The New Policeman
Authors: Kate Thompson
The New Policeman
Kate Thompson
Contents
J.J. Liddy and his best friend, Jimmy Dowling, often had…
The new policeman stood on the street outside Green’s pub.
They were falling, as well, on J.J. Liddy—or J.J. Byrne,…
It wasn’t that Mary Green didn’t want her customers to…
Helen was already out milking when J.J. got up. There…
There was never enough time. The summer was always particularly…
In the Garda barracks not far away, the new policeman…
The kitchen was full of the smell of lamb stew…
The visitor was Anne Korff. She didn’t need to be…
“Right,” said Ciaran, plonking the stewpot down on the table…
The new policeman was off duty, driving along the narrow…
J.J. was curious about what Helen had to say, but…
The new policeman went into Kinvara, got a bite to…
“This parish was unlucky,” said Helen. “Father Doherty was a…
There was only one hairy patch in the whole glorious…
Mary Green had never, to her knowledge, been in the…
It poured rain all morning. The goats stood in their…
An hour later his puncture was fixed and he was…
The souterrain was a much greater test of J.J.’s courage…
J.J. sat on the warm, grassy bank of the ring…
J.J. woke with a start. It felt to him as…
“Did you pass J.J. on the road?” Helen asked Phil…
The dog limped painfully behind J.J. as he walked down…
Helen was angry with J.J. If she hadn’t been, she…
For some reason that was not at all clear to…
“Well,” said J.J. He was still stunned by what he…
The new policeman arrived into work bright and early on…
“In your far distant history,” said Aengus, “people moved freely…
J.J. was charged with energy. The languid feeling that he’d…
There were no musicians playing that night in Winkles, nor…
J.J. sat down on the footpath beside Bran and leaned…
It was a long walk up to Eagle’s Rock, at…
The case of the missing teenager had come to a…
There was, after all, a pigeon on the gate. While…
“Aengus?” he called.
Anne Korff, with Lottie at her heels, walked back into…
The new policeman phoned in sick during the week and…
“You were lucky,” said Aengus.
To Sergeant Early’s annoyance, Garda O’Dwyer didn’t turn up for…
J.J. stood at the edge of the woods and looked…
At the head of the huge steps, Aengus put Bran…
“He gets up my nose,” said Aengus. They were climbing…
Ciaran had tried to talk Helen out of holding the…
J.J. retraced his steps across the hillside. He called out…
“Call him off!” said the priest.
In the Chinese restaurant, Helen experienced a sudden release of…
In Tír na n’Óg, the effects were no less dramatic.
Inside the souterrain, Aengus and J.J. felt the change as…
It was the new policeman who found the body in…
J.J. stared at the dying dog. Once again he was…
“Will we go down to the village?” said Aengus. “See…
Ciaran and Marian were down at the GAA pitch, watching…
The new policeman had just reported for duty when Sergeant…
The céilí, everyone agreed, was the best ever. There were…
J.J. Liddy and his best friend, Jimmy Dowling, often had arguments. J.J. never took them seriously. He even considered them a sign of the strength of the friendship, because they always made up again straightaway, unlike some of the girls in school, who got into major possessive battles with one another. But on that day in early September, during the first week that they were back in school, they had an argument like none before.
J.J. couldn’t even remember now what it had been about. But at the end of it, at the point where they usually came round to forgiving each other and patching it up, Jimmy had dropped a bombshell.
“I should have had more sense than to hang around with you anyway, after what my granny told me about the Liddys.”
His words were followed by a dreadful silence, full of J.J.’s bewilderment and Jimmy’s embarrassment. He knew he had gone too far.
“What about the Liddys?” said J.J.
“Nothing.” Jimmy turned to go back into school.
J.J. stood in front of him. “Go on. What did she tell you?”
Jimmy might have been able to wriggle his way out of it and pretend it was a bluff, but he had been overheard. He and J.J. were no longer alone. Two other lads, Aidan Currie and Mike Ford, had overheard and had come to join in.
“Go on, Jimmy,” said Aidan. “You may as well tell him.”
“Yeah,” said Mike. “If he doesn’t know he must be the only person in the county who doesn’t.”
The bell rang for the end of the morning break. They all ignored it.
“Know what?” said J.J. He felt cold, terrified, not of something that might happen but of something that he might find inside himself; in his blood.
“It was a long time ago,” said Jimmy, still trying to retract.
“What was?”
“One of the Liddys…” Jimmy said something else but he mumbled it beneath his breath and J.J. couldn’t hear. It sounded like “burgled the beast.”
The teacher on yard duty was calling them in. Jimmy began to walk toward the school. The others fell in.
“He did what?” said J.J.
“Forget it,” said Jimmy.
It was Aidan Currie who said it, loud enough for J.J. or anyone else to hear. “Sure, everyone knows about it. Your great-granddad. J.J. Liddy, same as yourself. He murdered the priest.”
J.J. stopped in his tracks. “No way!”
“He did, so,” said Mike. “And all for the sake of an old wooden flute.”
“You’re a shower of liars!” said J.J.
The boys, except for Jimmy, laughed.
“Always mad for the music, the same Liddys,” said Mike.
He began to hop and skip toward the school in a goofy parody of Irish dancing. Aidan trotted beside him, singing an out-of-tune version of “The Irish Washerwoman.” Jimmy glanced back at J.J. and, his head down, followed them as they went back in.
J.J. stood alone in the yard. It couldn’t be true. But
he knew, now that he thought about it, that there had always been something behind the way some of the local people regarded him and his family. A lot of people in the community came to the céilís and the set-dancing classes that were held at his house on Saturdays. They had always come, and their parents and grandparents had come before them. In recent years the numbers had increased dramatically with the influx of new people into the area. Some of them came from thirty miles away and more. But there was, and always had been, a large number of local people who would have nothing to do with the Liddys or their music. They didn’t exactly cross the street to avoid J.J. and his family, but they didn’t talk to them either. J.J., if he’d thought about it at all, had assumed it was because his parents were one of the only couples in the district who weren’t married, but what if that wasn’t the reason? What if it had really happened? Could J.J. be descended from a murderer?
“Liddy!”
The teacher was standing at the door, waiting for him.
J.J. hesitated. For a moment it seemed to him that there was no way he could set foot inside that school again. Then the solution came to him.
The teacher closed the door behind him. “What do you think you were doing, standing out there like a lemon?”
“Sorry,” said J.J. “I didn’t realize you were talking to me.”
“Who else would I be talking to?”
“My name’s Byrne,” said J.J. “My mother’s name is Liddy all right, but my father’s name is Byrne. I’m J.J. Byrne.”
THE LEGACY
Trad
The new policeman stood on the street outside Green’s pub. On the other side of the bolted doors a gathering of musicians was at full throttle, the rich blend of their instruments cutting through the beehive buzz of a dozen conversations. Across the road the rising tide slopped against the walls of the tiny harbor. Beneath invisible clouds the water was pewter gray with muddy bronze glints where it caught the street lights. Its surface was ragged. The breeze was getting up. There would be rain before long.
Inside the pub there was a momentary hiccup in the music as one tune ended and another began. For a couple of bars a solitary flute carried the new tune until the other musicians recognized it and pounced on it, and lifted it to the rafters of the old pub. Out
in the street, Garda O’Dwyer recognized the tune. Inside his regulation black brogues his cramped toes twitched to the beat. At the curbside behind him his partner, Garda Treacy, leaned across the empty passenger seat of the squad car and tapped on the window.