The Bloomsday Dead (10 page)

“Who ya running from? The poliss?” the kid asked when he saw that I had my breath back.

“Sort of.”

“Aye, thought so. I just seen this eejit running and I thought the poliss are after him. That’s why I done come after ya, show ya a wee route.”

“Thanks.”

The kid looked at the handcuff still attached to my left wrist. It was also still holding a silenced revolver, but the boy didn’t give a shit about the gun.

“Did ya make a break for it? Outta the car?”

“Aye. Sure,” I said. I found the key, took the handcuffs off, and gave them to him.

“Did ya have that key made? How did ya get out of those things?” he asked.

“You ever heard of Houdini?”

“Nope.”

I drank in air, safetied the pistol, and shoved it down the front of my trousers.

“Ya want me to get ya a drink or something?” the kid asked.

“No. Thanks.”

“Are ya heading back?”

“Yes.”

“Where to?”

“Belfast,” I found myself saying. “I’m going to Belfast to get some answers.”

The boy was looking at me funny now. Squinting as the sun came out and then smirking as it went back behind the clouds. I stretched my shoulders where they hurt and reached in my pocket. I found a twenty-euro note.

“Buy yourself some candy,” I said.

“I will,” the kid said, with a trace of ungracious defiance, as if he was just begging me to tell him to say thank you, in which case he would be ready to tell me to fuck away off. But I wasn’t falling for it. I looked at the wee lad and found myself breaking into a grin.

“Have you any brothers or sisters?” I asked.

“Jesus, you’ve no idea, mister.”

“Give them a share of the candy.”

“I will,” the kid promised.

“Give you another twenty if you could russle me up a T-shirt, this one’s fucked.”

The kid nodded, walked across the waste ground, walked into the nearest caravan, came out with a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt. A man appeared and said something to the kid and pointed at me. The kid replied, nodded. Brought me the T-shirt. I put it on.

“What did that man want?” I asked.

“Nothing. He was just telling me there was two men who came after ya, looking for ya, loike, asking questions.”

“What did he say to them?”

The kid grinned.

“Nobody saw anything or anybody.”

“Ok. Good. Which way back into the city center?”

“Down to the right. All the way down the hill.”

I left the boy and walked down the hill, past boarded-up houses and a few scary-looking hoods keeping watch at the corners. This was the heart of a bad area (interestingly, just behind the façade of new Dublin) and I walked fast to get out of it, but not so quickly that I would attract attention. If they thought I was an undercover cop or a rival hood I’d be approached at gunpoint, bundled into a van, and taken somewhere to be interrogated. Take me bloody hours to get out of it.

At the bottom of the hill I came to a bus station and then I saw some familiar street signs.

I was near the river again.

Belfast, I’d told the kid. And Belfast it would be.

The peelers.

Oh, they’d send a couple of beat cops to the exit points. Avoid the train station, avoid the bus station, avoid the airport, but there was no way the Garda could control cars leaving the city, not these days. Dublin was a big, modern commuter city with a thousand roads in and out.

Piss easy, steal a car, drive out of town. Shit, hire a car. They didn’t know who I was. Get my credit card, dial Hertz.

I found a quiet nook and took out my cell phone.

I called up every car-hire place in County Dublin but in every one the story was the same: “We’re all out of cars, there’s a big festival in Dublin to do with James Joyce. You’ll have no problem tomorrow, but not today.”

So, it was either thieve a vehicle or risk the bus or train stations. I really could chance the latter two. I didn’t have much respect for the Garda’s ability to apprehend someone even if they did have a photofit. But then again maybe that would be pushing my luck just too far.

As for the first option. There were hundreds of cars parked right here in the street, but who knew what fuckwit would miss his vehicle fifteen minutes from now, call the cops, and then they’d circulate the license plate and some keen motorcyle cop would lift me. What then? Shoot an unarmed Garda Síochána just trying to do his duty?

Nah. I had another idea. I found the card in my trouser pocket. I phoned the number.

“Hello,” I said when I got connected.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Hey, it’s me, the old geezer from the parade.”

“Oh, you, where did you go?” Riorden asked.

“Hey, let me ask you something, have you got a car, a Volkswagen?”

“Yeah, I do, a Volkswagen Beetle. One of the new ones. Why do you want to know?”

“Uh, I don’t. Just checking. Friend of mine wants to buy a car, he really likes Volkswagens, that’s all. You’re not in the market to sell it?”

“Is that why you called me up?”

“No, you got me. It’s only an excuse, I wanted to see you again and I couldn’t think of a reason for calling you. Where are you?”

“We’re still at Jury’s, do you know it?”

“Aye, I know it.”

Twenty minutes later I walked into Jury’s. A party was in full swing. It was a nice June day, the international media were in town, term was winding down. What more excuse did you need for celebration?

In any case it was packed with students. Standing room only and there wasn’t much room to stand. Two hundred dead easy if someone shouted “Fire.”

I found the girl talking to an enormous black-haired English rugby player in an Aran sweater. She was on lemonade, but he was half wasted and thought his luck was in. I waited till she took a bathroom break before I approached him.

“Fuck off, Hercules, the lady is spoken for,” I said with menace.

“Are you talking to me?” the rugby player asked.

“No, I’m talking to the midget who works you by remote control, now fuck away off before we test the adage, the bigger they are . . .”

“You’ve got to be pulling my leg?” he said.

“No. I’m not pulling your fucking leg. I’m not climbing up your fucking beanstalk to steal your magic beans either. I’m telling you to fuck away off before I get upset.”

“Jesus, are you looking for trouble?” he persisted.

“Believe me, I don’t have to go looking. I’ll count to ten and you better be out of here, this lady is spoken for.”

“You picked the wrong guy to start a fight with,” he maintained.

As I began my countdown, he clenched his fists.

“One, two, three, four,” I counted and kneed him right in the nut sack. He sank to the floor and as he tumbled I grabbed him by the hair and smacked my fist twice into his face. He wilted, wobbled, fell. I checked to see if anyone had spotted my assault on a brother student, but everyone was drunk, exuberant, not paying attention and I was a fast wee turd when occasion arose.

“Lend a hand here, Nigel can’t hold his drink,” I shouted and pushed the big guy’s head backward onto the concrete floor.

A couple of his mates, looking round for the first time, saw that their pal was out for the count and ran to help him. Just then the girl came out of the toilet.

“Your boyfriend can’t take his drink,” I said.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” the girl said, looking to see that he wasn’t dead, but not much beyond that.

“Good, you deserve better,” I said.

“Who are you?” she asked, exasperated.

I bit my lip.

I was going to romance her but suddenly, from out of nowhere, I was fed up with this story. I wanted to expedite matters. I wanted to bring things to the goddamn climax. There wasn’t time for an hour or two’s worth of bullshit.

“You want the truth?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“I’m a police officer, I’m undercover. Inspector Brian O’Nolan. Dublin CID. I know you don’t want to hear this in the middle of a party but someone broke into your car,” I said deadpan.

“Someone broke into my car?” she said, horrified.

“That’s right. We ran the plate, your name and number came up and I thought, Jesus, that’s a coincidence, I was talking to that wee lassie this morning.”

“Is that why you asked about it on the phone?”

“Aye, but I hate to tell people bad news on the phone. Thought I’d come in person. Come on. We’d like you to ID the vehicle and drive it to the nearest station for us, if you don’t mind.”

“Jesus, I’m glad I gave you my number,” she said, happy enough to buy the story without a heartbeat.

“Come on, let’s go ID the car.”

Five minutes later and we were at a small parking lot near Trinity. I deflected easily the many “You don’t look like a cop” or “You have a bit of an American accent” questions, reassured her that her car was relatively unharmed, and asked her a couple of details about her habits, friends, and teachers to see if she would be missed.

“There’s the car,” she said, pointing to a blue Volkswagen. “Shite. It looks ok from here.”

I checked the street.

There were people about but no one paying us any particular attention. We walked to the vehicle.

She looked at me with first a puzzled and then a suspicious expression playing across her pretty face.

“No one broke into the car,” she said.

“Don’t scream or I’ll fucking shoot you,” I said, taking out the revolver and shoving it into her ribs.

“Are you serious?” she asked, wondering, no doubt, if this was all some nasty practical joke.

“Aye.”

“W-what do you want?” she asked, a little bit more frightened this time.

“Well, I want your car, but you’ll have to come with me, because I don’t want you reporting me and I’m not feeling well enough to drive.”

“You must be kidding,” she said, her big eyes widening in terror. Her chest heaving up and down. It was not unattractive. I pushed the gun farther into her body.

“No joke, love. Now unlock the fucking car and get in.”

“You wouldn’t kill me in broad daylight.”

“I fucking would,” I said savagely.

This was the turning point for her.

“I don’t want to get shot. I’m, I’m . . . I’m pregnant,” she said and began to sob.

It threw me for a second, but only for a second.

“You listen to me, honey. You’re going to live till you’re a hundred and twenty years old. You’re going to be popping champagne corks in the year 2100 and you’re going to be here when the aliens show up with all their videos of Jesus and Alexander the Great. Either that, or you’re going to be fucking dead with a bullet in your skull, thirty seconds from now. Your call. And if you die, the bairn dies too.”

She composed herself a little, looked at me, stared at the gun.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“We’re going to get in your car and you’re going to drive me to Belfast and you’re going to drive back down to Dublin and never bloody mention this to anybody. Now enough yakking, get in the fucking car and drive.”

She was a competent driver even with a maniac kidnapper pointing a gun at her. She drove carefully and fast. It was all good. We had a full tank of petrol and in the backseat there was even a water bottle and a packet of biscuits. I ate the biscuits, offered her one, but she refused, giving me a look of utter scorn. I liked that.

The run was quick, easy, and straightforward until we hit Drogheda.

Here things were bollocksed because of a traffic jam on the bypass; the cops were diverting people into the center of town and over the Boyne Bridge. We were moving very slowly and there were about a dozen Garda milling about uselessly. I knew she wouldn’t try anything but I had to remind her.

“Honey, just because you see a lot of cops and the traffic’s slow, don’t think of being a hero. You make one bolt for that door and I’ll fucking plug ya. And don’t think I wouldn’t just because I like you. I’ve killed more people in the last twenty-four hours than you’ll kill in this and in your next half-dozen incarnations on planet Earth.”

“I believe you. You seem like a bastard,” she said bravely.

“Aye, well, we’ll all live through this and it’ll be something you can tell your wean about.”

“Don’t think I’d tell her anything about the likes of you.”

“You’d be surprised how I can grow on people. Seriously. Peruvians, Colombians, Russians, Americans, I make friends wherever I go.”

We drove over the Boyne Bridge.

The river seemed clean and Drogheda looked better than I’d ever seen it. Prosperity suited the Republic of Ireland. There were new signs up all over the town pointing to Tara, Newgrange, the Battle of the Boyne, and other wonders of County Meath.

“Ever been to Newgrange?” I asked.

“No.”

“Should go. Fascinating.”

She said nothing. We drove on for a while. The silence was irritating.

“What you studying at Trinity?” I asked.

“French,” she said, reluctant to give me any information.

“Yeah, well, had a bit of a sticky end, did Sunshine, although it wasn’t totally unjustified,” I said to myself.

The girl stole a look in my direction.

“Is that what you do? Terrorize women and hurt people?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“I try not to hurt anybody. But sometimes, when needs arise, you have to step on a few toes,” I explained.

“Aren’t you worried about the consequences?” she said.

“What consequences?” I replied, genuinely puzzled.

“Hell,” she said.

I laughed.

“Of course. We’re in Ireland. Hell. No. I don’t think about hell. There is no hell. Hell is a place in Norway, halfway between Bergen and the Arctic Circle,” I said and popped a digestive biscuit in my mouth.

“Don’t you believe the Bible?”

“Fairy stories. I suppose they don’t teach you Darwin in the Republic of Ireland.”

“Of course they do, it’s not Iran.”

“But you don’t believe him?”

“I don’t see how believing in Darwin and the Bible is mutually exclusive.”

“It is. I mean, do the bacteria in your stomach go to heaven when they die? Eight hundred million years ago, we were those bacteria. It’s just silly.”

She slunk into silence, nodded to herself in the rearview mirror. Whatever else happened today, at least she and me were going to go to different places, even if she was an unwed mother-to-be. Still, all this talk hadn’t been good for me. Morbid thoughts of eternal punishment weren’t the things I needed to have floating through my mind when every mile was bringing me closer to Belfast.

“Is Baudelaire your favorite?” I asked.

She pursed her lips, shook her head.

“Montaigne,” she said.

“Go on, give us a burst.”

“No.”

“Go on, humor the guy who has a pistol pointed at your kidneys.”

She thought for a moment and turned to face me.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said.

“Ok, I’m listening.”

“I’ll give you a Montaigne quote if you do something for me.”

“Ok.”

“That thing is really making me frightened. Really frightened. If you put the gun away, I promise I won’t try anything. I’ll drop you off in Belfast without any fuss or problems at all.”

I put the revolver in my pocket. No one could refuse such a reasonable request.

“Now the other part of the deal. Let’s hear what that Montaigne fella has to say,” I said.

We got through Drogheda and a bypass skirted us around Dundalk. The border to Northern Ireland, which had once been a big deal with army, police, helicopters, road blocks, razor wire, mines was now only apparent in the roadside markings which changed from yellow to white. We were in Northern Ireland a good couple of miles before I even noticed that.

“We’re in the north,” I said, surprised.

“Yes,” she said.

“I thought we’d have to bluff our way through a checkpoint, or at least customs,” I muttered.

“They got rid of all that years ago,” she said with quiet contempt.

We drove through the Mourne Mountains: bleak stony slopes, bereft of trees, people, and even sheep. Next Newry and Portadown— two nasty wee shiteholes unloved by God, the residents, and everyone else. Shit-colored housing estates where men went to the pub, women raised the kids, the TV was always on, and if it wasn’t chips for dinner there would be hell to pay.

Marsh on our left and right.

A few planes landing at the airport. An army helicopter. Ugly cottages and redbrick homes and I knew we were closing inexorably on the city.

“I’ve never been to Belfast,” the girl said. Her first words in fifty miles.

“You haven’t missed out on much.”

“Maybe you should let me out. I’ll only get us lost.”

“I’ll tell you where to go when we’re close enough.”

And as we came up the motorway, I began to smell the city. Rain, sea, bog, that burnt aroma of peat, tobacco, and car exhaust.

The sky was gray. It got colder.

Then the landmarks.

A place where I’d had a car accident.

A Protestant mural for the Ulster Volunteer Force. A Catholic mural for the Hunger Strikers.

Milltown Cemetery, where a madman had run amok at an IRA funeral, throwing hand grenades. The city hospital, so ugly Prince Charles had been flown in especially to denounce it.

She turned off for the city center. Close enough.

“You can stop the car, just go in anywhere along here.”

She slowed the car and pulled in off the hard shoulder. Got a little bit of a panic attack, started hyperventilating. No doubt the possibility flitted through her mind that I was going to kill her now.

She was looking for an escape route, for witnesses. But the traffic was fast moving and the shoulder was deserted.

I reassured her anyway.

“Take it easy. We’re parting company. I’m not going to touch you,” I said.

She nodded nervously.

“You really pregnant or were you lying to save your skin?” I asked.

“I’m pregnant. Three months,” she said with a blush.

“The dad know?”

“He knows, but he doesn’t want to know.”

“Your parents?”

“Of course not.”

“Keeping it?”

“Think so.”

“Either way you’ll need some dough. Take this,” I said, giving her almost all the money I had in my wallet. Easily ten or eleven grand.

“You can’t give me this,” she said, aghast.

“Oh, I can, it’s not stolen or anything, but don’t tell anyone.”

“But you can’t give me all this money,” she protested.

“Yes, I can. I’m an eccentric millionaire. That’s just the sort of thing I do.”

She hesitated still, but I forced it on her. I gave her a look that communicated how impolitic it would be to refuse. She took it wordlessly.

“You see that roundabout up ahead?”

She nodded.

“I said, do you see the roundabout?”

“I do.”

“Ok. These are the rules. You turn round right now and you head to Dublin and you don’t stop once until you’re there. You park your car in your space and you go about your life as if nothing had happened. You tell no one what transpired here today.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Now go back to your existence. You had to cross the line into my life for a while. But it’s over now. Good luck with the kid. If your folks don’t dig it, I’d say fuck ’em all, go to London and present yourself at social services. They’ll give you a flat and that dough will tide you over.”

She nodded silently.

She opened her mouth to say something, changed her mind, and then finally asked it: “What’s your name?” she managed in a whisper.

“Michael,” I said.

“Wasn’t there a Michel in the Bible, a woman?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“It would be a pretty name for a girl,” she mused.

“Aye.”

I got out of the car and walked away.

She sat there frozen for a second.

“Drive,” I said.

She nodded, put the car in first, stalled it, restarted it, got it going, and headed for the rotary. She exited the roundabout and sped down the other side of the dual carriageway. And I stood there and almost wistfully watched the car take her back into the land of civilized people.

I breathed deep. That air redolent with violence and blood. And everywhere the reminders of six years of sectarian cold war, thirty years of low-level civil war, eight hundred years of unceasing, boiling trouble and strife.

They say the air over Jerusalem is thick with prayers, and Dublin might have its fair share of storytellers, but this is where the real bullshit artists live. The air over this town is thick with lies. Thousands of prisoners have been released under the cease-fire agreements—thousands of gunmen walking these streets, making up a past, a false narrative of peace and tranquility.

Until the seventeenth century it didn’t even exist on the maps. It was drained from the mudflats and named in Irish for a river, the Farset, which has since been culverted over and is now part of the sewage system.

Ahh, Belfast.

You gotta love it.

I walked down Great Victoria Street to the Europa Hotel. The last time I’d seen this place, all the windows within half a mile had been blown out by a thousand-pound bomb. The Crown Bar was destroyed, Robinsons Bar was still smoldering, and the Unionist Party headquarters was a hole in the sidewalk.

Bill Clinton had been to Belfast three times since then. George W. Bush had come during the mopping-up phase of the Iraq war. With American help, Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern had brought a peace deal between the Protestants and Catholics. A shaky peace deal with many ups and downs, but a peace deal nonetheless. Cease-fires had been declared and all the paramilitary prisoners had been released, and although the two sides hadn’t come to a final agreement, at least they were still talking. There were dissidents on both wings, but there hadn’t been a serious terrorist bombing in Belfast in six years. Enough time for McDonald’s and Burger King to destroy the local food franchises and for real estate developers to go nuts in virgin territory.