The Gathering of Souls

by Gerry O'Carroll

  There was stillness in the air after the rain: even with the windows open, the old city seemed rather quiet. It was a weighty silence, thick and heavy, yet alive in a stifling kind of way. It was exactly 3 am, and he hadn’t woken from a dream so much as from a memory: it was the only one he had, and after all these years he was weary of it. His mother in the chair, with her lank, plaited hair, that stinking cigarette between fingers so waxen from nicotine they looked jaundiced. Her voice was ruined: no more than a cackle, like the old witch who buried her sons in the wood. Drink and smoke, and sitting there bitching about what having two boys had done to her. It was ‘Frankie this’ and ‘Frankie that’, and without them she would still have had a husband.

  Patrick could see damp seeping through the walls; he could see lime scale, thick and brown, clogging the sink in the kitchen: he could see it foul like dried shit in the bowl of the toilet. He could picture her cold, almost soulless, eyes, the way she ignored and humiliated him, behaved as if he wasn’t there.

  Angry suddenly, he grabbed his dressing gown and went through to the kitchen, pausing to stare at the photograph that for some reason he still kept on the mantelpiece. There she was with her eyes glazed, the wineglass hidden, but the ubiquitous cigarette between her fingers, with an inch of grey ash about to fall in her lap. And there they were, fatherless, yet dutiful as a mother’s sons should be; him and Frankie, stoic as ever, either side of her chair.

  Her mouth was narrow and pinched; orange-coloured lipstick smeared over horizontal lines that belonged to a woman more than twice her age. He considered her face, her hair; the way she occupied the chair. Looking closer still, he noticed the gold necklace glimmering at her throat.

  Monday 1st September 6 am

  Jessica Quinn woke to the silence, not sure what day it was – though she hoped it was Saturday.

  The house felt cold; it felt odd. She had a strange feeling in her stomach and she couldn’t imagine why. Getting out of bed, she grabbed her teddy bear and, hugging him close, crossed to her sister’s room.

  Laura was still asleep but, as if she could sense that someone was there, she opened her eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What is it, Jess? What’s wrong?’

  Jess hunched her shoulders. Laura rolled on her back then, sitting upright, she glanced at the large-faced clock beside the bed.

  ‘What are you doing up so early?’ Jess just stood there.

  ‘I miss my dad,’ she said.

  ‘Phone him up, then. He said we could phone any time. He told you again yesterday.’

  ‘Why did mam send him away?’

  Laura clicked her tongue. ‘She didn’t send him away. It’s not like that. You’re too young, Jessie: you don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m ten.’

  ‘You’re not ten till December. You don’t understand.’

  Jess had tears in her eyes. ‘We were all together, then Danny got knocked down, and since then mam is a different person. It’s as if she blames our dad, Laura. How can she blame Dad?’

  Laura sighed. ‘I don’t know, but policemen are supposed to be able to catch the people who do bad things, aren’t they? Dad couldn’t catch whoever killed Danny. I don’t know, Jess. But you know what he said yesterday: he doesn’t blame our mam for blaming him. She’s not very well but she’ll get better. It’s time is all she needs.’

  ‘I know that, but we’re on our own now; with dad not here, there’s only mam to look after us.’

  Sitting down on her sister’s bed, Jessica tugged at the ear of her teddy.

  ‘It’s Monday,’ she said. ‘I thought it was Saturday it’s so quiet, but it’s school today, it’s Monday.’ Laura lay down again.

  ‘Mam’s not even up yet. You should go back to bed, Jess.’

  Jess shook her head. ‘I’m going downstairs.’

  She shuffled out of the room and across the landing. One hand on the banister, she made her way downstairs, then went into the kitchen. A few moments later, Laura came down wearing pyjamas and dressing gown. She took the kettle from where Jess was trying to fill it, standing precariously on a three-legged stool.

  ‘You’ll burn yourself with the steam,’ she said. ‘Like you did before: remember?’

  A couple of years previously, Jess had burned her wrist and they’d had to go to hospital. Laura put the kettle on and got a cup from the cupboard. Jess fetched a tea bag and, between them, they made their mother some tea.

  A few minutes later, with Laura carrying the cup, they went back upstairs. Their mother’s bedroom door was ajar, and Jess noticed that the landing light was still on. That wasn’t normal. Their mother always closed her door, and she switched the landing light off when she came to bed. The bedroom was empty; their mother wasn’t there. The bed was untouched, the duvet smooth and flat, and pulled up to the pillows.

  ‘Where is she?’ Jess asked.

  Laura didn’t know. She didn’t reply.

  ‘Where is she, Laura? She’s not downstairs.’ The hint of panic began to stretch Jessie’s voice; anxiously, she worked a hand through her hair. Placing the cup on the bedside table, Laura stared at the bed as if she thought her mother would suddenly appear. Then she turned to her sister.

  ‘Where is she?’ Jessie repeated. ‘Why isn’t she here?’

  Laura crossed to the window. ‘Her car’s not there, maybe she went to the shop. We used up most of the milk last night, didn’t we? She must be at the shop, Jess. She’ll be back in a minute. We’d better get dressed; we’d better get ready for school.’

  Half an hour later, they were sitting at the kitchen table, the remnants of a packet of cornflakes in two bowls but not enough milk to pour over them. The only sound was the ticking of the wall clock.

  ‘She didn’t go to the shop, did she?’ Jess said.

  Laura didn’t answer: she sat where she was, her expression fixed, holding her spoon as if she was about to eat.

  ‘I’m going to phone Dad,’ she said. Sliding off the chair, she went through to the hall. Their father’s mobile number was plugged into the handset. Laura scrolled through the options, and dialled. She waited, then, frowning heavily, turned to her sister. ‘There’s no one there; his phone’s switched off.

  ‘Try it again,’ Jess told her.

  Laura redialled but still no answer. ‘What’s Dad doing with his phone turned off?’ she sounded suddenly panicky. ‘His phone is never turned off.’

  Jess clutched at her hand now. ‘No Mam; no Dad. Where are they?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Laura said. ‘Dad’s just not switched his phone on yet today, that’s all – or maybe the battery ran out.’ She was thinking hard, trying to work out what to do. She walked the length of the hall and opened the front door. Last night’s rain lay in puddles at the bottom of the steps. Hand in hand, the two girls looked up and down the road, but there was no sign of their mother.

  Back inside, Laura took the address book from the telephone table and flicked through the pages.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Jess asked.

  ‘I’m going to phone Uncle Joe.’ Laura picked up the phone. ‘Nanny and Granddad Quinn are away and Nanny Clare is in Kerry. I’m going to phone Uncle Joe, Jess: he’ll know what to do.’

  Monday 1st September 7 am

  Yet more rain seemed to be blowing in from the west. Pulling into the drive, Jimmy Hanrahan shut off the engine and climbed from the short-wheelbase Land Rover into weeds that reached to his knees. Taking a moment to roll a smoke, he could hear his father’s horse shifting around in the stable. He’d have to muck the horse out; the old feller didn’t seem capable any more, and if Jimmy didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done.

  He sucked on the cigarette, just a few threads of tobacco; the way he’d learned to make them when he’d been banged up as a kid. He worked his shoulders, looking at the sky and listening through the kitchen window to his father muttering away like a mad thing. No doubt he’d been up in the night spreading the holy water the priest from Bally
longford had given him.

  He took another drag and, letting the smoke drift, squatted on the old motorbike, which was a rust bucket these days. Resting one heel on the foot peg, he considered how low and bruised the clouds were as they gathered above what was left of Lislaughtin Abbey. From here, he could see the five-bar gate and the broken-down cottage where that American tourist had gone for a leak a couple of years back. The smell had attracted him; the maggots; millions of flies still in the larval stage.

  Jimmy had watched from this very spot, smoking a roll-up just as he was now. Shades all over the place, an ambulance, a helicopter; search teams in white suits; Quinn and Doyle down from Dublin.

  His father had dressed in his dark suit and wrapped a scarf round his neck before harnessing the horse between the shafts and offering his services as pall-bearer. Doyle had been kind enough, he supposed, humouring the old feller when he’d started coming out with his stories. Doyle was a Dublin man these days, though Jimmy knew him from here. He remembered how it had been when Maggs’s mother was found dead with her insides burned to bejaysus. He remembered stories told about how when Doyle joined the Guards, his eldest brother had told him not to come knocking on his granny’s door of a Saturday night. He grinned now wolfishly, licking at his teeth and wondering how a Kerryman from such a hardline family could end up with his nose in a trough of pigswill.

  He thought about how Doyle used to watch out for Eva in the days before she took up with Quinn and every mother’s son was trying to get inside her knickers. Jimmy had fancied a bit of that himself, and no matter what he tried to tell anyone, so had Conor Maggs. The sad fuck thought she fancied him just because she was the only girl in the county who’d give him the time of day. With the rumours her uncle spread, it was a surprise to no one but Maggs that people liked to avoid him. Maybe it was a streak of defiance in Eva – her way of telling Doyle she was old enough to look after herself – but all it did was to give the Maggot the impression there was something between them.

  Eva had been one of those girls, though; the kind that just didn’t know how beautiful they were. Either that or when she was really young, some priest had told her that ‘lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds’, and she’d never forgotten the comment.

  The clouds descended and he yelled at the horse to shut its noise, then went inside to make the old nutter a bowl of porridge. He wondered why he bothered; better to let them toss him in a mental home and be done with it. But then Jimmy liked the money the Social dished out, and without the old man there would be none of that.

  His father was in the living room moulded to his chair, with the cartoons playing on the TV.

  ‘Jimmy?’ he called. ‘Jimmy? Is that you, lad? Where the devil have ya been?’

  Jimmy didn’t answer.

  He closed the kitchen door. The place was so filthy he’d have to clean up or the social would stop the money. He shifted his shotgun and hunting rifle where they leant against the side of the fridge. The magnet fell off the door and two Polaroids came with it. Cursing softly Jimmy, picked them up: one of him with a stag he’d poached on the other side of the hill, the other with half a dozen rabbits he had hanging from a leather string.

  The door opened and his father stood there. ‘Jimmy, for the love of God, did you not hear me calling?’

  ‘Of course I heard you.’ Jimmy looked sour. ‘’Tis all I ever hear. Now go on back to ‘Tom & Jerry’ before I drag you down to Fletcher’s bog and throw your carcass in.’

  Monday 1st September 7 am

  Sitting in his car across the river from the Dublin city moorings, Doyle considered John Finucane’s boat. Sixty-two feet of ocean-going cabin cruiser, all white paint and smoked glass. Business was obviously good for the only property developer in Dublin who discouraged competition by tying industrial chains round the feet of his enemies and taking them out to sea.

  They’d had word that the clogger was employing illegal immigrants on some of his northside building developments. It wasn’t something that Doyle would normally bother with: at fifty, and a sergeant in the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, he didn’t concern himself with things like immigration. But this was Johnny Clogs, who had no trouble winning government contracts because there were a few in the government paid good money to see that’s how it remained. Any angle was a good angle; one of these days, Doyle would nail the bastard.

  Even now, with so much new competition, Johnny was still the northside’s most notorious, no matter that he was Doyle’s age. The fact that he was running Ukrainians would piss off Alexei Bris-Mintov, and that was no bad thing. From Kiev to Dublin via Berlin, ‘Minty’ had been around for about five years now; he had already carved up much of the ‘business’ on the south of the river. The old boss down there, Lorne McGeady, had been so miffed that he’d tried to create some kind of tie-up with Johnny, but the clogger was having none of it; not so far, anyway. It wasn’t like the old days, though, when the city had been ruled by hard men like the General. In those days, even amongst the villains there was order: there was honour and a certain amount of respect. But since the Celtic Tiger started to bear its teeth, everything had changed.

  Across the water, he saw Finucane poke his bald pate out of the main salon, sniff the rain like a reluctant dog and duck back inside again. How he managed to keep his boat at the moorings for as long as he did was another indication of how good his friends were: it was supposed to be a public mooring. Further up the quay, a replica of the old sailing ship The Jeanie Johnston was moored, but apart from her, all you ever saw was Johnny’s gin palace. Doyle glanced at The Jeanie Johnston again: a training ship, a graceful three-master; the original had been used to take emigrants to America back in the nineteenth century. Funny how things had changed, he thought: these days everyone was coming here.

  He had yet to go home and change after last night. He’d been in O’Shea’s for the music, before crossing the river to the little drinker he frequented behind Connolly Station. It was a private club where the bar was tended by Maureen, a wonderfully bosomy woman with whom he’d had a thing going for a while now.

  He could still smell her on him. She was warm and sensuous; always with a laugh and a smile, and a hint of her mighty cleavage to add some spice to a seat at her bar. She and Doyle went way back: he’d known her when she lived in Tralee, and when she moved to Dublin he’d helped her find work. Over the years, their on-off relationship had survived her three marriages.

  His phone rang where it lay on the seat beside him. A glance at the dashboard clock told him it was barely seven; he wondered who was phoning at this time. Probably Maureen, to tell him he’d left something at her place. It wasn’t Maureen; it was Quinn’s home number. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘This is Doyle.’

  ‘Uncle Joe, is that you?’

  Doyle narrowed his eyes: one of the girls. He could hear the unease in her voice.

  ‘Uncle Joe?’

  ‘Who’s that now, Jessie or Laura?’

  ‘It’s Laura.’

  ‘I thought it was. How are you, Laura?’

  ‘Uncle Joe …’ Her voice faltered.

  ‘What is it, love?’

  ‘It’s our mam, she’s not here. I don’t know where she is and I can’t get hold of my dad.’

  ‘Sit tight, I’ll be right there.’

  Scrolling through the numbers on his phone, he came to Quinn’s and dialled. No answer; his phone was switched off. In all their years working together, Doyle had never known Quinn to have his phone switched off. He was a detective inspector in the Garda, for Christ’s sake; what was he doing with his phone switched off? As Doyle spun the car around, his mind was working overtime: yesterday had been the first anniversary of Danny’s death, and both Eva and Moss had been at the cemetery. But they hadn’t been together; they’d not been together in a year.

  Doyle had no wife and no children but he’d seen how those two girls were. He’d seen how much they were hurting, and he would like to have taken his niece by o
ne hand and his partner by the other and metaphorically knocked their heads together; as if the boy’s death was not enough, without everything else breaking down because of it.

  He was concerned, though: he’d seen how Eva had been yesterday. He could see beyond the smiles, of course: she was his brother’s girl. This wasn’t like her. This wasn’t like her at all.

  Again he dialled Quinn’s number, but again he got nothing. ‘Moss,’ he muttered softly, ‘why haven’t you got your phone on?’

  Monday 1st September 7.30 am

  Murphy was still in the shower. They’d made love most of the night, and Quinn was nursing a cup of coffee with the kind of glow in his belly he’d not felt in years. He wasn’t sure what it meant. He wasn’t sure he cared what it meant: after the trauma of yesterday and how distant Eva had been, he was happy just to feel something.

  ‘Listen,’ he called through to her, ‘I’m going to the Square to get those files together for Naas. I’ll see you when you get there, all right? It’s probably better that we don’t show up together.’

  Murphy was working shampoo into her scalp. He watched it trickle down her shoulders, slip deliciously onto the fullness of her breasts: he watched it work in rivulets down her belly. ‘Go ahead,’ Murphy told him. ‘I’ll be discreet when I let myself out, so don’t worry.’

  Leaving her in the flat, Quinn trotted down the stairs and onto the autumnal street. The wind was blowing, and the rain was falling in a charcoal mist between the trees. They’d had so much rain through August that it felt as though half the country had been flooded for weeks. In his car, he flicked on the radio; a few minutes later, he was beyond the barrier at Harcourt Square and parking in the underground car park. Just behind him, Frank Maguire came down the ramp in his big silver Opel.