London two months earlier, making me sit on the floor and assemble it with him for two days straight. I’d learned to hate Scandinavian L-shaped tools and cute pictograms that only make you feel like a total eejit. Finbar wiped his hands on the angel-white apron and sat down on the matching couch on the opposite side. A crystal rendition of a mermaid caressing some kind of horny fish was the silent referee, as she stood on the slick marble coffee table between us, looking unhappy at the task. The fish looked as if he couldn’t have cared much either way.
“I have no excuse, Finbar, and I’m really sorry,” I began lamely, trying to breathe at the same time. Now that I was actually here, it was as if some of the mystical opium Jim had squirted into me was fading, and I was again beginning to feel the familiar thumping signs above my heart that meant raw shame lay right beneath and was trying to claw itself out by force.
Finbar said nothing, at first, and kept wiping his already bone-dry fingers on the fabric. It was then I noticed he was drunk. I’d only ever seen him give up control twice in my time with him. Once was when he’d become the top salesman in the whole county, and envious colleagues had dragged the both of us to a fancy restaurant in Cork City with an Italian name. He had drunk two bottles of champagne by himself, and when I drove us home the only thing he did all night was inspect his suit for dirt that wasn’t there. The other was when we’d had sex for the first time, and he told me he loved me right before finishing. I understood why he wanted the place to smell of fake lemons and not single malt. His eyes were pink, but that could be from either tears or another five fingers of whisky.
“You have to come to the dinner with me,” is all he said at first.
I waited for the rest, but Finbar put both hands on his kneecaps, having spoken his piece.
“What are you talking about?”
“Next Saturday. At Rabenga’s ristorante over in Glengarriff. The company dinner. Everyone expects to see both of us there.” He belted the words out as if longer sentences would cause him physical pain. He still hadn’t tried to smile, which actually is the only thing about that night that made me happy.
“Maybe . . . it’s not such a good idea, okay? I mean, the way things are now and all.”
Finbar covered his mouth before answering. “And how are things? Can you tell me exactly, Fiona, what things you think I’m talking about?” He was lisping, like his lips had begun acting on their own, telling tales the rest of the mouth knew nothing about. He looked at the crystal mermaid, not at me, and from the looks of it she was in for a hell of a beating.
“I didn’t plan it,” I said. “And I’m sorry I lied to you about seeing him. But I did, and I can’t take it back now.” I looked at Finbar’s hands and wondered how it was that he could massage my breasts like he was kneading dough, and it took me a while to feel anything at all, when all Jim had to do was look in my direction to make me drenched.
“Does that mean you’re not coming to the dinner?” he said.
I rose, went over behind him, and put my hand on his neck. I considered staying and sleeping with him for pity’s sake, but that would only completely mess with the poor fella’s head. So I let my fingers linger there a moment, feeling his pulse and the love we’d never really shared, until he reached up and brushed them away.
“See ya later, Finbar,” I said, opening the door, and knew I probably wouldn’t.
I KNEW THE headmistress didn’t believe a word I said when I rang her that morning.
“Well, then, feel better, won’t you, Fiona,” said Mrs. Gately, who had just heard me hand out some weepy excuse about pneumonia for leaving my evil sixth class to the tender mercies of a substitute teacher they’d no doubt tear to little bits before second bell.
“Thank you, Missus,” I said, being careful not to cough and oversell the story. “I am sure I’ll be much better next week.” Truth is, I had begun to feel a bit haggard since meeting Jim and losing him again. I traipsed out in front of the bathroom mirror and saw dark shades under my eyes, with a kind of gray pastiness in my cheeks.
“Nice work, Fiona,” I said to the reflection, before putting on my jacket and heading out the door. As you’ve figured out by now, I wasn’t just shirking the sixth-class monsters for the hell of it. The sensation of Tomo’s knife at my throat had kept me awake every bit as much as pictures playing in my head of poor Kelly, who had probably lain in her bed out in that cottage all night by herself, blood already hardened to a paste.
That’s why I decided to go see Bronagh, brave defender of truth and justice.
“Yer looking well for a person with galloping pneumonia,” she said tartly, eyeballing me from behind her cramped desk. It was round breakfast, and all the other gardaí were stuffing their heads with eggs and toast at the café down the street, leaving the rampant criminality to the youngest garda on the squad.
“Us Walshes, we mend quick, ya know,” I said, sitting down and handing her a cup of coffee with lots of sugar and milk, which is how she drank everything. If anybody had made a beer that tasted like java, she would have clapped her hands, poured in the cream, and drunk down two pints at once.
She accepted the peace offering without much enthusiasm, looking me over with the same kind of frank distaste my own sister had displayed the night before. I felt like saying how bitter Finbar had been but decided that wouldn’t buy me any mercy.
“Whatcha doing here?” Bronagh said, slurping the coffee while keeping an eye out for Sergeant Murphy, who had called her blubbering to attention at the old graveyard. A picture of a still-living and flirting Sarah McDonnell hung on the bulletin board, under a heading that said ENQUIRIES SOUGHT. There was no mug shot yet of the dead girl I’d read about in the paper. But I was sure Jim and his Chinaman were just itching to participate in clearing up that little mess.
“I saw something,” I said, working up the nerve to risk sounding stupid. “Last night. Out in the mountains toward Glengarriff.” I remembered Kelly’s voice from her upstairs bedroom, and it made me angrier—even then—than recalling Tomo’s breathy promises of death in my ear.
“Didja, n
ow? What was it, d’ya think? That Armenian pickpocket who escaped from my esteemed colleagues over there? Was he wearing that busker’s black suit with white stripes on it?”
“Get outta here with that, Bronagh, I’m really serious.”
She leaned forward, forgetting all about the steaming peace offering. Her face turned bright pink. She pointed at a pile of papers next to her. “And what d’ya think I am? Fucking desperate, like you? We’re only open four hours a day to handle this workload, Mum always brings Ava home half-filthy and filled to the eyeballs with sweets, and Gary is getting ready to make his move on that brunette over at the SuperValu and leave me for good. I can’t listen to yer half-baked visions, Fiona Walsh, I really can’t. Not today.” Her cleft chin burrowed into her regulation tie as if she were on parade—or trying not to cry.
“Remember that Japanese fella?” I persisted. “The one who passes the hat around for Jim? I think he may have killed someone last night.”
Bronagh didn’t move a muscle but just stared at me in a way that made me remember why she’d wanted to join the guards to begin with. Her eyes bored through me, through the wall, past Castletownbere, and to the farthest edge of Ireland until it came to rest on the unknown crime she hadn’t solved yet. “Last night?” she asked, hiding a nugget of something secret behind her vocal cords. Her eyes grew confident again.
I nodded, eager to be heard. “Yeah. A few miles past Adrigole, going east. I followed Jim up the road, and this guy Tomo, he was there, too. This woman, I don’t know her full name, but she goes by Kelly, she lives in a stone cottage by herself. Jim went upstairs with her, while Tomo robbed her blind. When he saw me, he tried to cut my throat, but I got away in time. Bronagh, you have to send someone up there right away.”
Darling Jim Page 11
