7

They gave me a couple of hours on my own, with a kind of delicacy I hadn’t expected, before they came looking for me. Kevin showed up first: sticking his head around the door like a kid on a hide-and-seek mission, sending a quick sly text while the barman pulled his pint, hovering and shuffling beside my table till I put him out of his misery and gestured for him to sit down. We didn’t talk. It took the girls about three minutes to join us, shaking rain off their coats and giggling and shooting sideways glances around the pub—“Jaysus,” Jackie said in what she thought was a whisper, pulling off her scarf, “I remember when we used to be dying to come in here, only because it was no girls allowed. We were better off, weren’t we?”

Carmel gave the seat a suspicious look and a quick swipe with a tissue before she sat down. “Thank God Mammy didn’t come after all. This place’d put the heart crossways in her.”

“Christ,” Kevin said, his head jerking up. “Ma was going to come?”

“She’s worried about Francis.”

“Dying to pick his brains, more like. She’s not going to follow you or anything, is she?”

“Wouldn’t put it past her,” Jackie said. “Secret Agent Ma.”

“She won’t. I told her you were gone home,” Carmel said to me, fingertips over her mouth, between guilty and mischievous. “God forgive me.”

“You’re a genius,” Kevin said, heartfelt, slumping back into his seat.

“He’s right. She’d only have wrecked all our heads.” Jackie craned her neck, trying to catch the barman’s eye. “Will I get served in here these days, will I?”

“I’ll go up,” Kevin said. “What’ll you have?”

“Get us a gin and tonic.”

Carmel pulled her stool up to the table. “Would they have a Babycham, d’you think?”

“Ah, Jesus, Carmel.”

“I can’t drink the strong stuff. You know I can’t.”

“I’m not going up there and asking for a poxy Babycham. I’ll get the crap kicked out of me.”

“You’ll be grand,” I said. “It’s 1980 in here anyway; they’ve probably got a whole crate of Babycham behind the bar.”

“And a baseball bat waiting for any guy who asks for it.”

“I’ll go.”

“There’s Shay now.” Jackie half stood up and flapped a hand to get his attention. “He can go, sure; he’s up already.”

Kevin said, “Who invited him?”

“I did,” Carmel told him. “And the pair of yous can act your age and be civil to each other, for once. This evening’s about Francis, not about you.”

“I’ll drink to that,” I said. I was pleasantly pissed, just heading into the stage where everything looked colorful and soft-edged and nothing, not even the sight of Shay, could grate on me. Normally the first hint of the warm fuzzies makes me switch to coffee, fast. That night I intended to enjoy every second of them.

Shay lounged over to our corner, running a hand through his hair to get rid of the raindrops. “I’d never have guessed this place was up to your standards,” he said to me. “You brought your cop mate in here?”

“It was heartwarming. Everyone welcomed him like a brother.”

“I’d have paid to watch that. What’re you drinking?”

“Are you buying?”

“Why not.”

“Sweet,” I said. “Guinness for me and Kevin, Jackie’ll have a G and T, and Carmel wants a Babycham.”

Jackie said, “We just want to see you go up and order it.”

“No problem to me. Watch and learn.” Shay headed up to the bar, got the barman’s attention with an ease that said this was his local, and waved the bottle of Babycham at us triumphantly. Jackie said, “Bleeding show-off.”

Shay came back balancing all the glasses at once, with a precision that goes with plenty of practice. “So,” he said, putting them down on the table. “Tell us, Francis: was that your mot, that all this fuss is about?” and, when everyone froze, “Cop on, will yous; you’re all gagging to ask him the same thing. Was it, Francis?”

Carmel said in her best mammy-voice, “Leave Francis alone. I told Kevin and I’m telling you: you’ve to behave yourselves tonight.”

Shay laughed and pulled up a stool. I had had plenty of time during the last couple of hours, while my brain was still mainly unpickled, to consider exactly how much I wanted to share with the Place, or anyway with my family, which amounted to pretty much the same thing. “It’s all right, Melly,” I said. “Nothing’s definite yet, but yeah, it’s looking like that was probably Rosie.”

A quick suck of breath from Jackie, and then silence. Shay let out a long, low whistle.

“God rest,” Carmel said softly. She and Jackie crossed themselves.

“That’s what your man told the Dalys,” Jackie said. “The fella you were talking to. But, sure, no one knew whether to believe him or not… Cops, you know? They’ll say anything—not you, like, but the rest of them. He could’ve just wanted us to think that was her.”

“How do they know?” Kevin asked. He looked faintly sick.

I said, “They don’t, yet. They’ll run tests.”

“Like DNA stuff?”

“I wouldn’t know, Kev. Not my field.”

“Your field,” Shay said, turning his glass between his fingers. “I’ve been wondering: what is your field, exactly?”

I said, “This and that.” For obvious reasons, undercovers tend to tell civilians that we work in Intellectual Property Rights, or whatever else sounds dull enough to nip the conversation in the bud. Jackie thinks I implement strategic personnel utilization solutions.

Kevin asked, “Can they tell… you know. What happened to her?”

I opened my mouth, shut it again, shrugged and took a long swig of my pint. “Did Kennedy not talk to the Dalys about that?”

Carmel said, with her mouth pursing up, “Not a word. They begged him to tell them what happened to her, so they did, and he wouldn’t say one word. Walked out and left them there to wonder.”

Jackie was bolt upright with outrage; even her hair looked like it had got taller. “Their own daughter, and he told them it was none of their business if she was murdered or not. I don’t care if he’s your mate, Francis, that’s just dirty, that is.”

Scorcher was making an even better first impression than I had expected. I said, “Kennedy’s no mate of mine. He’s just a little poxbottle I have to work with every now and then.”

Shay said, “I bet you’re good enough mates that he told you what happened to Rosie.”

I glanced around the pub. The conversations had cranked up a notch—not louder, but faster and more focused: the news had made it in at last. Nobody was looking at us, partly out of courtesy to Shay and partly because this was the kind of pub where most people had had problems of their own and understood the value of privacy. I said, leaning forward on my elbows and keeping my voice down, “OK. This could get me fired, but the Dalys deserve to know whatever we know. I need you to promise me it won’t get back to Kennedy.”

Shay was wearing a thousand-watt skeptical stare, but the other three were right with me, nodding away, proud as Punch: our Francis, after all these years still a Liberties boy first and a cop second, sure aren’t we all great to be such a close-knit bunch. That was what the girls would pass on to the rest of the neighborhood, as the sauce to go with my little nuggets of tasty info: Francis is on our side.

I said, “It looks a lot like someone killed her.”

Carmel gasped and crossed herself again. From Jackie: “God bless us and save us!”

Kevin was still looking pale. He asked, “How?”

“No news on that yet.”

“But they’ll find out, right?”

“Probably. After all this time, it could be tough, but the lab team knows what they’re doing.”

“Like CSI?” Carmel was round-eyed.

“Yep,” I said, which would have given the useless tech an aneurysm—the Bureau all loathe CSI to the point of sputtering incoherence—but which would make the old ones’ day. “Just like that.”

“Except not magic,” Shay said dryly, to his pint.

“You’d be surprised. Those boys can find just about anything they set their sights on—old blood spatter, tiny amounts of DNA, a hundred different kinds of injury, you name it. And while they’re figuring out what happened to her, Kennedy and his crew are going to be figuring out who happened it. They’ll be talking to everyone who lived around here, back then. They’ll want to know who she was close to, who she argued with, who liked her and who didn’t and why, what she did every moment of the last few days of her life, if anyone noticed anything odd that night she went missing, if anyone noticed anyone else acting funny around then or just after… They’re going to be very bloody thorough, and they’re going to take all the time they need. Anything, any tiny thing, could be crucial.”

“Holy Mother,” Carmel breathed. “It’s just like the telly, isn’t it? That’s mad.”

In pubs and kitchens and front rooms all around us, people were already talking: thinking back, dredging up old memories, comparing and contrasting, pooling them to come up with a million theories. In my neighborhood, gossip is a competitive sport that’s been raised to Olympic standard, and I never diss gossip; I revere it with all my heart. Like I told Scorch, info is ammo, and there was bound to be plenty of live ammo being tossed around, in with the dud stuff. I wanted all that good gossip to be focused on dredging up the live rounds, and I wanted to make very sure they would get back to me, one way or another—if Scorcher had snubbed the Dalys, he was going to have a hard time extracting any kind of info from anyone in a half-mile radius. And I wanted to know that, if someone out there had something to worry about, he was going to be worrying hard.

I said, “If I hear anything else that the Dalys should know, I won’t let them get left out of the loop.”

Jackie put out a hand and touched my wrist. She said, “I’m so sorry, Francis. I was hoping it’d turn out to be something else—some kind of mix-up, I don’t know, anything…”

“That poor young one,” Carmel said softly. “What age was she? Eighteen?”

I said, “Nineteen and a bit.”

“Ah, God; that’s barely older than my Darren. And left on her own in that awful house all these years. Her parents going mad wondering where she was, and all the time…”

Jackie said, “I never thought I’d say this, but thank God for your man PJ Lavery.”

“Let’s hope,” Kevin said. He drained his pint. “Who’s ready for another?”

“Might as well,” said Jackie. “What d’you mean, let’s hope?”

Kevin shrugged. “Let’s hope it turns out OK, is all I’m saying.”

“Janey Mac, Kevin, how’s it going to turn out OK? The poor girl’s dead! Sorry, Francis.”

Shay said, “He means let’s hope the cops don’t turn up anything that makes us all wish Lavery’s boys had dumped that suitcase in a skip and let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Like what?” Jackie demanded. “Kev?”

Kevin shoved back his stool and said, with a sudden burst of authority, “I’ve had this conversation right up to my tits, and Frank probably has too. I’m going up to the bar. If you’re still talking about this crap when I get back, I’m leaving you the drinks and I’m going home.”

“Will you look at that,” Shay said, one corner of his mouth lifting. “The mouse that roared. Fair play to you, Kev; you’re dead right. We’ll talk about Survivor. Now get us a pint.”

We got another round in, and then another. Hard rain gusted up against the windows, but the barman had the heating up high, and all the weather we got was the cold draft when the door opened. Carmel plucked up the courage to go to the bar and order half a dozen toasted sandwiches, and I realized that the last food I’d had was half of Ma’s fry-up and that I was starving, the ferocious kind of hunger where you could spear something and eat it warm. Shay and I took turns telling jokes that made G &T go down Jackie’s nose and made Carmel squeak and smack our wrists, once she got the punch lines; Kevin did a viciously accurate impression of Ma at Christmas dinner that sent us all into convulsions of hard, helpless, painful laughter. “Stop,” Jackie gasped desperately, flapping a hand at him. “I swear to God, my bladder won’t take it, if you don’t stop I’ll wet myself.”

“She’ll do it,” I said, trying to get my breath back. “And you’ll be the one that has to get a J-cloth and clean up.”

“I don’t know what you’re laughing about,” Shay told me. “This Christmas, you’ll be right there suffering with the rest of us.”

“My bollix. I’ll be safe at home, drinking single malt and laughing every time I think about yous poor suckers.”

“Just you wait, pal. Now that Ma’s got her claws back into you, you think she’ll let go with Christmas just around the corner? Miss her chance to make all of us miserable at once? Just you wait.”

“Want to bet?”

Shay held out a hand. “Fifty quid. You’ll be sat across the table from me for Christmas dinner.”

“You’re on,” I said. We shook on it. His hand was dry and strong and callused, and the grip flicked a spark of static between us. Neither of us flinched.

Carmel said, “D’you know something, Francis, we said we wouldn’t ask you, but I can’t help it—Jackie, would you ever stop that, don’t be pinching me!”

Jackie had got her bladder back under control and was giving Carmel the evil stare of doom. Carmel said, with dignity, “If he doesn’t want to talk about it, he can tell me himself, so he can. Francis, why did you never come back before this?”

I said, “I was too scared that Ma would get the wooden spoon and beat the living shite out of me. Do you blame me?”

Shay snorted. Carmel said, “Ah, seriously, but, Francis. Why?”

She and Kevin and even Jackie—who had asked this question a bunch of times and never got an answer—were gazing at me, tipsy and perplexed and even a little hurt. Shay was picking a fleck of something out of his pint.

I said, “Let me ask yous something. What would you die for?”

“Jaysus,” Kevin said. “You’re a barrel of laughs, aren’t you?”

“Ah, leave him,” Jackie said. “The day that’s in it.”

I said, “Da once told me he’d die for Ireland. Would you do that?”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “Da’s stuck in the seventies. No one thinks like that any more.”

“Try it for a second. Just for the crack. Would you?”

He gave me a bemused look. “Like why?”

“Say England invaded all over again.”

“They couldn’t be arsed.”

“If, Kev. Stay with me here.”

“I dunno. I never thought about it.”

“That,” Shay said, not too aggressively, aiming his pint at Kevin, “that right there, that’s what has this country ruined.”

“Me? What’d I do?”

“You and the rest like you. Your whole bloody generation. What do you care about, only Rolexes and Hugo Boss? What else do you think about, even? Francis is right, for once in his life. You’d want to get yourself something you’d die for, pal.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Kevin said. “What would you die for? Guinness? A good ride?”

Shay shrugged. “Family.”

“What are you on about?” Jackie demanded. “You hate Ma and Da’s guts.”

All five of us burst out laughing; Carmel had to tip her head back and knuckle tears out of her eyes. “I do,” Shay acknowledged, “yeah. But that’s not the point.”

“Would you die for Ireland, yeah?” Kevin asked me. He still sounded a little miffed.

“I would in me hole,” I said, which set everyone off again. “I was posted in Mayo for a while. Have yous ever been to Mayo, have yous? It’s boggers, sheep and scenery. I’m not dying for that.”

“What, then?”

“Like my man Shay says,” I told Kev, waving my glass at Shay, “that’s not the point. The point is that I know.”

“I’d die for the kids,” Carmel said. “God forbid.”

Jackie said, “I’d say I’d die for Gav. Only if he really needed it, mind. Is this not terrible morbid, Francis? Would you not rather talk about something else?”

I said, “Back in the day, I would’ve died for Rosie Daly. That’s what I’m trying to tell yous.”

There was a silence. Then Shay raised his glass. “Here’s to everything we’d die for,” he said. “Cheers.”

We clinked our glasses, took deep drinks and relaxed back into our seats. I knew this might well be because I was about nine tenths hammered, but I was fucking delighted that they had come in, even Shay. More than that: I was grateful. They might be a spectacularly messed-up bunch and what they felt about me was anyone’s guess, but the four of them had dropped whatever they could have been doing this evening, put down their lives at a moment’s notice and come in here to walk me through this night. We fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, and that felt like a warm gold glow wrapped all around me; like I had stumbled, by some perfect accident, into the right place. I was just sober enough not to try and put this into words.

Carmel leaned in to me and said, almost shyly, “When Donna was a baba, there was something went wrong with her kidneys; they thought she might need a transplant. I told them straight off, not a bother on me, they could take the both of mine. I didn’t think twice. She was grand in the end, sure, and they’d only have needed the one anyway, but I never forgot that. D’you know what I mean?”

“Yep,” I said, smiling at her. “I do.”

Jackie said, “Ah, she’s lovely, Donna is. She’s a wee dote; always laughing. You’ll have to meet her now, Francis.”

Carmel told me, “I see you in Darren. D’you know that? I always did, from when he was a little young fella.”

“God help him,” Jackie and I said, together.

“Ah, now; in a good way. Going to college, like. He didn’t get that off me or Trevor, we’d have been happy enough to see him go into the plumbing with his daddy. No, Darren came up with that all by himself, never said a word to us: just got all the course forms, decided what one he wanted, and worked like mad to get himself into the right Leaving Cert classes. Went after it bullheaded, all on his own. Like yourself. I always used to wish I was like that.”

For a second there, I thought I saw a wave of sadness rise up across her face. “I remember you doing just fine when you wanted something,” I said. “How about Trevor?”

The sadness vanished, and I got a quick mischievous snippet of giggle that made her look like a girl again. “I did, didn’t I? That dance, the first time I saw him: I took one look and I said to Louise Lacey, I said, ‘That one’s mine.’ He was wearing them flares that were all the rage—”

Jackie started to laugh.

“Don’t be making fun, you,” Carmel told her. “Your Gavin does be always in them raggedy old jeans; I like a fella that makes a bit of an effort. Trevor had a lovely little arse on him in the flares, so he did. And he smelled only gorgeous. What are yous two laughing at?”

“You brazen hussy, you,” I said.

Carmel took a prim sip of her Babycham. “I was not. Things were different back then. If you were mad about a fella, you’d sooner die than let him know. You had to make him do the chasing.”

Jackie said, “Jaysus, Pride and bleeding Prejudice. I asked Gavin out, so I did.”

“I’m telling yous, it worked; better than all this rubbish nowadays, girls going to the clubs with no knickers on them. I got my fella, didn’t I? Engaged on my twenty-first. Were you still here for that, Francis?”

“Just,” I said. “I left about three weeks after.” I remembered the engagement party: the two families squeezed into our front room, the mammies eyeing each other up like a pair of overweight pit bulls, Shay doing his big-brother act and shooting Trevor the filthies, Trevor all Adam’s apple and terrified bug-eyes, Carmel flushed and triumphant and squeezed into a pink pleated horror that made her look like an inside-out fish. Back then I was even more of an arrogant prick; I sat on the windowsill next to Trevor’s piggy little brother, ignoring him and congratulating myself fervently on the fact that I was getting the hell out of Dodge and would never have an engagement party involving egg sandwiches. Careful what you wish for. Looking at the four of them around the pub table, I felt like I had missed something in that night; like an engagement party might have been, at least in the long run, something worth having.

“I wore my pink,” Carmel said, with satisfaction. “Everyone said I looked only smashing.”

“You did, all right,” I said, winking at her. “If only you weren’t my sister, I’d have fancied you myself.”

She and Jackie squealed—“Yeuch, stop!”—but I wasn’t paying attention any more. Down at their end of the table, Shay and Kevin had been having a chat of their own, and the defensive note in Kevin’s voice had ratcheted up enough to make me tune in. “It’s a job. What’s wrong with it?”

“A job where you work your guts out licking yuppie arse, yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, and all for the good of some fat corporation that’ll throw you to the wolves as soon as the going gets tough. You make thousands a week for them, and what do you get out of it?”

“I get paid. Next summer I’m going to Australia, I’m going to snorkel around the Great Barrier Reef and eat Skippyburgers and get pissed at barbecues on Bondi Beach with gorgeous Aussie babes, because of that job. What’s not to love?”

Shay laughed, a short scrape. “Better save your money.”

Kevin shrugged. “Plenty more where that came from.”

“There is in me arse. That’s what they want you to believe.”

“Who? What are you on about?”

“Times are changing, pal. Why do you think PJ Lavery—”

“Fucking bogger,” said all of us in unison, except Carmel, who now that she was a mammy said, “Fecking bogger.”

“Why do you think he’s gutting those houses?”

“Who cares?” Kev was getting irritated.

“You should bloody well care. He’s a cute hoor, Lavery; he knows what way the wind’s blowing. He buys those three houses last year for top whack, sends out all those pretty brochures about quaint luxury apartments, and now all of a sudden he’s dropping the whole idea and stripping them for parts?”

“So what? Maybe he’s getting a divorce or having tax hassle or something. How is that my problem?”

Shay stared Kevin out of it for another moment, leaning forward, elbows on the table. Then he laughed again and shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you?” he said, reaching for his pint. “You don’t have a fucking clue. You swallow every bit of shite you’re fed; you think it’ll be all sunshine and roses forever. I can’t wait to see your face.”

Jackie said, “You’re pissed.”

Kevin and Shay never did like each other very much, but there were whole layers here that I was missing. It was like listening to the radio through stiff static: I could pick up just enough to catch the tone, not enough to know what was going on. I couldn’t tell whether the interference came from twenty-two years or eight pints. I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open.

Shay brought his glass down with a flat crack. “I’ll tell you why Lavery’s not wasting his cash on fancy apartments. By the time he’d have them built, no one will have the money to buy them off him. This country’s about to go down the tubes. It’s at the top of the cliff, and it’s about to go over at a hundred an hour.”

“So no apartments,” Kev said, shrugging. “Big deal. They’d only have given Ma more yuppies to bitch about.”

“Yuppies are your bread and butter, pal. When they become extinct, so do you. Who’s going to buy big-dick tellys once they’re all on the dole? How well does a rent boy live if the johns go broke?”

Jackie smacked Shay’s arm. “Ah, here, you. That’s disgusting, that is.” Carmel put up a hand to screen her face and mouthed Drunk at me, extravagantly and apologetically, but she had had three Babychams herself and she used the wrong hand. Shay ignored both of them.

“This country’s built on nothing but bullshit and good PR. One kick and it’ll fall apart, and the kick’s coming.”

“I don’t know what you’re so pleased about,” Kevin said sulkily. He was a little the worse for wear, too, but instead of making him aggressive it had turned him inwards; he was slouched over the table, staring moodily into his glass. “If there’s a crash, you’re going down with all the rest of us.”

Shay shook his head, grinning. “Ah, no, no, no. Sorry, man; no such luck. I’ve got a plan.”

“You always do. And how far have any of them ever got you?”

Jackie sighed noisily. “Lovely weather we’re having,” she said to me.

Shay told Kevin, “This time’s different.”

“Sure it is.”

“You watch, pal. Just you watch.”

“That sounds lovely,” Carmel said firmly, like a hostess hauling her dinner party back under control. She had pulled her stool up to the table and was sitting very straight, a ladylike pinky lifted off her glass. “Would you not tell us about it?”

After a moment Shay’s eyes moved to her, and he leaned back in his seat and started to laugh. “Ah, Melly,” he said. “You always were the only one could put manners on me. Do yous lot know, when I was a great lump of a teenager, our Carmel slapped me round the back of the legs till I ran, because I called Tracy Long a slut?”

“You deserved it,” Carmel said primly. “That’s no way to talk about a girl.”

“I did. The rest of this shower don’t appreciate you, Melly, but I do. Stick with me, girl. We’ll go places.”

“Where?” said Kevin. “The dole office?”

Shay shifted his focus back to Kevin, with an effort. “Here’s what they don’t tell you,” he said. “In boom times, all the big chances go to the big fish. The workingman can make a living, but it’s only the rich who can get richer.”

Jackie asked, “Could the workingman not enjoy his pint and have a nice chat with his brothers and sisters, no?”

“When things start going bust, that’s when anyone with a brain and a plan can pick up a big old handful of the pieces. And I’ve got those.”

Hot date tonight, Shay used to say, crouching to slick back his hair in the mirror, but he’d never let on with who; or Made a few extra shekels, Melly, get yourself and Jackie an ice cream, but you never knew where the money had come from. I said, “So you keep telling us. Are you going to put out, or are you just going to keep cock-teasing all night long?”

Shay stared at me; I gave him a big innocent smile. “Francis,” he said. “Our man on the inside. Our man in the system. Why would you care what a renegade like me does with himself?”

“Brotherly love.”

“More like you think it’ll be crap, and you want that nice warm feeling that you’ve beaten me again. Try this on for size. I’m buying the bike shop.”

Just saying it brought a faint red flush onto his cheekbones. Kevin snorted; Jackie’s high-up eyebrows shot up even farther. “Fair play to you,” she said. “Our Shay, the entrepreneur, wha’?”

“Nice one,” I said. “When you’re the Donald Trump of the bike world, I’ll come to you for my BMXs.”

“Conaghy’s retiring next year, and his son wants nothing to do with the business; he sells flash cars, bikes aren’t good enough for him. So Conaghy gave me first refusal.”

Kevin had surfaced from his sulk enough to look up from his pint. He asked, “Where’re you going to get the dosh?”

The hot glitter in Shay’s eyes made me see what girls saw in him. “I’ve got half of it already. I’ve been saving for this for a long time. The bank’s giving me the rest. They’re tightening up on the loans—they know there’s trouble ahead, same as Lavery does—but I got in there just in time. This time next year, lads, I’ll be a man of independent means.”

Carmel said, “Well done,” but there was something in her voice that caught my ear; something like reserve. “Ah, that’s great altogether. Well done.”

Shay took a swig of his pint and tried to play it cool, but there was a grin pressing at the corners of his mouth. “Like I told Kev, there’s no point spending your life working to fill someone else’s pockets. The only way to get anywhere is to be your own boss man. I’m just putting my money where my mouth is.”

“So?” Kevin asked. “If you’re actually right and the country’s going down the tubes or whatever, you’re still going with it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, mate. When this week’s rich pricks find out they’re in the shit, that’s when I get my chance. Back in the eighties, when no one we knew had the money for a car, how did we get around? On bikes. As soon as the bubble bursts, Daddy’s not going to be able to buy his little darlings BMWs to drive the half mile to school any more. That’s when they show up at my door. I can’t wait to see the faces on the little cunts.”

“Whatever,” Kevin said. “That’s lovely, that is. Really.” He went back to staring into his pint.

Carmel said, “Will it not mean living above the shop?”

Shay’s eyes went to her, and something complicated passed between them. “It will. Yeah.”

“And working full-time. Your hours won’t be flexible any more.”

“Melly,” Shay said, much more gently, “it’ll be all right. Conaghy’s not retiring for a few months yet. By that time…”

Carmel took a tiny breath and nodded, like she was bracing for something. “Right,” she said, almost to herself, and lifted her glass to her lips.

“I’m telling you. Don’t be worrying.”

“Ah, no, you’re grand. God knows you deserve your chance. The way you’ve been the last while, sure, I knew you’d something up your sleeve; I just didn’t… I’m delighted for you. Congratulations.”

“Carmel,” Shay said. “Look at me. Would I do that to you?”

“Here,” Jackie said. “What’s the story?”

Shay put a finger on Carmel’s glass and moved it down so he could see her face. I’d never seen him tender before, and I found it even less soothing than Carmel did. “Listen to me. All the doctors said there’s only a few months in it. Six, max. By the time I buy, he’ll be in a home or in a chair, or anyway too weak to do any damage.”

“God forgive us,” Carmel said softly. “Hoping for…”

I said, “What’s going on?”

They turned to stare at me, two identical pairs of expressionless blue eyes. It was the first time I’d seen them look alike. I said, “Are you telling me Da still hits Ma?”

A fast twitch like an electric shock went round the table, a tiny hiss of indrawn breath. “You mind your business,” Shay said, “and we’ll mind ours.”

“Who elected you spokesgobshite?”

Carmel said, “We’d rather there was someone around, is all. In case Da has a fall.”

I said, “Jackie told me that had stopped. Years back.”

Shay said, “Like I told you. Jackie hasn’t a clue. None of yous lot ever did. So fuck off out of it.”

I said, “Do you know something? I’m getting just a tiny bit sick of you acting like you’re the only one who ever had to take Da’s shit.”

Nobody was breathing. Shay laughed, a low ugly sound. He said, “You think you took shit from him?”

“I’ve got the scars to prove it. You and me lived in the same house, mate, remember? The only difference is that me, now I’m a big boy, I can go an entire conversation without whingeing about it.”

“You took fuck-all, pal. Sweet fuck-all. And we didn’t live in the same house, not for a single day. You lived in the lap of luxury, you and Jackie and Kevin, compared to what me and Carmel got.”

I said, “Don’t you ever tell me I got off easy.”

Carmel was trying to look daggers at Shay, but he didn’t notice; his eyes were fixed on me. “Spoilt rotten, the whole bloody three of yous. You think you had it bad? That’s because we made sure you never found out what bad was like.”

“If you want to go ask the barman for a tape measure,” I said, “we can compare scar sizes, or dick sizes, or whatever the hell has your knickers in a knot. Otherwise, we’ll have a much nicer night if you keep the martyr complex on your own side of the table and don’t try to tell me what my life’s been like.”

“Cute. You always did think you were smarter than the rest of us, didn’t you?”

“Only than you, sunshine. I just go with the evidence.”

“What makes you any smarter? Just because me and Carmel were out of school the second we turned sixteen? Did you think that was because we were too thick to stay?” Shay was leaning forward, hands clenched on the edge of the table, and there was a patchy fever-red flush coming up on his cheekbones. “It was so we’d be putting our wages on the table when Da wasn’t. So you could eat. So the three of you could buy your schoolbooks and your little uniforms and get your Leaving Certs.”

“Christ,” Kevin muttered, to his pint. “And he’s off.”

“Without me, you wouldn’t be a cop today. You’d be nothing. You thought I was just mouthing off when I said I’d die for family? I damn near did it. I lost my education. I gave up every chance I had.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Because otherwise you’d have been a college professor? Don’t give me the giggles. You lost bugger-all.”

“I’ll never know what I lost. What did you ever give up? What did this family ever take off you? Name me one thing. One.”

I said, “This fucking family lost me Rosie Daly.”

Absolute, frozen silence. The others were all staring at me; Jackie had her glass raised and her mouth half open, caught in midsip. I realized, slowly, that I was on my feet, swaying a little, and that my voice had been right on the edge of a roar. I said, “Leaving school is nothing; a few slaps are nothing. I’d have taken all that, begged for it, sooner than lose Rosie. And she’s gone.”

Carmel said, in a flat stunned voice, “You think she left you because of us?”

I knew there was something wrong with what I had said, something that had shifted, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. As soon as I stood up, the booze had hit me right in the backs of the knees. I said, “What the hell do you think happened, Carmel? One day we were mad about each other, true love forever and ever, amen. We were going to get married. We had the tickets bought. I swear to God we would have done anything, Melly, anything, anything in this wide world to be together. The next day, the next bloody day, she ran off on me.”

The regulars were starting to glance over, conversations falling away, but I couldn’t get my voice back down. I always have the coolest head in any fight and the lowest blood-alcohol level in any pub. This evening was way off course, and it was much too late to salvage it. “What’s the only thing that changed in between? Da went on a bender and tried to break into the Dalys’ gaff at two in the morning, and then the whole classy bunch of yous had a screaming knock-down-drag-out row in the middle of the street. You remember that night, Melly. The whole Place remembers that night. Why wouldn’t Rosie back out, after that? Who wants that for in-laws? Who wants that kind of blood in her children?”

Carmel said, very quietly and still with no expression at all, “Is that why you never came home? Because you’ve thought that all this time?”

“If Da had been decent,” I said. “If he hadn’t been a drunk, or even if he’d just bothered to be discreet about it. If Ma hadn’t been Ma. If Shay hadn’t been in and out of trouble every day of the week. If we’d been different.”

Kevin said, bewildered, “But if Rosie didn’t go anywhere—”

I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. The whole day had hit me, all of a sudden, and I was so exhausted that I felt like my legs were melting into the ratty carpet. I said, “Rosie dumped me because my family was a bunch of animals. And I don’t blame her.”

Jackie said, and I heard the hurt in her voice, “Ah, that’s not on, Francis. That’s not fair.”

Shay said, “Rosie Daly had no problems with me, pal. Trust me on that.”

He had himself back under control; he had eased back in his chair, and the red had faded off his cheekbones. It was the way he said it: that arrogant spark in his eyes, that lazy little smirk curving around the corners of his mouth. I said, “What are you talking about?”

“She was a lovely girl, was Rosie. Very friendly; very sociable, is that the word I’m after?”

I wasn’t tired any more. I said, “If you’re going to talk dirt about a girl who’s not here to fight her own corner, at least do it straight out, like a man. If you don’t have the guts to do that, then shut your gob.”

The barman brought down a glass on the bar with a bang. “Hey! Yous lot! That’ll do. Settle down now or you’re all barred.”

Shay said, “I’m only complimenting your taste. Great tits, great arse and a great attitude. She was a right little goer, wasn’t she? Zero to sixty in no time flat.”

A sharp voice somewhere at the back of my brain was warning me to walk away, but it reached me fuzzy and vague through all those layers of booze. I said, “Rosie wouldn’t have touched you with someone else’s.”

“Think again, pal. She did a lot more than touch. Did you never smell me off her, once you got her stripped down?”

I had him hauled up off his chair by his shirtfront and I had my fist pulled back for the punch when the others swung into action, with that instant, clenched efficiency that only drunks’ kids have. Carmel got in between us, Kevin grabbed my punching arm and Jackie whipped drinks out of harm’s way. Shay wrenched my other hand off his shirt—I heard something rip—and we both went stumbling backwards. Carmel got Shay by the shoulders, sat him neatly back down and held him there, blocking his view of me and talking soothing crap into his face. Kevin and Jackie caught me under the arms and had me turned around and halfway to the door before I got my balance back and figured out what was happening.

I said, “Get off. Get off me,” but they kept moving. I tried to shake them away, but Jackie had made sure she was stuck to me tightly enough that I couldn’t get rid of her without hurting her, and I was still a lot of drink away from that. Shay shouted something vicious over Carmel’s shoulder, she upped the shushing noises, and then Kevin and Jackie had maneuvered me expertly around the tables and stools and the blank-faced regulars and we were outside, in the rush of cold sharp air on the street corner, with the door slamming behind us.

I said, “What the fuck?”

Jackie said peacefully, like she was talking to a child, “Ah, Francis. Sure, you know yous can’t be fighting in there.”

“That arsehole was asking for a punch in the gob, Jackie. Begging for it. You heard him. Tell me he doesn’t deserve everything I can dish out.”

“He does, of course, but you can’t be wrecking the place. Will we go for a walk?”

“So what are you dragging me out for? Shay’s the one who—”

They linked my arms and started walking. “You’ll feel better out here in the fresh air,” Jackie told me reassuringly.

“No. No. I was having a quiet pint on my own, doing no harm to anyone, till that prick walked in and started causing hassle. Did you hear what he said?”

Kevin said, “He’s locked, and he was being a total dickhead. What are you, surprised?”

“So why the hell am I the one out on my ear?” I knew I sounded like a kid whining He started it, but I couldn’t stop myself.

Kevin said, “It’s Shay’s local. He’s there every other night.”

“He doesn’t own this whole bloody neighborhood. I’ve got as much right as he has—” I tried to reef myself away from them and head back to the pub, but the effort almost overbalanced me. The cold air wasn’t sobering me up; instead it was slapping at me from all angles, baffling me, making my ears buzz.

“You do, of course,” Jackie said, keeping me pointed firmly in the other direction. “But if you stay there, he’ll only be annoying you. There’s no point hanging around for that, sure there’s not. We’ll go somewhere else, will we?”

This is where some cold needle of sense managed to pierce through the Guinness fog. I stopped in my tracks and shook my head till the buzz faded a notch or two. “No,” I said. “No, Jackie, I don’t think we will.”

Jackie twisted her head around to peer anxiously into my face. “Are you all right? You’re not going to be sick, now?”

“No, I’m not going to bleeding well be sick. But it’ll be a long, long time before I go anywhere on your say—so again.”

“Ah, Francis, don’t be—”

I said, “Do you remember where this whole thing started, Jackie, do you? You rang me up and convinced me that I wanted to get my arse over to this godforsaken dump. I swear to God I must’ve slammed my head in a car door somewhere along the way, or I’d have told you just where to shove that genius idea. Because look how it’s turned out, Jackie. Look. Are you pleased with yourself, yeah? Are you getting that lovely glow of a job well done? Are you happy now?”

I was swaying. Kevin tried to get a shoulder under mine, but I shook them both off, let my weight fall back against the wall and put my hands over my face. A million little flecks of light were heaving behind my eyelids. “I knew better,” I said. “I bloody well knew better.”

Nobody said anything for a while. I could feel Kevin and Jackie glancing at each other, trying to make plans by eyebrow semaphore. Finally Jackie said, “Here, I don’t know about yous two, but I’m freezing my tits off. If I go back in and get my coat, will yous hang on here for me?”

Kevin said, “Get mine as well.”

“Grand. Don’t be going anywhere, yeah? Francis?”

She gave my elbow a tentative little squeeze. I ignored her. After a moment I heard her sigh, and then the perky clip-clop of her heels heading back the way we had come.

I said, “This poxy fucking bastarding day.”

Kevin leaned against the wall beside me. I could hear his breath, puffing a little against the cold air. He said, “It’s not like it’s exactly Jackie’s fault.”

“And I should care about that, Kev. I really should. But you’re going to have to forgive me if, right this minute, I don’t give a damn.”

The laneway smelled of grease and piss. Somewhere a street or two away a couple of guys had started shouting at each other, no words, just hoarse mindless noise. Kevin shifted his weight against the wall. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I’m glad you came back. It’s been good, hanging out. I mean, like, obviously not all the Rosie stuff and… you know. But I’m really glad we got to see each other again.”

“Like I said. I should care, but things don’t always pan out the way they should.”

Kevin said, “Because, I mean, family does matter to me. It always did. I didn’t say I wouldn’t die for them—you know, like Shay was going on about? I just didn’t like him trying to tell me what to think.”

I said, “And who would.” I took my hands off my face and raised my head an inch or two away from the wall, to see if the world had stabilized any. Nothing tilted too badly.

“It used to be simpler,” Kevin said. “Back when we were kids.”

“That’s definitely not how I remember it.”

“Well, I mean, God, it wasn’t simple, but… you know? At least we knew what we were supposed to do, even if doing it sometimes sucked. At least we knew. I think I miss that. You know what I mean?”

I said, “Kevin, my friend, I have to tell you, I really, truly do not.”

Kevin turned his head against the wall to look at me. The cold air and the booze had left him rosy-cheeked and dreamy; shivering a little, with his snappy haircut all bedraggled, he looked like a kid on an old-fashioned Christmas card. “Yeah,” he said, on a sigh. “OK. Probably not. It doesn’t matter.”

I detached myself carefully from the wall, keeping a hand on it just in case, but my knees held. I said, “Jackie shouldn’t be wandering around on her own. Go find her.”

He blinked at me. “Are you going to… I mean, will you wait here for us, yeah? I’ll be back in a sec.”

“No.”

“Oh.” He looked undecided. “What about, like, tomorrow?”

“What about it?”

“Are you gonna be around?”

“I doubt it.”

“How about… you know. Like, ever?”

He looked so fucking young and lost, it killed me. I said, “Go find Jackie.”

I got my balance solid and started walking. After a few seconds I heard Kevin’s footsteps start up behind me, slowly, going the other way.

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