Darling Jim

by Christian Moerk

  It took a full five seconds. Then Bronagh’s face lit up in one of those kinds of smiles people feeling suddenly superior can’t help showering you with. I think guards practice them every day before breakfast. She rose and beckoned me down the stairs with her.

  “Did you hear a thing I said?” I asked, nodding at two returning gardaí with crumbs still on their duty blues. One of them mumbled something about “pneumonia” and made a disapproving face at me as he passed.

  “Clear as a bell,” said my little cop in a self-satisfied voice, descending ever deeper into the dusty stairwell, until we both came to a steel door that was pitted with rust. She opened it with a smart turn of the wrist.

  “You’re quite sure it was last night that all this happened?” she asked.

  “Don’t be such a witch, Bronagh. I told you. And if you sweep that farmhouse properly, you’ll probably see that this woman, Kelly something-or-other, was murdered in the same way that Chinaman did both Sarah and that Holland woman over in Drimoleague.”

  “Sounds like a proper crime wave, is what it does,” continued Bronagh, unlocking a metal cabinet and sliding the tray out with a flourish.

  There was a loud clang! and she whipped a rubber sheet aside.

  Right under my nose, on a slab, lay my Chinaman, dead as Plastic Jesus.

  His slim equine face had swelled to twice its normal size, and it looked like something massive had pummeled his cheekbones until they gave under the weight. God Himself had sat on him, I thought. Either that, or Jim had taken a baseball bat to his tobacco leaf skin. No amount of hit-and-run drunk driving could have produced this kind of rag doll, unless someone had put it in reverse to do the job right.

  “You want to tell me how he could try killing ya looking like this?” Bronagh asked.

  “Jaysus!” I said, reeling backward and banging my head against the cooler where they kept the rest of the departed.

  “Exactly. That’s what I said when old Mrs. Monaghan called early this morning because her grandchild had found something nasty in the water,” said Bronagh, enjoying my gobsmacked expression. “Haven’t done a proper forensic analysis yet, but it looks to me like someone really put the boots to him before he got wet.”

  “He was still alive last night. Because I was there.” I turned my head so Bronagh could see the red line where his blade had nicked me. “See that?”

  “You should take more care when shaving,” she said, and shrugged, shoving Tomo back to his everlasting reward and ushering me out the door onto the footpath. We walked out on the main street, where Bronagh pulled me aside and put a hand on my shoulder, as if she’d seen it in a movie first. A couple of fishermen in the middle of yapping about some girl pretended not to look but lowered their voices, just enough to hear every word.

  “Now, you listen,” she said. “It’s one thing to break poor Finbar’s heart by whoring around with that tramp. But it’s quite another to mess about with our enquiries. So in future, stick to yer pyramids and mummies and leave the dead to us, all right?”

  “I know what I saw,” I said, trying to keep my voice down. That ever-nosy Sergeant Murphy had opened the window upstairs to take a look at us, and Bronagh used her big-girl voice in order not to disappoint him.

  “Go home,” she said. “And nurse that . . . pneumonia, was it? Maybe one of yer new boyfriend’s fairy stories can make it all better.” And with that, she turned and walked back into the station house, hoping for the kind of collegial respect that would never come her way, no matter how many tin badges she shined.

  My own blood had spurned me, and my old best friend thought I was a crack.

  For the first time since I could remember, I felt completely alone.

  THE WIND HAD taken hold of the bunchgrass up in the Caha Mountains and started to tug hard.

  I had biked with the wind in my face for two hours to get back up to the sloping meadow below the rocks. Now I lay arse up and nose to the ground, trying to figure if anybody was still alive in the cottage below. Fine, laugh if you must, but you try playing Hercule fucking Poirot with skylarks chirping away right over your head, the tattletales, and wayward sheep coming over to nibble at grass not two feet from your secret hiding place. I was roasting in my too-warm overcoat, and the tails flapped loudly in the wind like the ragged banners from some long-forgotten and buried army.

  The house seemed quiet. The Audi I’d seen before hadn’t been moved, and there was also a crusty old Land Rover that looked like it had come straight out of a hunting catalog, dirt, scratches, and all. I wanted to go down there, I did, but something held me back. It was probably fear, even if I would have called it prudence at the time.

  When I blocked out the birdsong and the whispering grass, I could hear a faint thumping noise. It sounded like someone smacking their palm against a tabletop, holding their breath to see if anybody noticed, and then trying it again.

  I inched closer in the grass, smearing green skid marks onto the yellow floral dress that I’d nicked from Aoife, until I saw what it was.

  The front door yawned as open as it had been the night before, banging against the lock as only the wind guided it. I dared to rise and felt like someone had dumped a load of cold water straight into my veins. If Kelly lay upstairs with flies crawling in and out of her, I didn’t want to see it. But if the brave sheriff in town thought I was a shirker and a nutcase, what choice did I have?

  “Hello?” I said, but the wind snatched the word away before it reached the door. I was close to where I’d been before and could see my old hardened footprints in the mud. Thump! went the door one more time, making me jump an inch off the ground. I put my nose to the window and peered through the glass but saw nothing new, no milk carton or coffee cup to ward off the fear of fresh corpses in the bedroom, courtesy of one darling Jim Quick. I cursed my own curiosity, but more so my desire to see him again. Because this much was the truth: I wanted to solve what I remained sure was a murder spree that traced back to him, but mostly as a means once more to stare into those amber eyes and try to divine their secrets. Judge me if you must, but there it is. That solidarity with my fellow girlies went only so far. Despite what I knew, Jim still owned the rest.

  So I took a deep breath, turned the corner, and went inside.

  The living room was still, but for the soft creaking the wind made against the glass door leading down to the bay. Sails filled the bay like white napkins on Neptune’s blue dinner table. I stood there a second, dreading what I had to do, and then started for the stairs.

  “Hello?” I tried one more time, but heard only the insistent thump! in reply. I was halfway to the top when it dawned on me I hadn’t brought as much as a kitchen knife for protection. And Father’s dreaded shotgun was still fast asleep in my bed. I looked down and rummaged through my bag for at least a set of keys to use for brass knuckles, when I heard the dead speak for the first time.

  “And what exactly might you be doing here?” asked a woman’s voice.

  I raised my head and looked into the eyes of a barely toweled-off Kelly, who held a giant robe about her waist with one hand and a heavy wooden bowl in the other.

  I was dumbstruck and relieved not to have to see another dead body and was surprised to feel myself actually smiling. “I—erm, the door was open, so—”

  “That’s ’cause I opened it to get some fresh air. See how that works?” Her voice was as sharp as her lantern jaw, but she’d begun to tremble at the left knee as she took a step down toward me. “And you’re not invited. So answer the question, or I’ll plant this in your skull.”

  I backed down the way I’d come, trying to keep my voice from breaking into a million pieces myself as I answered. “My name’s Fiona Walsh, and I’m a schoolteacher from over in Castletownbere.” There was no reaction in Kelly’s face, and she took another two steps down the stairs. My brief rush of joy at not having to see encrusted blood gave way to the kind of fear I hadn’t felt since I dragged my sisters out the back door while the fire below
burned the soles of our feet. “You know, Sacred Heart? Right behind the church?”

  “And yer pay is so crap you have to come stealing from honest people, is that it?” She took a swing at me, and I tumbled ass over teacups down the last few feet as I ducked, smacking my head into her nicely polished cherrywood floor.

  “No,” I croaked. “This is a misunderstanding.”

  “You’re the misunderstanding, whatever your real name is.” Her blood was up, and I could feel her circling me to have another go while I was down. “Do you manky illegal immigrants really think you can just use law-abiding folk as your own personal cash machine, is that it? So what’s yer real name, anyway? Sveta? Valeriya? Or, no, don’t tell me, you’re a tinker from some caravan up north. I thought you people had become extinct with the introduction of mobile phones.”

  “I just came to see if you were all right,” I said, half sitting and rubbing my head. “God’s honest truth. Call the Castletownbere Garda station if you don’t believe me. Ask for Bronagh.”

  Kelly blinked and cinched a terry-cloth belt around her slim waist to make what was probably her steady—and cuckolded—boyfriend’s bathrobe fit. She was cute. Jim had good taste, I had to give him that. Once again, my jealousy jumped into the driver’s seat and threw caution and righteousness onto the roadway. For the first time that day, I felt like choking her bony arse to death my own self.

  “If I was all right?” she asked.

  “Yeah. After what happened last night. I saw someone go upstairs with you. And I just thought—” I remembered how she’d screamed when Jim really gave it to her and felt my face redden. Now I felt both ashamed and stupid. I knew I should have listened to Bronagh.

  She wrinkled her brow and put the bowl in her lap as she sat down. A brief moment passed, as both of us listened to the other’s willingness to take this all the way. Then her eyebrows shot up, and she reached for her weapon again with something like joy. “It was you!” she shouted, rushing me like a hurler. “I knew I’d seen your face somewhere. Yeah. You were at the pub, weren’t you? And you followed me and Jim up here, you perv?” Her face had gone foam-white. “The ring my mother left me, my passport, cash, car keys to the Audi, and every single phone number I own! And you have the bloody cheek to come back and see if I had more? C’mere, you!”

  Swisshh! went the wooden missile, and I bolted out the door to avoid it, losing a shoe as I ran. “Come back here, you tinker bitch!” Kelly raved.

  “Remember the Asian fella who was there, too?” I screamed, running as fast and as far as I could.

  “Liar!” she yelled, gaining on me like a mad dog. “What fella?” Up on the road, a car had pulled over to watch the show, and someone rolled down the window.

  “Jim’s assistant; he followed you here, too,” I gasped. “I came by last night because I was jealous that Jim had found someone else, I admit it. But this guy, I saw him take everything. It’s how they work it. One man to open the door, one to keep it open.” She fumbled for my hair, pulling out a few strands before I found a few ounces of adrenaline, and escaped again.

  “Try again,” she said, wheezing. “Jim is a gentleman.”

  “Yes,” I said, “until his little helpers say the wrong thing. Then he kills them. That Chinaman is deader than shite.”

  I looked back at her, and she’d stopped running. Both hands hung by her sides as if suddenly heavy.

  “What’d you say?” she said.

  “That’s right.” I pressed on, slumping to the grass. “Saw him not one hour ago, head beaten in.” Kelly sat down, too, mouth chewing on an invisible blade of grass, so I decided to plunge the last knife of knowledge I had straight into her little yuppie heart. “And tell me this much,” I asked, trying not to smile as I said it. “Did he tell you all about how the story is in charge, not him? I’ll just bet he did. And didja get a look at that tattoo of his? What’s on it—I forget—Porky Pig or the heroic Cúchulainn? Sometimes they dress alike.”

  “Shut up,” she said, looking down, but I could tell I’d scored a bull’s-eye. Everybody wants the prize, don’t they? But nobody likes to share.

  “Jim charms and tells tales, and his little servant cleans up the rest,” I said, this time without anger, because it really was simply brilliant and you had to admire it.

  “Jim had nothing to do with this,” Kelly said, not quite trusting what her own voice was saying. She rose and brushed the grass off her bathrobe with a pinched expression as if someone were holding her nose shut against her will. “That man’s death was an accident, I’m sure. And now I would like for you to leave. Because I told you, Jim is a real gentleman.”

  I looked up at the ridge and saw Bronagh slowly walking down toward us between the rocks, the smile of the triumphant beaming on her face like a lighthouse.

  “Isn’t he just,” I said.

  MY DEMON SISTER took pity on me. Who else would do that for the girl who had cried wolf? As it was, the whole town had heard of my ridiculous murder-spree theory by nightfall. Bronagh saw to that. Snickers followed me on the footpath from the Garda station all the way back to my house.

  After Bronagh delivered another lecture on the way home on how easily she could have done me for burglary since my footprints were outside and inside Kelly’s place, the last thing I felt like that evening was more judgment.

  Instead, what I got was a healthy dose of Evgeniya when I knocked on Rosie’s door and saw a blond girl with freckles open up.

  Evgeniya was my sister’s girlfriend, even if none of us called her that but still let Aunt Moira refer to her as “that old flatmate of yours.” I suppose we could all have fought it, but you try coming out in a part of the world where anyone other than a boy whose hand you want to hold had better be your sister or else.

  She was from Russia somewhere, and I could never pronounce her name, even with a head full of Guinness and the patience of saints, but that didn’t matter. I just called her Evvie. She was grand, and the only outside influence who did anything to raise Rosie’s spirits. Elfinlike and gracious where Róisín was spawned from the darker corners of God’s imagination, Evvie moved with a fluid grace I would have expected to see in swimmers, except she did it on dry land. They had shared a flat at UCC, where Evvie still lived, and she came out to visit whenever she felt like it. The hand that shook mine was small and applied just enough pressure to let me know she was happy I’d come by. She had the brown fleece sweater zipped all the way up to her fine seahorse-shaped ears, because the wisdom behind my sister’s casual unwillingness to pay bills on time had been lost on the power company, which had promptly shut her off. Again.

  “Hey, how are ya?” Evvie said, in that peculiar choppy accent of hers, and walked back out into the kitchen, which hadn’t seen actual cooking since she’d last been there.

  “Not too bad,” I lied. “Whatcha making?”

  “Steamed salmon with vegetables,” she said, attacking each syllable with deliberation. Even Rosie, who had kissed her narrow lips for over a year and still hadn’t a clue how to say her name properly, only ever called her Ivana the Terrible.

  “Grand. Where’s the lovely one?”

  Evvie jerked a thumb toward the bedroom, where the familiar chatter of electronic voices told me where to find the only member of my family with a reputation more nefarious than mine. The muttering rose and fell, like a chorus of angels locked inside a radio for all eternity and still searching for the exit.

  “Oi, genius,” I said, feeling relief at seeing the crouched-over figure in the pink POG MA HON T-shirt manning the controls and trying to suck the life out of a ciggie at the same time. I knew Evvie hadn’t given her an item of clothing inviting the general public to kiss her arse. She’d probably made it herself.

  “About time ya showed yer face,” she said, giving me a fierce hug. “The Russian princess is staying for a coupla days, which means you and I will do better than rashers and old bread for breakfast.” Her face grew unnaturally serious, and she looked like som
eone whom you could hurt just by looking at her sideways. “I hear our little Columbo sold you out to get in good with the boys in blue. Fuck her.” Her chewed black nails dug into my wrist. She would have killed for me then. As it would turn out, we’d both soon kill for someone else.

  “Thanks, Rosie,” I said, and had to look away a moment in order not to cry from pure happiness. “Hear anything from Taxi Driver today?”

  “Ah, don’t worry too much about Aoife,” said Róisín, dialing an inch to the left, seeking a voice farther out on the band, where only the true hard-core devotees hung about. “She wanted to give your seanchaí a tumble herself and called me to say she had told you some things she already regretted. Typical. She’s back with that football player of hers, the shades are drawn, and she’s not taking any trips tonight.” She smiled at Evvie, who was setting the table. “What is it with all these beautiful people, I wonder? Taking advantage of nice, proper girlies like us?” The skull ring on her index finger shone as she adjusted the knob around a man’s voice, barely audible through the carpet of static, still eluding easy capture.

  “I feel like an eejit, Rosie,” I said, taking the newspaper article about the “accidentally” dead Mrs. Holland out of my pocket and handing it to her. “I was so sure that—”

  “Yer my big sister, and I’d drink donkey piss for ya,” she said, grabbing hold of my hand. “But you have got to give it a rest, now. Yer man there isn’t all shiny and fabulous; I think everyone knows that. Maybe he even stole more than hearts. But if you see murderers everyplace, you’ll come apart at the seams.” Her mouth curled upward in a smile so wide the tip of the cigarette nearly burned her cheek. “And who would take care of me then?”

  I squeezed her hand but didn’t answer. I was thinking about how much time it had taken for Tomo to stop feeling whatever it was that had punched him to death. I made a mental note to look at Jim’s knuckles if I ever laid eyes on him again.